Connecticut Yankees in Revolt

State Sen. Tony Guglielmo (R-Stafford), who acknowledged at the time that, "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem.”

Civil disobedience is the second step in a process where the legitimate interests of a group are ignored by authorities.  The first step is prompt action in the courts.  Failing these prior steps, the third step is armed revolt.

Connecticut has passed a law required registration of all guns conforming to some political notion of an “assault weapon”.  The recent knife attack in southern China killing 29 people shows that any weapon can be used for assault, and the very attempt to redefine the term “assault weapon” is evidence of blatant propaganda.  

Federal law (the National Firearms Act 18 U.S.C. 926) prevents the ATF or any other Federal agency from linking the NCIC data base to individual gun ownership, effectively blocking the creation of a Federal gun registry.    This is the same law that outlawed fully automatic machine guns.  Whether this pre-empts a state from creating such a registry is a question for the courts.  

With the stroke of a pen, Connecticut’s gun registration creates felons out of lawful gun owners whose action were previously deemed innocent.  There is a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison for the first offense.  This is an “ex post facto” law in contradiction of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution and that article applies to both Federal and state laws.  It is also a “slippery slope" issue because it may serve as a precedent for other states.  Finally, the NRA and every other Second Amendment advocate group recognizes that gun registration is the necessary first step to gun confiscation.  If anyone doubts the intent of the anti-gun folks, please witness that President Obama already signed a U.N Treaty calling for gun registration to be followed by small arms confiscation.  Former New York City Mayor Bloomberg is on public record as saying that only the military and police should have guns.  His bodyguards, who are neither military nor police, do carry guns.

Obviously, the failure of this gun registration law has created a class of citizens in civil disobedience.  This case is somewhat unique.  In my research of two dozen cases of civil disobedience, all were based on Mahatma Ghandi’s concepts of civil disobedience:

"Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention and sacrifice”.

Here we have a large, well-armed group, Connecticut Carry, screaming “Molon Labe (Come and get it!)”.   Historically, those cases were armed revolt, not civil disobedience.

One of the best descriptions of authority is that of the King in Exupery’s “The Little Prince”, who declares:

"Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders are reasonable.”

Moshe Feiglin, an Israeli whose civil disobedience was instrumental to the formation of Israel, said it clearly:

“It is a mistake to think that the state works within the boundaries of laws. The public does not obey laws. It obeys rules within the boundaries of a triangle, the first side of which is the law. But the triangle has two other sides: common sense and ethics.

In other words, the fact that we obey the law is not because of the law itself, but because it is logical enough to warrant our adherence.

The third side of the triangle is ethics. If the government ordered us to drive our elderly and infirm out onto the frozen tundra, as per Eskimo custom, we might agree that it would logically enhance the economy. But nobody would obey, because it would be patently immoral. The party at fault for the insubordination would be the government that enacted the law and not the citizens who refused to obey.

The greatest crimes in human history were perpetrated when citizens ignored their duty to delineate logical and ethical boundaries for the rule of law. The societies in which this took place by and large collapsed.”

The right to keep and bear arms is included in the Constitution as a last resort of the people faced with tyranny.  It is not just a sporting privilege for hunters and marksmen.  This is bedrock for the liberty of US citizens.

Consider what the police would have to do to enforce the registration and/or confiscation dictates of this law.  You will not see nice, polite cops going door to door serving papers.  These are “armed felons”.  The police response would be SWAT teams breaking down doors in the middle of the night, shooting the family dog, terrorizing children and instigating death and injuries on themselves and on other law abiding people.  Is this some insane way of saving children from Newtown incidents?  No, it has nothing to do with saving children.  This is the government tightening the screws on a population to enhance control.  As I said, this is bedrock for the liberty of US citizens.

No doubt, some will perish in this sort of armed civil disobedience.  However, it is my bet the Founders were right.  It will impossible, impractical and, eventually, politically unwise to disarm the citizens of the United States.