One of my favorite events at the local car racetrack is the Figure Eight race. It’s an amusing nail-biter, as the contestants race around a course that intersects at the center, and there are a lot of narrow misses and the occasional (minor) collision. The tension is a key ingredient of the enjoyment.
Not so with American gun owners and our newly-coronated emperor.
Gun sales hit an all-time high during President Obama’s first term, and surpassed even that high water mark on Black Friday after his reelection. The FBI’s background-check computer system crashed several times last weekend due to excessive request traffic. Americans are arming themselves at record rates, especially women and first-time gun buyers. The only “stimulus” for this national trend has been the two Obama terms. Market speculation is that these purchases are driven by fear of tougher gun restrictions under an Obama presidency.
Bloomberg Businessweek reported on November 20 that Smith & Wesson’s stock price fell a bit on speculation that the demand for guns would taper off, as a result of unrealized fears that the Obama administration was going to introduce new gun restrictions. This is despite better-than-projected earnings during the middle of the year, and also went to press prior to Black Friday’s record sales.
I’m thinking Wall Street got this one wrong. If their speculation was correct, then the boom in gun sales should have curtailed sometime during the first Obama term, since no significant gun legislation was put forth by the White House. Yet the record sales persist.
Sturm Ruger & Company CEO Michael Fifer has temporarily suspended new orders until the company can catch up on their substantial back-orders. SIG Sauer Arms, a German manufacturer whose US operations are based in New Hampshire, has tripled in size in the last five years, a timeframe coinciding with you know what. They are looking to move their production to a much larger facility at nearby Pease Tradeport in Portsmouth, in order to try and keep pace with the demand for their products. It doesn’t appear that the demand for firearms is going to taper off any time soon.
What makes all of this a concern is that we’ve now had four years of getting to know Barack Obama. He has confirmed by his own actions that he is a radical socialist, a racist, an apologizer for America, an autocrat, a flouter of the Constitutional separation of powers, a Liberal and a sociopathic political manipulator.
There are murmurs from the Administration that they are going to attempt more Chicago-style politics to gut the 2nd Amendment, using workarounds like excessive taxation of ammunition sales (remember Howard Metzenbaum’s “Arsenal Tax” proposal?), as well as ratifying the UN’s Small Weapons Treaty and other specious international policies that subordinate American sovereignty to external powers.
Obama, like his mentor Bill Clinton, has shown a propensity to contort and parse the law until it justifies whatever he wants to do. Obama may also have occasion to seat another Supreme Court justice, tipping the balance to the Liberal side.
So here’s the coming storm. This burgeoning group of gun owners is about to run headlong into a reaffirmed president who has no regard for his opponents, the constraints of his office nor, for that matter, the rules of engagement. What will happen when his government attempts to nullify personal gun ownership in the face of this tsunami of gun buying?
Are these new gun owners prepared to submit to a buyback program, which would be Obama’s least confrontational means to disarm the populace? Why would you sell something you just purchased, for the same or less than you paid?
What happens when the tax on a box of ammunition is five times the purchase price? Ten times? I believe Metzenbaum’s attempt to tax gun ownership to death was why he lost his Senate seat. Yet these are different times we live in now, and what passed for conventional wisdom even ten years ago doesn’t apply anymore.
What if the President feels he can build on his success with Obamacare and implements policies for mandatory surrender of citizens’ firearms? This has been done before under similar governments (England, Australia, Canada). After all, he’s an arrogant man who has not only been reaffirmed by a majority of voters but also watched his healthcare legacy survive a Supreme Court challenge.
Voters who assume Barack Obama will leave them, their guns and their Bibles alone are fools. This man has spoken out on both of these aspects with unprovoked derision. He has asserted to another head of state over an open microphone that, in his second term, he will do whatever he pleases. With cohorts like Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer backing him, our right to keep and bear arms is never safely locked within the framework of the Bill of Rights.
So, what will average citizens do when this devious prevaricator comes for their shiny new guns? We know who and what Barack Obama is, and just like that Figure Eight race at the local speedway, it’s only a matter of time. There’s definitely a collision coming.
Image: Crash in the 2nd race that finished off Gordon Shedden and Mike Jordan’s race; author Russell Trow from London, UK; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
