Christina, in a "perfect" world, I wouldn't object to background checks. But we don't live in a perfect world, which is why the Second Amendment was penned. People more visionary than any on this board realized that somewhere down the line some group would try to disarm the citizenry for their own good. And it's happening. Years ago I, like you, thought that what was going on was "reasonable." But, then came the next proposal. And the next. It soon became clear that what the anti's had in mind was not crime control but control over the guns of the lawful. Every time we object to some proposed law that looks "reasonable" we're called fanatics. But, if you look at how much we've given up in the last 32 years, there's no way we can be seen as fanatical. Imagine if any other group--car owners, golfers, boaters or even (gasp!) some ethnic group--were incrementally harrassed until it reached the point where they were required to be fingerprinted, have their lives checked out by the government, have their respective possessions increasingly regulated or banned by the government, and be demonized and caricatured by the press. No group would stand for it. Blacks would burn down every city in this country. The auto industry would be bankrupt. And golfers would...well, what do golfers do, anyway?
The long and short of it is that every supposedly modest proposal, when added to all the others passed since 1968, amounts to a huge deprivation of our rights as enumerated under the Constitution. And that's not even getting into the subject of natural or God-given rights. At some point, everyone reaches the point where enough is enough. For many gun owners, we're at that point or past it.
Dick
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http://www.petitiononline.com/monk/petition.html and forward the link to every gun owner you know.
