In Soviet Amerika, villains check YOUR background!

The U.S. Senate is working feverishly to expand background checks for people purchasing firearms at gun shows and over the internet. Supposedly this is an attempt to protect the American citizenry from gun violence such as the December 2012 shootings at a Connecticut elementary school in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed. The problem is that Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of that heinous crime, did not purchase his weapons at a gun show or on the internet. He didn't purchase them at all. Obviously, that means  such background checks would have been useless in preventing the horrific events of that day. Could it be that the government is merely using this event as an excuse to restrict Americans' liberty further?

Governments love guns. They surround themselves with them and buy up every piece of ammo they can get their hands on. If you wear a government uniform, they want you to be armed to the teeth. But they do not like guns when they are in the hands of the non-government class. This is no surprise when you consider that criminals tend to prefer that their victims be unarmed. And that consideration is what led the Founders to enshrine the natural right of self defense via firearms in the Constitution. But Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, assures us that we can "strengthen the background check system without in any way infringing on Second Amendment rights". Perhaps she hasn't actually read the 2nd Amendment which states:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I don't see anything in there about people only having a right to bear arms on the condition that they pass a federal background check. In fact, I don't see the words "background check" anywhere in the Constitution. Since such a power wasn't enumerated in that document, any action the federal government takes to restrict firearm access is necessarily unconstitutional. Of course, by that rationale, almost everything the federal government does is unconstitutional.

Republicans joining hands with Democrats in order to restrict or complicate access to firearms is a perfect example of why we should be wary whenever we see government officials touting "bi-partisan" measures. Whenever the two parties are able to come to an agreement on something, I start to get nervous. Adam Smith famously noted that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public". Smith was talking about private industry. But it is certainly applicable to the people in the trade of "public service". And the latter group's ability to carry out their plans is far more unsettling.

So, when politicians from both the left and right tell you that they are trying to enhance your security by limiting the supply of a very useful defensive tool, you should be very suspicious. The infamous communist dictator and mass murderer Mao Zedong understood that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." We need to make sure that the American people also understand this and never allow that power to be transferred, no matter how incrementally, into the hands of the already too politically powerful villains that call Washington home.