Universal Gun Ownership Legislation

The late Senator Kennedy was notorious for his belief that access to affordable health care was not a privilege but a right. That basic stance seems to have been accepted by almost all of the current members of congress, as each side of the isle is now convinced that they have the best strategy for making sure that all Americans have affordable health coverage. My "beef" is not so much with those who have accepted the notion that health care is an unalienable right not spelled out in the Constitution but implied in the ninth amendment (although that notion is silly at best). My beef is with the giant leap that we have now made, without any Constitutional authority, that has transformed a "right" into "universally mandated Fiat".

Even if it could be proven that access to affordable health care or health insurance is a right of all Americans, how does that give the Congress the "right" to demand that all Americans exercise this "right"? When a supposed "right" is imposed on the citizenry under penalty of law, it can no longer be regarded as a right. A right guarantees "free" exercise thereof without government interference.

So, I now propose that, if we are going to turn our rights into universally mandated fiats, that we at least include those rights that are explicitly spelled out in the Bill of Rights. In the spirit of fairness, and to start the process, I suggest that we take the right to bear arms and make that a universal mandate - a law similar to my example below (he says sarcastically :-)

Whereas it is the right of all citizens of this land of freedom and liberty to bear arms for their own defense, we the Congress of these United States do declare:

 1) All citizens are required to buy hand guns for their own defense and the defense of their community.

2) If you are happy with your current gun dealer, you will be allowed to purchase your guns from them. 

3) If your current gun dealer is greedy and charges too much for handguns, which is prohibiting you from exercising your right, we are establishing public, government-run gun shops that will allow you to purchase your guns at an affordable price.

4) If you choose not to purchase a gun, putting yourself and your community at risk, you will be charged $2800/year to offset the cost of your stupidity (and as incentive to do what Big Brother says)

5) If you cannot afford to purchase the gun that you are now being required to buy - because it is your right - no problem. We are going to give you a "tax refund" on taxes you never paid so that you will be able to afford this free gun.

6) To help pay for this new deficit-reducing program, a new tax will be levied on all "luxurious" guns, superfluous guns, and on the windfall profits of successful gun businesses.

7) If your current guns are being provided for you by your employer, and those guns do not meet the new government gun standards, your employer will be forced to choose new guns for you or pay for you to get guns from the public gun shop.

8) O yes...we almost forgot to mention you greedy, capitalist, profiteering gun shop owners who have been raping gun owners for decades. You will still be able to operate your gun shops as you always have, except for that you will only be allowed to sell the guns that we tell you. Furthermore, we are going to tell you how much you can charge for the guns. And what else? O yeah...if you don't do what we say, we will close your business.  Cheerio!

9) The government expressed no desire to take over the gun business. But to bring free market competition into the gun industry, we will be offering guns at our new government-run gun shops for much less than you can buy them anywhere else. And our new gun shops do not have to be profitable, because if they need any extra cash for overhead or advertising, we'll just print some more money for them and raise the taxes of all the "rich" people who can afford to do their patriotic duty of paying for this new gun program.

10) The government guarantees that, in spite of having no real incentive to do so, it will provide gun owners with customer service that is better in quality than what is offered by gun businesses who actually have incentive for serving you better than other gun shops.

11) The President will appoint a non-Senate-approved, tax-evading, anti-second amendment Marxist of his choice to be the new gun "czar". This person will advise the President on all the new gun policies.

12) The increased taxes to pay for this fiscally neutral gun program will be imposed immediately upon passage of this never-to-be-read-by-a-single-Congressman legislation, but the new gun shops will not be opened for business until the month after the current President's re-election votes are counted.

13) The tax money allocated for this program will be placed securely beside the Medicare and Social Security funds in our secure government lock box to insure its long-term solvency.

14) For a precedent, we cite the public education system. Your right to educate has now become a mandate to educate, with the government controlling the content and quality of the whole system. And that system is going Great! After all these years of spending more money on education than any other nation, we have been able to maintain our less-than-mediocre ranking among the industrialized nations. With any luck, this new gun program will operate with the same efficiency and productivity.

15) Due to the increase in gun ownership this program is designed to produce, and the necessary increase in government regulation of the gun industry, there may be brief, painless times in which there is not enough ammunition for everyone to purchase however much they desire. In that "extreme" case, the government will provide guidelines as to how many bullets/year you may purchase - based on how much ammunition the government deems as necessary.

Next year, we will discuss our plans to introduce our new "Universal Voting Act" that will mandate that each citizen exercise their freedom to vote.