Joe Biden might call gun rights militants the “black helicopter crowd.” But if Second Amendment folks fear that outlawing the AR-15s is only the beginning for the Biden crowd, they may be not far off the mark.
Attacks from abroad — Pearl Harbor, 9/11 — have united us.
Yet domestic atrocities lately seem only to deepen our divisions.
The bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City was seized upon to savage government critics like Rush Limbaugh.
After the murder of six innocents, including a 9-year-old girl, and the wounding of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and a dozen others in Tucson, Ariz., by a certifiable lunatic, Sarah Palin was charged with moral complicity.
The slaughter of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., put the National Rifle Association in the media cross hairs. With the massacres at Columbine, Virginia Tech and Ft. Hood, Tucson and Newtown are now the primary exhibits in the prosecution case for the disarming of America.
Are the gun controllers winning? They have surely made gains.
Maryland, New York, Connecticut and Colorado have outlawed high-capacity magazines used in semiautomatic rifles and pistols. All four have outlawed all versions of the AR-15 rifle used in Newtown. All have imposed background checks on all gun purchasers.
Maryland has gone further. According to The Washington Post, Maryland’s law “would force gun buyers to provide fingerprints and undergo classroom training, target practice and background checks to obtain a license to buy a firearm. No state had sought to impose a licensing requirement in nearly 20 years.”
To make licensing and fingerprinting a condition of buying a gun seems a prima facie violation of the Second Amendment.
[…]
