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Stroke of the Pen – The End of Your Gun Rights

By Richard W. Stevens

Every gun owner must have a registration card. Embedded into the card is a microchip carrying your identifying information, your fingerprints, and the gun's ballistics information. Anyone who uses an unregistered weapon will face two years in prison.

Scare talk? Hardly. In July 2004, that will be the law for the 400,000 registered gun owners in Honduras. The Minister of Security is implementing the program now using "smart cards." Honduran gun owners will have to prove their identity and their permission to have a weapon for self-defense.

"That can't happen here … we have the Second Amendment!" Really?

Your Papers, Please!

Dudley Hiibel, a Nevada citizen, was arrested because he politely but firmly refused to identify himself to a police officer. (The whole incident is available for public viewing on Internet video.) That was the only charge against him, and he was convicted.

The Nevada courts upheld his conviction under the state law that requires citizens to identify themselves to police officers. Mr. Hiibel challenged that law in the U.S. Supreme Court, saying it was unconstitutional to punish him in such a case. As a citizen presumed innocent, he had a right to remain silent, didn't he?

Sorry to say, but the Supreme Court will likely uphold the Nevada law. Government monitoring and tracking of citizens is becoming accepted by the American public. The Court will probably say that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, contained in the Bill of Rights, do not give citizens the right to refuse to cooperate with the government's obtaining identification information. An innocent man can be punished for failing to answer police questions about who he is.

Still Relying on Government To Protect Your Rights?

If Mr. Hiibel can be punished for failing to identify himself to authorities, then gun owners can be punished for failing to identify themselves to authorities. Does the Second Amendment prohibit the government from demanding identification? Not in its words. A federal court could interpret the Second Amendment to prohibit owner licensing and gun registration … but that has never happened.

Consider the recent experience with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. That court held in 2003 and 2004 that the Massachusetts Constitution requires the government to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Meanwhile, in California, the Mayor of San Francisco defied state law and authorized licenses for same-sex marriages. Marriage has been defined for thousands of years as the union between a man and a woman. Regardless of your position on the same-sex question, these events show that government officials are willing to defy laws and ignore settled principles of civilization.

Self-defense is a settled principle of civilization. You can't rely on it to stay settled. The Second Amendment is the law of the land. You can't rely on the government to obey it.

Smart Cards for Gun Owners: Police State Convenience

Anti-self defense and anti-gun owner ideas still hold sway over the media, the colleges, the courts and the politicians. New York prosecutes people who successfully use a firearm to defend themselves against criminals. The BATFE maintains files on individuals who purchased guns from now out-of-business dealers. The supposedly pro-gun party controls Congress and the White House, but federal "gun control" remains fully in place.

What happened in Honduras could take place in the United States very quickly. Just call it a way to identify citizens and weed out terrorists, and national firearms registration and owner licensing would sail into law. Because Americans are comfortable with technology and carrying cards, "smart cards" for gun owners will seem so convenient.

Needed: Cultural Sea Change

The only people who can halt this seemingly unstoppable movement to identify, monitor, register and license gun owners are: you, me, and everyone we know.

Get a copy of Innocents Betrayed – the documentary film – watch it – show it to others. No other single teaching tool can touch hearts and change minds about human liberty and the lifesaving right to keep and bear arms. No other tool can affect large numbers of people as quickly as Innocents Betrayed.

Call (800) 869-1884 and or order on-line at www.jpfo.org. Americans must learn to despise "gun control" – Innocents Betrayed can teach them.

See and download the Dudley Hiibel arrest video:
www.papersplease.org

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