Why am I a fanatic about my Right to own guns?
The biggest concern we gun owners have is that restrictions and permits will be decided by someone in government, and we DON’T trust some people in government.
For instance; If I apply for a Wyoming Concealed Firearm Permit, someone has to approve that. A person or a committee. The committee may be composed of liberal Democrat, anti-gun, wolf-worshipping Jackson Hole denizens.
Those kinds of folks succeeded in eliminating my Cowboy Common Sense column from the local newspaper, mainly because of my back-to-back columns attacking the wolves for destroying our native moose population. “A Disease Stalks the Yellowstone Ecosystem” and the next one “A Wolf is a Wolf is a Wolf”
The letters to the editor and comments online were downright vicious. The newspaper cancelled my column. I heard that some big advertisers threatened to pull their ads if I was allowed to continue. I stand by everything I said in those columns. They are the truth.
My point is that people who don’t like me or my politics or my stand on the wolf or my stand on numerous other things will deny me a firearms carry permit if they are the ultimate decision-makers.
Then, there is the mandatory licensing and registration of anyone who has a Wyoming CFP (Concealed Firearms Permit). If a major calamity happens and the mood in the country swings to banning a pistol from concealed carry, then they know who I am and where I am. They may come get it because I “registered” that particular concealed carry firearm. That’s how other dictators did it. I doubt they will knock on my door to take my gun; too risky. But they may blacklist those who are uncooperative about voluntarily surrendering their gun. Perhaps by putting me on a “no-fly” list, or red-flagging my driver’s license or passport, or stopping my Social Security checks, or any one of a number of other restrictions.
I’ve told the story before of my good friend Fritz Sluyter who was a kid in Holland in WWII. The Germans came into his town and got the government gun registrations (all firearms had to be registered) and went door-to-door confiscating them. If someone claimed they didn’t have the guns which were on the list, the Nazis ransacked the house. If they found an unregistered gun or the missing gun, they took the whole family into the town square and shot them right in front of everyone. Can’t happen here? I’ve heard Fritz say on numerous occasions that they didn’t think it could happen there, either.
So, government, here are Jonesy’s comments on gun control: Punish criminals. Get them off the streets. Publicly execute them by firing squad for using a gun to murder someone, especially mass shootings. Make it a mandatory five years in prison for committing a violent crime with a gun, such as robbing a bank or liquor store.
But DON’T mess with my right to defend myself from a thug, be he government thug or back-alley thug.
Jonesy
