The End of Gun Control: 4.4 Begin With the End In Mind and Be Proactive

Securing a "free state" must be practiced as a way of life, a daily discipline of civic contribution to a legal and social order that stifles the unquenchable ambitions of aspiring tyrants.

Waiting for a government to turn tyrannical is entirely too late.  The lone gun owner, or rag-tag group of insurgents, fighting a “Red Dawn” guerrilla campaign is both futile and unrealistic.  The real creep of tyranny comes through a game of inches, and it is on this field, rather than some climactic final battle, that liberty must be secured.

There will be no invasion or declaration of martial law.  None are necessary.  The invaders are already in place, along with the architecture of despotism. 

Rendering the people helpless against an omnipresent Leviathan state happens through normal political-bureaucratic churn, as Anthony De Jasay has called it.  It occurs through incremental encroachments, one policy change, one regulatory step, and one judicial opinion at a time. 

Gun owners and Second Amendment advocates routinely describe the familiar sequence of registration leading to confiscation.  It is for this reason that they, rightly, resist most attempts at creating these registries and bans on types of firearms or accessories, with varying degrees of success.

Yet the size and scope of governmental authority over ever increasing swaths of private life has continued to grow relatively unimpeded for over a century.  Defending the Second Amendment cannot withstand such an onslaught by playing defense against such a juggernaut. 

Just consider where the right to keep and bear arms stands today compared to where it was prior to the 1934 National Firearms Act, the 1939 overturn of U.S. v. Miller, the 1968 Gun Control Act, the euphemistically named 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act, and the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.  How does this comport with the standard of “shall not be infringed?”

It is only a matter of time before some emergency or crisis is used to usher in some infringing draft legislation that would never get out of committee otherwise.  Remember, most of the provisions that went into the 2001 USA Patriot Act, that thereby massively expanded the intrusive powers of the police state, were hurriedly cobbled together by the permanent legislative staff in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Here’s a little secret everyone should be aware of regarding the federal legislative process:  Legislative staffers get their draft proposals from executive agencies.  It is the executive branch that drives the legislative agenda, completely opposite of how the US Constitution was supposed to function.  Representatives of the people and the states, respectively, are not making the laws.  In most instances those representatives don’t even read the legislation they are voting on.  Representative government is a farce.    

Article 1 Section 1 of the Constitution states that all legislative powers herein are vested in the Congress, yet since these politicians are legislating in such vast areas, of which they have no delegated authority and likely no expertise, they have to rely upon experts to inform their policy proposals. 

Rather than representing the people or their respective states, they defer to the permanent bureaucracies in the executive branch to keep the ship of state moving on course.  This means that the legislation that gets passed, as well as the manner in which those laws are implemented, is done at the convenience and benefit of the bureaucrats in the executive branch.

We can talk about lobbying and how ‘regulatory capture’ perverts executive agencies to favor politically connected corporations at another time.  The short answer is that all of this is a consequence of governments exceeding the scope and sphere of legitimate authority.  However, this too is an example of legislative and executive branch collusion, just under the influence and on behalf of politically influential individuals.

This phenomenon illustrates the urgent need to restrain both the legislative and executive scope of governmental authority as a whole.  There is no longer any separation of powers at the federal level.  The general government has, over time and through incrementally centralizing churn, broken through the constitutional chains that were supposed to bind it down from mischief, as Jefferson advised in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.    

It has done so partially due to structural problems, yet more so because We The People have allowed a political class to control the instruments of governmental power.  Self-government requires active participation. 

Rather than allowing the political class to suffocate liberty the only way to secure a free state is to starve the political class of the murky atmosphere, the swamp if you will, that they thrive in.  The permanent bureaucracy must go.  When constrained to constitutionally delegated functions there is no need or legitimate purpose for a permanent class of bureaucratic positions in government. 

Like fitness or health, no one can do your pushups for you.  Nor can you neglect your diet, hydration, exercise, and rest six days a week and try to make up for it on Sunday.  Health and fitness need to become a way of life through daily practicing good habits.  This is the civic obligation to be “disciplined” in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16 in practice.

The Second Amendment, taken holistically as a key component of constitutional order, is the way to limit to governmental mechanism to its delegated functions.  Yet this too must be practiced as a way of life, as a way of maintaining the legal and social order corresponding to a free society.

More specifically, the way to limit legislative and executive powers to their legitimate functions, in a system of self-government, is by having the people themselves, as organized militia, act in the final stage of executing what legislation gets enforced, and in what manner, at the local level.