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VMI77 wrote:I agree with TAM and BigGuy but I also think a nation wide gun confiscation by the military is extremely unlikely. I think we can look to Canada, the UK, and Australia for the way any gun ban is likely to be implemented. The government will encourage your neighbors and relatives to turn you in and if you have what has been illegally made into an illegal weapon you may then get a visit from the local SWAT team. And of course, they won't be visiting the homes of any politicians or judges no matter what the circumstances --except perhaps for a few that have dared to oppose the ruling class dictates on this or some other matter important to our oligarchs and their henchmen.

VMI77, I agree with you that the likelihood is small.

The likelihood that I will be exposed to the flu on any given day is also small. And yet, when I am in the presence of one who is sniffling and obviously not feeling well, my first instinct is to protect myself from exposure to whatever ails them. But that requires me to be vigilant, so that I will notice that sick person, before I can practice any kind of avoidance.

So similarly, I, we, have to always be vigilant for signs of the Constitutional Flu, and take steps to remediate the situation early.......so that we don't have to face Constitutional life-support later.

tk1700 wrote:As far as the military confiscating firearms, I believe that would create much distention in the ranks. As a 33 year veteran, may times during my career I took an oath that included, "... to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic." As a second amendment rights supporter I would interpret that oath so that I would not have taken enforcement action to remove guns from law abiding US citizens. As with all things there are 2 sides to the story and I am guessing that there are people in the military that would not agree with me. I also believe (and hope!) that it is a small number that disagree,

Thank you for your service. Here's the problem with your statement....although I really do appreciate your sentiment, which I agree is correct..... you interpret your oath to mean that you would not take an enforcement action. Let's say hypothetically that Congress passes a bill which the POTUS signs into law, making all firearms illegal except for revolvers of caliber smaller than .40, and the law gives citizens 30 days to turn in anything that isn't a revolver of small enough caliber. Now, let's say that half of the people who own AR15s (to pick one weapon type at random) refuse to turn them in. Once 30 days has passed, these people are no longer "law-abiding". See what I'm getting at? They were law-abiding, but now they're not, and not for something they did, but rather for something they didn't......because an out of control federal government (full of people like the liberal writer in the OP's post) has arbitrarily criminalized them.

Now, I am NOT saying that you would take enforcement action against them, but a certain number of military personnel, particularly if they come from disarmed regions with a cultural bias against guns, might be willing to do so, and here's why:

Those gun owners who refuse to turn them in will have, in the eyes of the law, declared themselves to be law-breakers, not law-abiders. Yes, you and others who serve in the armed forces took an oath to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, but so did Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Diane Feinstein when they were sworn into office!!! The problem is that they interpret the Constitution (incorrectly) to allow them to infringe on gun ownership any way they see fit. Why shouldn't we expect that some in the military wouldn't have the same view? I don't ask in order to be insulting, but do you see where I'm going with this? That is the problem with interpretation.

We have to understand that the Constitution needs no interpretation. It says what it says, plain and simple, and the Founders actually went to great lengths to write it that way on purpose. They deliberately used language which would be understood by common, average, American citizens when they used Ben Franklin's postal system to circulate copies of the document all around the colonies so that The People would have an understanding of the underpinnings of their new government. There would be no official government functionaries accompanying these copies being circulated, to explain (interpret) what it meant. If a man could read, he could understand it, plain and simple, directly stated, in plain language. This idea that the Constitution needs interpretation is one of the most dangerously insidious concepts to invade the political landscape. There IS no interpretation that has any validity other than the Founders' original intent......and knowing that future generations might be fickle enough to twist their meaning, they ALSO left us the Federalist Papers so that there could be no doubt. ANY view of Constitutional meaning that falls outside that scope is dangerously seditionist.....and yet, more people are confused about its meaning today than ever before.

The intended purpose of the SCOTUS wasn't to tell us what the Constitution says; we already know what it says.....or we should. SCOTUS's intended purpose was to decide whether actions taken by Congress, the Executive, or the lower courts were consistent with the plain language of the Constitution. Other than by amendment, the Constitution is an unchanging bedrock, a framework upon which all else is hung....and when amended, those amendments become part of that bedrock. When politicians, bureaucrats, LEOs, soldiers, and voters start interpreting what it means, that is when we get into deep kimchee. Their "interpretations" have but one purpose: to push back against the limits which the Constitution places upon their authority.

I've read somewhere that, the AR15 being the most popular selling pattern of rifle in the country for years now, there are several million of them in private hands. Even if you take into account that some people have more than one of them, you have to figure that at least a million homes will have to be assaulted.....just to take the ARs....and that doesn't count all the other guns that would be covered by such a ban. Now you're no longer talking about self-made criminals ("self-made" for having refused to turn in their guns), you're now talking about self-declared revolutionaries.....in the millions....and a whole lot of dead people on both sides.....all because people who took an oath had a different understanding of what the Constitution means than you or I do.

I particularly like what the Bible says about oath-taking in Matthew 5:33-37:

33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord.’ 34 But I say to you, do not swear at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s throne; 35 nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 36 Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black. 37 But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one.

The various oaths of office, or of military service ask the individual to swear, Yes or No, to uphold and/or defend the Constitution......not to interpret it.

Please don't think I direct my comments at you specifically. This is more of a general rant.

VoiceofReason wrote:

baldeagle wrote:

healthinsp wrote:Maybe I'm naïve...

Something that I fail to understand, and maybe I'm wrong, is how she can make the assumption that if the POTUS ordered the ATF, or military, or federal law enforcement to turn their weapons on their own mothers, fathers, brothers, friends, and family they would do it.

I don't believe they would.

I firmly believe if my friends in the military were ordered to come to my house and take my weapons they would deny that order as an illegal order.

Like I said, maybe I'm the one living in a fantasy world.

The problem with this thinking is that it ignores history, and you can be certain that our "leaders" are aware of that history. When you want to take control of people, you don't send their friends to confiscate their property. You send their enemies or strangers. Your friends wouldn't be coming to your door. People you've never met and who have no loyalty to the Constitution would be. By then, it would be too late to resist.

It’s never too late to resist.

Yes. But it can become too late to resist effectively. That's why the "tipping point" is always sooner than people are either expecting OR prepared for. This is why vigilance AND preparation are equally important. So, let him who is not prepared, GET prepared, praying that it never becomes necessary.

JP171 wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

healthinsp wrote:Maybe I'm naïve...

Something that I fail to understand, and maybe I'm wrong, is how she can make the assumption that if the POTUS ordered the ATF, or military, or federal law enforcement to turn their weapons on their own mothers, fathers, brothers, friends, and family they would do it.

I don't believe they would.

I firmly believe if my friends in the military were ordered to come to my house and take my weapons they would deny that order as an illegal order.

Like I said, maybe I'm the one living in a fantasy world.

I'd like to believe that, but I'm not so sure any longer......

Considered individually, I'd say yes, you're probably correct. But when considered as larger units, I'd say that the individual's inclination to refuse immoral or illegal orders has a lot more inertia to overcome. In a group setting, it is easier to follow orders than to disobey them, and there is no reason to think that LEOs or military personnel are not human. I think the decision to disobey or follow orders is much more likely to come from the officer corps, and perhaps the NCO corps, than the lower enlisted ranks—not because enlisted people are unthinking automatons, but because officers and NCOs are trained to operate with a larger degree of autonomy than lower-ranked enlisted people, and that greater autonomy lends itself to consideration of larger issues and implications.

Now, I am NOT calling our military a bunch of nazis. To the contrary, I have a very high regard for them. But they ARE human, and human nature often fails to disappoint. It is easy to see how an individual soldier might be individually repelled by the idea of confiscating all guns, but when in a group setting might justify to himself "well, at least it's not like we are sending them to concentration camps.....we're just taking their guns......they'll be OK."

.....particularly if that individual soldier wasn't raised in a gun culture.....and never mind that the concentration camps might actually follow not that far behind the gun confiscations....

I just watched "Doctor Zhivago" again a week or so ago with my wife. It is amazing how the story portrays the incremental degradation of the society, and how the majority of people were just trying to survive whatever events swirled around them........the various military factions involved, and the brutality of troops against their own fellow citizenry.

TAM, I am not seeking a p match, but your belief of military of all types is somewhat skewed, we will not follow an unlawful order to either confiscate the weapons of the civilian population nor move them en mass to a re-education center, give 90% of the us military that order and get ready to be told where you can go and what you can do with yourself, politely but all the same. It doesn't matter what kind of culture you were raised in, the oath to the constitution comes before the oath to the CIC and most of us senior NCO's wouldn't even pass down such an illegal order to anyone, most officers are aware and feel the same and most of the junior enlisted would refuse if we did pass that kind of order down. Nor would we obey an unlawful order to open fire on civilians. The 10 percent that might do what your intimating would have a very short life expectancy measured in mere minutes, being an active member of a military force we do in fact do discuss this often and talk about what we would do if such orders were given. If the president of the US gave me such an order or all my SOC brothers the same he wouldn't be president long I promise you that, nor would anyone else that attempted to enforce such an order, nor would they be oxygen thieves anymore.

JP171, I dont want a p contest either, and I really REALLY hope you are correct. Like I said above, I do believe in the fundamental decency of the individuals who are serving, and their commitment to the oath they take. It's not the individuals I "worry" about. ("Worry" is too strong of a word, as I honestly don't think much about this topic....), but the institutions....which kind of take on a political a mind of their own, unrelated to the people who make it up.

Anyway, my primary point is that we can never take these things for granted. SOME of the people who wrote the above gun-grabbing platform which AndyC quoted probably served in the military at some point in their lives. The U.S. Army, as fine and as honorable an institution as can be found, is reinstating and putting back to work a deserter, who wouldn't know his constitutional oath if it bit him on the ass.....and in the process, they are paying him $300,000 in back wages.......for POLITICAL reasons. .....because it serves as the instrument of this particular president .....who has no more respect for the Army than he does for his toilet. The cabinet and military officers downstream from the president are reinstating this soldier because that's what the president wants, not because it is the right thing to do.

What would THIS general have done? http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Wesley_ ... ontrol.htm

healthinsp wrote:Maybe I'm naïve...

Something that I fail to understand, and maybe I'm wrong, is how she can make the assumption that if the POTUS ordered the ATF, or military, or federal law enforcement to turn their weapons on their own mothers, fathers, brothers, friends, and family they would do it.

I don't believe they would.

I firmly believe if my friends in the military were ordered to come to my house and take my weapons they would deny that order as an illegal order.

Like I said, maybe I'm the one living in a fantasy world.

I'd like to believe that, but I'm not so sure any longer......

Considered individually, I'd say yes, you're probably correct. But when considered as larger units, I'd say that the individual's inclination to refuse immoral or illegal orders has a lot more inertia to overcome. In a group setting, it is easier to follow orders than to disobey them, and there is no reason to think that LEOs or military personnel are not human. I think the decision to disobey or follow orders is much more likely to come from the officer corps, and perhaps the NCO corps, than the lower enlisted ranks—not because enlisted people are unthinking automatons, but because officers and NCOs are trained to operate with a larger degree of autonomy than lower-ranked enlisted people, and that greater autonomy lends itself to consideration of larger issues and implications.

Now, I am NOT calling our military a bunch of nazis. To the contrary, I have a very high regard for them. But they ARE human, and human nature often fails to disappoint. It is easy to see how an individual soldier might be individually repelled by the idea of confiscating all guns, but when in a group setting might justify to himself "well, at least it's not like we are sending them to concentration camps.....we're just taking their guns......they'll be OK."

.....particularly if that individual soldier wasn't raised in a gun culture.....and never mind that the concentration camps might actually follow not that far behind the gun confiscations....

I just watched "Doctor Zhivago" again a week or so ago with my wife. It is amazing how the story portrays the incremental degradation of the society, and how the majority of people were just trying to survive whatever events swirled around them........the various military factions involved, and the brutality of troops against their own fellow citizenry.