Maine Slaps Back Against a National Gun Registry

P. Gardner Goldsmith | June 16, 2017
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Guns

Remember that nutty Second Amendment thing?

It reads:

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

And one of the important things that distinguishes the Second Amendment from the First, is that the First specifies that Congress shall make no law infringing the freedom of speech, the press, or religion. As much as a freedom-lover like me dislikes it, in the United States, states and localities could “constitutionally” pass and enforce speech and religious laws -- which they did, until the end of the 19th Century.

But the same was not the intent of the rule-writers at the Constitutional Convention when they wrote the Second Amendment, which prohibits any government in the U.S. from infringing on the procurement or bearing of arms.

So it’s nice to see that the legislature of Maine, which was once part of Massachusetts, one of the original 13 states, is standing up for the right to keep and bear arms. According to The Tenth Amendment Center, the Maine legislature passed H.B. 9 on June 9, which prohibits the state from establishing a “firearms registry,” and would see Maine standing up to federal attempts to create a firearms database.

While some might think this is a prophylactic against a fantasy threat, others are very aware that a firearm registry or database is one of the key goals of U.S. politicians who despise the right to self-protection.

Still more are aware that a firearm registry was established by the German government prior to Hitler taking power, and was ultimately used by Hitler to target gun owners and seize their weapons, all as the Third Reich prepared to ghettoize non-conformists and minorities, take property, and institute the genocidal Final Solution.

So, morally and practically, a gun registry is a very improper and dangerous thing to impose on people. But constitutionally, it is absolutely, utterly forbidden. Thanks to the folks in Maine, the feds are being reminded of this.

How is it that some politicians, such as the ever-lovable Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Mr. Fast and Furious himself, Eric Holder, have waxed mantra-like in favor of mandatory gun “registration,” when establishing such a thing is not a power granted by the Constitution and, in fact, is it strictly prohibited? How is it that these “anti-gun” folks want to sanction armed agents of the state to hunt down civilians who do not comply with their gun registration mandates?

They often gurgle that “asking people to register their guns” isn’t an infringement of the Bill of Rights, that “it doesn’t take guns away.”

But what if someone doesn’t want to register his or her firearm? What if a seller would rather engage in a peaceful voluntary transaction without having to conform to political mandates about how to engage in such a transaction? The answer, of course, is that Chuck, Nancy, et al, want the armed agents of the government to carry firearms with them as they proceed to arrest you.

Meanwhile, people who have real criminal intent will never bother getting registered guns, and the black market will, as with all other prohibited items in history, continue unabated.

Maine H.B. 9 states, in part:

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, a government agency of this State or a political subdivision of this State may not keep or cause to be kept a comprehensive registry of privately owned firearms and the owners of those firearms within its jurisdiction.”

Good for the people who wrote and passed that bill, and it's likely that Maine Gov. Paul LePage will sign it.

But on every ethical, practical, and constitutional level, such a bill should not be necessary in the U.S. The reason it has become so is because far too many politicians and acquisitive leftists don’t care about the wording of the Constitution, and would prefer to force people to comply with their own fantasies about gun “control.”

Fantasies that are backed up by threats of armed government agents to enforce the “laws."

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