Peak Gun Rights? Not Even Close!

Reason.com recently published a very good article, asking whether we have already experienced peak gun rights and will experience a sharp decline in those rights (link). While there is good reason to be concerned about the torrent of gun control posturing and coverage in the media...and the civil liberties wimps in in legislatures doing their bidding...I have thought about the matter a lot recently.

My answer is a definite NO.

It is true that we have a fight on our hands but I am really starting to think that it could be more like a desperate Battle of the Bulge type fight than an unstoppable blitzkrieg. Will we lose? Nuts!

1. There aren't that many dedicated gun control activists. The NRA has close to 5.5 dedicated members and many supporters.
2. The NRA is the part of the gun rights movement that is willing to compromise. If they ever shut down (e.g., a recent attempt to extend Russian collusion investigations to the NRA), the next organization to take their place would probably not bother compromising.

That's the thing that gun control fans don't understand. We have been compromising and attempting to work with you and it's gotten us nowhere. The AR15 *is* the gun rights compromise. We have abided by a lot of really stupid laws for decades and all it's gotten us is more demands and hysteria.

Ironically, it may be the anti-Trump "Resistance" which is showing us the way to advance gun rights further. Attorney Generals like Washington state's Bob Ferguson have defied Federal law in opposition to immigration and travel restrictions. If extreme gun control attempts take away gun owners' motivation to continue abiding by arbitrary  and virtually unenforceable laws.

That Reason article hints at the outcome, in mentioning the growing non-compliance with gun laws. People are declining to turn in bump stocks or standard capacity magazines, even in states with a history of gun control compliance. If you ban AR15s or revoke the Second Amendment (nearly impossible but some unwise people have suggested it), almost no one will comply. Home firearm builds, many of them untraceable, will be ubiquitous. People will start figuring they have to violate the law anyway, so why comply with laws banning/restricting machine guns or suppressors. How long until people start 3D printing durable firearm receivers....or drop in autosears?

Prohibition, enacted with the intention of improving society and reducing domestic violence, served only to increase violence, create America's 100 year organized crime problem, *increase* alcohol abuse and foster corruption in government and contempt for laws. The chaos and justified contempt for legal fairness which would result from enacting worse gun control laws than we already tolerate would probably make Prohibition look like a church rally by comparison.

I hope that some gun control advocates and legislators have sufficient judgement to understand that. I do not want our country to look like Syria in 10 years.