A call to action for gun owners

In the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut school shootings, it appears more and more likely that Washington will try to impose several draconian restrictions on firearms, magazines, ammunition, and anything else the powers that be think they can get their hands on.  To summarize just a few developments since that tragedy:

• The White House appears to be weighing a broad anti-gun agenda, informed only by those opposed to firearm ownership - not including any of those who value it.
• The possibility of requiring gun-owners to take out liability insurance against the misuse of their weapons has been discussed.  This would, of course, prove very expensive - so much so that many gun-owners might not be able to afford it, and might therefore be pressured into giving up their guns as a result.
• Rumors (as yet unconfirmed) are circulating that President Obama may seek to add all semi-automatic weapons to the registry of Title II weapons established under the National Firearms Act of 1934, as amended by the Gun Control Act of 1968, to regulate possession of fully-automatic weapons, short-barreled rifles, silencers, etc.
• Other reports speculate that the President may seek to restrict online ammunition sales. There have also been calls to impose additional taxes on ammunition sales.  Very high figures for such taxes have been mentioned.
• Commentators are asking seriously questions such as, 'If They Come for Your Guns, Do You Have a Responsibility to Fight?'  Others have stated bluntly that they will disobey any new legal requirements to register and/or surrender their firearms and/or standard-capacity magazines.  There have been calls for massive civil disobedience against such measures.  Some are even warning of potential civil war.
• The mass media appear to have launched a barrage of anti-gun propaganda.  It's almost completely false, of course, but this hasn't stopped them.

My fears are as follows:

1. I believe that President Obama has no respect whatsoever for the Constitution of the United States.  All that matters to him is the furtherance of his agenda, and that of the unseen, faceless puppet-masters who control him.  (What's that?  You thought he was his own man?  Oh, come off it!  I've never seen a more blatant political figurehead in my life!)
2. The same applies to many of those calling for gun control, including Senator Dianne Feinstein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and many others.  To paraphrase the well-known words of Rahm Emanuel (currently Mayor of Chicago), they 'aren't letting a serious crisis go to waste'.  They're trying to use, manipulate and exploit it for all they're worth to advance their agenda, which is uniformly statist, anti-individual rights and anti-freedom.
3. I fear that the Republican majority in Congress is unlikely to stand up for the rights of gun-owners.  They're nominally against further gun control measures, but given the immense political pressure that the President can apply (and has applied, most recently resulting in a craven Republican surrender over the so-called 'fiscal cliff'), I don't trust them not to cave in and give him what he wants.  Even if most Republicans maintain their traditional position, there are enough waverers among them to pass an anti-gun measure if all Democrats vote for it.
4. I believe there is enough enmity stored up in Washington against the NRA, gun-owners in general, and those whom President Obama once accused of 'clinging to guns and religion', that those now in power are acting out of a sense of vengefulness.  They appear to actively want to provoke a conflict with gun-owners and their political representatives, because they believe that the Newtown massacre has given them sufficient political capital and popular momentum to force such measures down the throats of the American people - even if they're blatantly un-Constitutional.

I regard the present situation as very serious indeed.  I can only urge each and every gun-owner to contact his or her Congressional representative and Senator, and make very clear his or her opposition to any more gun control measures, whether they be in the form of laws, regulations or Presidential executive orders.  We need to do this now, before the momentum on the other side becomes unstoppable.  This is no ordinary 'crisis';  it's being deliberately fomented, exaggerated and manipulated by those opposed to the Second Amendment and the rights of gun-owners.  If we don't fight it, and them, they may win this fight.

Please, dear readers, take this seriously.  Do your part.  Call your elected representatives as soon as possible, write to them, and keep on reminding them that they will be held accountable if they do anything to support the erosion of your rights.  Point them to Marko's excellent essay 'Why The Gun Is Civilization'.  He speaks the truth - as we need to do.  If we don't, the truth will be steamrollered by those who don't care about truth at all - only political expediency.

Peter