Recently, the state of Connecticut passed some rather harsh gun laws, which do not, as one might expect, target criminals, but rather law-abiding citizens. This law, while not directly affecting criminals, has nonetheless created many of them. Before reading further, I highly suggest you read this article.
I can't say I would take the time either, so here's a summary: Connecticut officials estimate that 85% of gun owners in the state of Connecticut simply ignored the new laws that require registration of certain semi-automatic rifles.
One representative, Senator Tony Guglielmo, is shocked: "I honestly thought from my own standpoint that the vast majority would register..." he said. Frankly, I'm shocked too. I'm shocked that 85% of people targeted by this law decided to do the right thing. Another quote by Guglielmo is revealing: "If you pass laws that people have no respect for and they don't follow them, then you have a real problem."
Connecticut officials certainly do have a problem, and it's a problem they should bear in mind next time they attempt to pass an unpopular and un-Constitutional law at the expense of innocent civilians. The problem, for Guglielmo and others like him, is that people don't like to be told what to do, a fact Guglielmo discovered when he discussed the matter with a Connecticut gun owner: "I said, 'You're talking about civil disobedience, and he said 'Yes.'"
Guglielmo's surprise is valid. Civil disobedience is all too rare in our day and age. There was a day in this country, some years ago, when a group of officials sent their red-coated enforcers to confiscate the arms of the citizenry. On that day, those enforcers failed. Call me cynical, but I would never have expected that the same result could occur in 2014.
That day is important to remember, because it, like so much in history, gives us insight into our own era. Take the reaction of the state of Connecticut. Some, such as "undersecretary in the state Office of Policy and Management" Mike Lawlor, are talking tough: "Like anything else, people who violate the law face consequences. … that's their decision. The consequences are pretty clear. …There's nothing unique about this..." But the state's words don't match its actions. Connecticut recently extended its deadline for registration of these semi-automatic rifles, in the vain hope that some will register for it if given a little more time. Others in the government claim that the issue isn't defiance; people simply don't know about the new, and highly controversial, law.
Such implausible hopes and claims are face-saving measures which recall those made by the British government previous to the Revolution, and should be met with the same jeering derision proletarian colonists gave that government. The fact of the matter is simply that the state is afraid.
Those who refuse to give up their weapons aren't ignorant. They know all too well that the state cannot possibly create hundreds of thousands of criminals, particularly when those criminals are armed. It is unwise to make an innocent man a criminal. It is dangerous to make an armed man a criminal. It is devastating to make a community criminals. It is suicide to make a community of armed men criminals. A community of men and women who have been made outlaws, who have no further regard for the state and for whom the state has no regard, and who are armed, is an unpredictable and volatile community indeed. The state knows this.
They know, as well as those men and women in Connecticut who refuse to obey unjust law, that citizens who are treated as criminals do unpredictable things. They stand in fields against better-armed and better-trained foes and die for what they believe. They walk through snow without shoes, cross icy rivers, for the rights that they have lost and cannot regain but by force. This is not a scenario desirable to the state.
Possible violence aside, the state also knows it cannot jail or fine hundreds of thousands of men and women whose only "crime" is what type of property they choose to own. There are not cells enough, courts enough, for this. When so many stand and silently utter, "we are Americans; our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" then there is little the state can do, short of outright tyranny, something a state government, or a national government, cannot and will not maintain on such a scale.
This, I submit, should be a lesson for all Americans, no matter what their stance on gun control. When we refuse to comply, refuse to play along with the machinations of a corrupt state, we can make a difference. Perhaps had more Americans done so earlier, thousands, American and otherwise, would not be dead in the Middle East, we would not have our government flying deadly drones over our cities and towns, and an innocent man, a heroic man, would not be ironically exiled to a state whose freedoms are fewer than ours, and the rights for which that man still fights would be intact.
This is a lesson. It is a lesson for the state of Connecticut and a lesson for men like Mike Lawlor. It is, however, a greater lesson for us. As we do not, and cannot forget events like Lexington and Concord, we cannot forget the lesson hundreds of thousands of citizens in Connecticut are teaching us: oppression can be resisted, and peaceably. All it requires is that we simply do not give such oppression our consent.
