If I weren’t so sick of this topic, it would deserve longer post…a rant even.
Reason reports that many epidemiologists believe we should all wear masks and socially distance forever:
“I expect that wearing a mask will become part of my daily life, moving forward, even after a vaccine is deployed,” Amy Hobbs, a research associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says.Marilyn Tseng, an assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, said life would never revert to the way it was, though the preventative measures currently practiced—masks and social distancing—will feel “normal” in time. Similarly, Vasily Vlassov, a professor at HSE University in Moscow, said life was perfectly normal now because this is the new normal….”
Of course they say that. Are you surprised?
Do you detest these people yet? Do you see any reason to trust them to dictate public policy and to influence dictatorial public officials to constricting our enjoyment of life now and for future generations?
Writes the libertarian publication’s Robby Soave:
Epidemiologists are free to take whatever precautions they deem necessary in their own lives, of course—as are the rest of us. But for too long, their pessimistic dictates have provided cover for politicians and government employees to make people’s lives miserable. To take just the most obvious example, schools are still closed in many major cities, even as new scientific information has generally found that resuming in-person education would be perfectly fine. Teachers unions have echoed the choruses of the most alarmed public health experts, scrawling not until it’s safe on their school reopening protest signs.
This isn’t science, or safety, or even cautious. What we are hearing and seeing is the cynical and sinister exploitation of over-blown authority conferred on those with a distorted view of life and reality to provide cover for government control of our lives. Joe Biden says he is going to “ask” Americans to wear masks for the next 100 days, presumably all the time. I say that I’m going to metaphorically tell him to to take his “request” and shove it.
I’m not going to wear a mask inside my home, nor in my car, nor outside while playing with my dog, and I’m going to regard anyone who follows this edict with a “please” attached as an enemy of my future liberty as an American.
Ethics Alarms 
I am with you all the way on this. I just wonder if Biden’s “ask” will be accompanied by a governor’s edict to do so. Then Biden can claim an ability to encourage mask usage. We lose liberty with every new measure designed to protect us. And each time we lose a bit of liberty the ruling classes gain more freedom to control and profit.
I am on to Biden’s BS. For example when he says he won’t ban fracking. No, he won’t outright ban it but he will regulate it out of existence making it prohibitively costly to do and make heating your home cost 10 times as much. He won’t ban guns but he will impose a $200 tax on each firearm owned annually. Let’s start count the important lies.
Biden’s victory might be what causes the American people to say we are fed up with this new normal and take to the streets.
As for me, I cannot believe that a candidate that rarely left his home, appears senile at times and who has never placed better than an also ran in prior presidential elections garnered millions more votes than the “pedagogue in chief” that was Obama. I don’t have to step in a pile of pig shit to know it’s there when its stench is everywhere.
You nailed it, as surely as Jack nailed it with his thoughts above. My wife and I have said all along – as have you and numerous others – that an attempt is being made to “condition” us to living under more totalitarian government, greater restriction, and (for all intents and purposes) house arrest.
VP Biden has the typical left-mindedness. Kill things that threaten absolute power, but tax them to death until they are in the grave. First, it will be the fossil-fuel industry, then the gun industry…eventually?…it will apply to individuals that dare defy them…kill them, or tax them to death. I no longer believe I’m being overly dramatic.
Yesterday, my wife asked me if I wanted an NRA membership as a birthday gift. For the first 50 years of my life, I have rarely, if ever, publicly advertised my political world.
It’s starting to leech out of me a bit…
I agree with what both of you said. One point: In order to effectively collect a tax on currently owned firearms, the federal government would first have to construct a database of firearms owners, which is prohibited by the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986. (it is prohibited to the states as well.) Not saying that this law couldn’t be repealed, but it would at least slow down the process. beyond this, there is the fact that many people own firearms that they bought or traded for with friends or family members rather than obtained from a gun dealer, so the initial purchaser of a gun might not be the current owner. Several of the guns I owned before the tragic boating accident were obtained in this manner.
Many firearms owners I know point to the actual creation of a registry of firearms owners as the “strike one” against our liberty. If an ownership tax is enacted, many, many people will hide their guns. “Strike two” will be when the federal government makes it illegal to own any firearm or magazine that is currently legal. Then, If the government ever tries to actually confiscate firearms from citizens, that will be “strike three” and the hidden guns will reappear and the shooting will start. Working as an officer responsible for enforcing those confiscation laws could become a very hazardous occupation. Many people who have learned the lessons of history know what always happens after the populace is disarmed. They will be determined to never surrender their firearms.
I hope such a horrible scenario never comes to pass, but that is the path the anti-gun people are on.
What happens the first time one of these officers shoots a black man during an attempt to enforce the law.
Yes, the anti-gun cult would say “the thug had it coming”, even if said “thug” was carrying an unregistered handgun to protect himself because he has to work late-nights in high-crime neighborhoods to support his family, and who is unable the register a handgun because the police do not think that having to work late-nights in high-crime neighborhoods to be “good cause” or “justifiable need”.
But what about the whole anti-racism and Woke crowd? What would they say?
“Many firearms owners I know point to the actual creation of a registry of firearms owners as the “strike one” against our liberty.” For some time now, “universal background checks” for all gun sales has been pushed as a “reasonable” measure. I have yet to see a proposal for how such programs could be effectively enforced without the ultimate creation of a registry of all firearms. How would you prove an illegal transfer occurred without records tracking who owns what and when? It appears likely that the majority of bump-stocks manufactured are still undestroyed and hidden away. There is no registry of them.
Private transfers of firearms are not illegal so long as you do not know you are selling to a person prohibited to own firearms, and there is no federal requirement that such private sales be registered. Also, the background check just shows that the person was approved (or not) for a firearms purchase, it is not linked to the sale of a particular firearm. The actual federal sales records are retained by the dealers, not submitted to the BATFE. The BATFE can randomly inspect records on the dealers’ premises to ensure compliance, but may not copy or remove such records without a court order.
Yes, I know all that (Slight clarification: Actually you can’t sell while aware that the person you are selling to is prohibited from buying from you, not necessarily prohibited from owning the firearm in question…a slight but relevant distinction. That’s because besides prohibited persons. like felons, an individual can’t directly transfer to a known resident of another state, even if that buyer is not prohibited from owning firearms in his own state. Seller can arrange for a sale through a licensed dealer in the new owner’s state.).
What I was referencing in my previous comment was the types of laws in effect in some states, and that have been proposed as potential Federal requirements, that would supplant current laws on firearms sales and require background checks on all private transfers. I’ve seen proposals on how such a process could be done by those who wish to comply, but I see no way such a requirement could effectively be enforced without the creation of a registry to track ownership.
I didn’t mean to lecture you! As long as the BATFE obeys the current laws, you are correct. If the laws were changed or somehow bureaucratic subterfuge was used to seize (or copy) the Forms 4473 from firearms dealers, then it would be a fait accompli, insofar as guns purchased from FFL dealers.
I am not familiar with state and local laws elsewhere and am speaking only from my experience as a now-retired law enforcement officer and, for over a decade in the 70s and 80s, a federally licensed firearms dealer in the state where I reside. When my gun shop was bought out by a competitor in 1987, all my forms 4473 went into his records along with my “bound books” and all other sales paperwork.
Again, sorry if I seemed pedantic.
Sorry about that; I was probably more terse than intended and maybe not as clear as I should have been that I was addressing how a registry would be a necessity for enforcement if a hypothetical “universal background check” system were to be imposed, regardless of current regulations permit.
In any case, the ATF isn’t trustworthy; they’ve had to be slapped down before for trying to sneak around the “no registry” restriction. The idea that they’re not keeping a registry (at least of dealer sales) is a bit of a fiction already. since they have digitized scans of the dealers’ records, just not in a “searchable” form, except as sort of a gigantic version of the old library card catalog (for now…could be changed with time and a good text recognition program). For those interested, HERE’S A FAIRLY GOOD EXPLANATION of the situation, albeit from a gun-grabber perspective.
Interesting article. So, the way I read it, records they currently have on hand are (1) those of dealers who have gone out of business and (2) those submitted by dealers complying with a firearms trace request, in lieu of searching their paper records themselves. That would cover a lot of guns, for sure, and I can certainly see the ATF making some pretext to obtain these scans from dealers and use a few dozen woke college student volunteers to help them catalog owners of those evil guns.
The gun business sure has changed since I got out in 87. The ATF would send a person (usually not a gun-toting agent) out once a year to look at my form 4473 files and bound books and inspect my inventory and security, and that was the only time I ever saw them. Personally, I like the ATF being inefficient; they do less harm that way.
Cheers!
How much Federal money will be tied to that “ask”? I’m having flashbacks to the Dear Colleague Title IX letter.
It’s 5:15 in the morning in Oregon. Just woke up (too early) but am going to try to go back to sleep. I know better than to read Jack’s blog this early, but usually do it anyway. So, are we going to be “ordered” by Uncle Pres. Joe to also wear our masks for 100 nights too? …and then every night forever? Just asking.
Now it’s 5:34 am. Told you I shouldn’t read this stuff so early. My mind kicks in gear so I end up getting up early in frustration. So what are the so-called Experts going to call the medical condition of “asphyxiation by mask” …the result of dying from lack of oxygen for failure to take off that damn mask?
Hell no !! Give me fresh air or give me death!
“So what are the so-called Experts going to call the medical condition of “asphyxiation by mask” …the result of dying from lack of oxygen for failure to take off that damn mask?”
“COVID-related deaths”, of course. Can’t let a crisis go to waste.
I know of two persons. both young and healthy, hospitalized this past summer having collapsed while running with their masks on …. in other words, rebreathing air with less and less oxygen in it. I have still to hear or see in print anything that mentions that danger. At 80, I am risking going out for a walk in the middle of the night when the streets uphill are empty because I am unable to get up to a brisk enough walk to call it “exercise” during the day with the mask on. Then I’m out of breath in half a block compared to three blocks without the mask. Moreover, since I’m becoming hard of hearing and was relying more and more on lip-reading … I will be doubly relieved when the face covers can come off.
What do you want to bet that SloJo’s 100 day mask demand will result in even more people NOT wearing masks in defiance of being told that they have to.
The greatest strength and weakness of humans is that we can adjust to absolutely any situation. This could be a tragic blow for individual rights, especially added to the privacy rights we gave away with the privacy statements of our cell phones.
Airlines are already talking about not letting people board without a vaccine card. Is it such a stretch to say others will follow their example? What if it’s an annual vaccine, which is likely imo?
I’m with Chris above, “I am with you all the way on this.”
Every morning (at 5:15A) I go to the local park and walk for 2.5 hours and I see anywhere from 2 to 10 regulars and not one of us wears a mask. Sometimes we stop and talk briefly and then continue our walks; and, most of these people are about my age (62) and older. Harry is 72 – he comes to walk his beagle most mornings.
The people in my neighborhood walk around during the day and there is only one couple that wears masks. Everyone else is talking, socializing and enjoying themselves without masks. Most people I see around here aren’t wearing masks unless they are shopping or inside a public building.
There is no way I’m wearing a mask in my car, in my home, or in the park outside. I have a box of disposable masks on the back seat of my car for when I go to the grocery store, home improvement store or similar.
It’s primarily vast numbers of members of the forty-something and under demographic that are so excitedly enamored of “the new normal” and “SAFETY!” Very strange. They really seem to be enjoying yet another way to virtue signal and demonstrate their superior morals and intelligence, Science! I bet Thomas Friedman is thrilled to death that Americans want to go around wearing masks like the meek Chinese.
A comic side note: My 72 year old brother is in favor of one aspect of the hysteria. He informed me the other day, “I’m all in favor of social distancing, I HATE hugs!” Of course, when we were kids, no one hugged, hardly even adult women. It has become ubiquitous in our lifetimes, though. In 1974, when I was first hugged socially by a guy (pretty sure he was gay), I was so discombobulated, not knowing what to do but having played lots of basketball in grade school and high school, I reflexively patted him on the ass.
Best laugh I’ve had for a while. I’m with your brother on hugs.
An object lesson in how quickly, markedly and permanently social behavior and mores can be changed, eh Chris? I gave in to the hugging thing years ago.
I join you in hating hugs. That’s a recent convention I wouldn’t mind seeing relegated to the social dustbin posthaste. I always feel incredibly uncomfortable when one of my wife’s young, hot business associates wants to hug me.
But I’m not willing to pay for that with freedom of movement, association, or walking around without a diaper pulled over my face. That’s just too high a price. :_
Glen, the hugging comment from my brother was just comic relief. Do people really think a sufficient viral load can be transmitted by a hug? Sure seems dubious to me. Or by coming within fewer than six feet of another person while walking on a sidewalk? What are these people thinking?
And what ever happened to “DON’T TOUCH YOUR FACE!!!!” Where did that impossible to comply with mandate disappear to?
Again, this is advice given to children, not adults.
The correct admonition is to avoid touching your mucous membranes, i.e. sticking your finger in your nose, wiping your eyes with your infected hands, or sticking your infected fingers in your mouth or on your lips.
Don’t touch your face was all over the place early on. Now, you never hear it. It’s impossible.
Heh. Well, I guess that depends on where you live. I still hear it occasionally, and smile.
Perhaps not by the hug per se, but very close proximity to an infected person, especially a hug, is definitely a danger. Because to get there, you are very close to the major source of viral shedding — a person’s face. Even masked, leakage around the outside in the hugging action could well expose a person to a significant amount of virus, more than enough to produce a symptomatic infection.
I would discourage hugs much more than, say, a handshake. The reason should be obvious.
I’ve seen news reports with Fauci saying this for months. He at least has just been saying that it will only be normal from October to March, but still, that we would live like this for the rest of our lives. I have been wearing my stupid mask at my church and in businesses that require it. Unfortunately, my County Health Officer (who does not live in my county, much less my state) has put forward a mask mandate with a $1000 fine for people who do not wear masks in public buildings. I would love to say, “take this edict and shove it” but I cannot afford $1000 violations on a regular basis. Mostly I have been isolating my family and only going to private residences where no one cares if I wear a mask. I have had people come to my house, terrified that I’ll kick them out since they forgot a mask and I have had to tell them that I don’t care, but if they really want to wear a mask that badly, I’ll find one for them. No one has taken me up on that offer, nor do I expect anyone to. I think that as things go on, we will see many of my contemporaries (yes, I am a millenial) giving up freedom for safety, but many of the people of a more conservative bent will do as I have done, wearing masks as our officials require, to the letter of the law, but only to the letter of the law. I hope that these nascent totalitarians will knock this off, but I do not think it will happen shy of an open revolt against them, and I don’t think we are there yet.
Sarah B. said:
I’ve seen news reports with Fauci saying this for months. He at least has just been saying that it will only be normal from October to March, but still, that we would live like this for the rest of our lives.
Again, I am not an expert but I am trained and well-informed, so I can’t see why Fauci would believe this, much less assert it as a defensible fact.
I went back to CBS’s reporting on this issue, and without doing broad searches, I find the gist of what he said thus:
“Therefore, for the foreseeable future, we will need to continue our mitigation measures, including wearing masks,” Ho says, noting that precautionary measures will likely last “for much of 2021.”
First of all, I will for the sake of this comment stipulate that masks have some efficacy, while pointing out this is not a fact and is controversial. But beyond that stipulation, he is not wrong from the standpoint of an epidemiologist and doctor who’s first duty is to prevent death and suffering.
But keep in mind that this advice is very much akin to the health warning on cigarettes, the warnings of cancer specialists to avoid unprotected sun exposure, or admonitions to a proper diet. Once heard immunity is achieved, SARS-CoV-2 will become a health problem, not a plague. So whatever report you read that said that Fauci recommended mask-wearing from now until doomsday appears to be misreporting.
The question is, will we continue to allow government to restrict our assembly, movement, and actions beyond the end of the pandemic? Doctors are always going to advise the safest possible course because to do otherwise violates the Hippocratic Oath, at least in common thinking, so their position is understandable.
But freedom requires trade-offs between what may be best for the collective society and what is best for the individual, and if government can mandate this behavior, can it also not be applied to behaviors simply by declaring them public health problems? Already, there are suggestions that the Left may try to regulate firearms and even environmental policy by using public health as the authority to take drastic action.
In sports vernacular, this would be known as running the same play until the opposition proves they can stop it. I advise us all to keep this firmly in mind.
Jack said:
I’m not going to wear a mask inside my home, nor in my car, nor outside while playing with my dog, and I’m going to regard anyone who follows this edict with a “please” attached as an enemy of my future liberty as an American.
As a person who has taken college classes in both epidemiology and virology as part of my course of study, I can tell you that yours is a sane response. I don’t style myself any kind of an expert, but I do know plenty about both subjects. The SARS-CoV-2 virus appears to require a minimum viral load to produce symptomatic disease, and that load is nearly impossible to achieve outside without being in crowded close quarters due to natural air currents.
This is one likely explanation why there are so many asymptomatic infections. Viruses producing the common cold display this same characteristic, and coronavidae is one of the cold-producing families of virus. As far as wearing a mask in a car, this is unnecessary unless you have high-risk potentially exposed people other than you moving in and out of it all the time, and don’t follow basic sanitation rules. Even then, the risk of dangerous viral concentrations in a single-person car are very small.
Wearing a mask in a home is medically defensible if you have more than one person in it and at least one is exposed to high-risk situations — close quarters indoors with poor air movement where proximity to others is problematic. Otherwise, it is just a very low shared-risk situation.
All this assumes that masks are at least marginally effective. Obviously, that is currently very much in question. In any case, if an individual can no longer make a personal choice involving his own safety, we have truly placed safety above freedom, and Ben Franklin’s famous quote “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” would seem to apply. Eugene Volokh, placing that in context, gives us this:
So to sum up: All the logical work (if not all the rhetorical work) in “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” is being done by the decision about what aspects of liberty are essential, and how much safety is at stake. The slogan might work as a reminder not to make foolish tradeoffs, but the real difficulty is in deciding which tradeoffs are wise and which are foolish. Once we figure that out, we don’t need the slogan to remind us; before we figure it out, the slogan doesn’t really help us.
I deem this wise. Consider your tradeoff carefully — Is it all about “virtue signaling,” or is it more fundamental, personal, and essential? For the most part, we have to make that decision. No President or government can make it for us unless we allow them to.
And in that vein, also ask: What is government’s objective with any mask mandate? Is it to actually reduce infections, or to assert control over the masses? Informing this question is the apparent position of our betters that people are too stupid, pigheaded, careless, or their judgment too suspect to police their own hygiene practices and therefor must be ordered to do things on pain of punishment. Even embracing the healing power of “and” on the above, are we okay with allowing government to use it’s authority in this way?
Finally, I am constrained to point out that if we are to ever place this health problem in the rear-view mirror, we must all a) be infected or b) be vaccinated. There is simply no other solution. It’s true that heard immunity will occur at lower percentages of population infection/vaccination and control the spread, but anyone who has neither a) nor b) will be vulnerable to this disease until they have one or the other.
Glen, where do I go for my Spanish Flu vaccine shot?
I don’t believe that influenza variant it is still extant. As you know, influenza viruses mutate very quickly, being multi-“paged” viruses.
But scientists have tried to recreate it, I believe, and I think they were successful. Sounds crazy, I know, but they wanted to study why it was so particularly deadly and map its genome. Apparently, it produces cytokine storms which overwhelm the victim, rendering young, healthy people more susceptible than those with weaker immune responses.
But since “Spanish flu” is H1N1 (influenza A), you can get a quadrivalent flu vaccine that includes H1N1 variants just about anywhere. But I’m going to suggest “Spanish flu” isn’t really a thing anymore. 🙂
Won’t the same thing happen to the Wuhan flu?
Isn’t that the old normal?
Maybe, but not necessarily. The coronavidae family tends to mutate slower than influenza, as it is a much simpler virus and it’s mutations tend to be less successful because of it’s relatively less complex genome.
But remember, SARS-MERS was also a coronavirus, and a much more lethal one. Fortunately, it was also far less contagious. SARS-CoV-2 has seen some mutation so far, but from what I’ve read, most of them have been less virulent. But you can bet that at some point, another coronavirus mutation will emerge that has pandemic potential.
Having said that, influenza is still much more of a threat to health overall, and I would expect most health experts and immunologists to agree with me on that point. That’s not to minimize the potential of the SARS-CoV-2 virus — after all, we have yet to defeat it. We think we are almost there, but there could be an unpleasant surprise or two yet to come…
Now here’s an expert worth listening to!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9022827/COVID-19-cause-erectile-dysfunction-doctor-says.html
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Who knows, maybe covid causes blindness in teenaged boys?
or hairy palms
The premise of the masks-forever! proponents is that our respiratory system is built wrong. We have evolved (or been created, whichever) with a flaw in our oxygen intake set-up, and require an accessory to be worn forever.
This is hubris at the Greek tragedy level.
Why not wear scuba gear at all times? Can’t hurt.
The sign at our Dive shop says masks are required for entry – snorkels are optional. I want to get one of those BSL4 isolation suits and wear it to the Walmart. I wonder if that is like yelling fire in a crowded theater?
I’d say yes.
This whole discussion is so depressing. My upbringing was in the pioneer spirit of the last wave of 19th century immigrants to San Francisco. I come from a generation who listened to the stories of our grandparents’ troubled trip from the “old country”, living through the 1906 earthquake, the 1918 flu epidemic and then WWI. Then there were the stories our parents told us about the Depression and WWII. What all of these stories had in common was an understanding that life is fraught with risks and we need to learn how to navigate them and do so carefully but not to expect that life would be easy. That sense of personal responsibility seems to have disappeared and I grieve that it may never return.
Terribly eloquent JG.
My parents were in their forties when they had my brother and me because they’d both had Tuberculosis. My father for fourteen years, aged sixteen through 30, my mother for what would have been her four college years. My father lived to 90 on one lung. They met in a TB “san.” Both my grandmothers died of TB when my mother and father were in their respective childhoods. Both of my grandfathers died of accidents when my parents were teenaged. We were told Depression stories at almost every family gathering. My Aunt and Uncle’s first house was a converted chicken coop on his father’s chicken farm in the wilds of South Miami. They took things in stride and had great senses of humor. But they were frugal and always assumed things could very well get worse in the short term. I don’t recall them ever saying “stay safe,” or “travel safe.” (Most of them were also teachers and grammarians.)
From my observations both at my work , as well as the restaurants I visit there, people wear masks when walking about. If there were violations, they are so rare I have not observed them.
And yet cases are still rising, despite this virtually universal usage of masks in public.
I wonder why.
I’m glad that everyone here can at least agree that these people quoted in the article sound crazy. I hope I don’t end up eating crow, but they are hardly representative of the typical medical professional.
I am seeing more and more doctors who are refusing to see patients in person, only doing tele-help. The last one I heard of was the local pulmonologist. That’s right, during the pandemic of a respiratory illness, a 40-year old pulmonologist is refusing to see sick people because HIS life is worth so much more than that of his patients. I think any physician under 70 who refuses to see patients should lose their medical license. Those over 70 should probably retire if they don’t want the risk anymore.
‘ I’m not going to wear a mask inside my home, nor in my car, nor outside while playing with my dog‘
And that, I feel, is perfect. Viruses are transmitted in small spaces with too many people (packed trains, for example) and spaces with poor ventilation. There’s no need for a mask in a park, or in your car. Wearing one in the house makes no sense either as the number of people you are exposed to is so low, you know where each of you goes and how much potential exposure you’ve had.
What happened to “the land of the free and the the home of the brave?” It seems to be the we’ve moved to “the land of the safe and pussified.” To paraphrase Merle Haggard “Take this mask and shove it”
The first time I flew on an airline, I didn’t need ID, just my ticket and boarding pass. Now, my driver’s license isn’t good enough. I need a passport to travel from one airport to another WITHIN MY OWN STATE. Why was it that ID wasn’t necessary for the first 80 years or so of air travel, but now, I need a passport? Why do they need to know who I am, where I am coming from, and where I am going? It is none of their business. How does this make travel ‘safer’? Why didn’t it need to be safer before? If it is because we allowed a bunch of terrorists into the country, maybe we should show them the door instead. They have used fear to remove our freedom to travel. Illinois shut the interstates this summer so you couldn’t travel through. States had ‘quarantine’ rules that restricted your travel based on the ‘science’ that people from lightly affected areas would bring the disease to areas that were more heavily affected (why would you quarantine people coming from areas with LESS infection?). Expect checkpoints at state borders where you have to log your ID in and out, for ‘safety’ of course.
I knew the first time we let them dictate masks usage, shut down schools, businesses, and churches etc, they would never let go. Why does a virus with a lethality similar to the flu necessitate the removal of all of our freedoms? First Amendment…gone…for your own ‘safety’. No doubt, there will soon be exceptions to these rules for the rich and powerful. There always are. Didn’t it raise anyone’s eyebrows when the Supreme Court ruled that casinos could be open, but the moment they rented a room to a religious group, they were a ‘church’ and had to close? I’m sure there will soon be expensive and difficult-to-obtain licenses that allow people to eat at exclusive clubs, travel without restriction, and send their children to first-class schools. Just like some people can legally own a machine gun in NYC, while most aren’t allowed a black-powder musket in their own home.
Why do I say this? Because that is what they did last time. Let’s revisit gun control, shall we? In the 1930’s, during the Depression, a group of outlaws used cars and guns to rob banks. This scared the moneyed people to death, because common, everyday people could threaten them. So, they passed the National Firearms Act. This doesn’t ban anything. It just makes it so the government can track and tax machine guns, short-barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, supressors, grenades, etc. This doesn’t affect rich people. You can own a tank with explosive rounds, machine guns, and rocket launchers if you have enough money for the background checks and the tax stamps. It also makes you waive your 4rth Amendment rights (they can enter and search your home whenever they want). This is what Joe Biden has proposed extending to just about all firearms. Now, it didn’t actually affect those criminals that inspired it. Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly and the rest stole their machine guns from National Guard Armories, but it did make sure that the common people couldn’t rise up effectively. Now, in the 1960’s the Civil Rights Era scared the moneyed interests silly. They really were afraid of armed blacks demanding equality and challenging their power. Blacks couldn’t buy guns at local gun stores in the South because ‘private businesses can refuse service to anyone’ (sound familiar). So, blacks bought their guns through mail-order. They also tended to buy small, cheap guns, most of which were imported. So, the 1968 Gun Control Act banned mail-order gun sales and the importation of small, cheap guns. To this day, you can get around the import restriction by making the gun bigger, more powerful, or charging more for it. How does making a gun more powerful, or more expensive make it safer? It makes it harder for a black man to buy, that is how. Note that none of this affects the rich and powerful. They can still go buy a machine gun and they can afford to import any gun they want. Only the poor have their 2nd Amendment Rights removed. The press and schools have done such a good job convincing everyone this is necessary that Black Americans support the 1968 Gun Control Act overwhelmingly, despite the fact that it was designed to remove their rights.
So, we can see a consistent pattern in how rights are removed from the people. First, the 2nd Amendment has been effectively neutered in most places, now we see the same thing being done to the 1st. Remember, the ratchet only turns one way. Right can only be lost, they can never be regained. There isn’t a judge in this country that believes intrastate commerce exists.
Hear, hear, Michael!
In 1968 I was fourteen when my uncle, an avid hunter and gun collector, warned me about the impending passage of the GCA-68. At that time I didn’t own a center-fire rifle, borrowing one from him when we would go deer hunting. I purchased an Enfield “jungle carbine” and paid $35.00 for it from Klein’s Hardware in Chicago, from an ad in the back of my uncle’s American Rifleman magazine. He encouraged me to join the NRA, which I did, becoming a life member when I was eighteen or nineteen. (I still have the rifle.)
Your comment also reminded me of a time back in the mid-1970s when I had the misfortune to be appointed as my agency’s representative on a county government “safety committee, chaired by the county’s OSHA compliance and risk management officer. As the committee began discussing ways to reduce the number of lost-time employee safety accidents, incidents and so forth, the chairman quickly suggested we start a county-wide “Safety First” informational campaign.
I said, “I don’t know about the rest of these departments, but that won’t work for us at the Sheriff’s Office. We have a job to do, one that is inherently unsafe and often dangerous in many respects, and if we really do put safety of our employees first then we will keep them safely at the precinct offices and only send them out in groups to all calls for service and never drive over the speed limit. We also need to double the number of officers and they will also need more guns to keep them safer from attack. If we must have a slogan, I suggest “Safety Always.” We already integrate safety into our training, and teach our people to do what we have to do, but always weighing the safety aspects of each option and decision. Employee safety is certainly an important consideration, but we assume some risk in doing this job and we can’t let it take precedence over our larger mission.”
As I consider all the Wuhan Virus restrictions and edicts, this seems to be a “safety first” slogan writ large across our economy and society, but really a continuation of social control tactics leading toward eventual totalitarianism. We as free individuals and as a free society also have “a job to do,” and if we aren’t careful we will let this Wuhan Virus phobia paralyze us and even make us fearful of our neighbors, friends and even family members. Life is a risky proposition always. I have had many brushes with death over the years, both intentional and “through a series of unfortunate events,” avoidable and otherwise. I consider myself fortunate to have lived to be 67. I always tell my doctors ,”If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
Psalms 90:10 says “The days of our years [are] threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength [they be] fourscore years, yet [is] their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
I am closing in on my “threescore and ten,” and hope to be around a while longer. I would love to see all my grandchildren grown to adulthood. That means hanging around for fifteen more years. Every new dawn is for me truly a gift and, while I am reasonably careful, I intend to enjoy life until I die. But we can never remove all risk, and nobody here gets out alive.