-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a prelude to war! Upstanding citizen one day, criminal the next Jon E. Dougherty is a staff writer for WorldNetDaily. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com As millions of Americans try to predict or anticipate Y2K-related unrest -- set to begin tomorrow if at all -- there is one thing I can say with certainty that indeed will happen at the stroke of midnight, Jan. 1, 2000. Perhaps as many as tens of thousands of "evil wacko gun nuts" will become instant criminals in California if they own a type of semi-automatic rifle called an SKS Sporter with a detachable magazine. A year ago the state initiated a 365-day amnesty period after the legislature made it illegal to own one of the rifles. State law enforcement officials took a federal payoff of about $1.5 million to "buy back" as many of the rifles as they could, paying participants as much as $230 for their rifles which averaged about $150 apiece when they were new. If you think that sounds "fair" and "reasonable" and is "in the best interests of the public safety," think again. First of all, the California legislature lied their collective assets off to the owners of these guns when it told them some time ago that a previous scheme requiring all SKS Sporter owners to register the guns with the state would never lead to a ban or a confiscation of them. We now know how truthful that was. In good faith owners of these weapons -- who are and always have been law-abiding people -- complied. But how ironic indeed that Adolf Hitler got away with the same lie some 65 years ago. And yes, let me be crystal clear: I'm comparing the actions of the California legislature to those of Hitler's Nazi Germany because in this case, anyway, it is absolutely fitting and proper. Secondly, according to the most recent report on the buyback program, only about 600 of the guns have been turned in out of possibly thousands that have been sold in the state since the ban was announced a year ago. So clearly, despite the "best intentions" of California's most truthful and honest lawmaking apparatus, it would be fair to assume that lots of SKS Sporter owners will be instant criminals by the time they wake up tomorrow morning. That is a fact not lost on the state's attorney general's office. Of the amnesty and buyback period, Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office, said, "The legislature said, OK, we'll give them a one-year grace period to take advantage of the buyback and avoid becoming criminals." That is a helluva statement for a top law enforcement official to make. Lockyer, by way of Barankin, makes this phenomenon sound so normal and righteous, so cavalier. Never mind for one second that the rifles these owners have are not used in crimes, were legal when they were purchased, and are supposedly protecting thousands of lives in homes all across the state. Never mind all those bothersome studies that prove, beyond doubt, that more guns in a society equals less violent crime. And never mind, for one second, that "the right to keep and bear arms ... shall not be infringed," per the language of the Second Amendment. No, never mind all of that. The gods of California have spoken, the people's voice be damned, and ye shall fall in line or be shackled to a wall like the scum that you are. That's a little dramatic, but it illustrates the arrogance and presumptive disregard for the proper rule of law in this country -- the Constitution. Worse, the recipient of the first and most important amendment in the Bill of Rights, the press, is conspicuously avoiding this fight. Its behavior on this issue reminds me of the image of a child guilty of stealing cookies, but when caught assumes an innocent pose next to the open jar by whistling and staring up at the ceiling, hoping you won't notice the obvious. But imagine if you can that a similar ban was put on even a single element of the establishment press. Imagine if some socialist element in California determined one day that the incessant coverage of violence by members of the press was harming "the children" and passed a law giving them one year to fire their hard news reporters (the equivalent of "turning them in"). If that's too much of a stretch, then just imagine if the state assembly required all newspapers to simply place the gory stuff in the middle of the paper and get it off the front page. That'd be "reasonable," wouldn't it? Wouldn't that "protect the children?" No, of course not. And neither will this absurd and patently unconstitutional gun ban on a particular semiautomatic rifle whose firepower and reloading capability can be readily duplicated by dozens of other weapons. I predict that by tomorrow morning thousands of Californians will become "instant criminals" by simple virtue of owning a politically incorrect firearm. If that's not sad enough, I also imagine lots of these people who still, in my view, rightfully believe they should not have to abandon them at all, will not abandon them. It's likely those guns will have to be taken by force, their owners killed by an overreaching and power-mad state bureaucracy that will use those cases as an excuse to ban even more weapons. After all, California gun owners have already seen just how badly their legislators stick to their word. I can't believe this is happening in what is supposed to be the "most free country" on the face of the earth. 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