This is about the strongest I've sent so far...
But we need to draw the line in the sand clearly for these fools.... I sent this to my reps and the prez via the NRA's "Contact Your Reps" site.
NRA-ILA | Write Your Reps
Credit to "Marko Kloos", TFL, 2000, the original poster of most of this.
=============================================
Senator Merkley
Senator Wyden
Representative Blumenauer
President
Message text follows:
"A Declaration of Civil Disobedience
I will not register my guns. If such a law is ever enacted on the federal,
State or municipal level, I will choose to ignore it. I was required to
leave my personal data with the gun dealer when I purchased each of my
guns legally, and this data is doubtlessly on record already. Let law
enforcement look it up if they choose, but I will not register my guns:
not now, and not in the future. Registration of handguns, or any other
firearm, will not prevent a single crime from happening. It only serves to
harass the law-abiding citizen for the sole offense of owning a
politically incorrect item.
I will not surrender my guns voluntarily, ever. If the possession of
handguns is declared illegal by any legislative body, I will choose to
ignore it. If the owners of newly or soon-to-be illegal weapons are asked
to turn them in for compensation, I will not comply. Let them try to
enforce a law that is not enforceable, and declare a war on guns that will
be no more successful than the war on drugs that has eroded most of our
civil liberties in the last two decades. If they go from door to door to
ask for guns, I will deny ownership; if they break down doors to search
for guns, I will do my best to make their mission difficult. Confiscation
of firearms will do nothing to make society safer. It merely takes away an
essential basic right from the peasantry: the right to self defense.
Without the means to it, the right itself is nonexistent except on paper.
I will never again concern myself with concealed carry laws. I will carry
my sidearm as I see fit, and wherever I choose, whether I am in Wyoming or New York City. I will ignore unjust laws denying me the right to determine my own fate while exempting friends and cronies of the legislature and the executive from the same laws. I will try to comply with the law whenever possible and obtain a permit whenever given the opportunity; I do not wish to be a lawbreaker if I can avoid it. But I will no longer comply with the demands of legislators who want to leave us defenseless against those who will always prey on others with the help of guns no matter what the law says.
I know that I am not alone. I am part of a growing group of citizens that
are fed up with being painted as radical, violent, ignorant and bigoted.
Most of us are not camouflage-wearing conspiracy theorists. We are
doctors, lawyers, soldiers, carpenters, nurses, computer programmers and
convenience store clerks. We are fathers, mothers, grandparents, brothers, sisters and colleagues. We are "the American people" so often quoted and invoked by politicians. We come from all walks of life, all levels of income and education, all faiths and non-faiths. We share a common anger at those who want to take our self-determination away from us, those who blame us for every senseless and over-publicized act of gun violence in this country, those who are more than willing to trade an essential liberty for the illusion of safety. We are tired of politicians who create law after law to fight actions by people who by definition do not obey laws, in order to pacify a vocal and ignorant portion of the population.
We also share the belief that the responsibility for our safety is up to
us, and can never be completely entrusted to an understaffed, underpaid
and overworked police force that is mostly tied up in an unwinnable battle
against drugs.
We do not ask for special rights, we merely ask that our right to
self-defense and self-determination is respected and not undermined. We
wish to be left alone, and we do not want to surrender our integrity and
our means to enforce our right to life and liberty for a social experiment
that has already been a massive failure in those countries who attempted
it. We are citizens, not peons. We are free men and women, not serfs who exist to provide taxes to the ruling caste.
We have tried to play by rules that have turned more pointless and
nonsensical by the year. We have paid the fees, filled out the forms and
subjected ourselves to the background checks. We have been fingerprinted like common criminals. We have tolerated the insults and the scapegoating of some of our fellow citizens, and that of the mass media. We have, where we could, taken all the steps necessary to go armed and obey the laws at the same time. Here we draw a line in the sand. Stop harassing us, for we are not the problem. Taking our rights away from us will not solve your problems, or make us all any safer against crime. We have done what we can to work with you when you came after us year after year. We gave up our military-style sporter rifles, and society did not turn any safer. We were forced to purchase guns with crippled magazines that limited their functionality, and yet society did not turn any safer for it. Yet you come back with sure regularity, asking for more of what is ours, in return for the promise of a safer society. You pass laws because it is the only thing you can do in the face of outraged soccer moms demanding that something be done to "stop the violence'. You cater to ignorance, and you willingly chip away at the rights of a group that is perceived to have little public support--minimizing the risk of election day backlash. Everything you have done has failed to improve society, yet you return and ask for one more restriction, one more "common sense" gun law, arguing that the last round of restrictions was just not severe enough.
We are tired of it. We know that if you made all guns illegal, it would
have no effect on crime and violence, but we also know that you would not turn around and return us our rights and our guns after you are proven
wrong by reality.
As an individual, I will choose to disobey whenever you enact a law
inconsistent with my basic right to self-defense. Try to force us into
registering our guns, or giving them up altogether, just so you can garner
support for your next election, and you face the responsibility for
whatever happens next. Many of us will refuse to obey, and then you will
have a choice between trying to enforce this law or silently ignoring
those who choose to disobey it. A law that is not obeyed, and cannot be
enforced, does more harm to you than it does to those you try to govern.
As Albert Einstein said after the repeal of the Prohibition laws, nothing
will cause more disrespect of government than the enactment of laws that cannot be enforced. And make no mistake, a general gun registration or outright ban can only be enforced by sending the police from door to door, forcefully entering those homes which refuse to cooperate. How many dead citizens are you willing to tolerate before you repent? How many police officers are you willing to sacrifice? More importantly, how much of this is the general population willing to take? The war on drugs has brought about the demise of most civil rights, a war on guns would bring society to its knees. You've declared drugs illegal, yet they are available on most every street corner in this country. What good will a ban on guns do?
Law is law, but a bad law is just that. It was the law in Germany to
refuse Jews access to public air raid shelters during World War Two, and
many people chose to ignore that law. I am glad they did. I value my
conscience and my integrity over your seat in Congress. Therefore I
declare that I will no longer obey laws that are an affront to my
humanity, laws that are nothing but elitist arrogant attempts to keep arms out of the hands of the unwashed masses. Pick another group for your social experiments, like the criminals for example.
We have no intention to commit crimes of violence with our guns, and we
are deeply offended by the notion that you alone can make the decision who can be trusted with a gun, and that we serfs just cannot act in a
responsible fashion when given access to guns.
No registration, no confiscation. Ever. If I should ever break your laws
and get caught, you can arrest me. I'd rather live in jail with the
knowledge that my spirit is free, than on the outside as a tax-paying serf
knowing that I only serve as a worker bee with no rights and little
personal freedom. I know that I am not alone, and let's see just how many jails you can build to accommodate all those who have had enough of your failed and unjust policies."
- Credit to "Marko Kloos", TFL, 2000
This sums up my feelings perfectly. We, the law abiding gun owners of this nation, are not going to be your scapegoats for criminal misuse of firearms, and the failures of the criminal justice system in enforcing the laws that are currently on the books.
New restrictions that will have no effect and will only serve to criminalize legal firearms owners are morally reprehensible, and run counter to the Founders intentions when they wrote the Constitution. You are leading the nation into great peril with your determination that inanimate objects (guns) and the legal ownership of them should be the focus of your response to the terrible tragedies we have seen where mentally unbalanced individuals have taken the lives of innocents.
In closing:
"I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him
is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse
the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality
expressing the very highest respect for law." Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sincerely,
2hawk
ETA, sorry about the formatting, I copied it from the confirmation email I got from the NRA.
