The headline might not make sense, but let me explain. I ordered a pistol from a major gun store who shall remain nameless, at least for this article. This pistol has the feature of magazines holding 24 bullets each. When the pistol arrived, there were no magazines. Apparently, the dealer didn’t want to ship so-called “high capacity” magazines to Colorado because the state has a law forbidding them.
Our country’s founding fathers pledged their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to fight the tyranny of the British empire. Most of them had to sacrifice at least the “lives” and “fortunes” part of that pledge. In modern times, people who describe themselves as “patriots” or “second amendment supporters,” in particular gun stores, can’t even sacrifice a few dollars or the possible loss of their businesses (as in the loss of their license). They don’t stand up to unconstitutional laws by selling anyway what the tyrannical government tells them they can’t sell.
The courts of the state of Colorado have zero jurisdiction in other states. If an out-of-state gun store wants to send me magazines of which Colorado doesn’t approve, they cannot be prosecuted by Colorado. Even if they are, they can easily ignore the court case. If the Feds were to get involved, the easy rebuttal to any charges is the Constitution. So the claims of patriotism by the gun store in this case are just hollow advertisements, perhaps trying to sell more guns (keep their license). Their patriotism is an empty mockery of the pledges from our founding fathers. They are helping the tyrants enforce gun control by quietly acquiescing to their every whim.
The gun stores don’t even fight back when given the encouragement of a ruling from the courts admitting that restricting the size of magazines is unconstitutional. Recently, the historically liberal 9th Circuit Court ruled that California magazine restriction laws go against the Constitution and are therefore void. Sure, this only applies to western states (California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Montana, Arizona), but it gives evidence that the courts are aware that the magazine bans don’t pass the smell test. In addition to this, many local Sheriffs, including our own, have specifically stated that they will not enforce lousy laws like the magazine size restrictions.
At the very least, you would think the gun stores would do like so many other retailers and refuse to judge what people will do with the items they sell. The responsibility of adhering to the magazine size restrictions should be up to the end user. If I am willing to suffer the wrath of the tyrants (and I am much more subject to the state courts than they are), then the gun store should stop trying to be the police and just sell me the stuff I want. In fact, they may be opening themselves up to more of the liability they are trying to avoid. If they act like a judge and jury with magazine sizes, afraid of liability, then what’s to keep them from liability for the use of the other items they sell? If you are judge and jury for a magazine size, doesn’t that raise the question of the gun store’s part in what I might do with the gun itself?
When stores start sliding down the slippery slope of laws they will enforce and laws they won’t, what is to happen to the business when the tyrants finally do pass bans on keeping and bearing arms? If stores are helping to enforce some unconstitutional laws, how are they possibly going to refuse to enforce others?
Some gun stores really do resist the tyranny of stupid gun laws by inventing ingenious ways to get around them. For instance, in our state there are places you can go to get magazine “kits” with instructions on how to modify the magazine to increase its capacity. I’ve already used some videos telling me how to remove the plug in my shotgun magazine so it can hold more than two extra rounds. I can buy magazine extenders for that shotgun so it will carry more than five extra rounds even after I removed the plug. So it’s not completely bad out there. But it is obvious to me that some of the success of the gun control tyrants is due to the fact that many so-called “patriots” are rolling over and playing dead for them.
We’ve come such a long way down from the “give me liberty or give me death” pledges which won the Revolution and birthed the greatest country the world has ever known. Now we can say “patriot” without even having to sacrifice a dollar or two, let alone backing it up with our lives, fortunes and sacred honor.