I was in a gun store recently. I won’t say where or when, or who I was with. I probably shouldn’t even mention that I was in a gun store, but I was in a gun store, and I noticed something that struck me. Before anyone could buy a gun, they had to fill out a form. A long, long form. The Form 4473 (5300.9) Revised May 2020. It is six pages long–but to be fair, only one and a half of the pages are completed by the purchaser and three and a half of the pages are instructions. I used to be a licensed federal firearms dealer, and I know a few things about the 4473. You have to complete the form exactly right. You must put your check mark in the correct Yes or No blocks or the dealer can’t sell to you. (The check boxes are an improvement. Before, you had to write out Yes or No. Y or N was not acceptable.) You have to spell out the name of your address state and state of birth–no abbreviations. You can make a mistake and correct it, but I heard someone behind the counter say that you couldn’t have more than three corrections on the form. After filling out the form, you must present valid identification that provides your name, address and state of residence, and it must include a photograph, expiration date and be of a document type that is accepted. Once you have proven who you are, you must then prove that you are worthy to purchase a firearm in one of two ways. You can undergo a government background check wherein the dealer calls, gives the FBI operator your identification information and then waits for approval. It might be provided right away, or the dealer might have to hold for a bit, or wait for a call back in a few minutes, an hour or two, or maybe a few days. Or the prospective gun buyer can present a concealed carry, firearms owner card or other state license or permit that certifies that the purchaser has already been deemed worthy to purchase and own a firearm by being fingerprinted, undergoing an even longer and more exhaustive background check, and paying some money. Once the government has granted permission for the purchaser to take possession of a gun, the sale continues and (depending on the size and type of gun store) five minutes to an hour later the purchaser may leave the store with his new firearm.
As I stood there watching a surprising number of people going through this process in order to be allowed to exercise their constitutional rights, I also reflected on the deeply disturbing and quite perilous situation in which our nation currently finds itself. Of course, Joe Biden has been projected, or called or declared the winner by the Mainstream Media (a member of which I must now sadly consider the Fox News Network) but we all know a few things about this:
- Neither Joe Biden nor anyone else will be the “winner” of this election until the electors authorized by the state legislatures (in whatever fashion) cast their votes and transmit a record to the President of the Senate.
- Recounts are underway in several states and the margins could easily be changed.
- There are serious and credible allegations about ballot fraud and computerized vote switching that must be investigated and adjudicated.
- Every election ever held probably had “irregularities” but we are looking at nationwide, systemic and blatant cheating on a massive scale–an unprecedented scale. That’s what you get when you build, as Joe Biden claimed, “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
How did we get here? Election security has been a joke in this nation for decades, and for justification of the electoral college you need look no further than the fact that certain cities and states have a long and colored history of voter fraud. The electoral college helps prevent one corrupt state from swaying the entire election. But now the corruption has spread throughout the nation, and it was accomplished under the guise of dealing with the threat of Covid-19. The last I heard, about one half of all the votes cast in the 2020 election were “mail-in” ballots, and in most states Democratic lawsuits, Democratic legislatures and Democratic judges made drastic, last-minute changes to voting procedures in order to make fraud easier–not harder. The Biden “victory” is the fruit of their labors.
So what’s my point about the guns? We have allowed our government to make it so hard to exercise our constitutional right to keep and bear arms that it takes hours or days to gain “permission” to buy a gun. While at exactly the same time our government has made it so easy to register and vote that in some places a person can literally walk in off the street, present no identification, cast a ballot and then head off to the next precinct. But that’s nothing! Fraudulent “mail-in” ballots have been injected into this election by the thousands and perhaps millions. In some states signature witnesses were not needed and no comparison with signatures on file was done. In some cases it was supposedly done, but Republican poll watchers were forcibly excluded from the areas where signature comparisons were supposedly being done. All of this is the result of sending out millions of ballots to millions of people who did not request one. Some of them are dead, some have moved out of the district, and some were happy to exchange their blank ballot for money or other valuable considerations.
It is grotesque, obscene, and inexcusable that voting for president, which is not a constitutional right, has been made so trivial that stealing an election is easy for those willing to do it; while buying a gun, which is a constitutional right, has been made such a complicated, confusing and troublesome task that the law-abiding dread it.
But guns are dangerous and we have to keep them out of the hands of criminals! Votes are dangerous too. They can be used to change the course of a nation, alter history and enslave millions of free people, but right now our election laws are designed to make it easy for ballots to fall into the hands of criminals. Therefore, I am calling for laws to be enacted that tie the right to vote to the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms. It should never be harder to buy a gun than it is to vote, and it should never be easier to vote than it is to buy a gun.
As I often say, I’m not holding my breath.