Buy-Back Mania

by: the Common Constitutionalist

There’ve been many weapons buy-back programs throughout the country recently. Local police and sheriffs departments, towns and cities have all offered monetary compensation for those turning in a gun or ammunition magazine. The object of these programs is to attempt to get weapons off the streets. That sounds reasonable. After all, less guns mean less gun violence, does it not?

Just ask those living in the city of Chicago, where because of some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere in the US, it is virtually impossible to own such a weapon. I’m sure they all feel quite safe because of those restrictions. Oh that’s right! One of the inconvenient truths about gun control is that it doesn’t work. Chicago is the poster child for strict control. At the same time it just happens to have the distinction of being the murder capital of America. Rather a strange coincidence I’d say.

Now it seems a pastor in St. Louis is taking the gun buy-back program to a new level. Pastor Rodney Francis of the Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church has planned a buy-back program of his own. It is not for weapons however. It’s for toys.

Pastor Francis will not allow allow weapons, violent video games or gory movies in his home. Bully for him. The pastor is a private citizen and is welcome to set those rules for he and his family.

He is now proposing that parents trade their children’s toy guns and other toy weapons for more wholesome toys. The pastor explained that, “We want to engage the culture of violence and one of the strategies that we thought we might be able to use is to educate parents about the dangers of allowing kids to continue this access to toy guns and playing with toy guns. They’re going to get exposed to it but we can protect them early on so they don’t get a distorted view of what those can do to the human body.”

Although I admire Pastor Francis for living his beliefs, I think those beliefs are misguided.

Now I don’t know the pastor from Adam, but I do recognize the behavior. Pastor Francis is either a progressive or has bought into the myth that the degradation of society is due to inanimate objects.

It seems he like an ever-increasing percentage of this country believe, if you just take away the weapons, all will be right in America. That is exactly what those who seek to rule us are counting on. I hate to quote Karl Marx, but this is what he would call a useful idiot.

Throughout history despotic regimes have known they must first completely disarm their citizenry. However, another effective way of controlling a nations citizens is through education. Get to the children early with programs such as head start, public (government run) kindergarten and now pre-kindergarten. Pressure the parents into thinking they must send little Johnny and little Janey to a government training facility at age 3 or 4 to have any chance of success later in life.

Once in the training facility the eager tots are taught how to correctly think and conduct themselves. They’re also taught life lessons such as, the earth is warming and that it is your parents fault, and that all guns are bad and scary.

The Hitler youth, thinking that the teacher knows best, absorb the propaganda like sponges. The parents trust little Johnny and Janey are being well care for and thus give little thought to the misinformation their children are being fed.

This has been happening now for a generation or more. The progressives, long ago, figured out that this is the most effective way to change society.

So now we have children who have probably never seen a gun in person, much less held or shot one, scared to death of them.

Parents and even grandparents, children of the 60s, think the same way. But now, having been raised in a state of fear, the same Chicken Littles are running the country.

Hopefully, enough people in our nation will figure out that it is not the guns, the video games or the movies and music that are the problem. The real problem is the simple lack of love and respect for our fellow man, as it were.

It is the worship of the state and an unpinning from God and the 10 Commandments. I’m not saying everyone has to be a religious zealot; I’m not. Heck, if citizens just live their lives by the Golden rule, we could cure a lot of ills. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. It’s short and virtually anyone can understand its meaning. Even an atheist could follow it.

This has been our problem for decades. We have to stop giving in to progressives and Marxists that think they can engineer the perfect society just by mandating it. We must also fight against so-called conservatives that believe compromise is a good thing. It’s too late for compromise.

The pastor has every right to do what he is proposing, however misguided I think he is. He is, as I said, a private citizen and should be able to do what he wishes provided he doesn’t try to make it public policy.

To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson; If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, it matters not to me. You may do what you wish.