Connecticut Has A Tiger By The Tail

I found this good Reason article summing up something thathas been proven time and time again, which is this:  

A person in a position of power should never, ever give an order that they know will not be obeyed.  It leads to erosion and destruction of that person’s power, and inevitably does not result in good things for either the order-giving, or the order-defying. 

now that Connecticut's resident class of politically employed cretins has awoken to the fact that, in their state, like everywhere else, people overwhelmingly disobey orders to register their weapons, they're acting like this is a shocking revelation. They're also promising to make those who tried to comply, but missed the deadline regret the effort (proving the point of the openly defiant). And the politicians' enablers in the press are screaming for the prosecution of "scores of thousands" of state residents who, quite predictably, flipped the bird at the government.

Will all the people who assured us that we were just being paranoid about registries eventually leading to confiscation just sit down and shut the fuck up now?  How about all the folks who lampooned anyone who took exception to the background check idea as being paranoid loons?  Because it looks to me like every single fear that we espoused – that the registry would eventually be used as a confiscation list, and that the background check database would end up being a de facto registry with the same result – is coming true.  Only we’re not talking about these things eventually coming true.  No.  We’re talking about them coming true almost immediately.  Here we are, not even two full months after the creation of this law requiring registration, and the good citizens of Connecticut are already looking down both barrels of the confiscation machine. 

Some people actually tried to comply with the registration law, but missed the deadline. The state's official position is that it will accept applications notarized on or before January 1, 2014 and postmarked by January 4. But, says Dora Schriro, Commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, in a letter to lawmakers, anybody sufficiently law-abiding but foolish enough to miss that slightly extended grace period will have to surrender or otherwise get rid of their guns.

One thing that struck me was the scope of the disobedience.  We aren’t talking about a paltry few percent.  We aren’t even discussing a minority of gun owners.  From the article:

Three years ago, the Connecticut legislature estimated there were 372,000 rifles in the state of the sort that might be classified as "assault weapons," and two million plus high-capacity magazines. Many more have been sold in the gun-buying boom since then. But by the close of registration at the end of 2013, state officials received around 50,000 applications for "assault weapon" registrations

In my quick and dirty maths, that means that 87% of gun owners if Connecticut told their government to go fuck themselves. 

Folks, this is huge news.  This is a sea change in the way that governments ought to be viewing their people.  I don’t see this as being non-compliance.  I see this as being open defiance.

Open defiance not by a few fringe loonies, but by a huge number of people, and the state legislature there should be pulling nervously at their collars right now.  The folks in every state government should be paying attention, and re-evaluating how they will proceed from this point forward. 

One other point: This law has essentially proven to be unenforceable (seriously, what are you going to do about it?  What suicidal idiot are you going to hire to go confiscate these weapons?), which is a mixed blessing.  On one hand, it proves the impotence of the state to control a population that chooses to not allow it (good thing), but on the other hand, it does not bode well for freedom in the good State of Connecticut:

Unenforceable laws almost always lead to increasing levelsof brutality on the part of law enforcement officials, frustrated and struggling to find a way to make the populace comply. 

Connecticut passed this law with the intent of decreasing violence, but my guess is that it will lead to a net increase in violence, and may even lead to out-of-control violent scenarios like Ruby Ridge and Waco.  Talk about your unintended consequences. 

Any blood whatsoever that is shed because of this is on the hands of the Connecticut State Legislature, and any idiot who supported this law.  Men standing in defiance of the State violating their rights are not in the wrong here, and have every right to defend their rights against State encroachment of such.