Enemies Foreign And Domestic Page 3

  “Well thanks, I’ll pass that along. And good luck.”

  Congressman Delante stayed inside the atrium while Cynthia McFadden passed through the security points and went back out onto the dreary street, giving up for the day. She would go back to her National Firearms Organization office and watch the day’s events in Congress on television like the rest of America.

  ****

  Senator Ellsworth, the elderly senior Republican Senator from Montana, was the last of a very short list to speak against the bill. He had been in poor health for a few years, and it was no secret that he did not plan to run for reelection.

  “Thank you, Senator Prescott, for extending to me your time to deliver these last remarks before we vote. And I am grateful to my party’s leaders, who allowed me to speak in their place.” This was an oblique jab; most of the senior Republicans were attempting to hide under their antique Senate floor desks. There had been precious few volunteers lining up to speak against the proposed law.

  “I am not grateful that the majority party leadership has seen fit to pack the gallery with hooligans who have behaved like a street mob today, apparently with the majority leadership’s blessing. We will all live to regret the day that this august chamber was turned into a Roman Circus.”

  Catcalls, whistles and chanted jeers came down from the gallery along with a hail of wadded up paper. All day the Democrat Senate leaders had made only token efforts to control the strident and obnoxious behavior of the public gallery, which had frequently joined in chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “The NFO has got to go,” drowning out the few Republican speakers willing to speak against the bill.

  The packed gallery was the result of it inexplicably being opened to the public an hour earlier than the usual time. Activists from Gun Control Inc., Stop Gun Violence, the Gun Safety Policy Center and other anti-firearms groups had “somehow” found out about the early opening, and had filled the gallery with emotional supporters. This was their day, they would not be silenced, and the majority leaders would not have them ejected despite repeated demands from the minority. Senator Ellsworth was one of the few with the heart, not to mention the lungs, to stand against the organized jeering and catcalling.

  “My fellow Senators, I beg you one last time to consider what this well-intentioned but terribly conceived law will mean. To begin with, millions of Americans will be forced to give up valuable property without recompense, an unconstitutional taking of lawfully obtained private property.” This statement was greeted with a chorus of boos.

  “Many millions of Americans will be stripped of the ability to defend themselves against criminal marauders, who will surely applaud the passing of this bill, which should be called the ‘Safety for Violent Criminals Act.’ In this era of terrorist attacks on our home soil, it is almost unbelievable that the Congress wants to make our citizens more vulnerable to terrorism, and not less.

  “Veterans who fought and bled for this country from Germany to Vietnam to Iraq will be forced to surrender their old M1 carbines and M1 Garands, surplus rifles which for many decades the federal government itself provided to veterans and other law abiding citizens for a nominal fee. Now a few short years later, the federal government is taking them back. Honorable weapons with which those veterans defended our nation and our Constitution, they will no longer even be entrusted to own! Our veterans fought and bled for our nation. They took an oath to defend our Constitution, and that Constitution says clearly in black and white ‘a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’

  “George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, said about this very subject: ‘What is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.’ This has now been stood on its head! The whole people are to be disarmed, and only a few public officials are to be entrusted with the very types of weapons which are suitable for the ‘militia of the whole people’ of which Mason spoke! He wrote it my friends, you can check it yourself, if you care about what is actually written in the Constitution.

  “My fellow Senators, I beg you to reconsider. There are millions of Americans who will never in their lifetimes accept the Second Amendment being torn from the Constitution and burned. The Second Amendment was included right behind the freedom of speech, assembly and worship, to stand guard over and protect all of the rest of our God-given rights. With the Second Amendment ripped from the Bill of Rights, there will be no final check to encroaching tyranny, and I am certain, dead certain, that millions of Americans will not be willingly disarmed.

  “It is my worst fear that the passage of this misbegotten and blatantly unconstitutional law will lead inexorably to a terrible conflict within this nation. You may choose to believe that your radical Supreme Court will have the final word on the constitutionality of this law, but I assure, I promise you, indeed I warn you, they will not have the final word! Five left-wing activist judges who believe that the simple words printed on the paper of the Constitution do not mean what they clearly say will not have the last word!

  “There is still time my friends, blessed time, to enact reasonable legislation which will help to prevent the type of national tragedy which we witnessed yesterday. But we must all recognize that in a free society, we will always be at the risk of madmen in hijacked jet airplanes, or madmen armed with truck bombs, or a vial of germs, or a rifle. If we are searching for 100% guaranteed safety, we will not find it in this law, or any other. Instead, we will all be swallowing a sweet tasting poison, and not some utopian panacea. In the words of Ben Franklin, let me remind you that ‘they that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

  “My fellow Senators, please hear my words and my warning: millions of Americans will never consent to being disarmed without a great and terrible struggle. For millions of Americans, this law will be their Rubicon. This foolish bill demands that in one short week all semi-automatic rifles must be turned in for destruction, or their owners will face five years in federal prison for each weapon. I tell you now that in one week, millions and millions of those arms will not be turned in by loyal and law-abiding citizens. What then? I ask you, what then?”

  Senator Ellsworth gathered his papers and left the podium among an outpouring of curses, boos and wads of paper thrown from the gallery.

  ****

  The last to speak before the vote was Senator Jack Schuleman, the senior Democrat Senator from Connecticut, and the primary author of the bipartisan Schuleman-Montaine Firearms Safety Act. His short brisk walk to the podium was greeted with thunderous applause and a standing ovation by most of the Senate.

  “My fellow Senators, Congressmen, and American citizens, I don’t want to debate the constitutionality of the proposed bill before us tonight, we have been through various Second Amendment cases all day today ad-nauseum. So let’s just blow away the gun smoke: all reasonable people agree that the Second Amendment only protects a state’s right to maintain a well regulated militia, and not an individual’s right to possess any type of firearm. In ruling after ruling, the courts have stated that the Second Amendment refers to a collective right of the states, and not the right of an individual to own a machine gun or semi-automatic assault rifle!

  “Ultimately, it will be up to the Supreme Court of the United States to rule on this law, and I am confident that they will uphold its constitutionality. And when they do, we must all join together and respect their decision, as the last word and the final law of the land.

  “But let us leave all that tortured legalese for the future, and return to the real world where this law will affect all Americans. Yes, some will be asked to make a small sacrifice for the greater safety and security of our entire society. They are being asked to give up their rapid-fire semi-automatic assault rifles and submachine guns and so on.

  “For the life of me, I could never understand the need for these military assault rifles in t
he first place! What sort of hunter needs to shoot a deer or a rabbit thirty times, as fast as he can pull the trigger? Maybe what that type of ‘sportsman’ needs is more target practice, one shot at a time!” This quip was greeted with laughter and cheers and applause.

  “This bill does not in any way affect the vast majority of legitimate hunting rifles and shotguns owned by genuine American sportsmen. Let me repeat that: this bill does NOT in any way affect genuine American sportsmen. So what need then is there for individuals to own semi-automatic military assault rifles? Let’s examine this question. Do some of our own citizens harbor the paranoid delusion that we may someday suffer a foreign invasion by enemy armies? Should anyone so delusional even be allowed to own any kind of firearm at all?

  “Yet far more dangerous, it seems to me, are the paranoid fanatics who harbor a secret hatred for their own democratically elected government. Some of these demented souls even compare their own government to the Nazi regime, and attempt to peddle the sick lie that gun control in America will lead somehow to gas chambers. In America! As if America is in any way comparable to Nazi Germany. As a Jew and the descendent of Holocaust survivors, I find that argument particularly repugnant, and it must be rejected by all sane and intelligent Americans.

  “I can tell you the name of one American who was filled to overflowing with that extreme right wing anti-government and anti-Muslim fervor: Jimmy Shifflett. Besides the arsenal of assault rifles that madman was able to assemble, his home was a virtual library of racist hate literature, and books on sniping, booby trapping, and bomb making.

  “Perhaps worst of all were the letters he intended to be found in his sniper’s lair after the massacre, laying the blame for the attack on our honest, hardworking and loyal Muslim American brothers and sisters. Thank God that at least Shifflett did not escape, to leave behind a black cloud of false blame. His organization clearly intended the massacre to lead to vigilante violence against those of our fellow citizens who follow the teachings of Mohammed, along with the teachings of Jesus and Moses.

  “Now although the mass murderer James Shifflett is dead, we know all too well that there are thousands more like him still hiding in cabins and basements and garages all across America. Shifflett may have been the poster boy for the paranoid right wing militia movement, but there are many more like him waiting to take his place. By passing this law tonight, you will be voting to take these military assault rifles out of their hands, before they can perpetrate another massacre like the one which wounded our national soul yesterday.

  “So I ask and I beg you not to forget the nearly twelve-hundred victims of Jimmy Shifflett’s assault rifle. Our unholy American love affair with weapons of war must be ended. We must announce our final divorce from that evil witch called gun lust! We must finally learn to care more for the victims of assault rifles, than for the lovers of those completely unnecessary military weapons!

  “So please, do the right thing tonight. Please vote to put an end to this national scourge, and take the assault rifles out of the hands of the next Jimmy Shiffletts. Pass this bill so that we may all live in a safe and sane America, free from the threat of assault rifle violence. Thank you.”

  Waves of stormy applause fell upon Senator Schuleman, who was mobbed by throngs of ecstatic hand-pumping and back-slapping colleagues as he left the podium.

  ****

  The cable television news channels and C-span carried the House and Senate debates live all through the day and into the evening, alternating with the ongoing Stadium Massacre investigation, fatality reports, and updates on the hundreds of other victims lying in hospitals. Many survivors were expected to suffer permanent brain damage from oxygen deprivation, after finally being extricated from under the human log jams. When the Senate vote appeared imminent the broadcast networks also joined in live coverage through the roll call. All 51 Democrat senators and 17 Republicans voted “aye,” and the Schuleman-Montaine Firearms Safety Act passed with an unneeded veto-proof supermajority. The session was gaveled to a close as the bill’s advocates all shook hands, grinning, fist-bumping and high-fiving. The opponents quietly gathered their papers and departed.

  The no longer young Canadian who was the long-time anchor for a major American network turned to his in-house legal expert. “So, Jeffrey Bootkin, tell us in practical terms, layman’s terms if you will, what does the passage of the Schuleman-Montaine Act mean? Just how many Americans will be directly affected, and how will their soon to be outlawed assault weapons be collected?”

  “Well Desmond, estimates of the total number of semi-automatic rifles in circulation range from thirty to fifty million, but they are very, very rough estimates. Most of them are small .22 caliber target rifles.”

  “Didn’t the notorious Beltway Sniper use a .22 caliber rifle?”

  “Umm, no actually that was a .223; I think that’s a much larger bullet. The case is bigger, I mean, the .223s hold a lot more gun powder, I believe. The .22s, I mean what most people call .22s…they are those very tiny bullets, like we used to shoot for target practice at summer camp.”

  “Really! Shooting guns at summer camp! Imagine! That was certainly a different era. But let’s not get sidetracked. How many of the rifles that are banned are there? Military assault rifles I mean.”

  “Well, actually, not all of the banned guns are what you might call assault rifles. The .22s are certainly not assault rifles. And many of them you might say are legitimate hunting rifles that happen to be semi-automatic. The rest might to one degree or another be called assault rifles, although there is a large gray area. Actually, there’s quite a big ongoing dispute over what exactly constitutes an assault rifle. Previous laws focused on some of the um…exterior features, such as pistol grips and folding stocks. The manufacturers got around those laws rather easily, that’s why this law just goes after all semi-auto rifles. It eliminates all the loopholes in one fell swoop.”

  “I see.” The news anchor looked doubtful. “The new law says the weapons must be turned in for destruction by next Tuesday at noon. How will this be accomplished, with so many banned rifles still in circulation? How does the law actually deal with the logistics of this?”

  “Well Desmond, the actual wording on the collection side of this are a bit vague, but according to the bill—I should say the law—all semi-auto rifles must be turned in at the police station nearest the owner’s home. Fifty million dollars has been allocated in the law to provide for their collection, in, I believe, large dumpsters. I understand the dumpsters will be taken to central collection sites for destruction.”

  “How will the actual destruction occur? Is that specified?”

  “No, in some cases the rifles will be taken out to sea on trash barges and dumped, in some locations they will be crushed or shredded or melted. The bill leaves that to the individual states to accomplish.”

  “And what again are the penalties for failing to comply with the law? I’m sure that many die-hard advocates of the so-called ‘individual right’ interpretation of the Second Amendment cannot be too pleased with the prospect of turning in their rifles?”

  “Well that’s right Desmond. In order to ensure compliance, the penalties for possession of any semi-automatic rifles after noon next Tuesday will be quite harsh. Holdouts will receive a five year federal prison sentence, with no parole, for each rifle they fail to turn in. And large cash rewards, I believe it’s $10,000 per rifle, will be offered to anyone who provides information leading to violators. So anyone considering holding back will have to consider very carefully everyone who might know about their banned rifles. Plus, we know from the 2002 Beltway Sniper case that even without an actual ‘national firearms registration list’, the FBI and ATF are very good at finding out exactly who does own these rifles, just from computerized sales records and ammunition purchases and so on.”

  “But Jeffrey, I would imagine that after yesterday’s horrific tragedy, most gun owners will be glad to get rid of their assault rifles, to dispel any doub
ts about their…I should say…to convince their neighbors and law enforcement that they are not dangerous people, not a danger to their communities. Are any major problems foreseen with the turn-in? As you said, the law is a bit vague on the details.”

  “I don’t know Desmond; we really are sailing into uncharted water here. But I might mention that thousands of licensed gun dealers are going to have to forfeit much of their inventory, this law may ruin or bankrupt many of them. Not that there will be much sympathy for gun dealers who are forced out of business, not after what happened yesterday.”

  “Indeed. Thank you Jeffrey Bootkin.”

  “Thank you Desmond.”

  3

  Monday evening Brad Fallon succeeded in moving his new diesel marine engine from the dock into the engine compartment of his sailboat Guajira. This was accomplished using ropes and pulleys, and a hand-cranked wire winch “come along” attached to a branch of the live oak tree which spread above his boat. Determined not to lose another day to the wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Stadium Massacre, he followed the congressional debates on the radio. He worked through the afternoon and into the night, and his Perkins turbo diesel was finally bolted to the engine bed under the harsh yellow glare of clamped-on work lights.

  In celebration of this critical milestone he took Tuesday morning off to drive the mile into the nearby town of Highpoint for a sit-down breakfast at Lester’s Diner. He justified this extravagance by coupling breakfast out with a visit to the local hardware store.

  At age 30 Brad was single, never married, and had no marriage plans even on the distant horizon. He had a long term plan which he had carried out faithfully, and now he was nearing the payoff. He’d worked the ANWR oil fields two months on and one month off for the last three years, he’d banked his payroll, and bought Guajira. The pay had been excellent, but the social life was nil, since he was not interested in one hour romances with toothless and tattooed Arctic boomtown whores.