Guest Editorial: Diligence Awards

[Foreword: Andy Barniskis' emails are invariably well-reasoned, instructive , challenging and engaging. He has given me permission to post the following.]

Diligence Awards
Andy Barniskis

House Bill 1029: This legislation would allow individuals with a valid Pennsylvania license to carry a firearm to purchase additional guns without the cumbersome, expensive and redundant requirements of subsequent background checks through the Pennsylvania Instant Check System (PICS).

Correspondent writes:

What can you really have against this? Opposing it sure makes you sound pretty anti-gun, yourself.

Andy responds:

I'll start with the practical and then move up to the philosophical.

Carry permits are fundamentally a means of establishing a gun OWNER registration system, which in my opinion is more dangerous than the firearms registration systems everyone [rightly] gets so hot and bothered about. Why worry if some percentage of your GUNS are registered, if YOU are registered as the type who owns guns? Do you suspect being a "registered owner" might supply "reasonable cause" for an otherwise random search, someday in the future?

Thanks to some of our Real Gunnie, reciprocity-maven compatriots here in Pennsylvania, we are already on the way to having a centralized, computerized, 24/7, JBT-accessible registration of CCW holders (which will record your name FOREVER, even if you give up your CCW tomorrow) instead of the decentralized, 67- county system of the past. As bad as the county-level system may have been, it at least provided some hope that 67 bureaucracies, most of them rural, would lose or confuse some records, and possibly destroy outdated records. We could hope that if freedom ever broke out and we got Vermont/Alaska Carry, at least some of those counties would destroy all of their past records. Wishful thinking, maybe, but not impossible. The centralized system is going to be hardwired to the FBI, BATF, and possibly even accessible by (e.g.) the Southern Poverty Law Center, if they can dream up a use for it. (And don't tell me "Oh, but that will be ILLEGAL. . .") Tell me ANYONE's record is EVER going to cease to exist!

But hang on, I'm still not addressing the specific issue.

This legislation will create an implied (initially) and required (later) legal linkage between the CCW system and the IBC systems. As I'm writing this, the NRA and Rep. McCarthy are conspiring to make YOUR medical and mental health records -- and how will those be defined in the future? -- readily accessible to NICS/PICS. Meaning they will logically become linked to the PA CCW granting system. So, when Sister Mary Katherine tells someone in her eighth grade class that a trip to the principal's office for acting out in class will go on their "permanent record," she may be telling more truth than she'll ever know.

Maybe I'm sensitive to it, because the last big lawsuit I filed against a public official, was against my county sheriff for trying to make a "doctors note," attesting to mental health, a part of the application requirements for a CCW. It was illegal under PA law, and I don't think I have to itemize all the ways it could have been (and probably was) abused before my suit put a stop to it. Now, I'm supposed to cheer because the same thing that I fought and won against at the county level, is going to be imposed on us via a 24/7 electronic system at the state/national level that WILL eventually be linked to NICS/PICS?

And by "pro-gun" people?

Moving on to the tactical/political level: I have never made a secret that for me the gold standard of individual gun rights is that we should not have to seek permission from The State to acquire, own, or carry a gun. Unfortunately, I'd say the majority of firearms hobbyists I encounter seem to regard holding a CCW as imbuing them with some special status as a "Real Gunnie," and (referring to outside Pennsylvania) the harder it is to get a CCW, the more CCW holders seem to hold themselves in high regard. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I recently listened to a national radio talk show, and the STRONGEST advocates for restricted access to carrying firearms were self- identified "certified firearms instructors!" These people, sad to say, are one of the strongest constituencies IN OPPOSITION to fundamental rights, and yet to a man they regard themselves as "pro-gun" -- they want you to have a gun, as long as you satisfy THEIR criteria for it.

Now, add to the mix that this legislation grants additional benefits for those holding a CCW; they can walk into a gun shop, flash their CCW, and wave off the background check, to the admiration of the kids and counter-loungers; "Gosh Elmer, that feller must have a LICENSE to do that! He must be a real Gun Guy, you betcha!"

Think that feller is going to be much of a constituent for losing his self esteem, via the abolition of CCWs, should the day come when the rest of us make that possible? It's hard to call legislation that serves hobbyists' convenience "anti-gun," but I'd suggest it is appropriate to call it "anti-rights" in its practical effects on the masses and their attitudes.

And last, I must wax poetic, with a true story that is nonetheless also allegorical:

My uncle was captured at Corregidor in 1942. Eventually he was taken to Japan, where he spent almost the entire war as a slave laborer in the Mitsubishi Shipyards, building ships (well, A ship) for the Japs.

The Japs would give "diligence awards" of extra food, cigarettes, and privileges to prisoners who did good work. According to my uncle, many was the time they beat the hell out of fellow prisoners who earned or accepted diligence awards. I once asked "How badly?" and he just grimaced and shook his head.

For most of the time they had no idea how the war was going. According to the Japs, Japan was winning. They never heard of the Battle of Midway or any of the island landings. The first positive hint they had was, the first time they saw a B-29 fly overhead at high altitude, probably in late 1943.

But they resisted. When the one ship they completed was launched, it rested in the harbor for a few minutes, then promptly sank. Welders like my uncle had laid cold welding rods and other debris in joints and welded over them. Under the first stresses the welds snapped, and the ship sank. They EXPECTED to be executed, en masse, but they weren't. The Japs had used Jap civilian labor on the ship, too, and with their bizarre sense of "honor," they could not punish the prisoners without punishing their countrymen the same way.

Nevertheless by war's end only eight of the 350+ men he had been captured with were left alive. Standing 6 feet tall, my uncle weighed less than 100 pounds when liberated. I've never asked him this -- I've never had to -- but with hindsight, wouldn't it have been better to accept "diligence awards," so that maybe a handful more would have survived? In the big picture, what difference would it have made if they had helped the Japs launch another cargo ship or two?

The idea of course was unthinkable, even during those long months when it appeared possible that the Japs WERE winning -- just as it appears now the anti-freedom forces in our own country have won, hands down, on some issues.

You of course see the analogy I'm making: I WILL not believe the war for true gun RIGHTS -- not privileges -- is lost. While the fight goes on, I WILL not countenance the acceptance -- much less the SEEKING -- of "diligence awards" from our enemies, in the form of special privileges granted in return for willing acceptance of our present state of subjugation.

--Andy