Losing our gun rights

By Gregory Crawford

In the past 30 days I have witnessed at least three major events that directly place more restrictions on or destroy more of our individual and constitutional rights.

In this country the emerging police and military state that is now in place in New Orleans is a direct violation of civil rights and Louisiana law and an affront to the U.S. Constitution. The police have gone into the city to "get all the guns," thereby confiscating the weapons registered and owned by homeowners and business owners who -- in the absence of law and order and in the presence of massive crime both by criminals and, in some cases, law enforcement itself -- are left defenseless to protect themselves, their homes and their businesses.

Who in do they think they're kidding? The law enforcement officials who set forth on this extreme folly know full well that the criminal element now rampant in New Orleans will never give up their weapons willingly and that the chance of locating and confiscating the weapons in the hands of criminals is virtually impossible.

Where does this leave the law-abiding private sector of New Orleans? Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. Defenseless in the face of crime, but legal in the eyes of law enforcement. Or, safer in their homes, businesses and on the streets, but criminals themselves in the eyes of the law.

A shameful display of how quickly individual rights, established law and the Constitution can be set aside because the military presence and law enforcement of New Orleans have decided to flex their muscles, use their power and virtually turn the New Orleans area into their own military and police state.

In San Francisco a measure just passed a public vote that will ban handguns from the city. Who's handguns? The criminal's? Not likely. Let's all sit back and watch over the next year or so as this bill takes effect and as the law -abiding citizens who have willingly obeyed the new law and turned in their handguns are preyed upon by the criminal element who will, for the most part, still have their weapons.

In Canada, guns are already banned in total for private citizens, and the government concedes that violent crime against individuals has skyrocketed, up almost 60 percent. That nation's highest court has decided that what is needed isn't the restoration of laws that allow private citizens of Canada the right to protect themselves, but tougher laws for the use of a firearm in a crime.

Well, wake up. Tougher laws won't deter a career criminal from going about his usual business of burglary, break-ins, theft, rape and murder. Please, stem my enthusiasm as I look forward to possibly walking a Canadian street at night totally unarmed in a country where the crime rate is through the roof and there are tougher laws to protect me from some individual who is set on robbing me and possibly scattering my body parts all over the street, because then I would never be able to testify against him and make his life unhappy because there are new tougher laws.

Gregory Crawford resides in Cape Girardeau.