The lockdowns of businesses have, as the year 2020 comes to a close, sparked calls for resistance, for example this article in The Federalist from December 8, 2020. (My words which follow do not comprise an endorsement of every call for resistance. I approve civil disobedience in response to every unconstitutional edict of a government. I do not approve violence except in immediate self-defense.)

I’m concerned only that rebellion against covid lockdowns will dissipate the energy needed for resistance once the severe outlawing of liberty begins in 2021. You don’t see licenses to publish in newspaper offices, because of the First Amendment. But the license to publish is coming. Before that happens, the already-eroded Second Amendment will undergo a full-frontal attack. (See another article at this site, A Well-regulated Militia.)

Ersatz-President Biden’s handlers will provide him with the text for many executive orders, on the premise that these orders will serve to implement existing law, or to restore practices, desirable to totalitarians, that were suspended by President Trump — the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the Paris Climate Accord, and such. The latter category will be nothing different than was seen under President Soetoro/Obama. But several executive orders will constitute new edicts with the force of law.

Early in his term, though, he will address his party’s issues with the Second Amendment. Without presuming either the timing, wording, or sequence (except the first) of these orders, here is what this series of edicts will accomplish.

Executive Orders

Beginning with a certain ill-defined (in fact undefinable) class of rifles, and encompassing all handguns as well, owners of these firearms will be required to register them. States will implement firearm registration under penalty of loss of federal funds to certain state agencies of government for failure to do so.

Citizens will refuse to register their weapons en masse at first. The rule will be amended to provide mandatory penalties, of course, which by themselves will not motivate compliance.

“Buy-back” programs will be tried, (never mind that the government can’t buy back something that the government didn’t buy and provide in the first place), and rewards will be offered for information leading to the discovery and “recovery” of “illegal” firearms.

Eventually the rule will provide that anyone found hunting with an unregistered firearm or who, when registering a big game kill, refuses to declare the weapon used or who falsely identifies the weapon used, will face crushing penalties. In similar fashion, anyone who uses a firearm in defense of home or property, who might otherwise face no criminal charges for such self-defense, will face severe penalties for doing so with an unregistered firearm.

Defendants charged under these rules will enjoy some initial victories in court (while sitting in jail pending trial and while losing fortunes to their attorneys), but once the rule is signed and the battles begin, the Second Amendment will be under its death sentence.

A further serious blow will be an executive provision that no one may inherit, carry, display, buy, or sell a firearm of any kind that has not been registered. Therefore, as old gun owners die and their collections, small or large, are handed down, cowering heirs will scramble to register them so they can sell them off quickly. A prohibition may be added which prevents registration of inherited guns but requires their destruction instead.

The coup de grâce in this will be an executive order requiring, not merely suggesting, that victims of crimes and those shot by home defenders sue firearms manufacturers, ammunition manufacturers, and retail gun sales outlets for injuries. Gun manufacturers and sellers will be unable to afford the insurance needed to remain in business. The Second Amendment will remain on the books, since revising or revoking it will be politically impossible, but there will be no armaments left for a citizen, uninfringed, to keep and bear.

You read it here first. I’m not quoting anyone else on this. The writing on the wall is more plain than it was at Belshazzar’s feast.