People are often surprised to hear that I’m a self-proclaimed anarchist. Society still seems to hold the stereotype of anarchists being molotov cocktail throwing, graffiti spraying, bomb making, angst-filled teenagers. Reality is far different. A vast majority of anarchists I know are extremely peaceful, in fact they are anarchists because of the state’s reliance on force to make others obey its commands. There are many reasons why I’m a proponent of anarchism, one of those reasons is the way lawful individuals can be redefined as unlawful individuals with the stroke of a politician’s pen. Look at the current fiasco happening in Illinois:
An Illinois Senate committee approved restrictions Wednesday on semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, despite criticism from gun-rights groups that the measures go too far and amount to an assault-weapons ban “on steroids.”
This entire fiasco in Illinois is insane. First of all the legislation in question isn’t coming in the form of separate bills, it’s coming in the forms of amendments to other bills. One of the amendments is attached to HB0815, which purports to:
Amends the Illinois Nuclear Safety Preparedness Act. Makes a technical change to a Section concerning the short title.
The other amendment is attached to HB1263, which purports to:
Amends the Unified Code of Corrections. Provides that for a person convicted of criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual assault, predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, criminal sexual abuse, or aggravated criminal sexual abuse when the victim of any such offense at the time of the commission of the offense was under 18 years of age and the person had within the previous 20 years been convicted of any of those offenses when the victim of the offense at the time of the commission of the offense was under 18 years of age, the sentence shall be a term of natural life imprisonment.
Why does an amendment restricting shooting ranges, semi-automatic rifles, and standard capacity magazines have to do with nuclear safety or sexual assault? Not a damned thing. But making these amendments to other bills increases the chances that the restrictions will pass, which is the sole goal of the gun control movement at the moment. Make no mistake the legislatures in Illinois are not concerned about what is best for the people living within that state. Their goal is to punish all gun owners and that punishment is coming in the form of changing the state’s status of gun owners from lawful to unlawful. With the simple stroke of a pen the lawful can be changed into the unlawful.
At no point did Illinois gun owners begin performing mass acts of violence. Nothing has changed between the time prior to the Connecticut shooting and after the Connecticut shooting that justifies labeling all gun owners as unlawful individuals. But the state claims the authority to turn anybody into a criminal at any time and for any reason. I can’t support such ideas. There is no way to justify changing somebody from a lawful individual to an unlawful individual without that person having done harm. This is one of the reasons I’m an anarchist. I believe somebody should only be labeled unlawful if they have brought actual harm against another. Somebody shouldn’t face punishment because somebody else did nothing more than sign a piece of paper.