Via Borepatch I came across an excellent article regarding gun rights by Eric S. Raymond. In the article he summed up the reason gun rights activists are unwilling to cooperate with gun control schemes:
Now comes the news that the head of the Department of Homeland Security officially thanked the Governor of Missuri for violating state law by illegally passing to the DHS Missouri’s list of concealed-carry permit holders. The Governor then lied about his actions.
The Feds, meanwhile, continue to illegally retain transfer records from federally licensed firearms dealers past the statutory time limit, among several other continuing violations of a 1986 law forbidding the establishment of a national gun registry.
The BATF also criminally violated its authorizing laws by transferring over 2000 firearms to Mexican drug gangs through illegal straw purchases (google “ATF gunwalking scandal”). Over 150 Mexican citizens and United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were killed with these guns.
Meanwhile, following scandals about “drop guns” at the sites of police shootings, some big-city police forces (notably in LA and NYC) are strongly suspected of routinely using planted guns to frame suspects they can’t otherwise nail on firearms-possession charges.
Any trust that “gun control” will be administered with even minimal respect for civil rights is long gone, destroyed by the behavior of the enforcers themselves.
Why won’t those of us in the gun rights movement submit to background checks? Why won’t we agree to using gimped magazines? Why won’t we surrender our semi-automatic rifles? Because of the solution gun control advocates have chosen.
As I’ve state numerous times the primary failure of gun control is its reliance on statism. Gun control advocates want the state to pass and us its capacity for violent to enforce laws controlling or completely prohibiting non-state agents’ access to firearms. The state has proven itself to be a beast that cannot be trusted with any amount of power, especially when that power allows them to control civil liberties.
If gun control advocates were willing to seek nonviolent solutions to the issue of violence those of us in the gun rights community would likely lend a hand. Instead they have chosen to use a violent solution administered by an organization that has proven itself to be untrustworthy. A gun owner submitting to state control over guns would be akin to women submitting to abusive misogynist control over women’s rights. Nobody in their right mind would submit to an untrustworthy entity.