Lexington Resolution on Militia-Suitable Firearms An Insult

by David Codrea

United States -(AmmoLand.com)- “Article 34 receives a ‘yes’ vote from Lexington Town Meeting Members,” Gun Owners’ Action League alerted members last Thursday.

The vote was to “initiate a ‘town wide discussion’ to pass a resolution urging the legislature to pass more restrictive laws related to firearms ownership.”

A GOAL blog post updated members on the April 6 meeting in which the vote took place, a meeting where that discussion being invited was closed down, leaving concerned citizen who’d taken the time to show up without a chance to have their say.

“For those that don’t know, Article 34 started as a ban on many commonly owned firearms and magazines,” the post explains. “This was quickly changed to a non-binding resolution when Lexington’s board of selectmen and chief of police refused to support a ban of any sort.”

It’s true enough that a mere “nonbinding resolution” represents a tremendous scaling back of the original subversive attack on the right to keep and bear arms (scroll to page 23):

This article would prohibit the manufacture, sale, ownership, or possession of assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines in the Town of Lexington.

The driving force behind that intolerable affront to liberty was no doubt inspired by the Supreme Court’s reluctance to even hear such cases, let alone overturn such local rulings. Refusal to grant cert to Friedman v Highland Parkmeans gun-grabbers who perceive the political climate will let them get away with it have no reason not to try for everything they get.

Fortunately for Lexington, the politicians aren’t quite there yet, as was evident last month when gun rights supporters called it “an affront to liberty” and three members of the Board of Selectmen and the chief of police disavowed the ban. That’s what led the chief plotter behind the proposal to scale it back to a resolution.

The prohibition enthusiast responsible is “town resident Robert Rotberg, the founding director of Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict and president emeritus of the World Peace Foundation.” Rotberg is a career globalist (and failed candidate for selectman himself), evidently intent on proving the truism that for “progressives” every day is Opposite Day – how else would one explain someone from Lexington who thinks it’s a peace-promoting idea for government to disarm citizens in a town that prides itself on a statue of Captain John Parker?

What could go wrong?

Still, the willingness of town officials to accept a resolution indicates how far the heirs of the Minutemen have strayed from the principles of their forebears, conditions that were apparent when Oath Keepers conducted an oath ceremony in spite of the revocation of a permit to hold it on Lexington Green. And GOAL notes that even scaled back, Rotberg’s attack on founding principles presents “two-fold” concerns.

“It has a pre-determined outcome, ‘to inform the Great and General Court of its concern that existing Massachusetts laws regarding assault weapons (M.G.L. c. 140, § 131M) may not sufficiently protect citizens of the Commonwealth, and Lexington,’” GOAL advises. In other words, it opens the door to what should be regarded as “Intolerable Acts.”

The second objection: It places moderation in the hands of Bloomberg collaborators, and citizen disarmament zealots in their own right, the League of Women Voters.

That Rotberg chose to profane what many consider hallowed ground seems more than a matter of mere hometown activism. Taking his abominable subversion statewide shows a fundamental personal and political hostility to the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

As for the resolution process being short on inputs from those who believe in that right, bear two realities in mind: When the antis call for a “conversation on guns,” all they really mean is they want to dictate terms of further surrender. Understanding that, there’s really only one response such a call merits from patriotic Americans:

 “No. Your move.”

About David Codrea:

David Codrea blogs at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance (WarOnGuns.com), and is a field editor/columnist for GUNS Magazine. Named “Journalist of the Year” in 2011 by the Second Amendment Foundation for his groundbreaking work on the “Fast and Furious” ATF “gunwalking” scandal, he is a frequent event speaker and guest on national radio and television programs. David is an associate editor for Oath Keepers. David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.

He also posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

Source: http://www.ammoland.com/2016/04/lexington-resolution-militia-suitable-firearms-insult/