Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey Fits the Definition of Tyrant

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, July 22, 2016:  

Tyrant is commonly defined as an absolute ruler unrestrained by law or constitution. It would include a ruler inflicted with passions that led to punishing innocents for perceived injustices. The definition of tyrant so inflicted with those passions is perfectly provided by theEncyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert:

[By] tyrant, the Greeks referred to a citizen who had seized the sovereign authority of a free state … today [the term refers to] not only a usurper of sovereign powers, but even a legitimate sovereign who abuses his [or her] power in order to violate the law, to oppress his [or her] people, and to make his [or her] subjects the victims of his [or her] passions and unjust desires, which he [or she] substitutes for laws. (emphasis added)

That’s why, in issuing her edict concerning so-called “assault weapons” on Wednesday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, the country’s first openly gay state’s attorney general, mentioned only the attack on the Pulse LGBT nightclub in her “directive” that galvanized her own attack on the Second Amendment and those citizens in her state still enjoying it. She could have used other attacks on other locales as justification for her diktat, but she didn’t. Instead she justified her unilateral (and soon to be declared unconstitutional) attack this way:

Here in Massachusetts, 10,000 assault weapons  [i.e., semi-automatic rifles that often look like fully-automatic military firearms] were sold just in the last year…. In the week after the Pulse [LGBT] nightclub massacre, sales of [such] weapons jumped as high as 450 percent over the previous week – just in Massachusetts….

They are weapons used to commit mass murder. And they have no business being in civilian hands….

That will end now.

It didn’t matter that her blatantly unconstitutional ukase would certainly be challenged in court and was likely to be tossed out. It didn’t matter that her state had not a single murder by a rifle of any kind, including an “assault rifle,” in the latest year for which the FBI has data. It didn’t matter that she acted entirely on her own, with no input from the public, no enabling legislation modifying the 18-year old law regulating them, no concern about lack of due process that protects innocent citizens from such tyrannical behavior, and certainly no concern about recent Supreme Court rulings in McDonald and Heller. She was mad and she was going to do something about it:

On Wednesday we are sending a directive to all gun manufacturers and dealers that makes clear that the sale of these copycat assault weapons is [now] illegal in Massachusetts. With this directive, we will ensure [that] we get the full protection intended when lawmakers enacted our assault weapons ban [18 years ago], not the watered-down version of those protections offered by gun manufacturers.

She unilaterally modified the language so that every rifle that even looks like an assault rifle is now banned from manufacture or sale in the state. Dealers have already removed the “offending” items from their walls. They’re “offending” if a gun’s operating system is the same as that of a banned weapon under present law, or has components that are interchangeable with those in a banned weapon.

For the moment, citizens of her state who own the newly declared “offensive” weapons are exempt from the decree, but, under tyranny, that can change at any time.

Virginia’s state attorney general Mark Herring tried the same stunt, although likely for much different reasons. He tried to change his state’s laws concerning concealed weapon permit reciprocity unilaterally, but his effort was negated thanks to the efforts of affronted Virginians. In turning back Herring’s attempt to restrict reciprocity, the legislature wound up expanding it instead, and, in the process, prohibiting Herring from attempting to issue such unilateral illegal mandates in the future.

A similar outcome is likely in Massachusetts. It’s what happens when a citizen comes to power with a personal prejudice that drives her to punish innocents in her quest for justification in the name of justice.

Sources:

Ammoland.com: Massachusetts AG Decides to Dictate Gun Law

Townhall.com: Mass AG Unilaterally Changes Gun Laws, Redefines Assault Weapon Definition

Healey’s Directive: The loophole in the Mass. assault weapons ban

TheTruthAboutGuns.com: BREAKING: Massachusetts Attorney General Bans Sales of All New “Assault Weapons” As of Today

Bio on Maura Healey

Common definition of tyrant

More useful definition of tyrant from The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert