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Let’s say I support total marijuana legalization. Then I discover the DEA turned a blind eye to the sale of two tons of ganja, which was illegal. They said it was for a sting operation, but the drugs seemingly vanished in a puff of smoke. It would be hypocritical of me to accuse the DEA of knowingly ‘poisoning the youth’, destroying the economy and generally reefer madness roasting the shit out of the DEA for its inadequacy.
I would think extensive laws with the goal to prevent arms trafficking and straw purchases would... infringe. But you're telling me you support those laws unequivocally ? Want them strengthened?
All they did was not interfere in a transaction, I don't find it all that reprehensible, they should do that more often.
Sure. But the difference here is that the DEA is allowing what you actually want.
Suppose that you support total marijuana legalization, but believe that harder drugs like, say, PCP should remain illegal. Suppose the DEA deliberately turned a blind eye to the sale of two tons of PCP-laced marijuana, which was then distributed as normal marijuana and resulted in numerous high-profile deaths and injuries, which were in turn used to argue for greater restrictions on "normal" marijuana. It seems to me that you would be well within your rights to complain, especially if it seemed that the DEA did this on purpose and you suspect they did so explicitly to fuck your interests.
If you wish the sale of firearms to be entirely unrestricted, you are free to argue for your position. I am free to disagree with you, as are most gun owners and the rest of the gun culture. Total removal of all restrictions on firearms sale and ownership is a level of survival we are willing to accept, but it is neither our preference nor a desirable state. Violent criminals, and especially organized violent criminals, should be denied arms to the extent that doing so does not significantly compromise the rights of the law-abiding.
I disagree that "all they did was not interfere with a transaction". They failed to interfere with one of the absolute worst forms of transaction possible, and they made a largely successful effort to keep their failure to interfere secret, when the obvious disasters resulting would and did offer them a clear and entirely illegitimate political advantage. To the extent that you accept such behavior, you make it impossible to fight the principle-agent problem at the heart of the political corruption of law-enforcement.
As I and others have pointed out repeatedly, such laws have existed for decades without complaint from the gun culture. I do in fact support those laws unequivocally, to the exact extent that they are enforced in good faith. I would not agree with my friend being prosecuted for buying me a firearm as a present, as it is sometimes erroneously claimed that the laws restrict, and which a corrupt enforcement agency might try to prosecute for illegitimate reasons.
Sure, one could argue that this "infringes" the right to keep and bear arms. Society is a compromise, and I am willing to accept a level of infringement when the cost is small and the benefits large and obvious. I am willing to be a maximalist, but I prefer compromise, so long as that "compromise" does not involve me and mine getting assfucked without lube or consent by unaccountable and deeply corrupt government and social interests who hate us with a passion. Belief that such compromises are possible continues to drop asymptotically toward zero, but the APIT rounds have not hit the cooling jacket yet; there is still time to hope for a better future, and prepare for the future that seems more likely.
I certainly do not want them strengthened. The problem is that the laws we already have are not being enforced, and that is not a problem that strengthening those laws could plausibly fix. I cannot begin to imagine an argument for why the government refusing to appropriately enforce existing laws means we should pass more laws, thereby granting them more power. I would be happy to see strengthened laws and additional laws aimed at the government agents themselves, to reduce their ability to cover up abuses of this sort and to punish them more severely if they occur. That would seem far more sensible that responding to a refusal to enforce gun control laws by passing more gun control laws.
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