Not with a bang...

From The Liberty Sphere, The Bush Betrayal of Gun Owners

Since 2002, a whopping 85% of firearms manufacturers in America have been forced to close their doors for good.

85% is a HUGE number. In fact, it's almost an unreal number. When was the last time the government shut down 85% of ANY market? I like to think I'm up on these kinds of things, and I knew the ATF was incredibly overzealous, but 85% is just beyond anything I could have even guessed.

Note that the alarming rate of shut-downs of gun manufacturers by the ATF coincides with the election of George W. Bush.

However, the Clinton Administration is every bit as culpable. From 1994-2005, 80% of gun dealers were forced out of business. Eight of those years were under the Clinton Administration.

I'm not going to go so far as to suggest Bush doesn't want us to have guns, (I know Clinton didn't) but in the face of numbers like these and the public revelations of unprofessional, questionable, and criminal conduct by the ATF, his silence speaks volumes. But I guess he shouldn't concern himself with something Democrats aren't currently screaming at the top of their lungs about.

The statistic that nails the Bush Administration is that from 2001 until 2006, the number of gun dealers who have had their licenses revoked by the ATF has risen by 6 times the number of revocations in the previous six years.

This is the endgame. These are the final moves to end private gun ownership in America.

The ATF will continue charging gun shops with minor paperwork errors or improper record storage (after they change their record storage rules), and make it impossible to run a gun shop in America. Not shops that sell "Assault Weapons" or "Saturday Night Specials", EVERY GUN SHOP. Big guns, little guns, fat guns, skinny guns.

There won't be a call to arms, or a challenge of confiscation.

They'll make it impossible to profitably sell guns, then they'll impose restrictions similar to those on registered assault weapons in California, and deny the ability to transfer your firearms to anyone else (family included).

Private gun ownership in America will end, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Never to return until the inevitable second civil war. There WILL be a second civil war, because any government who must intrude into our liberties to protect us from ourselves has only one final form. It's not a utopia of love and peace. It's tyranny, and its only a matter of time. There's only one way to fight tyranny, and it doesn't involve love and peace either.

Good fucking luck to all of us. We're going to need it.

Hat tip to JR.