Remember: "No one is coming for your guns!"

It is a common refrain from gun-control advocates when faced with second amendment supporters who say they will not relinquish their firearms or the right to bear them:  "You're paranoid!  No one is coming for your guns!".  POTUS has said this numerous times.  I just got this response myself this weekend when I noted that I would not vote for anyone who considered the second amendment rights negotiable - this from someone who thinks if Trump were elected (no, I am not a Trump fan) the borders would close the next day: "No one is coming to collect your guns".

But no one thinks that we will go from where we are to having armed government groups going door to door confiscating firearms.  That kind of change does not happen overnight, it happens slowly, bit by bit.

In evidence of that I submit the latest from Gabby Giffords and her ilk. At each step the cry is for sensible reasonable gun control measures - it starts with "All we need to do is legislate universal background checks. Who can possibly disagree with such a reasonable measure?"  Then, when that idea has been adopted and becomes the "new normal", the next small bite of the elephant is taken. But we know where that leads. No group ever gives up its freedoms in one bite - it is small nibbles until it is all gone.

For those whose hate for guns is so blinding that they cannot see how this works, perhaps it will help to think of it like the case of FBI/DOJ v. Apple  - demanding that Apple create a hack to break encryption "...on just this one cell phone.  We need it for safety and security".  All of the victims families chime in - "Yes, we need to violate rights for the sake of security".  Perhaps for now it is one phone, but once that is done, what will be needed next - a means for hacking into all cell phones of those deemed suspicious? Do you really believe this would not be step one in a slow process to erode your rights? Haven't we already seen that?  Beware cheering it when you agree with it, because it may be at your door next!

Note:  From Huffington Post:  "The filing -- a letter by an Apple lawyer in an unrelated New York drug case -- noted that federal judges across the country have ordered the tech giant to help the federal government unlock as many as 15 iPhones and other Apple devices in a number of ongoing investigations."

So you think it ends there?

Note the similarity:  We need to limit your rights for our safety, we will only do it to criminals.  It is just this one reasonable step, how could anyone deny it?  Think of the victims of such heinous people!  But who is a criminal?  Who defines who is a criminal?  Gun owners, drug users, democratic socialists?  It's all fine and good until the day your name ends up on the list.  But just smile - we fall down one inch at a time and never notice until we hit rock bottom with the weight of tyranny sitting on our chests.

One difference:  Once the content of your phone becomes government property, you're screwed.  Oh, you'll still carry it because it is your lifeline, but when they want what's on it, they'll have it.  As you bite away at the elephant that is gun rights, you may increase restrictions, write laws, amend constitutions, even find ways to restrict access to training and ammunition. But you will not take people's firearms, they will not all be given up willingly.  If they are given it will be muzzle first.  Are you ready for that, do you find great perverse pleasures in the possibility of watching law enforcement or military going door-to-door like in Nazi Germany? Are you ready to watch the bloodshed that will ensue?