[44capnball]

This is a new Nazi SS police for the USSA.

Although the parallels you draw might be compared to historical precedents meaningfully, some people get an upwelling of irrational feeling as soon as certain hot-button words come into the discussion. While that failing is more theirs than yours, you still have to play nice in the language arena that's been defined. The enforcers of unpopular laws cannot be Nazi SS police, because that would mean they were doing something wrong. Therefore you have to call them liberators and heroes and can-do type of guys. They always are, just ask them.

Come to think of it, MTV did have a video that showed soldiers bursting into homes and rounding up people, then to the viewer it's revealed that these are the exact scenes that happened in Germany, so...

Anyway, the Nazi SS were the end result of the legal, political process in Germany. Though the orders carried out by the SS were later exposed to be unacceptable by any standard of human decency, at the time they were following orders that were legal according to German law. Legal standards and human decency are not always connected. Problem is, the people who carry out the orders always think they have the moral high ground by virtue of having the law behind them.

In 1945, some of them kept spouting their tired excuses until the little stool got kicked out from under their feet. You can go to any failed dictatorship around the world, the foot soldiers of legally mandated terror never thought of themselves as terrorists, but as the "good guys".

As for the word choice, much of the success of anti gunners has revolved around controlling the language. That is losing some of its power with the internet, and also I really don't think the majority of people are as stupid as the antis had hoped, but anyway...

I apologize for the lengthy digression, but it seemed entirely appropriate since the Nazi SS theme came up, and IMHO it was better to offer some meaningful discussion than to act like a taboo word was said. Godwin's so-called law is out the window when a military or quasi-military force actually takes over a town and unwelcome house searches enter the picture.

That has not happened yet, but if it did, it would be 100% appropriate to compare it to Nazi and Soviet tactics. Well, OK, there was Katrina, but people can't even agree on what happened. I do know I saw some disturbing videos of things that shouldn't have happened in the USA.

Maybe my ancestry makes me a tad sensitive to nascent police states and the tactics used therein. I don't want to say any more about that.

To steer it back on topic, the anti gun extremists are trying any and every strategy they can, and it's pretty obvious that tying gun owners to illicit "arms dealers" and the Mexican drug wars is just one of these strategies. We already know they weren't above inventing phony legal scholarship (Joyce Foundation) to advance their aims.

The OP pointed out that everyone knew an import ban was coming, and we all knew it was just a question of what transparent excuse would be made this time.

As Huey Long and Any .45 pointed out, it is much more likely the Mexican gangs are getting their guns from other countries, especially in Latin America. They have full auto weapons, they have grenades. These are not coming from Gander Mountain.

The dedicated antis have proven once again that no tactic is beneath them. They're going to make their agenda palatable to the public any way it takes.

I'm waiting for them to get a "spokesperson" who announces that "now, loud-mouthed gun owners will finally shut up". The parallel might even go unnoticed.

So... You think everything that limits your freedom is called socialism?

The corrupt who seek power don't care whether it's gangster capitalism or authoritarian socialism.

Too bad politicians had to be invented. Most of us just want to be able to go hunting, protect our families, and shoot tin cans in the back yard.