To my non-Jewish eyes, the event above seems like something from long ago and far away. In fact, that’s fellow blogger Y.B. ben Avraham’s newly minted son-in-law balancing precariously on a table being carried by his friends and family. The photo was taken less than a month ago at his wedding in New York City. (Well then; it may not be long ago, but it’s certainly far away, in that land so distant from gun rights.)

Y.B. sent several pictures of the joyous event. But the night they arrived I was in a pensive mood. Instead of feeling the happiness, I worried for the bride and groom and the future they face in a time when Jew-hatred (I’ll never again call it anti-Semitism, thanks to Y.B.’s semantics lesson) is spreading across the globe. In a time when, even in the U.S. “diversity” no longer implies toleration of religious beliefs that happen to deviate from the politically correct. In a time when elitist victim disarmers are feeling new power after their stunning (and stunningly ghastly and stunningly, insultingly duplicitous) election-day victory in Washington state.

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Of course I was also aware that even in a time that’s increasingly perilous for them, at least some of the men in that happy photo happily support their own disarmament.

I hope (and expect) that Y.B.’s new son-in-law understands better.

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A lot has been written about that ghastly Washington state initiative, that gun-grabbers’ duplicitous dream. Some of it has been said here by Nicki and Vladka and Ilana.

I have only personal impressions — and a dream — to add. Though those wedding celebrants are far away from I-594, my apprehension blended them together.

During my rational waking hours I know that I-594 will never stand as written. It will be challenged in court on numerous grounds. Police will never be able to enforce its completely insane provisions. (If five friends meet at a plinking quarry or go on a hunt together and each brings multiple firearms and they try out each other’s weapons, how will cops catch them, let alone count the number of innocent “felonies” committed on any sunny afternoon?) Whatever prosecutions there may be are likely to be so outrageous that they’ll wake up the v*ters who, in their ignorance, thought they were supporting “common sense gun safety.”

Already Washington state gun owners are planning a mass public non-compliance. Thousands plan to commit harmless felonies outside the state capitol building.

To whatever extent I hold to reason, I do not believe that I-594 will stand — or that the Billionaire Brigade will succeed in passing such a monstrosity on many other states.

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But in vulnerable moments — like right before falling asleep or upon waking in the middle of the night — I-594 chills me.

The night I got the happy photos from Y.B., the moment my head hit the pillow I was assailed by dread. I had visions of thousands of unknowing innocents being dragged away from their pleasant days, dragged to jail, dragged before by-the-book judges, dragged into the financial ruin of legal defense, losing their jobs — merely because they handed a gun to a friend or handled a friend’s firearm. I had to sit back up and turn the light on to get past the images.

I slept well — until about 3:45, when I awoke from a dream. All I remember of the dream was its last moments. A train passed by pulling endless numbers of cattle cars. The cars weren’t made of old-fashioned wood and metal, but of some new, high-tech material that was slightly translucent. Every cattle car that ground past was full of people. I couldn’t see the ones deep inside and couldn’t see much detail. But I could see those who were pressed against the outer wall. I saw their mouths, opened in agonized screams. I saw their hands, splayed against the walls of the cattle cars, pushing and clawing to get out.

I understood (don’t ask me how) that these endless carloads were the mildest “offenders.” They were the children or spouses of gun owners. Or they were people who’d broken the law unknowingly. They were also all the vulnerable disarmed, including the happy Jews at Y.B.’s daughter’s wedding.

Eventually, more cars rumbled by and these contained gun owners who had protested the law or boldly violated it. These cars also contained special victims of hatred — people who weren’t PC, who didn’t conform, who were “different.” They couldn’t scream or claw at the walls because they were being tortured — bound into contorted positions, blindfolded, and gagged.

I woke up before seeing what worse things might be near the end of that train.

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Yes, it was just a dream. And before that just the terrors of a half-conscious brain. Nothing. Just impressions, phantasms. Meaningless. After all, even the most awful gun controllers wouldn’t seek out and target the innocent. And surely, after the horrors of history, Jews wouldn’t do anything to enable their own destruction?

But the combination of those happy wedding photos, the vulnerability of the people in them, the fact that so many conniving power-trippers want innocents to be more vulnerable, and the fact that there are so many useful idiots who’ll v*te to make it so … all that still chills me days later.