Hunter Biden Would Not Be Prosecuted in a Free Society

by
Jacob G. Hornberger
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How ironic that the son of a Democrat president of the United States is having to pay the price for living in a paternalistic state that his own father ardently supports.

Hunter Biden is currently on trial in a U.S. District Court for federal gun-control violations. Waiting in the wings is another federal prosecution for income-tax violations.

It’s worth noting that what Biden did would never be considered offenses in a genuinely free society.

In the gun-control prosecution, there are three charges against Biden: (1) lying to a federally licensed gun dealer about his use of drugs; (2) lying about his drug use on a federal application to purchase a gun; and (3) possessing a gun while being a drug user.

Hunter Biden. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

My questions are: Why don’t drug users have the right to own guns? Why don’t drug users have the right to defend themselves with the use of guns? Does the Second Amendment really say “shall not be infringed except in the case of drug users”? Didn’t Congress simply make up that drug-use exception?

Moreover, given that marijuana is a “controlled substance” under federal law, doesn’t that mean that the estimated 23 percent of Americans who ingest the substance are prohibited from owning guns? Why not also make it illegal for people who consume alcohol to own guns?

In a genuinely free society — that is, a libertarian society — everyone, including drug users, has the right to own whatever he wants to own, including both drugs and guns. And everyone, including drug users, has the right to defend himself from others, including through the use of firearms.

Moreover, why should anyone be required to fill out federal paperwork in order to purchase a gun? In a genuinely free society, people are free to purchase anything they want, including guns (and drugs), without having to fill out government-mandated forms. Indeed, in a genuinely free society, the government wouldn’t know who is buying guns; the purchase of guns is an entirely private matter.

Moreover, under what authority is the federal government licensing gun dealers? Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to dictate who sells firearms and who doesn’t? Why shouldn’t people be free to sell whatever they want, including firearms, without the permission of either the federal government or the state governments?

The feds are also charging Biden with a host of income-tax violations, including taking improper deductions. Of course, the income tax is what funds the welfare-warfare state that his father and his statist ilk so ardently believe in. In a genuinely free society, there would be no income taxation and no IRS. In a genuinely free society, everyone is free to keep everything he earns and to decide for himself what to do with his own money. In other words, no income-tax returns and no income-tax deductions and, therefore, no criminal prosecutions for income-tax violations.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that our Americans ancestors lived without income taxation and gun control for more than 100 years.

Poor Hunter Biden. He is paying the price for living in the paternalistic state that people like his father have foisted upon the American people, one that has destroyed the natural, God-given rights of liberty and privacy of the American people.