Damn Bloomberg, you and Charlie want to take away our guns because of some fucked up kid in Virginia? Next can we ban cars to prevent drunk driving deaths?
The main reason our founding fathers wanted us to have guns is as a check against the power of our own government. James Madison in the Federalist Papers: the Constitution preserves “The advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
Disarmed people are neither free nor safe - they become the criminals’ prey and the tyrants’ playthings. When the civilians are defenseless and their government goes bad, however, thousands and millions of innocents die.
China: In 1935 the Nationalist government prohibits the private ownership of firearms. The Communists take over in 1949 - they keep the population disarmed. During 38 years of Communist violence and economic ‘experiments’, they wipe out 35 million Chinese - and possibly as many as 100 million. During all this time Red Chinese dictator Mao Tse-Tung controls all the guns.
Russia: The Communists took power in Russia in 1917, and immediately passed laws making it almost impossible for non-party members to own firearms. Then, in 1929 Soviet dictator Josef Stalin decrees that all livestock, produce, and farmland belong to the State. Farmers are ordered to surrender their land and livestock, and to move to government-owned collective farms. First, to terrorize the rest into submission, several million of the most prosperous farmers are sent to forced labor camps or killed outright. These ‘Kulaks’ are demonized by the Communists. Because of ten years of firearms confiscation, farmers can only fight back with farm tools.
Germany: After Hitler disarmed the population by passing the Nuremberg Laws, pre-war Germany was a picture of domestic tranquility – unless you were a Jew.
People always snicker at the idea that little Joe Citizen with his shotgun or semi-automatic rifle can stand up to the might of the U.S. Army. And I say, the Vietnamese did a pretty damn good job of it, and the Iraqis seem to be too.
There’s also the statistical evidence that says gun violence rises when you ban guns. Why? Because criminals don’t get their guns legally anyway. A gun ban takes guns out of the victim’s hands, not the perpetrator’s. You think gangbangers in Bed Stuy buy shotguns at Wal-Mart?
And if none of this persuades you, can I just close by saying guns are fucking sexy.
Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by U.S. Armed Forces near Iran’s borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.
I occasionally read Stuart Taylor Jr.’s column “Opening Argument”, and occasionally agree with what he says. Today I especially agree with his assessment of D.C.’s unreasonable gun laws, as compared to individual states. Since D.C.’s gun laws are in essence the Federal Government’s, it is interesting to note the crime rate there. For a good case study of which gun laws work and which do not, you need only compare the murder/crime rate involving handguns in Washington D.C. vs any other state-controlled city.
Here is part of his column of Monday, March 19, 2007 titled “A Right To Keep And Bear Arms?“, reprinted here almost in full because in a while it will go under lock and key in the National Journal’s archives, which requires a paid subscription:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued the biggest gun control decision in decades on March 9, perhaps setting the stage for the biggest Supreme Court gun control decision ever. Rejecting the views of most other courts, Judge Laurence Silberman held for the 2-1 majority, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms” — not just to have guns when needed for service in now-defunct state militias. On this basis, the majority struck down the District of Columbia’s uniquely broad ban against having either a pistol or an operational rifle, even at home for self-defense against intruders.
“It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit
annoying us.”
— Judge Alex Kozinski
The decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, is right and should be affirmed. And contrary to a widespread myth, confirmation by the justices that Americans have an individual right to keep and bear arms would not invalidate reasonable gun control laws.
To put my own biases on the table: I don’t hunt or own a gun. I support reasonable gun controls but consider the D.C. law unreasonable. I had never fired a pistol until a recent vacation trail ride, when I missed a large target with all six shots. This amused my 19-year-old daughter, who scored five out of six.
Now to the Second Amendment. It states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
For decades, most courts and legal scholars have treated this as essentially a dead letter. Their reasoning goes like this: The amendment’s first clause means that its sole purpose was to guarantee each state a collective right to have self-armed private citizens available as a military force-in-waiting (militia) to fight off federal encroachments; therefore, the second clause protects no individual right; state militias long ago became defunct; so the Second Amendment is an inoperative historical anachronism.
Judge Silberman shreds this conventional wisdom in a 58-page opinion joined by Judge Thomas Griffith. In doing so Silberman builds on the work of a few leading scholars of diverse political persuasions.
“At first blush,” Silberman begins, “it seems passing strange that the able lawyers and statesmen in the First Congress (including James Madison) would have expressed a sole concern for state militias with the language of the Second Amendment. Surely there was a more direct locution, such as, ‘Congress shall make no law disarming the state militias’ or ‘States have a right to a well-regulated militia.’”
In addition, the opinion points out, the Framers vested in “the people” the rights protected by the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments as well as the Second. Nobody contends that those other provisions protect no individual rights; indeed, “the Bill of Rights was almost entirely a declaration of individual rights,” Silberman says. And the Supreme Court said in 1990 that “the people” means the same thing in the Second Amendment as it does in the First, Fourth, and Ninth.
The Founders’ language strikes another “mortal blow to the collective-right theory” in explicitly guaranteeing a right to “keep” arms, as well as to “bear” them, Silberman asserts: “‘Keep’ is a straightforward term that implies ownership or possession of a functioning weapon by an individual for private use.”
And while no other Bill of Rights provision includes a preamble clause stating its civic purpose, many state constitutions of that era did begin with prefatory clauses stating “a principle of good government that was narrower than the operative language used to achieve it,” Silberman explains.
Similarly, in the Second Amendment context, “preservation of the militia was the right’s most salient political benefit — and thus most appropriate to express in a political document” that was designed to assure “Antifederalist opponents of the 1787 Constitution [that] the militia system would remain robust.”
Silberman’s opinion makes a convincing case that the Founders saw the Second Amendment as codifying a natural right to “private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense [against] either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government.”
VP Dick Cheney giving his Tony Montana speech at the Republican Convention in 2004. This first line is awesome. I can actually hear Cheney making some of these comments. F-you Dick! I hope these jerkoffs lose control of the House and Senate today.
The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report [pdf] released Tuesday, found that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.
The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.
…
One business owner who learned from a reporter that a company named Amish Country Popcorn was on the list was at first puzzled. The businessman, Brian Lehman, said he owned the only operation in the country with that name.
“I am out in the middle of nowhere,” said Mr. Lehman, whose business in Berne, Ind., has five employees and grows and distributes popcorn. “We are nothing but a bunch of Amish buggies and tractors out here. No one would care.”
But on second thought, he came up with an explanation: “Maybe because popcorn explodes?”
“To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero… assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war.
It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability.”
They’re good. They’re always one step ahead of the game. Hey Googler: Google “immigration poll” and you get this ( 1, 2, 3 ). Top 3 results as of today, June 3 2006, are all strongly in favor of “immigration reform”, whatever the fucking hell that is. They want immigration to be the one big issue in November. Please, for the love of everything that you think is worth a shit in this life, America, don’t buy into it. There are much bigger fish to fry. Like, for instance, the immediate future of the sovereignty of our nation as it faces a deficit the size of which has never been seen in human history. Or the interaction between opposing oil-rich nations, all out to thwart us, trying to vie for China’s and other up-and-coming nations’ oil needs, completely and blatantly sidestepping the U.S. (but not the U.N.) in a mad dash to gain favor in the Western world.
Point is, forget about the Mexican people coming over to pick fruit and water the lawn. They should literally be the LAST thing on your mind.
Consider the future of the nation in which you live. It could literally be gone tomorrow.
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