Random thoughts and guns has an interesting post up on Bracken’s cube (h/t WRSA).  I think the way to see it is lines of tension that may act to oppose, may act symbiotically or may couple (with forces in opposite directions but with a common outcome).  You can decide for yourself.

At any rate, it is in the best interest of the hive that the rulers do all they can to eradicate the lines of tension.  This means a number of things, but an interesting line of effort appeared today.

Last Friday’s headlines focused on President Obama’s address at Argonne National Laboratory, where he proposed to spend $2 billion on an energy-security trust fund for renewable fuel research. Obama boldly pledged “to shift our cars entirely . . . off oil.”

How exactly is he planning to do that? Research will have an effect over time, but “entirely off oil” is either a greatly exaggerated or a very incomplete account of the administration’s energy plans. The New York Times story on Obama’s speech dryly notes that although the president “has vowed to make addressing climate change a priority in his second term . . . he has provided only scant details on how he intends to act.”

Look closely, however, and it’s possible to spot some troubling plans. The Times, and just about every other major news outlet, neglected to note that on the day of Obama’s Argonne speech, the Department of Energy released a series of coordinated reports called “Transportation Energy Futures” (developed in cooperation with Argonne). This DOE project explores a variety of strategies designed to curb America’s greenhouse gas emissions up to 80 percent by about 2050.

Arguably the most controversial of those reports covers the “effects of the built environment on transportation.” To put it plainly, the “built environment” report lays out strategies the federal government can use to force development away from suburbs and into cities, supposedly for the sake of reducing carbon dioxide emissions given off by all those suburban commuters. The Obama administration wants to force so-called smart growth policies on the country: get out of your car, stay out of the suburbs, move into small, tightly-packed urban apartment complexes, and walk or take public transportation instead of driving.

After all, those country boys with guns will be much easier to control if they collect them into the hive than if they leave them in the mountains and woods to cause trouble for the collective.

Do you understand?

Good grief.  Heritage again.

On February 26, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Center for Human Rights issued a white paper on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which concludes that “the proposed ATT is consistent with the Second Amendment.” This conclusion neglects important facts about the treaty and the processes surrounding it, which we have explored in this four-part series.

We have shown that while we agree with several of the ABA’s contentions, it ignores the fact that the ATT—like many treaties—is not designed for a nation with a federal structure like the U.S. The ABA also ignores the fact that the ATT goes beyond import restrictions on firearms by requiring signatories to prevent the domestic diversion of imports. The treaty may also invite the executive branch to take executive actions to restrict and control the import of firearms into the U.S., imports which comprise about 35 percent of the new firearms market.

Finally, the treaty raises broader concerns about the application of transnational law to the U.S. These concerns are heightened by the fact that both foreign nations and some prominent legal scholars have identified treaties like the ATT as a mechanism to pressure the U.S. to change its domestic policies, and even to change the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

The question, then, is what the U.S. should do about this. The U.S. is sensitive to allegations that it is failing to fulfill treaty commitments, and it rightly takes its treaty obligations seriously. Because the ATT is a process that is designed to evolve and grow, it is impossible to know where it will lead.

A new ATT conference begins today in New York, and we will be blogging from the conference.

Supporters of the ATT frequently defend it as entirely unrelated to the Second Amendment. Some opponents of the ATT criticize it as a nefarious plot against the Second Amendment. The truth is more complicated …

Listen carefully.  No, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty isn’t really that complicated.  It is a nefarious plot against the second amendment.

We’ve covered this in detail before.  All that rubbish and claptrap about the treaty excluding civilians because it excludes civilian arms is a ruse.  What it does is what Feinstein and Obama want to do within the framework of U.S. law, and distinguish between so-called “military weapons” and “civilian weapons.”  Again – it doesn’t distinguish between you and a member of the professional military, it distinguishes between military arms and civilian arms.

It would make illegal all sorts of firearms currently in circulation, as well as subject you to a set of rules, licensing and governmental checks that would make what Obama has proposed look like free utopia.

Some things really are as they seem.  Can Heritage at least try to get it right next time?  Otherwise, it’s just wasted space and bandwidth.

David Codrea:

“Marcus Hook mayor under investigation over gun incident,” a Saturday Philly.com report revealed.

“The mayor of tiny Marcus Hook, who just last year was a guest at the President’s State of the Union address, is under investigation for allegedly shooting a gun in his house and giving alcohol to a 20-year-old whom he threatened to hold hostage,” the report continues.

On top of that, the report says Mayor James D. Schiliro “ordered a borough police officer to pick up the 20-year-old, who was at a friend’s home, in a police vehicle and bring him to Schiliro’s home.”

But David, don’t you understand?  Gun control is like all other laws.  It is all intended for the little people, not the special people.  You are little and the special people, well, they are special.  Understand?

Read the rest at Examiner.

ExpertClick.com:

The Supreme Court recognized our right to ownership of firearms, but didn’t specifically broach the issue of “bearing” those arms, i.e., carrying them for personal defense. The Second Amendment, as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia knows, isn’t about duck hunting, or deer hunting, or any other “sporting purpose.” The sporting purposes test imposed by the last round of onerous firearms laws, and enforced by the ATF, is entirely unconstitutional. But proliferation of this test through the judiciary (from some future decision) is cowardly because it doesn’t formally recognize the truth, and that is that the second amendment exists in order to ameliorate tyranny.

Me on Scalia:

The Supreme Court recognized our right to ownership of firearms, but didn’t specifically broach the issue of “bearing” those arms, i.e., carrying them for personal defense.

This relationship that appears to be developing between Scalia and Kagan is, I’m sure, very sweet and and all of that, but I wouldn’t count on her vote.  Furthermore, the whole issue of duck hunting concerns me.  The Second Amendment, as Scalia knows, isn’t about duck hunting, or deer hunting, or any other “sporting purpose.”  The sporting purposes test imposed by the last round of onerous firearms laws, and enforced by the ATF, is entirely unconstitutional.  I have said before that I think the test is misapplied, and that if it is a firearm, it has a sporting purpose.  But proliferation of this test through the judiciary (from some future decision) is cowardly because it doesn’t formally recognize the truth, and that is that the second amendment exists in order to ameliorate tyranny.

Look, I will quote other writers, and sometimes at length.  But what I try to do is quote (especially for my friends) in such a way that the reader wants to visit their site to finish reading their analysis.

This was cited without attribution.  Bad form.

MSNBC:

H. Joaquin Jackson is the kind of iconic rifleman that gun advocates welcomed to their board. He spent 27 years as a Texas Ranger and is remembered for following his commander into a jailhouse shootout and capturing an elusive horse thief.

The actor Nick Nolte spent several weeks studying Jackson in preparation for his role as a Ranger in the 1987 film Extreme Prejudice. And Tommy Lee Jones cast Jackson to play a sheriff in the 1995 TV movie The Good Old Boys alongside Jones, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and a young, unknown Matt Damon.

With Hollywood friends and a storied law-and-order past, Jackson was an ideal fit for the National Rifle Association’s 76-member governing board, which he joined in 2001. Today, however, he is under fire from a younger generation of NRA activists. Organizing online, they want Jackson voted off the gun lobby’s board for his past comments criticizing high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons. His comments are making waves again due to the assault weapons ban recently proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

[ … ]

“I wouldn’t be with the NRA if I didn’t believe in the Second Amendment,” Jackson told MSNBC in a telephone interview. But critics are not convinced. “Joaquin Jackson has a background in law enforcement and he’s a ‘staunch supporter’ of the Second Amendment…or is he?” recently asked one gun rights activist, Joe Levi, on his blog sittingduckpolicy.com.

“I personally believe a weapon should never have over, as far as a civilian, a five-round capacity. If you’re a hunter, if you’re going to go hunting with a weapon, you shouldn’t need over but one round. So five rounds would be plenty,” said Jackson in the video now labeled by one of his critics as “The Enemy Within” on YouTube.

On assault weapons, Jackson said: “Personally, I think assault weapons basically…need to be in the hands of the military, and in the hands of the police.”

Two years later the NRA’s lobbying wing posted a statement by Jackson to clarify “misunderstandings” about the interview. Jackson said his comments on assault weapons referred only to fully-automatic weapons used mainly by military forces and some police. High-capacity magazines, he clarified, were not appropriate for hunting.

I don’t care that Mr. Jackson is a former Texas Ranger, any more that I would care if he were an engineer or dug ditches for a living.  That movies that were made about his exploits are irrelevant to me.  His history means something to him, but nothing to me.

The same rule applies to boards of directors that applies to politicians.  You are voting for policy decisions.  Nothing more.  If my dog could consistently make decisions that followed my policy, I would vote for her for President.  She would certainly make a better one that the totalitarian clown we currently have.

And that bit about a clarification of his position is clearly a lie.  No one needs to “clarify” that he believes that hunters need to limit their available rounds for  sporting purposes because every state already does that without his assistance.  And as for a high capacity magazine, if all you’re talking about is the difference between LEOs having fully automatic weapons and civilians not being allowed to (a policy with which I firmly disagree anyway), then there is no need to bring it up in the first place.  It’s not germane to the conversation.

Jackson is therefore lying about his clarification.  Jackson’s days should be limited on the NRA board of directors.  There is no place – none – for someone who says he believes in the second amendment but undercuts it with his words.  The second amendment says nothing about hunting, and Mr. Jackson believes in a different second amendment than do I.  Mine is written in the Bill of Rights, and he fabricated his version in his head.

Morning Sentinel:

In his current constituent response about the gun-control discussion and legislative proposals, Sen. Angus King says he has serious reservations about limiting “assault weapons” as there is “too much emphasis on the cosmetic appearance of particular firearms rather than their actual functionality.”

A carefully presented NRA tutorial is being circulated among pro-gun control folks about the “assault weapon” misnomer. It’s real intent, though, is to say that if you can’t distinguish an “assault weapon” by definition, then your case for limiting anything is questionable.

The gun control effort is not about cosmetics nor technical definitions of weaponry and does not seek to obliterate anyone’s Second Amendment rights.

This so-called “assault” on gun owner’s rights is not a high-capacity, rapid-fire onslaught against all guns nor their owners. It is, however, a limited capacity onslaught where the outcome will be a lessening of deaths.

Limited capacity onslaught.  It’s okay if only 15 or so people die.  Exceeding that threshold crosses the line, however.  It rankles the sensibilities of all good Americans.  Just kill fewer people if you’re going to perpetrate such a heinous act.  We won’t talk about what higher capacity could possibly do for the man who’s trying to stop the heinous act.

Limited capacity onslaught.  There you have it.  Schoolchild logic in today’s America.

The media outlet biases the report for the readers:

It’s a case where it appears concealed carry worked.

West Allis Police confirm that early this Tuesday a man used a gun to stop an attack on a woman.  That man had a concealed carry permit for the weapon.

A man who knew that victim was attacking her near 102nd and Lincoln.  The good samaritan happened on the attack.  He jumped into action, pulling out his gun.  He never fired, but he used the gun to hold the suspect until police arrived.

“It appears to have worked well where nobody was injured as a result of the use of the weapon,” West Allis Police Chief Charles Padget told us.

Police arrested the suspect and the woman is recovering.  The chief says it appears the good samaritan did everything right.  The District Attorney’s office will still review the use of the weapon.  The DA will also investigate the original attack.

It’s amazing, no?  It’s actually a case where “concealed carry worked.”  First of all, the tools that write this claptrap should read a little more.  Guns are used every day in America to stop crimes and save lives.

Second, concealed carry only worked because this person happened to be concealing his hand gun.  Wisconsin is a traditional open carry state, and it’s possible that the perpetrator wouldn’t have even committed the crime had he seen someone openly carrying a weapon.  It would have “worked” equally well if the individual had been openly carrying and had used his weapon to stop the attack.

The hint in the article is also that it “worked” because the weapon wasn’t discharged.  Let’s be clear.  If the perpetrator had attacked the person with the weapon and he had discharged the weapon in response, it still “worked.”

It always “works” when a weapon is used to stop a violent crime, as long as we stipulate that a life was in peril.  That’s the point.  The only thing he couldn’t do – and neither can the LEOs because of Tennessee Versus Garner – is detain the perpetrator by discharging his weapon.  And he didn’t.  So that worked too.

It “worked” all around, and it does in American every day.

Liberal rag The Raw Story has a piece on Ted Nugent.

Gun rights activist and musician Ted Nugent claimed in a radio interview on Monday that he killed more than 450 pigs with a machine gun while shooting from a helicopter. According to the website RumorFix, Nugent made the claim in an interview with Brett Winterble on Sirius XM Radio and said that he dedicated the kill to HBO host Bill Maher and “all those other animal freaks out there.”

“I took my machine gun in the helicopter — in the Texas hill country – me and my buddy ‘Pigman’ … his name is ‘Pigman’ – I’m the swine czar,” said Nugent. “I killed 455 hogs with my machine gun. i did it for Bill Maher and all those other animal rights freaks out there.”

Boasting that the weapon he used fired 750 rounds a minute, the right-wing provocateur said, “My haters will hate me more for that.”

According to the Associated Press, the state of Texas awards prize money during an annual three-month event in which hunters are urged to kill as many feral pigs as they can. The animals have bred out of control in the Texas wilderness and cause millions of dollars in crop and property damage every year.

“We saved the environment from the destruction of these out-of-control pigs,” said the Michigan-born rocker, “and I’m not talking about Washington D.C. or San Francisco … I’m actually talking about actual pigs.”

He went on to say that “we distributed tons of the most delicious pork to the soup kitchens and homeless shelters of this state. Everything we did was perfect – win win win. I had to adjust my halo as I was machine gunning hogs.”

Given the blight on the landscape that feral pigs are, Ted did a good thing, of course.  But take a look at the comments.

Ah.  To be so hated.  One can only admire and hope.

The Obama administration is planning never before seen intrusions into the private affairs of U.S. citizens.

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

This will split our fiber backbone signals and dump every 1 and 0 that transverses it into government computers.  Every detail of life of all citizens is now subject to inspection and assessment by government overlords who can and will make decisions as to so-called “terrorist activity,” which could be al Qaeda or perhaps unorganized militia who prepare for any threat against the U.S., foreign or domestic.

This knowledge should be coupled with another stunning intrusion into our God-given rights we learned about today.  Bob Owens has a report for us.

Chuck Schumer’s S. 374, the Orwellian “Protecting Responsible Gun Sellers Act of 2013,” has been an empty shell… until he slipped in Amendment ALB13180 (PDF) today, which shows the “teeth” of the bill.  It is an extremely aggressive attempt to destroy the Second Amendment by isolating and criminalizing extremely common behaviors among gun owners.

Doubt me?

Take a looking at a sampling of what it Sebastian notes it would outlaw:

• If you leave home for more than 7 days and leave anyone at home, that becomes a felony illegal transfer. 5 years in prison for each of you.

• if you take a friend shooting and allow him to fire your gun, that is a felony illegal transfer. 5 years in prison for each of you.

• If you have a gun lost or stolen and don’t report it within 24 hours, you’ve committed a felony. 5 years in prison.

• If you lend a gun to someone for to try out at the range, provide a loaner for a student in training, let your son shoot a rifle you purchased while hunting, or provide a gun to a woman for self-defense, you’ve committed a felony. 5 years in prison for each of you.

Bob ends his assessment with the following almost desperate interdiction.

It’s inching closer.

May God have mercy on us all.

See also reaction at WRSA.  It’s possible, of course, to forestall such an eventuality, even if unlikely.  For example, the states who are currently considering or have passed laws against enforcement of federal gun laws could actually take their state laws seriously.

If such a federal law were to pass, a state could decide to confiscate and immediately destroy all form 4473s in all FFLs in their state, and warn FFLs to contact state police if any ATF agents enter their premises.  State police could arrest any federal agents who attempted to enforce federal gun laws and place them into the general prisoner population in state penitentiaries.  Threats to arrest state police or stop these actions could be met with National Guard troops to further effectuate the arrest of federal agents and enforce a cease and desist action to all federal employees, including federal judges who moved against such actions.

But this would have to happen all across the nation for it to be effective, and I find it unlikely that a governor would take these actions, regardless of the posturing that we currently see by the states.  The concept of States’ rights has fallen too hard and too far, and federalism has lost its appeal in the U.S.

Short of something like this, I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about a possible recovery of our national character.  When the people demand cradle to grave security and overwatch, the state responds with cradle to grave demand for omniscience for itself and cradle to grave compliance by the people.  It’s a deal with the devil for our soul, and America has made it a long time ago.

If this sounds judgmental, then I plead guilty.  Based on religious doctrine, which the epistemologists might call strongly held truth value, or incorrigible beliefs, I hold that gun control is evil.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

Gun control is like control over everything else.  The key word here is control.  It is at one and the same time a function of wicked rulers and a benchmark, or barometer or gauge, to measure their wickedness.  God doesn’t cede or relinquish rule over His creation for mankind, and totalitarian governance usurps the authority He demands over the actions of mankind.  God will not be mocked – He does the mocking.

God sits in the heavens and laughs and scoffs at the designs of man (Psalm 2:4).  Here is a warning to totalitarian rulers.  “Do homage to the Son, lest He become angry, and you perish in the way.”  Judgment will come, here or in the hereafter, and perhaps sooner and more unexpectedly than you think.

The only explanation for Senator Schumer’s totalitarian dictates is that he believes that Americans will go along with it.  To be sure, there are many who will … who will take measure of the situation and decide that they value peace and security over measurements of right and wrong.

But there are many who will not go along with such laws.  They will not allow themselves or their children or their friends or loved ones to be imprisoned for failing to take their weapons to a public armory when they go on trips, or loaning a rifle to their son to learn to shoot at the range.

We have covered this ground before.  Bob reacted the way he did because he understands in a way that the totalitarians and wicked rulers in Washington do not.  These measures will not stand.  They will fall, one way or the other.

Will our wicked rulers turn back before it’s too late?  Only God knows, but only time will tell us.  Here is a final warning: do not cross lines from which there is no return.

In the mean time, this isn’t your father’s country.  Welcome to Amerika!

UPDATE: Thanks to David Codrea for the attention.

The professor:

WOULD MANDATORY GUN OWNERSHIP violate citizens’ constitutional rights? No, because it’s an exercise of Congress’s power to arm the militia under Article I, section 8. In fact, the Militia Act of 1792 required adult males to own guns and ammunition.

I would also point out that it wouldn’t diverge at all from common practice during colonial America.

In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.  When the British government began to increase its military presence in the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, Massachusetts responded by calling upon its citizens to arm themselves in defense.

The seventeenth century was a long time ago, no?