Archive for the 'Second Amendment' Category

Good grief!  CCRKBA has turned to the dark side (h/t David Codrea).

One of Washington state’s largest gun-rights groups is negotiating with lawmakers on a deal that would simultaneously boost a controversial gun-control proposal and remove one of gun owners’ biggest fears.

Alan Gottlieb, of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said Tuesday night he has offered to support mandatory background checks for all firearm purchases if state lawmakers agree to end what some see as a de facto database of handgun owners.

“I need to see the final version, but we’re working with the sponsors of the bill to try to get one that’s workable,” said Gottlieb, who also runs the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation. “If we can accomplish that, it’s a win for all sides.”

No.  It is not a win for all sides.  It’s a win for the totalitarians and a loss for law abiding citizens.  I don’t want to hear another damn thing about how the NRA waffles and turns against our interests.  At least – so far – Wayne hasn’t turned to this kind of pandering.

Good grief!

We’ve discussed the ongoing attempt to hold states accountable via a boycott and also relocation of gun and ammunition companies from inhospitable states.  But amidst the hubris of New York’s response, this sentiment was almost missed.

“To tell you the truth, Dave, we’re not worried about it,” John Grebert says. He is the executive director of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police, a group that supported the new gun law in New York State.

But, he adds, “I think it’s pretty unfortunate that any business thinks they can bully us.”

Because people in law enforcement deal with criminals every days, Grebert thinks they have, “a greater right” to weapons, “to deal with potentially violent situations.” And Grebert says he’s confident police will still have access to the equipment they need “to get the job done right.”

He could be discussing the popular progressive notion that the militia doesn’t exist today because it’s an antiquated idea, or if it does, it consists of law enforcement.  Thus, the second amendment gives them rights that it doesn’t give us, or a “greater right,” if you will.

But even though this takes on the trappings of erudition, it’s still ignorant and illogical.  There were constabulary officers in the eighteenth century America that produced the constitution.  And besides, if the second amendment applied only to constables, then we would have no right at all, not less right to weapons.

The reason he did give was that they deal with violence.  You don’t, or if you do, it isn’t as necessary for you to be capable of dealing with it.  Don’t ever forget this sentiment, and how it leads to an “us versus them” mentality in law enforcement.  This is rich and wonderful because of its honesty.  I’m thankful that he brought it up.

Mike Vanderboegh:

William Diamond’s drum is sounding the long roll once again, and it doesn’t take much imagination to hear it … The enforcement of these various odious, unconstitutional laws — whether state or federal — will be resisted, flaunted and then Leviathan, which can’t afford to look silly, will come to kill us for our temerity.

What’s Mike talking about?  You’ll have to visit his place to read the rest.  In this article, Mike waxes philosophical and even poetic in places.  His call isn’t a funeral dirge, or a panic.  It is a solemn call to duty.  It’s absolutely worth the time to study it and study it again.

David Codrea:

The “progressive” activist group MoveOn.org posted a television commercial to You Tube yesterday featuring a self-proclaimed gun rights proponent warning politicians of electoral consequences if they don’t support more “gun control” laws.

“The six-figure ad buy is running for a week on national cable and will air during the Sunday morning political talk shows,” The Hill reported.

“I’m a gun owner and a proud defender of the Second Amendment, but for years I’ve watched Congress take money from the NRA and then oppose any kind of reform that helps keep us safe,” a man identified in the video as Ohio gun owner Jerry Thompson declares.

“After the Newtown massacre and the NRA’s disgusting response, I’ve had enough, Thompson growls, warning members of Congress if they “take money from the NRA, and then continue to do their bidding, we’re gonna remember that come election time.”

Read the rest at Examiner.  Mr. Thompson isn’t a proud defender of the second amendment any more than I’m a defender of MoveOn.org.  It’s the same story with Congressional candidates and Senators who claim that they’re NRA members or hunters.  The hair on my neck stands up when I hear a candidate for any office claim that he’s a hunter.  There’s nothing wrong with hunting.  I’ve done it before.  But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the second amendment.

And as for Mr. Thompson, the second amendment pertains to resistance to tyranny.  That’s why we know he’s lying.  On the one hand he claims to support resistance to tyranny, and on the other wants to impose tyrannical laws.

Consistency isn’t the hobgoblin of little minds.  It’s the stuff of life, and when you’re not, you’re irrelevant.

Examiner:

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, decrying America’s demonization of guns, is predicting that the parade of new gun control laws, cheered on by President Obama, will hit the Supreme Court soon, possibly settling for ever the types of weapons that can be owned.

Scalia, whose legacy decision in the 2008 case of District of Columbia vs. Heller ended the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., suggested that the Constitution allows limits on what Americans can own, but the only example he offered was a shoulder-launched rocket that would bring down jets.

And the wily judge suggested to an audience of Smithsonian Associates at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium Tuesday night that he is not just preparing for a new gun control challenge, but that he’s softening up one of his liberal colleague on guns.

The long-time duck hunter revealed that he’s taken Obama appointee Elena Kagan hunting several times, the last being for big game in Wyoming where she shot a whitetail doe. “She dropped that doe with one shot,” he said during an event that featured questions from NPR’s court reporter Nina Totenberg.

[ … ]

Scalia explained why he wrote Heller, but wouldn’t discuss current gun control limits in Congress and the states. “There are doubtless cases on the way up,” he said, adding that limits on what weapons can be owned will likely be part of any new decision. “There are doubtless limits, but what they are we will see.”

Commentary

Good.  Let’s rock.  Let’s get on with the preservation or diminution of our rights and freedoms.  Time is wasting.  It’s time to revisit the decisions in Heller and McDonald, not because, as Justice Ginsburg thinks, there might be a reversal of Heller on the horizon with a “future, wiser court,” but because Heller didn’t go far enough.  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.

But for the courts, just remember that we firearms owners aren’t likely to have any more respect for confiscatory policies (or anything that can enable confiscation such as universal background checks), onerous policies (such as counting the number of cartridges I can put in my magazine), or unconstitutional tests (like sporting purposes) coming from the courts than we would if it came from the Congress or the President.  And just for the record, the Supreme Court became a laughingstock over the decision on Obamacare.  You wouldn’t want to put the final nail in the coffin holding your honor or respectability, would you?

Be very careful.  Think wisely.  Don’t start things you cannot stop.

UPDATE: Thank you for the visit on this article.  It is timely and important.

Washington Post:

Switzerland has the world’s third-highest number of privately held guns per person, after the United States and Yemen, an outgrowth of its unique military culture. Service is mandatory for young men, though the national military is a little bit like a collection of local militias. That militia-tinged military culture blurs the line, just a bit, between an “on duty” time, when it’s normal to carry a gun, and “off-duty”; the result is that it’s not considered crazy, as it might be in the United States, for a service member to carry his or her assault rifle home.

[ … ]

Philip D. Jaffe, a forensic psychologist, said Switzerland’s military draft and annual weapons training have historically fostered national unity among the confederation’s cultural groups, which include French, German and Italian speakers. Even though the citizen militia may be outdated in modern military terms, he said in an interview in Lausanne, it has long fit in with the national image of small, self-reliant Switzerland maintaining its independence while being surrounded by much larger countries.

“They drill this into you; there’s something idealistic about it,” Jaffe said. “They hand you a big, bulky machine gun, and it’s yours. You get to keep it.”

This is all written from the perspective of someone who doesn’t believe in the unorganized militia in America.  I wouldn’t consider it “crazy” at all for unorganized militia members (such as me) to own machine guns, and I don’t believe that the notion of a citizen-militia is outdated at all.  I should be able to own the same kind of weaponry that I have to use my tax dollars to purchase our military forces.

Driving South for a few hours, the world view changes a great deal.  South Carolina is currently considering protections for the unorganized militia (via Mike Vanderboegh).

Senate Bill 247 was introduced on January 16, 2013 by state Senators Tom Corbin, Tom Davis, Kevin Bryant, and Lee Bright and sources indicate that a companion measure will soon be offered in the South Carolina House of Representatives.

The bill reads:

(A) Pursuant to the provisions of Section 25-1-60, an able-bodied citizen of this State who is over seventeen years of age and can legally purchase a firearm is deemed a member of the South Carolina Unorganized Militia, unless he is already a member of the National Guard or the organized militia not in National Guard service …

(2) A militia member, at his own expense, shall have the right to possess and keep all arms that could be legally acquired or possessed by a South Carolina citizen as of December 31, 2012. This includes shouldered rifles and shotguns, handguns, clips, magazines, and all components.

(3) The unorganized militia may not fall under any law or regulation or jurisdiction of any person or entity outside of South Carolina.

This bill seems like obvious low hanging fruit.  It should have an easy time being ushered through the legislature.  But beware, it does in fact lend protections to the unorganized militia from the intrusive federal government.  The totalitarians will be furious.

This kind of state law is a good and necessary thing only insofar as the state is willing to enforce it with the power of law enforcement and the unorganized militia themselves.  As long as the state is willing to throw agents of the federal government in state penitentiary for enforcing intrusive federal laws, the state’s word means something.  Otherwise, the state is just inviting scorn from both the federal government and its own citizens.

Federal laws concerning firearms are unconstitutional – every one of them, without exception.  State laws are too if they infringe as prohibited in the Second Amendment.  This South Carolina law places them squarely in the totalitarian line of fire coming out of Washington, D.C., and decidedly in the corner of the people.  But being righteous doesn’t end the story.  Totalitarians never decide to go away.  They must be defeated.

From Joseph Farah:

How do you know the left is firmly in charge of the political and cultural establishment in America?

Because now they want to ban guns.

As a former leftist revolutionary during my misguided youth, I recall with crystal clarity when the radical left of the 1960s brazenly bore arms in public, boasted about firearms training, stockpiled arms and ammo and even engaged in armed violence against police.

The Black Panther Party, originally, by the way, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, is a case in point. The organization, led by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, were often referred to in the ’60s as “the vanguard of the revolution.”

They were known for ambushing police. Newton himself, after being freed from prison for the killing of Oakland police officer John Frey, boasted of murdering him. James Forman, Black Panther Party “minister of foreign affairs,” called for blowing up police stations, killing Southern governors and mayors and murdering 500 cops. They took full advantage of the Second Amendment and California laws that permitted the carrying of loaded rifles and shotguns in public, as long as they were not concealed or pointed at anyone. In May 1967, the Panthers literally invaded, fully armed, the State Assembly of the California Legislature. Later they organized an armed march on the state Capitol when lawmakers introduced legislation banning the carrying of loaded weapons in public.

All of this made them the heroes of the left. So-called “civil rights attorneys” like Charles Garry and William Kunstler and the American Civil Liberties Union defended them for their brazen calls for armed struggle, armed attacks and armed intimidation tactics.

But that was then, and this is now.

[ … ]

The only difference between now and then is who is running things.

[ … ]

The New Left, as it was known back then, worshipped firearms.

The new, new left does, too – as long as it maintains a monopoly on them and state power.

Yes, the left still loves guns.  There is no other reason for the fawning acceptance of the vulgar SWAT raid tactics in which innocent men like Mr. Eurie Stamps get shot and killed.  These tactics are repeated all across America every day.

The left just doesn’t love guns in the wrong hands, and anyone who isn’t an agent of the state is the wrong hands.  Listen to Representative Jim Himes (D – CT) tell you why high capacity magazines are still necessary in government hands.

There is absolutely no justification for weapons that were made for the explicit purpose of killing lots of people quickly to be in the hands of civilians.

Let that wash over you again.  “Killing lots of people quickly” and “civilian hands.”  The two don’t go together.

Leftists are by nature not liberals, no matter what label they have adopted.  Scratch a liberal, and find a Fascist.

Loyal reader Rich Buckley sends this video along.

To LEOs and N.G., one less than memorable point, and one point that you’d better always remember.  First, pause the video at 42 seconds.  The idiot holding the forend grip like that looks like a girl.  Listen girly-man, go watch some “Art Of The Tactical Carbine” videos by Travis Haley.  You’ll thank me later.

Second point – and like I said, always remember I said this.  If you ever try to confiscate my weapons like that for any reason under the sun, you’ll get shot, without delay, many times.  I just wanted to make sure that we were on the same page of the hymnal.  There.  I feel that we understand each other now.

David Codrea:

Because that’s true, and it is, you know, looking at quick fix kneejerk ‘solutions’ such as changing state and federal information loop protocols on recorded mental health incidents may not produce any appreciable public safety improvements, and may in fact, endanger not only rights, but people disabled by ‘law’ who have been denied full due process.

Um, yes.  Of course a system like this is highly vulnerable to abuse and negligence.  It’s the government.  My God.  When is the last time you witnessed a government program work the way it should?  Besides, mental health professionals will tell you that their science isn’t as accurate as you think it is and isn’t amenable to such neat categories, that they cannot really predict with any confidence who will become violent, that their science won’t sustain such a burden, that such reporting will intefere with the doctor-patient relationship, and that they don’t want that kind of legal and regulatory pressure on their profession.  They have already told you so.  It’s like asking your Volkswagen Beetle to hit the curves at Daytona International Speedway and race with the big boys.  Man is too complex, and “doctors” don’t know as much about his psyche as this system would demand.  Because, you know, it’s his psyche … his soul … his spirit.  It’s not his big toe.

Finish reading Codrea’s piece at Examiner.  Mental health checks are not the answer to gun violence.  Move on to the real solutions, like abolishing gun free zones as an intrusion on our God-given right of self defense.

Kurt Hofmann has a great piece up at Examiner on foreigners respecting the Second Amendment more than some Americans.

It’s well worth the time.  As you read it, remember that your company can define who you are, characterize you, and change you.  “Bad company corrupts good morals,” 1 Corinthians 15:33.  And remember that many of those who currently rule us were trained by Marxists.

Also remember this.  I have called their designs for gun control evil, a function and product of wicked governments.  Take note that communist China has criticized our Second Amendment and encouraged gun control, as well the United Nations.  Finally, their ideas come mainly from Nazi Germany, where Hitler had designs for gun control long before our current administration.  That’s who this administration can call company.

What does all of this have to do with Kurt’s article?  Just that those who have seen the final manifestations of evil in a society are the very ones who warn us about it and encourage the nurturing of freedom in America.