Remember that rights are moral principles which define and protect a man’s freedom of action, but impose no obligations on other men. Private citizens are not a threat to one another’s rights or freedom. A private citizen who resorts to physical force and violates the rights of others is a criminal — and men have legal protection against him.

Criminals are a small minority in any age or country. And the harm they have done to mankind is infinitesimal when compared to the horrors — the bloodshed, the wars, the persecutions, the confiscations, the famines, the enslavements, the wholesale destructions — perpetrated by mankind’s governments. Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is men’s deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written.

Ayn Rand
1963
POV: Man’s Rights; The Nature of Government
[Via email from Stephanie.—Joe]

People come to me and say, ‘Cody, tell us why you want to do it.’ No, no – more like all these authorities, all these powers, they will have to justify why they should have the right to stop me.

…

If they could build a system that could prevent people from downloading that pistol, it would be far more dangerous and the effects would be far more terrible than that little pistol. Power wants to know everything, surveil everything, absorb everything. This impulse should be checked.

Cody Wilson
August 14, 2018
3D-printed gun inventor welcomes Seattle legal battle
[I would make the correction that it is actually all these authorities will have to prove they have powers delegated by the people to do what they are attempting to do. The 1st and 2nd Amendments reinforce the fact the Constitution did not give them any such power.

Also, I would say, “must be checked” rather than “should be checked.” It fails my Jews In The Attic Test.—Joe]

So much ado about nothing. People have been making guns since the founding of our nation. As far as these files go, they are already out there and anyone can get them. Criminals don’t make crappy ass plastic guns, they simply buy quality firearms from the black market or steal them. More political grandstanding by Ferguson to make his sheep feel safe. The only way you’ll ever be safe is if you take some personal responsibility and learn self defense by the method of your choosing (martial arts, knife, firearms or all the above). Practice self awareness and get training. The police and government are under no legal obligation to protect you. Stop being a victim and take control of your life.

Mark Brockway
August 16, 2018
Comment to Seattle judge blocks publication of 3D-printed gun design
[I would like to make a minor correction. People were making guns long before the founding of our nation. Other than that, Brockway has it right.—Joe]

President Trump himself tweeted that the idea of approving 3D-printed guns “doesn’t make much sense.”

But the only thing that “doesn’t make much sense” is the hyperbolic response of gun-control advocates to activity protected by both the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution.

Amy Swearer
August 1, 2018
3D guns: Despite the complaints of gun-control advocates, these weapons are protected by the Bill of Rights
[Well… it makes sense if you understand that the gun control advocates want to eliminate the entire Bill of Rights.—Joe]

Imagine the damage one of these guns, even if it was only capable of firing one shot, could do aboard a plane. Or in a government office. Or in your child’s classroom.

Alyssa Milano
July 31, 2018
Alyssa Milano: A 3D printed gun is downloadable death
[Imagine the good one of these guns could do if it was used to defend your life or the life of your child. Imagine the harm it will do if the courts somehow decide the First Amendment doesn’t apply to software used to protect freedom.

I find it very telling she thinks a government office is a particularly bad place to have a gun. World history shows governments are a much bigger threat to innocent life than all other threats combined. This puts her squarely on the side of evil.

Ms. Milano, go back to your acting. These are specific enumerated rights we are talking about and we don’t want or need your acting skills to inject emotional baggage into a question of civil rights.—Joe]

If you support this proposal then you must support a keeping homeowners honest act. While the vast majority of homeowners are law abiding citizens, studies would suggest that over 90% of illegal drugs distributed in any given area are distributed by a few bad apples. To have all homes periodically searched to prevent illegal drug sales is just common sense.

Mark
July 17, 2018 at 1:24 pm
Comment to Senators Blumenthal and Murphy offer new bill to increase gun dealer oversight
[The ATF should be a chain of convenience stores, not a regulatory agency.—Joe]

Certainly the Leftists do not want us to love freedom and liberty at all, and as soon as the streets and cities are made safe from “gun violence”, and knife and club and fist violence take its place, the lickspittle followers of the Leftists can sit in their houses and quake at every thump and bump, and think about what they did, or perhaps they will later write letters to Comrade whoever explaining why it’s a mistake they’re in the camp.

Windy Wilson
July 18, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Dov Marhoffer
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

I am a Holocaust concentration camp survivor. I am one of a rapidly dwindling number of eyewitnesses to the Nazi Holocaust, the most systematic genocide of all time.

I regularly speak at high schools, universities, and community events, sharing my eyewitness account with newer generations of Americans who have no concept of the horrors governments can inflict. I feel a duty to keep alive the memories of millions of Jews who were murdered by Adolf Hitler’s Germany and who cannot speak for themselves.

Today, misinformed students cynically led by progressives are using that event and its rallying call to confiscate guns and turn them over to government–the exact opposite of the core lessons to be learned. This is so fundamentally wrong no justification can excuse it. Naming a book Never Again!–which is a desperate call to arms–to address drug-addled, video-mesmerized, psychotic, murderous classmates –misappropriates and reverses the central messages and lessons of the Holocaust.

…

In the 1940s, the words Never Again! in German were scrawled on the wall of the Muehldorfer Hart Nazi concentration camp in southern Germany, where 2,200 prisoners, mostly Hungarian Jews, were murdered and buried in a mass grave. For 70 years, the slogan Never Again! has been the post-Holocaust rallying cry of Jews everywhere. It is a solemn vow that millions of Jews will never again be disarmed and defenselessly marched into camps for systematic liquidation because we can resist with the same powerful firearms we might face in the hands of totalitarian government. That progressives would take this vow, turn it upside down, and use it to grab guns is an abomination.

Dov Marhoffer
JPFO Board of Advisors
July 17th, 2018
“Never Again!” Belongs to the Holocaust — not an anti-gun-rights book and campaign Using the Holocaust this way is disgraceful
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

In 1776, Pennsylvania declared: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves, and the state.” Vermont copied that language in its constitution, which explicitly abolished slavery. Massachusetts and North Carolina adopted their own versions.

When the states debated adoption of the Constitution without a bill of rights in 1787-88, Samuel Adams proposed the right to bear arms in Massachusetts’s ratification convention. The Dissent of the Minority did so in Pennsylvania, and the entire New Hampshire convention demanded recognition of the right.

There was no connection to slavery in any of these historical antecedents.

Stephen P. Halbrook
June 25, 2018
The Second Amendment Had Nothing to Do with Slavery
[The background for this is that a certain professor, Carl T. Bogus, has been peddling the fiction that the Second Amendment was about keeping slaves from rebelling. In 1998 it was an open claim. More recently it is more of a suggestion. Halbrook explains why the story Professor Bogus has been telling is, as you might expect, totally bogus.—Joe]

“Moderate:” Someone who agrees that the plain written text of the Constitution means something halfway between what it actually says and what the Left wants it to mean.

“Extremist:” Someone who believes that the Constitution means what it actually says.

Sean D Sorrentino
July 7, 2018
Comment to Quote of the day—Emma Brown
[Sad but true.—Joe]