Category Archives: Freedom

Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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As I listened to Barack Obama’s inaugural speech yesterday, the memory of Sing-Sing and that particular prisoner floated into my memory.

Obama’s vision of America is Sing-Sing.

The government will provide just about everything you need to survive.

In return, you will surrender your freedom.

But don’t worry—and this is the most insidious part of post modern liberalism—slavery will be redefined as freedom.

Robert J. Avrech
January 22, 2013
Welcome to Obama’s Sing-Sing
[Roosevelt’s four “freedoms” can be met in a prison. Avrech merely expresses it in more direct language than some Obama and Roosevelt defenders would be comfortable with.

From talking to a fair number of people I’m shocked at the number who see it as a reasonable trade. I can see now why tyrants often come to power from the ashes of a collapsed economy. And because of this one might also postulate that those that drive an economy into collapse frequently want to be tyrants.

Avrech status with me is close to reaching the point where I put him in the same category as Tam. Tam is no longer eligible for QOTD because she would dominate nearly every day.—Joe]

Another quote of the day – Me

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If it’s the best thing I’ve read all day, why after all should I be prevented from posting it here just because I happen to be the one who wrote it?

Seen in comments at Uncle;

“Machineguns are in common use by military, and AS SUCH they are protected by the second amendment. Actually, if it is or can be considered an “arm” it is protected by the second amendment (the second amendment doesn’t have any qualifiers, exceptions or modifiers in it).

One might be able to make the case that strategic weapons like nukes and other WMDs are not, but even then you may be running afoul of the balance-of-power concept embodied in the second amendment.

In the American Revolution there were private owned war ships, were there not? Those would be analogs of our modern aircraft carriers and destroyers.

And don’t give me court precedent bullshit. If precedent defines (redefines) our rights, it means that any and all rights degrade and evaporate over time. No thanks. I’ll stick to original principles.”

There is a common error committed by our side. It is the use of arguments along the lines of, “Machineguns are ALREADY banned [and so leave our semiautomatics alone].” That’s a bit like saying to the alligator, “You already ate my buddy (and I didn’t like him a lot anyway) and so you should therefore leave me alone (I guess because your appetite should already be satisfied, or something…)”

In fact, if they can ban the most common small arms used by military and police, and get away with it, they can certainly ban everything else, just as the alligator can eat you some time after it ate your buddy. The fact of the matter has been established, so at best you’re only arguing over the details of the infringements at that point.

The Hughes Amendment to FOPA of 1986 should be rendered null and void, followed by GCA ’68 and NFA ’34.

There were slaves that didn’t want freedom too

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Wendy Button almost begs Please Take Away My Right to a Gun.

After the civil war there were slaves that didn’t want their freedom either.

Just because a few people want their rights taken away from them doesn’t mean the rest of us do, that it is the right thing to do, or that we won’t fight to keep them.

Random thought of the day

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Doesn’t it seem more than a little messed up when Pravda is urging us to never give up our guns, telling us we are wrong to go down the Marxist path while the New York Times is urging us to give up the constitution?

Ammunition Capacity Limits – the “why” of the matter

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Trying to cut to the chase; there are two possible reasons that I can see, why a rogue government (and let’s be honest– that’s what we’ve had for some time now) would want to limit ammunition capacity. One would be simply to irritate and harass their political opposition, putting a few innocent people in jail now and then as a bonus. The other would be to limit the ability of the citizenry to fight against mass attacks (two or more assailants).i.e. to promote the ease of government attacking citizens. A possible third reason, going along in part with the first, would be to generally degrade society with more complex laws, more bureaucracy and more violent crime (criminals will have 30 round mags, but law-abiders won’t).

Any or all of those motivations would appeal naturally to any authoritarian, and to anyone who sees the founding of the U.S. as a problem (unfair, unjust, etc.)

If anyone can think of another reason, I’d like to know it.

ETA, 1-18-13; I’d thought of another, hoping maybe someone would chime in with it, and Publius pretty much, sort of did in comments here, though it’s not the way I would have put it. That motivation being to control the framework of the conflict (between liberty and authoritarianism), to keep us fighting THEIR fight and not ours. On that they have done a most excellent job– I bet you can find a million words, just today, about details of this or that proposed restriction and how it will not “work”. Well, it is working– they’re keeping us talking about THEIR ideas. As I’ve said before and elsewhere; it is a subtle yet crucial tactic, though most every little kid understands it. You see that bratty kid fussing loudly at his mother in the supermarket? He knows how to keep his mom off balance, off kilter, off her game, distracted, irritated, embarrassed, until he gets something from her (recently I noticed one such brat pause in his “tantrum” to look around and make sure he was getting a reaction from bystanders, then resume his fake tantrum, thus demonstrating that he understood exactly what he was doing). HE set the agenda, the framework of the conflict, not his mom. That one should have occurred to me foremost. It goes along with number one, but the distinction is between simply wanting to irritate your opposition on one hand, because you dislike them, and maintaining control of the whole discussion’s very framework on the other. The communists are experts at this.

Prior restraint

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Gun control is prior restraint. Since prior restraint for the First Amendment is unconstitutional it is also unconstitutional when applied to the Second Amendment.

The classic example of falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater can be extended to illustrate.

Prior restraint would be requiring a gag on everyone as they enter the theater because someone might falsely yell fire.

The solution we have is to punish those that do, not gag everyone who enters the building.

“Gun free zones” are the same sort of thing. You must leave your gun behind because it is feared that you might use it in a criminal manner.

The solution must be that we punish those that injure innocent people and we must not attempt to prevent all people from using their gun at all.

One might claim that the risks are so high that prior restraint is justified as in drunk driving laws. There are two counters to that. 1) Driving is a privilege, not a specific enumerated right; and 2) Only in extremely rare cases does driving drunk have any benefit to society.

And even if we were to accept crime prevention is a valid means to protect innocent life we have problems. Does that mean to prevent rape we should castrate all the men? How about sewing all vaginas shut so women can’t engage in prostitution? Or removing eyes so people can’t engage in voyeurism? And to prove I’m not stuck on sex crimes, we can prevent fights by shackling the hands and feet of everyone. We can prevent drunk driving and public drunkenness by banning alcohol. Slander can be prevented by removing people’s vocal cords. Libel can be prevented by banning publication of, well, everything. And while we are at it we can prevent theft by abolishing private property.

Crime “prevention” is a very hot button for me.  There is no limit to the evil that can be justified and/or enabled once you accept the premise that it is acceptable to prevent crime by restricting liberty.

The very name of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence demonstrates they are a very misguided and dangerous organization.

We are better than this.

Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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Revolution works best when the authorities are weakened by a transition period, when they were once oppressive, but have been liberalizing, or where they are asserting a new level of authority that the people are not used to. It is in these transition points that revolutions are most effective because the authorities are not ready to cope with them and the people are made bold and desperate by the uncertainty.

Daniel Greenfield
January 14, 2013
And This is Revolution
[H/T to Rudy Kearney.

Interesting stuff. Almost all assertions with a bit of anecdote thrown it, but still interesting.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Adrian Bogdan

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I cannot begin to tell you how many memories, flash-back and déjà vu moments I’ve had…

Youth brigades with full indoctrination programs and training to rat on all non-conformists, including their own families, mandatory service of up to 2 years in some sort of “service corps” for “mandatory national service” (which ultimately will turn out to be work brigades needed for cheap slave labor), nationwide police force with full military capabilities and numbers surpassing it and all the “patriotic” work they will be doing like income verification (making sure you’re not living above your means), suppression of free speech and all other basic rights, midnight roundups and arrests, impromptu inspections of homes/businesses/vehicles with no need of any kind of search warrant, unlimited detention at the slightest suspicion of illegal activities (guess how many things will still be legal by then) and so on, so forth. 

Just a recommendation: start showing these proposals to the people you know from the old communist block and then take notes.  Most of them can tell you from memory what the road map will look like. 

Adrian Bogdan
January 15, 2013
From the gun email list at work.
[While the context was the anticipated attack this morning on gun rights by the President Adrian was actually referring to a different article. Still, the road map could be similar.

Other people don’t exactly have a “warm and fuzzy” feeling over the current activities of our public servants either.

It’s interesting to hypothesize parallels to the Palmer Raids which could be used in our current situation:

The Justice Department launched a series of raids on January 2, 1920 with follow up operations over the next few days. Smaller raids extended over the next 6 weeks. At least 3000 were arrested, and many others were held for various lengths of time. The entire enterprise replicated the November action on a larger scale, including arrests and seizures without search warrants, as well as detention in overcrowded and unsanitary holding facilities. Hoover later admitted “clear cases of brutality.” The raids covered more than 30 cities and towns in 23 states, but those west of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio were “publicity gestures” designed to make the effort appear nationwide in scope. Because the raids targeted entire organizations, agents arrested everyone found in organization meeting halls, not only arresting non-radical organization members but also visitors who did not belong to a target organization, and sometimes American citizens not eligible for arrest and deportation.

The Department of Justice at one point claimed to have taken possession of several bombs, but after a few iron balls were displayed to the press they were never mentioned again.

About 10,000 were eventually arrested.

Also the Japanese (and lesser known Italian and German) internment camps are also examples worthy of using for potential parallels.

And, of course, it was a liberal/progressive administration in charge at the time of both the Palmer Raids and the internment camps.

The way it could come about is as follows. There will be widespread noncompliance and heated talk about the “common sense” legislation when the next tragedy occur. Then, particularly if it involves a government entity, those most vocal will be targeted even when they had nothing to do with the violence.

Our Federal government hasn’t passed a budget in, what, three years now? There is significant political tension over the debt and debt ceiling

In times of discontent the government needs scapegoats. Gun owners are now the designated scapegoats. It’s could turn into an extremely rapid escalation of events. The more we complain and the more we resist the more valid the claims that “we can’t be trusted with weapons of war” may appear. They then “have to” confiscate them to preserve our “democracy” (I know it’s a republic but they won’t admit that).

I can see the sound bites now:

  • Those most hostile to our way of life must not be allowed to spread their hate.
  • They do not represent true American values and respect for our form of government.
  • While still respecting the 2nd Amendment we must restrict the rights of a few gun owners in order to respect the rights of the population as a whole to be free from fear.

    Sure, virtually no one is talking about stuffing people in cattle cars right now. But five weeks ago we didn’t, and most probably couldn’t, imagine we would be seeing seven round magazine limits being law, or a full-court press for a more restrictive “assault weapon” ban at the Federal level.

    Things sometimes happen extremely quick. The Rwandan genocide went from moderate tension to mass murder in 30 minutes. Many other events of historical significance went from moderate tension to massive human rights violations over the course of a just a few weeks or months. And, of course, it will be for the children.—Joe]

    • Gun cartoon of the day

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    ExecutiveOrder2ndAmendment

    From The Patriot Post.

    What if the president were to publically announce they were going to sign an executive order to “research” the detrimental effects of free speech or Christianity? Or how about the prohibiting the reading of material from international sources that had no “sporting or scientific purpose”?

    Why can’t people see how disturbing it is that a single person has the power to place restrictions on a specific enumerated right? It’s a really bad precedent to allow.

    Do you trust your government?

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    Yesterday I had lunch with Barb L. and as I was giving her an overview of our current political situation something crystalized and I thought I would share, in more detail, that insight.

    I have been a gun rights activist since 1995 and have seen the fight from the perspective of someone “in the trenches”. In this post I want to give the 10,000 foot view of the battle.

    Gun ownership is under more pressure with draconian laws affecting more people than I have ever seen. And I remember watching the TV news as the gun control act of 1968 was being debated. A month ago gun rights activists were on the offense and making steady progress. We would have minor losses and advances would be slowed or temporarily stopped but we would use what we learned from the failure and reapply the next legislative or court session. The anti-freedom people were on the defensive and operating with severally restricted finances. That changed on December 14, 2012.

    One tragedy, implemented by a mentally ill man, put us on the defensive again. That tragedy is used by both the politicians and the anti-freedom activists as the reason for the latest push for gun control. It was the spark that ignited the Gabby Giffords anti-gun Political Action Committee two years after she was shot by another mentally ill person. It is the justification for the committee on “gun violence” headed by V.P. Biden.

    I completely understand the grief and the urge to prevent such terrible tragedies but there is something that truly scares me about the political reaction to these tragedies.

    Let’s take a look at some of the proposed anti-freedom legislation.

    From New York state:

    • Ban any magazine that can hold over seven rounds.
    • Existing magazines holding more than 10 rounds must leave the state or be destroyed.
    • Existing eight to 10 round magazines may be kept but must not be loaded with more than seven rounds.
    • “High volume” (undefined) purchases of ammunition will alert the police.
    • Universal background checks will prohibit sales between private parties without a background check.

    The Federal government wish list formulated by V.P. Biden isn’t public yet but it is expected to include essentially the same things along with numerous executive actions such as increased gun control “research” and enforcement of existing laws.

    What is particularly striking and scary to me is that none of the firearms restrictions would have prevented the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting or even reduced the death toll. The facts are that the shooter had 15 to 20 minutes without serious resistance by someone with a gun. Even if he fired three rounds for every one of the 26 people murdered that would have only required 10 magazine changes with a limitation of seven rounds per magazine instead of the three with 30 round magazines. Suppose a magazine change on an AR-15 style rifle requires five seconds (with practice it requires far less). Had he been limited to seven rounds per magazine it would have taken him, at most, an extra 35 seconds to execute his foul deeds.

    Even if all semi-automatic firearms were banned, and unavailable, the reloading of a six round revolver is also easily (with some practice) accomplished in less than five seconds. Suppose it was 12 reloads instead of the three. This requires, at most, 45 more seconds.

    A total of something on the order of 100 rounds were used. A typical practice session of mine is on the order of 300 rounds. A typical weekend class is on the order of 1000 rounds. A one day pistol match is on the order of 150 rounds. Any “alerts” the police receive will be totally without meaning.

    The shooter did not obtain his guns through a private sale. He murdered his mother with her own guns and took them.

    Weerd Beard has more examples with a broader historical scope but arrives at the same conclusion, in many instances the firearms restrictions proposed and passed into law would not have prevented the tragedies that inspired the law.

    If the Sandy Hook shooting is the motivation and none of the solutions being so vigorously being pushed would have in any way prevented the tragedy then what is the real reason? I can only come up with two different hypotheses to explain the politicians demands for more firearms restrictions:

    1. They have ulterior motives they are not sharing with us.
    2. They are unwilling or unable to act rationally.

    If it is the first then what could those ulterior motives be? From U.S. history we know the motivation for restricting firearm access to the native Indians, the slaves, and blacks in general was to the extreme detriment of those populations. Internationally the same was true in Russia in 1918, the German Weapons Control Act of 1938, in China throughout the 20th Century, and in many other instances. The people in control of the government had sinister plans for the disarmed populations.

    If it is the second then there is no predicting what these people might do next. And there is every reason to believe they will act in ways that will be to the extreme detriment of the whole of society.

    This realization should shake the U.S. population to its very core. This should be like the moment you see in the movies when someone realizes that the person standing in front of them is either very evil or very crazy. It should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and a chill run down your spine.

    This is not, and cannot be, about preventing the shooting of elementary school children. This is about sinister and/or irrational people in control of our government who are trying to take your means to defend yourself and your family away from you.

    Do you trust a government like that? And what do you do about it?

    Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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    The automobile represents freedom.

    You climb into a car and go, go, go, whenever and wherever you want. The car is modern man’s path to liberty.

    Contrast cars with trains.

    Railroads are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state-controlled system that turns citizens into passive cogs, manipulated and at the mercy of government bureaucrats.

    That’s why democrats/progressives/liberals/ (what are they calling themselves this week?) are obsessed with high-speed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to big government fanatics. The ruling elite seek to regulate and control tobacco, food, calories, soda, education, light bulbs, toilets, health care, reproduction — your every cell. In short: liberty is constricted by any and all means.

    And all in the name of an amorphous, preadolescent concept: Fairness.

    And you better believe that the chattering elite are the ones who get to define what’s fair and what’s unfair. Funny how that always works out in their favor.

    Nazis just adored trains. And hey, the Italian fascists boasted that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Though Italian trains were about as effective and efficient as the Italian army. Which is to say: Not.

    At a certain point, one must acknowledge the convergent philosophies of post-modern liberals and iron-fist fascists. Both ideologies assert the power of the state as the final arbiter of human affairs. Hence, the government replaces G-d and family as the center of man’s universe. It’s no surprise that the formal title of the Nazi party was “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”

    Robert J. Avrech
    January 3, 2013
    Hollywood: I Drive Therefore I am Free
    [And what point will we “acknowledge the convergent philosophies of post-modern liberals and iron-fist fascists”? As a nation we clearly have not yet acknowledged it or else many who acknowledge it also welcome it. And I fear even if we were to acknowledge today it would already be too late.

    We have some very rough times ahead of us.—Joe]

    Quote of the day—Charlton Heston

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    When freedom shivers in the cold shadow of true peril it’s always the patriots who first hear the call. When loss of liberty is looming as it is now the siren sounds first in the hearts of freedoms vanguard. The smoke in the air of our Concord bridges and Pearl Harbors is always smelled first by the farmers who come from their simple homes to find the fire and fight. Because they know that sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel. Something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms. When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty. That’s why those five words issue an irresistible call to us all.

    …

    From my cold dead hands!

    Charlton Heston
    2000 NRA Annual Meeting
    [H/T to Mike B. who sent me the link via email.

    I have nothing to add.—Joe]

    Quote of the day—Chris Cox

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    Yesterday was nothing more than a dog and pony show. They checked the box, yep, we met with the NRA. They had no interest in hearing what we had to say.

    Chris Cox
    NRA Chief Lobbyist
    January 11, 2013
    NRA Chief Lobbyist Chris Cox on Meeting With Joe Biden’s Task Force: ‘It Was Nothing More Than a Dog and Pony Show’
    [I’m reminded of this:

    In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

    Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

    —Joe]

    Quote of the day—Louis Michael Seidman

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    As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

    Louis Michael Seidman
    December 30, 2012
    Let’s Give Up on the Constitution
    [H/T to Roberta.

    It’s good to have clarity.—Joe]

    If the pro liberty side had courage

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    And if we understood how the process of winning works, we wouldn’t be protesting the latest outrages committed by the authoritarians, we wouldn’t be panicked, hoping that the next set of violations will be endurable. We’d be proposing our own “outrages” for the communists to get upset over. They’d be protesting us, you see, because we were so blatant, relaxed, and matter of fact about it.

    In that spirit I propose a short, simple bill that would repeal the NFA of 1934, the GCA of 1968, and eliminate (not restructure, re-task or rebrand, but eliminate) the BATFE.

    If we feel we have to use statistics to justify it, we have more than enough of those, plus we have personal human interest anecdotes galore, but better yet we have the principles of liberty and the constitution on our side. We have the future of our children on our side.

    And to summarize; if the pro liberty side had courage, and resolve, and really understood the principles and how this is played, we’d never have gotten to this stage. But resolve does exist and it is growing I think, watered by the increasingly outrageous and transparent enemy. Isn’t this interesting?

    If statistics were really that important…

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    …we’d have gotten something like this;

    When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the statistical averages which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Statistical Ranges, that among these are Crime Rates, Unemployment Rates and the pursuit of Smaller Relative Income Disparities.–That to secure these statistics, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these statistics, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their desired statistics…

    The first ten amendments to the constitution would have been called the Bill of Statistics, and it would lay out the target statistical ranges for various things like crime, accidents, economics, and so on.

    Quote of the day—Daniel Greenfield

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    The defining American code is freedom. The defining liberal code is compassion. Conservatives have attempted to counter that by defining freedom as compassionate, as George W. Bush did. Liberals counter by attempting to define compassion as liberating, the way that FDR did by classing freedoms with entitlements in his Four Freedoms.

    On one side stands the individual with his rights and responsibilities. On the other side is the remorseless state machinery of supreme compassion. And there is no bridging this gap.

    Daniel Greenfield
    December 17, 2012
    Gun Control, Thought Control and People Control
    [H/T to JPFO.

    Nearly every paragraph in Greenfield’s post would qualify for a QOTD here. It is filled with awesome insights.

    I decided to focus on these two paragraphs because of the last sentence of the second paragraph quoted above.

    I’ve read that no two businesses or even species in nature share the same exact marketplace or ecologically niche at the same time. One will dominate and push the others out or cause them to differentiate themselves.

    The freedom and anti-freedom, the left being the dominate flavor of anti-freedom, people are in a political struggle for the geographical niche known as the United States of America. There is no compromising with the other side anymore than there is compromising with someone that wishes to rob you or loot your business. There is only winning versus losing and protecting your property versus having your property redistributed for the common good.

    The language of the left betrays this mindset.

    In their “compassion” they will sometimes “concede” a “buy-back” of firearms they want confiscated. You can’t “buy back” something that was not yours to begin with. And you can’t “buy” something with money that you confiscated (in the form of taxes) from the victims you want to take the property from. But in the mind of the left all property, including money, is “community property” and there is no inconsistency. They don’t, and probably can’t, “get” the problem we have with their plans.

    The anti-gun people claim removing restrictions against people carrying firearms on college campuses is “forcing guns on campuses”. Did you catch that? In other words we are using the power of government to force liberty upon them. One of daughter Kim’s economic class reading materials literally referred to the U.S. government “forcing free markets.” In their language and their world/philosophical view that makes perfect sense rather than being a self-contradicting statement.

    They can barely understand that we don’t trust the government. They can understand not trusting the “right government” which in broad terms is a government which is not “compassionate.” But they cannot understand not trusting a government because of its size. The classic joke about the anti-freedom people fear Libertarians because they would take over the government and leave everyone alone is funny because it is true. It is beyond their philosophical framework to not trust the government based on its size. It simply doesn’t make sense. It is a nonsensical thought and in order to make sense of it they have to redefine the fear of large government in other terms such as “greed”, “selfishness”, or a as a close relative recently told me, “heartless bastards”. Gun owners cannot possibly be serious about defense against a tyrannical government and rational gun ownership must be redefined in terms of a hobby, penis substitution, or some sort of paranoia in order for it to make sense to them.

    Any “compromise” they offer is defined in terms they understand. They are “compromising” by “allowing” us to continue our “hobby” by registering our firearms/magazines and submitting to a licensing process. In their minds this is a HUGE concession. In our minds this essentially defeats the entire usefulness of the right to keep and bear arms.

    It goes deeper. They do not comprehend that the act of submitting to the government over a basic right is unacceptable. Submission to government/authority on every level is so fundamental to their nature it is like a fish in water. Any glimpse of “not water” is very brief and incomprehensibly hostile. It is extremely scary to them. More government is less scary and more “compassionate” to them.

    They oppose us so vigorously and with so much violence because they see it as does a fish having their water removed. In their minds we have to be insane, incredibly stupid, or have evil intent. There is no other way to explain our actions and desires. Hence they are completely justified in killing us because if we had our way we would destroy their existence.

    As Greenfield says, “There is no bridging this gap.”

    I only see two possible outcomes and two ways to get there.

    The possible outcomes are:

    1. One side will dominate and force the other side into virtual extinction.
    2. The sides will find different geographical niches. This option would mean the collapse of the union of the individual states.

    The two ways to get there are:

    1. “Education.” The left has been working, successfully, on education for a century.
    2. Force. The left is close to reaching a critical mass and they now contemplate a victory through force.

    The force option will result in massive numbers of people being forcibly imprisoned and/or murdered.

    The big wild card in this deck is that the intended victims are arming up and training. The outcome is difficult to see. It depends both upon the order in which the cards show up and how the cards are played. For example had a “Newtown massacre” occurred before the Heller decision the course of history could have been drastically different. And so it is with our future.

    I hate to go all Godwin here but I’m seeing the final option being played by the anti-freedom people as being the Final Solution to the “freedom problem”. Let’s play our cards well.—Joe]

    Careful with the whole stats argument…thing

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     We like to toss out statistics that bolster the pro second amendment position.  That’s something of an oxymoron, really.  I’ve done my share of it, certainly.

    For example, there is the decline in our murder rate as gun ownership has gone up.  That’s nice and all, but I heard the other night that if our medical and response training and technology were that of the 1960s, our murder rate would be three times what it is today.  A person must actually die, you see, before it’s actually murder.  I haven’t looked it up (that’s your job – I’m not your servant) but it certainly sounded plausible.  If it’s true, then it means that there is in fact much more violence, but that yet more lives are being saved.  Gun owners couldn’t very well take credit for that.

    I’ve been harping on this stats issue, and probably pissing off some people.  It may seem like a subtle point to some, but if so it is a subtle point of crucial importance.

    Like Tam said, and I paraphrase; “Even if every other gun owner on the planet tried to kill someone last night; I didn’t, so leave me alone!”

    And that’s really it, isn’t it?  As the story goes, Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared for just one righteous person.

    The concept of a right is a purely moral concept, and if you can find where the Bill of Rights was to be dependent on statistics, I’d like you to show me.

    The communists hate the concept of unalienable rights, and will use stats as a way of changing the subject– of completely reframing the conversation.  I call them “tweakers” because all they care about is tweaking this and tweaking that, using the force of government ostensibly to get some predicted result in the statistics.

    That’s a communist premise, and it stinks right from the get go.  It puts us into disparate groups, each being ruled according to its status.  Statistical arguments alone, either for or against a “right” imply the non-existence of rights by ignoring them.  Conversely, if rights truly exist, stats have no bearing on them, and the discussion is purely about morals– right verses wrong.

    Our premise is, or should be, that justice demands the respect of all human rights, all the time, that rights belong only to individuals, just as criminal prosecutions are of individuals.  If you didn’t violate, or attempt to violate, someone else’s rights, you are to be held harmless in all regards.  If there were only one, that is the American principle.  If that ideal is not upheld, you have no rights and in that case your statistics won’t save you.

    The communists know exactly how this works, and you all know that they know it, and of course they hate the very concept of rights.  They will ignore it and fall back on statistics.  It’s a pretty clever, evil trick.  I’ll give them that, but what else have they got, being that they’re on the wrong side?

    That is where we (I hope) differ.  Not only is the moral rights concept all we need, it is all that can work in the long run to persuade good people.  If we rely on stats, we’re relying on the weather, essentially, because stats, like the weather, are not only very fickle but are subject to interpretation, while rights are eternal.

    Sure; bring out the human interest stories– we probably don’t do near enough of that, all told, but start them, and finish them, with the moral Declaration.  There’s not a Republican alive, and very few in the NRA, who can do this, so it’s up to us.

    The problem with experts

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    Plenty of research, plenty of information, zero mention of the second amendment or the core principles behind it;

    http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2013/01/with-megyn-kelly-on-fox-news.html#comments

    In other words, he didn’t make the case.  Instead he argued purely within The Enemy’s framework, proving who had all the control over the conversation.  Human rights, and the power relations between citizens and government, were apparently not even worth mentioning, yet those are THE points to be made.  Listen to their words very carefully.  Lott and Kelly both took the bait, hook, line and sinker, and ran with it.  It’s sad.  The term, “too clever by half” comes to mind.

    In fact, a fundamental human right is being impugned and attacked without being mentioned– as though it didn’t exist– as though infringements on that right aren’t specifically prohibited.  “Machineguns are already highly regulated, and aren’t used in crimes” as if that would matter– as if your rights depend on statistics– as if a certain set of infrigements to your rights is all we’re going to talk about.  It would be like discussing how to cook your mother for dinner, with no mention of the mother’s moral right to life or the legal prohibition against killing her and eating her.  Cannibals are arguing over the cannibal pot, and the audience is to see one chef as the more clever culinary tactician than the other.  No doubt many of us on both sides are cheering along like mindless sports fans at a game.  We are better than this.  It’s not a goddamned game.

    Quote of the day—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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    A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    [I have nothing to add.—Joe]