Banning certain types of firearms steps on the Second Amendment. Law abiding gun owners routinely use these firearms for self-defense or sporting. Such an unconstitutional act cannot stand.
Patrick Morrisey
West Virginia attorney general
August 29, 2017
Attorneys General From 21 States Ask Supreme Court to Hear Suit Against Maryland’s Assault Weapons Ban
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
There is little comfort—and there ought to be little comfort—in being told that your own death is worth the benefits that accrue to other people. In the sixth century, the Emperor Justinian presided over the compilation of the Digest of Roman Law, a core precept of which was, “that which someone does for the safety of his body, let it be regarded as having been done legally.” This notion was echoed by a host of British philosophers and legal scholars of the 17th and 18th centuries. In his Treatise, John Locke cast self-defense as a “part of the law of nature,” and insisted that it must not be “denied the community, even against the king himself.” William Blackstone concurred, holding that the right to protect one’s life and person was “justly called the primary law of nature” and cannot be “taken away by the law of society.” In most cases, Blackstone submitted, the courts were sufficient to resolve disputes between citizens. In the case of physical violence, however, he argued that it was tyrannical to deprive a man of the means “immediately to oppose one violence with another.”
Charles C.W. Cooke
August 9, 2017
Brits Vs. Guns
[I am of the opinion that a society which does not recognize the right of self-defense is in the process of committing suicide. They are mentally ill and a threat to themselves and others.—Joe]
Each month when I write about our right to keep and bear arms, it’s difficult to predict what the state of play will look like by the time this article hits your mailbox. This is especially so when it comes to the dizzying array of fake news from an opposition that is not only increasingly desperate but also increasingly detached from reality.
This time, however, The Washington Post made it easy. In July, the Post published a story that is so ridiculous, so outlandish in its shading of the truth, that it may very well take its place alongside Rolling Stone’s timelessly ludicrous “expose” on America’s five most dangerous guns (i.e., pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, and derringers). The story ran under the headline: “Gun-control advocates pushed back a tough year at the state level, and they’ll take the win.” The basic premise of the Post article is that gun control is “winning” because it’s not losing as badly as it conceivably could.
That’s right. According to The Washington Post—maybe America’s second-most prominent nationwide newspaper—“gun control” is “winning” at the state level in 2017.
…
The Post article glosses over the fact that the ratio of pro to anti-gun bills actually signed into law at press time was 20:1. Only in the modern era of fake news running amok would that ratio result in the clear loser proclaiming victory and the media reporting it as true.
Chris Cox
August 25, 2017
Gun Control Advocates, Cheered on by the Media, Claim Victory in Losing
[This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. We’ve know for a long time anti-gun people can’t even do numbers, let alone arithmetic.—Joe]
Firearms made possible the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Charles Cobb’s excellent book, “This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible” describes how pacifist community organizers from the North learned to accept the armed protection of their black, rural communities.
The Deacons for Defense and Justice was an armed community defense organization, founded in 1965. With .38 Special revolvers and M1 carbines, they deterred terrorism in the “Klan country” region of Louisiana and Mississippi. When Dr. King led the “Meredith March against Fear” for voter registration in Mississippi, the Deacons provided armed security.
David Kopel and Joseph Greenle
August 22, 2017
The racist origin of gun control laws
[See also The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement and Negros with Guns. These books should be required reading in high schools.—Joe]
It’s now got a name: Trump Sleep, the opposite of what President Trump’s election has done to former political liberals: Trump Psychosis. The left is literally sawing holes in reality, inventing collusions where they don’t exist, setting things on fire, displaying an inability to let go of past events…too many are literally losing their grip on reality, and acting out.
On the right we are seeing almost the opposite. Instead of forging ahead with all deliberate speed, and accomplishing what’s possible, with such a tantalizing array of low-hanging fruit, former conservatives are withstanding outrageous assaults and refusing to fight back, file charges, sue, damn the torpedoes, forge ahead and enact legislation. It’s a deadly combination for survival of the nation, let alone preservation of firearms ownership.
JPFO Bill of Rights Sentinel
Vol 1, No 9, page 2
July 2017
Trump Psychosis vs. Trump Sleep Now is NOT the Time for Gunowners to RELAX!
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
We’re done arguing about gun safety – and we’re going to fight for the common-sense reforms the overwhelming majority of Americans want.
Elizabeth Warren
U.S. Senator
August 12, 2017
Read the massive speech Elizabeth Warren gave ripping moderate Democrats at Netroots Nation
[We’ve been done arguing for years. I’ve been voting, training new shooters, buying guns and ammo, getting training, practicing, and competing. Your move Senator.—Joe]
It’s long past time we renew the assault weapons ban in this country. It is in the best interest of keeping all of us safe.
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris
Tweeted on August 10, 2017
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
The left is agitating for a fight. They don’t care how bad it gets. Keep poking the bear long enough and you will get a fight. They want the fight to serve as the catalyst for the destruction of all civil rights expressed in the Constitution, and granted by God under Natural Law. Sickening how ignorant they are, mere “useful idiots”. They will be the ones screaming the loudest about their “rights”when they are being walked out to the execution wall.
Wil Radford
August 17, 2017
Comment to NJ Dems Have 20 Gun Control Bills Lined Up If Murphy Becomes Governor
[The USSR, Italy, Germany, China, and Cambodia all come to mind. When the “intellectuals” who pushed for the political change realized things weren’t turning out as they planned and started complaining the tyrants in power sent them to the gulags, firing squads, camps, and killing fields. This was because these people had some level of influence and hence were a threat to the tyrant’s power.
Those that advocate for the elimination of individual rights believe the conditions they bring about will only be hostile to their political foes and are often surprised when those very conditions they imagined are imposed upon them.
The proper role of government is to protect human rights. The further it strays from that domain the higher the risk of enabling extreme evil.
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.—Joe]
Stephen Yearwood got creative with the wording of the Second Amendment and in a article titled “Gun Control: How To Solve The Second Amendment” says:
In my lifetime ‘gun control’ has become as explosive as any political issue in this country can be. To my mind, all we need to do to settle that issue once and for all is to read the Second Amendment and do what it says.
He then parses nearly all the words careful, throws up and knocks down and knocks down four straw men, and concludes the Second Amendment means the states can have militias. He conveniently ignores the word “people” and that all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices agreed it guarantees an individual right.
If he wants to “Solve the Second Amendment” I suggest he make an appointment with me and start here. If he is successful he can work his way out from there. If not, well… I have lots of land and earth moving equipment.
The second amendment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our first amendment, the freedom of speech, and also to defend ourselves against our own government.
Kim Rhode
August 10, 2017
Gold Medal Shooter Takes Aim at Gun Control Supporters
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Such a massive punishment of decent arms holders is unacceptable, because banning legally-held weapons has no connection with the fight against terrorism.
This is not only a nonsensical decision once again undermining people’s trust in the EU, but implementing the directive could also have a negative impact on the internal security of the Czech Republic, because a large number of weapons could move to the black market.
Milan Chovanec
Interior Minister of The Czech Republic
Czechs take legal action over EU rules on gun control
[It’s also unacceptable because it infringes upon a natural right, but that line of reasoning has no weight on those the message was intended for. If you want to persuade someone you need to be able to speak in a language they understand. Individual rights are an alien concept to socialist politicians.—Joe]
Over the past 30 years, the right to bear arms has enjoyed a renaissance in the United States, to the extent that the latest trend is for states to abolish permit requirements completely. Moreover, despite constant attempts to convince them to do so, Americans do not seem to see terrorism as a reason to disarm. On the contrary: When a soft target is hit, the numbers of gun sales and carry permit applications soar. This is a country in which self-reliance is still cherished.
Charles C.W. Cooke
August 9, 2017
Brits Vs. Guns
[Renaissance, yes. But our gains will not be secure until all gun serial numbers are out of the reach of the government (or guns do not have serial numbers) and people are being prosecuted for conspiring to infringe upon our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]
NRA is a nonpartisan organization and we continue to endorse members of any party who work to defend American gun owners. As the current marginalized national Democratic Party grapples with its agenda moving forward, it would do well to learn from its past and curtail their attacks on the Second Amendment. Wise Democratic leaders will recognize that they have been here before and that abandoning their anti-gun ambitions is an important component of their path back to power. However, with Democratic House members still offering microstamping and gun turn-in bills, there is little evidence of such wisdom.
NRA-ILA
August 11, 2017
Repudiated at the Polls, National Democrats Continue to Push Gun Control
[I believe it is beyond the capacity of the majority of Democrats to do this. There are too many socialists and communists who know their path to power and tyranny would be blocked by firearms in the hands of individual citizens.—Joe]
First and foremost, the Second Amendment says that the “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” I believe that the “and bear arms” part means the right to carry in public, and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in Moore v. Maidgan.
The Ninth Circuit came to the opposite conclusion, but keep in mind that the Ninth Circuit is the Captain Peter “Wrongway” Peachfuzz of the judiciary. If you want to know what the constitution really means when it comes to civil liberties, take any decision by the Ninth and do exactly the opposite.
J. KB
August 9, 2017
CCW Appeal to Authority
[Via email from Mike B.
I have heard it said that the Ninth is the most overturned circuit in the country. That the Ninth is in California should come as no surprise.—Joe]
They say we need a “conversation” on guns in America. A common sub-argument is that pro-gun people need to stop saying “No” every time those who prefer a disarmed populace suggest more restrictions on the honest folks who didn’t kill any innocents in Newton.
We already had that conversation.
We had it in 1791, and settled the issue with the second amendment to the Constitution protecting a preexisting right to keep and bear arms. Gun banners being the whack-a-moles of civil rights violation, we had that conversation several times: Cruikshank and Presser come to mind.
More recently, we again had that conversation in 2008, when the Supreme Court pointed out that yes, the second amendment really does protect an individual right to keep and bear arms in Heller.
Chi-town pols didn’t like that, so we had the conversation yet again in 2010. The Supreme Court again pointed out that arms really are a right, and that it really is an individual right, in McDonald.
Victim disarmers are slow learners, forever doomed to riding the short bus through life, so we had the conversation yet-a-frickin’-gain in 2012: Moore v. Madigan, in which a federal judge had to lecture the poor, cognitively-challenged pols of Illinois (who have trouble even finding the short bus) in small words that, WHACK-upside the head “Pay attention, dipsticks; we told you it’s a right of the individual people, so stop screwing with it.”
And here we are: Once more, idiots who shouldn’t be on the streets without a guardian to wipe the drool off their faces, change their diapers, and keep them out of the road, are calling for the “conversation”. Like whiny children pestering exasperated parents over and over and over and over for a coveted-but-terribly-bad-for-you present, they keep ignoring the settled issue. “But China does it. What can’t we make all the citizens helpless, too?” they pontificate petulantly. (Yeah, China does it. That’s why their lunatic had to cut up those 22 Chinese schoolchildren with a knife a few days before Newton. Guns bans sure solved China’s violence problems.)
We had that conversation, and explained in words that anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size should have been able to comprehend: “the security of a free state”, the right to life and liberty, self defense. At this point, anyone who doesn’t—or won’t—get it probably falls into one or more of three categories:
You might abbreviate those as morons, criminals, and traitors. None of which are really interested in reasoned conversation.
Carl Bussjaeger
July 14, 2017
We Had That Conversation
[I hinted at this in the post, Been there. Done that. Let’s move on. That was almost exactly five years ago. Our opponents are ignorant, stupid, and/or evil.—Joe]
Gun control has always been a weapon of the elite ruling classes to keep the masses in a state of subjugation. When all you have is the vote, you don’t really have much. Elites can manipulate the masses into voting the way elites want them to vote, or can outright manipulate the system (see Venezuela). An armed population will always have an actual say in how things are run.
Sebastian
August 8, 2017
You Don’t Say: Gun Control Disarms Poor
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Every time I learn of another abused, desperately scared woman who uses a firearm effectively to defend her life and her children’s lives, I cannot help but wonder how the so-called “gun safety advocates” would have wanted things to turn out. Of course, they almost never admit it publicly, but most of them want a world without guns. For these at-risk women, it means a world without protection.
It’s not about gun safety for these anti-gun advocates. That is the NRA’s domain. Gun-ban advocates refuse to accept or acknowledge the simple and unavoidable fact that if their dangerous dream were ever realized, it would leave the weak helpless to the desires of the strong. The rules of the Stone Age would dominate once again.
Darren LaSorte
August 3, 2017
Would Gun-Banners Rather Nicole Carney Had Been Murdered?
[To answer the question of the title of the article, in a word, yes. Anti-gun people do not respect the rights of individuals. To them, the ”needs” of the many outweigh the rights of the few. It’s the old meme about two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner and finding a well armed sheep.
I have found examples of firearm empowered women are one of the most effective debate tools we have in our “toolset”. If they are anti-gun then they are, indirectly, anti-women. They may claim men need to be taught to “respect women” or “not to rape”. But the inescapable truth is that some men are very poor students and refuse to adhere to their lessons. Efficient and effective instruction is required and the women who are the most efficient and effective instructors at “teaching men not to rape” use well placed jacketed hollow points*.—Joe]
Via son-in-law Jacob:
Markley’s Law, without being called that, makes an appearance.
The close surveillance of gun owners and householders comports with the police tradition of keeping close tabs on many private activities. For example, the nation’s official year-end police report includes statistics like ‘Background and Motives for Girls’ Sexual Misconduct’. The police recorded 9,402 such incidents in 1985, and determined that 37.4 per cent of the girls had been seduced, and the rest had sex ‘voluntarily’. The two leading reasons for having sex voluntarily were ‘out of curiosity’ for 19.6 per cent, and ‘liked particular boy’, for 18.1 per cent. The fact that police keep records on sex is simply a reflection of their keeping an eye on everything, including guns. Every person is the subject of a police dossier.
David B. Kopel
1993
Japanese Gun Control
[Japan has extremely low rates of crimes committed using a gun. And, as you can guess from the details about sexual conduct of girls, they also have a police state. They visit every home twice a year. The confession rate of criminal suspects is 95%. And the police routinely engage in torture or illegal treatment.
If someone suggests we should implement Japanese type gun control in the U.S. let them know they can’t have the same “success” as Japan without a police state to back it up. Implementing a police state here would be “challenging”.—Joe]
Gun ownership is an inherently political act. In fact, it’s a transformative political act. The more Americans who own guns, the safer our Constitutional republic will be. Without a shot fired.
Robert Farago
July 20, 2017
The Trace: ‘The NRA’s Campaign of Cultural Warfare is Working’
[Take a new shooter to the range, give them a great experience and save the republic.—Joe]