What’s the difference between the person who hits you and the person who ties your hands so that someone else can hit you? Whoever takes away your ability to defend yourself needs to be defended against.
Richard Roberts
Category Archives: Gun Rights
Quote of the day–Charles Schumer
We’re here to tell the NRA their nightmare is true!. We’re going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We’re going to beat guns into submission!
U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer
November 30, 1993
NBC Nightly News
I thought it would stop with knives
Brought to my attention by The Smallest Minority who has a somewhat different viewpoint. In an effort to “banish street crime“ they are banning certain types of clothes in England now. And I thought banning knives was so low the only way they could go was up. I was wrong:
The United Kingdom is the most-monitored nation in the world, with more than 4 million closed-circuit television cameras operating around the country. But culprits frequently evade Big Brother’s watchful eye by concealing their identities with the ubiquitous head wear.
“I think the fact you go around with these hats and these covers… I mean, it is a uniform, in a sense,” Prescott said last week.
As a result, a large shopping center in southeast England offered a new tact by implementing a “code of conduct” that includes a ban on the wearing of “hoodies.”
…
“I think it’s marvelous,” Bluewater shopper Jill Hopper said of the initiative this week.
…
Cropper, a doorman, and Thomas, a bar manager, both added that they would like to see a complete ban on caps and hoods in city centers.
What will it take for them to realize the problem isn’t that they don’t have enough laws but they have too many? If a few potential vicitims emptied a couple of 15 round magazines of jacketed hollowpoints into a gang of thugs attempting a violent crime two things would happen:
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Thugs would be less inclined commit crimes.
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There would be fewer repeat offenders.
But that won’t happen. I can’t imagine what will be next but I’m certain they will think of something else to ban.
Quote of the day–Dianne Feinstein
Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein
November 18, 1993
Associated Press
[A reminder of how far we have come in the past few years.]
Quote of the day–Joseph Biden
Banning guns is an idea whose time has come.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden
November 18, 1993
Associated Press
[A reminder of how far we have come in the last few years.]
Quote of the day–Charles E. Schumer
What is sad is that this Congress is in danger of becoming irrelevant. We are on the verge of ceding responsibility from the legislative branch to the judicial branch because we cannot stand up to [the] gun lobby. It is ironic and fitting that our inability to act in any way that satisfies the American people has spawned a series of lawsuits that could ultimately impose penalties on the gun industry far more severe than even the most ardent gun control supporters in Congress hope to achieve.
Charles E. Schumer
November 4, 1999
http://schumer.senate.gov/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/press_releases/PR00067.html
[Could this have been the turning point? The instant when we held the line and our attackers directed their attention to a perceived weakness in our flank?]
Quote of the day–Bill Clinton
I think, as I said, what Governor Florio did and what Governor Wilder did, I think will contribute to Americans facing this and trying to reconcile our absolute obligation under the Constitution to give people the right to handle a firearm responsibly and our obligation to try to preserve peace and keep these kids alive in our cities.
Bill Clinton
March 1, 1993
Remarks in discussion with National Service Volunteers
[Florio banned the sale and severely restricting the possession of semi-automatic rifles and pistols in New Jersey. Wilder implemented gun rationing in Virginia. Notice that Clinton talks about “giving a right“? If something is “given“ then it isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. And then just seven months later he talks about doing weapons sweeps. A reminder of how far we have come in recent years.]
Quote of the day–Bill Clinton
And we should — then every community in the country could then start doing major weapon sweeps and then destroying the weapons, not selling them.
Bill Clinton
October 1, 1993
[A reminder of how far we have come in the past few years.]
Quote of the day–Joseph P. Tartaro
Rep. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. John Chafee (R-RI) made their big anti-gun push after Terry and Florio lost. They are all going to be back in the 104th Congress and they have said nothing to indicate that they will not keep pushing. Schumer and Feinstein got only part of what they wanted. Chafee didn’t get his bill to ban all handguns in the last Congress, so he can be expected to file it again.
Schumer’s agenda still calls for passage of Brady II, which would require, among other things, that all handguns be licensed by the states along federal guidelines on a “needs” basis, that the licenses would have to be shown to buy handgun ammunition for the particular licensed guns, that the licenses would be renewable every two years at high cost, that people who own more than 20 firearms (rifles, shotguns and/or handguns) or 1,000 rounds of ammunition or one box of primers would have to pay for an expensive arsenal license and be subject to home inspection by the police. Brady II will be filed again, in part because Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who was re-elected also, called for its passage during his election campaign.
Hindsight from The New Gun Week Dec. 9, 1994
Nov. 8 Election Commentaries
by Joseph P. Tartaro
http://www.ccrkba.org/pub/rkba/hindsight/hs941209.txt
[A reminder of how far we have come in the last few years.]
Quote of the day–Bill Clinton
I think — you know, we can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles…
Bill Clinton
March 1, 1993
A reminder of how far we have come in the past few years.
As I have been saying
We have won the gun control debate at the political and intellectual level. There’s still lots of work to do but there are no serious obstacles in our path. The ‘enemy’ will continue to resist but the best they can do is mount a delaying action. Read this article for further thoughts along this line of thinking then let’s get to work and politically exterminate the bigots. Some excerpts:
When the Department of Justice issues a public statement that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun, when 35 states pass nondiscretionary carry permit laws, when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof declares that “gun control is dead,” you know the gun debate is over.
…
Here’s what gun control supporters must do to have any hope of being heard on the national level again:
Stop trying to destroy the gun culture. There are more than 250 million guns in public circulation in the U.S. They cannot be wished away. Even if the U.S. government banned gun ownership and stopped all gun manufacturing and importation, it would still need to confiscate all those weapons. Doing so would require wholesale violations of Fourth Amendment rights. The probability of getting rid of guns in America, therefore, is practically zero.
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The ultimate goal of the anti-gun movement precludes any compromise. Gun control advocates disingenuously ridicule gun owners for fighting regulation of guns similar to what they readily accept for cars. But drivers too would adamantly oppose controls if they were promoted by people who believed that automobiles are evil instruments no decent person would want to have and that anyone who does desire them must be warped sexually, intellectually, educationally, and ethically. Car registration and driver licensing would be adamantly opposed if advocated on the ground that cars should be made increasingly unavailable to ordinary people and eventually denied to all but the military, police, and the influence peddlers and other “special” individuals whom the military or police select to receive permits.
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Abigail Kohn clearly has come to a nuanced understanding of gun owners. That would be unremarkable for the majority of Americans who already understand gun owners (because they are, or are closely related to, gun owners). The fact that Kohn finds her understanding noteworthy is an indication of the ignorance that prevails among those who have a negative attitude toward guns, among whom I assume Kohn once counted herself. In that sense, her essay reads much like an article urging people not to fear the Jews because they don’t really drink the blood of Christian babies: Reading it makes one sad that it’s needed, but perhaps it will do some good.
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…shooters are unlikely to consider any form of gun control: They don’t need to consider it. For the most part, at least on the national level, they now hold the winning hand. Why tinker with success?
Quote of the day–James Bovard
Gun bans in response to high crime rates mean closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. The higher the crime rate, the less right the government has to restrict or impede people’s ability to defend themselves. According to gun ban advocates, government has a specific, concrete obligation to disarm each citizen, but only an abstract obligation to defend the citizen.
James Bovard
Lost Rights
ISBN 0-312-12333-7
Copyright 1994, 1995
Quote of the day–William Burroughs
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.
William Burroughs
(b. 1914)
U.S. author. “The War Universe,”
taped conversation (published in Grand Street, no. 37;
repr. in Painting and Guns, 1992, in a slightly different form.
Why Boomershoot?
Why guns and explosives? Why would people want to do this? Why do you do this? What motivates you to put all this work into something that you frequently lose money on?
I’ve had those questions asked of me many, many times. In public I almost always give answers that, while true, weren’t entirely complete. I’d give them this answer about evolution, human curiosity, action at a distance and creating a “magic kingdom“ for long range shooters. I’d give them the psychology of intermittent rewards. I would tell them about being able to get positive news coverage for gun owners because it was an unusal event with smart educated people from all over the country (really, it’s essentially from all over North America). Or I would be flippant and give them “Ragnar Benson’s“ quote about having a character defect if you didn’t share our delight with explosives. Sometimes I would tell people who I figured I could trust with the answer to ask me again in private. That was several years ago.
The politics of this country in regards to gun control have changed. The turning point has been reached and we have a winning endgame in front of us. There are still a lot of bigots out there that are trying to make gun owners into second class citizens and politicians that try to use fear of guns to increase their power. But Federally things have improved in the last five years. And even in some states like Washington where the Democrats got control of both houses and the governor’s mansion no further restrictions have been implemented recently. And there are means in place by which you can legally carry your loaded firearm for personal protection in nearly all states. Alaska now has “Vermont style” concealed carry laws and a few other states are debating it in the legislature. Even Illinois, a gun owners hell, is debating allowing people to carry concealed firearms. The war is being won. We need to keep up the pressure and push the bigots into political extinction rather than let them build up strength and attack us again but if we choose our battles carefully and don’t slack off the victory is ours if we want it. So, with that in mind I feel much more comfortable in revealing the main reason why I do this thing called Boomershoot. Because myself and the people I enable will likely not be required to utilize in a life and death situation what we learn from “boomershooting“. Hence it is unlikely that myself, my friends, and my family will be near the top of a list of people to “question“ in the near future after revealing the primary reason for Boomershoot:
If it ever becomes necessary to start shooting tyrants and “jack booted thugs“ in our country I want as many people on my side as possible. And I want them to have the equipment and the skills to be able to hit head and chest sized objects many hundreds of yards away.
Boomershoot is about a “magic kingdom” for shooters. The availability of this magic kingdom is a great motivator for people to acquire the skills and equipment necessary to accomplish the tasks that only a few years ago I thought could come within just a few years. Do you know how long it was from the time Germany passed their “Weapons Control Act” (our Gun Control Act of 1968 was based on this Nazi law) to when they started the initial, then Final Solution? The Weapons Control Act was passed in 1938. Just two to three years from “reasonable” gun laws with the “sporting purpose” test to this (from of a poster I purchased from JPFO):
In Rwanda the time from blissful unawareness of impending doom until the slaughter began was measured in minutes. There has never been a genocide without a prior implementation of gun control. It’s trivial to come up with 60 million dead due to gun control in the 20th century. Other estimates range as high as 200 million. And it is the prevention of those sort of genocides that is my primary motivation.
Quote of the day–Jeff Cooper
By now the British have fairly written into law the position that a personally owned firearm may only be acceptable for “sporting purposes.” Teddy Kennedy used this idea in the 1968 gun law, despite the fact that we in America are protected, at least theoretically, by the Second Amendment, which has nothing whatever to do with sport. Various sorts of legislators are still at it, and the BATF takes the notion of “legitimate sporting purpose” seriously, even though this would appear to be obviated by the supreme law of the land. This is a fight in which we all must continue to participate. Self-defense has nearly come to be a misdemeanor on the face of it in Britain, where the subject is conditioned with the belief that whatever happens he (or she) must not fight back. If the wimps prevail in the next election, you may be sure that America will then gain on Great Britain on the road to serfdom.
Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 4, No. 9
August 1996
[Note that this was said in ’96 and his concerns about Great Britain are now being realized. – Joe]
Quote of the day–Madeleine K. Albright
Of course, small arms are not the root cause of conflict in these and other regions. We cannot ease every tension or prevent every fight. But we can help make bad situations better by doing more to ensure that arms do not fall into the wrong hands. We can help governments that want help to keep dangerous weapons off their streets. And we can make it harder for the forces of extremism and hate to get the weapons they need to carry out their destructive designs.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright
Remarks on the Occasion of Receiving the
International Rescue Committee Freedom Award
New York, New York, November 10, 1998
[That philosophy is working well in the Sudan right now, huh? And it worked well for Germany when they passed the Weapons Control Act of 1938 keeping guns out of the hands Jews. –Joe]
Airport security is still a joke
Another report is soon to be out and the results are as expected:
WASHINGTON — Screening at U.S. airports is no better now than before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who was briefed Friday about an investigation conducted by the Government Accountability Office and one by the Homeland Security Department.
“A lot of people will be shocked at the billions of dollars we’ve spent and the results they’re going to see,” said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House aviation subcommittee.
Improving the ability to find dangerous materials has been a top goal of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration since it took over the security task at about 450 airports in early 2002. More than 45,000 people were hired.
Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio, the ranking Democrat on the aviation subcommittee, also was briefed on the two reports, which are to be released within a month.
…
The TSA, which did not immediately return telephone calls Friday seeking comment, has said in the past that the tests used to measure screener performance are much more rigorous than they were before the Sept. 11 hijackings.
Since then, screeners have been much more aggressive about seizing prohibited items. Each month, screeners confiscate about a half-million objects from passengers, including, on average, 160,000 knives, 2,000 box cutters and 70 guns.
Although they will claim they just need more money for training and better equipment the real problem is that it’s an unsolvable problem from this approach. There are better solutions available but they are politically unacceptable.
Who’s insane?
At the NRA convention last week one news organization managed to take a few Ted Nugent quotes out of context and make him sound a bit on the extreme side:
HOUSTON (AP) – With an assault weapon in each hand, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent urged National Rifle Association members to be “hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense.”
Speaking at the NRA’s annual convention Saturday, Nugent said each NRA member should try to enroll 10 new members over the next year and associate only with other members.
“Let’s next year sit here and say, ‘Holy smokes, the NRA has 40 million members now,'” he said. “No one is allowed at our barbecues unless they are an NRA member. Do that in your life.”
Nugent sang and played a guitar painted with red and white stripes for the crowd at Houston’s downtown convention center.
He drew the most cheers when he told gun owners they should never give up their right to bear arms and should use their guns to protect themselves if needed.
“Remember the Alamo! Shoot ’em!” he screamed to applause. “To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want ’em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot ’em.”
Of course almost every gun rights activist knows the NRA is the gun owners organization most likely to hand over our rights on a silver platter to victim disarmament crowd and cannot considered radical. And even though I disagree with the philosophy of only associating with NRA members the world would be a safer and better place if the anti-freedom biogots of the world like Henry Boitel were in the mental wards rather than the Ted Nugents as Henry suggests would be appropriate.
Quote of the day– Samuel Adams
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of The United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
Samuel Adams
Right to murder bill
Florida’s bill, soon to become law, which explicitly says you may use deadly force to defend yourself from serious injury or death is being called a “right to murder” bill by the anti-freedom people:
“It’s literally mind-boggling in its audacity,” said Arthur Hayhoe of Wesley Chapel, president of the Florida Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “If I make a mistake, all I have to do is repeat the NRA’s magic words: “I feel threatened.’ ” I call this the “right-to-murder’ bill.”
I suspect the real problem is that Mr. Hayhoe is feeling threatened. After this law has been in effect for a couple of years and the crime statistics come in he will loose all traction with the population at large. He will be like the crazy guy predicting the end of the world on the street corner. No one will pay him any attention and that will be a very uncomfortable position to be in. And of course after making these crazy predictions of the end of the world and being proved wrong he will make even more predictions and push his crazy, disproven viewpoint even more. It must really suck to be an anti-freedom fighter these days.