Amen brother, and pass the ammunition. But in my state 30 round mags are illegal. so I will have to do with 15 round mags. What a pain in the ass.
By William A. Levinson
Senator Dianne Feinstein's latest divide-and-conquer attack on the Second Amendment has made even Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) a sucker for the argument that private citizens do not need high-capacity magazines. These include not only 30-round rifle magazines, but 17-round magazines for handguns like the Glock.
Why does anybody need a high capacity magazine? If Senator Manchin were to educate himself by, for example, attending Front Sight's four-day defensive handgun class, he would learn the two primary answers:
(1) Failure to stop the aggressor, and
(2) Multiple aggressors
Failure to Stop
The classic .38 caliber revolver, with a capacity of six rounds, was the standard sidearm of the United States Army during the Moro insurrection in the Philippines. The Army found at least one dead Army officer with an empty sidearm, and his head split open by a machete or similar weapon. They also found the soldier's killer, who had finally bled to death. Six rounds of .38 were therefore not enough to convince even one determined attacker.
Police instructor Masaad Ayoob's The Truth About Self Protection adds an incident in which a female police officer saw a crazed gunman murder a woman, who then shot her as well before she could do anything. "She lay helpless as she watched a neighbor empty a .22 rifle into the killer; the neighbor then had to club the madman down with the empty rifle, again and again, before he succumbed."
Ayoob does not report the size of the .22's magazine, but the Moro insurrection exemplifies why even a 30-round rifle clip might not be enough to stop a crazed and determined attacker, such as one hopped up on a drug like PCP. "He had 32 Krag balls through him and was only stopped by the 33rd bullet -- a Colt .45 slug through both ears." The Krag-Jorgensen's 30-caliber cartridge was far more powerful than the .22 in Ayoob's example, but not sufficiently powerful to civilize this particular attacker even when fired in mass.
Colonel Jeff Cooper's To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truthadds the case of a man who was prosecuted for shooting his attacker eight times with a .380 automatic pistol. The prosecutor admitted that the dead man had been the aggressor, but argued that the shooter had taken the law into his own hands by continuing to shoot an adversary who had "obviously" been disabled. Cooper, whom the defense called as an expert witness, cited a suicide in which "the deceased shot himself amidships four times with a .380 Webley. Presumably the first three hits did not convince him."
The .45-caliber Automatic Colt Pistol was the Army's specific solution to the "failure to stop" problem in the Philippines. A single hit from a .45 caliber bullet will (per Cooper) stop the aggressor 95 percent of the time. This does not mean, however, that 7 or 8 rounds are enough for all conceivable defensive scenarios. Front Sight teaches students to change magazines in (ideally) less than two seconds. The other issue that Senator Manchin fails to recognize is that of multiple attackers.
Gang Bangers and the Knockout Game
Front Sight's 4-day defensive handgun class included scenarios with multiple aggressors, including four gang bangers on a street and five or more in a house (along with innocent bystanders). Front Sight's standard doctrine is to fire a controlled pair into an aggressor's thoracic cavity and, in the event of failure to stop, another into his cranio-ocular cavity to take out his central nervous system.
In the street gang situation, though, one shot is fired into each gang member due to the need to economize on both time and ammunition; only those that don't go down (or flee) then get "seconds." You might conceivably stop four gang members with seven or eight rounds of .45 ACP; that is what the cartridge was designed to do. A small man or woman who can handle only a 9 mm comfortably might not be able to end the incident even with 15 or 17 rounds, unless he or she can make the far more difficult head shots. It is particularly telling that most police officers carry either .45s or high-capacity 9 mm sidearms.
Then there is the knockout game, in which a street gang selects a victim at random, knocks him or her down, and then maybe beats him or her to a pulp. Here is an example that involved six individuals; only one struck a blow, but the others seemed to approve. Although the Web page and the book it promotes focuses on black racial violence, there is similar Caucasian-on-black crime, such as that perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan. In any event, if there are six (or more) bad guys, you are obviously going to need far more than six bullets.
The anti-Second Amendment camp may argue that the teacher who was assaulted in this video would not have had time to defend himself with a firearm or anything else, because his attacker hit him by surprise. (While use of a firearm in response to a fist might normally be considered excessive force, multiple aggressors, even unarmed ones, create a disparity of force situation that might indeed justify a lethal response. The same applies if a single unarmed aggressor is much younger, bigger, and/or stronger than the victim, e.g. a teenage punk against a senior citizen or woman.) This is where the five conditions of mental awareness, as taught by Front Sight, come into play.
States of Mental Awareness
The knockout game victim was in what Front Sight calls Condition White, which means he was not paying attention to his surroundings. Front Sight recommends living in Condition Yellow. This does not mean a state of paranoia but it includes, for example, not getting too close to alleys or other positions from which you can be ambushed. It also means looking around you when you are handling your car keys in a parking lot. Violent criminals often avoid people who are clearly alert; they, like all predators in the animal kingdom, don't want to take a chance with anybody or anything that might hurt them.
Condition Orange means you have identified a potential threat. Had the teacher been in Condition Yellow, he would have seen the six young males in time to recognize them as such. Condition Orange can prevent a confrontation before it even becomes a confrontation. You don't get hurt, and you don't have to explain to the police why you hurt somebody else.
Condition Red means a known threat is in front of you. In the case of an imminent "knockout game," you have laid out in your mind how you are going to put the gang bangers down if they escalate to Condition Black by initiating hostilities.
Senator Feinstein's latest attack on the Second Amendment relies entirely on public ignorance of firearms and their legitimate uses, and this ignorance extends even to many people who support the principles of the Second Amendment. Education is the cure for ignorance and Front Sight, along with Gunsite (founded by Colonel Cooper) offers some of the best.
William A. Levinson, P.E. is the author of several books on business management including content on organizational psychology, as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Feinstein's New Gun-Ban Bill Likely to be Introduced January 22
Rights stealing scum bag assholes. Everyone that cashes a government paycheck. Maybe the anarchists are right. No government is best. Hell, limited government doesn't work here anymore because those in it will not let it.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)--author of the federal "assault weapon" and "large" ammunition magazine ban of 1994-2004--has said for weeks that she will soon introduce an even more restrictive bill. Leaders in the U.S. Senate have stated that January 22 will be the first day on which new Senate legislation can be proposed, so that is the most likely date for the new, sweeping legislation to be introduced.
On Dec. 17th, Feinstein said, "I have been working with my staff for over a year on this legislation" and "It will be carefully focused." Indicating the depth of her research on the issue, she said on Dec. 21st that she had personally looked at pictures of guns in 1993, and again in 2012.
According to a Dec. 27th posting on Sen. Feinstein's website and a draft of the bill obtained by NRA-ILA, the new ban would, among other things, adopt new definitions of "assault weapon" that would affect a much larger variety of firearms, require current owners of such firearms to register them with the federal government under the National Firearms Act, and require forfeiture of the firearms upon the deaths of their current owners. Some of the changes in Feinstein's new bill are as follows:
* Reduces, from two to one, the number of permitted external features on various firearms. The 1994 ban permitted various firearms to be manufactured only if they were assembled with no more than one feature listed in the law. Feinstein's new bill would prohibit the manufacture of the same firearms with even one of the features.
* Adopts new lists of prohibited external features. For example, whereas the 1994 ban applied to a rifle or shotgun the "pistol grip" of which "protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon," the new bill would drastically expand the definition to include any "grip . . . or any other characteristic that can function as a grip." Also, the new bill adds "forward grip" to the list of prohibiting features for rifles, defining it as "a grip located forward of the trigger that functions as a pistol grip." Read literally and in conjunction with the reduction from two features to one, the new language would apply to every detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifle. At a minimum, it would, for example, ban all models of the AR-15, even those developed for compliance with California's highly restrictive ban.
* Carries hyperbole further than the 1994 ban. Feinstein's 1994 ban listed "grenade launcher" as one of the prohibiting features for rifles. Her 2013 bill goes even further into the ridiculous, by also listing "rocket launcher." Such devices are restricted under the National Firearms Act and, obviously, are not standard components of the firearms Feinstein wants to ban. Perhaps a subsequent Feinstein bill will add "nuclear bomb," "particle beam weapon," or something else equally far-fetched to the features list.
* Expands the definition of "assault weapon" by including:
--Three very popular rifles: The M1 Carbine (introduced in 1941 and for many years sold by the federal government to individuals involved in marksmanship competition), a model of the Ruger Mini-14, and most or all models of the SKS.
--Any "semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds," except for tubular-magazine .22s.
--Any "semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that has an overall length of less than 30 inches," any "semiautomatic handgun with a fixed magazine that has the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds," and any semi-automatic handgun that has a threaded barrel.
* Requires owners of existing "assault weapons" to register them with the federal government under the National Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA imposes a $200 transfer tax per firearm, and requires an owner to submit photographs and fingerprints to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), to inform the BATFE of the address where the firearm will be kept, and to obtain the BATFE's permission to transport the firearm across state lines.
* Prohibits the transfer of "assault weapons." Owners of other firearms, including those covered by the NFA, are permitted to sell them or pass them to heirs. However, under Feinstein's new bill, "assault weapons" would remain with their current owners until their deaths, at which point they would be forfeited to the government.
* Prohibits the domestic manufacture and the importation of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The 1994 ban allowed the importation of such magazines that were manufactured before the ban took effect. Whereas the 1994 ban protected gun owners from errant prosecution by making the government prove when a magazine was made, the new ban includes no such protection. The new ban also requires firearm dealers to certify the date of manufacture of any >10-round magazine sold, a virtually impossible task, given that virtually no magazines are stamped with their date of manufacture.
* Targets handguns in defiance of the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects the right to have handguns for self-defense, in large part on the basis of the fact handguns are the type of firearm "overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose." Semi-automatic pistols, which are the most popular handguns today, are designed to use detachable magazines, and the magazines "overwhelmingly chosen" by Americans for self-defense are those that hold more than 10 rounds. Additionally, Feinstein's list of nearly 1,000 firearms exempted by name (see next paragraph) contains not a single handgun. Sen. Feinstein advocated banning handguns before being elected to the Senate, though she carried a handgun for her own personal protection.
* Contains a larger piece of window dressing than the 1994 ban. Whereas the 1994 ban included a list of approximately 600 rifles and shotguns exempted from the ban by name, the new bill's list is increased to nearly 1,000 rifles and shotguns. But most of the guns on the list either wouldn’t be banned in the first place, or would already be exempted by other provisions. On the other hand, the list inevitably misses every model of rifle and shotgun that wasn’t being manufactured or imported in the years covered by the reference books Sen. Feinstein’s staff consulted. That means an unknown number of absolutely conventional semi-auto rifles and shotguns, many of them out of production for decades, would be banned under the draft bill.
The Department of Justice study: On her website, Feinstein claims that a study for the DOJ found that the 1994 ban resulted in a 6.7 percent decrease in murders. To the contrary, this is what the study said: "At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995. . . . However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban. Nor can we rule out effects of other features of the 1994 Crime Act or a host of state and local initiatives that took place simultaneously."
"Assault weapon" numbers and murder trends: From the imposition of Feinstein's "assault weapon" ban (Sept. 13, 1994) through the present, the number of "assault weapons" has risen dramatically. For example, the most common firearm that Feinstein considers an "assault weapon" is the AR-15 rifle, the manufacturing numbers of which can be gleaned from the BATFE's firearm manufacturer reports, available here. From 1995 through 2011, the number of AR-15s--all models of which Feinstein's new bill defines as "assault weapons"--rose by over 2.5 million. During the same period, the nation's murder rate fell 48 percent, to a 48-year low. According to the FBI, 8.5 times as many people are murdered with knives, blunt objects and bare hands, as with rifles of any type.
Traces: Feinstein makes several claims premised on firearm traces, hoping to convince people that her 1994 ban reduced the (already infrequent) use of "assault weapons" in crime. However, traces do not indicate how often any type of gun is used in crime. As the Congressional Research Service and the BATFE have explained, not all firearms that are traced have been used in crime, and not all firearms used in crime are traced. Whether a trace occurs depends on whether a law enforcement agency requests that a trace be conducted. Given that existing "assault weapons" were exempted from the 1994 ban and new "assault weapons" continued to be made while the ban was in effect, any reduction in the percentage of traces accounted for by "assault weapons" during the ban, would be attributable to law enforcement agencies losing interest in tracing the firearms, or law enforcement agencies increasing their requests for traces on other types of firearms, as urged by the BATFE for more than a decade.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)--author of the federal "assault weapon" and "large" ammunition magazine ban of 1994-2004--has said for weeks that she will soon introduce an even more restrictive bill. Leaders in the U.S. Senate have stated that January 22 will be the first day on which new Senate legislation can be proposed, so that is the most likely date for the new, sweeping legislation to be introduced.
On Dec. 17th, Feinstein said, "I have been working with my staff for over a year on this legislation" and "It will be carefully focused." Indicating the depth of her research on the issue, she said on Dec. 21st that she had personally looked at pictures of guns in 1993, and again in 2012.
According to a Dec. 27th posting on Sen. Feinstein's website and a draft of the bill obtained by NRA-ILA, the new ban would, among other things, adopt new definitions of "assault weapon" that would affect a much larger variety of firearms, require current owners of such firearms to register them with the federal government under the National Firearms Act, and require forfeiture of the firearms upon the deaths of their current owners. Some of the changes in Feinstein's new bill are as follows:
* Reduces, from two to one, the number of permitted external features on various firearms. The 1994 ban permitted various firearms to be manufactured only if they were assembled with no more than one feature listed in the law. Feinstein's new bill would prohibit the manufacture of the same firearms with even one of the features.
* Adopts new lists of prohibited external features. For example, whereas the 1994 ban applied to a rifle or shotgun the "pistol grip" of which "protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon," the new bill would drastically expand the definition to include any "grip . . . or any other characteristic that can function as a grip." Also, the new bill adds "forward grip" to the list of prohibiting features for rifles, defining it as "a grip located forward of the trigger that functions as a pistol grip." Read literally and in conjunction with the reduction from two features to one, the new language would apply to every detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifle. At a minimum, it would, for example, ban all models of the AR-15, even those developed for compliance with California's highly restrictive ban.
* Carries hyperbole further than the 1994 ban. Feinstein's 1994 ban listed "grenade launcher" as one of the prohibiting features for rifles. Her 2013 bill goes even further into the ridiculous, by also listing "rocket launcher." Such devices are restricted under the National Firearms Act and, obviously, are not standard components of the firearms Feinstein wants to ban. Perhaps a subsequent Feinstein bill will add "nuclear bomb," "particle beam weapon," or something else equally far-fetched to the features list.
* Expands the definition of "assault weapon" by including:
--Three very popular rifles: The M1 Carbine (introduced in 1941 and for many years sold by the federal government to individuals involved in marksmanship competition), a model of the Ruger Mini-14, and most or all models of the SKS.
--Any "semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds," except for tubular-magazine .22s.
--Any "semiautomatic, centerfire, or rimfire rifle that has an overall length of less than 30 inches," any "semiautomatic handgun with a fixed magazine that has the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds," and any semi-automatic handgun that has a threaded barrel.
* Requires owners of existing "assault weapons" to register them with the federal government under the National Firearms Act (NFA). The NFA imposes a $200 transfer tax per firearm, and requires an owner to submit photographs and fingerprints to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), to inform the BATFE of the address where the firearm will be kept, and to obtain the BATFE's permission to transport the firearm across state lines.
* Prohibits the transfer of "assault weapons." Owners of other firearms, including those covered by the NFA, are permitted to sell them or pass them to heirs. However, under Feinstein's new bill, "assault weapons" would remain with their current owners until their deaths, at which point they would be forfeited to the government.
* Prohibits the domestic manufacture and the importation of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The 1994 ban allowed the importation of such magazines that were manufactured before the ban took effect. Whereas the 1994 ban protected gun owners from errant prosecution by making the government prove when a magazine was made, the new ban includes no such protection. The new ban also requires firearm dealers to certify the date of manufacture of any >10-round magazine sold, a virtually impossible task, given that virtually no magazines are stamped with their date of manufacture.
* Targets handguns in defiance of the Supreme Court. The Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects the right to have handguns for self-defense, in large part on the basis of the fact handguns are the type of firearm "overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose." Semi-automatic pistols, which are the most popular handguns today, are designed to use detachable magazines, and the magazines "overwhelmingly chosen" by Americans for self-defense are those that hold more than 10 rounds. Additionally, Feinstein's list of nearly 1,000 firearms exempted by name (see next paragraph) contains not a single handgun. Sen. Feinstein advocated banning handguns before being elected to the Senate, though she carried a handgun for her own personal protection.
* Contains a larger piece of window dressing than the 1994 ban. Whereas the 1994 ban included a list of approximately 600 rifles and shotguns exempted from the ban by name, the new bill's list is increased to nearly 1,000 rifles and shotguns. But most of the guns on the list either wouldn’t be banned in the first place, or would already be exempted by other provisions. On the other hand, the list inevitably misses every model of rifle and shotgun that wasn’t being manufactured or imported in the years covered by the reference books Sen. Feinstein’s staff consulted. That means an unknown number of absolutely conventional semi-auto rifles and shotguns, many of them out of production for decades, would be banned under the draft bill.
The Department of Justice study: On her website, Feinstein claims that a study for the DOJ found that the 1994 ban resulted in a 6.7 percent decrease in murders. To the contrary, this is what the study said: "At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995. . . . However, with only one year of post-ban data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true effect of the ban. Nor can we rule out effects of other features of the 1994 Crime Act or a host of state and local initiatives that took place simultaneously."
"Assault weapon" numbers and murder trends: From the imposition of Feinstein's "assault weapon" ban (Sept. 13, 1994) through the present, the number of "assault weapons" has risen dramatically. For example, the most common firearm that Feinstein considers an "assault weapon" is the AR-15 rifle, the manufacturing numbers of which can be gleaned from the BATFE's firearm manufacturer reports, available here. From 1995 through 2011, the number of AR-15s--all models of which Feinstein's new bill defines as "assault weapons"--rose by over 2.5 million. During the same period, the nation's murder rate fell 48 percent, to a 48-year low. According to the FBI, 8.5 times as many people are murdered with knives, blunt objects and bare hands, as with rifles of any type.
Traces: Feinstein makes several claims premised on firearm traces, hoping to convince people that her 1994 ban reduced the (already infrequent) use of "assault weapons" in crime. However, traces do not indicate how often any type of gun is used in crime. As the Congressional Research Service and the BATFE have explained, not all firearms that are traced have been used in crime, and not all firearms used in crime are traced. Whether a trace occurs depends on whether a law enforcement agency requests that a trace be conducted. Given that existing "assault weapons" were exempted from the 1994 ban and new "assault weapons" continued to be made while the ban was in effect, any reduction in the percentage of traces accounted for by "assault weapons" during the ban, would be attributable to law enforcement agencies losing interest in tracing the firearms, or law enforcement agencies increasing their requests for traces on other types of firearms, as urged by the BATFE for more than a decade.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
White House Plans To Overwhelm NRA With Rapid Victory
Never let any "crisis" go to waste. Some people think this is just about guns. No no no my dear readers this is about power over the masses. Those who live in the cities have already surrendered their freedoms (see Mayor Bloomberg et al). But for those of us who actually enjoy our freedom better wake the hell up and do something!
The White House and gun control supporters are gearing up for a whirlwind month, with plans to pass reform legislation before outrage over the Sandy Hook massacre has a chance to fade. . .
While the fiscal cliff has dominated Washington’s attention in recent weeks, lawmakers and activists are laying the groundwork for their big push. Vice President Joe Biden, tasked with heading a commission to investigate gun violence, has been quietly meeting with experts, interest groups, and public officials and is expected to release a set of recommendations within weeks. Boston mayor Thomas Menino, co-chair of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told the Boston Herald this week that an optimistic Biden had assured him that Obama would sign legislation “by the end of January.”
“We had been led to believe their report would come by end of January, but we’re hearing they may want to have something out by January 15, even quicker than expected,” Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told TPM.
There are political countermeasures to this blitzkrieg being discussed by a number of folks of national stature.
The White House and gun control supporters are gearing up for a whirlwind month, with plans to pass reform legislation before outrage over the Sandy Hook massacre has a chance to fade. . .
While the fiscal cliff has dominated Washington’s attention in recent weeks, lawmakers and activists are laying the groundwork for their big push. Vice President Joe Biden, tasked with heading a commission to investigate gun violence, has been quietly meeting with experts, interest groups, and public officials and is expected to release a set of recommendations within weeks. Boston mayor Thomas Menino, co-chair of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told the Boston Herald this week that an optimistic Biden had assured him that Obama would sign legislation “by the end of January.”
“We had been led to believe their report would come by end of January, but we’re hearing they may want to have something out by January 15, even quicker than expected,” Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told TPM.
There are political countermeasures to this blitzkrieg being discussed by a number of folks of national stature.
Friday, January 4, 2013
2013: Resist or Disarm. Start deciding now what form your resistance will take.
See I told you other people were thinking this way. Posted by Dutchmann6 at Sipsey Streeet Irregulars one of the best things I have ever read on the net. I agree totally and whole heartedly. I have been saying stuff like this for years. So good to see it elsewhere.
2013: Resist or Disarm. Start deciding now what form your resistance will take.
"The meek, he had been told, would inherit the earth, but only when the last soldier left it to them in his will." -- Captain Richard Sharpe, in Sharpe's Company by Bernard Cornwell, Chapter 10.
Piece of Mind.
Sebastian, the ultimate pragmatist, has presented his read on the bills now entered, or about to be entered, into Congress: "We have a lot of work to do on the magazine issue. Most people, at this point, even pundits and elites, know the “assault weapons” issue is a crock of shit. The magazine issue is a different story." I left this comment on his blog which was not approved:
It doesn't matter what they pass, enough of us will defy it to make the choice mandatory for the rest of you. Fight or disarm.
Sebastian and other Fudd "pragmatists" may continue to hide from this reality if they choose, but J.D. Longstreet understands this in his piece The Next American Civil War:
At first glance it appears to be lunacy of the highest order—and yet—here we are on the cusp of violence to defend something the political left, an authoritarian cabal itself, cannot abide, AT ALL: personal freedom, individual freedom. . .
And now they intend to disarm us.
Look. There is so much pent-up anger in America today that if this argument over gun control ever gets beyond the talking stage it is reasonable to believe there will be violence on a scale not seen since the 1860’s in this country.
These fears are reinforced by the promises of the antis to 'pry guns from cold, dead fingers'.
But the time has not come to begin shooting -- yet. Feinstein's Intolerable Act has not yet passed, let alone begun to be enforced. The raid parties are not yet forming. However, the time HAS come for each of us to decide what form our resistance will take.
Some of us, myself included, are already on the public stage so we might as well dance. For us, the struggle will be a political one of letters, demonstrations, passive and active resistance designed to put the regime on notice that this line they have drawn will not be crossed without further resistance, even righteous, justifiable self-defense of our lives, liberty and property. We shall be the rattlesnake's rattle, the low growl of the wolverine, saying "Don't tread on me." Our job is to put them on notice so that they don't blunder uninformed into this civil war that the unintended consequences of their actions will spark. Our job will be to get in their faces and say plainly, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you." This is the same moral requirement that we would be under if a convicted home invader and rapist out on parole met us in the street and announced that he was coming to our home that night to rob, rape and kill. Would we be justified in killing him on the spot? No. But we would be obligated to warn him that if he attempts it we will kill him. Those who also have a record of robbing and raping the Founders' republic and killing its citizens to work their will upon them deserve the same sort of warning.
Some of us will also be doing political work, but behind the scenes, doing such things as privately putting each of our county sheriffs and other politicians on the spot -- here is the Intolerable Act, will you enforce it or help us resist it?
Others of us, the majority I suspect, will simply be the hidden core of resistance, using the intervening time by seeing to their own training and logistics, awaiting the day when the Feds, having lost patience with those of us who publicly defy them, finally begin killing us. These will be the folks who will execute a Fourth Generation civil war upon the tyrant's leadership -- and only them to the greatest extent possible -- with the target of breaking their will as they prosecute their treasonable war against the Founders' republic. They are willing to fight to the last ATF agent and local policeman to enforce their will. But it will be by their own aggression, and the 4GW reaction to it, that we will then discover if they are willing to fight to the first Senator, the second congressman, the third White House aide, the fourth editor, the fifth Hollywood propagandist using Bill Clinton's revised rules of engagement against the Serb's in 1999. Unintended consequences indeed.
It will be the time of One Hundred Heads, may God spare us all from its horrors.
The point is that each of us must decide now what form our resistance will take. Either that, or prepare to disarm. Time is just about up. Those who are busy subverting the Founders' republic have told us so.
"Son, you don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick unless you want your balls ripped off." -- Grandpa Vanderboegh.
2013: Resist or Disarm. Start deciding now what form your resistance will take.
"The meek, he had been told, would inherit the earth, but only when the last soldier left it to them in his will." -- Captain Richard Sharpe, in Sharpe's Company by Bernard Cornwell, Chapter 10.
Piece of Mind.
Sebastian, the ultimate pragmatist, has presented his read on the bills now entered, or about to be entered, into Congress: "We have a lot of work to do on the magazine issue. Most people, at this point, even pundits and elites, know the “assault weapons” issue is a crock of shit. The magazine issue is a different story." I left this comment on his blog which was not approved:
It doesn't matter what they pass, enough of us will defy it to make the choice mandatory for the rest of you. Fight or disarm.
Sebastian and other Fudd "pragmatists" may continue to hide from this reality if they choose, but J.D. Longstreet understands this in his piece The Next American Civil War:
At first glance it appears to be lunacy of the highest order—and yet—here we are on the cusp of violence to defend something the political left, an authoritarian cabal itself, cannot abide, AT ALL: personal freedom, individual freedom. . .
And now they intend to disarm us.
Look. There is so much pent-up anger in America today that if this argument over gun control ever gets beyond the talking stage it is reasonable to believe there will be violence on a scale not seen since the 1860’s in this country.
These fears are reinforced by the promises of the antis to 'pry guns from cold, dead fingers'.
But the time has not come to begin shooting -- yet. Feinstein's Intolerable Act has not yet passed, let alone begun to be enforced. The raid parties are not yet forming. However, the time HAS come for each of us to decide what form our resistance will take.
Some of us, myself included, are already on the public stage so we might as well dance. For us, the struggle will be a political one of letters, demonstrations, passive and active resistance designed to put the regime on notice that this line they have drawn will not be crossed without further resistance, even righteous, justifiable self-defense of our lives, liberty and property. We shall be the rattlesnake's rattle, the low growl of the wolverine, saying "Don't tread on me." Our job is to put them on notice so that they don't blunder uninformed into this civil war that the unintended consequences of their actions will spark. Our job will be to get in their faces and say plainly, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you." This is the same moral requirement that we would be under if a convicted home invader and rapist out on parole met us in the street and announced that he was coming to our home that night to rob, rape and kill. Would we be justified in killing him on the spot? No. But we would be obligated to warn him that if he attempts it we will kill him. Those who also have a record of robbing and raping the Founders' republic and killing its citizens to work their will upon them deserve the same sort of warning.
Some of us will also be doing political work, but behind the scenes, doing such things as privately putting each of our county sheriffs and other politicians on the spot -- here is the Intolerable Act, will you enforce it or help us resist it?
Others of us, the majority I suspect, will simply be the hidden core of resistance, using the intervening time by seeing to their own training and logistics, awaiting the day when the Feds, having lost patience with those of us who publicly defy them, finally begin killing us. These will be the folks who will execute a Fourth Generation civil war upon the tyrant's leadership -- and only them to the greatest extent possible -- with the target of breaking their will as they prosecute their treasonable war against the Founders' republic. They are willing to fight to the last ATF agent and local policeman to enforce their will. But it will be by their own aggression, and the 4GW reaction to it, that we will then discover if they are willing to fight to the first Senator, the second congressman, the third White House aide, the fourth editor, the fifth Hollywood propagandist using Bill Clinton's revised rules of engagement against the Serb's in 1999. Unintended consequences indeed.
It will be the time of One Hundred Heads, may God spare us all from its horrors.
The point is that each of us must decide now what form our resistance will take. Either that, or prepare to disarm. Time is just about up. Those who are busy subverting the Founders' republic have told us so.
"Son, you don't poke a wolverine with a sharp stick unless you want your balls ripped off." -- Grandpa Vanderboegh.
Outing the Gun Owners and the Left's New Savagery
The left is getting dangerous. It is getting near the time to make it extremely dangerous for them. They threaten and try to scare us 'til no end. What is the next step? What is the answer? Civil war? Revolution? Just sayin...If Im thinking it someone else must be also. What are you thinking about?
January 4, 2013
By Robert Spencer
As Michael Walsh noted last week at PJ Media, the Westchester Journal News has published the name and addresses of legal gun owners in Westchester County, New York. While many have rightly upbraided the paper for endangering innocent people and giving criminals a map of homes without guns, the paper has stuck to its guns (so to speak!), not only defending its action but warning that more gun owners will soon be outed. And thus in a nutshell we see the Left's narcissistic, solipsistic and savage new moralism.
The Journal News editors believe that they are in the right to victimize Westchester gun owners, making them subject to possible vigilante attacks, legal harassment, and who knows what else, because they think they have the moral high ground, and are so morally obtuse as to assume that since they have that high ground, any action in its service is justified.
The American Left, which thoroughly dominates the mainstream media, no longer believes, if it ever did, in the concept of reasonable and respectable people disagreeing in good faith on core issues; it increasingly demonstrates that it believes all opposition to its own outlook and policies must never be tolerated, but only eradicated. Its opposition is never to be engaged on the level of ideas, but only ridiculed and held up as evil. The Left has done nothing but demonize its opposition for years. Organizations like Media Matters routinely repeat remarks made by conservative politicians and commentators as if they were obviously risible and/or morally offensive, without ever bothering to explain why or to offer a substantive refutation of any kind. They and others like them never debate or discuss issues, but only deal with their opposition with endless games of "gotcha" and searches for "gaffes."
After the Left has played such games for so long, this new level of savagery was perhaps inevitable. For the Westchester Journal News, owners of legal guns are evil, and thus have no rights they are bound to respect. For the Left in general, their opponents are evil, and so can and should even be put in physical danger if that is what is needed in order to bring about its silence and submission.
This savagery grows more common by the day, and doesn't extend only to gun owners. I myself have been on the receiving end of this thuggery because of my work in opposing the global jihad and Islamic supremacism -- as has my colleague Pamela Geller and other defenders of the freedom of speech and equality of rights for all people. A Leftist journalist named Nathan Lean, the editor-in-chief of Aslan Media, who has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Daily News, has sent me several tweets and emails containing personal information about myself: where he thinks I live, who he thinks my wife is, and more.
The purpose of these messages was unmistakable: Lean was signaling to me that he thought he knew my whereabouts (and that of my family), despite my attempts to conceal them because of the many death threats I receive. And why would he want me to think that he knew where I was? So that I would be frightened into silence, afraid that one of his many violence-inclined allies might do me in if I continued to speak out for freedom and human rights. Yet despite his appetite for menace, Lean had no trouble getting published in flagship mainstream media outlets -- which tells you a great deal about them.
In the 1930s, when the National Socialist German Worker's Party, aka the Nazi Party, was consolidating its power in Germany, its storm troopers regularly terrorized its opponents: showing up when they spoke to shout them down and intimidate them, vandalizing their messages, and sometimes attacking them outright. We are rapidly approaching the same situation in America today, as the Left's demonization of its opponents descends to this menacing new level.
The Westchester Journal News does not have the moral high ground, and never did. Any doubt about that was removed when it published the addresses of the gun owners. But soon thuggish demonstrators outside the homes of those gun owners and others targeted by the Left will be a commonplace of American life. And the next step after that will be even worse: it is only going to get more dangerous -- physically and in other ways as well -- to oppose the policies of those who style themselves our moral superiors. With four more years of Obama coming, there is no stopping them now.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist?.
January 4, 2013
By Robert Spencer
As Michael Walsh noted last week at PJ Media, the Westchester Journal News has published the name and addresses of legal gun owners in Westchester County, New York. While many have rightly upbraided the paper for endangering innocent people and giving criminals a map of homes without guns, the paper has stuck to its guns (so to speak!), not only defending its action but warning that more gun owners will soon be outed. And thus in a nutshell we see the Left's narcissistic, solipsistic and savage new moralism.
The Journal News editors believe that they are in the right to victimize Westchester gun owners, making them subject to possible vigilante attacks, legal harassment, and who knows what else, because they think they have the moral high ground, and are so morally obtuse as to assume that since they have that high ground, any action in its service is justified.
The American Left, which thoroughly dominates the mainstream media, no longer believes, if it ever did, in the concept of reasonable and respectable people disagreeing in good faith on core issues; it increasingly demonstrates that it believes all opposition to its own outlook and policies must never be tolerated, but only eradicated. Its opposition is never to be engaged on the level of ideas, but only ridiculed and held up as evil. The Left has done nothing but demonize its opposition for years. Organizations like Media Matters routinely repeat remarks made by conservative politicians and commentators as if they were obviously risible and/or morally offensive, without ever bothering to explain why or to offer a substantive refutation of any kind. They and others like them never debate or discuss issues, but only deal with their opposition with endless games of "gotcha" and searches for "gaffes."
After the Left has played such games for so long, this new level of savagery was perhaps inevitable. For the Westchester Journal News, owners of legal guns are evil, and thus have no rights they are bound to respect. For the Left in general, their opponents are evil, and so can and should even be put in physical danger if that is what is needed in order to bring about its silence and submission.
This savagery grows more common by the day, and doesn't extend only to gun owners. I myself have been on the receiving end of this thuggery because of my work in opposing the global jihad and Islamic supremacism -- as has my colleague Pamela Geller and other defenders of the freedom of speech and equality of rights for all people. A Leftist journalist named Nathan Lean, the editor-in-chief of Aslan Media, who has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Daily News, has sent me several tweets and emails containing personal information about myself: where he thinks I live, who he thinks my wife is, and more.
The purpose of these messages was unmistakable: Lean was signaling to me that he thought he knew my whereabouts (and that of my family), despite my attempts to conceal them because of the many death threats I receive. And why would he want me to think that he knew where I was? So that I would be frightened into silence, afraid that one of his many violence-inclined allies might do me in if I continued to speak out for freedom and human rights. Yet despite his appetite for menace, Lean had no trouble getting published in flagship mainstream media outlets -- which tells you a great deal about them.
In the 1930s, when the National Socialist German Worker's Party, aka the Nazi Party, was consolidating its power in Germany, its storm troopers regularly terrorized its opponents: showing up when they spoke to shout them down and intimidate them, vandalizing their messages, and sometimes attacking them outright. We are rapidly approaching the same situation in America today, as the Left's demonization of its opponents descends to this menacing new level.
The Westchester Journal News does not have the moral high ground, and never did. Any doubt about that was removed when it published the addresses of the gun owners. But soon thuggish demonstrators outside the homes of those gun owners and others targeted by the Left will be a commonplace of American life. And the next step after that will be even worse: it is only going to get more dangerous -- physically and in other ways as well -- to oppose the policies of those who style themselves our moral superiors. With four more years of Obama coming, there is no stopping them now.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist?.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Senator Feinstein's Constitutional End-run
Senator Feinstein's Constitutional End-run
By Alan P. Halbert
There's more than a touch of hypocrisy in the recent exploitation of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy by the MSM, Obama, and the Democrats. All the wanton murders due to Fast & Furious (estimated at 300 or more) do not appear equal to one life lost at Sandy Hook. The administration paid criminals to illegally arm drug cartels in Mexico, choosing to supply them with none other than "assault weapons", mostly AK-47's with some Barrett .50 caliber BMG rifles and a few hand grenades thrown in for good measure.
The result was the deaths of federal agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, along with another thirteen American citizens, and several hundred Mexicans. Another disgusting milepost for 2012 is the 500th homicide in Chicago, Obama's and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's hometown. This sad statistic was achieved when Nathaniel Jackson was shot and died at the scene on December 27th at 9:00 P.M. as he stood on a street corner.
The MSM has largely been silent about these tragedies, choosing instead to concentrate on the victims at Newtown. In the process they overlook at least 466 child gunshot victims with 68 fatalities in Chicago this past year alone.
This brings us to Senator Feinstein's attempt to revive the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 with her recently drafted gun control legislation. She will introduce this revamped legislation to the Senate in January in an effort to resolve our supposed epidemic of violence as revealed by Obama in his Sandy Hook speech to the nation. In effect, what this darling of the left has done is reintroduce all of the weapons that were not subject to registration initially.
This is simply a national gun-registration scheme; a synopsis of the NFA follows:
The National Firearms Act ("NFA"), 72nd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, enacted on June 26, 1934, currently codified as amended as 26 U.S.C. ch. 53, is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. (Note: bold emphasis is mine)
Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated the same as machine-guns, though they were exempted as the legislation moved its way through Congress. Feinstein's expansion of the NFA will include all of the weapons they had the intelligence to exclude previously.
It is interesting to note that the NFA became law right after the repeal of Prohibition. Congressmen of the day were intimately familiar with how unintended consequences play out from their legislative intent. Prohibition released a murderous rampage of gang-related violence on this nation dwarfing anything we have seen since, leading to the expansion of the Mafia and other organized crime syndicates that are still with us today, another testament to a benevolent Congress.
Owning an NFA weapon subjects the owner to loss of certain constitutional rights, chief amongst them the surrender of our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to due process. The possession of an NFA weapon allows the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to demand inspection of these weapons any time they appear at your door, usually unannounced, all without a search warrant of course.
These weapons are individually registered to the owner. You are not allowed to transfer them without the express permission of the government. Transporting the weapon across state lines for any purpose without government approval beforehand is illegal. This is also applicable to each weapon you currently own. Senator Feinstein's draft does not discuss the waiver of the $200.00 dollar fee to register "grandfathered" weapons in the NFA database.
To legally posses an NFA weapon requires that the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) in your area of residence sign a BATF form that expressly allows the citizen to possess such weapons. You will also need to submit photographs of yourself, a fingerprint card, and of course, pay the $200.00 fee and possibly a registered Class III Transfer Agent, with his fee as well.
Imagine a harried rural or county sheriff overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests made to his office. This will probably place many weapons in limbo while the documents are in process. No doubt they will enact some method of holding these weapons while this plays out; probably leading to many lost, stolen, or outright confiscated weapons by attrition.
Not to mention how many LEOs will be required to perform the background checks on individuals for weapons that are already legally owned, taking them away from legitimate law enforcement duties. This will probably lead many local law enforcement agencies to throw up their hands and refuse to comply with these new requirements; again leaving law-abiding citizens in limbo with lawful weapons in their possession subjecting them to arrest and prosecution, leaving many weapons surrendered by default.
I have to wonder how many leftist CLEOs will choose this route? Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Chicago to name just a few cities play host to such officials. Of course, they will excuse themselves with "legitimate budget" busting cover story(s)... if only we had the funds....
You get the idea.
These tactics are nothing short of a backdoor scheme to render legal weapons illegal by redesignating them through the NFA as equivalent to automatic weapons. The result will be a national gun registration database for conventional arms. At the same time, these very same legislators (along with Obama) have encouraged untold carnage and mayhem through policies of looking the other way as regards the inner cities of this nation, Mexico, South America, and the Middle East as our government willingly supplies criminals, jihadists, and cartels with weapons.
Now in their ultimate wisdom, they wish to make pariahs and criminals out of law-abiding citizens by means of an act of Congress that will force us to reapply for our lawful and legally owned weapons for a false premise of security from ourselves.
Discussing the real reason for the Sandy Hook tragedy is beyond the gun control mentality of the leftists currently ensconced into the media, educational institutions and seats of power in this nation. It is simply about power and control... not guns. The action of our president in Fast & Furious and the arming of Al Qaeda in Libya, Syria and the pipeline of illegal weapons funneled by the Mexican drug cartels back into our nation renders this clear enough.
We are in far more danger from these actions of our own government than from another Sandy Hook atrocity by a crazed killer.
The Second Amendment's purpose is to provide for the citizens' defense from all who would deny their natural God- given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" against a criminal, a foreign or domestic enemy, or our own government. We will witness the end of the Republic if this proposed legislation is passed, since all of our rights flow from the citizen's ability to defend them.
As for this citizen, I will never disarm or surrender my Second Amendment rights, much less willingly comply with such a traitorous act of Congress if enacted... it is actions like these that light revolutionary fervor in a nation and its citizens. It did so in 1776 and it will do so again.
By Alan P. Halbert
There's more than a touch of hypocrisy in the recent exploitation of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy by the MSM, Obama, and the Democrats. All the wanton murders due to Fast & Furious (estimated at 300 or more) do not appear equal to one life lost at Sandy Hook. The administration paid criminals to illegally arm drug cartels in Mexico, choosing to supply them with none other than "assault weapons", mostly AK-47's with some Barrett .50 caliber BMG rifles and a few hand grenades thrown in for good measure.
The result was the deaths of federal agents Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata, along with another thirteen American citizens, and several hundred Mexicans. Another disgusting milepost for 2012 is the 500th homicide in Chicago, Obama's and Mayor Rahm Emanuel's hometown. This sad statistic was achieved when Nathaniel Jackson was shot and died at the scene on December 27th at 9:00 P.M. as he stood on a street corner.
The MSM has largely been silent about these tragedies, choosing instead to concentrate on the victims at Newtown. In the process they overlook at least 466 child gunshot victims with 68 fatalities in Chicago this past year alone.
This brings us to Senator Feinstein's attempt to revive the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 with her recently drafted gun control legislation. She will introduce this revamped legislation to the Senate in January in an effort to resolve our supposed epidemic of violence as revealed by Obama in his Sandy Hook speech to the nation. In effect, what this darling of the left has done is reintroduce all of the weapons that were not subject to registration initially.
This is simply a national gun-registration scheme; a synopsis of the NFA follows:
The National Firearms Act ("NFA"), 72nd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236, enacted on June 26, 1934, currently codified as amended as 26 U.S.C. ch. 53, is an Act of Congress in the United States that, in general, imposes a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and transfer of certain firearms and mandates the registration of those firearms. (Note: bold emphasis is mine)
Originally, pistols and revolvers were to be regulated the same as machine-guns, though they were exempted as the legislation moved its way through Congress. Feinstein's expansion of the NFA will include all of the weapons they had the intelligence to exclude previously.
It is interesting to note that the NFA became law right after the repeal of Prohibition. Congressmen of the day were intimately familiar with how unintended consequences play out from their legislative intent. Prohibition released a murderous rampage of gang-related violence on this nation dwarfing anything we have seen since, leading to the expansion of the Mafia and other organized crime syndicates that are still with us today, another testament to a benevolent Congress.
Owning an NFA weapon subjects the owner to loss of certain constitutional rights, chief amongst them the surrender of our Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights to due process. The possession of an NFA weapon allows the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to demand inspection of these weapons any time they appear at your door, usually unannounced, all without a search warrant of course.
These weapons are individually registered to the owner. You are not allowed to transfer them without the express permission of the government. Transporting the weapon across state lines for any purpose without government approval beforehand is illegal. This is also applicable to each weapon you currently own. Senator Feinstein's draft does not discuss the waiver of the $200.00 dollar fee to register "grandfathered" weapons in the NFA database.
To legally posses an NFA weapon requires that the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) in your area of residence sign a BATF form that expressly allows the citizen to possess such weapons. You will also need to submit photographs of yourself, a fingerprint card, and of course, pay the $200.00 fee and possibly a registered Class III Transfer Agent, with his fee as well.
Imagine a harried rural or county sheriff overwhelmed by the sheer volume of requests made to his office. This will probably place many weapons in limbo while the documents are in process. No doubt they will enact some method of holding these weapons while this plays out; probably leading to many lost, stolen, or outright confiscated weapons by attrition.
Not to mention how many LEOs will be required to perform the background checks on individuals for weapons that are already legally owned, taking them away from legitimate law enforcement duties. This will probably lead many local law enforcement agencies to throw up their hands and refuse to comply with these new requirements; again leaving law-abiding citizens in limbo with lawful weapons in their possession subjecting them to arrest and prosecution, leaving many weapons surrendered by default.
I have to wonder how many leftist CLEOs will choose this route? Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Chicago to name just a few cities play host to such officials. Of course, they will excuse themselves with "legitimate budget" busting cover story(s)... if only we had the funds....
You get the idea.
These tactics are nothing short of a backdoor scheme to render legal weapons illegal by redesignating them through the NFA as equivalent to automatic weapons. The result will be a national gun registration database for conventional arms. At the same time, these very same legislators (along with Obama) have encouraged untold carnage and mayhem through policies of looking the other way as regards the inner cities of this nation, Mexico, South America, and the Middle East as our government willingly supplies criminals, jihadists, and cartels with weapons.
Now in their ultimate wisdom, they wish to make pariahs and criminals out of law-abiding citizens by means of an act of Congress that will force us to reapply for our lawful and legally owned weapons for a false premise of security from ourselves.
Discussing the real reason for the Sandy Hook tragedy is beyond the gun control mentality of the leftists currently ensconced into the media, educational institutions and seats of power in this nation. It is simply about power and control... not guns. The action of our president in Fast & Furious and the arming of Al Qaeda in Libya, Syria and the pipeline of illegal weapons funneled by the Mexican drug cartels back into our nation renders this clear enough.
We are in far more danger from these actions of our own government than from another Sandy Hook atrocity by a crazed killer.
The Second Amendment's purpose is to provide for the citizens' defense from all who would deny their natural God- given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" against a criminal, a foreign or domestic enemy, or our own government. We will witness the end of the Republic if this proposed legislation is passed, since all of our rights flow from the citizen's ability to defend them.
As for this citizen, I will never disarm or surrender my Second Amendment rights, much less willingly comply with such a traitorous act of Congress if enacted... it is actions like these that light revolutionary fervor in a nation and its citizens. It did so in 1776 and it will do so again.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Sam Colt and the Law of Self-Preservation
Sam Colt and the Law of Self-Preservation
By Glenn Fairman
"God made man but Sam Colt made them equal."
It is said that the 2nd Amendment follows hard upon the 1st so as to serve as its bodyguard -- providing the added incentive of coercive force by a wary citizenry to guarantee that those initial cherished liberties, expounded by our Founders, did not go the way of the 10th Amendment. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted as the right to bear arms by a free people, has not escaped that yawning chasm that has opened up between the political Right and Left, and the rationale behind this stratification falls along the same familiar tensions of individual vs. collective. The nature of men, having proved insufficient in wisdom for the eradication of evil, must then paradoxically utilize the equalization of deadly force to not only suppress the jaundiced glint in our neighbor's eye but the tyranny that arises when men esteem the chimera of ordered equality over liberty.
Of all laws that are deemed to have their origin in nature, the Law of Self-Preservation is indeed the most fundamental. Each person, ceteris paribus, has been deemed to have an a priori right to guard the sanctity and value of their life through any means necessary, assuming their attitude is one of general peace with men and not of the character of brigands. The friction arises with the inherent inequality of humanity, evidenced in their disparate size, strength, and stature. Now, while defensively brandishing a knife or cudgel poses a strong inducement in mounting one's stout defense of life or property, the use of a firearm has irrevocably changed the dynamic relationship between both predator and victim. Since criminals, from the dullest to the most sophisticated, are deeply concerned with maintaining both their own freedom and their "skin," more than a passing thoughtful consideration is generally weighed within a criminal's nefarious equation when deciding whom he shall next fall upon.
Assuming that the above statement is true, it would seem logical that municipalities or states whose concealed and open carry gun laws were the most relaxed would be the same areas which would have the lowest rates per capita of crimes either committed with force, or through the threat of deadly force. Therefore, should we be surprised that national statistics bear this position out? Conversely, regions that have severely forbidden either the sale of handguns or the lawful concealment thereof should reflect elevated levels of crimes against both property and life. And generally, we find that this premise, especially true in the major urban centers, to be consistently affirmed.
Accordingly, the current murder and violent crime rates in the Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia areas are astronomical, despite having hardened laws against concealed carry. These misdirected laws have indeed the net effect of proscribing their citizenry from effectively protecting themselves from criminals--miscreants who care not a whit for the asphyxiating legal technicalities that burden and condemn honest citizens. And as governments have increasingly sought to regulate the sale, transportation, and use of handguns and "assault rifles," they have increasingly begotten a nation of sheep by laying bare their population's throats to packs of increasingly dangerous and feral werewolves. Can it be any longer doubted that the same misplaced compassion that would outlaw firearms has willed these darkened hearts through government's calculated legislation of filial destruction and subsequent moral anarchy?
In the concrete jungles of our urban cities or in our seemingly tranquil suburbias with their flaccid social disintegration, many Progressive-minded levels of government have made the considered decision that in lieu of a debauched and malicious portion of its citizenry, it is far better to effectively disarm their constituent fiefdoms in order to show them that superficially they have their best interests at heart. All the while, and with their fingers testing the winds, those same politicos are deftly side-stepping the fact that those cretins with pernicious intent will handily acquire guns elsewhere, or commit their menacing acts with a baseball bat or a lawnmower blade if necessary.
We now see in Great Britain, a country that has elevated to the status of fetish the disarmament of its society, a towering crescendo in property and violent crimes, as men and women even possessing rifles and shotguns are fearful of using them for fear of being charged for killing or maiming thugs in self-defense. Within the milieu of such a nation of rabbits, the fabric of trust and safety erodes and sends a subliminal message to society that emboldens the brazen and terrifies the weak and defenseless.
America's 2nd Amendment, once thought to be the most secure of our organic rights, has come under assault by forces that believe that the monopoly on significant coercive force should be limited to the agents of the State; and as Dennis Prager has wisely said: "As the State grows larger, the individual in fact grows smaller." Our government exists to guarantee our lives, liberties, and our properties. Not only has it proven itself insufficient to this foundational task, but it has actively conspired to disrespect our personal sovereignty and safety, having wandered far afield of its fundamental mandate. Meanwhile, tireless energy is spent attempting to instead equalize and homogenize us---mandates that had never once entered into the minds of the Founders.
Perhaps the best indicator of where the 2nd Amendment is the booming sale of handguns; this barometer is rooted in the anxiety and trepidation that Americans feel for both the safety of their families in perilous economic time, while it is a hedge against the predations of a regime that has forgotten its minimalist confines and spilled over into the imperial, the unilateral, and the arbitrary. Gun manufacturers have mockingly named Barack Obama as their Man of the Year for his contribution to a veritable tsunami of firearm sales. This, in itself, might evoke a good belly laugh if the stark implications of it weren't so damn depressing.
By Glenn Fairman
"God made man but Sam Colt made them equal."
It is said that the 2nd Amendment follows hard upon the 1st so as to serve as its bodyguard -- providing the added incentive of coercive force by a wary citizenry to guarantee that those initial cherished liberties, expounded by our Founders, did not go the way of the 10th Amendment. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted as the right to bear arms by a free people, has not escaped that yawning chasm that has opened up between the political Right and Left, and the rationale behind this stratification falls along the same familiar tensions of individual vs. collective. The nature of men, having proved insufficient in wisdom for the eradication of evil, must then paradoxically utilize the equalization of deadly force to not only suppress the jaundiced glint in our neighbor's eye but the tyranny that arises when men esteem the chimera of ordered equality over liberty.
Of all laws that are deemed to have their origin in nature, the Law of Self-Preservation is indeed the most fundamental. Each person, ceteris paribus, has been deemed to have an a priori right to guard the sanctity and value of their life through any means necessary, assuming their attitude is one of general peace with men and not of the character of brigands. The friction arises with the inherent inequality of humanity, evidenced in their disparate size, strength, and stature. Now, while defensively brandishing a knife or cudgel poses a strong inducement in mounting one's stout defense of life or property, the use of a firearm has irrevocably changed the dynamic relationship between both predator and victim. Since criminals, from the dullest to the most sophisticated, are deeply concerned with maintaining both their own freedom and their "skin," more than a passing thoughtful consideration is generally weighed within a criminal's nefarious equation when deciding whom he shall next fall upon.
Assuming that the above statement is true, it would seem logical that municipalities or states whose concealed and open carry gun laws were the most relaxed would be the same areas which would have the lowest rates per capita of crimes either committed with force, or through the threat of deadly force. Therefore, should we be surprised that national statistics bear this position out? Conversely, regions that have severely forbidden either the sale of handguns or the lawful concealment thereof should reflect elevated levels of crimes against both property and life. And generally, we find that this premise, especially true in the major urban centers, to be consistently affirmed.
Accordingly, the current murder and violent crime rates in the Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia areas are astronomical, despite having hardened laws against concealed carry. These misdirected laws have indeed the net effect of proscribing their citizenry from effectively protecting themselves from criminals--miscreants who care not a whit for the asphyxiating legal technicalities that burden and condemn honest citizens. And as governments have increasingly sought to regulate the sale, transportation, and use of handguns and "assault rifles," they have increasingly begotten a nation of sheep by laying bare their population's throats to packs of increasingly dangerous and feral werewolves. Can it be any longer doubted that the same misplaced compassion that would outlaw firearms has willed these darkened hearts through government's calculated legislation of filial destruction and subsequent moral anarchy?
In the concrete jungles of our urban cities or in our seemingly tranquil suburbias with their flaccid social disintegration, many Progressive-minded levels of government have made the considered decision that in lieu of a debauched and malicious portion of its citizenry, it is far better to effectively disarm their constituent fiefdoms in order to show them that superficially they have their best interests at heart. All the while, and with their fingers testing the winds, those same politicos are deftly side-stepping the fact that those cretins with pernicious intent will handily acquire guns elsewhere, or commit their menacing acts with a baseball bat or a lawnmower blade if necessary.
We now see in Great Britain, a country that has elevated to the status of fetish the disarmament of its society, a towering crescendo in property and violent crimes, as men and women even possessing rifles and shotguns are fearful of using them for fear of being charged for killing or maiming thugs in self-defense. Within the milieu of such a nation of rabbits, the fabric of trust and safety erodes and sends a subliminal message to society that emboldens the brazen and terrifies the weak and defenseless.
America's 2nd Amendment, once thought to be the most secure of our organic rights, has come under assault by forces that believe that the monopoly on significant coercive force should be limited to the agents of the State; and as Dennis Prager has wisely said: "As the State grows larger, the individual in fact grows smaller." Our government exists to guarantee our lives, liberties, and our properties. Not only has it proven itself insufficient to this foundational task, but it has actively conspired to disrespect our personal sovereignty and safety, having wandered far afield of its fundamental mandate. Meanwhile, tireless energy is spent attempting to instead equalize and homogenize us---mandates that had never once entered into the minds of the Founders.
Perhaps the best indicator of where the 2nd Amendment is the booming sale of handguns; this barometer is rooted in the anxiety and trepidation that Americans feel for both the safety of their families in perilous economic time, while it is a hedge against the predations of a regime that has forgotten its minimalist confines and spilled over into the imperial, the unilateral, and the arbitrary. Gun manufacturers have mockingly named Barack Obama as their Man of the Year for his contribution to a veritable tsunami of firearm sales. This, in itself, might evoke a good belly laugh if the stark implications of it weren't so damn depressing.
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