Posted on 12/04/2006 2:04:25 PM PST by neverdem
News By Us, not news bias
This caught my eye this morning: Paul Helmke’s anti-liberty rant Guns and Governing, on The Huffington Post, December 1, 2006. Helmke is head of The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence. Here is my response, December 1, 2006.
First of all, very first of all, when it comes to guns, there is no governing to be, with the exception of protection of the Bill of Rights. Since the right to bear arms is absolute, there is no governing over it. there can be only protection; you protect the rights of the people on that and that’s your oath. Simple. Anything else is an attack.
Refusal to understand this not only reflects a poor understanding of the law and practical values in America, but reveals a hidden agenda to overthrow us all. All of us, not just those who support rights, but all of us. That would include Mr. Helmke, himself, unless he wishes to own a gun secretly.
In fact, if any anti-gun activist owns positively any sort of weapon in the home for self-defense – I don’t care if it’s a baseball bat! – he/she supports self-defense and the use of up to lethal force. Or, don’t they realize what they’re saying and doing? Most anti-gun nuts do in fact own weapons. Right, Rosie? N’cest pa, Dianne?
The second amendment isn’t about guns, it’s about personal sovereignty and the use of force to back it up.
Anti-gun activists, therefore, are to be discredited utterly.
In three itemized issues, Helmke lays out mention of straw purchases, political clout of the gun rights lobbies versus election wins, and he mentions gun violence.
The first two arguments are themselves straw arguments, since straw purchases are way exaggerated as many, many writers have pointed out in the past in detail, and since the election wins and losses are not gun rights based, but far, far more based on republican disappointments, border control issues and size-of-government issues. Every voter knows it. It is silly to write that republicans lost because they listen to the NRA when voters (readers) know darned good and well their own minds and why they didn’t vote republican this time around.
The third argument got my attention: Gun Violence.
Again, there is the call for sensible gun laws, but in fact there is no such thing as a sensible gun law. Could there be such a thing as sensible censorship? The only sensible gun law exists purely as a civil right, and it is absolute. If you want sensible gun laws, try no one under eighteen owns a gun, felons don’t own a gun, and non-citizens don’t own a gun, and then, repeal all gun laws. Now, that’s sensible.
Here is my analysis as Mr. Helmke’s piece summons of me.
The Second Amendment was made absolute and impervious to due process for a reason. The Founding Fathers knew very well what they did not want any more of – no more over-reach, no more abuses of powers, no more warrants without local supervision (jury) and more – and just as certainly as the fact that they ratified it all, they knew that it all had to be backed by force forever. That force is in the hands of the People, individuals like you and me, and it is this sovereign authority that cannot be infringed. It is being infringed various different ways. It is your authority which is being infringed. Remember that gun control is attacking not guns, and it’s not attacking violence; it is attacking individual sovereign authority which is backed by lawful force.
In many ways, Americans are being bluffed out of their sovereignty.
Attacks on guns are attacks on personal sovereignty to undermine the power of the People to remain in control over the country: gun control is an attack to wrest that control from the people in an immense transfer of authority, convincing people or coercing people out of it. Remove the lawful force of the people, and the rest can simply be taken unopposed.
Many laws toward that goal come in the form of anti-crime measures, so that little by little, the people surrender – Americans cooperate – in handing over what they think will help fight crime. Americans will do a lot and put up with a lot if they believe it will help.
It’s a scam, a trap. Because of the sovereignty of the People and the People’s own lawful force to back it up, the idea of one-sided force in this country is a trap.
Helmke summarizes, “More guns are likely to make a home, a state, or a country more dangerous, not more safe.”
This is, of course, wholly untrue, and I’ll say just where.
Well, America, if you want to help fight crime and violence, listen up.
I’ve said a thousand times that police have no mandate to protect individuals. Most officers will nod and agree with this if asked. I’m surprised that some younger officers are not even aware of it. Hell, even some legislators aren’t aware of it, but it’s true. This is important for everyone willing to help to fully understand. As always, I am speaking not to gun owners, but to non-gun owners and the impartial, people looking for both sides of the issue. Heads of household who really want to understand. I know it’s hard to accept, but every head of household must come to understand that police don’t have to protect you.
Police join law enforcement to help, but in actuality, in the most critical moments of a crime emergency, you are on your own.
As benign as it might sound at first, ‘governing’ guns and people who own them means restricting before-the-fact your right to act at the moment action is needed most – when you are facing grave danger alone, and let’s be realistic: only you have the right to make that call. I support the idea of investigation for reasonableness under the circumstances, but before-the-fact restrictions (gun control) are entirely unreasonable and unlawful. It grows crime by permitting it to succeed unopposed in case after case after case, hundreds of thousands of times every year.
Equally realistic is the fact that some Americans believe preparedness in self-defense to be an unwanted burden. Their over-reaction of being expected to grow up and protect loved ones manifests itself as name-calling gun owners as Cowboys and Vigilantes. It’s merely a denial or a refusal to take responsibility for something that unavoidably belongs only to them.
For an example of this, please visit the YouTube Video Confession Of A Rat: An anti-gun newspaperman admits to his wife (and to himself) that he can’t be counted on to protect her life.
‘Governance’ over guns and people who rise to meet their responsibility is a ruse to disarm individuals to pave the way to grow crime to the advantage of officials. In a very obvious way, the anti-gun crowd uses the crowd who refuse this burden to increase numbers of anti-gun voters. Minions. Minions by the millions.
As I say often – very often – personal disarmament is a trap for the American household and a payday for officials.
Who is the real thief in this issue?
Why is the Second Amendment absolute and made impervious to due process? Why can there be no such thing as so-called sensible gun laws?
Because the individual victim of crime is the first line of defense, and no matter what law you write, we always will be. Gun control takes away the power but leaves the ultimate accountability, the typical bureaucratic trap. This is anti-violence? This is American? Is it good for your household to be denied the power, but left with the responsibility anyway?
The individual is now and always will be the first line of defense. And when crime is an excuse to transfer liberty and authority out of the hands of the people, this then makes the citizen the first line of defense for the entire nation. Taking away that anywhere/anytime, instance-by-instance defense is in no way sensible.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. :)
If the Second Amendment were a gun law, it sure isn't enforced. There ought to be a lot of legislators, cops and judges who should go to jail for violating it, but of course they're all on the "other team" and protect each other. This myth of separation of powers is just that, a myth.
For that matter you can make functional equivalents to LAWs & RPGs too. If you have the right tools and materials ( I wonder if that comes under the heading of model rocketry?)
Congress doesn't make the determination if the Court determins that the law is unconstitutional. Also there was evidence at the time that could have been presented to prove that shotguns under 18" had militia/military use. Also, it was not until the USSC made the determination that there was any clue that they would even use militia/military use as a factor for making the determination. The case was supposed to be about the constitutionality of the GCA of '38 not about the legality of the shotgun.
I searched expecting to find a military wavier. Instead I found that no member of the U.S. Army in Alaska may carry a concealed weapon on or off base by order of Major General Charles H. Jacoby Jr.
http://www.usarak.army.mil/policies/PUBS-ACROBAT/USARAK_Policies/CGCOFS%20POLICY%20STATEMENT%2020.pdf
Good thing I read further before replying to that post, I was going to bring up about that also. I would also point out that you can still buy derringers and ultra compact semi-autos (.22 & .25 calibers) that are no different than SNSs.
I'm guilty of not having read further, many times in the past, and will probably be so again. But I do try to avoid it!
The whole "SNS" terminology is just an attempt to generate an emotional reaction among the sheeple in an effort to infringe upon Second Amendment rights.
Thanks for the ping. I did not know this about Condi, and if it is possible it causes me to respect her all the more. I say "if possible" because I have always thought very highly of her as a gracious and skilled leader.
Ahh, thats harder. Compared to a directional mine, a rocket and a launcher are precision machinery...
Less than shotguns & rifles with barrels under 18" both had/have been used by the milary, police, government agents, etc. The blunderbus is one such form of a shotgun that was used by militaries. Sawed off shotguns were used during the civil war also.
But if you really want to crack those limousines :-)
Shorter barrel does not equate to less effective weapon, it depends on the situation. In WWI a shorter barrel is more effective than a long one when fighting inside the trenches.
In fact "When American troops were in the heat of the fighting in the summer of 1918, the German government sent a protest through a neutral agency to our Government asserting that our men were using shotguns against German troops in the trenches. The allegation was true; but our State Department replied that the use of such weapons was not forbidden by the Geneva Convention as the Germans had asserted.Manufactured primarily for the purpose of arming guards placed over German prisoners,these shotguns were undoubtedly in some instances carried into the actual fighting. The Ordnance Department procured some 30,000 to 40,000 shotguns of the short-barrel or sawed-off type, ordering these from the regular commercial manufacturers. The shell provided for these guns each contained a charge of nine heavy buckshot, a combination likely to have murderous effect in close fighting." Benedict Crowell, America's Munitions, 1917-1918; Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1919; pp. 185-86. Benedict Crowell was Assistant Secretary of War, Director of Munitions.
Don't we have Navy & Air Force bases there also? His order would not be in effect on them. Also, what about those that are discharged (medically or otherwise) and are still under the age of 21, they are still being barred by the state and his order would also not effect them.
Which is the reason we need to examine the problems with society today and fix it. Just getting rid of the gun control laws won't fix things. Part of the problem is parenting (or the lack there of) by some, but there are other issues that need to be addressed also.
Either that, or you could go by original intent. Clearly, there is no way the framers intended the second amendment to include weapons that did not yet exist, and had little to no similarity to weapons that existed at the time.
If I were to interpret the Constitution in the same was as you William Tell, we'd need to pass a Constitutional Amendment in order to stop someone from walking down the middle of a quiet street at 2am with a bullhorn, expressing his political views as loudly as the bullhorn would allow him to, because otherwise he would be protected by the 1st Amendment because he's engaging in "Free Speech."
That's an absured arguement, no doubt, but it's no less absured then the arguement you are attempting to make. Clearly, the Founders didn't intend the Second Amendment to apply to nuclear weapons, they didn't exist at the time, they bare no resemblance to what existed at the time, they would serve no purpose they could have envisioned at the time, and thus, by original intent, would not be included.
A sensible and reasonable position. I totally agree, that's the point I was trying to make.
>Dynamite and anti-tank rockets are very different things.<
Why? I can walk into Safeway and buy enough chemicals to level the building. Should you be prohibited from buying cleaners?
With a .50
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