Posted on 08/21/2009 5:05:16 AM PDT by reaganaut1
It is hard to know what is more shocking: the sight of a dozen Americans showing up to flaunt guns outside the venue for President Obama’s speech in Phoenix on Monday, or the fact that the swaggering display was completely legal. We are all familiar with the right to bear arms and the noisome extremes indulged by its zealots. But is there no sense of simple respect due the nation’s elected leader when he ventures forth among the citizenry?
One man strutted through the crowd with an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle slung over his shoulder. (That weapon was banned in recent American history until a bipartisan retreat before gun-lobby propaganda.) The man also packed a holstered handgun and completed this war-games ensemble with an ammunition clip in his back pocket. Such lethal parading, he announced, was legal under Arizona law and the public should “get kind of conditioned to it.”
The local police and the Secret Service were aware of the armed protestors and noted that they were kept out of the guarded convention hall where Mr. Obama spoke. That is hardly reassuring, especially this summer when so many protestors seem to consider primal rage a reasoned political statement.
New Hampshire is another “open carry” state. When Mr. Obama held a town hall meeting in Portsmouth on Aug. 11, gun-packing protestors were also there.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“But is there no sense of simple respect due the nation’s elected leader when he ventures forth among the citizenry?”
Gee, this never bothered the NY Slimes during Bush’s tenure.
This isn't about the right to bear arms, it's about the right to PEACEABLY assemble.
Without the 2nd, there can be no 1st.
In my case there's none for the entire American political class, including the editorial boards of most major newspapers and the electronic media. I have the same antipathy for them that they do for me.
Of course, they missed the fact that NH is a “must issue” CCW state.
They should have wondered about how many CCW’s were present, locked, loaded, and ready to rock.
And, yes, I do think that it’s getting to that point.
What about the simple respect that our elected leaders should show towards the individuals that they represent and answer to? I don’t understand this “politician worship” mentality.
Really?
There seems none among the elected leaders for the opinions of the citizens.
It seems the only way you can have an opinion is to show up with a gun. If you don't show up with a firearm, then you're just "astroturf" - somebody else's paid shill.
Or, #3, that the NYT is incapable of acknowledging that so many gun owners and gun-bearers peaceably assembled, discussed issues, and left with no crimes being committed, not one gun being fired, no one being harmed.
You see, what is shocking to the NYT is not that Americans RESPONSIBLY took advantage of their 2nd Amendment rights ONCE (while the NYT IRRESPONSIBLY takes advantage of their 1st Amendment rights every day), but that these firearms didn’t jump out of their holsters and off the shoulders of their owners and run down the street shooting at people.
You see, the NYT actually believes that it is the object (the firearm) that is guilty of so much “evil” in America, and not the character (and criminality) of those that bear the object.
This idiotic perspective is analogous to people blaming the printing presses at the NYT for the lies of Blair and of the stupid, anti-American drivel that is splattered on their newspaper every day.
...or perhaps helmets and gas masks as the left often does when protesting?
“That is hardly reassuring, especially this summer when so many protestors seem to consider primal rage a reasoned political statement.”
What an odd choice of words from the same left Bill Ayers is a part of.
I am currently rereading Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and found this remarkable passage in the first para of chap. 3. It’s not the entire para because my typing skills are not that great but the relevant passage is:
“A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.”
To me that is a remarkable statement written by an Englishman in a history of the decline of a great empire.
The author is one of those leftist people
who project their own immaturity onto others.
They don’t want others to be entrusted with
the awesome responsibility of carrying the means of self defense
because they know that they themselves could not be trusted with such means.
The concept of “consent of the governed” comes to mind. I wonder how many of our would-be nobility still understand that concept.
When’s the last time the NYT lamented the “noisome extremes” of gay pride parade participants?
If the politicians don’t stop playing fast and loose with the Constition, the NY Slimes haven’t seen anything yet.
Apparently the NYT is out of touch with the American people:
Poll: Fewer Americans support stricter gun control laws
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/08/gun.control.poll/index.html
Since 2001, most Americans have favored stricter gun laws, though support has slightly dropped in recent years: 54 percent favored stricter laws in 2001, compared with 50 percent in 2007, according to Gallup polling.
Now, a recent poll reveals a sudden drop — only 39 percent of Americans now favor stricter gun laws, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll.
I know that was just an editorial and all – expressing one’s opinion etc. But does anyone else feel a sense of nostalgia for the days when Journalists actually KNEW about the subject they were talking about?
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