Understanding Gun Control

Posted on December 19, 2015 by Tony Heller

Last weekend, the New York Times ran a front page editorial demanding gun confiscation. Their plan has historic precedent.

2015-12-19-08-25-29

Middlesboro Daily News – Google News Archive Search

2015-12-19-08-32-24

About Tony Heller

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124 Responses to Understanding Gun Control

  1. Foryourtable LLC (@Foryourtable) says:
    December 19, 2015 at 3:40 pm

    Just saw a Harvard study indicating the more guns in the hands of civilians, the less violent crime and robberies. Sorry, I didn’t save the link but it’s out there.

    Reply
    • Steve Case says:
      December 19, 2015 at 4:33 pm

      An armed society is a polite society.

      Reply
      • gator69 says:
        December 19, 2015 at 10:19 pm

        Just placed my 12ga back in the safe. Only one homocide in my county in 15 years, a mentally disturbed man who killed his father.

        Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      December 19, 2015 at 10:23 pm

      EVERYONE FORGETS The Second Amnendment has NOTHING to do with crime or self protection. The reason for the Amendment was to prevent TYRANNY as Tony is trying to show.

      The Second Amnendments purpose is to allow the citizens to CONTROL the government and protect their God given right instead of the ‘state’ control the citizens.

      Crime Stats are nothing but a strawman argument.

      You want stats on ‘gun control’?

      Here they are:
      Look at the countries that have disarmed their citizens: Turkey – 1911, Soviet Union – 1929, Germany – 1938, China – 1935, Guatemala – 1964, Uganda – 1970. Now look at Switzerland, issues a gun to every household, teaches them to shoot, lowest gun-related crime rate in the civilized world.

      DEMOCIDE: Death by Government, murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century

      **************************************************
      1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges ( 1900 to 1923)
      61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State (1922 – 1991)
      20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State (1933 – 1945)
      38,000,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill (1947 to present)
      2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State (1975 – 1977)
      1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
      1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing
      1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State
      1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse
      1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea
      ******************************************************

      The 20th century total of citizens killed by their own government = 262,000,000 people “… tortured or beaten to death, hung, shot, and buried alive, burned or starved to death, stabbed or chopped into pieces, and murdered in all the other ways creative and imaginative human beings can devise, I have never been so happy to conclude a project. I have not found it easy to read time and time again about the horrors innocent people have been forced to suffer. What has kept me at this was the belief, as preliminary research seemed to suggest, that there was a positive solution to all this killing and a clear course of political action and policy to end it. And the results verify this. The problem is Power. The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom.” – Dr R.J. Rummel

      People want to know why we want to keep our guns?

      “If all these people, killed by their own government were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5 feet, then they would circle the earth ten times.”

      That is a pretty damn good reason to tell the totalitarian enablers to stuff their gun control where the sun don’t shine.

      Reply
      • Jason Calley says:
        December 20, 2015 at 12:57 am

        Hey Gail! Great comment, and as far as I am concerned an absolutely irrefutable justification for an armed populace.

        “That is a pretty damn good reason to tell the totalitarian enablers to stuff their gun control where the sun don’t shine.”
        Yep. That is pretty much the conclusion that I have reached as well. No more compromises.

        Reply
        • Gail Combs says:
          December 20, 2015 at 1:37 am

          The usual modi operandi of Progressives is to use a strawman and divert the argument. The CAGW scam is a classic. It is and never has been about climate. It is all about totalitarian control of the world by an unelected diplomatically immune bunch of bureaucrats.

          At least the 2nd Amendment is pretty clear but the Progressives STILL will drag it back to crime and gun control. I tried the argument out on a ditzy brainwashed socialist a few days ago. It took me forever to get her to answer the question of what was the purpose of the 2nd Amendment and even then she zoomed back to whining about the need for gun control because of the murder rate.

          I think I may start carrying those Death by Government stats from Dr Rummel to shove under peoples faces.

      • Andy says:
        December 20, 2015 at 4:21 pm

        “Now look at Switzerland, issues a gun to every household, teaches them to shoot, lowest gun-related crime rate in the civilized world.”

        A couple of interesting pieces on this from the BBC a few years apart

        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4755143.stm
        http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21379912

        They don’t issue a gun to every household, not sure where you picked that up from and gun related crime rate as a claim is pretty nebulous claim. Better to pin it down more on deaths and injuries per 100 000 population from firearms.

        Andy

        Reply
        • Gail Combs says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:50 pm

          This is where I got the information on the Swiss from:

          The Militia System

          In Switzerland, military service is compulsory for all able-bodied men, and alternative civil service is only available for conscientious objectors. Those unwilling to serve must pay a fine.[32] Conscription begins at age nineteen,[33] and the duty to serve ends between the ages of thirty-four and fifty, depending on the rank of the militiaman.[34]

          Militiamen are issued personal equipment, which includes a personal weapon and ammunition.[35] The militiaman is authorized to keep the weapon in his home,[36] unless he decides to deposit it in his unit’s armory.[37] When the militiaman retires, he may keep the personal weapon,[38] provided it has been properly maintained by the qualified technicians of his military unit.[39]

          If there is danger of the abuse or improper handling or maintenance of the weapon, the commandant of the military unit will confiscate the personal weapon.[40] The police, courts, and prosecutors may inform the commandant of circumstances that call for the confiscation of the weapon.[41] The abuse or mishandling of weapons is punishable either by a disciplinary measure or by imprisonment or a fine, depending on the circumstances.[42]……

          ….After several incidents in which militiamen killed themselves or others with the issued weapons, reforms were also proposed for a Regulation that allows members of the Swiss militia to keep their assigned personal weapon in their home.[16] In 2010, this Regulation was amended to allow members of the militia to voluntarily deposit their issued firearm in an armory.[17]

          On February 13, 2011, a popular referendum was held on a proposal that would have made Swiss gun-control laws stricter in several ways. The proposal called for an end to the practice of letting militiamen keep their weapons at home. In addition, it proposed that gun registration should be carried out by the federation instead of the cantons, and that for a weapons acquisition license, the applicant would have to prove a need for the weapon and the skill and knowledge to handle it.[18]

          The Swiss Parliament and the Federal Cabinet advised against the referendum on the grounds that the existing laws were sufficient to protect against gun abuse.[19] The referendum was rejected by 56.3% of those voting, and the voter participation of 49.1% was high as compared to other referenda.[20] It remains to be seen whether the Swiss will change their mind on tougher gun-control laws…

          Prepared by Edith Palmer, Chief,
          Foreign, Comparative, and
          International Law Division II
          February 2013
          http://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/switzerland.php

          From the same site

          …Statistics

          On the occasion of the 2011 gun-control referendum, the Swiss Federal Police compiled statistics on gun-related crimes.[24] These showed that during 2009 the police investigated 236 homicides, of which 55 were allegedly committed with a gun.[25] During the same year, 524 aggravated batteries were reported, 11 of which involved gun use, and 3530 robberies were reported, of which 416 were committed with a gun.[26] Switzerland has a population of 7.9 million.[27]

          The Swiss Statistical Office prepared a chart that lists the number of deaths caused by guns during the years 1995 through 2010.[28] According to these figures, 70 to 90% of the reported deaths were suicides. The figures also show a gradual decrease of deaths by gun use from an overall number of 444 deaths in 1998 to 241 deaths in 2010. The Statistical Office also stated that 17% of all suicides reported in 2009 were committed with a gun, and that 9% of the suicides committed with a gun were committed with a military weapon.[29]

          Until recently, Switzerland had a reputation for combining high levels of gun ownership with a low incidence of mass shootings.[30] This reputation, however, has been marred by the recent shooting rampage in Dainnon…..
          http://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/switzerland.php#Statistics

  2. Jason Calley says:
    December 19, 2015 at 4:32 pm

    The similarity between Nazi gun laws and the 1968 US gun legislation was not accidental.
    http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/GCA_68.htm

    Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      December 19, 2015 at 10:33 pm

      And those Gun Laws sure have helped curb crime here in the USA haven’t they?

      http://www.sentencingproject.org/images/photo/1_US_prison_pop_1925-2013.png

      Reply
      • gator69 says:
        December 19, 2015 at 10:38 pm

        One of the ugly legacies of the ill conceived War on Drugs.

        Reply
        • Gail Combs says:
          December 19, 2015 at 10:49 pm

          The other problem was Kennedy’s laws closing down mental institutions and county homes. When I grew up there were no ‘street people’ If you didn’t have a home you were picked up by the police,, evaluated and taken to the country home or otherwise helped. (The churches did a lot more back in those days)

          Now we have the mentally ill left on the streets to fend for themselves so the Progressives have something to whine and winge about (but never fix).

        • gator69 says:
          December 19, 2015 at 11:52 pm

          Insitutionalization would have likely prevented the only homicide in my county in 15 years (actually it could be longer, the online stats only go back to 2000), and we have had zero drug related homicides.

  3. au1corsair says:
    December 19, 2015 at 5:01 pm

    http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses/crp8703/plassman_whitley.pdf

    There’s the link.

    By the way, how you define “crime” will affect how guns “cause” less crime. Back in the 19th Century it was illegal to sell Indians guns because the Red Man was slated for extermination. Deer are harder to slaughter when Bambi shoots back! Later, the Native American remnants were “assimilated” but were not afforded citizenship until 1924, and even then there was no political equality. The ‘true crimes’ of the American Indian were occupying valuable real estate, failure as a slave labor force, and breathing the air. Gun control was an important factor in dealing with the Indian Problem.

    Today we are all Native Americans.

    Reply
    • Robert Braley says:
      December 20, 2015 at 12:32 am

      Corsair, then the next “gun laws” were in the south which prevented blacks from having guns to enforce Democrat KKK and segregation laws and the laws were brutally enforced. They were the first Non-Indian guns laws and provided for strict prohibition, not just restrictions.
      Again, as in all gun laws they were designed to prevent the population from fighting back to the power elite.
      Anyone that thinks the people like Feinstein, Obama, Bloomberg and their like are one bit concerned about violence are not looking closely enough. These people are looking at the long term of little by little, chip by chip, of Obama’s “fundamental change”, of the liberal “elitist”, big government outlook that they are so right, so smart, and the population so dumb and stupid (watch the Gruber tapes) the people must be told what they need, what they must do, what they cannot do, for their own good, by those very smart elitist ones. And to prevent a revolt of those stupid people you cannot have them running around with a bunch of guns.

      That is the long term goal. Master state government of the elite. But need to get rid of the guns and convince enough “sheeple” that that is what they really want have them vote in their own laws and destruction.

      Reply
  4. scott says:
    December 19, 2015 at 6:39 pm

    a more compelling Harvard study found that LESS gun ownership (world wide, including the US) translates to MORE deaths and that countries with more restrictive gun laws are in fact less safe.
    http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

    Reply
    • Andy says:
      December 19, 2015 at 9:02 pm

      I don’t find that very compelling at all considering there is no abstract to the piece, I don’t see any peer review and also the fact I see the words STUDENTS in the URL link. Are they practicing or such?

      Also apparently the United Kingdom doesn’t exist according to their tables of European stats. Maybe UK low death rates from firearms due to lack of firearms upset their pre-conceived notions so they just blanked us out 😀

      Nice work.

      Reply
      • Andy says:
        December 19, 2015 at 9:11 pm

        I do have to laugh at this load of bollox they wrote

        “In the late 1990s, England moved from stringent controls to a
        complete ban of all handguns and many types of long guns.
        Hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated from those
        owners law?abiding enough to turn them in to authorities.
        Without suggesting this caused violence, the ban’s ineffective?
        ness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had so in?
        creased that England and Wales had Europe’s highest violent
        crime rate, far surpassing even the United States”

        Lol, what a load of baloney ! It’s become so bad over here even our dear old police still don’t want to be armed en masse.

        We ain’t got an armed police force, we ain’t got an armed public. We are happy. Whoever wrote that shit in that piece ought to be shot. Not by us of course.

        Andy

        Reply
      • gator69 says:
        December 19, 2015 at 9:19 pm

        Andy, you might check your facts before commenting…

        These peer reviewed publications offer invaluable practical experience in legal writing, editing, and scholarship.

        List of HLS Journals

        Harvard Business Law Review
        Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
        Environmental Law Review
        Human Rights Journal
        Harvard International Law Journal
        Journal of Law & Gender
        Journal of Law and Public Policy
        Journal of Law and Technology
        Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice

        http://hls.harvard.edu/dept/dos/student-journals/journals-and-publications/

        Reply
        • Andy says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:08 pm

          So who peer reviewed this Gator? Was it other students as they are their peers?

          It’s still a load of rubbish.

          Andy

        • gator69 says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:11 pm

          It’s still a load of rubbish.

          That is your opinion Andy. You gave an earlier “opinion” that was incorrect, and I corrected it for you, you are welcome.

        • Andy says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:27 pm

          It wasn’t an opinion Gator, it was me stating that I had not seen any peer review process. You mentioned they do have peer review process so thanks for that. Peer review by other students you would assume?

          It’s still a load of rubbish. Yes that’s my opinion given their comments. If you want to defend it then feel free.

          In the last 15 years more criminals in the UK are using fake firearms due to them being easier to obtain, and if they get caught less penalty. Souce is UK government crime stats. So is the UK more dangerous now that criminals are moving to fake arms?

          I don’t think so.

          These Harvard papers are ” practice ” ones aren’t they from younger people?

          Andy

        • gator69 says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:30 pm

          Thanks for your opinions Andy. I prefer to use a real gun when defending myself and family, you guys can keep the fake ones.

        • Andy says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:47 pm

          Do you go out to work Gator? How do you protect you family when you are not at home or with them? I protect my family by living in a society where when I go to work and leave my family at home the nearest gun is likely to be about 3 miles away and not owned by the next door neighbour.

          Most US people killed by firearms are not from criminals attacking a family, it’s by the very same family, the neighbour, the co-worker, the person who saw the red mist. All previously law abiding. Or even your pet dog

          https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/a-dog-shoots-a-person-almost-every-year-in-america/

          Statistically you are more likely to be shot dead than me tonight even though you have a real gun over in the USA than in the UK.

          Good night.

          Andy

        • gator69 says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:57 pm

          Your statistics are shit Andy. They do not take demographics into account, among many other things.

          The county in which I live is armed to the teeth, virtually every household has guns. And we all hunt, and we shoot for recreation as well. This same county has had only one homicide in over 15 years. Just 20 miles away as the crow flies, they have almost daily murders, and strict gun control laws resulting in most households being unarmed.

          Live in your world Andy, and I will live in mine. I prefer to be prepared for the worst, and not having any regrets of being gun-phobic in my final moments.

          As for my family, they have their own guns.

        • Gail Combs says:
          December 20, 2015 at 5:09 pm

          Here in the USA women and children also learn to handle guns safely. I shot my first shotgun at age 4. My brother at age 16 held a bunch of Mifia enforcers from NYC at gunpoint until the police arrived. (They were looking for a deserted road to kill the guy and dump the body.) Dad wasn’t at home.

          We have hunters (L.C. Hunting Club) lease our land and the kids all are well drilled in gun safety. Best thing we ever did was agree to continue leasing the land to the hunt club when we moved down from New England. If we want help they are always willing with advice, recommendations or even hands on.

  5. richard says:
    December 19, 2015 at 7:03 pm

    Gun control. The guns causing havoc are under control.By criminals,
    who ,by their actions, demonstrate that laws can be broken by anyone.
    There are about 20,000 gun laws on the books. Will a few more stop
    what proponents of gun control are upset about?? HOW??? The only
    effect these proposed laws will have, will take guns away from law-abiding
    people. They are not the problem. So it seems that the real agenda is
    to disarm law abiding citizens. That is disturbing.Criminals who accept
    death as a probable outcome and still commit the crime laugh at a gun
    control law. Logic tells me that gun control proponents know this and
    have another agenda in mind. And it ain’t pretty.

    Reply
  6. Rosco says:
    December 19, 2015 at 7:26 pm

    Are people really that stupid they believe criminals give a damn about the law ?

    Reply
    • Andy says:
      December 19, 2015 at 9:03 pm

      Most US people killed by guns are people killed by non criminals.

      It’s a fact.

      Andy

      Reply
      • gator69 says:
        December 19, 2015 at 9:11 pm

        So the killings were legal?

        Reply
      • rah says:
        December 19, 2015 at 9:12 pm

        ONLY when you count suicides in the total. The vast majority of homicides involving firearms are committed by persons with a criminal record according to the FBI stats.

        Reply
      • Robertv says:
        December 19, 2015 at 11:08 pm

        And how many of those killed by non criminals were criminals ? Do those non criminals include police officers?

        Reply
      • Colorado Wellington says:
        December 19, 2015 at 11:53 pm

        US people, eh? Is the word you were hunting for “Americans”?

        Reply
      • Latitude says:
        December 19, 2015 at 11:56 pm

        Most US people killed by guns are people killed by non criminals.
        It’s a fact.
        Andy
        ===
        Are you saying our legal system is too lenient?

        Reply
      • richard says:
        December 20, 2015 at 1:12 am

        Andy, unless the victim dies before they are shot, they die from an unlawful act,
        since shooting a person is not allowed by law. Actually, pointing a gun at a person,
        planning to shoot them, are also criminal acts, making the killer a criminal before
        pulling the trigger.Ask a police officer what happens to someone who points a
        gun at them.

        Reply
        • EV2 says:
          December 20, 2015 at 2:50 am

          @richard – I have no idea what Andy was trying to say, but your comment is also inaccurate. There are many circumstances where pointing a firearm at someone or even shooting them would not be a criminal act.

        • Robert Braley says:
          December 20, 2015 at 2:55 am

          What the hell is Richard talking about? Is he delusional? What information is he reading. Most gun deaths are committed by “non-criminals”. Chicago, DC, Baltimore. My god, this man needs treatment.

      • Gail Combs says:
        December 20, 2015 at 5:27 pm

        From the FBI:
        Felony circumstances (rape, robbery, burglary, etc.) accounted for 23.1 percent of murders. Circumstances were unknown for 38.0 percent of reported homicides. That is 61.1% so you are making numbers up Andy.

        Law enforcement reported 653 justifiable homicides in 2011. Of those, law enforcement officers justifiably killed 393 felons, and private citizens justifiably killed 260 people during the commission of a crime.
        When considering 5- and 10-year trends, the 2014 estimated violent crime total was 6.9 percent below the 2010 level and 16.2 percent below the 2005 level.
        Murder fell from 14,722 (9,199 guns) in 2010 to 14,249 (8,454 guns) in 2014.

        https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/figs/violent-crime.jpg

        https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/11murderbyrelate.gif

        Reply
        • wizzum says:
          December 20, 2015 at 6:02 pm

          To be clear Gail, just because someone is known or a relative does not mean they are not a criminal or breaking a restraining order or other such legal restraint on their action.

        • Gail Combs says:
          December 20, 2015 at 11:07 pm

          wizzum,
          I am well aware of that since I have a brother who has offed several (at least 8) relatives after convincing them to make a will in his favor. In the case of rape it is often a relative or family ‘friend’ same goes for a lot of theft. However those numbers I cited were clean and unambiguous.

          The other problem is a lack of a sheet does not mean there is no crime, just that the person has not been caught. Since much of the murder is in the inner cities, the chances of the murderer having committed previous crimes, on drugs or alcohol is great.

          Another factor is the blasted schools and doctors forcing ritalin and prozac on kids as young as THREE! The Center for Disease Control show that the ADHD diagnosis had been made in 15 percent of high school-age children, (mainly boys) and that the number of children on medication for the disorder had soared to 3.5 million from 600,000 in 1990.

          That is just the tip of the iceberg.
          Violence in Schools? It’s the Prozac and Ritalin Stupid! by Lawrence Wilson, MD

          AN EPIDEMIC
          In many areas, one of every five children is labeled with ‘attention deficit’ or ADHD. The number of children so diagnosed increased by 90% between 1989 and 1996! Three-fourths of the doctor visits resulted in drug treatment. Clinical Psychiatric News, July 1998 reported that 223 children under age 3 who enrolled in Michigan’s Medicaid program before December 1996 were labeled ADHD. The author adds: “Amazingly, 57% of these children were treated with one or more psychotropic drugs including Ritalin, Prozac, Dexedrine, Aventyl and Syban. Thirty-three percent were medicated with two or more of these drugs.”…..

          CRIME AND NUTRITION
          Many studies support the concept that better nutrition reduces crime and delinquency in adults as well as in children. A recent study appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2002. This was a well-controlled study in which half of a group of 230 young offenders were given a food supplement containing vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. The other half were given a placebo or dummy pill (an excellent choice of words, in this case).

          Those who took the real food supplement over an eighteen-month period experienced a reduction in all repeat offenses of 25%. Violent crime was reduced by nearly 40%. Those who took the placebo had no reduction in their repeat offenses over the same period of months……

          Guns save many, many more lives than they take:

          * Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2

          * Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3

          * As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4

          * Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of “Guns in America” — a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5

          * Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that “only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The ‘error rate’ for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high.”7……

          The following do not include those who committed suicide.

          35 School shooters/school related violence committed by those under the influence of psychiatric drugs

          At least 35 school shootings and/or school-related acts of violence have been committed by those taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs resulting in 169 wounded and 79 killed (in other school shootings, information about their drug use was never made public—neither confirming or refuting if they were under the influence of prescribed drugs). The most important fact about this list, is that these are only cases where the information about their psychiatric drug use was made public.
          The below list includes individuals documented to have been under the influence of psychiatric drugs and not only includes mass shootings, but the use of knives, swords and bombs. 22 international drug regulatory agency warnings cite side effects including mania, violence, psychosis and even homicidal ideation.…

          From one commenter: ….see 4000 more such incidents between 2009-2011 at http://ssristories.com/index.php?sort=date&p
          The rest of the comments are good.

        • wizzum says:
          December 20, 2015 at 11:29 pm

          Sorry Gail, my comment was more for Piers….errr. Andy’s benefit rather than yours.

        • Gail Combs says:
          December 21, 2015 at 12:23 am

          No problem wizzum, so was mine.

      • wizzum says:
        December 20, 2015 at 5:31 pm

        I’m going to call bullshit Piers…I mean Andy (oops, 1 ignorant Pom is the same as another to me). Please put up your facts.

        Reply
  7. au1corsair says:
    December 19, 2015 at 8:33 pm

    Gun control isn’t just about controlling guns. Censorship follows because guns are easy for an educated person to make. In America’s shameful past, gun control has been used for economic exploitation and political domination over “minority” ethnic and political groups starting before the American Revolution. Here’s an example from Japan:

    http://www.geektime.com/2014/10/28/hype-and-punishment-why-the-media-went-hysterical-over-3d-printed-guns-in-japan/
    Basically, opportunistic American libertarians are using a new technology to make gun control politicians and their constituents hysterical, which is about as challenging as getting a labrador retriever to eat spam. 3D printing aficionados are taking advantage of the hysteria to promote their pet technology. A Japanese nerd working in an educational shop got carried away and not only printed a “gun,” but showed it off to the whole world on YouTube. After viewing the video, the Japanese justice system (not known for its fuzzy and gentle demeanor) used him as a convenient example of why you shouldn’t flaunt illegal activity in Japan.

    The truth is that 3D printing is not a mature technology. It is very valuable in a limited number of applications, with small parts, high variance between parts and high costs. Making firearms is not one of those applications.

    Because of the political agendas of the gun rights advocates and the anti-gun lobby, and the hype-driven nature of tech media, 3D printing has been uncomfortably shoehorned into the debate, where it now sits awkwardly.

    Regulating personal 3D printing is about as intelligent and feasible as regulating power tools or sharp objects.

    Reply
  8. Zebo says:
    December 19, 2015 at 8:45 pm

    Considering the NYT -article I just wonder why most of those pro-gun-confiscation -guys
    in the past decades were and are jewish?

    Reply
  9. Andy says:
    December 19, 2015 at 8:46 pm

    Perhaps rather than impersonate the Nazi’s the US can impersonate the UK after Churchill for the last 70 years? Our last spree killing that caused outrage was back in 2010.

    When was the last US one?

    Andy

    [SG : Europe has killed about 100 million people over the past 150 years. But thanks for the mindless BS]

    Reply
    • rah says:
      December 19, 2015 at 9:05 pm

      Yes it would have to post Churchill since during the time when Churchill first became PM the fact that the UK had practically already disarmed it’s law abiding citizens was rather inconvenient wasn’t it?

      http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2012/8/23/the-hession-rifle/

      http://nramuseum.org/the-museum/the-galleries/wwii,-korea,-vietnam-and-beyond/case-64-world-war-ii-us/major-john-w-hession's-springfield-03-rifle.aspx

      Besides many of us Yanks tend to distrust our government more than the majority of you Brits seem to. This is true story:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5ut6yPrObw

      Reply
    • gator69 says:
      December 19, 2015 at 9:13 pm

      Considering that the US has five times the population of the UK, I don’t see your point.

      Reply
      • Ted says:
        December 19, 2015 at 11:48 pm

        There’s also the legal definition of “murder” to take in to account. Americans pretty much list every suspicious death as a murder, then pull them off the list if other reasons are found. The idea of an unrecorded murder here is almost unthinkable. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve heard that the British government doesn’t count a death as a murder unless someone has already been convicted of it.

        Reply
    • wizzum says:
      December 19, 2015 at 9:31 pm

      Andy, how much time have you spent in the U.S.?

      Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      December 19, 2015 at 11:25 pm

      1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges ( 1900 to 1923)
      20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Germany Genocide State (1933 – 1945)
      1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing

      24,414,000 people murdered by their own government in Europe during the 20th century.

      Reply
      • Ted says:
        December 19, 2015 at 11:55 pm

        Don’t forget the staged famines in the Soviet Union. At least another 3 million, with some estimates going much higher. There was, in fact, plenty of food. The Soviets merely starved their people until they agreed to agricultural collectivization.

        Reply
        • Jason Calley says:
          December 20, 2015 at 1:17 am

          Gun control nuts never count the murders that follow civilian disarmament, even if the victims are shot. After all, those were “official” executions. They also do not count the starvations, the gassings, the beating-to-death, etc., etc. No, the only murders that count are the civilian shootings.

          The gun control nuts are like black shoe nuts. Suppose that the majority of rapes are committed by men wearing black shoes — which is entirely possible in view of how popular black shoes are. “We need to do something about black-shoe-rape! Ban black shoes!” OK, so you ban black shoes and the incidence of black-shoe-rape goes down. Sure, there are just as many rapes as before — but black-shoe-rape is down. “Hurray! We fixed the black-shoe-rape problem! Kumbaya!”

        • Latitude says:
          December 20, 2015 at 1:25 am

          Jason, I think someone could make a very good argument that crime goes up because people are no longer able to defend themselves….

          https://i0.wp.com/2.bp.blogspot.com/-DJ-KA2WhhLo/UNZr8agpVqI/AAAAAAAAFH4/f6rrTVN7q6I/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-22+at++Saturday,+December+22,+9.26+PM.png

        • Robert Braley says:
          December 20, 2015 at 3:04 am

          Latitude, a huge factor in Britain’s murder rate is how they classify murder–it was exposed recently and there was a big stink (actually it was exposed about a lot of crimes and how they were categorized much lower than they actually were to make the stats look good)

          Anyway, police in England only count a murder as a murder if the person dies at the scene or in the ER. If they die later after being admitted to the hospital it declared a natural death, not a murder or at a later time after leaving the hospital due to complications from the injury it is not a murder–thus low murder rate.

          Also, they only count it as a murder in final stats if they get a conviction of the perpetrator. If no arrest is ever made or the bad guy is acquitted it is not a murder.

          Every single one of these instances are murders in the US. Want to keep your violence down, don’t count it.

    • Jason Calley says:
      December 20, 2015 at 1:23 am

      England and the US are two very different places. Just as it is appropriate for US citizens to be armed, it is appropriate for English subjects to be disarmed.

      Reply
      • David A says:
        December 20, 2015 at 5:32 am

        Time will likely prove that assertion false.

        Reply
        • Andy says:
          December 20, 2015 at 4:11 pm

          Maybe David, but I think it will take a very long time for the US not to be armed.

          Andy

        • Ted says:
          December 20, 2015 at 6:09 pm

          Andy-

          You plainly don’t understand Americans. This country will cease to exist before it’s unarmed. If nothing else the act of disarmament will end it. If federal agents went door to door, forcibly collecting the millions weapons that Americans would refuse to voluntarily hand over, what do you think would happen? You appear to believe that we Americans are trigger happy. Do you think we’d become less so, just because a government we despise told us to stop? Loss of life would be enormous. How many people would the government have to kill, to reduce our killings of each other? And who would be those people the government would kill? Most would be safe, honest, random people, who’ve never posed a threat to anyone. Those people would die, in effect, to save the lives of far less desirable people. Here’s the dirty little secret of American murder rates, and why we tolerate them as well as we do. Most of the victims are thugs themselves. Certainly not everyone who’s shot deserved it. But the solid majority of firearm murders in this country consist of one gang banger killing another, for whatever gang related reasons they come up with. Total confiscation of guns in this country would mean the almost certain deaths of Gator, Gail, Rah, Myself, and countless other peaceful citizens, in order to hopefully save the lives of a group mainly consisting of violent criminals. Countries don’t survive trades like that.

          Beyond that, lets just look at the situation on the ground. Let’s set aside all the politics, personal beliefs, desires, and fears, and look to reality for a moment. Most estimates today suggest that there’s slightly more than one firearm for every living resident of this country. How do you propose we remove those weapons? There are over 300 MILLION guns in America, roughly 100 million having no record of their most recent sale. No one knows where those guns are. A very conservative estimate for the number of bullets sitting in American homes right now is about 50-100 BILLION. The American public could, very comfortably, fight WWII from that stockpile. Almost none of that ammunition came with any paper trail at all. The government doesn’t have the slightest idea where it is, or even how much there is. How do you round that all up? How do you put the Genie back in the bottle? It doesn’t matter how we got here. We can’t change the past. We’re here now. What do you propose we do about it?

        • Latitude says:
          December 20, 2015 at 6:51 pm

          Ted, Andy doesn’t realize that our countries are coming from two different places too…
          socialism is a step up for them…
          ..it’s a step down for us

        • Gail Combs says:
          December 21, 2015 at 3:50 pm

          Ted,
          There are also the reloaders like a preacher here in town. We can make our own bullets.

          Caves have lots of saltpeter ( potassium nitrate) one of the ingredients for the making of gun powder so do manure piles.

        • gator69 says:
          December 21, 2015 at 4:20 pm

          I also have a reloader, and it works like a champ.

          Let’s not forget 3-D printers.

        • Ted says:
          December 21, 2015 at 5:01 pm

          Guns are very simple devices. You can literally make a 12 gauge shotgun with a length of 3/4″ steel pipe, a cap, a hand drill, and a nail. I’d strongly recommend welding the cap, but I’ve seen one hold together with just the threads.

          And of course, I have my own machine shop. I could make functional copies of pretty much any small arm, without any trouble at all. (no, I’m not offering) As the saying goes, parts is parts. There’s certainly nothing in a Glock that’s more complex than the parts I’ve made that are currently in orbit. And there are roughly a million people in this country with access to equivalent machinery.

        • Jason Calley says:
          December 21, 2015 at 8:15 pm

          Free men have every right to be armed and to protect themselves with their weapons of choice. Those who allow themselves to be slaves and subjects have lost that right. It is appropriate that people such as myself, gator, Ted and Gail be armed. It is not appropriate for Andy to be armed. Andy even agrees that it is inappropriate for him to be armed. Far be it from me to dispute his own judgement of himself and his fellows.

  10. JPinBalt says:
    December 20, 2015 at 4:57 am

    In times series data, the number of guns per capital in the US has massively increased at the same time violent crimes per capita like murder have fallen from the mid 1990s. FBI has good data. However, you need to be careful if you see handgun deaths versus homicides or murders since a lot of handgun deaths are suicides and some homicides are justifiable by people defending themselves or police (it is easy to be misleading with what data set is chosen). Also, while guns per capita is a widely cited figure both for time series and cross-section, less cited data for US shows that the percent of the US population owning guns has fallen. Thus we have more guns per person, but fewer people are guns owners – this means less people own guns in the US over time, but the average gun owner now has more guns. The marginal impact on crime or deterrence thwarting crime is likely insignificant if a gun owner say has 6 guns versus 3 guns.
    If you look at the highest murder rates in the US, it negatively correlates with gun ownership, places like DC,Maryland or Baltimore have low gun ownership, but super high murder rates, opposite for places with high gun ownership. However, if you do a better statistical analysis of gun ownership and murder rates in the cross-section by US states and add things with multivariate analysis like population density, demographics by age, race, and ethnicity, percent religious, then gun ownership rates fall out as an insignificant variable (1.13 t-ratio) to explain murder rates, or does not matter if 50% population has a gun or 5%, other things are much more correlated and significant, and also politically incorrect.

    Reply
    • Colorado Wellington says:
      December 20, 2015 at 9:18 am

      Beware the man with one gun because he probably knows how to use it.

      Reply
      • JPinBalt says:
        December 20, 2015 at 10:01 am

        I agree, on margin, ten men or women each with a gun, is probably more formidable than one person with ten guns, abet vast majority of murders are committed by men, most in 20s or 30s, high testosterone, drops off significantly with age. Please do not accuse me of a microaggression by gender/age bias.
        In any case, did the statistical analysis in cross section by states, insignificant or no correlation with per capita murder rate and percent gun ownership rate (ignored per capita guns) if add a few likely suspects, but should do F-tests. Sky high murder rate in some downtown areas in US has noting to do with guns. Let’s see 339 murders so far in Bmore with 600,000 living here, more than NYC with 8 million – think if 339 people standing in front of you all Xed (victims usually/mostly thugs if you look up criminal records also), but has nothing to do with gun ownership. I feel sorry for those living in high crime areas subject to progressive/statist/liberal take away gun laws.

        Reply
        • Gail Combs says:
          December 20, 2015 at 11:27 pm

          “….vast majority of murders are committed by men, most in 20s or 30s, high testosterone, drops off significantly with age. Please do not accuse me of a microaggression by gender/age bias….”

          THAT is the reason we castrate equines, goats, sheep and cows. The sooner the better. Like at less than one week for all but horses. For horses as soon as they descend.

  11. Andy says:
    December 20, 2015 at 4:09 pm

    I saw a movie once where only the police and military had guns. It was called the Sound of Music.

    Andy

    Reply
  12. JPinBalt says:
    December 21, 2015 at 8:03 am

    “….vast majority of murders are committed by men, most in 20s or 30s, high testosterone, drops off significantly with age. Please do not accuse me of a microaggression by gender/age bias….”
    “n re your comment
    “THAT is the reason we castrate equines, goats, sheep and cows. The sooner the better. Like at less than one week for all but horses. For horses as soon as they descend. “

    That is interesting Gail, did not know that, the gun murder rate by animals is down to about one per year, mostly by dogs. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/a-dog-shoots-a-person-almost-every-year-in-america/
    But the testosterone levels of dogs is also down considerable due to 100,000 years of breeding versus wolf ancestors.

    Seems castration working against sex offenders …
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105035/Germany-rejects-demand-stop-castrating-sex-criminals-punishment.html
    ” … a 1997 study that tracked the history of 104 sexual offenders ‘who subjected themselves to castration in the decade between 1970 and 1980. Their reoffending rate was three per cent,’ the German authorities explained, ‘as opposed to 46 per cent for a control group.’ ”

    The second element is could cleaning the gene pool, testosterone levels are partly genetic in addition to gender and age. People may forget, but in the 1940s and 50s it was common to get the death penalty for rape in the US. Those days over. Accused as too “racist” since convicted offenders and executees were more often black.

    But I do not think society would go for castration of young boys as a pseudo WMD pre-emptive doctrine to get down murder rates, but could see medication for first time offenders as “voluntary” “option” to get out of a prison term sometime in future. Also as far as gene pool, after Ferguson and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, police have called it quits to a degree, why risk a lawsuit, unfairly accused of racism, put life in danger to protect, cut back on putting neck out going out for call, it is obvious, and then just let thugs kill each other off. We have had surge in murder rates this year. What I am getting at is that the murder victims are not all innocent victims. I look up the last week’s murder victims names whose bodies show up with bullet holes and stabbings on the streets here in Baltimore via MD Judiciary Search, the majority have multiple felony offences, assault, drug possession, handgun violations, burglaries, trespass, car jacking offenders, drug dealing, etc., wonder why some are not locked up. You see someone who shows up murdered last night with 20 prior felonies under belt and in and out of prison whole life, makes you wonder, maybe some percentage say tried to rip someone else off in a late night drug deal and were shot while trying, shows up as murder statistic while would be justifiable homicide in other setting by legal definition. Police sitting back to a degree and letting it go.

    Reply
  13. Martin Smith says:
    December 21, 2015 at 11:44 am

    The Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to own a firearm. This narrative was developed by the National Rifle Association in the late 1970s, out of fear that further gun control laws would eliminate private ownership of firearms altogether.

    For 200 years following the ratification of the Second Amendment, federal judges understood that the Second Amendment safeguarded the right to keep and bear arms when serving in a state militia. This view was widely held until the 1980s when pro-gun organizations began claiming that federal regulation of the individual use of firearms violated Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

    Initially, the National Rifle Association dealt more with sport than politics. “I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns,” said Former NRA President Karl Frederick in 1934. “I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses.”

    In response to increasing crime, a 1968 federal law prohibited interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. The NRA became scared that more restrictions would ultimately result in government seizure of all personal guns. That’s when, in 1977, the group reorganized to launch an aggressive anti-gun control movement based on a fabricated understanding of the Second Amendment. Those who invoke the Second Amendment as an absolute reason why the United States can’t act like Great Britain, Australia, Japan and other countries to reduce staggering gun violence don’t understand the amendment at all.

    When the thirteen colonies broke away from tyrannical Great Britain to form the United States of America, the concern that this new government would become corrupt was very real. The ultimate check on a tyrannical government, the Framers of the Constitution believed, was an armed population.

    The Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Since militias are made up of citizens bearing arms, gun proponents argue that the right to keep and bear arms naturally extends to each citizen, who may use a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

    For the first time in history, this perspective was supported in the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller. A civilian, the Court ruled, has a constitutional right to keep a handgun in his or her home for purposes of self-defense.

    Nowhere in the text, however, is it stated that an individual right to keep and bear arms is preserved. More overtly, the text refers to the collection of people who would make up a militia if the federal government were to abuse its power.
    For Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the Second Amendment defends only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with military activities. Individuals do not have the right to keep and bear arms or to use weapons outside the context of service in a well-regulated militia.
    “Different language surely would have been used to protect nonmilitary use and possession of weapons from regulation if such an intent had played any role in the drafting of the Amendment,” Stevens wrote in the dissenting opinion to the case.
    What’s more, the Framers’ primary motivation, he clarified, was not to reinforce the already common-law right of self-defense. A common-law right is established either by previous legal cases or by custom. Thus, defendants in criminal proceedings in each state already have the right to self-defense.

    When Stevens joined the Supreme Court in 1975, there was no doubt among the Court of the Second Amendment’s connotation being military, rather than personal. “Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands,” he observed.

    Five years after his retirement in 1986, former Chief Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger, a conservative, explained that “The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.” The notion that the Second Amendment preserves an individual right to own a gun, he added, is “one of the greatest pieces of fraud… on the American public by special interest groups that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.”
    If the Second Amendment doesn’t protect an individual right to own a gun, we don’t need to repeal or amend it in order to establish major gun control laws. We must remember that this tale is the NRA’s doing, not the Founders of the Constitution, and that it is rooted in fear. This fear is why the NRA staunchly opposes even minor firearms regulations today. We can and should move forward in enacting exactly what the pro-gun lobby is afraid of. We can’t hide behind the Second Amendment anymore.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-paige-rosen/stop-hiding-behind-the-se_b_8845634.html

    Reply
    • gator69 says:
      December 21, 2015 at 12:16 pm

      The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, … or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.
      -Thomas Jefferson

      No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
      -Thomas Jefferson

      Here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for their defense, not for offence.
      -John Adams

      [W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually.
      -George Mason

      I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor.
      -George Mason

      [W]here and when did freedom exist when the power of the sword and purse were given up from the people?
      -Patrick Henry

      The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.
      -Alexander Hamilton

      Why is it that you leftists are constantly trying to rerwrite history?

      Reply
      • Colorado Wellington says:
        December 21, 2015 at 12:43 pm

        I don’t think the moron knows who these men were. The only significance of his repost is documenting that the global warming campaign is a Leftist project. Show me a warmist and I will show you a hater of individual liberty and a lover of oppressive goverments.

        But you knew that …

        Reply
        • Martin Smith says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:08 pm

          I’m a humanist, a Buddhist, a Christian, a strong advocate of individual liberty and a strong believer that oppressive governments should be removed by force, after political means have failed.

        • Colorado Wellington says:
          December 21, 2015 at 8:27 pm

          I was wrong about your sense of humor. You are funny.

        • wizzum says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:45 pm

          You are definitely an Idiot, you cannot be a Christian and a Buddhist, their belief systems are totally different.
          So what happens after this life for you Marty, will you be rewarded with everlasting life in the kingdom of heaven with your one of two true gods or be reborn as a goose or some other higher form of life?

      • Martin Smith says:
        December 21, 2015 at 1:05 pm

        Those are all important quotes, but none of them is in the Constitution.

        Reply
        • gator69 says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:17 pm

          Actually Marty, many of those same words and phrases are indeed in the Constitution. And the quotes come directly from those who actually wrote the Constitution, one of them being known as ther “Father of the Bill of Rights”. On top of that, these quotes were from their deliberations on the Bill of Rights, and its meaning.

          Your leftist propaganda is not found anywhere in the Constitution, and was written by people with a leftist/progressive agendas 200 years later.

          You lose.

        • Martin Smith says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:20 pm

          No, gator, nothing like any of those quotes is in the Constitution. The point of the article is that the 2nd amendment refers to service in a well-regulated militia.

        • gator69 says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:28 pm

          that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.

          Sorry Marty, but you are wrong again. And again, these were the deliberations of the authors of the Bill of Rights (separate from the Constitution, it was added later, time for you to go back to school), and not some leftist/progressive attempt at a rewrite.

          Why is it you freaks are so afraid of original script and original data? Oh yeah, the agenda thingy.

        • Latitude says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:25 pm

          militia.- a military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency.

        • Martin Smith says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:37 pm

          That has nothing to do with bearing arms, gator. In fact, the government saw that there was nothing in the Constitution that guaranteed the right to bear arms, so they added it a couple years later. And when they added it, they specified that the right to bear arms is for participating in a well-regulated militia. So, not only does it require membership in a militia, burt it says the activity of the militia must be well-regulated, which really does mean rational gun control, like in Australia and Norway, for two examples, is allowed in the US. So that’s what we will do.

        • gator69 says:
          December 21, 2015 at 1:41 pm

          Liar.

          I ask, who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers. But I cannot say who will be the militia of the future day. If that paper on the table gets no alteration, the militia of the future day may not consist of all classes, high and low, and rich and poor.
          -George Mason

        • Gail Combs says:
          December 21, 2015 at 2:18 pm

          Marty, Go read the Federalist Papers and then get back to us.

          The Federalist (later known as The Federalist Papers) is a collection of 85 articles and essays written (under the pseudonym Publius) by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the ratification of the United States Constitution.

          Before the Constitution could become “the supreme law of the land,” it had to be ratified or approved by at least nine of the thirteen states. When the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787, they knew ratification would not be easy. Many people were bitterly opposed to the proposed new system of government. A public debate soon erupted in each of the states over whether the new Constitution should be accepted. More important, it was a crucial debate on the future of the United States.

          Link to the papers: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fedpapers.html

          Among others:

          The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered Madison argues in favor of a federal military. After suffering at the hands of the Brits, many were frighten/opposed to the Federal Government being given the power to create a standing army and navy. So why ever would you think these people would want to give up away their rights to own weapons to that same Federal Government or even to the states???

          The Federalist Papers Org.The Founding Fathers and the Right to Bear Arms

          ….According to author Stephen Hallbrook in his new book “Founders on Firearms,” not only is it an individual right to bear arms it is a right that can not even be restricted constitutionally. In Kurt Williamsen’s book review he wrote, “His research is so thoroughly done that one can say with certainty that anyone who can say the the federal government may restrict this right, may justifiably be called either ignorant or a liar”(2008). The concept behind Holbrook’s book was to research all of the drafting documents and the debates of the time in order to find the exact intent of the Second Amendment –and he has spoken. Gun ownership is an individual right and the intent is for it not to be even restricted. So the fact that our Government may want to ban a firearm, granted the backbone weapon to our militia, is preposterous and unconstitutional. As a matter of fact for a 150 year period it was a law that every able-bodied male have a rifle in his home at all times for the protection of the State (Williamsen, 2008)…..

          The militias were designed to ensure that the people of the United States retained the power. The founding father foreseen a country in which they knew would not always remain in tranquility and therefore there had to be a certain, not just right, but a way to execute, a plan to take back control of the government, if the citizens ever lost power or control. The Second Amendment essentially secures two rights, the right to bear arms and the right to form militias in the name if the citizens against foes both foreign and domestic that impeded upon their rights. This is a very hard concept for us to comprehend because when are our rights impeded to the point that we can over throw and unlawful government. But the founding father were drafting this document in a time of war and despair and the concept of a monarchy was still present. So they may have thought what if a President retains too much power and transforms the government into a monarchy of single rule. These concepts would not have seemed bizarre to the thinkers of this times because essentially every government they had known had been bad. They understood that there is no rights that unalienable unless the people have the means and the power to secure them. The entire Constitution is thus ratified by the people to bear arms, so the Second Amendment essentially gives us the right as citizens to protect all of our other rights. The Second Amendment therefore could be held as one of the most important Amendments to the Constitution.

          Also read DEMOCIDE: Death by Government by Dr. R.J. Rummel, Hawaii Univ.

          For the REASON the right to have arms is so important to the welfare of the masses.

      • richard says:
        December 21, 2015 at 1:30 pm

        Good stuff!! I read the second amendment simply; they could have just
        written ” the right to keep and bear arms, SHALL not be infringed”. But
        they knew some retarded people could not get it. So they “lawered”
        it up and included an example, the militia. Buy that inclusion, they thought
        that the unsaid phrase” including but NOT LIMITED TO, THE MILITIA” was
        understood. The 10th also is being deliberately misconstrued.IMHO.
        richard

        Reply
    • au1corsair says:
      December 21, 2015 at 3:32 pm

      Funny that you should mention the National Recovery Act–or did you mean the National Rifle Association? Your history is deficient. Go back to the hearings on the National Firearms Act of 1934. Attorney General Homer Cummings was convinced that the Second Amendment protected the individual citizen’s right to own firearms, so he based his proposed handgun ban on the power to tax handguns out of existence. The National Rifle Association and the United States Revolver Association were on-board for national registration of all legal handguns and national licensing of all legal handgun owners; neither organization at the time “believed in the Second Amendment.” Had AG Cummings went along with the proposed $5 tax rate and not publically insisted that he was going to tax “murder weapons out of existence” then handguns today would be licensed just like machine guns, like firearm suppressors (silencers), like cannon and grenades and bazookas–and like those handgun substitutes, short barreled rifles and sawed off shotguns. The original bill limited magazine capacity to 12 rounds and any
      “auto-loading” (semi-automatic action) was regarded as a machine gun, too.
      The $200 tax in 1934 along with waiting periods of six months and more for the transfer to take effect and getting permission from corrupt local and state officials before getting the federal bureaucracy to okay the sale or gift of a handgun was just a bit much. In 2015 dollars, $200 “1934” dollars has the buying power of $3558 “2015” dollars. The federal transfer stamp fee hasn’t increased.
      What the National Rifle Association had to do was counter the “salami slicing strategy,” incremental infringements. “Be reasonable. I’m only trimming your toe nails. Now that the toe nails are gone, you don’t really need that toe. Now we cut off your legs. Next…” Gun control measures including confiscation are just “the first step.”
      And if Homer Cummings had overcame his own hubris, he would have achieved three of the “minimum achievements” of today’s gun ban fanatics:
      All legal handguns registered at the federal level (if not properly registered, it’s a felony with a severe fine and long prison term)
      All legal handgun possessors (not just owners) licensed at the federal level, holding their handguns ONLY with the permission of the Secretary of the Treasury (again, touch a handgun under that scheme and get a heavy fine and go to prison for a long time)
      With these flaming hoops in place, the number of legal handguns and legal handgun owners would be only a few million, and those would be “politically reliable” Party minions.
      That’s without further restrictions and rules–such as machine gun owners have to have “secure storage” and are subject to announced annual inspections. There are also provisions for unannounced inspections (read “legal detention and search without warrant”) of legal, registered machine gun owners by Treasury agents. Being a registered machine gun owner means that the Treasury department may legally sneak up on your home during the hours of darkness, shoot your dogs (standard World War Two commando tactics that made it into standard police tactics for police raids), blast your doors, windows and walls to gain entry, use any force they deem necessary to “subdue those resisting arrest,” hold you for a “reasonable” amount of time in conditions that would be inhumane torture if inflicted upon America’s declared enemies, tear your house apart “assuring compliance” with storage regulations, all without the need for even “Probable Cause” or “Reasonable Articulate Suspicion” because part of your agreement for having a licensed machine gun is compliance with unannounced inspections. Look over the rules of evidence again–anything found during a legal search (or compliance inspection) is admissible evidence. During a “compliance inspection” you have no right to legal counsel–and you are not “under arrest” but you may be held at gunpoint and in chains until the inspection has been completed. So far, this Orwellian nightmare hasn’t occurred because the backlash against the government would be swift and severe.
      After all, gun ban fanatics don’t see gun owners as humans. It’s okay to kick gun owners in the face and stomp their cats and club gun owner brats. Back in the day, the Native American was treated like that when they strayed off the reservation. American blacks were treated that way up through the 1960’s — and Black Lives Matter claim that is still the case. Muslim Americans fear being treated that way. Gun owners are regarded as lower life forms.
      Why is that?

      Reply
      • Gail Combs says:
        December 21, 2015 at 6:32 pm

        “… During a “compliance inspection” you have no right to legal counsel–and you are not “under arrest” but you may be held at gunpoint and in chains until the inspection has been completed. So far, this Orwellian nightmare hasn’t occurred because the backlash against the government would be swift and severe…..”

        ERRRRrrrr, I hate to tell you but you are completely wrong on that.

        ….So, just for posterity…the USDA and their cohorts took over 7 months to end their command of our personal property. We, of course, must continue to pay our personal property taxes on land that we had no rights or access to. – Cindi Henshaw

        Please note that Danny Henshaw is a former police officer who’d done undercover narcotics work. People who commented on the noNAIS website and lived nearby in NC and Virgina went to visit the Henshaws and found the US agents had left a royal mess including used toilet paper and human feces.

        Walter has closed down his website so I am reproducing some of the comments/story here.
        Source: http://nonais.org/2006/09/29/henshaw-incident/
        (Has it really been ten years?)

        The news article is still up Boar war

        These are the e-mails from Cindi Henshaw and other wittnesses from NONAIS.ORG website

        I have posted HERE Virginia’s Section 303(d) compliance documents with the EPA that shows Virginia Commonwealth had reduction plans for livestock along tributaries that empty into Virginia’s 3 watersheds.

        The behavior and health of the pigs was not consist with the disease. Pigs were NOT listed on the law cited.

        Gladstone, Virginia: “I am sitting here at 1:00 am, and trying to figure out what has happened to our little farm. Last Tuesday morning at 5:30 am a Game Warden arrested my husband on a Class 2 Misdemeanor for having a mammalian shooting enclosure without a permit. That was followed by agents from the USDA swooping in (9 different vehicles) and beginning the slaughter of our hogs. It is almost one week later, and it is still going on. We have 24 hour armed surveillance, we are not allowed on our preserve, we are not allowed to do our own testing, and they have killed 2 of our pet hogs that we had in a totally separate pen [separately deeded property not on warrant]. We are in shock. My husband has had a hunting club for 11 years and out of the blue, our lives have been taken over and our rights taken away. WE are being treated like drug dealers by the agents. The Game Wardens are stunned at the way this all happened and have said they have never seen anything like this. Even one of the USDA’s agents from Ohio said he has never witnessed anything like what is going on here Any advise?” Cindi Henshaw
        Comment Cindi — September 18, 2006

        Well, it has been something to read all the posted comments. We can understand some of the comments that seem unbelieving…or even cruel. We are having a difficult time believing it ourselves. If you don’t have animals (or pets, for that matter), you would be hard pressed to feel the gut-wretching of hearing them shot, or snared. If we had known the fate of our animals my husband, Danny, would have done the “honors”, and shot them correctly. I would have wanted him to kill Cupid and Valentine. It would have been accurate and painless. They would not have known what was happening. They were pets that followed us around on the 4-wheeler (because they outgrew riding on it), were favorite local celeberaties with kids and 4-H Clubs. I would have loved to have buried them on our property. They were part of our story. Danny brought them in to me on our first Valentine’s Day. But, alas, I have been told to take the emotion out of it.
        To date, 3 weeks later, all the officials have still not killed all of our pigs. A representative showed up here tonight at 8:00pm to give us an update. He had gone out to the preserve and found lots of tiny prints; fresh tiny prints. (Please note that they should not exist according to the symptoms of pseudorabies). His agents will be back in the morning to try once agian.
        I want to take a moment to thank everyone that has taken up our cause. You know that it is your cause, also. This goes beyond “pigs on the Henshaw’s ranch”… this is what can and will happen. We need to use their own tactics. They slip things by us when we are busy living our lives and just getting by. A little intrusion here, a little taken there. Little things…a little at a time. So we can apply this method to ourselves. A little person here doing something, a little person there writing something, until we are ALL doing SOMETHING. We need to earn our freedom back. A little person at a time. Just do it.
        Our hearts are with all that are fighting this battle. You know who you are.
        Comment Cindi — October 2, 2006

        …Just to say several us from Amherst County went down to the Henshaw’s yesterday evening(October 2,2006) to give our support. We can confirm Cindi’s comments in message 83 about an agent coming to the door. We heard him tell Danny about the small footprints, leaving a bag of corn for him to feed the hogs and that they would be back.
        Early this morning a friend and I rode to the Henshaw’s. We were there when a game warden came in and drove to the reserve gate. He turned around went back down the driveway.
        I walked out to the gate for the reserve just to see for myself. It had a chain lock on it. If it is a quarantined area why didn’t I see any quarantine sign, do not enter sign, warning tape, etc.?
        Very shortly the game warden and a man in a truck with U.S. government plates came up the drive and to the reserve gate. They stayed very briefly and left….

        I am a retired magistrate and am having a real hard time getting my head around why Danny was arrested to begin with. Rather than a warrant a summons could have been issued which would have given him a court date and not required his arrest. Also, second class misdemeanors can be permitted (sign for with promise to appear on a certain date) or not permitted which require an arrest and being taken to the magistrate for a bond hearing. What was said to the magistrate to make this type of warrant be issued is very perplexing to me.

        Our State Vet in Vermont sent me the link for the APHIS Pseudorabies Eradication State–Federal–Industry Program Standards.
        Two points that I can see that VA did not follow.
        *Official pseudorabies herd-cleanup plan: A written plan to eliminate pseudorabies virus from a swine herd. This plan is (1) developed by an official pseudorabies epidemiologist in consultation with the herd owner and his or her veterinary practitioner, when applicable; (2) mutually acceptable to those parties; and (3) approved by the State animal health official. [HA! They failed that one]
        *Have undergone a 30-day depopulation with appropriate cleaning and disinfection. [Disinfection? What’s that? They left blood trails down the public road as they haul away the dead hogs.]

        The USDA is STILL here on our property. After 3+ months they have not been able to kill/catch the 100 pigs on our 100 acres. Mind you, this is our governments’ finest. They have sent special trained sharpshooters in, used professional catch pens and had over three months…and are not able to get the job done.
        Our patience is run. Danny asked wehn they would be off our property and they couldn’t answer. Mr. Antsey said that the pigs had not been as cooperative as they had originally hoped. (Darn those uncooperative pigs…) So, we are still the unhappy hosts to our government. As we all know by now, they can do whatever they “deem neccessary”….
        Cindy Henshaw

        ….While we were talking to Norman [the lawyer], he pointed out the laws that were sited on the original warrant. ( there were several quoted on the original papers) and Norman found, after a great deal of study, there was no law at all that pertained to this case, especially how it was carried out with no notice or warning to correct the problem, if in fact one existed. Basically the bottom line is Danny was convicted on laws that do not even exist. SO MUCH FOR JUSTICE…. Comment Becky — March 4, 2007

        Reply
        • Ted says:
          December 21, 2015 at 7:40 pm

          Not nearly as bad as Gail’s example, but I was once personally held at gunpoint for over an hour for a “compliance inspection”. I had a single .45 caliber round, in a magazine. I needed it for measurements, for an art project I was working on, (bullet shaped valve caps) and I thought that would be the safest way to carry it. Apparently, I was wrong. I got stopped for not having a headlight on my bike, about 20 minutes after sunset. (the day after daylight savings, they were literally out looking for people to ticket who’d forgotten to prepare for the early sunset) In Santa Barbara, the official policy is that failure to consent to a voluntary search constitutes probable cause for an involuntary search. The fifth amendment doesn’t exist here, either. During the search that I’d explicitly refused consent for, they found the ENTIRELY LEGAL magazine in my backpack. They immediately threw me to the ground, pulled their guns, and started screaming, “WHERE F**K IS IT?” over and over. It took me 3-4 minutes to get them to even tell me what was going on. One cop spent the next hour doing an utterly incompetent search, while the other kept his gun pointed at my chest. Since I didn’t, in fact, have a gun on me, (I’ve never even fired a .45, I just needed to measure the round) they let me go with a warning. They were very clear that they were warning me, and that I’d go to jail if they caught me doing it again, but they couldn’t tell me what the “it” was. They completely conceded that I’d done nothing at all wrong, with respect to the bullet and magazine. But I’d better never do it again.

          On the plus side, they did feel bad about the whole thing, so they cut the headlight ticket down to a fit-it ticket. Of course, by then I had to ride the rest of the way home in pitch black darkness, instead of the twilight they’d stopped me in.

        • au1corsair says:
          December 22, 2015 at 3:14 am

          Where’s Obi Wan when you need him?

          “These are not the pigs you’re looking for. Move along. Have a nice day.”

    • Ted says:
      December 21, 2015 at 5:54 pm

      Martin-

      The United States Library of Congress disagrees with your interpretation:

      http://www.loc.gov/law/help/second-amendment.php

      The United States supreme court has explicitly stated that the right to keep and bear arms IS an individual right.

      Reply
      • rah says:
        December 22, 2015 at 4:13 am

        You got that right Ted. Anyone that says otherwise has a reading comprehension problem because after all it does say “the right of the people”. Nor do they know our nations history or can understand the context of the Bill of Rights. For some reason leftist idiots believe that the 2nd amendment and the 2nd amendment ONLY out of the 10 in the BILL OF RIGHTS was written to limit or deny an individual right. I mean how really stupid is that idea?

        Reply
    • Jason Calley says:
      December 21, 2015 at 8:32 pm

      Martin says, “Nowhere in the text, however, is it stated that an individual right to keep and bear arms is preserved.”

      Really? How about where it says in the main clause of the sentence, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Remember, that part is the main part of the sentence; the other parts are dependent clauses.

      Consider another sentence with a parallel structure. “Well informed voters, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read books shall not be infringed.” Question— does that sentence only protect the right of voters to have books, or does it protect the right of the people to have books? If you say it only protects the rights of voters, I suggest that you go back and study grammar more closely.

      Reply
    • au1corsair says:
      December 21, 2015 at 11:38 pm

      And then there was https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

      In a 5-4 decision, DC v Heller decided that the Second Amendment was an individual right. Ignoring this 2008 Supreme Court decision is not okay. You may, of course, point out the partisan politics behind the decision, that if those nasty Republicans were never allowed to appoint Supreme Court justices, only the policies of the DNC would get the Supreme Court stamp of approval.

      Be sure to mention this other inconvenient fact–you correctly quoted the National Rifle Association mindset of the 1930’s as voiced by its leaders was that the Second Amendment didn’t allow individual citizens to own guns and carry them about (keep and bear arms). This did change over time–you correctly pointed out that in 1977 the National Rifle Association had a coup and the banner of the Second Amendment became a line in the sand–“NIE WIEDER!” But, as pointed out by Robert Sherrill in his 1973 “The Saturday Night Special” the National Rifle Association seriously mangled the National Firearms Act of 1934 and was regarded in the Beltway as a serious threat to political careers.
      And FDR’s Attorney General, Homer Cummings, regarded the Second Amendment as the right of the individual to own firearms. He proposed to tax gun owners out of existence, just as poll taxes kept the “Negro voter” from casting a ballot. The poll tax was one model for Cummings’ National Firearm Act.

      Reply
  14. richard says:
    December 21, 2015 at 2:01 pm

    What they DID write was ” THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, SHALL NOT
    BE INFRINGED”. How do you explain the reason they wrote that???

    Reply
  15. Gail Combs says:
    December 21, 2015 at 2:33 pm

    Only Progressives bent on forming a totalitarian government and their would be slaves could misinterpret the 2nd Amendment.

    “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”
    — Adolph Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Conversations 403 (Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens trans., 1961)

    Progressive and co-founder of the Fabian Socialist society, George Bernard Shaw defends Hitler and the killing of ‘useless eaters’
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQvsf2MUKRQ

    “…if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?”
    — Delegate Sedgwick, during the Massachusetts Convention, rhetorically asking if an oppressive standing army could prevail, Johnathan Elliot, ed., Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol.2 at 97 (2d ed., 1888)

    “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”
    — Tench Coxe, in `Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution’ under the Pseudonym `A Pennsylvanian’ in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1).

    “The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.”
    — William Rawle, A View of the Constitution 125-6 (2nd ed. 1829)

    “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
    — George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788

    “Whereas civil-rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as military forces, which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”
    — Tench Coxe, in Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution

    “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
    — Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188

    If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State. In a single State, if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.
    — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28

    “That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms … ”
    — Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850)

    “[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation…(where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
    –James Madison, The Federalist Papers, No. 46

    “To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws.”
    –John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States 475 (1787-1788)

    “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
    –Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

    “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
    –Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

    “Whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it.”
    –Richard Henry Lee, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.

    “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
    — Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

    “No Free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
    — Thomas Jefferson, Proposal Virginia Constitution, 1 T. Jefferson Papers, 334,[C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950]

    “The right of the people to keep and bear … arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country …”
    — James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789

    “What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty …. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
    — Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, August 17, 1789

    ” … to disarm the people – that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
    — George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380

    ” … but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights …”
    — Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist 29

    “Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
    — Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d ed. Philadelphia, 1836

    “The great object is, that every man be armed … Every one who is able may have a gun.”
    — Patrick Henry, Elliot, p.3:386

    “O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone …”
    — Patrick Henry, Elliot p. 3:50-53, in Virginia Ratifying Convention demanding a guarantee of the right to bear arms

    “The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”
    — Zachariah Johnson, delegate to Virginia Ratifying Convention, Elliot, 3:645-6

    “Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms … The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
    — Hubert H. Humphrey, Senator, Vice President, 22 October 1959

    “The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpation of power by rulers. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of the republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally … enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
    — Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, p. 3:746-7, 1833

    ” … most attractive to Americans, the possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave, it being the ultimate means by which freedom was to be preserved.”
    — James Burgh, 18th century English Libertarian writer, Shalhope, The Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment, p.604

    “The right [to bear arms] is general. It may be supposed from the phraseology of this provision that the right to keep and bear arms was only guaranteed to the militia; but this would be an interpretation not warranted by the intent. The militia, as has been explained elsewhere, consists of those persons who, under the laws, are liable to the performance of military duty, and are officered and enrolled for service when called upon…. [I]f the right were limited to those enrolled, the purpose of the guarantee might be defeated altogether by the action or the neglect to act of the government it was meant to hold in check. The meaning of the provision undoubtedly is, that the people, from whom the militia must be taken, shall have the right to keep and bear arms, and they need no permission or regulation of law for the purpose. But this enables the government to have a well regulated militia; for to bear arms implies something more than mere keeping; it implies the learning to handle and use them in a way that makes those who keep them ready for their efficient use; in other words, it implies the right to meet for voluntary discipline in arms, observing in so doing the laws of public order.”
    — Thomas M. Cooley, General Principles of Constitutional Law, Third Edition [1898]

    “And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress … to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms…. “
    –Samuel Adams

    Reply
  16. au1corsair says:
    December 21, 2015 at 2:46 pm

    Let me demonstrate how uneducated gun control fanatics are with this simple statement: guns don’t kill people. It’s bullets, bullets, bullets fired by killers that kill people. I oversimplify for the simple-minded. Very few people are murdered by blunt impact of a gun used as a club or fatally choked out by the gun used as a tool to strangle. There are a few deaths per decade by means of pistol whipping. In the Marines and Army I was taught the art of bayonet fighting–and learned that even the M16 was effective as an impact weapon without the bayonet. However, the use of my issue service rifle as an impact weapon or as a bayonet platform was secondary to its use as a projectile launcher.

    Bullets. Buckshot. Pellets. Slugs. Sometimes even the powder gases from blank (no bullet) cartridges can kill. The bullet after launching is lethal for an instant–and then it’s not. The majority of deaths listed as firearm homicides are from firearm projectile injury.

    So the gun control fanatics prove their ignorance every time they moan and scream and cry “guns kill people!” We’re supposed to be EVOLVED primates. The gun can be fingered, licked, has substance and the bullet is a fleeting thing that becomes almost harmless after it runs out of steam. Guns don’t fire themselves. Bullets need expanding powder gasses to power them through the constricted barrel and out the bullet exit port in the direction of the bullet’s victim. A gun is a launcher and very few people are killed with the gun–it’s the projectile, dummy!

    I can’t educate superstitious savages. They’ll keep lying about homicide by pistol whipping: “The mad gunman killed six with his handgun.” Six people just sat there while another savage pounded them to death with a handgun? Why a handgun and not a hammer? Cheaper, only one moving part, less likely to break.

    Just remember–it’s bullets, bullets, bullets! Not guns, bullets!

    Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      December 21, 2015 at 4:20 pm

      LOL Love it.

      Actually it is always the idiot controlling the implement. Nail guns shoot nails and those nails can kill too.

      Gun control is NOT about stopping the murdering of civilians it is about facilitating totalitarian control. Individuals can always find a way to kill. — A friend stopped a maniac using an axe on a person in Boston. He shot and killed him with a gun. — The militarization of the American police force makes that VERY VERY clear when the US government is now treating American citizens as THE ENEMY.

      http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/2011-04-05-ice-training-using-armored-vehicles.JPG?itok=fmMSA_1q

      The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

      …The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither “concrete facts” nor “irrefutable evidence” to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained….

      The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted…..

      “Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”….

      “If reasonable suspicion is the only standard you need to label somebody, then it’s a slippery slope we’re sliding down here, because then you can label anybody anything,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent with experience running high-profile terrorism investigations. “Because you appear on a telephone list of somebody doesn’t make you a terrorist. That’s the kind of information that gets put in there.”

      The fallout is personal too. There are severe consequences for people unfairly labeled a terrorist by the U.S. government, which shares its watchlist data with local law enforcement, foreign governments, and “private entities.” Once the U.S. government secretly labels you a terrorist or terrorist suspect, other institutions tend to treat you as one. It can become difficult to get a job (or simply to stay out of jail). It can become burdensome—or impossible—to travel. And routine encounters with law enforcement can turn into ordeals…..

      Militarized police overreach: “Oh, God, I thought they were going to shoot me next” —- Local law enforcement’s often using SWAT teams to do regular police work. The results are frightening — and deadly

      National Network of Fusion Centers Fact Sheet

      Reply
  17. Jason Calley says:
    December 21, 2015 at 8:58 pm

    If guns made society dangerous then politicians would not demand to have dozens of men armed with guns there to surround them. If guns make society dangerous why on earth do we allow police to carry them everywhere?

    Reply

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