Gun Grabbers Go Snipe Hunting

Don Wos writing at the American Thinker thinks that Anti -gun Radicals Are On A Misguided Mission. Please go read the whole thing, as it is short. Wos's argument is that the problem identified by gun grabbers, so-called "gun violence" is a ghost. The real problem is human violence.

The dangerous push to disarm Americans is a clear example of deceitful people misleading others who don't know any better by leveraging their own fear and anger against them. If people were able to see how the anti-gun propaganda is designed to mislead them, anti-gun groups would be seen for what they really are: fearful, angry anti-gunners chasing a ghost that never existed while simultaneously putting good people in danger to support a political agenda. 

Lucky for the anti-gun groups, some people would rather be led by reactive emotion than logical thought. Here are some facts for those who want the truth.

-  Gun-free zones have been the target of more than 98% of all mass shootings (Crime Prevention Research Center) (Anti-Gun Groups support GFZ's)

-  Guns are used 2.46 million time per year in America to save lives (Centers for Disease Control) (report was hidden from the public for 20 years)

-  Ninety percent of criminals surveyed in jail admitted to avoiding background checks when acquiring firearms (Department of Justice study)

In chasing after guns, the gun grabbers are essentially playing the old game of snipe hunting. You know how this goes. You find a gullible child, present him with the great adventure of hunting and capturing a "snipe", a creature that doesn't actually exist. Of course it must be at night. After leading the child around searching for and almost catching the snipe, the older boys reveal that it was all a joke. Ha, Ha, Ha.  In the process, the child learns to be a more critical thinker so he isn't taken for a fool.

But for gun grabbers, the snipe is not a joke. And they are quite willing to infringe YOUR rights to satisfy THEIR fears.

Lies of Socialism Number 8,267

Socialism is built on lies.  The very foundations of socialism, the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles, are fantasy that starts with positing a human nature that never was and will never be.  In today's post I want to write about two lies that you may hear from time to time.  The first lie you may hear about is the canard that "this country was built by slaves."  The second lie is that "Our Constitution is a living Constitution."

The first lie is usually asserted authoritatively with out any evidence, because there isn't any.  It should be obviously false on its face, such that I don't know why socialists can not see it.  Let us keep in mind that from time immemorial slavery has been an accepted part of all societies.  Indeed, in Muslim societies, it still is.  England was the first country to end the shipping of slaves.  In the United States, there were a number of attempts to outlaw slavery, but these were routinely turned back by Southern plantation owners who believed they needed slaves to compete on the open market for their agricultural products.

Before the Civil War, the great majority of slaves were confined to Southern plantations.  However, the great majority of Americans in both the South and the North lived and worked on small family farms.  Along the Eastern Seaboard, were located mills and small craftsmen, as well as ship builders.  Family farms did not need slaves, and most craftsmen operated with the master, perhaps a journeyman and an apprentice or two.  None of these were slaves.

In any case, blacks today are only 12% of the population.  In 1870, five years after the emancipation of all slaves, the black population was 4.88 million out of a total population of 38.56 million, or 8.9%.  What, are we to believe that the rest of America sat on its hands, drinking mint juleps perhaps, attending charity events, and generally being somehow "elite?"  Somehow I don't think so.  The majority did the majority of work in this country whether it was making steel, building tractors and farm implements, blowing glass bottles, or blacksmithing.  And the majority was never a slave.

Now, in saying that this country was built by all of us, working very hard, is not to say that blacks did not make valuable contributions to the American culture.  Perhaps it would be enough to say that blacks contributed to this country in proportion to their population.  So many people contributed, and continue to contribute to the building of this country, and if we remain a free market meritocracy, we have a bright future.

The second lie, that ours is a living constitution, is yet again false on its face, but may be harder to prove.  But Selwyn Duke, in yesterday's American Thinker makes an admirable case in The Taming of the Bench: MAGA Means Ending Judicial Presedent. Duke's point is that instead of slavishly following stare decisis, each decision should go back to the Constitution as it exists at the time of the decision. This means, of course, taking into account the various amendments. But, even so, the interpretation should be based not on "emanations and penumbras" what other country's constitutions may say, but on what the one we have says.  There is always ample evidence of what the intent of various provisions of the Constitution mean.  Politicians are always loquacious, and their debates are recorded for anyone to peruse.

Please go read Selwyn Duke's piece.

Liberty vs. Freedom

We often use the words "freedom" and "liberty" as if these words had the same meaning.  But in truth, and as used by the Founders, these two words have very different meanings, and sometimes conflating them can create confusion in the listener.  At Ammo.com there is post that explains the differences entitled Freedom vs. Liberty: Understanding Negative vs. Positive Rights. I urge gentle readers of this blog to go read the whole thing over at Ammo.com, and I want to thank David Codrea of the War on Guns for pointing me to it.

In a nut shell, the word "freedom" refers to your personal attitude toward the world around you.  "Liberty" on the other hand refers to your freedom of action as an individual.  Here is how Ammo.com puts it:

Freedom comes from Old English, meaning “power of self-determination, state of free will; emancipation from slavery, deliverance.” There were similar variants in Old Frisian such as “fridom,” the Dutch “vrijdom,” and Middle Low German “vridom.”

Liberty comes from the Latin “libertatem” (nominative libertas), which means “civil or political freedom, condition of a free man; absence of restraint, permission.” It’s important to note that the Old French variant liberte, "free will," has also shaped liberty's meaning. In fact, William R. Greg’s essay France in January 1852 notes that the French notion of liberty is political equality, whereas the English notion is rooted in personal independence.

The emphasis is mine. I wanted to make a point here. Did George Washington care how Thomas Jefferson ran his plantation? Only to such degree as Jefferson might impose upon Washington by force of law. Yet each agreed, if on nothing else, that they each had the natural rights granted to everyone by our Creator.  the rights granted to each of us by our Creator, in turn are negative rights.  They impose no requirement on others to satisfy them.  Thus, each of us has the right to bear arms.  That right includes the right not to bear arms, and a duty to bear them responsibly.  It also properly recognizes that the Constitution may be the highest law in the land, but itself is under a higher authority that may impose further duties than those listed. 

Since the so-called "Progressive Era" in American politics, roughly from the beginning of the 20th Century, rights have been framed more and more as what are called "positive rights."  Positive rights are obligations one person, or classification of persons must perform for another.  One has no choice, and thus is actually a form of slavery.  As an example, let us take healthcare.  Under the negative rights concept, each of us has a right to healthcare, but each of us must pay our own way, and therefore the more you can afford, the better the healthcare you theoretically will have up to the limits of human technology and understanding.  Under the positive rights concept, the state decides who has what rights to healthcare.  Under this scheme, usually the state taxes those who can pay and then turns the funds as welfare over to those who can't or won't pay.  The rich therefore are enslaved to pay not only their costs, but the costs of others as well.

If truth be told about so-called "positive rights," they would instead be called "entitlements."  And entitlements can be given, and entitlements can be taken away at the whim of the majority, a majority that can never be satisfied, or trusted.

Please go read the article in its entirety.  I promise that unless you are a scholar and a philosopher, there is some nugget you have not run across before.  The Founders got it right, no doubt through the workings of the Holy Spirit, and the French got it wrong.  May the Holy Spirit turn us away from the evils road we are going down.

Schlicter: Be A Rooftop Korean

Also today, Kurt Schlichter has a piece at Townhall.com entitled Be A Rooftop Korean that urges everyone who can to begin practicing self defense. Schlichter relates that as a young law school student in L.A., and just back from the Gulf War, the L. A. Riots broke out in 1992. He relates how the police were unable to keep order, and the National Guard, and eventually Federal troops were called in to restore peace and order.

The Koreans were small shop keepers and business owners who were being blamed, incorrectly, for many of the troubles then plaguing the city, and thus had a target on their back.  But what the rioters did not know was that most of the Koreans were veterans of the Republic of Korea army, and had training in tactics, weapons use, and the mental will to defend themselves and their property.  When the rioters came to Korea town, saw the riflemen lined up on the rooftops, they opted for softer targets.

Schlichter is right that when the law breaks down, you must be willing and able to defend yourself. He provides some interesting statistics:

But I had a M16A1 – a real assault rifle – and I had a bunch of buddies with M16A1s. The regular folks … not so much. The decent people of LA were terrified, and with good reason. See, the dirty little secret of civilization is that it’s designed to maintain order when 99.9% of folks are orderly. But, say, if just 2% of folks stop playing by the rules…uh oh. Say LA’s population was 15 million in 1992…that’s 300,000 bad guys. There were maybe 20,000 cops in all the area agencies then, plus 20,000 National Guard soldiers and airman, plus another 10,000 active soldiers and Marines the feds brought in. Law enforcement is based on the concept that most people will behave and that the crooks will be overwhelmed by sheer numbers of officers.

But in the LA riots, law enforcement was massively outnumbered. Imposing order took time. And until then, our citizens were on their own, at the mercy of the mob. Betting that the cavalry was going to come save you was a losing bet.

 In the end, it is your and my civic duty to prepare to be our own first responder.  Then it is our duty to pray that we will not need to perform our civic duty.

The Left and Individual Rights

Yet again I come to plead with whoever will listen, that so-called "Red Flag" laws are un-Constitutional, are un-American, and should not be passed.  Anyone involved in passing such laws should be ashamed of themselves, and slink off into histories dust bin.

Today, at the American Thinker R. Quinn Kennedy writes a piece entitled Red Flag Laws and Individual Rights. Kennedy writes:

There are inherent risks associated with living in a free society. One of those risks is that free people will harm other free people. Is freedom worth the risk? Of course it is! The reason is because the alternative is far worse. In a society where government controls every aspect of life, particularly the ability to own a firearm, dead bodies are piled upon each other at the hands of government elites who hold little regard for freedom of the masses.

Loss of liberty is the central contention against ‘red flag’ laws being enacted state by state. The law chips away at personal freedom. What the left refuses to accept is that liberty as an irrefutable right is foundational to the United States Constitution. The Constitution, so right and moral, has never stopped the left from snubbing their collective nose at yours and my freedoms. In legislative bills around the country every year, the left demonstrates that they prefer subjugation over personal liberty. California is an enduring example of citizens actually embracing subjugation by government. Imagine that.

What Kennedy doesn't say is that the actual risks to the individual are greater in a socialist society. They are always greater when the government doesn't have to fear the people. They may promise equality, but it is an equality of misery. They may promise safety, but it is only safety for the elite. "Utopia" literally translates as "nowhere." That is because the promises of the Red Flag laws will never be fulfilled. Instead, the Left is counting on family members who secretly hate guns, neighbors who have a gurdge, and people who are willing to "swat" their fellows to snitch on others until they have cowed enough of us that the rest won't matter. Then you will have a virtual monopoly of force in the government, who can do whatever they like. The criminal element will still have their guns, because they can always get them. But now you will be ruled by the strongest and most ruthless among us, with no recourse. As Samuel Adams said:

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

Go read the whole article, then please think about it.  Note too that they will be coming eventually for YOUR freedoms at some point.  Wouldn't it be nice if you had a few million more people on YOUR side?  Oh, and hope that they only take your wallet.  The history of such governments is that they will take your life.