Second Amendment Victories, and Gun Owners Showing some Spine

While Dave Hardy had it first at his Of Arms and the Law blog last night, I could not access the opinion to read it. Katie Pavlich has a more accessible piece over at Townhall.com today. The title says it all: Second Amendment Victory: Liberal Court Rules Unconstitutional for Government to Restrict Concealed Carry Permits based on "Need."

I have dubbed the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the "Ninth Circus" because the "reasoning" coming out of their opinions is often head spinning. This is a major victory for California gun owners. This ruling is likely to be appealed, and since we have conflicting rulings from other courts, will end up in the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, it seems that that tens of thousands of gun owners decided to flout the recent "assault weapon" registration requirement. Hot Air has the story here. I don't envy these people, for surely they have had to make a calculations of the risks of getting caught versus the risk of having their defensive weapon confiscated without a fight. Not knowing whether or not their calculations were correct must cause pain and stress.  But it is good that Connecticut gun owners are showing some spine. Mike Lawlor now has to decide how far he is willing to go to enforce the law, how much he is willing to rile the populations to achieve its goals, which, BTW, have nothing to do with stopping another Sandy Hook school shooting.  But now the political class knows exactly how far they can take the war on guns.  Connecticut gun owners are saying, like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae "Come and take them!"

A War on Your Freedom

As has often been mentioned by numerous gun writers, the Second Amendment exists primarily to allow citizens to be armed and trained in the use of weapons as a deterrent to both foreign and domestic enemies who would overthrow the Constitutional government.  The implication is that citizens should have access to the same small arms carried by our armed forces.  In other words, fully automatic weapons like the M16 and the M4.  But when it is our own government which is defying the Constitution, and thus overthrowing the government, it does become trickier.  Leftists are fond of saying that the Founding Fathers never envisioned so-called "assault weapons," but what they really never envisioned was that the Constitutional government would be undermined by elected officials within the government.  But that is what is happening, and a major front in the battle to save the republic is an ongoing war on guns.  William Levinson writes about the war being waged at the American Thinker in an article entitled Gun Control: A War, not a Conversation on February 6, 2014.

 Levinson cites the many ways in which the current crop of gun control laws are in fact a war on guns, and on gun owners. These new laws attempt to delegitimize the bearing of arms by making possession of classes of weapons illegal, and those possessing them criminal.  What was legal yesterday has become illegal today.  In New York today, a handgun that carries 10 rounds of 9mm ammunition is a legal self defense weapon, but a similar handgun that carries 11 rounds of the same ammunition illegal.  There is no sense to such a thing, other than to wage a war on guns and gun owners, and further restrict the type of weapons civilians can own.   Noteably, police officers are exempt from such silly rules.

Gun owners have become the new Jews, the scapegoated minority that took the blame for the country's difficulties in Nazi Germany.  The nasty cartoons and articles demonizing gun owners as somehow sanctioning the murders of children by our refusal to give up our guns insults each and every peacefully armed citizen.  The use of the National Rifle Association as a stand in for the "gun lobby" resemble again the propaganda that was run against the Jews in Nazi Germany.  Lest you think that the anti-gun crowd is made up of mere citizens upset at the murders that seem to continually take place, please note that the fact that the NRA is cited so often as an enemy of the anti-gun crowd is due to the Saul Alinski's Rule 13 "Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." The facts do not matter.  The truth does not matter. The only thing that matters is the goal of disarming the American people. Levinson also points out the many other ways the war in being waged, including blitzkrieg legislation, military grade propaganda, and incrimentalism.  Yes, other writers have remarked on any number of these methods, but none has framed them in terms of the debate we are supposed to be having.

After the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Heller, and the Left began its drum beat for a "national conversation on guns," I commented that we had been having a national conversation since the 1950s. Arguably, we have really been having the conversation since the 1930s, with the passage of the National Firearms Act, making fully automatic weapons effectively out of reach of the average man. Heller settled the issue by deciding that the Second Amendment meant that Americans can have weapons, at least at home. McDonald extended that to possession of arms outside the home.  The Constitutional side in the war on guns won that particular battle.  But the Left never gives up, and the current crop of gun control laws illustrates that fact very clearly.

Unfortunately, the Constitutionalists side in this war has never understood it as a war.  Understand, the Jews could not have had a meaningful conversation with the Nazis about differences.  The Nazis were determined to kill them, and either the Jews had to fight back, flee the country, or be killed.  There was no compromise.  Similarly today, there is no compromise with radical Islam.  They are determined to kill us, and the only reason to understand them is to live rent free in their heads in order to fight back.  Gun owners must adopt guerrilla tactics of their own if we hope to win the war on guns.  Failure to do so...

Update:  Bob Barr has an article up at Townhall.com entitled Another Federal Court Undermines the Second Amendment today. It illustrates the war being waged on all fronts. Bob Barr:

Ever since the 2008 Heller opinion (and the companion, 2010 Chicago v. McDonald decision), liberal judges and anti-gun state and local government officials have been fashioning ways to undercut and subvert the ability of citizen to exercise their Second Amendment rights. That’s why Alan Gura, the prominent Second Amendment lawyer who argued both Heller and McDonald, has stayed so busy since 2008. “It's nice that the Supreme Court declared we enjoy a fundamental individual right to bear arms, but that doesn't mean much if they allow lower courts to rubber stamp any infringement of the right,” says Gura. “It's not the judiciary's role to 'defer' to the legislature's alleged wisdom and expertise. It's the judiciary's role to guard our rights and enforce the constitution.”

About that last post....

In my last post, I presented the reasons that the embassy closings were possibly real, and speculated that the closings portended the start of WWIII.  Anthony Martin at the Liberty Sphere has an entirely different take , saying that the embassy closings are a way to take the heat off scandals at home. I must admit that it seems equally probable.  By pointing to the embassy closings they are saying "See, we need to spy on you to find out about these bad guys!"  Except, of course, that the embassies are all over there, and have nothing to do with the 300 million American citizens at home who will never in their life times visit these countries, or even have a phone conversation with such people.  But if the NSA can identify someone who has called a terrorist, or vice versa, then the government has  probable cause to obtain a warrant to snoop into that persons telephone records and internet usage.  Since they know these things are happening in real time, they don't actually need to scoop up everything everybody says and does electronically. 

After some consideration, I think Anthony's analysis is correct.  The embassy closings are nothing but a red herring drawn across the trail to distract us.  This is nothing more than the typical misdirection by the left hand so we don't see what the right hand is doing.

Oh, and too the NSA agent assigned to read this blog, "The package has been delivered."  Repond in the comments. 

The Real Reason Embassies are Closing

Friday, the news came that the government was closing a number of embassies and consulates in the Middle East. We were told that an unspecified, but very likely terror threat had been detected, and that the level of "chatter" among known terrorists had greatly increased. Most of us probably received the news with a yawn, and went back to whatever we were doing. But, not so fast, America. As Fay Voshell points out today at the American Thinker in an article entitled World War III?, such closings usually signal something ominous. Mere terrorist threats don't usually result in closing embassies. Indeed, the closing of an embassy signals that any hope of a diplomatic solution has been lost, that the talking is done, and now the only thing left is armed conflict. Ms. Voshell:

For some time, the power-struggles of the listed nations have been largely characterized as civil wars among various Muslim factions, including the Muslim Brotherhood. But civil wars are confined within national boundaries. Once the boundary lines have bled into one another, as is presently the case with Syria, the wars become a generalized struggle, with various factions joining with the likeminded of surrounding nations. As World Wars I and II demonstrated, when war escapes national boundaries or aggressive entities invade other national boundaries, nations with a vested interest in maintaining or extending their power bases begin to team up with one another according to ideological empathies. The fighting then spreads as more and more nations get sucked into a black hole of conflict.

snip...

Now, however, the national boundaries established in 1919 are becoming increasingly meaningless, as the Islamist movement is more about empire-building than nation-building. The West, with its long tradition of democracy, has never fully grasped the Islamist preference for authoritarianism and empire, and so it has believed that the national lines it drew would encourage the growth of democracy. What the Islamist impulse for empire means, however, is that war among the Middle East and North African nations is inevitable, as national boundaries mean nothing to those determined to re-establish the equivalent of a caliphate.

So, how does all this affect us here at home?  A lot of people believe that we should just put enough nuclear bombs on countries like Iran and the various Arabian countries to turn their deserts into glass, and be done with them. Of course, that is not the Christian way, and we are, despite what the President has said, a Christian nation. What must be understood, is that Islam is a twisted form of Christianity turned into a political authoritarianism for the purpose of giving the ruling elite at the time a divine basis for ruling, and increasing their empire.  You can read more about that here. But note well that whether or not it is as I have characterized it, the faithful to Islam believe it. They believe it because it clearly sanctions their killing of anyone who doesn't submit. They believe it because it gives them an excuse to pursue a global caliphate.  That means, of course, that sooner or later they will bring the fight to us.  When they do, they will no longer be merely terrorists, but nation states with the full sovereign power to bring resources and people to bear.  The only way to survive such a war is to well and truly beat them until either they surrender, or the lose the ability to carry on the fight.  There can be no half measures, for this enemy to too dangerous.

With that in mind then, I want to bring in Doug Hagmann of the Canada Free Press in the article Unmasking the Embassy Threat. Hagmann has been on the Benghazi story almost from the beginning. With the evidence Hagmann has uncovered, and the recent CNN reporting on the subject, I think it fairly certain that far from being a random act, the attack on our consulate at Benghazi was planned to stop the United States from running guns and other weapons, illegally I might add, to the Syrian rebels. The attack had the desired effect as it stopped or greatly reduced such weapons smuggling. But why would these terrorists want to do that? The answer apparently is that they are allied with Russian and Chinese interests in Syria. So we find ourselves currently involved in a proxy war with Russia and China. Hagmann:

It is vital to understand that the embassy closures are a signal of the rapidly escalated intervention in the region by the US. It is a modern day equivalent to the Bay of Pigs, except Barack Hussein Obama is no John F. Kennedy. Those old enough might recall that the CIA trained and inserted a group of “freedom fighters” into Cuba to oust Castro. Exactly like the rebels in Syria, those fighters could never overthrow Castro without direct U.S. military intervention and assistance. The situation is exactly the same in Syria today.

The difference is that Kennedy saw the plan for exactly what it was - a globalist plan not to defeat communism, but to engage us in a larger war to the benefit of the globalists and the military-industrial complex. He refused to take the bait and in so doing, bought the world time by avoiding World War III.

Note in the last paragraph the belief that Obama is not sufficiently his own man and continues to follow the plans of others. I don't think so. I think Obama wants this precisely because it will destroy the United States. He believes we are an unjust country established by evil rich white men for the benefit of evil rich white men, who stole and looted the rightful wealth of the poor. This is what he was raised to believe. At the end of a WWIII, no matter who ultimately wins, and the odds are not in our favor, America will find itself like England did after WWII. What brought the English back was support from the United States. But there is no one to support us, and no one will try. This country, if it survives at all, will need several generations to return to anything resembling prosperity. That's if we return at all.

Pray for our country, and pray for Israel.

It Never Hurts to Put Yourself in Someone's Shoes

An article appearing today at the American Thinker entitled After Zimmerman: Lessons for a Citizen Carrier by Paul Jacobson is worth a read. He makes some good points that Zimmerman didn't do everything right, though the law doesn't require a person to do everything necessarily right. Rather, the law asks whether a reasonable person in the same circumstances would have done what Zimmerman did. Still:

So then, what would I have done in George Zimmerman's shoes? First of all, Zimmerman fell right into the middle of the Rule #1 trap the moment he lost sight of Martin. The 911 transcript makes it clear that Martin had seen him and that Zimmerman knew it; Martin's disappearance alone converted the location to high-risk. But Zimmerman seems to have naively, absentmindedly let down his guard, making himself a sitting duck for Martin's sudden, close-up reappearance and criminal assault with no way for Zimmerman to back off.

When Martin disappeared, Zimmerman should have resorted to Rule #2 while continuing to wait for the police: get in the truck, make sure the windows are closed, lock the doors and start the engine... and put the Kel-Tec PF9 over on the passenger seat. This situation would have provided something of a barricade if Martin had reappeared with, say, a crowbar and started bashing windows. It would also have provided a possible means of escape; if Martin had showed up with a gun, that gas pedal would have been down there on the floor waiting to be tromped. Shooting accurately at a moving target is notoriously difficult.

How about Rule #3? In short, it has no relevance to this incident, notwithstanding AG Holder's bogus attempt to link the case to stand-your-ground laws. The prosecution tried all the facts -- and lies -- it could muster but failed to prove beyond a reasonable or even unreasonable doubt that Zimmerman stalked Martin with intent to kill. The charge was utterly baseless: when the 911 operator said, "We don't need you to [follow Martin]" Zimmerman's response was, "OK." This is one thing Zimmerman did right. However, observing Rule #2 as elaborated above would obviously have eliminated all possibility of making the stalking charge.

Well, maybe, and maybe not, but it never hurts to play Monday morning quarterback and try to put ourselves in a situation, and play it out in our heads. I particularly remember on admonition by my own instructor: "Whenever you get into a confrontation, you know there is at least one gun." What he meant by that is that one should avoid confrontations at all costs.

There was a time, not so long ago, that when a man's honor was impugned, he was duty bound to prove to the world his honorable nature by fighting a duel. Now, if the slanderer was confronted, and immediately apologized, then a gentleman was duty bound to accept the apology. But, if our slander raised the defense that what he said was in fact true...well, there's the rub. After the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression) the law began to take over such private disputes, and these matters more and more were settled in courts.  In general, I agree that fighting it out doesn't really prove who is in the right, only who is the better shooter.  After I started carrying, I found there were all sorts of situations that I had previously gotten in peoples face over, that now I don't even acknowledge.  I just walk away.  I am the most careful of drivers, the most agreeable of partners, because of what my instructor admonished his students.

In the movie  Sling Blade the main character says that "Some folks just need killin'." That may be, but the Lord says "Vengeance is mine." My old Karate Sensei said that you will never lose a fight you don't have. All good advice.

Strangling Fracking in the Crib

Our planet has been in a constant state of change since if first solidified out of rocky bits circling the sun. The first thing that changed the environment was the emergence of photosynthesizing plants, like algae. These plants, deriving their energy from the sun, took in great quantities of carbon dioxide, belching forth from the pervasive volcanoes, and exhaling oxygen. Soon enough, the oxygen content of the atmosphere was such, that oxygen breathing bacteria emerged. The next great change to the environment was when plants began colonizing the earth, not just the oceans. More plants, more oxygen, larger and more complex animals followed. But you would not recognize the plants that dominated the earth then. They were mostly giant fern like plants, and spread not seeds but spores to reproduce. The next great change, and it changed the environment with it was the rise of the flowering plants. Today, flowering plants dominate the landscape, including the grasses, which cover more area of the earth than any other plant. Some believe the dinosaurs were done in by a giant meteor. Personally, I think they were as much done in by the changes occurring do to the rise of flowering plants, which had a negative affect on their food sources. For every animal depends, at rock bottom, on the photosynthesis of plants for their energy source.  Carnivores can only exist if there are herbivores on which to prey.

With that as background, I point my readers today to a piece at the American Thinker entitled Why Environmental Professionals Hate All of the Above by Jeffrey Folks. Folks:

In terms of carbon emissions, natural gas is twice as clean as coal. That was once good enough to earn it lukewarm praise from many green supporters. Now, with the U. S. Energy Department projecting that gas will be the fastest-growing global fuel source through 2040, environmental leaders have turned against it. They now claim that hydraulic fracturing causes catastrophic damage to the earth, air, and water, and that natural gas was never that clean to begin with.

What's behind this change of heart? Maybe it's the need to continue the struggle. Admitting that natural gas is clean and that America has enough of it to power the country for a century -- where would that leave the leaders of environmental groups that now raise hundreds of millions in donations? It might leave them having to make a living like everyone else.

And it could be that they just need to keep things stirred up in order to raise money. Certainly the race hustler industry has found that to be true, and capitalized on it. But in this case, there is more to it. Many extreme environmentalists have stated their belief that man, as a species is destroying the planet. They believe that man does not belong here, that unlike the other creatures who follow their nature, man should not be following his. They will not be happy until the earth is returned to its state before man came along and mucked things up. But, at what stage are they referring to? Is it after flowering plants, but before man evolved? Is it before flowering plants, or before plants at all. Because as we have seen, the most humble of creatures on earth the, blue green algae, changed the world in the most profound ways. The earth's atmosphere was literally suffocating before these plants came along, and as they slowly raised to oxygen content to it's 20 percent today, we animals could evolve.

While some wish to see man eradicated from the planet, though they are not leading by example, others nostalgically look to man's agrarian past as the golden age.  Everything man accomplished in this pre-industrial age was by muscle power, with the help in some cases of beasts of burden.  Of course, when we look at this past, we see it was not so golden.  People often lived in filth with their animals, ate poorly processed grains, so that by 25 or so their teeth were ground down to nubs, and lived short, hard scrabble lives.  If their crops failed, they didn't eat that winter except what could be hunted or begged from neighbors.  Even when harvests were good, a not insubstantial percentage of their crop was eaten by rats and mice.

By contrast, with the invention of the tractor, a farmer could plow many more acres of land, with less pollution per unit of work, and for more hours per day.  Tractors were also versatile, giving the farmer a power take off for a saw and other power tools.  It could be used to haul his crop to town where it could be sold to others for cash.  Long haul trucks could haul it to far cities, where the residents didn't necessarily have space for a garden.  Trucks don't tire out, and they move things faster than the old teams of horses, and again produce less overall pollution per unit of work.  But the internal combustion engine made other things possible.  Think of how things were moved around the warehouse before the invention of the forklift.  By relieving men of the need to haul heavy stuff around all day, they could extend their working lives, thus feeding their families and being around longer to help with older children.  Now that children didn't need to work to feed their families, they were free to get an education.

Most people, I think, see through the energy alarmists, and recognize that they are living in the golden age right now.  And our politicians are too cynical to actually believe any of the hype surrounding the energy sector.  They also realize reality, that so called "green energy" will always be a niche industry.  So what is driving the push to limit the American energy sector from achieving net exporter status?  I think it is here in this article from Hot Air.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has warned that the kingdom’s oil-dependent economy is increasingly vulnerable to rising U.S. energy production, breaking ranks with oil officials in Riyadh who have played down its impact.

Prince Alwaleed has huge influence in this country. He sits on the boards of many corporations, and if he is afraid of losing the strangle hold OPEC has had on the world, he can make at least some of the politicians dance to his tune. Whether they will be able to stop it completely remains to be seen.

Restaurant Carry Passed NC Legislature

Here in North Carolina, the legislature has passed H. B. 937, Amend Various Firearm Laws.  It now goes to Governor McCrory to sign.  Among the things included in this bill are provisions allowing the carrying of concealed handguns by concealed carry licensees (CHL) in restaurants that serve alcohol, and carrying venues that charge a fee for entrance.

Grass Roots North Carolina (GRNC) has long fought for restaurant carry.  Opponents charge that if they allow concealed carriers to carry in restaurants that serve alcohol, that there will be shoot outs in restaurants where they and their kids are, causing blood in the aisle, over an undercooked hamburger, because some drunk decides to play vigilante.  Besides that, there is a general feeling among hoplophobes that they just don't want to believe that they could be sitting next to someone who is carrying a gun.  GRNC has pointed out that even if people with a CHL can carry in these restaurants, they can not drink alcoholic beverages while carrying.  We have pointed out that States and Commonwealths around us, including Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia all have restaurant carry, with no ill effects.  Virginia is a good example, as they had restrictions, but lifted them.  One year after lifting restrictions, there was no change in the crime rate at restaurants that serve alcohol.

The restriction from carrying in places that charge a fee for entrance was, I suspect, a case of painting with too broad a brush.  The term includes rock concerts and the State and County fairs, but also includes movie theaters and your daughter's ballet recitals.  North Carolinians with a CHL can now, under this bill, carry in these venues unless they post a "no guns" sign.

The bill was held up by the North Carolina Sheriff's Association (NCSA) because they did not want to lose the funding that comes from issuing pistol permits to people without a CHL.  The pistol permit is a Jim Crow era law, originally designed to keep blacks and certain other undesirables from obtaining pistols.  It is both an embarrassment, and a redundancy.  It is embarrassing because of the discriminatory nature of the law.  It is redundant because now that we have the NICS background checks in place, there is no reason to have a second background check.  As Paul Valone said in an alert sent late yesterday:

Although full repeal of the Jim Crow-era pistol purchase permit law did not remain in the bill, thanks to your input and the efforts of Senator Buck Newton (R-Johnston, Nash, Wilson, GRNC ****), the following improvements were made:

 

• Prohibits sheriffs from limiting the number of permits issued;
• Prohibits additional fees for permits;
• Requires sheriffs to list statutory reasons for denial;
• Requires sheriffs to keep de-identified records on why permits are denied; and
• Places the burden on sheriffs to revoke permits from those commit disqualifying offenses.

Overall, H. B. 937 is good law, and I urge the Governor to sign it.