Another reason to love Sarah

There's just something about a beautiful woman with a machine gun.

They equalize for women too

Megan McArdle wonders why feminists don't embrace firearms ownership:

I'm hardly the first person to make this observation, but I don't know why it isn't noted more often: guns are the only weapon that equalizes strength between attacker and attacked. It's the only time when men's greater speed, strength, and longer reach make no difference; if you pull the trigger first, you win.

This is an enormous social advance. I am all for strengthening the social contract (and law enforcement) so that fewer men commit rape, assault, or robbery. But until human nature has improved so radically that grievous bodily harm has passed from living memory, I don't understand why more feminists don't push for widespread gun ownership.

The answer to Ms. McArdle's question comes quickly in the comments section when a moonbat named Susan responds with a bunch of anti-gun boilerplate statistics about how a gun in the home is 3,528,854,921.258 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder. Susan then tops off her tirade of ignorance with this gem:

Even if one were to hand-wave away all the statistics, it's difficult to imagine a situation in which you'd be able to locate key, gun, and bullets, and load and aim credibly if under attack.

I will pause to let the reader stop laughing hysterically.

Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of the idiots keeps his home defense gun unloaded and locked up - unless he lives in an area ruled over by left-wing morons like New York City. And even then I would wager that a great many of the Big Apple's privately owned handguns rest in the nightstand fully loaded with the trigger lock nearby. After all how would the cops ever prove that it wasn't unloaded and locked when you heard the goblin breaking down the door?

Susan then brings up a legitimate issue:

If you think you'll walk around with a loaded gun, you should visit a place like Texas where it's legal but no businesses will let you enter with a gun.

As I said this is a legitimate issue, but the problem is businesses which do not wish to allow their customers to exercise their God-given rights on their premises. The answer to this problem is to amend the regulations insurance companies must abide by so that they can no longer penalize businesses who refuse to ban lawfully armed customers. That and legislation granting businesses absolute indemnification against law suits relating to their permitting customers to bear arms on their property. Those two things would remove the major incentives that businesses have to post "no guns allowed" signs on their property.

It would also be nice to have laws which forbid places of public accommodation to discriminate against the legally armed in the same why that they are forbidden to discriminate against blacks, Jews, gays and so on.

Ms. McArdle is correct in believing that women should embrace firearms ownership. There was a little poem praising the Colt revolver that was popular in the old West. Be not afraid of any man, No matter what his size, When danger threatens, call on me, And I will Equalize.

A firearm equalizes the woman with the man, the old with the young, the disabled with the fit and the lone person with multiple assailants. In feudal Japan firearms were outlawed because a peasant with a gun could easily kill a highly trained Samurai warrior. This is precisely why they are so beloved by the America people.

Praise for Heller

Commentary on the Heller decision is already flooding the net. Here is the press release put out by Americans for Limited Government:

June 26^th, 2008, Fairfax, Virginia— Americans for Limited Government today praised the Supreme Court’s decision in Heller v. D.C. “as a refreshing return to personal freedom, a reminder to the revisionists that the Constitution is neither out of date, nor out of vogue.”

In addition, ALG President Bill Wilson called upon 88-year-old Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to “do what is right and honorable and resign now from the seat he has held too long and abused so badly.” Said Wilson, “In referring to Mr. Stevens’ convoluted reasoning as ‘grotesque,’ Justice Scalia summed up in a word Mr. Stevens’ entire career. He is clearly out of touch, out of sync, and, as demonstrated by his dissenting opinion in Heller, now barely coherent.”

In the historic 5-4 Heller ruling, the high court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the District of Columbia’s gun ban is unconstitutional, violating the individual right to bear arms. Said Justice Scalia in writing the majority opinion, “Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

“This is a major victory for the citizens of the District of Columbia, and the rest of the nation,” said Wilson. “For far too long, citizens in certain parts of this country have been denied their constitutional rights. We commend the Supreme Court on this decision, and we trust it will mark the beginning of the end for misguided jurisprudence that views the Constitution as, in Jefferson’s words, ‘wax in the hands of the Judiciary’.”

In writing the majority decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that, “[W]e find that [the textual elements of the Second Amendment] guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”

Both parties in this case had argued on the basis of the meaning of the Second Amendment itself. D.C. had argued that the right to keep and bear arms only applied to State militias. But the Court ruled against that logic: “The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.”

Wilson agreed, “D.C.’s argument – and Mr. Stevens’ defense of it -- never even measure up to the basic rules of grammar, let alone the basic rule of law. The operative clause the Second Amendment has always been the right of the people to keep and bear arms. What is stunning to me is that the decision was so close.”

Wilson was guarded against overly praising the Court, “The Supreme Court has definitely been up and down with important decisions these past few years, with horrible rulings in both Kelo and the McCain-Feingold challenge, but this one they certainly nailed. In addition to commending the 5 justices ruled in favor of Mr. Heller, we would also like to praise the brave citizens who challenged D.C.’s unconstitutional law for their courage and patriotism. George Mason and Patrick Henry would be proud.”

Wilson added, “Nonetheless, Americans for Limited Government is very pleased with this decision protecting citizens’ rights to own and carry guns, and importantly that the case was decided on a textual basis. For too long the Court has done everything except rule on the basis of what the Constitution clearly says. Justice Scalia’s opinion, therefore, is a breath of fresh air for all Americans who value the rule of law.”

A great day!

The Supreme Court today ruled that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution means exactly what it says.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The 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."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for four colleagues, said the Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

The "evidence", you drooling moron, is to be found in a document called "The Constitution". For supporting evidence you can look at every single fraking thing that any and all of the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution had to say about the ownership and carrying of firearms.

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

No surprises there, unless you find it a bit amazing that Kennedy did the right thing.

The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.

Let us pray that the fearful ones were entirely justified in their fears and that Heller becomes the crowbar which dismantles the entire unconstitutional structure of gun control laws in this nation. The only citizens who should be deprived of their right to keep and bear (own and carry) arms are violent felons, young children outside the supervision of their parents and the insane.

SCOTUSblog has these quotes from the Heller Decision:

“Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command.”

“We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.”

“the most natural reading of ‘keep Arms’ in the Second Amendment is to “have weapons.”

“The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.”

“Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”

“Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.”

“The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.”

“It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense.” [This refers to the unconstitutionality of laws forbidding freed slaves from owning firearms]

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.”

For my money this is the most significant language in the opinion. If the District MUST permit Heller to own his handgun and to allow him to keep it in his home assembled and loaded for the purpose of self defense then the District is prohibited from establishing a sham purchase permit system where everyone is welcome to apply but in practice no one but the politically connected are actually granted the permits.

Under the Supreme Court's language anyone in the District who is not disqualified under the Second Amendment MUST be allowed to own a gun and self defense is, all by itself, a valid reason for that ownership.

This is potentially huge because if this ruling is held to apply to the states (as any ruling on the First Amendment would) then this will radically transform the firearms laws in places like New Jersey, New York City, Chicago and San Francisco (Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi won't be the only ones there with handguns anymore).

You will also notice that Justice Scalia wrote about "carrying weapons" in the same context as owning weapons. This might very well lay the groundwork for making the entire nation "shall issue" with regard to concealed handgun permits.

Tom Goldstein, writing on the SCOTUSblog summarized the ruling this way:

Individuals have a constitutional right to possess a basic firearm and to use it in self-defense. The government can prohibit possession of firearms by, for example, felons and the mentally ill. And it can also regulate the sale of firearms, presumably through background checks.

The opinion leaves open the question whether the Second Amendment is incorporated against the States, but strongly suggests it is. So today’s ruling likely applies equally to State regulation.

Patterico has this to say:

5-4. Let that sink in, folks. Even though it was expected, it’s now official. Ponder it for a moment.

If the Democrats had appointed just one more Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, there would be no individual right to possess firearms in the United States of America.

I agree completely. That is why it so breaks my heart that we don't have a Republican running for president this time around. BTY, I'll have more to say about McCain and the Court later today.

Download the entire Heller Decision here.
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I'll be celebrating tonight with a glass of 12-year-old scotch and a fine cigar. Then Saturday I'm off to the range for some celebratory cap-busting! Post a comment and tell us how you plan to celebrate.

Today is the day

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is meeting to issue opinions in some of the seven cases it has yet to decide.

Major cases still unresolved include the ban on handguns in Washington, D.C., whether people convicted of raping children can be given the death penalty and the $2.5 billion punitive damages judgment against Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) for the Exxon Valdez disaster.

I have to leave in a few minutes so I will likely hear the outcome of the Second Amendment case on the radio.

Like most people I have been expecting the Court to rule that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right. After all that is the only ruling possible unless the court wants to completely trash the Constitution and make up their own law from the bench.

I pause now to let the reader consider some of the insane 5-4 rulings that the High Court has already released this year.

So far this morning they have ruled the wrong way on the issue of whether those who rape children can be put to death and the right way on reducing the damages that Exxon must pay in regard to the Exxon Valdez accident.

I find myself growing apprehensive.


UPDATE:

Drudge has a cryptic note on his website indicating that the 2nd Amd. ruling will be released tomorrow.

I fully expect them to hold this one till last regardless of how they rule it will be the most explosive announcment they have made since Roe v Wade.

Reflections on the state of the Republic

From Mike Vanderboegh writing on the blog Western Rifle Shooters Association:

Premonition of Civil War: "We. . . are about to have our fues lit".

"I listened to Sen. McCain address the NRA Friday night with my 1st grandson asleep in my arms. As I listened to the diluted mumbo jumbo from him, I thought about what my grandson will probably face. I did not like it one bit. I think we, the folks in America that just want to be left alone to live a peaceful life without the gov't intervention in every facet of our life, are about to have our fuse lit. I just know it's coming." - Email to Mike Vanderboegh from his friend John in Florida, 19 May 2008.

Mr. Vanderboegh's comment on his friend's email:

My friend John's prediction, his premonition, "we . . . are about to have our fuse lit," came to him because he understands where we find ourselves in the first decade of the 21st Century. His is an intellectual premonition, as was mine before Thursday afternoon. It takes no seer, no crystal ball, no weird purple light from the Twilight Zone to anticipate the coming confrontation between those who revere the Founders' constitutional republic and the God-given liberty it codifies and the gathering dark forces of "enlightened" collectivism. And like most wars, this one will need to be fought precisely because most of us think it is impossible.

The Belief that there will be another American Civil War is not a new one. Everyone is familiar with Thomas Jefferson's observation that the Tree of Liberty would periodically need to be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. What most people don't know was that he saw that "watering" taking place around every 20 years or so.

However I have always been deeply skeptical about the prospect of any kind of widespread insurrection against the federal government. The fact is that for the overwhelming majority of people in the USA life is very good. And it never seemed likely to me that the average person would be too keen on giving up his fat 401K, 56" flat screen with blu-ray disc player and the realistic prospect of that summer home at the beach/mountains/lake to take up his rifle and start potting the jackbooted Schutzstaffel of the American leviathan. I think that most people agree with me in that opinion. This is why the story of the frog in the pan of water being slowly heated to boiling is such a popular metaphor for the American people's slow loss of liberty at the hands of an ever expanding federal government.

However I am reminded of the fact that the people who made the American Revolution happen were not wretched masses of the desperately poor who had nothing to lose. Rather they were the landed gentry. Educated and affluent they were the elite of colonial society. The same can be said of the Southerners who led the South into succession from the Union. In both cases the people leading the breakaway from what was thought of as an oppressive government were the men with the most, not the least, to lose by their actions.

I'm sure that the vast legions of people who comprise the federal government (from elected officials to senior bureaucrats down to the alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agencies) do not feel themselves in any particular danger of an armed domestic uprising. In this respect the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution has failed in its intended purpose. The 2nd Amendment was not written so that country boys could go out and put venison on the table with their trusty long arm. Nor was it written so that the robbers and rapists might be terrorized into reforming their evil ways by the thought that their next victim might put a bullet between their eyes. No, while those things are happy side effects of the 2nd Amendment its real purpose was to ensure that the government would ever and always feel profoundly intimidated by the citizenry.

However the BATF agents who raided a peaceful religious community in Waco, TX in 1993 had absolutely no fear that the other residents of Waco would take up arms and turn out to help defend their neighbors (however they were seriously taken aback when the Davidians had the gall to actually shoot back - note that they haven't tried another raid of that type since). Just like the US Marshals and FBI agents who surrounded Randy Weaver's house and murdered his wife and son knew that there would be no convoys of outraged armed Americans descending on Ruby Ridge to turn the incident into a latter day Lexington and Concord.

We all remember the video of police in post-Katrina New Orleans tackling an elderly woman to take her revolver away from her. Do you think that any of those cops hesitated for one second out of fear that the old woman's neighbors would come to her defense?

As I said, the true purpose of the 2nd Amendment has been forgotten both by the citizens it was intended to protect and by the government it was intended to terrify. But this forgetting is a dangerous thing to both the citizen and to the government and its minions. Fredrick Douglass, the runaway slave who became a respected writer and leading advocate of the abolition of slavery in the antebellum North, once advised slave owners to "cuff your slaves and treat them cruelly, for a slave with a bad master will aspire to have a good master while a slave with a good master will aspire to be his own master".

Douglass knew that removing the lash from a slave's back allowed him to look up and see the possibilities of freedom. In the United States the lash of poverty has been removed from the great majority of the population. At the same time the Internet has broken the virtual monopoly which the elite media (the handmaiden of big government) has held on the dissemination of information (anyone who doubts the importance of having a way to get out the other side of the argument should study the history of the Reformation and realize that Gutenberg had as much to do with its success as Luther).

Remember what drove the propertied class which led both the Continental Congress in the Revolution and the Confederate government in the Civil War was the fact that their life experiences made them intolerant of being pushed around and unwilling to accept the impositions of a distant government which they did not respect. For those of you having difficulty seeing Thomas Jefferson commanding his slaves at Monticello and Joe Sixpack being fawned on by the salesmen at Best Buy in the same light let me ask you this, what really pisses you off about being pulled over by a cop, the fact that a ticket might make your car insurance go up or the fact that you are going to have to bow and scrape before an arrogant prick who, absent his badge, would be fixing cars or sweeping a Wal Mart parking lot?

Fix this thought in your mind. The American Civil War was not an uprising of slaves seeking freedom. It was an uprising of Slave owners seeking to preserve their prerogatives.

Now think about the fact that those who wish to concentrate unlimited power in the federal government have effectively lost the ability to control the flow of information within the United States. Just as the printing press made it impossible for the Pope to prevent all of Christendom from reading Luther's 95 thesis and the committees of correspondence allowed the patriots to frame the debate in colonial America the Internet allows the instant and uncensored distribution of information about every usurpation of liberty and every affront to the dignity of a free people.

Internet services like YouTube allow people to not only read about but to see examples of the outrages which are inflicted by the servants of the state. The video of the old woman in New Orleans being piled on by a group of cops who were just following orders generates far more raw fury than just reading an account of the incident. The 'net also allows these datum to be archived and easily searched so that the intellectually honest seeker after truth soon finds himself buried under an avalanche of other similar affronts and usurpations.

It is not inevitable, but it is entirely possible, that a breaking point could someday be reached. The fact that the government, the police who enforce the government's will and the elites in the academy and the media who exist in symbiosis with the government no longer believe that there is any such thing as a "breaking point" where the people are concerned means that they will be in no way cautious about approaching that point.

The fact that most of the general public is not aware of the fact that there is a societal breaking point in regard to their government means that they will not become alarmed and act to rein in the government while it can still be reined in.

It doesn't have to start big. In fact it almost certainly will start small. Mr. Vanderboegh relates an exchange he had with someone named Peter on a gun blog:

Peter: "The day may come when we need to take up arms against a tyrannical government, but the fact that you can 'tell them in advance, in public, what MY “rules of engagement” were.' is proof that this is not the time. So please stop giving the anti-gun nuts more ammo, and trying to bait the government to come after you. This is only hurting our cause."

Vanderboegh: "Well, if that's the case, our 'causes' are not the same. My cause is that of the constitutional republic of the Founders and a United States of America that my children and grandchildren can live in as free citizens, not frightened serfs. Here's the thing: with the ATF on the prod, and cantankerous people like me refusing to be pushed, sooner or later somebody's going to trade shots. WE, my friends and me, are going to give the cheesers on this board and in the larger country a choice: are you going to make the same excuses you made before in 1993 when you watched government murder on television and did nothing? And if they kill someone like me, someone who's not a religious cultist (unless you count the Baptists as cultists), someone who doesn't mess with explosives or automatic weapons, someone who's a father and a grandfather, a guy who's on disability for congestive heart failure and can't attack anybody, a guy whose only real sin in their eyes is to despise them publicly -- if they kill me and you do nothing AGAIN, hiding behind excuses AGAIN, well I don't know how you look yourself in the mirror."

And I concluded:

"And understand this, in a country that allows the David Olofsons to be victimized without correction, sooner or later people like me are going to force people like you to look in that mirror. And I suppose that's what really scares y'all. But whether you like it or not, whether you join us or not, we will force you to make the choice because we DO NOT consent to be victimized by some thug simply because he possesses a federal badge that is unconstitutional in the first place. We are free men and women, and will live or die as free men and women. You are free to choose, but you should understand that the choice is not far away. The imperial feds have apparently decided that by their egregious misconduct in the Olofson case."

That's how it can start. Someone snaps and says "I'm not taking this any more" and fights back. Then someone like me, a man with no family depending on him, says "you know if I sit here and watch this happen and don't do jack about it I have no right to call myself a man". Then the mirror gets held up and more and more people are dragged kicking and screaming by their own consciences and forced to look into it. Then the nation has a moment like the jury in the movie Walking Tall where Buford Pusser takes his shirt off and shows them his scars and tells them "if they can do this to me then they can do the same damn thing to you".

Will everyone in the nation rise up then? No, and they will not have to. Remember that at the time the Declaration of Independence was signed the actual number of the colonists who favored independence even at the cost of war was around 20%. During the war the percentage favoring independence more than doubled, but never reached even 50%. And of those favoring independence only a small minority actually took up arms and fought for it.

It is just that the minority favoring independence was more willing to act than the majority opposing it. In the Civil War it was the same. The number of Southerners who favored breaking away from the Union was less than half and the number of Northerners who favored going to war to keep the South in the Union was less than half. It is just that an active minority will always trump a passive majority.

The cost in blood and treasure could be enormous and the effect on the rest of the world could be catastrophic. If America, the "essential nation", were ripped apart by internal fighting who would take its place in a world where the "bad guys" outnumber the "good guys" by orders of magnitude?

As Mr.Vanderboegh said, ". . . like most wars, this one will need to be fought precisely because most of us think it is impossible." There is a breaking point and it must be not just respected but feared.

McCain tries to fool the NRA

From The Washington Post:

LOUISVILLE, May 16 -- Sen. John McCain, once derided as one of the "premier flag-carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment" by the National Rifle Association, enthusiastically embraced the group's pro-gun agenda at its annual convention here Friday.

In front of a crowd of about 6,000 people who gave him two standing ovations, McCain also mocked Democratic Sen. Barack Obama as a liberal, anti-gun politician and made a direct appeal to the "bitter" voters Obama said were clinging to their "guns or religion" to soothe concerns about their economic struggles.

"The Second Amendment isn't some archaic custom that matters only to rural Americans who find solace in firearms out of frustration with their economic circumstances," McCain said.

McCain, who is viewed with suspicion among many gun owners because of his efforts to reform campaign finance laws and his decade-long battle with the NRA over background checks at gun shows, sought to mollify his conservative critics by declaring fealty to the Second Amendment. The presumptive GOP nominee did not abandon his support for background checks, but he tried to cast his disagreements with the NRA as isolated cases separate from otherwise solid support for gun rights.

This is standard McCain. Go before a group who he has alienated by his deeds and offer them words. Note that McCain didn't back off the things which have caused the NRA to condemn him. This is also standard McCain, never abandon you left-of-center positions on anything.

Gun owners need to be aware of the fact that if McCain is elected that he will work with the Democrat majority to "close the gun show loophole" in a way which will effectively outlaw gun shows and probably outlaw all private transfers of firearms as well.

If gun owners are going to lose ground over the next four years I would rather it be to Democrats than to Republicans. At least then in 2012 Republicans could remind gun owners that it wasn't the Republican party which screwed them.

Good Question

H/T: White Trash Republican

Gaze into the mind of a moron

I found this over on Shooting the Messengers. It seems that a feminist blog run by true idiots (sorry, redundant) has taken on the issue of gun control by attempting to fisk a pro Second Amendment post on another blog. Here is a sample of the attempted fisking:

Here is a quote from the pro gun blog - "Yet much of the effort by the perpetrators of gun control has been to deny the rest of us safe, effective and well-designed guns."

Here is Ms. Einstein's answer - "Actually much of the effort has been to keep guns and weapons that are considered "too dangerous" off the streets. Things like rocket launchers, grenades and other items usable by terrorists. Besides, who carries a grenade or an automatic sub-machinegun like a Mac 10 around for self-defense?"

Actually explosives like grenades and rockets come under the heading of destructive devices and are not generally considered to be in the same class as firearms where the Second Amendment is concerned. As for sub-machine guns (the word automatic is superfluous since "machine-gun" implies a gun capable of fully automatic fire) here are a couple of pictures from Israel.

Technically the women in these pictures are not carrying sub machine-guns. They are carrying M-16 assault rifles which fire the 5.56 MM NATO cartridge while a sub machine-gun by definition fires a pistol cartridge.

This bottom picture is my favorite. It shows three Israeli girls buying ice cream at the mall.

You see over there it is very common for people, men and women and teenagers, to carry sub machine-guns like the 9MM Uzi, Assault rifles like the M-16 and the Galil and semi-automatic pistols for self defense.

And here is the interesting thing. When you exclude violent acts committed by Palestinians there is very little violent crime in Israel. There are also very few accidental shootings. Israelis of both sexes are taught from a young age to handle firearms safely and constant exposure to firearms keeps that training fresh in their minds.

If you want proof that these people are not only unutterably stupid but complete moral lepers listen to this:

If the Jews during WWII had had more guns available to them it would have been one more excuse for Hitler to hunt them all down, which he attempted anyway.

Think about that for a minute and see if your skin doesn't get up and walk out of the room without you. By this "logic" the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto shouldn't have fought back since they were outnumbered and didn't have any real chance of winning.

It is very nearly impossible for me to recognize a common humanity with people who think this way. If evil is coming to murder you do not sit there like a terrified rabbit and wait for the wolf's jaws to crush the life out of you. Fight back and take as many of the bastards with you as you can!

In a primitive society in which people do not enjoy the protection of modern civilization those who do not believe in fighting back tend to get killed off before they can reproduce. This keeps the numbers of those who suffer from the form of mental illness known as pacifism to a minimum. You can file it under "no good deed goes unpunished" that the introduction of the rule of law protects such people and allows them to clog the gene pool with their worthless DNA.

Starts well, ends badly

Thomas A Bowden gives us his take on the Second Amendment as it relates to the Heller Case:

First, the robber hit Willie Lee Hill more than 50 times with a can of soda, knocking him unconscious. Later, the 93-year-old victim awakened, covered with blood, to find his 24-year-old assailant ransacking the bedroom. When Hill pulled out a .38-caliber handgun from near his bed, the robber lunged at him. Hill stopped his attacker with a single bullet to the throat. “I got what I deserved,” the robber told police afterward.

That episode happened in Arkansas last July, but similar acts of self-defense occur by the thousands all across America every year. Overwhelming historical evidence and common sense demonstrate that guns--often called the “great equalizer,” for obvious reasons--are a powerful method of self-defense in the precious minutes before police can arrive.

In the District of Columbia, however, citizens may not lawfully possess a handgun for self-defense, even in the home...at least, not yet. The Supreme Court has heard oral argument in D.C. v. Heller, which is expected to determine whether such a blanket ban violates the Second Amendment. But regardless of how the Court may interpret the Constitution, citizens deserve a legal right to own a handgun for self-defense.

As the Declaration of Independence recognizes, governments are created to protect our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right of self-defense is included and implied in the right to life. In forming a government, citizens delegate the task of defending themselves to the police. But to delegate is not to surrender. Each citizen retains the ultimate right to defend himself in emergencies when his appointed agents, the police, are not available to help.

So far so good. If Mr. Bowden had stopped here all would be well. However in a sort of writer's version of the Peter Principle he felt the need to keep typing until he had reached his level of incompetance:

But what constitutes an emergency? What acts of self-defense are permissible in such a situation? And what tools may private citizens own for emergency self-defense? The law’s task is to furnish objective answers to such questions, so that citizens may defend their lives without taking the law into their own hands.

An emergency, properly defined, arises from an objective threat of imminent bodily harm. The victim must summon police, if possible. An emergency ends when the threat ends, or as soon as police arrive and take charge. During that narrow emergency interval, a victim may defend himself, but only with the least degree of force necessary under the circumstances to repel his attacker. A victim who explodes in vengeance, using excessive force, exposes himself to criminal liability along with his assailant.

This is mostly true, except that the trend in self defense law is heading in the direction of allowing people broader latitude in when they may use deadly force. For example Mr. Bowden asserts that the police must be called if at all possible. It is a good idea to summon the police, if only to go on record with the fact that you felt yourself under threat and attempted to bring in the authorities to handle the situation for you. However taking the duty to summon the police if at all possible to its logical conclusion could very well imply a duty to retreat.

For example if you are watching TV in the living room and hear someone trying to break down the front door a duty to call police if at all possible would imply that you are bound by law to grab the phone and run to the rear of the house or upstairs and lock yourself in the bedroom or bathroom and dial 911. The direction which the law is heading in most states is to enact so-called "castle doctrine" laws which eliminate the need to retreat when one is on one's own property. I believe that the law will continue to evolve in this direction due to the fact that almost all states currently have "shall issue" laws to any citizen who is not disqualified by a criminal record, mental illness and who can meet certain minimal training requirements.

The trend throughout history is that bearing arms and political power go hand in hand. In societies where only one class of people have the right to bear arms that is the class which will hold the political power. In European history you can see the rights of the common people grow in conjunction with the loss of the monarchy and aristocracy's exclusive right to bear arms.

In the United Kingdom we have seen over the past decade changes in the House of Lords which have removed nearly all the final vestiges of power held by the hereditary lords at the same time as the government has extended the UK's strict gun control laws to shotguns. Shotguns are the weapon most associated with the gentry in that society (because hunting was almost exclusively the right of the upper class). It is simply no accident that the British aristocracy lost its last bit of political power at the same time as it lost its right to bear arms.

Mr. Bowden goes sharply downhill from this point:

Many objects commonly owned for peaceful purposes can be pressed into service for emergency self-defense. But unlike kitchen knives or baseball bats, handguns have no peaceful purpose--they are designed to kill people. The same lethal power that makes handguns the most practical means of self-defense against robbers, rapists, and murderers, also makes handguns an essential tool of government force. Handguns are deadly force and nothing but--a fact that gives rise to legitimate concerns over their private ownership in a civilized society.

I'm sure that the bullseye shooters, the cowboy action shooters, the handgun hunters and metallic silhouette shooters will find it a surprise that their guns are only designed to kill people and that they are "deadly force and nothing else". I'm also surprised that handguns are an essential tool of government force. After all when the British Empire was at its absolute zenith in the Late Victorian period the police were armed with wooden clubs and the citizenry could carry revolvers.

These concerns can be resolved only by laws carefully drawn to confine private use of handguns to emergency self-defense, as defined by objective law. Such laws must also prohibit all conduct by which handguns might present an objective threat to others, whether by intent or negligence.

Again it will come as a surprise to the above mentioned sporting community that their handguns must be restricted to emergency self-defense. There goes that bowling pin match I was going to shoot Saturday. Of course it is necessary to criminalize the criminal misuse of firearms. Just as the criminal misuse of kitchen knives, baseball bats and the odd bit of steel pipe are all illegal.

Contrary to an often expressed worry, therefore, a right to keep and bear arms in no way implies that citizens may stockpile weaponry according to their arbitrary preferences. Cannons, tanks, and nuclear weapons have no legitimate use in a private emergency, and their very presence is a threat to peaceful neighbors.

The people who live in the housing development across from the Carter Co., TN chapter of the VFW will be surprised to know that their lives are in imminent peril from the two howitzers sitting out in frot of that private organization's building in Elizabethton. All the private collectors who own fighter planes, tanks and artillery pieces will be as surprised as the cowboy action shooters to learn that their very presence constitutes a threat to their peaceful neighbors.

If handguns are confined to emergency self-defense, no legitimate purpose is served by an outright ban such as the District of Columbia enacted. Even if such laws actually deprived criminals of guns (which they don’t), they would infringe upon a law-abiding citizen’s right in emergencies to repel attackers who are wielding knives, clubs, fists--or cans of soda.

With the aid of his handgun, Willie Lee Hill survived that violent home invasion last July. Self-defense was his right, as it is ours. A proper legal system recognizes and protects that right, by permitting private ownership of handguns under appropriate limits.

You see Mr. Bowden you have made the same mistake that the DC city government has made and has asked the Supreme Court to make. You have assumed that the matter of owning handguns is a matter of public safety. The District says that people are safer without them and you say that they are safer with them. You are correct in that point but that is not the basis of the American citizens right to keep and bear arms.

It is a constitutional right, Mr. Bowden. That means that the Framers recognized that the right to own and carry weapons comes to us from our Creator and they determined that the government they were creating would not take to itself the power to interfere with that God-given right. Human beings have a natural right to own and carry (keep and bear) weapons for whatever purpose they choose except to use them to deprive another of their own God-given rights.

Neither my guns nor my speech nor my religion has to pass your test of appropriateness - or the Supreme Court's or Congresses or anybody else's either! The government may use its power to deprive me of the free exercise of my natural rights but it cannot take away those rights.

Why do we need guns?

American Spectator looks at the Second Amendment case just argued before the Supreme Court:

Why would a citizen want to own a gun? These days, the most obvious reason is the one offered by Heller himself: self-defense. The District of Columbia is a particularly dangerous city, with a violent crime rate more than three times the national average.

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who has tenaciously defended his city's gun laws all the way to the Supreme Court, said at a press conference on the Court steps after the hearings that D.C.'s gun laws helped make his city a safer place.

FENTY IS BLINDLY assuming that just because a law was meant to make the city safer, it must have worked according to plan. In some categories of crime, things have gotten better since 1976, when the D.C. gun ban went into effect. The rape rate per 100,000 residents has indeed fallen by more than half since then, as has the burglary rate. Of course, those results are in line with national trends in crime reduction, and cannot be meaningfully credited to D.C.'s gun laws.

When it comes to the more meaningful data of murders per capita, D.C.'s rate was still higher in 2005 than it was in 1976. It has been higher every year but one since the gun ban passed, and most years it's been enormously higher.

For 10 of the past 30 years, the District's per capita murder rate was more than twice as high as it was the year the ban passed. D.C. residents have no reason to think its gun laws have done anything to make them safer.

Beyond statistics, two of the original plaintiffs in the Heller case have specific stories that reveal exactly why law-abiding citizens would want the right to possess handguns. One was a woman who was threatened in her own D.C. home for daring to stand up to neighborhood drug dealers. Another was a man who once saved a friend's life and his own from a gay-bashing mob by brandishing -- not even firing -- his handgun.

The ugliest aspect of D.C.'s laws is that they inherently presume that your life is not worth protecting -- given that government cannot, and does not promise to, provide effective police protection in every life-threatening situation.

If the Supreme Court declares that the Second Amendment, like its sister amendments, protects an individual right, then many localities besides D.C., from New York City to Chicago, may have to rethink aspects of their gun control laws. The full meaning of the Court's decision will play out in the political arena.

Regardless, our right of self-defense is central to our right to life. For D.C. -- or any other city or state -- to completely deny us the most effective means of protecting our homes and our families is unacceptable. We shouldn't need the Supreme Court to tell us that.


"The ugliest aspect of D.C.'s laws is that they inherently presume that your life is not worth protecting. . ." that is the premise behind all gun control laws beyond those seeking to deny access to weapons to convicted violent felons and lunatics.

The NYT on the Second Amendment case

From The New York Times:

When reading this keep one thing in mind. The writer of the NYT article is Linda Greenhouse. Ms. Greenhouse specializes in covering the Court and her writing is believed by many to set the tone for the entire media in covering cases before the High Court. Many believe that the phenomena of justices "growing in office" (which means becoming more liberal and activist) is a result of the judges wishing to receive favorable coverage in the elite media. It is a measure of Ms. Greenhouse's partisan effectiveness that this had been termed the "Greenhouse Effect".

For a hard-line left-liberal like her to take such an even tone in reporting on this story is a measure of exactly how far the debate on the Second Amendment has changed in the favor of firearms rights over the past twenty years or so.

WASHINGTON — A majority of the Supreme Court appeared ready on Tuesday to embrace, for the first time in the country’s history, an interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the right to own a gun for personal use.

This is ridiculous. The writings of the Founding Fathers demonstrate clearly to anyone not willfully blind that they (who were the writers and adopters of the Constitution, after all) interpreted the Second Amendment as an individual right.

That may be the easy part.

The harder question in the case challenging the District of Columbia’s handgun ban is what kind of restrictions the government could constitutionally place, in the name of public safety, on the newly recognized right. The answer to that question, on which the outcome of the case will turn, was less clear.

This is the question. Even Second Amendment hard-liners like myself believe that the state does have the authority to place some restrictions on the right to own and carry (keep and bear) firearms. For example persons who have been convicted of violent felonies and or who have been found by competent authorities to be insane should not have access to firearms. I also believe that the term "arms" as used in the Amendment can be reasonably restricted to firearms and should not be seen as broad enough to include nuclear weapons, nerve gas or biological agents.

However "reasonable" restrictions do not include any fee so high as to be a hardship upon someone making minimum wage. It does not include a waiting period longer than the amount of time it takes to obtain a criminal background check. And "reasonable" deffinately does not include giving the government the ability to outlaw entire classes of firearms like handguns, machine guns or .50 caliber rifles.

The argument was lively and intense, running 22 minutes over its allotted hour and 15 minutes. Despite “starting afresh,” as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. put it, on a subject the court had not addressed since 1939, the justices appeared at least as well informed as the lawyers on minute details of English and American legal history. The relevance of that history, on which both sides have their distinguished experts, remains to be seen.

There was also a good deal of linguistic dissection of the Second Amendment’s text: “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.”

“The amendment’s first clause confirms that the right is militia-related,” Walter Dellinger, arguing for the District of Columbia, told the court near the beginning of his argument.

The District is appealing a ruling by the federal appeals court here last year that adopted the individual-rights view of the Second Amendment and declared the handgun ban unconstitutional.

Mr. Dellinger asserted that at the time the Second Amendment was drafted, “the people” and “the militia” were essentially synonymous; therefore, he said, the amendment, its two clauses properly interpreted, gave people the right to own weapons only in connection with their militia service.

That assertion promptly ran into objections.

Doesn’t the argument that the people and the militia were one and the same “cut against you,” Chief Justice Roberts asked. If the militia included everyone, he continued, “doesn’t the preamble that you rely on not really restrict the right much at all?”

Bingo Justice Roberts!

Tacking slightly, Mr. Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general, replied that the focus should be on “the scope and nature of the right that the people have.”

“It is a right to participate in the common defense,” he added.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose vote may well be crucial to the outcome of the case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, disagreed. The purpose of the first clause, with its militia reference, was simply to “reaffirm the right to have a militia,” he said, while the second made clear that individuals had the right to own guns.

In his questions throughout the argument, Justice Kennedy insisted that the amendment’s framers wanted to assure the ability of “the remote settler to defend himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves and bears and grizzlies and things like that,” as he phrased his concern with self-defense at one point.

That Justice Kennedy took this position in his questioning is hugely significant. Kennedy is the swing vote who will likely be the pivot around which the outcome of this case will turn. That he is aggressively backing both and individual rights and a pro self defense position is all but a guarantee that the Court will rule that the 2nd is an individual right.

And Justice Antonin Scalia told Mr. Dellinger that “the two clauses go together beautifully” if the Second Amendment was understood as an effort to guarantee that militias would not be “destroyed by tyrants.” The proper reading, Justice Scalia said, is, “Since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

I never had any doubt that either Scalia or Thomas, the two finest Justices to have sat on the court in its entire history, would do the right thing.

Skipping on to the current administration's presentation to the Court:

The lawyer in the middle, both literally and figuratively, was Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, whose time slot for argument fell between those of the two principal advocates. In accordance with the brief he filed for the government, Mr. Clement supported the individual-rights view and took no position on the statute’s constitutionality. But he criticized the lower court as having approached the issue too categorically. And he cautioned the court against writing an opinion so broad as to jeopardize federal gun regulations.

“The Second Amendment talks about the right to bear arms, not just a right to bear arms,” Mr. Clement said. “And that pre-existing right always coexisted with reasonable regulations of firearms.”

As in his brief, which angered some members of the Bush administration for not supporting the appeals court’s approach, Mr. Clement said the government was particularly concerned that federal restrictions on machine guns not be undermined.

Under the lower court’s analysis, he noted, categories of weapons that would have been considered “arms” by the Second Amendment’s drafters could not be banned today. He added that it would be hard to argue that machine guns did not fall into such a category, “given that they are the standard issue weapon for today’s armed forces and the state-organized militia.”

Consequently, he said, the justices should use a standard more relaxed than the “strict scrutiny” that the lower court applied in evaluating restrictions on gun ownership. Selecting a standard to accommodate sufficient regulation is important, he said, adding, “In our view, it makes a world of difference.”

I congratulate Mr. Clement for speaking the truth in recognizing that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of the people to own military weapons like machine guns. However I damn him to the lowest circle of hell for attempting to convince the High Court to rule in a way which he admits runs contrary to the Constitution.

Did not this man, when taking his oath of office as Solicitor General, place his hand upon the Holy Bible and swear to protect and defend the Constitution? Has he not just forsworn that oath and committed an impeachable offense? This is not a case of a public official having a different interpretation of the Constitution. This is a plain case of a public official saying, in so many words, that "the Constitution says this, but I urge the Court to ignore it and do something else". He is damned out of his own mouth. He has a right to hold an anti-constitutional opinion under the First Amendment but there should be no place for him in the US government as long as he holds it.

And if he is standing before the court giving George W Bush's opinion as president then there should be no place in the US government for him as well.

While the Court can do whatever it pleases it appears that they are primed to issue a better ruling than most Second Amendment activists had hoped for.

Another look at the High Court's look at the 2nd Amendment

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans have a right to own guns, Supreme Court justices declared Tuesday in a historic and lively debate that could lead to the most significant interpretation of the Second Amendment since its ratification two centuries ago.

Governments have a right to regulate those firearms, a majority of justices seemed to agree. But there was less apparent agreement on the case they were arguing: whether Washington's ban on handguns goes too far.

The justices dug deeply into arguments on one of the Constitution's most hotly debated provisions as demonstrators shouted slogans outside. Guns are an American right, argued one side. "Guns kill," responded the other.

Inside the court, at the end of a session extended long past the normal one hour, a majority of justices appeared ready to say that Americans have a "right to keep and bear arms" that goes beyond the amendment's reference to service in a militia.

Several justices were openly skeptical that the District of Columbia's 32-year-old handgun ban, perhaps the strictest in the nation, could survive under that reading of the Constitution.

"What is reasonable about a total ban on possession?" Chief Justice John Roberts asked.

Walter Dellinger, representing the district, replied that Washington residents could own rifles and shotguns and could use them for protection at home.

What Dellinger did not say was that DC's law requires the rifles and shotguns to be locked at all times and makes no exception for their use in self defense. The second a DC resident unlocks her shotgun to fend off a serial rapist she breaks the law.

A ban on handguns is stupid, misguided and unconstitutional. A ban on making a legally owned firearm ready for self defense is demoniacally evil.

Good news from the High Court

From Financial Times:

The US Supreme Court appears ready to rule that Americans have a constitutional right to keep a gun in their home for self-defence, a ruling that could help Republicans in the upcoming presidential election.

Hearing the most important gun rights case in nearly 70 years, the justices on Tuesday spent 98 minutes engrossed in a lively debate about British and American legal traditions relating to the right to bear arms, especially in self-defence.

By the end of Tuesday’s session, it appeared clear that a majority of the court would rule that the US constitution protects the right of individual Americans to “keep and bear arms” – but that federal, state and local governments will retain some powers to regulate firearms.

At issue in the case is the constitution’s second amendment, which includes ambiguous language about gun rights. It says “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”.

The language of the Second Amendment is "ambiguous" only to the willfully ignorant.

The justices sparred over whether those words guarantee the right of individual citizens to bear arms, or only the collective right to bear arms in a state militia.

A majority of the nine justices, including the crucial “swing” justice Anthony Kennedy, who often holds the balance of power on the court, appeared to believe the amendment guaranteed an individual right to weapons.

Justice Kennedy repeatedly insisted that the amendment must have been intended to allow citizens to protect their frontier homes and families against dangers such as attacking Indians or bears, and should provide a similar right to protect the modern home.

With the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor Kennedy has become the swing vote and has been moving to the right somewhat. With him on the right side it is almost impossible that the court could rule that the 2nd is a "collective right".

The case before the court involves a Washington DC law making it a crime to have any kind of firearm that is ready to fire, either a handgun or a loaded rifle or shotgun, and is among the strictest gun control laws in the US.

Dick Anthony Heller, an armed security guard, sued the District after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his home for protection. The top court is reviewing a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the DC law and broadly interpreted the right of individuals to bear arms.

The most difficult question for the court is: what kind of laws can governments pass to restrict the constitutional right to keep and bear a gun?

The question which should be before the court is whether government can pass any kind of laws to restrict the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that the DC law would not meet his test as a reasonable regulation of firearms ownership. “What is reasonable about a total ban on possession of handguns?” he asked. But several other justices defended the ban as a reasonable response to the crime problem in America’s capital city.

There is nothing reasonable about disarming the victims of crime.

Mr Heller’s lawyer said the court could find that Americans have an individual right to own guns but still allow governments to regulate some types of weapons, such as machine guns, and who can own them.

The fact is that because of decades of liberal judicial activism the court can do anything it damn well pleases, including strike down every gun control law in the nation. However if the court chooses to apply a strict interpretation to the 2nd it will rule that military type weapons are the class of firearms most protected by the amendment.

Political analysts said a ruling in favour of gun rights could help Republicans, especially in a close general election.

This is likely true. McCain's sycophants and kool-aid drinkers have been beating the Supreme Court drum as loudly as they can. It is offered as the best reason for conservatives to hold their nose and vote for the Benedict Arnold of the Senate.

It would be a more convincing argument if McCain had not single-handedly put together the infamous "Gang of 14" deal which prevented the Senate's rules from being changed to disallow the filibuster on judicial appointments. As things stand now McCain's efforts guarantee that any genuine conservative he might nominate for the High Court will be blocked by Senate liberals.

This will force the withdrawal of the conservative in favor of a "nominee who can be confirmed" which will mean that any justices appointed during a McCain administration will be approved by Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Patrick Leahy. Which is, I firmly believe, exactly what McCain intended all along.

Fun with Gunz

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and police superintendent Warren Riley clown around with firearms. But the ordinary citizen can't be trusted with them.

Why can't Dick Cheney be our next president?

WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney took the unusual step Friday of joining with lawmakers in signing a Supreme Court brief that goes further in support of gun rights than the one submitted by the Bush administration.

The filings were made in a case that challenges the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns. It was scheduled to be argued on March 18.

Both briefs argue that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns. However, the administration contends that too categorical a ruling could threaten other federal gun restrictions and wants the justices to send the case back to lower courts without deciding whether the handgun ban should fall.

Cheney joined more than 300 senators and representatives, led by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who want the court to rule that Washington’s ban is unconstitutional.

“The vice president believes strongly in Second Amendment rights,” Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said.

Seventeen Democratic lawmakers and District of Columbia Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton urged the court to uphold the ban.

Lawyers with long experience at the court could not recall another case in which a vice president took a position different from that of his own administration.

What next? President Bush signing the amicus?

H/T: Don Surber via Rigth Truth

Grasping at straws

From The New York Times:

The best way to make sense of the Second Amendment is to take away all the commas (which, I know, means that only outlaws will have commas). Without the distracting commas, one can focus on the grammar of the sentence. Professor Lund is correct that the clause about a well-regulated militia is “absolute,” but only in the sense that it is grammatically independent of the main clause, not that it is logically unrelated. To the contrary, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause.

The founders — most of whom were classically educated — would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.”

Likewise, when the justices finish diagramming the Second Amendment, they should end up with something that expresses a causal link, like: “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias, notwithstanding the originalist arguments to the contrary.

I suppose that all of this comes from spending the eight years of the Clinton presidency having to constantly keep track of the ever shifting meaning of words like "is".

I love the way that leftists can pretend that the Second Amendment exists in a vacuum of any other statements the Founders might have made about the issue of firearms, militias or who they considered "the people" to be when referred to in the constitution.

After all the scholarship which has gone into the current recognition of the fact that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right going back and re-listing all of the points demonstrating that fact would not only be pointless, but actually insulting to the intelligence.

At this point the only argument that the Second Amendment, uniquely among the other items of the Bill of Rights, speaks of a "collective right" rather than an individual right is centered around wishful thinking. You don't want there to be constitutional right for individual citizens to own and carry firearms so you simply deny that there is. And if anyone counters you with fact you stick your fingers in your ears and hum real loud until they shut up.

I don't know what the Supreme Court will do in the upcoming Second Amendment case, but if Justice Kennedy seeks to pay true honor to his oath of office rather than to receive what passes for honor from the New York Times and the Washington Post we will have a ruling that the constitution actually means what it says, that the individual has a right to own and carry firearms.

Supreme Court to take up 2nd Amendment case

From The Washington Post:

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will determine whether the District of Columbia's strict firearms law violates the Constitution, a decision that will raise the politically and culturally divisive issue of gun control just in time for the 2008 elections.

The court's examination of the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 years carries broad implications for gun-control measures locally and across the country.

The District has the nation's most restrictive law, essentially banning private handgun ownership and requiring that rifles and shotguns kept in private homes be unloaded and disassembled or outfitted with a trigger lock. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declared it unconstitutional last year, becoming the first appeals court to overturn a gun-control law because of the Second Amendment.

For years, legal scholars, historians and grammarians have debated the meaning of the amendment because of its enigmatic wording and odd punctuation: "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."

Gun-rights proponents say the words guarantee the right of an individual to possess firearms. Gun-control supporters say the words convey only a civic or "collective" right to own guns as part of service in an organized military organization. The Bush administration said in 2002 that it supports the individual-rights position.

Robert A. Levy, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute who has spent years planning a challenge that would reach the Supreme Court, called the court's decision to take the case "good news for all Americans who would like to be able to defend themselves where they live and sleep."

"And it's especially good news for residents of Washington, D.C., which has been the murder capital of the nation despite an outright ban on all functional firearms since 1976," he said.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has said the District's up-and-down homicide rate would have been higher without the ban, and that the law is a locally supported move to protect police officers, children and other victims of gun violence.

"It's the will of the people of the District of Columbia that has to be respected," Fenty said at a news conference with D.C. Attorney General Linda Singer and several D.C. Council members. "We should have the right to make our own decisions."

The truth is that there is no real controversy over the meaning of the Second Amendment. All one need do is look at both the state of laws restricting firearms ownership in the early Republic and read the actual writings of the Founders on the subject of firearms ownership.

As far as early American laws restricting firearms ownership there were none at the federal level and at the state level the only "gun control" laws were those aimed at keeping slaves from having firearms (and not even all states had those). For a free man there were no restrictions on how many or what type of arms a person could own. In those days if a man wished to buy or build a ship of the line and outfit it with 80 cannon, or assemble an entire division of field artillery in his back yard the law had nothing to say about it.

The fact that the only laws limiting who might own firearms considered acceptable were those aimed at disarming slaves gives us a clue as to how the framers saw the right to keep and bear arms. It was for free men to be armed and for slaves to be disarmed.

Of course if you look at what the Founders actually said about the subject of arms any reasonable doubt is dispelled:

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Thomas Jefferson

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

"[A]rms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. . . Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them." -- Thomas Paine

"The great object is, that every man be armed." -- Patrick Henry

"And that the said Constitution be never 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 peacable citizens, from keeping their own arms. . ." -- Samuel Adams

"... 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..." -- Richard Henry Lee

"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny." -- James Monroe

No honest person who understands the plain meaning of language can have the slightest doubt that the intention of the men who wrote and ratified the Constitution was to recognize and protect an individual right to own firearms.

The only hope the left has of disarming, and thereby enslaving, the American population are Supreme Court judges who will be willing to break their oath of office by ruling based on their opinion rather than the Constitution or else be too cowardly to issue a ruling that will have the Washington Post and the New York Times say disparaging things about them.

John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and David Souter can be counted upon to do the wrong thing no matter what the consequences. Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia can be counted upon to do the right thing no matter what the consequences. John Roberts and Samuel Alito will most likely do the right thing (right thing being defined as ruling in a way which upholds original intent). The wild card is Anthony Kennedy.

Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan and was once thought to be a conservative. However at some point a strong animosity seemed to develop between Kennedy and the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. This seemed to push Kennedy to take positions which opposed Rehnquist, who was a political and judicial conservative. This caused Kennedy to more and more align himself with the far left judicial activists on the court.

Since Rehnquist's death and the installation of John Roberts as Chief Justice Kennedy has began to recover some of the judicial conservatism which originally made him attractive to Ronald Reagan. However his long sojourn in the intellectual and moral wasteland of the Left has left its marks upon his soul.

Kennedy is going to find himself the swing justice in the upcoming Second Amendment case. Given the unquestionable smallness of character of a judge who would alter his judicial philosophy and harm his nation by bad rulings just because of a personal feud with a coworker I have some misgivings about the upcoming case.

If I can figure out that Kennedy is going to be the key man in this case others can as well. The left-liberal mainstream media is going to do everything in their power to influence him. Expect the Washington Post to start giving Kennedy a hand-job that won't stop until the day the ruling is made public.

Our best hope is to hammer on the fact that the consensus of respected constitutional scholars over the past 20 years has solidified around the fact that the Second Amendment recognizes an individual right. In addition to being the simple truth it will bring home to Kennedy that only judicial lightweights continue to cling to the "collective right" interpretation. Bring it home to Kennedy that issuing a ruling which will make the left happy will result in him going down in history as a second rate legal mind and his vanity compel him to do the right thing.

Don't like Hucakbee, BUT this is good

For the record, I don't care if someone has been a "lifelong hunter" or if he has ever been hunting even once. The Second Amendment is about the individual citizen having the right to own and carry the same kind of firearms as the military for the purpose of protecting the nation against foreign invasion and domestic tyranny.

STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS (CONCEALEDCAMPUS.COM) ANNOUNCES NATIONAL COLLEGIATE EMPTY HOLSTER PROTEST

During the week of October 22-26, 2007, college students throughout America, organized under the banner of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, will attend classes wearing empty holsters, in protest of state laws and campus policies that stack the odds in favor of armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else.

In 39 U.S. states, thousands of collegiate students and faculty—age 21 and above—are licensed to carry concealed handguns throughout their day-to-day lives. And they do so without incident. However, despite the absence of any compelling evidence that these licensed individuals would pose any more threat to college campuses than they currently do to office buildings, shopping malls, movie theaters, grocery stores, banks, etc., they are prohibited, either by state law or school policy, from carrying their firearms onto most college campuses.
On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims—He wasn’t concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech’s status as a “gun free zone,” this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire.

In the last twenty years, the vast majority of the mass shootings in America—from the Texas Luby’s massacre to the Columbine High School massacre—have happened in “gun free zones.” Labeling an area “gun free” may make some people feel safer, but as the shootings at Virginia Tech taught us, feeling safe and being safe are not the same thing.

For over a year, state law in Utah has allowed licensed individuals to carry concealed handguns on college campuses. This has yet to result in a single act of violence. Numerous studies* by independent researchers and state agencies show that license holders are five times less likely than non-license holders to be arrested for violent crimes. Clearly, license holders pose little threat to college campuses.

There is a wide discrepancy between the intent of campus gun bans and the actual consequences of such bans. It is this discrepancy to which the students of SCCC hope their Empty Holster Protest will draw attention. While opponents may argue that guns have no place in institutions of higher learning, SCCC contends that it is the threat of uncontested, execution-style massacre that has no place in America’s colleges. The students of the Empty Holster Protest respectfully ask that steps be taken to take the advantage away from those who seek to harm the innocent.

For more information, contact Scott Lewis or visit http://www.concealedcampus.com/.

*“Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” John Lott and David Mustard, Journal of Legal Studies (v.26, no.1, pages 1-68, January 1997); “An Analysis of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population,” William E. Sturdevant, September 1, 2000; Florida Department of Justice statistics, 1998; Florida Department of State, “Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report,” 1998; Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000; Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association


ABOUT STUDENTS FOR CONCEALED CARRY ON CAMPUS - Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization comprised of college students, parents, and concerned citizens who believe that holders of concealed handgun licenses should enjoy the same rights on college campuses that current laws afford them virtually everywhere else. SCCC is dedicated to persuading state governments and school administrators to approve laws and campus policies that will grant all citizens with concealed handgun licenses the right to carry their concealed handguns on college campuses. We are not affiliated with the NRA, a political party, or any other organization.


UPDATE:

Fits at Shooting The Messengers directs our attention to this item on the blog Call Me Ahab.

It seems that the University of Florida is worried that the sight of empty holsters will cause sensitive students to fall to the ground in paroxysms of foaming madness and wants them to know that the campus police will be there to protect them:

TO: Deans

FROM: Dr. Patricia Telles-Irvin, Vice President for Student Affairs

RE: Protest Event Next Week

A national group known as Students for Concealed Carry On Campus, which
advocates allowing students and others to bring concealed weapons to
campus, plans an Empty Holster Protest all next week. Students who
participate in the event are being urged to wear an empty holster to
class in order to protest state laws and university policies that
prohibit firearms on campus.

Neither state law nor campus policies prohibit carrying an empty
holster, so anyone who participates in this event is within his or her
rights. However, if any faculty member or student feels genuinely
threatened (emphasis mine), they should feel free to call the University
Police Department. If you would, please pass this along to your
department chairs and faculty.

The A, cravenness and B, stupidity of these people is almost impossible to believe.

UPDATE II:

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus have t-shirts for sale. You can see them here. This would be one way to support this fine organization. Other ways of sending them some financial support are being explored.

In the meantime it would be very helpful to spread the word as far and wide as possible. If you have a blog please re-post the press release. If there is a college in your town please write a letter to the local newspaper supporting the protest.