End the War on Freedom - RKBA

N.Y. lawsuit against 37 gun makers dismissed

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:53:38 -0500

Rhonda Cook at The Atlanta Journal Constitution - Michael Bloomberg's lawsuit against gun stores who sold guns that were later found in New York City was dismissed on Wednesday by a federal appeals court. Good. Now let's hope that the countersuits are successful, and that Bloomberg himself is forced to pay millions of his own money. More related stories here.

Michael Bloomberg, Serial Killer

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:13:51 -0500

L. Neil Smith at JPFO - forbidding people from possessing self-defense tools, under color of law, is morally equivalent to murder. Hopefully, Bloomberg and Richard Daley and other victim disarmers will swing for their crimes before they die of old age. [jpfo]

Quote:

At this point, I want to make it clear that this is not a parable. It is not a metaphor, a simile, or any kind of analogy. It is an accurate, point-for-point description of the criminal behavior of the authorities in many of America's biggest cities -- New York, Chicago, Denver -- where you are forbidden to carry, or in some cases to own, a weapon of self-defense. Instead of using their resources to pursue criminals, the police in these jurisdictions are busy preventing you from exercising the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right of every man, woman, and responsible child to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

The crime I'm guilty of in my scenario is the crime they're guilty of in real life. Through force or the threat of force, they pin your arms and make you helpless while robbers, rapists, and killers do whatever they like with you. Certain of these authorities are even guiltier because they've mounted a deliberate, nation-wide effort to spread their particular kind of deadly criminality as far and wide as possible.

Who Needs An Assault Rifle?

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:35:44 -0500

John Taffin at Guns Magazine - Mr. Taffin tells of how he verified the lies from an anti-gunner that evil assault weapons cause good people to turn violent. He bought two of them, and, golly gee, he didn't turn evil. I've seen this thesis before, but Taffin tells it very well. [guns]

Quote:

Fifteen years ago I did not own an assault rifle, and from here on we will use this term in the same way the all-knowing “mainstream” media does even though it is incorrect. My only semiauto rifle was a Ruger 10/22 customized by Jimmy Clark with a heavy match-grade barrel and match trigger. I had also given my daughter and son-in-law a 10/22 for a wedding present. I really did not see the need to personally own an assault rifle. Then it happened. I was sitting in my hotel room in Quincy, Illinois, after covering the Masters Tournament and waiting to go to the airport for the flight home. Turning on television I was astounded to hear the words of a Northeastern governor testifying before a Senate committee about assault rifles. He said, “It is the very nature of the weapon that causes normally law-abiding citizens to turn into criminals.”

There it was! The cause of crime was not environment, nor poverty, nor someone looking for the easiest way to gather money. It was all the fault of this hideous weapon — the assault rifle. This man was saying these magic weapons could somehow change the character of anyone who even touched one. Could this actually be true? Did I dare to take the chance of finding out for myself? If I procured one would everything I have ever been taught be thrown by the wayside? Would the influence of parents, grandparents, teachers, and ministers suddenly be destroyed by a few pounds of metal and wood? Could the nature of this inanimate object really cause a normal law-abiding citizen to turn to crime and violent behavior? Did I dare take the chance to find out? If this governor was right and I put myself in possession of an assault rifle my whole life could change.

It was a dangerous chance to take but I had to know if this governor was right. Surely he could not be either lying or ignorant. After all, he was an elected official. If he was right in his assessment, I could possibly ruin my life forever, perhaps destroy my family and lose any standing I had in my community. I thought about it for quite a while spending several sleepless nights. The decision was made and I would order not one, but two assault rifles. I would take the supreme test with both a .223 and a 7.62x39. It was possible one would not be enough to overcome my character. But if I survived both of them, I would be a stronger and better person, and I would also know that governor was either an ignorant liar or a lying ignoramus.

UNTOUCHABLE

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:55:02 -0500

Mike Vanderboegh at Mindful Musings - a short history of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, followed by a warning, which I hope comes true. If they ever attempt another Waco, I hope their intended victims will realize, when the BATFE goons run out of ammo, that they'll be doing the world a favor by killing them all, to the last man. May the Unintended Consequences of their lawless enforcement visit every BATFE agent everywhere.

Quote:

De Palma's film, like most Hollywood "true stories" plays fast and loose with the truth of Ness' efforts to bring Al Capone and his mob to justice. No matter. It was Costner's Ness -- pure good -- versus Robert de Niro's Capone -- pure evil. With great supporting actors like Sean Connery and a slam-bang script, it was a hit -- especially with ATF agents. There was only one problem: the Untouchables in the movie were not law enforcement officers, they were avenging angels unrestrained by law.

Toward the end of the movie, after Costner's Ness has shot fleeing felons, thrown a suspect in custody off a roof to his death and blackmailed a judge, he confesses: "I have foresworn myself. I have broken every law I have sworn to uphold, I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right!"

The ATF agents who watched it ate that sentiment up. And after it came out in VHS they would watch it again and again, internalizing the lesson that the ends justify the means. Over and over they would watch it. When a new guy came into the field office, they would ask, "Have you seen The Untouchables? No? Well, I'll loan you my copy. It's great." Over and over they would cheer as Costner and Connery used the "Chicago Way" on Capone's cartoonish bad guys. And gradually, in the minds of the field agents of the ATF, life began to imitate art.

...

So here we are today, fifteen years later, still facing the "Untouchables" -- the "monster without a master." What will prevent them from carrying out another Waco atrocity? Not the law. Not the Supreme Court. Not an anti-gun president of either party. Not a Democrat controlled federal legislature. The Untouchables are a law unto themselves. But here is where they will be brought up short.

One day, and that day may not be too far off, they are going to do something that it retrospect will be seen as both unbelievably stupid and perfectly predictable. One day, the Untouchables in their lawless arrogance are going to pick on the wrong guy -- a guy with nothing to lose, a guy who has been paying attention to things like the Olofson case and has decided upon that evidence that he can no longer count on a fair trial in this country. They are going to tangle with a guy who sees them coming and knows what to do. And on THAT day, the "Untouchables" are going to discover to their terminal surprise that they are indeed, "touchable." And to people who have been paying attention to the ATF's long and sordid career, it will come as no surprise whatsoever.

Duquesne University 2008 Gun-Control Symposium

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:07:58 -0500

Alan Korwin at GunLaws.com - Mr. Korwin gave a speech in Pittsburgh to a room of hoplophobes. From his account, he did very well. May have even changed some minds.

Quote:

Metal detectors were installed at the entrance, a precaution we were told, because five athletes were shot on campus several years ago (none fatal thank God), which was a motivator for the conference in the first place. I’ve seen this before -- pro-rights gun conferences, walk right in. Anti-rights conferences, bristling with armed security and pat downs. What’s wrong with that picture?

I counted at least 14 crisply uniformed campus police, bearing 9 millimeter semis with a pair of double-stack extra mags on their duty belts. We had some great conversations, though the other speakers seemed to avoid these people. I had them laughing about all the guns in this anti-gun conference. As more showed up I kept telling them that now I REALLY felt safe. We swapped gun talk, war stories, a few thanked me for being there. I knew I had at least a few people on my side -- the ones with the guns.

...

The university asked me here, I told them, so you could have some measure of balance, so you could see that this conference is only half the equation. I’m here, and I held up the sign I had used at the Supreme Court case a few weeks ago, to make sure you keep in mind that Guns Save Lives too. Guns Stop Crime (and another matching sign). Guns Protect You. Look how many guns there are in this room. You know why they’re there -- because guns have a purpose, a social utility that’s important and should not be overlooked.

Their emotions had been played upon all afternoon, so I continued the trend. I told of a woman awakened to find a knife-wielding, ski-masked intruder in her home, and how she had to shoot him while crouched behind her bed, after having called 911. She had to keep firing until the big guy finally collapsed. The police arrived only nine minutes later. You could hear a pin drop.

Would you deny this woman her right to live, by taking her gun away? Isn’t the message, “If it saves one life...”? Do you have the moral authority, or a sense of self righteousness that says she must die because you think guns are bad? I pressed on.

Strippers

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:01:37 -0500

Mike Vanderboegh at Mindful Musings - from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising to a shortage of stripper clips. Jude haben waffen (Jews have weapons), and in America, the new Jude, gun-owners, are preparing for battle. Those who think they rule us had best be careful, unless they think they can continue to rule from the grave.

Quote:

Yesterday I had to go to my daughters' high school soccer game in the eastern part of Alabama. I got an early start and stopped at gun stores and military surplus stores along the way. I was looking for some small items, but I was also taking a survey -- checking the lay of the gunnie land as we find it in this turbulent political season. All along the way I asked this question: "Do you have any SKS strippers in stock?" And you know what? Nobody did. Everybody I asked had stocked them. And each and every one of them were out. "You must be the fifth or sixth guy who been in here this week looking for 'em," one store owner told me. "I can't keep 'em in stock." In the past month he's sold several hundred of the little metal strips, maybe a thousand, he said. In case your math skills are weak, that's 10,000 rounds of 7.62x39 rifle ammunition being put back -- out of just one small gun store in a sparsely populated section of Alabama. The great grandsons of yeoman farmers are buying lots of SKS and AK-47 ammunition these days and combat packing it like there's no tomorrow.

A Ring of Truth

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:53:13 -0500

L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - how to prevent future terrorism by the Taking Scissors Away goons. [tle]

Quote:

Understand from the very beginning that, even if TSA were sincere about protecting airline passengers from terrorist nipple rings and similar dire threats, they would still be an abject failure. The simple, inescapable fact is that self-defense is an individual bodily function -- like eating, sleeping, making love, or going to the bathroom -- that cannot be delegated to anybody else. Every attempt to evade or override that fact invariably winds up in tragedy. Sometimes the tragedy is of monstrous proportions, as it was on September 11, 2001.

That's a very important concept, so I'm going to state it again: self-defense is an individual bodily function that cannot be delegated. The very notion is absurd. Every attempt to do so ends in tragedy.

"What's the alternative?", I pretend to hear you ask. Well to begin with, for the sake of preventing any further violations of the rights and dignity of individuals -- and to avoid any more tragedies like 9/11 -- the TSA must be abolished, and for some reasonable interval, its budget diverted to compensate its many thousands of victims.

Before they are entirely released from service, each TSA employee must be individually investigated, scrutinized, charged, and tried for his or her crimes against the Constitution for which the excuse -- exactly as it was established at the Nuremberg Tribunals following World War II -- that "I was just following orders" will not be acceptable.

Under the terms clearly mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment, no former TSA employee will ever be employable at any level of government again (no government pensions should be payable to any of these people), nor will he or she be permitted to run for or to hold public office. Moreover, because many of their crimes closely resemble (or actually are) sexual offenses, the residences of former TSA employees, in any neighborhood, will be a matter of public record, and whenever they move, their new addresses will be duly reported to their new neighbors.

Furthermore, anyone who ever referred to the infamous "No-Fly List" to deprive Americans of their right to travel, or who helped to compile that list, will be subject to exactly the same sanctions as former TSA employees. Substantial rewards will be offered to those willing to turn fellow government or corporate employees over to the law.

The ownership or use of weapons-detecting technology by any agency or employee or government at any level, or by any corporation, or by its corporate personnel, will be treated as an equivalent to felonious assault. Aside from the presence of unobtrusive, totally transparent "bomb-sniffing" devices, no searches of passengers or their belongings (including the use of X-rays, multispectral cameras, or any similar mechanism) will be permitted at America's airports by anyone, ever again.

What Part of "Shall NOT be Infringed" Do You NOT Understand?

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 04:11:25 -0500

Dennis Wilson at The Libertarian Enterprise - Mr. Wilson reminds us that the reason the Second Amendment says "shall not be infringed", not "shall not be unreasonably infringed" is because it is there to inhibit exactly the tyrants who would love to decide which infringements are "reasonable". He also provided a nice, public-domain, image, which you can buy imprinted on stuff or print yourself.

Why Are American Jews So Anti-Gun?

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:32:01 -0500

Eric King at The Jewish Daily Forward - Mr. King thinks that American Jews, unlike their Israeli counterparts, are still suffering from what he calls the "shtetl mentality." Maybe he's right. Amazing what hogwash you can teach a whole culture. [tmm]

Quote:

With the Supreme Court opening this week the first extensive examination of the constitutional right to bear arms in nearly 70 years, now seems a pretty good time to ask a question that’s been perplexing me for nearly as long: Why is that American Jews are so overwhelmingly anti-gun?

I’ve been stumped by this communal aversion to firearms ever since I was a 6 year old, back in 1947. While flipping through old Life magazines one day in my grandparents’ living room in the Bronx, I came across photographs taken at the liberation of concentration camps. I saw the pictures of bodies stacked like cordwood, and was stunned.

“Mommy, why are all those people dead?” I asked.

My mother, a brilliant and subtle woman, thought for a moment and said, “The bad Germans called Nazis killed them.” To which, of course, I asked, “Why did the Nazis kill them?”

“They killed them because they were Jews,” she replied.

Although I was only 6 and not yet sure of my identity or its meaning, I asked, “We’re Jews, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” answered my mother.

“Mommy,” I asked, without missing a beat, “do you and Daddy have a gun so we can protect ourselves if the Nazis come for us?”

“This is America,” my mother reassured me. “That can’t happen here.”

...

Israelis, in short, have learned a lesson that far too few American Jews have yet to grasp: For Jews, the phrase “assault rifle” is a misnomer — the correct term, once the shtetl mentality has been transcended, is “Jewish defense rifle.”

D.C. v. Heller Eyewitness - Postgame Highlights #1

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:50:35 -0500

Alan Korwin was in the court room for the Supreme's hearing on the Second Amendment in the District of Columbia. He thinks their likely decision bodes well for our right to legally keep and bear arms, though "reasonable restrictions" will survive, through some magic of interpreting "shall no be infringed" to mean "reasonable restrictions". [scopeny]

Gun Control Isn't Crime Control

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:41:23 -0600

John Stossel at The New York Sun - how long will it take the victim disarmament crowd to realize that laws forbidding the carry of self-defense tools harm only the victims? Probably forever. There appears to be no cure for congenital stupidity. Sigh... [scopeny]

Quote:

As usual, the Times editors seem unaware of how silly their argument is. To them, the choice is between "carefully controlling guns" and "arming everyone to the teeth." But no one favors "arming everyone to the teeth" (whatever that means). Instead, gun advocates favor freedom, choice and self-responsibility. If someone wishes to be prepared to defend himself, he should be free to do so. No one has the right to deprive others of the means of effective self-defense, like a handgun.

As for the first option, "carefully controlling guns," how many shootings at schools or malls will it take before we understand that people who intend to kill are not deterred by gun laws? Last I checked, murder is against the law everywhere. No one intent on murder will be stopped by the prospect of committing a lesser crime like illegal possession of a firearm. The intellectuals and politicians who make pious declarations about controlling guns should explain how their gunless utopia is to be realized.

While they search for — excuse me — their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.

...

It's impossible to know exactly how often guns stop criminals. Would-be victims don't usually report crimes that don't happen. But people use guns in self-defense every day. The Cato Institute's Tom Palmer says just showing his gun to muggers once saved his life.

"It equalizes unequals," Mr. Palmer told "20/20." "If someone gets into your house, which would you rather have, a handgun or a telephone? You can call the police if you want, and they'll get there, and they'll take a picture of your dead body. But they can't get there in time to save your life. The first line of defense is you."

What I Have Learned From the Twentieth Century

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:58:10 -0600

Mike Vanderboegh at Western Rifle Shooters Association - an oldie but goodie from 2000. Six lessons we would all do well to take to heart.

Quote:

LESSON NO. 1: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and take you someplace you do not want to go because of who you are or what you think -- kill him. If you can, kill the politician who sent him. You will likely die anyway, and you will be saving someone else the same fate. For it is a universal truth that the intended victims always far outnumber the tyrant's executioners. Any nation which practices this lesson will quickly run out of executioners and tyrants, or they will run out of it.

LESSON NO. 2: If a bureaucrat, or a soldier sent by a bureaucrat, comes to knock down your door and confiscate your firearms -- kill him. The disarmament of law-abiding citizens is the required precursor to genocide.

LESSON NO. 3: If a bureaucrat tells you that he must know if you have a firearm so he can put your name on a list for the common good, or wants to issue you an identity card so that you be more easily identified -- tell him to go to hell. Registration of people and firearms is the required precursor to the tyranny which permits genocide. Bureaucrats cannot send soldiers to doors that are not on their list.

If You’re Going to Lock and Load, You Should Talk the Talk

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:55:26 -0600

Greg Perry at LewRockwell.com - a good collection of quotes on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, openly or concealed, always and everywhere, without asking anyone's permission. [lew]

Quote:

I look at our public servants as just that – "the help." And so I consider government gun grabbers just as I would a yard man or maid who had the audacity to demand my gun. – Mark Gilmore

Fear

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:56:17 -0600

Mike Vanderboegh at Western Rifle Shooters Association - a glorious essay relating the real Americans Mr. Vanderboegh knows, redneck southernors. They truly love liberty, enough to kill and die for it. He got a lot of negative comments on his last essay, Awkward, but all from "pissant Yankee wusses", not real American men.

Quote:

Stupid me, I should have realized two things. First, it is not only liberals who can extrapolate from their own cowardice. And second, the folks who were responding to my writing negatively are not representative of the people I expect to "get" my stuff anyway. I use the medium at hand to broadcast my message, the Founders' message, forgetting that the folks who will best understand it are not tuned in. In a "blinding flash of the obvious" to use John Wesley Rawles' phrase, here is what I finally figured out: most rednecks (and most gunnies) are not keyboard commandos. They do not sit in the dark trying to make sense of the electron-borne winds of modern information (or disinformation). They are too busy with the exigencies of life to trade intellectualisms on the Net. The folks I'm talking about (and those I'm trying to reach) are rather more like the Kentuckians that Hank Messick described in the forward to his book King's Mountain: "One thing about the fellows back home -- when they say they're going to kill somebody, they kill him."

...

They are quiet fellows, mostly. But it is not the smartest thing in the world to make them mad, as British Colonel Patrick Ferguson found out when he called their ancestors in North Carolina "backwater men," "barbarians" and "mongrels" in 1780. He miscalculated his audience. The Scotch Irish pioneers came down out of the "backwaters," tracked Ferguson and his Tories to King's Mountain and killed him in a fight that proved THE turning point of the Revolution. One of my friends, a maintenance man at a local nursing home, a humble fellow who never went to college, a son of a coal miner and the descendant of men who fought Ferguson (and others who fought the Creeks, Abe Lincoln AND Jefferson Davis, and the Kaiser and Hitler and Hirohito) can tell you the story as if it happened yesterday with a comprehensive knowledge of the subject and an eye for detail that would put a professional historian to shame. One of the defeatist critics of Awkward headlined his piece "the revolution has been canceled." Try telling that to my friend. It lives within his soul. As another great Southerner once said, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."

So, When Should We "Shoot the Bastards?"

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:34:17 -0600

Mike Vanderboegh at The War on Guns - excellent editorial on why we should not hesitate to shoot the bastards, when they indeed need shooting. Which was a long time ago. We should emulate revolutionary America, not the Weimar Republic. The former enjoyed liberty. The latter, death. [Western Rifle Shooters]

Quote:

The Germans, wholly indoctrinated in obeying orders, were incapable of acting without them. Because their would-be tyrants represented "the government" and cloaked their wolfish actions in "legal" sheepskin, because their own "leaders" could not or would not give the order, they all ended up in a concentration camp -- leaders and followers -- without ever having struck a blow.

...

The Founders were people who believed in "preserving the spirit of resistance." To take Abbe Raynal's words to their conclusion, the Founders aimed to think AND act before they felt. Unlike the Germans, their "awkward stage" ended at Lexington green, and ultimately led to liberty. In the light of recent events such as the Olofson case, it seems plain that our own "awkward stage" may be perilously close to drawing to an end. There are those who still insist that such unconstitutional outrages perpetrated under color of law deserve nothing more than verbal condemnation or further attempts at legal redress in a "justice" system rigged against us (as if these thugs pay attention to the law anyway). Used to inaction and afraid of even voicing the threat of justifiable self-defense, these timid souls, these "summer soldiers and sunshine patriots," would have us wait for true tyranny before acting. This was not the way of the Founders. They understood that tyranny is best strangled in its unholy infancy, before it becomes a raging beast. They understood the threat, they prepared to meet it and, in the end, they defeated it. The Germans of the 1930s did not, and they were devoured.