Expect to see more titles like that.
From Breitbart:
Contrast with the last leftist hypocrite from a few minutes ago.
Update: May as well toss in this hypocrisy from leftist group Media Matters, that bought guns illegally. It was for protection they “need” of course. Because some needs are greater than others. Namely, their needs are greater than yours.
Sounds sinister, doesn’t it? Here’s the NY Democrats asking him to keep it hush-hush, because leaking confiscation might “dampen the spirit of compromise”:
And here’s the list of Democrat demands, as posted by Assemblyman McLaughlin on his facebook page:
Here it is. This is the video where I was asked to keep the Democrat proposals for the NY SAFE Act away from the public. This list was given to me by a colleague and it is not confidential.
This bill was an attack on the 2nd amendment and the Democrats clearly wanted to dismantle the work of the Founding Fathers. None of these amendments were included in the final bill thanks to us fighting back. I will not stand silent while these unpatriotic proposals are pathetically thrown at us a 11 o’clock at night:
1. Confiscation of “assault weapons”
2. Confiscation o ten round clips
3. Statewide database for ALL Guns
4. Continue to allow pistol permit holder’s information to be replaced to the public
5. Label semiautomatic shotguns with more than 5 rounds or pistol grips as “assault weapons”
6. Limit the number of rounds in a magazine to 5 and confiscation and forfeiture of banned magazines
7. Limit possession to no more than two (2) magazines
8. Limit purchase of guns to one gun per person per month
9. Require re-licensing of all pistol permit owners
10. Require renewal of all pistol permits every five years
11. State issued pistol permits
12. Micro-stamping of all guns in New York State
13. Require licensing of all gun ammo dealers
14. Mandatory locking of guns at home
15. Fee for licensing, registering weapons
Shall not be infringed, huh?
Total annihilation of a natural right, a right preexisting the Constitution, but codified and affirmed by it – that tends to dampen the “spirit of compromise”. This is a war of annihilation by the Democrats and leftists against your rights.
Not that this hasn’t been noted a lot before, but this particular example is almost parody:
One of those off-the-record moments was an event where President Obama joined reporters for drinks while the campaign was in Orlando, Fla., an event that Hastings partially details in the book.
“The behavior of the assembled press corps was telling. Everyone, myself included, swooned. Swooned! Head over heels. One or two might have even lost their minds,” Hastings writes, as each reporter had a chance to speak personally with the president. “We were all, on some level, deeply obsessed with Obama, crushing hard, still a little love there. This was nerd heaven, a politico’s paradise, the subject himself moving among us — shaking our hands, slapping our shoulders!”
Hastings reveals that the president spent “over an hour” with reporters who later stayed up late buzz over every detail of the evening.
“Did this inform our reporting, did seeing the man in the flesh, in a somewhat staged and casual setting, provide new, deep, and lasting insights?” asks a reflective Hastings in his book. “Yes, I would say, but again, I’m not at liberty to share.”
They worship him.
And he demands they shut up or he destroys them:
Naturally, Hastings was chastised by many of his campaign colleagues for revealing some of the precious details of the event.
“The fear was that the White House would collectively punish all of us by revoking the already limited access or, worse, Obama might never come down and hang out with us again,” Hastings writes.
Campaign spokesperson Jen Psaki, Hastings notes, was furious and angrily phoned his editor Ben Smith for publishing details of the event. In response, the Obama campaign banished him from the campaign plane for a week.
If you aren’t part of the obsequious, drooling, swooning sycophant worshippers, you’re banished. Also, it’s worth nothing this piece by Politico:
Obama has had his share of problems, amply noted, probed and press-released by Hill Republicans — including Solyndra, the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the bungled Fast and Furious program, which funneled weapons to drug dealers in an effort to trace a trail to kingpins. But they have been relatively easy to swat away so far.
Why do you suppose the murder of two US federal agents, the murders of hundreds (if not thousands by now) of our Mexican neighbors, have been “relatively easy to swat away”? The press worships him. They swoon in his presence, going weak in the knees for their progressive godling.
They won’t report on murders of American citizens. They won’t report on Fast and Furious. They won’t question why Obama exerted executive privilege to hush up hundreds of murders ordered by him. They won’t question Benghazi, where our ambassador was murdered and dragged through the street. They won’t question why a consulate was left defenseless. They won’t question Paula Broadwell’s comments about secret CIA prisons (but they sure will hammer Petraeus).
Most of the media is a willing collaborator in this. They are Obama’s zealots. No wonder public opinion of the media has been so low.
In all this “new national debate on gun violence”, which is really just a big propaganda event against citizens rights, some things have gone almost totally forgotten. Namely, how the Obama administration sent guns to Mexico with the intent of finding them at crime scenes in order to “prove” that US guns were going south. Operation Fast and Furious ended up with hundreds (if not thousands) of dead Mexicans and two US federal agents dead (that we know of so far) – all because Obama and his DOJ wanted to push for more gun control. After their scheme was found out, anti-gun forces still wanted to use their own murderous scheme by government to destroy US citizens’ rights. It’s like a wife-beater getting caught and then beating his wife twice as hard because she “made him do it”.
Remember – they were mandated by the ATF to let guns go to Mexico, the Mexican authorities and the ATF in Mexico knew nothing. This was the US government supplying guns to the cartels to “find” them at murder scenes:
Eric Holder’s DOJ has been stonewalling since this began to be exposed when US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed and Operation Fast and Furious and the ATF’s many Gunwalker plans have come to light (including Operation Castaway, and an unnamed operation in Texas that provided the gun that killed Jaime Zapata). They’re still trying to stop any of this from coming to light, with Holder begging for courts to stop any further exposure of his crimes:
Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.
Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”
The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
So each time you hear about Obama calling for more gun bans, remember – his administration intentinally murdered over 10 times the people at Sandy Hook in order have an excuse to try to take away your rights.
And they’re still covering it up.
The original article is here.
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The link to Matt Drudge’s site is here.
This is getting serious folks, Joe “foot in the mouth,” Biden has now stated that,
The president is going to act…. There are executives orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required….
So the question is now, does Congress play dead and allow this to happen like they did with the President using an Executive Order to legislate from the White House and make the DREAM Act a reality?
From Pravda writer Stanislav Mishin:
Pravda newspaper front page (around 1950s). The head article title says: From the Soviet Leadership (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
…it (gun control) is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question.
The gentleman from the former Soviet Union has it spot on. Control is the issue. Think about this for a few minutes. If the second amendment falls, what of the others? Free speech, illegal searches and seizures (already happening to some in the name of “security”), having a national guardsmen in your home, and the right to not incriminate yourself just to name a few. A further look at amendments and the constitution suggest that if the 2nd amendment falls that it would also be possible for the 22nd amendment to be ignored as well. Think on the ramifications of that, a president seeking a third term….
Mr. Stanislav’s article discusses the disarmament of the Russian population, particularly the former members of the tsar’s army:
Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.
Trust politicians much? I don’t. Again the idea of the slippery slope applies. If we give up our right to bear arms, what recourse do we have as, “The People,” if some or all of our enumerated rights disappear? I would go into unenumerated rights but Senator Fienstein just wouldn’t be able to comprehend my argument or I would have to direct her to John Locke if she knows who that is.
And now for the Soviet Union’s slippery slope:
… the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle.
Sounds like fun doesn’t it?
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government” – Thomas Jefferson
Let’s preface this appropriately by a quote from Sportsmen for Obama:
President Obama supports the rights of gun owners as guaranteed under the Second Amendment, and believes that the Constitution guarantees an individual’s right to bear arms.
Today from The Hill, as quoted on Meet The Lawbreaking Press:
President Obama on Sunday said he would make gun control a priority in his new term, pledging to put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013.
The president is putting his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms. Contrast that with what the Constitution says: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Now read the full weight quote again. This president is violating his oath of office as much as if he said he were putting his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on free speech.
“I’m going to be putting forward a package and I’m going to be putting my full weight behind it,” Obama said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m going to be making an argument to the American people about why this is important and why we have to do everything we can to make sure that something like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary does not happen again.”
Disarming the innocent does nothing to change anything. But again, this isn’t about guns, it’s ultimately about control.
But he has also called on Congress to move quickly to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines.
I’ve addressed “Why High Capacity Magazines” just recently, but to touch on it in the shortest way possible, would you end up the victim of a home invasion robbery by five guys, would you rather have 6 rounds, 10 rounds, or 30 rounds?
“I’ve been very clear that an assault-rifle ban, banning these high capacity clips, background checks, that there are a set of issues that I have historically supported and will continue to support,” the president said.
And banning handguns, and all guns that don’t belong to his government. Yeah, we know. “Shall not be infringed” means “a ban, banning these other things, background checks to exercise a right are all things I have historically supported.” Yes, his oath of office is as meaningless now as it was when he was an Illinois senator.
“I’d like to get it done in the first year. I will put forward a very specific proposal based on the recommendations that Joe Biden’s task force is putting together as we speak. And so this is not something that I will be putting off.”
Translation: “I have to do this before people catch on to it and realize it’s a feel-good measure that does nothing but expand government power. I put Joe Biden in charge because he’s a mindless ideologue who doesn’t care about facts, and doesn’t listen to the other side, and can be trusted to ram this crap through and f*** the citizen back into the serf they should be.”
“I am not going to prejudge the recommendations that are given to me. I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem,” he said.
Wait, what?
We joke sometimes about how Malia’s getting to the age now, and boys start calling and, you know, sort of, I always talk about how one of the main incentives for running again was continuing Secret Service protection to have men with guns around at all times
It’s not really a joke, though.
And the president who sent thousands of guns to narcoterrorist cartels to kill our Mexican neighbors then goes on:
“I think there are a vast majority of responsible gun owners out there who recognize that we can’t have a situation in which somebody with severe psychological problems is able to get the kind of high-capacity weapons that this individual in Newtown obtained and gun down our kids,” Obama said.
Of course, the leftist-logic solution to this is…
And of course, with regards to this statement:
“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,” Obama said. “And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.”
David Gregory, who interviewed him, and is a gun law breaker himself, has kids who go to school with Obama’s kids. And they have 11 armed guards at the school. The rest of you, the little people, don’t need your kids protected. Guns are bad, m’kay, while the President and David “High Capacity Stupid” Gregory, have a squad of armed security who specialize in CQB.
Because now, as it was for the thousands of years of human civilization before the American experiment began, laws are once again for you, not for the elites. Welcome back to serfdom.
The Founders disagreed vehemently.
First off, 30 rounds is not “high capacity”, it’s standard capacity for an AR. 60 rounders are high capacity. For a pistol, magazines over 10 rounds are rarely high-capacity. A simple example is the Sig P226, which in 9mm normally carries 15 rounds. High capacity magazines go beyond that, pushing 17-20 or even 30 rounds; as these are magazines that often don’t seat flush in the magazine well. High-capacity versus standard capacity is dependent upon the model of firearm. With that bit of gun-specifics out of the way…
Huffpo has this piece saying that Democrat congresswoman Diana Degette from Colorado and mindless anti-gunner NY Democrat congresswoman Carolyn “Shoulder-Thing-That-Goes-Up” McCarthy are pushing to introduce a “high-capacity” magazine ban on the first day of the new congress.
Still, backers are hopeful, noting that a ban on high-capacity magazines — which have been involved in many of the recent high-profile instances of mass gun violence — would be a smaller concession for gun-rights advocates than a broader assault weapons ban.
Translation: “We think we can get the stupid Fudds to go along with this because there are still a few Zumbos out there who think the Second Amendment is about duck hunting and their aristocratic priviledges and not about disarming the serfs… especially black people.”
The bill Democrats will introduce would limit magazines, belts, drums, feed strips and “similar device[s]” to 10 rounds of ammunition. It would allow people to hold on to the “large capacity ammunition feeding device[s]” that they currently own, but prohibit them from buying others or transferring the ones they have.
Because the best way to disarm the citizens is slowly, over a couple generations. When they aren’t used to having freedom anymore, they’ll never notice. How do you boil a frog?
The bill would also exempt retired and current law enforcement officials who use those devices for “purposes of law enforcement (whether on or off duty)” as well as contractors who have been licensed to carry the devices for security purposes required by federal law.
Because some animals are more equal than others, and the enforcers for the state should always have access to weapons that allow them to “shoot as many people as possible“.
“I’m not so naïve as to think that we can pass some law that will stop a deranged person from taking a gun and shooting people,” DeGette told The Huffington Post two weeks ago. “What I am interested in is making it as difficult as possible for that deranged person to shoot as many people as possible.”
Yes, no gun law can work, so we must pass a law against 300 million other citizens. Clearly, only the state should have those tools that allow them to shoot as many people as possible.
It’s somehow amazing to watch so-called liberals, who are really leftists, statists, progressives and/or liberal fascists (mostly the same thing in this regard), decree that a tool isn’t used for valid self-defense because it’s only used “to shoot as many people as possible”, and then declare that only the government should have them. They completely ignore legitimate usages like that having more ammo is a good thing if you’re defending yourself against any type of attack, and that just because you could fire more in a defensive situation, you don’t necessarily have to fire more; and sometimes a few rounds can act as a deterrent (consider deterring a mob – one rare time where warning shots may be helpful). Their ideology can’t allow them to understand that firearms are for self-defense.
Huffpo notes an interesting correction:
This article previously stated that no Republicans have expressed support for a ban on high-capacity magazines. A reader points out that Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) has called such legislation “helpful,” while incoming Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) said he would “consider looking at some of the larger magazines” as a response to the Newtown shootings.
Yup, it’s helpful for big government RINOs who want to expand the state against the citizen. It’s also helpful for RINOs who enjoy unemployment, and it’s helpful for the voters, so we know which ones to get primary out and replace with good representatives.
Speaking of good representatives, Texas’ newest Senator, Ted Cruz, has this to say on the subject:
Sadly, but predictably, it took just minutes for liberals to begin exploiting this horror to push their own gun-control schemes. One media pundit after another blathered on about their deep desire to strip away our Second Amendment rights — despite the fact that no gun-control laws could possibly have prevented this madman from stealing guns from a law-abiding citizen and murdering these children.
President Obama leapt on the bandwagon, renewing his call to come after our guns. And Senator Feinstein reintroduced an even more aggressive “assault weapons ban” that would, among other things, create a national firearms registry — a government list of those Americans who choose to exercise our constitutional rights.
This is wrong, and I will fight to stop it. It contravenes the Bill of Rights, and it is foolhardy policy — consistently, those jurisdictions that enact the most restrictive firearms policies have the highest crime and murder rates, and those jurisdictions that protect our right to keep and bear arms have the lowest.
He has a national petition going as well – not just for Texans.
For those honestly wondering what the deal with magazines is, consider this piece by The Truth About Guns:
…Because Government Troops Have High Capacity Magazines
When I am asked why I need a magazine for my “assault rifle” larger than 10 rounds, the answer is “because soldiers carry magazines larger than 10 rounds.” The 2nd Amendment was written to protect the people from more than just criminals. It was also understood that each sovereign state in the union would need to depend on its citizen militias to project power as needed. That meant well-armed men . . .
Our founding fathers also understood the danger of too much power in the hands of a government. They took great pains to hobble it through a system of checks and balances. The 2nd Amendment gave us the means of rebellion should the government go too far in encroaching on our freedom.
I’m not an anarchist or an insurrectionist. I think government is a good thing. Liberty must be ordered to be meaningful. To prosper, civil matters like contracts need to be adjudicated peacefully and fairly. Criminals must be punished sufficiently to suppress their activity.
That said, too much government is lethal. Untold millions suffer under the malignant brutality of all-powerful governments. Western European fascism, eastern European communism, communism in the Far East and Southeast Asia, totalitarian socialist nations from Cuba and throughout Central America. Over and over again, these governments resort to oppression and murder to maintain power over a helpless populace.
Socialists like Senator Feinstein and President Obama have access to the same data you and I do. They know that confiscating baseball bats would save more murder victims than confiscating AR-15s would. They know that the Clinton assault rifle ban did nothing meaningful to reduce crime. Why then are they hell bent on making a move that’s already proven worthless for the ostensible reason it’s been proposed?
We have no reason to think these college-educated adults have fully benign intent. What would they do different if they were working to set America up for a future tyranny that today’s Americans would openly rebel against?
We’re not necessarily talking today, or even tomorrow, but 10, 20, 50, or 100 years down the road. The Second Amendment prevents far, far worse things. Visit Heart Mountain and then try to say “it can’t happen here”.
From Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com, an excellent piece and roundup of the David Gregory Magazinegate story, with this wonderfully smug snippet of spurned media with rationalization for crime:
POLITICO’s Glenn Thrush took to Twitter to express his disdain for efforts to hold Gregory accountable.
Oh, yes, the public interest. Only to a certain type of individual would it seem that David Gregory was “acting in the public interest” by violating the law in order to try to crush the rights of citizens, working to gut the Bill of Rights.
–
Over at Sipsey Street Irregulars, Mike found a column by Cass “the peons are stupid Homer Simpsons I can manipulate” Sunstein:
Gun Debate Must Avoid Crazy 2nd Amendment Claims
The rise of the Second Amendment as a serious obstacle to U.S. gun control legislation is astonishingly recent.
Its rise is a tribute less to the vision of the Founding Fathers than to the skill, money and power of the contemporary gun-rights movement, which has not only exerted disproportionate influence on Congress, but also helped transform the landscape of constitutional argument. We should be able to have a serious national discussion uninhibited by wild and unsupportable claims about the meaning of the Constitution.
Let’s try that again, Cass.
Its rise is a tribute less to the vision of the Founding Fathers than to the skill, money and power of the contemporary gun-rights movement, which has not only exerted disproportionate influence on Congress, but also helped transform the landscape of constitutional argument. We should be able to have a serious national discussion uninhibited by wild and unsupportable claims about the meaning of the Constitution.
Now, the problem with this radical leftist-statist tyranny-enabling regulatory-nudging deceit is easily illustrated by the following statements:
The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They 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.
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed;…
-Thomas Jefferson
And:
“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 peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …”
Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
- Samuel Adams
Milton Friedman often pointed out that throughout human history, mankind has almost always lived under the heel of some tyrant, trading one king, emperor, or warlord for another. The American experiment has been one of the rare times where freedom has existed and been preserved. We have seen examples such as The Battle of Athens where Americans had to use force to repel tyrants inside our own nation, as the Founders intended. Samuel Adams’ last quote there about defense of property as a duty of self-preservation and an extension of the First Law of Nature goes back a ways. It’s not just to repel an immediate physical threat to one’s life, but to the greater threat of the state. That the state can be held in check by the citizen is what keeps the state honest and sustains liberty. We need not look further than our southern border to see evidence of what happens when the state (and criminals) have a monopoly on force.
That some manipulative communist wannabe-dictator slimeball like Cass Sunstein would outright lie isn’t really a surprise. He’s one of those masters of men that knows what’s best for you, and will force you to submit (though he tries to subtly force you to submit for your own good – what was once defined as Liberal Fascism – a term coined by HG Wells). That anyone could take it seriously, however, means sad times for the republic.
Kurt Hofmann at Examiner.com has some good observations on Sunstein’s call for tyranny.
Sipsey Street has another observation on the graphic:
I look at it as the visual expression of every modern tyrant’s fear. Ten minutemen are replaced in the cartoon by ten rounds, a third of the standard capacity of an AR or AK. In other words, a ten-man modern minuteman squad carrying ARs and just one magazine per has an immediate firepower available of 300 rounds versus 10. Can there be any better illustration of the fear behind the tyrannical eyes of the advocates of citizen disarmament? THIS is why they have been striving mightily to ban semi-auto rifles.
It’s no wonder the Founders wanted her armed, and the tyrants want her disarmed:
Jazz Shaw over at HotAir has an excellent 4 part series on the new push for gun control. If you want yet another excellent dissection of this topic, as well as what political forces have been moving in the last few days, I highly recommend reading it.
By the time Monday morning had rolled around, forces which have been waiting for the perfect storm of outrage were moving to use the deaths of innocents as an excuse to portray this week as the ideal time to “open a national dialogue” on limiting the second amendment rights of United States citizens.
Part 2: The Black Hole of Mental Health
Monday morning. The discussion was focused on “military styled weapons” (referring to the Bushmaster or other, similar AR-15 style rifles) and “high capacity magazines” such as the ones which hold 30 or more rounds. Fast forward to to later that day and the vocal proponents of the Left were already up with this:
Fifty-four percent of Americans support stricter gun control laws, while a little more than half are in favor of a ban on semi-automatic handguns, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday.
That’s a shift from “military style” weapons to a semi-automatic handgun in less than a day. That’s one of the most common and useful choices for home defense, sport target shooting and more, usable by both genders and people of less than Olympian build. And suddenly it’s being put on the same shelf as the real “military style” weapons which purportedly spurred this. If you were still somehow feeling sanguine about this entire, “Oh, we don’t want to take all the guns”, and you’re not getting nervous yet, you should be. I received a very serious response on Twitter from one gun control activist who answered my question of which weapons should be banned. I was told, you can have a muzzle loading rifle. That’s what the constitution gives you a right to.
Part 3: Military Style Weapons
Military Style Weapons
This is an argument which is already being picked up not only in every media outlet, but by normally reliable conservative voices. It breaks down into a neat, repeatable refrain in three parts which can be parroted as follows:
1.We aren’t trying to stop anybody from hunting! We support your right to hunt!
2. And besides, we’re not talking about coming and taking your guns. We just don’t want them sold any more.
3. All we’re saying is that we don’t want these military style weapons around. They’re only good for killing people!Taking these in order, it is first important for our conservative thought leaders to loudly enunciate one very important point about the hunting angle. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. So when you hear this, you need to shut it down immediately. First off, the Bill of Rights says nothing about hunting. It talks about the possible need for a militia, which has since been affirmed as an individual right by the Supreme Court, particularly since anyone might – in the darkest of possible times – be once again called upon to stand up for the survival of the nation.
And that means against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
These same, soft spoken voices will, as I noted, also assure you that nobody is coming to take your guns. Perish the thought! They simply want to restrict the methods of obtaining them. limit access in increasing fashions and essentially stop the selling of whichever types of weapons and accessories they deem unacceptable in the future. This, to me, rings as hollow as Republicans who argue for reforms to Social Security and Medicare, but begin the discussion by saying, “Of course, we’re not going to touch YOURS.” That’s a dishonest approach, though it may be politically expedient.
But were I a liberal falling into such a category, I would immediately be wondering… what happens to my children and grandchildren? Second Amendment proponents should demand the same answer. Even if you have your guns today, what about the day when you take your son or daughter out to purchase their first firearms? The long game here is simple: we may not be able to get rid of all the guns today, but if we stop their sale, eventually all of the weapons will drop out of the system. This isn’t a fight for what you have today, but rather a stand against what happens to future generations.
This right here is much of the crux of the pro-gun argument. It’s not that the government will be herding you into camps like they did at Heart Mountain, but it’s that 10, 20, 50, 100 years down the road, they can herd you into camps. Removal of guns from the citizenry also means that such supreme court rulings that say “firearms in common use” can continue to remove firearms from the citizen. If it’s not in common use, it’s not protected… well, ban it in violation of the Second Amendment and then it’s not in common use.
The slippery slope is indeed real (by Matt K Lewis).
“[I]f you let a bully come into your front yard one day, the next day he’ll be up on your porch, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.”
That wisdom comes from LBJ — but it might as well be the NRA’s motto.
Early on, the NRA understood how rights are incrementally lost. Eventually, the agitators always win, because they realize the natural state of life is constant struggle.
Conversely, conservatives love peace. They will sometimes become politically active for a season (usually, in order to defend a traditional right or value), but are anxious to cut a deal, and return to normalcy. And so, they let the bullies on our porches.
The following cycle should sound familiar to anyone paying attention: 1.) The agitators ask for a lot, 2. they settle for less (a common sense compromise!), and 3.) they come back for more at the most opportune time (they never let a crisis go to waste.)
…
This isn’t organic gradualism – it’s a strategy. And it works. For this reason, principled conservatives — the ones who are hip to this strategy, and thus, resist it — are easily cast as mean-spirited weirdos.After all, who could be opposed to “reasonable,” “common sense” gun control? (Or asking the rich to pay a little more, or…?)As James Taranto notes in an excellent Wall Street Journal piece: “A central reason these gun debates tend to be futile is that gun owners and gun-rights supporters think advocates of gun control will not settle for reasonable restrictions but want to deprive them of their constitutional rights altogether. They are right to think so…”Refusal to compromise — on even the smallest encroachment of freedoms — of course, looks to the outside world like stubborn paranoia.
And sometimes, it is…overwrought. (Yes, almost all totalitarian regimes begin by slowly rolling back freedoms, but not every new law or regulation passed in America will lead to more laws and regulations.)
Still, the safe assumption is that losing some rights will inexorably lead to losing others. That’s why I’m disappointed to see some conservatives throw their hands in the air.
Friends of liberty should not be so quick to surrender their rights to the government.
And Jazz Shaw quotes from an earlier piece of his, explaining the need to own one of those evil military-looking assault death kitten killing weapons of mass destruction:
1. Some people have concerns that, in a very unstable world, things might eventually go completely pear shaped and the social fabric could be in danger of collapse. Nobody wants this and I’m not saying it’s even likely, but if that is one concern of yours, you’re going to have to be ready to defend yourself, your family and your property. And not against deer.
And:
2. There has been a constant undercurrent of worry that the United States might still, some day, be invaded by a foreign power using a land invasion rather than a nuclear attack. And if such invaders overwhelmed the troops and the National Guard, there would still be an armed force of tens of millions of Americans to deal with. More than a few people wiser than me have opined over the years that this is a large reason nobody has tried to invade us.
Except, obviously, for where we have been invaded by armed narcoterrorist cartels.
And:
3. The last, worst, and – I hope – most unlikely scenario is one which persons as “radical” as Thomas Jefferson fretted over. And that is the possibility that a vastly swollen and powerful central government could forget and abandon the promises made to the people and violate the fundamental rights promised to them. The Founders came from a land and a time when that was hardly science fiction. And while I see no indication that such a thing is imminent today, an armed populace remains a constant reminder to those in Washington that, should they ever dare go so far as to employ the military to suppress their citizens and break those promises… You only rule by the consent of the governed. We outnumber you vastly. And we are armed. This isn’t a threat. It’s a reminder.
That’s Heart Mountain, a US concentration camp for US citizens that was built in 2 just months.
For a good look at what you are truly up against, you need do little more than listen to the openly offered words of one of the chief architects of the current push for a gun grab… one Michael Bloomberg. He’s been making the rounds of every media outlet from Morning Joe to the full slate of Sunday gab fests, usually parroting the lines we featured before about “not wanted to take anyone’s guns” and respecting the first amendment. But he might have gotten a bit tired by the time he showed up for Nightline, and he let the mask slip fully from his face. Check this out. (Emphasis mine.)
“I think the public has finally come to the conclusion that, what the Supreme Court said you can do is have reasonable restrictions on the right to bear arms, is something that our society finally has woken up and said, ‘We are going to do this whether you like it or not,‘” Bloomberg said…
But if he had his preference, Bloomberg said he would go farther than the 1994 ban and outlaw all automatic and semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. The mayor said magazines shouldn’t be allowed to contain more than five or even three rounds.
Jazz’s ultimate advice comes down to join pro-Second Amendment groups like the NRA, GOA, and JPFO. Make your voice heard. Call your congressmen and senators, call your local representatives. Stop it before it’s allowed to start. Then arm yourself – buy a gun and vote with your dollars.
Mind you, that’s coming from a very mainstream conservative site. That’s not some little outlier libertarian conservative group like here. That’s HotAir, one of the big powerhouses of conservative discussion online, that’s constantly quoted across talk radio, that sort of sets the tone for a lot of conservative discussion.
He finishes with this very somber note:
Sadly, there is little beyond that to be done if I’m reading the cards correctly. The sad truth is that, beyond these types of actions and preparations, you potentially find yourself with only one more alternative in a worst case scenario.
Come and get ‘em.
Good luck to us all, and thanks for following along this week for this series. If we’ve managed to accomplish anything here, I hope it is to impart the message that this is not some far off, possible future of problems. The wolves are truly at the door and they will be sitting down in Washington DC in a couple of weeks, aided by nearly every media outlet in the country. But in the end, they are not the United States. This country isn’t a collection of politicians arguing in spacious halls. It’s a collection of papers more than two hundred years old. And with a bit of luck, it’s one thing more than that as well.
It’s you.
I’ll leave you with some words from the President on this issue.
“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
ShortTimer
JBH
