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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.
Do you remember the story of Carl Rowen, that most outspoken opponent of the second amendment? Rowen was a Washington, D.C. columnist who constantly cried for more restrictive firearms laws. One day he arrived at home to find a stranger occupying his hot tub. What did he do? Did he call the authorities to deal with the situation? No, he pulled an unlicensed illegal handgun and shot at the intruder!
It's interesting how he and so many of his ilk demand more restrictive laws for the rest of us, while flaunting the existing laws themselves. What is most amazing is that Rowen could not understand why others thought him a hypocrite for this behavior!
How about that bastian of morality, Marion Barry the Mayor of DC? Another stauch detractor of the constitution, he was tried, convicted and then imprisoned for possession of illegal drugs. No, the law abiding common citizen cannot be allowed a weapon for his own defense, but the mayor of one of the most important cities in the world can openly consort with the same drug dealers who poison our children, and then get re-elected!
The simple truth of the matter is this: Had Scottland not already had overly restrictive firearms laws, and had the teacher been armed, lives could have been saved. Seventeen died because they were not allowed the means to defend themselves. Had the teacher been armed, the worst possible outcome would have been IDENTICAL to what happened. The best outcome would have been only the gunman lying dead on the floor, and the most probable outcome somewhere in between. Half a dozen or more children could have been saved if only the existing laws had been more sensible. Would it have been worth having the teacher armed if only one child could have been spared? I think so. It seems that those calling for even more restrictive laws do not. Are our children's lives worth so little? Is it right for government to harass the lawful, letting criminals run free, while our children die in our arms?
What did our founding fathers have to say about an armed citizenry?
"that the Constitution be never construed to prevent the people who are peacable from keeping their own arms."213
By the way, for all of you die hard "National Guard" people. There was no National Guard in 1776. It was not even formed until the nineteenth century. There wasn't even a formal "militia" until 1792. That pretty much invalidates that silly argument.
George Will in the Washington Post 21 march, 1991: "The National Rifle Association is perhaps correct and certainly is plausable in its "strong" reading of the Second ammendment protection of private gun ownership. Therefore gun control advocates who want to square their policy preferences with the Constitution should squarely face the need to deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the emabrassing second ammendment." Sure, if the world doesn't meet your warped perceptions, just tamper with the Constitution. Maybe we can take on the free press next ...
Michael Kinsley - Anti gun lawyer and activist in the Washington Post on 08 jan, 1990: "Unfortunately, there is the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The purpose of the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee was pretty clearly to protect political discourse. But liberals reject the notion that free speech is therefore limited to political topics, even broadly defined. True, that purpose is not inscribed in the amendment itself. But why leap to the conclusion that a broadly worded constitutional freedom ('the right of the people to keep and bear arms') is narrowly limited by its stated purpose unless you're trying to explain it away? My New Republic colleague Mickey Kaus says that if liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory."
Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar25: "When the constitution means 'states' it says so ... The ultimate right to keep and bear arms belongs to 'the people', not the 'states' ... Thus the 'people' at the core of the Second Amendment are Citizens - the same 'We The People' who 'ordain and establish' the Constitution and whose right is to assemble ... (is) at the core of the First Amendment ... Nowadays, it is quite common to speak of the National Guard as the 'state militia', but 'the militia' referred to all Citizens capable of bearing arms. 'the militia' is identical to 'the people' ..."
Back to sub-menuActually, all of the writings quoted in the individual right section bear relevence to this section as well. Additional examples follow:
"Street crime in Isreal is very low by American standards." {ed: Street crime by citizens is vanishingly small by our standards} "And it is plain from this evidence that possession of firearms does not automatically foster crime."
In our own country we need only look at New York City and Washington D.C., where the most restrictive firearms laws in the nation are intimately coupled with the highest rates of crime. Is there perhaps a negative correlation between firearms laws and crime rate? Recent evidence suggests that this in fact the case.
Thomas Paine 'Writings'29 "The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense ... [Weakness] allures the ruffian [but] arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were [the good] deprived of the use of them."
Wayne LaPierre - NRA: "Criminals prefer unarmed victims"
The Federalist Analysis of the proposed Second Amendment was that the amendment confirmed to the people "their private arms."214
Our president William Jefferson Clinton often touts Thomas Jefferson as his role model and hero. Little does he know about the true Jefferson.
Jefferson kept a book of quotations which he valued as great truths. Among these is a paragraph by Cesare Beccaria the great eighteenth-century Italian criminologist. It reads thusly:
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty - so dear men, so dear to the enlightened legislator - and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the quality alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homocides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventative but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree.210
Back to sub-menuFor many years the anti-second ammendment pundits shouted that we needed
more gun laws to keep "machine guns" out of the hands of criminals. This
is faulty logic on two very simple grounds;
a) Criminals by definition, do NOT obey the law. New laws will have no effect.
b) Fully automatic weapons ("machine guns") have been virtually banned in
this country since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Yes, since 1934.
What much of the media would like the public to think of as "machine guns" are all rifles which look like the machine guns depicted in the movies, regardless of their mechanical function. When the true definition of automatic weapon was brought to the attention of the people, the anti-gun folks simply coined a new phrase - "Assault Weapons" to take it's place. The basic premise of the assault weapons rhetoric is that if a gun looks more deadly then it must be more deadly. What ever happened to common sense?
When we check the facts, we discover that rifles which 'look like' military rifles are involved in less than one half of one percent of violent crimes. Looks are apparently not everything.
In his best selling book "Guns, Crime and Freedom", Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says, "'Assault Weapon' is nothing more than a contrived term that now applies to all semi-automatic firearms. Their distinguishing feature is that after firing a single shot by one pull of the trigger, a mechanism reloads another cartridge. This mechanism is equivalent to, and often slower than, some other commonly used methods for loading additional shots, such as in pump action shotguns." In reality, Mr. LaPierre is mostly correct. Generally, semi-automatic weapons can reload a cartridge somewhat faster than the average shooter can manually. With an experienced marksman, the time is virtually identical. Semi-automatic weapons also sometimes fail to load the next cartridge because of mechanical problems between the mechanism and the ammunition.
Deputy Police Chief Joseph Constance of the Trenton, NJ PD testified about assault weapons legislation: "At best, it was mere window dressing for frightened politicians to say they did something, when rank-and-file officers in New Jersey knew perfectly well that criminals would continue to obtain their guns illegally and won't fill out applications for permission with superintendents or anyone else. Most frightening, this bill breaks down the trust between law enforcement and the citizens we're sworn to protect. Many of the guns outlawed are used by police as well as citizens for protection and recreation."602
From the Wall Street Journal of 06 January, 1994 we read: "Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming .026 of 1 percent of crimes in New Jersey. This means that [police] officers are more likely to confront an escaped tiger from the local zoo than to confront an assault rifle in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets."
In 1985 a survey603 of over 1800 incarcerated felons found
two important facts.
1) Criminals prefered guns other then semiautomatic firearms.
2) Criminals don't care about gun laws. They obtain their weapons illegally.
In the 29 December, 1993 issue of USA today, the ten most popular "crime guns" were listed. Only one could be classified as an "assault weapon" and it was number nine on the list.
In 1989 in Florida605 "assault weapons" were used in fewer than fifty crimes with an overall use of weapons in 108,600 crimes. These weapons included guns, knives, hands, sticks, etc.
Back to sub-menuWe all like to comfort ourselves with the idea that the police officers of this country will be there to protect us in our time of need. We then feel betrayed when we are robbed or assaulted and no one comes to our aid. Then we wonder, "Where were those charged with our protection?"
The simple fact of the matter is that no one but you is responsible for protecting you and your family. Some may choose not to exercise this duty, but they have no right to stop the rest of us from doing so. There will never be enough police officers to protect each and every one of us all of the time. No matter how hard these people work they cannot be everywhere at once.
By ruling of the Supreme Court police officers have NO duty to protect any individual. They are charged only with preserving the general order. Interesting isn't it?
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