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Archive for the ‘2nd Amendment’ Category

Demonstrators rally outside the Capitol in Albany, N.Y. , on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013 to assert their right to own firearms and to denounce recent gun-control efforts. (Photo: AP)

Time to do the math and get the REAL facts.  Pay attention and learn something.

No rhetoric.  No political agenda.  No hyperbole.  Just facts.

Judging from yesterday’s turnout at the ‘Gun Appreciation Day’ rallies across the United States, I’d say there are quite a few people in this country who already know how important it is to be able to defend one’s self.  Now you have the actual mathematics.

Naphtali Rothrock, left, and her sister Naomi Rothrock, both of Sprakers, N.Y. , join a rally outside the Capitol in Albany, N.Y. , on Saturday, Jan. 19, 2013 to assert their right to own firearms and to denounce recent gun-control efforts. (Photo: AP)

This man knows the truth about the mathematics because he lived it.  A Chinese national who is now a United States Citizen talks yesterday about how he participated in the Tienanmen Square protest in China.  Things could have been so different for the Chinese people if they had any way to fight back against Mao’s tyranny.  Instead, this man came to the United States, and we are grateful to have him and his wisdom.

To see more photographs of the rallies see:

The Blaze

The Salt Lake City Tribune

The following is a list, provided by the White House, of executive actions President Obama plans to take to address gun violence.

1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

11. Nominate an ATF director.

12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

Zero Hedge

Fox News argues….

In the wake of tragedies we tend to react out of emotion. When dealing with policy-making, however, we all benefit if logic enters the discussion. It is difficult to imagine a more heart-wrenching event than the Newtown, Conn. shootings. The inevitable calls for more gun control legislation reflect an understandable desire to do something after 26 defenseless and innocent people are slaughtered.

The more important question, however, is what can we do that will make a difference? That, I suggest, is the best way to honor those who lost their lives. Making us feel better should not be the measure. We should try to make a difference.

Correct.

And to do so we need to look at what happened objectively, which is very difficult to do in the “heat of the moment.”

So let’s agree on a couple of things — first, those who argue in the heat of the moment are not arguing for safety.  They’re trying to play on the “feel better” side of the ledger, and we must reject that.  Second, we must demand and discover their true motive, which is not making a difference — at least not when it comes to the issue at hand.

We also must look at the facts, no matter where they lead us.  Like, for instance, the fact that alcohol kills roughly as many people as do guns (most of the deaths are self-inflicted or accidents, as is true with guns) and indeed alcohol causes well over a thousand homicides a year which is remarkable considering how horrifying people consider guns to be and the fact that a bottle of booze has zero defensive value.

Now for those inconvenient facts that nobody wants to discuss…..

First, the current furor over “assault rifles” is a false, media generated hype campaign that lawmakers have seized upon — and they know they’re lying as well.

First, there are no legal ”assault rifles” manufactured since 1986 in civilian hands.  That’s because an “assault rifle” is aselect-fire weapon – that is, it is capable of firing more than one cartridge with each depression of the trigger.  The common name for such a weapon when that mode of operation is selected is machine gun.  No select-fire weapon made since 1986 can be lawfully transferred to a civilian, and ones made prior can only be transferred when registered with the BATFE (and with payment of a $200 tax.)

Oh, and unless I missed a news story in my sweep one legitimately civilian-owned select-fire weapon (that is, an actual assault rifle) has been used in a crime in the last 20 or so years — and the person who did so was a police officer.  (There have been plenty of very-illegal select-fire weapons used in crimes, but I’ll get to that in a bit.)

What the media and Feinslime want to call an “assault rifle” is in fact an automatic-loading rifle similar in design and operation to hunting and sporting rifles used for target practice, varmint control, plinking and competitive shooting.  In fact, that’s exactly what such a rifle is almost-always used for.  The only distinction between an “evil assault rifle” and a rifle that lawmakers “accept” as being intended to shoot varmints on a farmer’s land is the color of the weapon and its decorations, along with things such as a handguard (which helps prevent you from burning your hand by touching the barrel after the gun has been fired) and a “flash-hider” (which serves to direct where the flash goes, but does not prevent it from being seen — in short, it keeps it out of your eyesight and is useful for shooting said varmints in low light conditions, or in some cases is fashioned to help control the muzzle by directing the blast in a fashion that counter-acts the natural motion of the barrel as the weapon is fired.)

The other interesting statistic is that only about 1 in 500 guns used in a crime are “assault weapons” as these people would define them according to some statistics, and less than 2% of people in prison for a firearms violation (including simple possession by a felon or other crimes where no violence took place) involve such a weapon – yet there are some 3.5 million of them, according to various surveys, in civilian hands. Indeed these weapons are extremely popular among law-abiding Americans; the much-maligned “adjustable stock”, for example, allows the same gun to be comfortably fired by a 6’4″ man and his 5’8″ wife at the range — a perfectly-lawful and reasonable consideration.  The removable “flash-hider” is popular as it can be replaced if it is damaged in the field (while hunting varmints) at low cost and protects the crown of the barrel rather than forcing a barrel replacement or if you wish to change it out for one that better-controls muzzle flip (the tendency of the barrel to rise when the weapon is fired) at the range.

Why do they appear to be used by whack jobs like the Sandy Hook shooter?  Probably because they look scary. After all, these are whack-jobs we’re talking about; they are unlikely to pick the most-lethal weapon as they probably haven’t studied weapons well-enough to do that (and that’s a good thing as it keeps them from choosing bombs and similar items that would do even more damage) but a scary-looking gun, oh boy, that’s just the ticket in a mentally-disturbed person’s mind.

Are you really going to suggest that if a particular scary-looking gun wasn’t available for some reason that this would actually deter said whack-job from committing his horrific act?

And besides, are you really going to argue that we should ban something because of how it looks?  If that’s the case then Dianne Feinstein is certainly on top of the list of things to ban!

Speaking of that fine gentleman with which Feinstein shares a particular love of firearms registration (and confiscation), I’d like to draw the reader’s attention to this chart up on JPFO’s web site.  It lists nine acts of genocide in the 20th century alone, each of which was preceded by gun permitting, restrictions, registration in and many cases confiscations and/or outright prohibitions.

Not one of these incidents occurred without first disarming the people to be exterminated.

You may have heard about some of these people; certainly everyone knows about the Jews in Nazi Germany.  But it was not just Jews — anyone critical of the regime, Gypsies, political opponents and even just people who they thought would make “good examples” were shoved in the hole, some 20 million in all.  The law requiring registration began in 1928; 10 years later Hitler used it to begin murdering millions.

I’m sure some will argue that this is a “bygone era” since WWII.  Well then I’m sure you can explain away Rwanada in 1994, which came about 15 years after a 1979 law requiring gun registration, justification of need and restriction on ammunition – - along with confiscation powers.

Fifteen years later fully 20% of the population, some 800,000 people, were slaughtered in 100 days.

Oh, and the left’s beloved President Clinton did exactly nothing about it.  I guess he was too busy getting blowjobs in the Oval Office to worry about 800,000 black people being slaughtered like rats.

In Guatemala it was Mayans, other Indians and political enemies.  In Uganda, Christians.  In Cambodia it was anyone that the government didn’t like (about 2 million people fell into that category) and China had two bouts of this in the 20th Century, totaling somewhere around 40 million citizens, all murdered in cold blood.

All told the count is somewhere north of 170 million citizens that have been executed not by combat in war or as “collateral damage” (accidental injury) but rather simply because once the government obtained an absolute monopoly on force it was able to slaughter people with impunity, and did.

170 million people is an extraordinary number.  Since we’re only 330 million out of a world population of something like 7 billion, it is not fair to charge all of them against us when making comparisons.  We’re about 5% of the world population, basically, so you could “charge” 8.5 million of those deaths (5%) to us in comparison.

How’s that work out?

Well, we have 11,000 firearms homicides, more or less, annually.

Objectively looking at this issue it would take 772 years for civilians to murder 8.5 million people, most of them one at a time, but the comparison table only runs in the last century. 

It is therefore nearly eight times more likely that you will be slaughtered by your government wholesale if you give up your guns than the risk you run of being murdered by a bad guy if you don’t and this assumes that all of the 11,000 gun murders do not happen if we ban all or some firearms.

But many if not most — or possibly even all of those killings will still happen, and we all know it.

How do we know it?

Because they have and do occur in the past and present.

The worst mass-murder in a school in US history took place in Bath Township, Michigan.  The assailant used explosives to blow the place up.  Tim McVeigh used home-made explosives to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City.  A bunch of Islamic nutjobs used aircraft as bombs to kill over 3,000 Americans on 9/11.  A handful of Islamic nutjobs tried (and mostly failed) to blow up the WTC several years earlier — with a truck bomb, not a gun.  A deranged individual used a can of gasoline to burn up a nightclub and murder 80 people.  Just the other day a nutjob murdered a man because she thought he was Muslim — she used her hands to push him in front of a subway train.  In China, which disarmed its citizens and then suffered not one but two acts of genocide in the last 100 years, knife attacks have become commonplace with horrific results.

Mentally-deranged individuals use all sorts of implements of destruction.  Guns are tools, and like gasoline, airplanes, explosives (both commercially available and home-made), automobiles, trucks, knives, crowbars, chainsaws, baseball bats and other items they can be used for good or evil.  A mentally-deranged person is not particularly concerned with what implement he or she employs to commit their dastardly deed.

Now let’s separate the gun murders out a bit, and I’ll refer to ”the bible” on this — the FBI’s statistics.

I’m going to first go after the single largest group of people who both shoot and die, because if we’re serious about addressing gun violence instead of playing politics (or setting up your own personal genocide a few years hence) you have to start where most of the violence is centered.

And the fact is that it is gang-bangers, mostly black gang-bangers, shooting one another.  These are all our (collectively) our fault (I’ll get to that later), and account for about half of all gun murders.

Here’s an ugly fact — black people were charged with 49.7% of the murders in 2011 but are only about 13% of the population.   What’s worse is the distribution of victims by age.

In short if you’re black, male and make it to 25 your risk of being gang-banged (that is, dead by gunshot) drops by about half.  But here’s the key – it’s still four times that of a white person and was nearly 10 times greater before your 25th birthday!  It’s not much better if you’re black and female — your risk is four to five times greater than if you’re white.

So if you want to talk about people being shot to death, it’s black people, especially young black people, who are both doing the shooting and being shot.

But that’s not the “pretty white face of a child” we saw in Newtown, is it?

Nope.

It is, however, one Newtown worth of dead black youth approximately every day.

Where’s the outrage?  Why is this not a Newtown-style scandal and media event every single day?

That outrage and attention is in the exact same place it was in 1994 with Rwanda — all missing.

You know why?

Because both the victims and the killers are black, that’s why.

You want to argue otherwise?  Then go ahead and explain it.  Close to a Newtown’s worth of youth murdered every day.  That’s a fact folks, and there’s a huge concentration of those shooters and victims in one small subgroup of our nation’s population — the 16-24 year old black youth.

And while you’re at it, pay close attention to what happened during Rwanda (that would be “nothing”) and what the United States did in response.  Who also remembers Madame Albright and the “little dustup” she subsequently got us involved in over in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia?

What was the difference?

Gee, not the color of the skin of the participants and how that sells to both the government and the people, eh? 

Riiiiiight.

Let’s cut the crap — about half of the murders in this country are committed by and against one tiny subset of our population.  That subset of our population has a risk of homicide ten times that of the same age group outside of that ethnicity.  Simply put young black men are killing one another at an outrageously high rate, this is roughly half of our homicides all-in, it amounts to roughly a Newtown every single day and nobody gives a damn.

What could we realistically do to address this problem?  That’s not hard to figure out either.

If we were serious about this issue we’d legalize all drugs tomorrow, selling them in pharmacies to anyone with ID for 21.  And yeah, I said all drugs.  It would put the gang-bangers out of business in an afternoon and a huge percentage of those homicides would disappear overnight.  We’d also stop incarcerating half of the people we currently hold in federal prisons (who are there on drug charges) and about 1/3rd of those in state prisons (ditto.)  Those people, having no felony record any longer, would have better economic opportunity, which would do even more toward making it possible for them to choose a productive life instead of a criminal one.

The fact is that nobody is interested in putting a stop to all the black youth being killed in this country.  Nobody is proposing that which we know would stop it, just as it did when we repealed Prohibition.

If we were really going to have a logical examination of the problem of gun homicide and violence in this country, this is what we’d do.

But we’re not going to do that, are we?

No, we’re not.  At least not thus far.

Instead we have official racism throughout our government, media and nation as a whole.

Yes, even Barack Obama practices it personally by refusing to deal with the real issue, instead stomping his feet like a petulant child with his minions in Feinstein and now Blumenthal.

Now let’s look at history.

You want to know where gun laws came from and why they were first enacted?  The same place marriage laws came from: To keep “those people” from having firearms.

This is not conjecture; it dates to 1751!  There was actually law in Louisiana requiring colonists to stop any black and“if necessary, beat any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane.” 

Free blacks in slave states were required to obtain a license and show need to have a firearm.  Whites of course, did not have any such restriction.

So official racism is dead in the United States eh?

Bull.  We may be better at hiding it but we’re still practicing it to this day and it originates in our government and mainstream media, exactly as it did in the 1700s and 1800s.

So having settled that our government doesn’t want to talk about where the real problem lies, nor to fix it, because the folks who are both doing the shooting and dying have the wrong color skin, we’ll turn next to that tiny subset of those who commit such crimes that our screech-owls are desperately trying to focus our attention on – mentally-deranged individuals.

What can we actually do about this subset of the problem?

Can we ban guns?  No.

How do I know this?  Because we can’t successfully ban drugs despite a near-100 year attempt, and yet if you get caught with drugs, whether possessing or selling them, you may go to prison but it is generally not a life sentence.  The same would be true for a “bare” firearms offense.

The problem is that once someone decides to commit murder all of the other crimes are free.  You see, it’s only possible to imprison someone for life — or hang them — once.  Therefore once the decision is made to commit homicideno other law is of any effect whatsoever upon that person’s conduct.

This is a matter of basic logic and is irrefutable; anyone claiming otherwise is mentally deranged themselves — or lying.

Let us remember that the shooter at Sandy Hook apparently murdered his mother to obtain the weapons he used in the assault.

Once he had made the decision to murder the children at the school there was no barrier to any other crime he would then have to commit in order to carry out his original intent, up to and including killing his mom to obtain the weapons he used.

There is no “gun law” that will prevent what Adam did.  Not only are there over 100 million guns in America but our borders are swiss cheese, as we’ve seen with 20 million illegal immigrants that we refuse to force to leave this country.  Hell, some states even issue them driver licenses and all look the other way when they take jobs that citizens could be performing.  Literal tons of cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana come into this country every year over those very same borders.  Guns are trivially easy to move across our borders as well; they don’t smell like dope does, among other things.

To those who propose that an “assault weapons ban” will help: Have you forgotten Columbine?  It happened duringthe previous assault weapons ban!  That assault occurred when high-capacity magazines were banned and Harris carried 13 10 round magazines for his pistol, 10 of which he consumed.  So much for 10-round magazine limits “slowing people down” and “preventing mass-murder.”

It did neither.

The pair also sawed off two shotguns (instantly making them federal felons; note that they didn’t care as they intended to commit murder) and constructed nearly 100 improvised explosive devices (also making them instant federal felons for that too) – fortunately, the two largest ones made with propane tanks didn’t explode.

Once Harris and Klebold decided to murder people in the school all the other felonies, well over a hundred of them that they committed first, were “free.”  There was no law that inhibited their actions nor could there be – not the acquisition of the firearms, their felonious modification, the felonious construction of explosives and the placing of said explosives.  All those crimes were free because once they decided to commit murder no other sanction could be applied to them for the other offenses.

So we can’t stop nuts with gun restrictions; we can neither get rid of the guns successfully nor will limiting certain guns stop the nuts or even slow them down — they’ll just choose different guns.  A shotgun is a basic weapon; Harris and Klebold procured two of them (illegally) and then sawed them off (illegally.)  Just as with Adam Lanza they didn’t give a damn what the law was or what it restricted, as they already had decided to break the most-serious law we have (murder) and as such all other violations of the law were “free.”

Now let’s talk about the shooters themselves.  Virtually all of these deranged individuals are on psychotropic drugs of some sort.  And we know full-well that these drugs can cause homicidal rage along with suicide; it’s documented as a “black label” warning. 

Indeed this warning singles out teens and young adults under 25 as being at particular risk!

Yet we continue to give these drugs to teenagers and young adults, who are the group that continually are overrepresented in these homicidal rages.

Yes, I understand that the reported incidence of such “bad reactions” is under 1%.  But let’s face reality; if there are 1 million young people prescribed these drugs then that’s 10,000 potential homicidal or suicidal maniacs we createwith these drugs.

Of course the NIH and other agencies all maintain we’re “appropriately” using these drugs.  The problem is that they can be statistically correct (that is, 99% of the people prescribed them are helped rather than harmed) and at the same time be responsible for the creation of the monsters that go insane and shoot up movie theaters, US Representatives and schools.

The question then legitimately becomes this: Is the creation of thousands of potential homicidal maniacs anacceptable price for our society to pay so we can medicate our youth with these drugs?  Are we willing, as a society, to accept the price that the medical and pharmaceutical profession imposes along with the claimed benefits? 

That’s a policy question for our society to examine in depth and a debate we must have as a society.  We must confront this head-on and bring into the forefront the facts.

And the facts are that virtually all of these “active shooter” incidents involve someone who is on, or has recently been on, psychotropic medication.

Again, that 99% of the people who are prescribed these drugs are helped doesn’t change the fact that according to the prescribing information some percentage — even if a very small percentage — of the people who take it, especially among teens and young adults, become psychotic to a degree where extreme violence or suicide are recognized risks.

It’s either worth it or not, and if we’re going to hand these drugs out to this segment of the population which the drug-makers themselves have documented as being “at risk” for extreme negative side effects we must accept that price, or we must stop prescribing these drugs to the segment of the population that is “at risk” for turning into homicidal maniacs when using said drugs.  Period.

If you want to actually make a difference when it comes to mass-shooting incidents you start here because it is a statistical fact that virtually all said mass-shooters are either using or were recently using these drugs.

Finally, we must talk about deterrence.  And this too comes from our knowledge and history of “mass-shooting” incidents.  In virtually every case these people are documented cowards — when faced with resistance they either give up (e.g. in Aurora) or kill themselves.

The sooner someone can offer effective resistance the fewer people will die. 

We saw this in Oregon where, despite having a full magazine once the shooter saw a man with a concealed weapon draw he killed himself instead of continuing his rampage.  Time and time again as soon as these shooters hear the police sirens they blown their own brains out or give up.

The people who do this, by the manifest weight of the evidence, are fundamentally cowards; they’re not looking for a fight, they’re looking for a shooting gallery with unarmed targets.

That means we must stop advertising “free-fire kill people zones”, which is what the insanity of passing laws and posting signs for “Gun Free” zones actually represent.

With exactly one exception (Giffords) all of the contemporary “mass active shooter” incidents have taken place in allegedly “Gun Free” zones because they are looking to minimize the odds of running into effective resistance.

The people who commit these acts are insane — they are not stupid.  They are specifically looking for targets of opportunity and are demonstrably, in case after case, cowards.  This is not “Seal Team Six gone bad” or some Rambo-type looking to “go to war” (with all that comes with doing so including being shot at), they’re sniveling keyboard warriors who spent too much time in their mother’s basement with a video game screaming DIE! at the monitor.  As soon as their fantasy world of firepower and invincibility turns to shit and bullets start flying the other way they either stick up their hands and surrender or blow their own brains out.

If we’re not willing to stop dispensing the drugs that we know are correlated with these events and are documented to produce homicidal rage in some percentage of teens and young adults who take them we must increase the odds that anyone attempting such an act will rapidly, within seconds, face such resistance.

And that means we must allow everyone who is not insane to pack heat.

That means everyone, all the time and everywhere.  No permits, no BS, no kidding.  If you’re a law-abiding citizen and wish to carry, especially concealed, you may exactly as The Constitution provides.  Period.  I am all in support of charging straw purchasers accessories before the fact to crimes committed with the weapons they procure; indeed, I see no reason why that couldn’t be charged under existing law in exactly this fashion (as is done today if you knowingly give someone a ride to the bank for the purpose of robbing it.)

The bottom line on risk reduction is really rather simple:  If we will not stop turning out mental zombies willing to commit mass murder because we are so married to the pharmaceutical industry that we will not force them to stop marketing and making available these drugs to people under the age of 25 — the population that we havedocumented evidence are at heightened risk of psychotic reactions while using these drugs — then we must do what we can to put an end to “free fire” zones where the zombies we create can murder with impunity.

Since the police cannot be everywhere all the time, there’s only way to do that — drop the pretense that paper stops bullets, that signs deter aggression instead of encouraging it to be focused where there is no resistance, and exchange the “gun free” signs with one that looks like this:

You want a thoughtful discussion and debate focused on logic?

Here it is.

The Market-Ticker

Discussion (registration required to post)

Dear Mr. Security Agent

FedUpUSA received a request to circulate this essay by Matthew Bracken, and it is worth every second of the time it takes to read.

Federal, state, or local. You, the man or woman with the badge, the sworn LEO or FLEA and those who inhabit the many law enforcement niches in between and on all sides. This essay is directed to you, because in the end, how this turmoil about gun control turns out will depend largely upon your decisions and actions over the coming months and years.

….

The unintended consequences of this misguided utopian fool’s crusade to ban guns would include a second civil war as agonizingly painful as the first one, if not more so, since there would be no front lines and no safe areas for anybody, anywhere. Every sane American wants to prevent such a calamitous outcome as a “dirty civil war” on United States soil.

But know this: those tens of millions will never be quietly disarmed and then later forced at government gunpoint onto history’s next boxcars. If boxcars and detention camps are to be in America’s future, then you, Mr. Security Agent, will have to disarm them the hard way first. Not Piers Morgan, not Michael Moore, not Rosie O’Donnell, not Dianne Feinstein, not Chuck Schumer.

You.

Dear Senator Feinstein

As if to prove Bracken’s point, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) recently proposed some very strict gun control legislation. In response, former Marine Cpl. Joshua Boston wrote her a now-viral letter, which partly reads:

“I am not your subject,” Boston wrote.

“I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America. I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.”

Fox and Friends interviewed Mr. Boston about his letter to Sen. Feinstein. Click the link below for their article, a link to Mr. Boston’s complete letter, and a video of the interview.

U.S. Marine Talks About Letter to Sen. Feinstein: Assault Weapons Ban Would Start Country on ‘Slippery Slope’ to Americans Being Disarmed

In Truth

Governments never truly have “your own good” or “your protection” in mind when they begin to strip rights away from a populace, and ours is no exception. Mr. Bracken and Mr. Boston are both correct: We, in America, are starting down the path to tyranny, and unless we change course soon, we will become the country our Founding Fathers most feared. Once stripped of the natural right to bear arms, there will be nothing to prevent the utter subjugation of America, and the mass imprisonments and murders that usually follow. While there has historically been some “lead time” between gun registration and gun confiscation, it is never very long, and invariably leads to very ugly things.

Randy – FedUpUSA

Reprinted with permission, in whole as required at the link.  Something to ponder….

I want to tell you about my recent death. I will be brief, because I know there are many other stories to be told about my tragic day. I hope that my death brings about the the type of conversation that will help to prevent more unnecessary deaths of teachers and children, or of any persons caught in similar circumstances.

I was a normal person. I liked many of the things that you like. But mostly I loved my children and I loved teaching them. That is what I was doing four days ago on the day that I died, when a man out of his mind attacked us in our sanctuary.

I am sure you already know most of the story, so I won’t reopen that wound if I can avoid it. However, the part that you may not know about, and never hear about is the fact that I was prevented from protecting myself and my children. That’s right, the school board, the state, and the federal government told all teachers including me, that so long as we were on school grounds that we could not defend ourselves against a deranged person, hell bent on killing us.

When the man came into my room armed with a rifle, we were huddled in the corner. He shot me with a rifle several times, the bullets easily passing through my body and through several children behind me. We didn’t have a chance. The inadequate training we received to combat such a person or situation failed. I know you will mourn our deaths, and you should. But when you get to that point of being mad, ask why we were not allowed to defend ourselves? Ask how it is that an unarmed school teacher can be asked to defend themselves and the children under her care against an armed aggressor? Why don’t they ask police to be unarmed and defend themselves against aggressors?

So far, it is nice here in Heaven. We are not beyond The Gates yet – the line is very long. We do have many people from the other side of The Gates who have come out to help us with the transition. Some of them are familiar faces to us, and some are not. Some are helping us grieve, while others are helping us to understand our new reality, but all of us are happy. It is impossible not to be happy here.

I met a fine young man from the military shortly after I arrived here. He is not from this era, but one long before my time. He presented me with this computer so I could write this to you. It was funny when he saw the expression on my face and said, “we have a very special Wi-Fi connection up here.” I couldn’t help but laugh. It’s obvious they have dealt with this before.

I asked him what he wanted me to write. He told me to write whatever I wanted. We both sat silently for a while when he suddenly asked if I had any questions. As I started to speak, he indicated that he could not answer any questions about the other side of The Gate, so I just asked his name.

“John Smith,” he replied, still looking forward at the children standing patiently in line. “I fought and died in the Revolutionary War.”“I am sorry,” I replied. “Why are you sorry?”“Because you died fighting in a war…a very horrible war,” I said to him, the tears starting to well. He was so young. “So did you,” he said as he turned his head to look at me. “That is why I was sent out here for you.” “What?” I said incredulous at his false assertion. With calmness and much love in his teenaged voice he said, “I know it is hard for you to see, or even believe, but you and I fought the same kind of war for the same reasons. The difference is I volunteered for my war and wore a uniform and you did not volunteer. Even your children,” he rotated his eyes towards the line of six and seven year old angels standing in front of us,“fought the war.”“I don’t understand.”“I died in 1778 fighting under George Washington. I was fighting for the Liberties granted to all men by God that had been stolen from us by King George and the British Crown…”

I was a school teacher. I had to cut him off before he went too far. “I know these things, John. I taught school remember?”“Yes ma’am, but did you know about all of the tyrannous legislative Acts imposed upon the people?” “Sure. There was the Stamp Act and the Tea Act that eventually spawned the Boston Tea Party,” I responded. “Yes ma’am, but there were many more, both before and after those most infamous ones. There was the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, the Townshend Revenue Act, the Boston Non-importation Agreement, the Boston Port Act, the Administration of Justice Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, Quartering Act of 1774, and the Quebec Act. This was the government’s way of stripping the God Given Natural Born Rights of mankind in the new colonies. These are but some of the things that added to the fuel that became the Revolutionary War. The ‘shot heard ’round the world’ were the attempts by the redcoats to kidnap Sam Adams and John Hancock as well as deny the use of arms by capturing gunpowder.”“That’s all well and good Mr. Smith, but I still don’t understand why you believe I am fighting a war too,” which was more of a question to him than a statement. I was feeling like I was back in school myself.

John continued, “It is not just you, but tens of thousands of you fighting the new Revolutionary War.”“No. You’re mistaken, Mr. Smith.”“Do you believe the Revolutionary War was a good fight? That is was worth the cost?”“Well…yes.”“Do you believe we could have won that war if our motives had not been Just and Right in the eyes of God?”“No. But they were Just. You and your men were fighting for our freedom from unjust laws imposed upon the people by a king across an ocean,” I told him, showing him that I had retained my education about the Revolutionary War. “Do you believe we could have fought a war against the redcoats had we been disarmed?”“Well, of course not!”“Then why would you believe that you could defend yourself and your children against a gunman with no arms yourself?”

I was shocked and dumbstruck. I didn’t believe such a thing…or did I? No, I know that I didn’t believe such a thing. That was ridiculous. My head was spinning. How could he make such an assertion? He doesn’t know me…

“Then why were you unarmed?” he asked softly. “What!?” Could he hear me thinking? “If you don’t believe that you could defend yourself and your children against a gunman with no arms yourself, then why were you not carrying a gun?”“We can’t carry guns in school!” I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t be. Not in this place. “Says who?”“Says the law.”“What law are you speaking of? God made no such law. God gave you the Right to defend yourself and those in your charge against such aggression,” he stated, still speaking softly. “The laws of the country and state say that schools are ‘gun free zones.’ They even have signs all around the school.”“How did that work out for you and your children?” John asked as he got up and walked away.

Before I had a chance to answer or call him back, a woman on the other side of me, who I never noticed before addressed me.

“He’s right. You were fighting a new war, along with many others who have now passed on. There are still others fighting it now.”“I still don’t understand how I was fighting a war. And who are you?”“It is probably better that I don’t tell you who I am. The news media painted myself and others like me with a broad brush in order to turn the people against us, and I was killed in a fire holding my children. But like you, we were unwittingly fighting the same war.” “Exactly what war is that?” I wanted to know.After a brief pause, she looked up at the line of children, took a deep breath and began, “the war to retain the Rights and Liberties God gave you when you were born…”“I have all of my Rights. What are you talking about?” I interrupted. “Yes ma’am, you do have them, but you don’t practice them for fear of retribution by your government,” the unknown woman said. “No, I did everything I wanted to do.” I told her. “Did you?”“Of course I did,” answering her rhetorical question. “Ok, I believe you. But let me ask you this. If you had to do it all over again, would you have taken a gun to school with you this morning?”“Well…no. I would have gotten fired.”“So it is more important to you to keep your job than your life, or to preserve the lives of those children?” she asked. “What? NO! That is not what I was saying.” I had to pause and collect my thoughts. “I am saying that I am not allowed to have a gun at school, and that if I had taken one to school, and used it to defend myself or the children, that I would have been fired and most likely put in jail,” I restated to her. “My question still stands. You would still choose the shackles of tyranny over the life of yourself and your children. You feared the retribution of government more than you fear the retribution of God,” she said as she looked towards The Gate. “No. That’s not true. I couldn’t…There was no…The laws don’t allow…” She put her hand on my shoulder and looked at the side of my face as I stared at The Gate, “You don’t have to answer to me. God knows that Adam Lanza killed the children, your co-workers and yourself. But he also knows that you chose to follow man’s laws over His laws, for which twenty beautiful children now stand at The Gates waiting their turn to get in, and He may want an explanation for that.”

I went cold. I was numb. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I turned to look at her, but she was gone. As I turned back to The Gate, I saw a police officer and an older military man approaching me. I wondered what was going to happen now.

“Ma’am. We know you may be confused. Maybe even reeling a bit. Sometimes the truth can be harsh and painful. We hope to help you through a little bit more of it,” the police officer said as he neared me.

They each took a seat on either side of me. It was only now that I realized that we were not sitting on anything at all, just air. Maybe that explained the comfort. I wasn’t ready to hear any more, but I was certain they were going to deliver it anyway, even against my objections if I chose to lodge one.

“I’m Officer Tally, and this is Sergeant Munson. We wanted to help you understand a few more things about this morning.”“I am not sure I can take any more guys,” I said meekly. “You can. You’re stronger than you realize,” Sergeant Munson tried to reassure me. “I don’t know about that.” Officer Tally started,“You were taught to put your faith in men like us. Men who volunteered to step in harms way to protect and defend the defenseless, and we gladly did so.” Sergeant Munson continued the thought, “But what they did not teach you was the part about you taking the personal responsibility for yourself in the event we cannot make it in time.”“…and we generally cannot make it in time,” Officer Tally finished. “I don’t understand.” Officer Talley continued, “Using this morning as an example, several people were already dead or injured before the call to police came in. Even though an officer was on the scene within one minute after receiving the call, serious damage had already been done. A mass murder had already been committed in that short sixty seconds. Even after officers entered the building, they saw the gunman enter a room from the hallway. Before they could make it to him, he was shooting teachers and children.” Sergeant Munson continued the conversation, “Had the teachers and staff, including yourself had guns for defense of yourselves and the children and the proper training to use them, the outcome would have likely been much different. The teachers and staff would have been able to attack the shooter from multiple angles and ended the hostilities long before they reached these dimensions,” he was gesturing towards the line of happy children who were talking with other children who had come out from the other side of The Gates. “But…”“There is no but,” the Sergeant calmly stated. “We know what you are going to say, and those measures don’t work against someone who is intent upon killing. Taking guns and weapons away does not prevent mass murderers from committing their acts of violence, it only prevents the unarmed people from properly defending themselves against such people. Connecticut has some of the most oppressive and strict gun laws in the United States, and still the massacre happened there, not in Alaska or Wyoming where gun laws are minimal.” Officer Tally put his arm around me and said, “There was an Assault Weapons Ban that started in 1994 and ended in 2004 that prevented the sale and manufacture of certain types of guns and magazines. There is also the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968, but none of these laws prevented Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from committing mass murder at Columbine High School in 1999. In fact, they broke multiple federal and state laws in the planning and executing stages of their killing spree. Not a single one of the man made laws stopped them, or prevented them from killing twelve children and one teacher that day. But had the teachers and staff been following their Natural Born Rights to self-protection that day, maybe things would have turned out differently.”

On the computer screen in my lap an article appeared. It was an article about mass murders by knife and bomb. Most of these occurred in places where guns had been outlawed. The Osaka School Massacre grabbed my attention, because I noticed that it involved children the same age as mine. The man had used a kitchen knife to murder 8 children and seriously wound 13 more children and two teachers. There was also a story of a man that killed 8 children with a knife at another elementary school. The list was very long, with many different ways that killers had adapted to the laws of the land to use what was available to them to commit their crimes, including knives and explosives.

Officer Tally pointed to the screen, “most people forget that one of the worst mass murders in history was perpetrated by men with box cutters. They were able to kill over 3000 men, women, and children. What would have happened if multiple people on those airplanes had been following God’s laws by carrying guns for self-protection?”“Explosive decompression?” I said rhetorically. “That’s a myth,” the sergeant said, ”unless you were talking about the terrorists suffering from explosive decompression, and then you would be correct.”

I wasn’t, but I let it go.

“Your training wasn’t adequate for what you encountered,” Officer Tally continued. “Your systems of defense were also inadequate. The only reason Adam Lanza didn’t kill more people isn’t because the doors were locked, it was because he didn’t know what he was doing.”“Didn’t know what he was doing? He killed all of these people…and me!” Officer Tally calmly forged ahead, “Had he known what he was doing, he would have brought the shotgun with him and shot the locked doors off of their hinges. With the shotgun, he could have done some serious damage and easily gotten though every locked door with little fanfare.”“Even worse,” Sergeant Munson jumped in, “had he carried a gun that had more power, like the type most hunters carry, he could have shot straight through the walls, even if they were made of cinder block.” I was stunned, “guns can shoot through walls?”

A video of a man shooting a rifle at a cinder block wall popped up on the computer screen. The first round punched a hole the side of a fist in the wall. The second round made the hole the size of a head. It only took a few more rounds for the majority of the wall to collapse. “Yes, quite easily. That is a video of a man using a common hunting rifle. So just having ballistic locked doors and cinder block walls won’t stop a determined assailant. Only equal or greater force will,” Sergeant Munson finished. Looking at her beautiful children, “So we were doomed no matter what?”“No. Not if you, the other teachers, and staff had been armed and had been even minimally trained. You would have been able to confront him with bullets instead of harsh words, because there was nothing you were going to be able to say to stop him,”Sergeant Munson said. “Your mistake was believing in man’s laws over God’s laws,” said Officer Tally.“But we have to follow man’s laws…the Constitution,” I rebutted. “No. God’s laws, and mankind’s Natural Born Rights existed long before the Constitution, long before the existence of the United States, or the nations of Europe, even before mankind learned to write. Man’s Rights are not given or guaranteed by governments. They are not subject to negotiation, dilution, curtailment, distribution, or removal by any man or government. They are YOUR Rights, given to mankind as a gift of Life. Only mankind can protect them, not governments.” I didn’t have anything to say. Everything they were telling me made sense. I was personally responsible for my own life and Liberty. It wasn’t up to anyone else nor any government. I died because I had voluntarily relinquished my Right to self-defense, not because the police had not come to rescue me in time. They would never had made it in time.

“You gave up more than your Right to self-defense, you just didn’t know it,” said a new voice. I looked up and noticed Officer Tally and Sergeant Munson were gone. “I did?” I asked, looking up to notice a vaguely familiar face that I couldn’t place. “Yes.”“In what way?”“Would you have publicly criticizedyour school’s superintendent or the chief of police, if you had had a problem with them?”“Of course not?”“Why not?”“Because I probably would have lost my job?”“So you feared retribution for speaking freely. You gave up your Right to speak your mind,” the now more familiar man said. “OK.”“Would you have driven your car without a license, or registration?”“No,” I answered. Realizing he would ask why, I went ahead, “Because I would get a ticket, or have my car towed, or be jailed.”“So the threat of government punishment kept you from doing it?”“Well…yeah.”“So you allowed the government to convince you that driving a car was a privilege; that it was a requirement to register your car and have a license to drive it. There you gave up your Right to free travel upon God’s earth. Why did they not register horses and wagons, and require licenses?” I was feeling exasperated, “I don’t know.”“Because the government could not convince people that riding a horse was a privilege,” he said. “I could go on, but I think you get the point.”“Yes. I get it: I am dead because I relinquished my God Given Natural Born Right to defend myself in lieu of a false belief that the police could do it for me when seconds mattered. I was not as free as I thought I was because I lived in fear of retribution from my government if I broke their laws. I was put in this unfortunate position by an overbearing government who forced me to choose between my job and my Liberties. And….what am I supposed to do with this information now…now that I am dead?”“Well, when I was killed in a school murder spree over a decade ago, they didn’t have independent blogs like they do now. The internet was not as wide spread as it is now. You have the opportunity to continue the new Revolutionary war from here, at least for a little while. Because of the deaths of these beautiful innocent children, you, and your coworkers, there is talk of more laws that will only weaken other teachers and people of the world like yourself. You have been shown that no law will prevent a mass murderer from doing their evil, but that it will only result in more deaths of innocent people who have been hamstrung by their governments if they further restrict the God Given Rights of self-defense through ill-advised legislation. It has never worked. It never will work. Gun free zones are only free of guns in the hands of people who would stand against a murderer. Write your story. Tell the people that they must not tolerate the reduction of their Rights to adequately defend themselves. Convince them that had you been armed, less people would have died this morning. Show them the Truth, because once seen, the Truth cannot be unseen.“ The man started to walk back to The Gates.

As I was letting his words sink in, he turned and said, “if no one has told you yet, we have special Wi-Fi up here.”