THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS PART II: WHY FIREARMS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM

The blithering from the Statist Left in the wake of the Connecticut massacre continues on and on, with the same tired old baloney rehashed as the lefties fan the embers of emotion shamelessly. This is, after all, how the Left makes every argument they try: by getting people to act on their feelings instead of looking at facts with a level head (see the post "Liberal SIN" for more on this).

 

The Left does not hate guns. They hate guns in the hands of anyone who opposes them, including United States armed forces when the Commander in Chief is a Republican. (When the CinC is Barack Hussein Obama, they even love the hell out of drones doing missile assassinations of American Citizens without due process of law.)

 

The Left is well aware of the truth of the saying of Mao Tse-Tung: "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun". (This is possibly the only thing the late Chairman Mao and I would agree on.) Thus, firearms in the hands of those who oppose the Left must be tightly controlled (or ideally eliminated altogether). Chairman Mao's saying was however hardly an original thought. The Founders of this Republic had exactly that in mind when they put the Second Amendment into the Constitution. The power (and therefore the guns and the right to keep and bear them) belong to "the people"; meaning to each individual free citizen.  No wonder the Left hates the thought of a common citizen being able to own firearms and carry them.

 

But the trend for about 35 years has been toward recognizing the right of citizens to keep and bear Arms, and toward loosening the infringements on them that began back in the Depression era. This has been driving the anti-gun Left nuts. Their reaction has been predictable, and time and again they have been shown to be spectacularly wrong.

 

When Virginia joined the growing ranks of states which stipulate that any citizen who is not otherwise prohibited from possessing a handgun be issued on request - with the exception of persons convicted within the five years preceeding the request of certain offenses such as disorderly conduct or DWI - a permit to carry a concealed handgun, provided the applicant take and pass an NRA-approved concealed carry training course; the Washington Post op-ed page went absolutely nuts.

 

Rivers of blood running through the streets of Arlington and Alexandria were forecast, especially since those jurisdictions' "three-day waiting periods" and Alexandria's special prohibition against the open carry of a loaded firearm were nullified by the law that was passed.

 

Nothing even remotely like this happened. In fact, Virginia's (already lower-than-much-less-"gun friendly" D.C. and Maryland) crime rate plummeted. Virginia has had a few - notably the "Virginia Tech Massacre" - mass shootings, but these were committed in places which were among the few places allowed under Virginia law to declare themselves "gun-free" zones.

 

As Virginia's crime rate dropped, the city of Washington D.C. experienced a rise in particularly gun crimes. Of course the Post and the politicians were quick to blame the "easy availability of guns in Virginia" for their problems. But this just begs the question of why, if we just across the river are so awash in evil guns, we in the Blessed Commonwealth don't have the problem?

 

Then, the District of Columbia was forced by the Supreme Court's Heller decision to allow (allow??) residents to purchase and keep handguns in their residences, loaded and ready to go. The Washington Post again literally screamed bloody murder. But the result has been a steady decline in the homicide rate. 

 

Meanwhile, Chicago - whose Mayor Daly said a few years ago that he was against loosening that city's gun laws because it would lead to "You got a gun, and I got a gun, let's go out in the street and settle this". Today Chicago has the strictest prohibition on handguns in the country. And last year, 800 people lost arguments settled because the guy who shot them knew his opponent would be unarmed.

 

Also, consider Vermont. In Vermont, you carry your weapon openly, you carry it concealed, you carry it how you like, when you like, and where you like. Ever hear of a mass murder in Vermont? (And by the way, Vermont is also so far to the Left otherwise that - barring the cold and the absence of firearms restrictions - it could be California with maple syrup.)

 

Of course there are people who say that the "more guns = less crime" examples here are a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy. This is Latin for (roughly) "It happened after this, therefore this caused it".  The classic example of this fallacy is: "The rooster crowed, the sun arose, therefore the rooster crowing made the sun rise".

 

The "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy can be exposed by the simple device of killing the rooster. When the sun rises in silence, the fallacy is exposed.

 

So you would expect that if some area in a "gun-freindly" place were made "gun-free"; then if nothing bad happened there either; that would mean that other factors unrelated to the presence of firearms in ordinary citizen's hands were responsible for the low occurrence of gun violence. Fair enough.

 

Look to Aurora, Colorado. In Colorado, citizens may carry concealed weapons into almost any venue that does not specifically prohibit them.

 

The maniac who shot up the theater multiplex in Aurora bypassed several other (much more conveniently located) theater complexes which did not prohibit firearms. In those places, the rooster of  firearms in the hands of citizens was crowing, and the sun of safe and peaceful life shone.

 

The place where that rooster was killed and failed to crow was a theater which specifically prohibited its patrons from having weapons on the premises. When that rooster failed to crow, darkness reigned, and people died.

 

The state-controlled media reporters like to respond to this fact with a droning mantra about how if there had been armed citizens in the theater they (choose as may as you like, it's all BS) would have not been able to stop the killer because of his "superior weaponry"/ might have sprayed even more bullets and killed more people/or whatever. But the main usefulness of an armed citizenry in preventing crime (and for that matter, tyranny) is mostly one of deterrence. In Aurora, the killer was deterred three times before he found a place where there was guaranteed to be no opposition to his design.

 

In the case of the tragic massacre in Connecticut, the lamestream media types have been conjuring visions of "teachers in pitched gun battles" with the killer, had they been permitted to have firearms to defend the kids.  The irony is, the killer selected a school full of kiddies for his crime precisely because he knew that there would not be a single armed person there to stop him. Had he known that any adult he encountered just might have a Glock under his or her jacket, he likely would have just stayed home and jerked off.

 

Firearms are not "the problem". In our next post we will identify the problem and posit some possible solutions.    

THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

I promised not to write on this subject until the holidays had passed, in order to be at least one person who kept his yap shut and let the poor families of the children murdered in the Newton, Connecticut schoolhouse massacre deal with what can only be the worst Christmas anyone has - outside of actual wartime - ever experienced.  Since everybody else was playing this event for all they could get out of it, my silence does not count for a whole lot; but at least one commentator on one obscure web log let them have their peace. My prayers are with these families.

 

On the other hand, as I pointed out in my initial reaction to this dreadful event, those whose fantasy is - for whatever motive - getting rid of firearms were crying on the outside, but smiling on the inside as they planned on how best to use this awful massacre of innocents to their own ends. I can imagine the Brady Bunch doing jigs and rubbing theiir hands together in glee as they crafted press releases and gave their lobbying corps their marching orders.

 

The bunch of loony ladies known as "Code Pink" have gotten involved, too.  On a scale rating obnoxiousness of 1 to 100, with cream cheese on the low side and the Westboro Baptist Church on the other end; Code Pink is about a 75.3.   In one instance, a "Code Pink" gal stood up in front of NRA President Wayne LaPierre and started shouting that the NRA were "murderers". I really regret  not renewing my NRA membership, as I'd have sued that idiot woman and Code Pink for every dime they had, since I've never killed a soul. 

 

Code Pink also had a picket line outside "The Nation's Gun Show" at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia last weekend. They were annoying the living hell out of every show attendee they could, and I would just like to know; if they are so damned scared of people carrying firearms; just why it is then that they felt so sure they could openly irritate the hell out of a couple thousand armed gun enthusiasts without getting shot to death? After all, we folks who carry loaded firearms kill people, don't we?  (Of course we don't - except in the case of defending ourselves or others from death, or greivous bodily harm (such as, oh, rape).) Those Code Pink ladies were in the safest place in Virginia right then, and they knew it. 

 

Speaking of gun shows, have you ever heard of a mass shooting at a gun show? If you believe the lies spewed by the Bradys and the Pinks and their ilk, you'd expect that a gun show - where there are literally miles of tables piled with all manner of firearms, ammunition, swords, knives, daggers, etc. - to be the ideal place to stage a mass murder. They even have Class III weapons - fully automatic M-16s, AK47s, Browning Automatic Rifles, even a few old examples of the world's first true assault rifle, the Sturmgewehr StG44 - on display and for sale. Sneak a few loaded up magazines and a pair of wire snips to sever the security cables, snatch an M16 from one of the displays, and start spraying rounds. It would be ridiculously easy. So why hasn't anyone tried it?

 

The answer is as ridiculously obvious as the act would be easy. No one has tried this because if they did, they would be dead as the bovine that provided my corned-beef-and-cabbage New Year's Day dinner before three rounds of full-auto fire had exited the muzzle of the weapon. 

People bring their kids to these gun shows, too. I bet that just horrifies you anti-gun folks, doesn't it? Well, yes they sometimes get hurt. One boy was ripping and tearing up and down the aisles and hit his puddin' head on a table corner, and his father - who had been admonishing him to settle down - came over to him and...

I bet you antis thought I was about to say that the dad pulled out his belt and gave the tyke a bare-ass whippin' while the rest of the assembled hillbillies hooted approval.  Sorry to disappoint you all, but Daddy came over, comforted his son, and gently told him that now he knew why Daddy was telling him not to run in the aisles. Then Daddy and his wife (Girlfreind, maybe?) excused themselves to drive their son to the emergency room to get him checked out.

That child was never in any danger of being harmed by gunfire, even though he walked (and ran and horseplayed) among tables chock-full of weapons. I would also note that anyone who tried to harm him might well have met the fate of my above-mentioned hypothetical gun-show shooter.

That's the kind of people we Armed Citizens are.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, however, the anti-gun statists hurried to get their message out while the hurt was deep and emotions were high.  There was nothing for them but the agenda, and they used every trick in Mr. Alinsky's book to push it. When Virginia Governer McDonnell suggested armed guards in schools, the Democrat Representative for Fairfax County, Gerry Oconnell, said that he was "offended" that McDonnell had "insulted" the Newtown teachers by the (where did this come from?) suggestion that they had been derelict by not being prepared for the shooter by being armed.  That's not even close to anything McDonnell said or implied, but it advances the narrative; so even if it's not true it's still a fact (such is the reasoning of the anti-gun Left).

The media blitz about this tragedy - having the same anti-gun agenda - is actively pushing the same old load of baloney about guns and the effectiveness of gun bans. Perhaps the biggest load of crapola came from noted Leftist movie maker Michael Moore, who said that he found it odd that all the places where people could own guns legally were places where there was no crime; yet our "inner cities" where the crime rates are highest are where you will find no legal gun owners. Moore's conclusion is that people who live where guns are legal are "racist" (?!!!??!!!).  Michael Moore has a Wack-A-Mole game where his brain should be (Yet there are people who take this fat fool seriously, and this really worries me.)

The Washington Post   has a column called "5 myths about" whose subject two weeks ago was "gun control".  In it, the columnist said that he was tired of hearing the "canard" that the Second Amendment was put in to ensure that the people would be armed and able to stave off a tyrannical government. 

It is not a canard.

The Amendment reads thus:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The Second Amendment is not about hunting.

Neither is it about the right of a State to have a National Guard unit or two.  "Well regulated" does not mean "Drowning in regulations written by people who don't know a spontoon from a halberd". It means "adequately trained to the use of Arms".  And the Militia is NOT the "National Guard".  It is, according to James Madison, "The whole body of the People". 

"...(B)eing neccesary to the security of a free State". Note the phrase "free State".  A tyranny is not a "free State"; ergo the Second Amendment is about providing something for a would-be tyrant to worry about.

The last clause of the Amendment states how this shall be accomplished:

"(T)he right of the people, to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

It is the right of the people. That means that it is the right of each and every free man and woman, whether they be formal members of a State, Federal, or local military or paramilitary organization or not. Every time a right is said to belong to "the people" it means individual people. Otherwise the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...." could be interpreted to mean the houses and papers, etc. of the State government and not you in your little castle.

"(S)hall not be infringed".  Out of deference to religion in the First Amendment, churches are not taxed. Firearms and ammunition are. Why someone doesn't point this out as infringement baffles me. All this hooey being shouted about "banning" certain types of firearms is nothing more than the advocacy of violating the Second Amendment, too.

Because "(T)o keep and bear Arms" means to keep and bear, not just a flintlock musket (you can just can that old arguement) but to keep and bear ANYTHING UP TO AND INCLUDING THE STANDARD ARMAMENT OF A COMMON LIGHT INFANTRYMAN. This today means everything up to and INCLUDING a fully automatic select fire (true) assault rifle.

All but one of the recent mass shootings took place in "gun-free" zones. Much has been made of the fact that the Columbine shooters were dealing with an environment where there were armed security guards, but being few and in uniform they were easily avoided; there routines having been observed and analyzed by the killers.

In all but one of the "gun free zone" massacres, the killer(s) - including the Columbine murderers - killed themselves when met with armed resistance and the inevitability of capture. The lone exception is the Aurora, Colorado killer who tried to slip the police net by pretending to be a cop. The police, however, are not stupid; and he was taken alive.

In the event where lawfully armed citizens were present - the attempted murder of Representative Gabby Giffords in Arizona - the killer was tackled and brought to justice alive, though not a shot was fired by the good guys.  The good armed citizens of Arizona thus have a track record similar to that of the United States Secret Service, who fired not a shot but captured John Hinckley alive after his attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. If "the right of the people, to keep and bear Arms" had not already been so egregiously infringed by people with motives ranging from misguided to devious and despotic, a score and more of kids in Connecticut might just be telling their pals today what Santa gave them for Christmas. It is just infuriating.