Gun Control and Freedom, Part 4

                The topic of discussion for this Freedom Friday is the simple fact that gun control takes away freedom and security.  This fact has been proven time after time in nation after nation.  Is the United States doomed to follow the pattern?  We can know only by looking back, but heaven help us if we do. 

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states:  “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.”  Put simply, the reason for the Second Amendment is for the security of the people, individually and in groups, from our own government as well as from invasion by enemies.  Consider the Third Amendment in connection with the Second Amendment:  “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”  Our Founding Fathers trusted the common people more than they trusted the military!  This is the reason why they wanted every person to have the Right to keep and bear Arms.  We have the Second Amendment in order to provide security for ourselves and our neighbors, not for hunting and sports shooting as some claim.  In fact, it is the Second Amendment that protects all our other Rights.

President George Washington obviously thought the Second Amendment was for more than hunting and sports shooting because he said, “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”

Millions of people in numerous nations – Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, and Cuba to name a few - have suffered loss of freedom and even death through gun control and then confiscation of the guns.  Russia is one of those nations where citizens lost their freedom to protect themselves.  A Russian blogger by the name of Stanislav Mishin published the following opinion piece, titled “Americans never give up your guns,” on his blog, and his article was later picked up by Pravda.  Considering that Pravda was once the official press of the government of the United Soviet Socialist Republic, I find it strange for that specific newspaper to be publishing this information about the history of Russia to the world.

                “These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains:  the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions.

                “This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth.  This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar.  Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns, were everywhere, common items.  People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered.  Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples?  Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

                “Various armies, such as the Poles, during the CMYTA (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own.  In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

                “This well-armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds.  It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own.  If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

                “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.

                “Of course being savages, murders and liars does not mean being stupid, and 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.  Not much for soldiers.

                “To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense.  Why?  We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere…. but criminals are still armed and still murdering and too often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police.  The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.

                “While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people.  They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population.  This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

                “For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2^nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room.  Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position.  In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases.  As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or homemade bombs (everywhere), insane people strike.  They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or `talking to them’, it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

                “The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly.  So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted?  Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

                “No, it 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.  They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

                “So do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self-respect.”

                Did you notice the author’s comment that the Russian people still do not have the right to self-protection even though the Soviet Union fell 21 years ago?  I believe it will be much easier to defend and protect our right to keep and bear arms than it would be to retrieve it once it is taken away. 

Did you notice that the author considers the American way of life to be a “light” to the rest of the world?  President Ronald Reagan spoke about a “shining city on the hill,” and this is what he meant.   The people of the world recognize that the United States has what they want to enjoy; they want their nations to have the same freedoms we enjoy.  We cannot and will not give up our liberties!  America is the last best hope for the freedom of the world!  

Gun Control and Freedom, Part 2

                The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the simple fact that gun control destroys freedom.   We know from history that gun registration leads to confiscation of guns; we also know from history that governments commit mass murder against their own unarmed citizens.  Our Founders understood the connection between an armed citizenry and freedom and intentionally wrote the Second Amendment in order to provide American citizens with a way to protect themselves from a tyrannical government.

                Every time a mass murder takes place, Liberals and Progressives start clamoring for more gun control.  Within hours of the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, the media was focused on the weapons used and led the demands for new gun laws, and Liberal and Progressive politicians are only too happy to meet those demands.

                Charles Krauthammer published an interesting article at the Washington Post about the root causes of mass murder.  He wrote, “Every mass shooting has three elements:  the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate.”  After discussing the gun control demands which arose after the Newtown killings, he wrote, “Monsters shall always be with us but in earlier days they did not roam free.”  He explained how as a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s he had committed mentally ill patients but “labored under none of the crushing bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely more difficult today.”

                Krauthammer explained that we have many mentally ill people wandering our streets who are collectively known as “the homeless.”  In our politically correct society, we were forced to give them their freedoms and allow them to circulate through our communities as one of their “Rights” under the U.S. Constitution.  Krauthammer said that only a “tiny percentage of the mentally ill becomes mass killers,” but they apparently have to actually kill someone before they can be forcibly treated.  They can then be committed if they do not commit suicide first.

                “Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker.  Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.”

                Krauthammer suggested that the mass murders are connected to our culture of violent movies and video games:  we should not be shocked when “a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.”  He wrote that if “we’re serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything – guns, commitment, culture – must be on the table.”  In other words, just controlling the guns will not stop the problems; yet, all we hear from the media and the politicians is that we must get control of the guns. 

                Except for the awful mass murders, we do not have an epidemic of gun violence.  Krauthammer wrote that “over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50 percent.  Gun murders as well.”  He explained that the mass murders “are infinitely more difficult to prevent.  While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic.  The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage `entertainment’ that can intensify already murderous impulses.

                “But there’s a cost.  Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing `entertainment’ violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech.

                “That’s a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments.  But there’s no free lunch.  Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.”

                Every time something serious happens, Americans trade away some liberties.  After the terrorist attacks of 9/11 we gave away some of our freedoms and ended up with the TSA invading our bodies at the airports.  How many more of our freedoms are we prepared to give away for more public safety now?

We must learn from history or we will repeat it.  Hitler first went after the guns in Germany and then started gathering the people to exterminate them.  He then went into other countries where the citizens had been deprived of weapons to protect themselves.  He did not go into Switzerland because he knew the citizens were armed and ready to meet any invasion.

I judge the seriousness of any claim by the people who are making the claim.  When I learned that China was calling for American citizens to be disarmed, I knew for sure that we needed to keep our right to bear arms.  

It is a fact that armed citizens help to keep their nation free.  We must be careful about the freedoms we trade away in order to enjoy a safer society.  We must remember that those who want to take our guns are the very people who want to control everything that we do. 

               

Gun Control and Freedom

                The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the simple fact that citizens of any country lose freedom when their nation practices gun control.  Liberals and Progressives in our nation and in the counsels of the United Nations desire to disarm Americans in order to control us.  Gun control is not about controlling guns; it is about controlling citizens.

                Our Founders understood the importance of guns in the hands of common citizens.  This is the reason why they wrote the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.  This amendment reads:  "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."

Noah Webster, one of our Founders, stated:  "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe.  The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."  (An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, 1787)

Bob Costas, a sports announcer, found it necessary in early December to discuss his perceived need for gun control.    While discussing the murder/suicide of Kansas City player, Jovan Belcher, Costas appeared to call for stricter gun control measures.  He indicated that there was no need for professional football players to be carrying guns.  Costas continued to defend his rant about gun control because he is a liberal and believes that the common citizen is not capable of owning and using guns responsibly.

Switzerland seems to be the model for why citizens need to be armed, and Stephen P. Halbrook wrote an interesting article entitled "Guns, Crime, and the Swiss" to explain the connection between guns and freedom.  (Holbrook also wrote a book entitled Target Switzerland:  Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II.)

Holbrook began his article, "Back in 1994, when the U.S. Congress was debating whether to ban `assault weapons,' a talk show host asked Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, a sponsor of the ban, whether guns cause crime.  The host noted that, in Switzerland, all males are issued assault rifles for their militia service and are required to keep them at home, yet little crime exists there.  Bradley responded:  `My guess is - Swiss are pretty dull - so my guess is that probably didn't happen.'

"Actually, for those who think that target shooting is more fun than golf, Switzerland is anything but `dull.'  By car or by train, you see shooting ranges all over the country, but only a few golf courses.  If there is a Schuetzenfest in town, you will find rifles slung on hat racks in restaurants, and you will encounter men and women, old and young, walking, biking, and taking the tram with rifles over the shoulder, to and from the range.  They stroll right past the police station and no one bats an eye (in the U.S. a SWAT Team might do you in).

"Tourists - especially those from Japan, where guns are banned to all but the police - think it's a revolution.  But shooting is really just the national sport, although it has the deadly serious function of being the backbone of the national defense.

"Although there is more per capita firepower in Switzerland than any place in the world, it is one of the safest places to be.  To the delight of Americans who support the right to keep and bear arms, Switzerland is the proof in the pudding of the argument that guns don't cause crime."

Holbrook continued his article by quoting statistics from the UN International Study on Firearm Regulation about the 1994 homicide rate in various nations.  "The UN Study omits Switzerland from its comparative analysis.  The Swiss example contradicts the Study's hypothesis that a high incidence of firearm ownership correlates with high violent crime."  He then included some statistics from Swiss records.  "Sometimes, the data sounds too good to be true.  In 1993, not a single armed robbery was reported in Geneva.  In a word, Switzerland, which is awash in guns, has substantially lower murder and robbery rates than England, where most guns are banned."

While the United States and other nations have experienced school shootings, Switzerland has experienced zero attacks in spite of the fact that guns are available to students.  "At all major shooting matches, bicycles aplenty are parked outside.  Inside the firing shelter the competitors pay 12-year-olds tips to keep score.  The 16-year-olds shoot rifles along with men and women of all ages."

Halyard reported that Prof. Marshal Clinard wrote in "Cities with Little Crime:  `Even in the largest Swiss cities crime is not a major problem.'"  "The low crime rate is even more remarkable in that the criminal justice system is relatively lenient."

According to Halyard our Founders were well aware of the record in Switzerland, and the "Swiss influence was partly responsible for the adoption of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution….

"When the first U.S. Congress met and turned to defense measures in 1791, Representative Jackson argues:  `The inhabitants of Switzerland emancipated themselves by the establishment of a militia, which finally delivered them from the tyranny of their lords.'  A law was passed requiring every able-bodied citizen to provide himself with a firearm and enroll in the militia, and it stayed on the books for over a century."  I wonder if the law was struck from the books when the Progressive movement began in the early 1900s! 

Holbrook continued his article:  "While the United States is victimized by embarrassing episodes of criminal degradation, the twentieth-century European experience suggests that tyrannical governments kill far more than private criminals.  In 1933, the Nazis seized power via massive search-and-seizure operations for firearms against `Communists,' i.e., all political opponents.  In 1938, in preparation for and during the Night of the Broken Glass, they disarmed the Jews.  And when the Nazis occupied Europe in 1939-41, they proclaimed the death penalty for any person who failed to surrender all firearms within 24 hours.

"There may be various reasons why the Nazis did not invade Switzerland, but one of those reasons is that every Swiss man had a rifle at home.  The Nazi invasion plans themselves state that, because of the Swiss gun ownership and shooting skills, that country would be difficult to conquer and occupy.  The European countries occupied by the Nazis usually had strict gun controls before the war, and their registration lists facilitated confiscation of firearms and, in many cases, execution of their owners.

"By being able to keep out of both world wars in part through the dissuasive factor of an armed populace, Switzerland demonstrates that possession of firearms by civilians may help prevent large numbers of deaths and even genocide.  The Holocaust never came to Switzerland, the Jewish population of which was armed just like their fellow citizens…."

The European examples show that registration of guns precedes confiscation of weapons.  This is apparently one reason why Liberals and Progressives want to “register” our guns. 

Do you retain any wonder about why the Progressives want gun control?  I do not.  I believe that we should learn from the Swiss example; I believe it is important for us to have private gun ownership because armed citizens are free citizens.  No individual or group can overcome us when we have the capability to defend ourselves.  Obviously, many other Americans agree with me because gun sales have soared in the past four years and continue to increase.  Americans know that an armed citizenry is necessary to maintain liberty.  Gun control is not about controlling crime; it is about controlling citizens!