CNS:
According to the FBI’s unified crime report, 77.3% of justifiable homicides, defined as the killing of a felon during the commission of a felony, committed by private citizens in 2011 involved firearms. That’s 201 involving a firearm out of 260 total justified homicides.
For justifiable homicides committed by law enforcement officers in 2011, the number is even higher. According to the same FBI unified crime report police used firearms in 99.2% of the justifiable homicides they were involved in, 390 of 393 to be exact.
Furthermore, the FBI’s unified crime report tells us that the rate of firearms use in justified homicides has never fallen bellow 77.3% between 2007 & 2011. Similarly the rate for law enforcement officers has never been below 98.7% for that period.
Clearly, the data show that firearms are an integral part of self defense, at least in cases of justifiable homicides.
None of which matters, because this fight is not about guns. They are but the prop. Rather, this fight is about power, control, liberty, and the Statist’s desire to remove the last, most effective obstacle keeping free men free, not subjects, or masses to be managed and herded by a ruling elite.
Piers Morgan may sneer like the posturing foppish puff pastry he is, but the truth remains that the 2nd Amendment was added to the Bill of Rights to arm the American populace. And this arming was understood to serve as a way to defend the country and oneself — not only from potential foreign invaders, but from a home-grown tyrannical government. The USC and many state codes and constitutions identify both ready and reserve “militia” — a group that consists of all citizens, we the people, and those intent on becoming citizens.
When it comes to the relationship of the free individual to the state, it was the original, classically liberal iteration of “peace through strength” — or at the very least, a kind of detente. Noting that it isn’t likely to ever come to that — Morgan called the very idea absurd — is not the same as negating what was and is the purpose of the amendment. Leaving aside that in the 20th century alone we saw what tyrannical leftwing governments were willing to do to a disarmed populace, rendering Morgan’s definition of absurd absurd, you don’t change the Constitution with smug irony and haughty dismissiveness.
Obama and the Left have plans to erode that necessary protection to our liberty by way of Executive order — knowing that he can’t get legislation passed through Congress despite the orchestrated push by the progressives and their media handmaidens to demonize guns and gun ownership, and to use every emotion appeal they can contrive to push public opinion to their side.
If Obama believes we need to re-consider second amendment protections, he has at his diposal the amendment process and the bully pulpit. What he doesn’t have is dictatorial authority. Unless we grant it to him.
Thus far, the GOP has been largely silent on this issue — yet another hill they don’t appear willing to die on — but we mustn’t be. Nor should we feel compelled to comply with unconstitutional dictates. And this will remain true even after Obama stacks the Supreme Court with anti-gun activists in order to get legal rulings giving him or some future leftist cover to usurp by legislation a natural right that can only be challenged through the amendment process.
The only way to defeat a post-constitutionalist President and his willing cabal of lawbreakers is to insist on reaffirming the Constitution, then holding those who seek to undermine it to account. That we may not have the votes to do so doesn’t mean the gesture is an empty one.
It may seem at times that there is nothing larger and more powerful than the federal Leviathan. But we the people, brought together by the common purpose of protecting 0ur liberties, can be just that. If we are willing to stand up and be counted.
Oh heck no. No no no. First, capitulate. Then consider the lack of alternatives.
What they say:
Versus what they do by executive/administrative action which overrides what was legislated and is in the law.
I fully expect his coming executive orders to push into wholly new territory the power unilateral imperial presidential orders. And that the agencies carrying out the orders will expansively interpret their sway.
I live on the prairie, so I’m having a hard time losing the items I don’t have at the bottom of a lake.
Greetings:
In referring to Piers Morgan (who was apparently born down by the docks ???), I would have gone with “Shepherd’s Pie instead of “puff pastry”. Only the English (is that word still allowed or is it Great Brits these days ???) deserve Shepherd’s Pie and I like to save “puff pastries” for the froggies.
Take a weekend trip, Ernst. Do some ice fishing.
Confirmed.
The only way to defeat a post-constitutionalist President and his willing cabal of lawbreakers is to insist on reaffirming the Constitution, then holding those who seek to undermine it to account.
There’s also the Guy Fawkes route. (Never mind that all the kids in Guy Fawkes masks are trying to empower the fascist state; instead, savor the irony.)
And Ernst, I have one word for you: tornado. Those things will suck up an arsenal like it was a trailer park!
Greetings:
If I may abuse your hospitality just a bit more. This is the sorry state of leadership on the right end of the political spectrum. Even the NRA guy, who was so willing to show his neck to David Gregory, and accept even more “reasonable regulation” instead of shouting from the rooftops something like “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand ??? or “We plan to take any new government regulations (and maybe some old ones) to the Supreme Court and we’ll see how much you like that !!!
I don’t see any Vince (the best defense is a good offense) Lombardis on our coaching staff at all.
Gun control:
Hayek:
[T]he power which a multiple millionaire, who may be my neighbor and perhaps my employer, has over me is very much less than that which the smallest functionnaire possesses who wields the coercive power of the state on whose discretion it depends whether and how I am to be allowed to live or to work.
And Tocqueville:
“[A] network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules”… reduces citizens “to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
More group less individual. What’s not to like.
I may have to do that cranky.
Still, a general purpose threat repulsor/mayhem preventer/vermin eliminator is not an assault rifle, whatever the hoplophobes and Master minds might say.
It’s hard to strike the right balance between pushing back and calling too much attention upon oneself.
Of course, one thing about losing guns in boating accidents: On many homeowner’s insurances, your firearms are covered against loss. If you DO lose all your guns, and you happen to be a customer of, say, PROGRESSIVE insurance (proudly funding leftists for 30+ years), you should definitely report your loss and have them reimburse you, so you can get yourself a new Evil Black Assault Rifle, which you, being a complete klutz, promptly let fall into the ocean.
…you should fix that.
Nor should we feel compelled to comply with unconstitutional dictates.
This is the test, homies: If Obama loses in Congress and then makes his gun control thing a diktat, watch what the GOP and governors do. Do they say “we will not comply with this clearly unconstitutional power-grab” or do they knuckle under (with or without grousing) as if the diktat were law, on account of Obama says so?
Then we’ll know whom we can trust and whom we cannot (no surprises, I’ll warrant), and then it’s on.
“See, the President served the Governor, and then the Governor served him back, so now IT’S ON!” [/southpark]