Or referenced and cited only when it is politically expedient to call on its protections. At all other times it is but an old document quilled by whigged white misogynistic racists of the propertied gentry who, like savages, brought insurrection and destruction against a dignified Monarchy. Much of it right from inside Massachusetts!
To wit: “Town of Westford Moving Forward with Unprecedented Gun Ban” (this being one of those occasions where the Constitution is racist and can therefore be ignored. Nay, must be! For the children!)
Westford Selectman, Bob Jeffries, has proposed a bylaw that will significantly affect the 2nd Amendment rights of the residents of Westford. If the bylaw passes it will do the following:
*Ban all firearms that accept a magazine.
*This affects firearms used by law abiding citizens for the purpose of home defense, self-defense, small game hunting, sporting, target shooting, and competition shooting.
*Owners would have 90 days to remove all banned firearms from town or surrender them to the police.
*Violators may be penalized by indictment or complaint in district court.
*Violators would face a fine of $100 for first offense, $200 for second, and $300 for third.
Were I a legislator in Westford, I’d introduce a bill that affects every other right in the Bill of Rights in a similar way. For instance, I’d introduce a bill that bans all methods of information dissemination that uses binary code, movable type, or mass printing machinery and typographic plates; I’d introduce a bill that redefines “soldier,” for the purpose of quartering, as “only those wearing tri-point hats, white stockings, and red coats; I’d introduce legislation that seeks to expand probable cause to include “those who just look kind of sketchy”; and so on down the list.
The fact is, while Heller does make some allowance for restrictions on firearm ownership, it doesn’t allow any state or locality to create restrictions that are meant specifically to undermine the very natural right laid out in the Bill of Rights and protected from government.
It’s time to maybe point out the absurdity of such measures — and take away the power they possess when politicians, bathed in crocodile tears, use emotional blackmail to bring about the kinds of policy changes that fundamentally impinge upon our natural rights.
During Colorado’s gun debate, I begged my Rep, the very pro-Second Amendment Rep Lori Saine, to go into the well and introduce as an amendment legislation that would ban criminals — and offer it as a more effective counter to the “epidemic” of bad “gun violence” than those measures on offer from the Majority Democrats (who, for instance, used mass shootings in gun free zones in both Aurora and Connecticut to pass legislation creating of college campuses new gun free zones. With a straight face, even).
Arguing with these anti-liberty crusaders by using facts doesn’t work: I watched the Democrats in the Colorado assembly act just as many progressives in blog comment sections act: you point them to facts, they ignore you, then they demand you present facts disputing their emotional claim that gun bans would of course stop violence.
John Lott proposed we argue on the ground of safety, but as we saw with the campus gun ban, so long as whistles are available, suck it up, ladies, or pretend you have the crabs. Plus, buddy system! You don’t need guns. And even if you do, making professors feel safe from the hickish rural rightwing gun nuts while they are indoctrinating you is more important than your natural right to self-protection, which of course stops the minute you enter a bastion of open-minded free-thinking and diversity.
So what’s left, I think, is Swiftian ridicule. Smile and sneer and ironize as the left does — then mock their fake outrage (instead of going out of your way, as the GOP representatives in the CO assembly did, to insist that the bills’ sponsor(s) was a serious person advancing serious, workable solutions to some problem that, statistically speaking, doesn’t exist).
Instead, though, we have poll-watching cowards within the GOP who are ready, on the national level, to sacrifice our freedoms for some good press from the NYT.
At least in Colorado none of this passed with bi-partisan support. Giving voters a moment of clarity going forward.
The GOP establishment doesn’t like such clarity. Because they like a centralized ruling class, and they figure that the electoral pendulum will swing their way eventually no matter what, so what’s important now is making sure there aren’t enough Hobbits around when it does to ruin their turn at the trough.
(h/t RI Red)
Thing about critters that like a turn at the trough is, BACON!
Andrew Breitbart understood the power/effectiveness of ridicule and, therefore, promoted it as a very important weapon in the #War.
So, for the sake of discussion: I wonder if a revolver’s cylinder would be considered a magazine.
Or are they referring to removeable/replaceable magazines?
If that’s the case, would an M1 be legal, with its fixed magazine loaded using a clip? How about an SKS loaded from a stripper clip? The magazine itself stays in place; you’re just filling it up, in place, from something that holds the shells.
Or you could reload an SKS, slowly, one shell at a time. Would that be legal?
— Albert Camus, of all people. His works on rebellion and totalitarianism were recommended to me, and I’m finding them far more interesting than The Stranger ever was. Whether that’s the subject matter, or the fact that I’m twenty-*cough* years older now, I’m not sure.
We shall go on to the end, we shall mock them
fightin France, we shall mock themfighton the seas and oceans, we shall mock themfightwith growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall mock themfighton the beaches, we shall mock themfighton the landing grounds, we shall mock themfightin the fields and in the streets, we shall mock themfightin the hills; we shall never surrenderOne is guessing that the ban does not apply to the Westford po-po.
Otherwise, I’d be doing a Gomer Pyle calling “Citizen’s aRAYest! Citizen’s aRAYest!” on every evildethbringing gun-toting cop I’d see.
In California you can buy an AR, but it has to be configured with an nondetachable 10 round clip.
Of course now they want more, gun owner liability insurance, ammo licenses and such.
Proggs never let go of a cause once they’ve taken it up, and they never not want more once their cause is successful. It’s who they are.
Forgive me if this has been linked already; it’s worth linking again if it has:
—Via Rachel Lucas
About that ‘Mistake’ that Almost Created a Police State in Washington…
“If that’s the case, would an M1 be legal, with its fixed magazine loaded using a clip?”
Not a problem since no one has ever been killed with one of those. (sarc, of course).
Owners would have 90 days to remove all banned firearms from town or surrender them to the police.
I reiterate my comment about telling the legislators to introduce their mouths to my nether regions as the appropriate response to “laws” such as this. And again, followed by a punch to the nuts. By now, though, I think it’s time to escalate to “Louisville slugger to the nuts”. Next offense? Shoving a live Tasmanian Devil down their shorts.
Joe Biden’s Felony Self-Defense Advice
Follow the Vice President’s tips to his wife and head directly to jail.
I’m really starting to like this Milwaukee County Sheriff fella:
This is what they did with tobacco. They passed unconstitutional restrictions concerning a legal product and de facto banned it’s use.
They succeeded because smokers felt guilty (because anyone who smokes, knows it’s bad for them and others) and never fought very hard against the bans.
Again it was the caving of businesses to gov’t intrusion that sealed tobacco’s fate. By not fighting the laws, they aided and abetted the loss of freedom of choice and the rule of fake science in the war against liberty by liberals.
I’m heartened that many manufacturers are standing up against gov’t but it will be the gun shop owners and sales outlet’s who will be the deciding factor. If they bow to the illegal restraint of trade and acquiesce to ammunition taxes/bans and firearms taxes/bans then the game is lost.
The next step is the migration of those who no longer can remain in a state that has banned firearms (by whatever means) to states that vigorously defend the 2A.
We are being Balkanized on purpose.
isn’t an m1 clip 10 rounds? I forget. 8-10.
8
@dicentra
That Michael Z. Williamson post was epic.
since the epa now says radon can cause lung cancer i’m wondering how they controlled for radon in previous studies about smoking? as far fighting back, smokers were an ideal target for alinsky rule 13 pick the target.
I can understand the gov’t having a case to ban or restrict the use of a toxic substance that by it’s use will affect others. However, how they managed to dupe bar owners and restaurant owners into forced site wide banning is beyond me.
If people don’t like being where a smoker is, then they can not be there. Unlike say an Airplane, you can decide to leave or not show up if they allow smoking.
This was an intrusion not so much on smokers as it was on business. And they let it happen. Now we’ve got the pusillanimous pipsqueak Bloomberg deciding what size drink we can have and what type of cup we can use.
Where does it end?
Now we come to a named amendment to our constitution. One so important that the signers decided it needed to be included as part of the original formative rules.
It is second only to the right to free speech (the right of religious worship and the press are only specifiers of the general right to free speech and are derivative of that right but it was felt they needed to be specifically spelled out)
It really should be the first as it guarantees all the others. If one doesn’t have the right to self defense (which includes defending oneself against an intrusive government) then all other rights become moot.
Gun owners know this. Sportsmen less so.
Now we see the result of acting rationally in the face of zealotry. They have waited in ambush for over 50 years for these days and their thirst for the rights of patriots will not be slaked by mere background checks and partial bans.
They will continue to press for seizure. They will continue to claim that they have the right to take our rights away in the name of a subjective and irrational fear.
That our Senators are even CONSIDERING to accede to their wishes is a triumph of evil over right and they should be primaried for it.
Sen. John McCain is hereforth a TRAITOR to the US and the constitution he swore to uphold and defend and a shame to the USN. His previous acts of bravery and courage do NOT protect him from these charges and he has foresworn his duty and oath as both Senator and Naval Officer.
HE SHOULD BE AS ASHAMED OF HIMSELF AS WE ARE OF HIM.
Haven’t heard too much about it lately, but the 7th Circuit ordered the State of Illinois to adopt a “shall issue” CCW law about a month ago, and gave it 180 days to comply. Hard to see how a town could outlaw guns when Heller says the 2nd amendment protects a fundamental right to have a gun for self defense, and Federal courts are ordering states to adopt objective standards for concealed carry.
Hard to see how a town could outlaw guns when Heller says the 2nd amendment protects a fundamental right to have a gun for self defense, and Federal courts are ordering states to adopt objective standards for concealed carry.
Westford has no respect for federal authority. That’s the only admirable thing I can find about its current actions.
I guess if states can go outlaw so can towns. They just don’t go outlaw the same way.
Radon is the culprit in lung cancer from secondhand smoke. The amount of carcinogenic substances in secondhand smoke is miniscule but the tars can grab onto Radon if it is present and then when inhaled stick to the lung tissue allowing the Radon to remain there till it fissions and gives off its radiation.
Without the tars Radon is less likely to stay in the lungs long and without the Radon the tars are too tiny an amount to have a cancer effect that emerges from the background. The combination of secondhand smoke and elevated Radon levels can lead to an increase in lung cancer among non-smokers in a household but it requires both and an indoor place where the smoke has a chance to pick up the Radon atoms.
However this combination effect was not blasted out in the propaganda used to get all the smoking bans whose real reasons are nanny-state-ism and delicate noses of the PC crowd.
wiki
It’s actually kind of hard to recall an instance when last the Constitution was respected in the prospective act of governance. There was a moment during the Bush 43 administration when Pres. Bush almost — but didn’t quite — act in a way demonstrating respect.
Recall?
When he spoke publicly about his (mere) consideration to veto the McCain-Somebody Campaign Finance bill regarding free political speech protections, saying in effect: *This bill looks UnConsitutional to me, but I’m going to go ahead and sign it into law anyway, leaving the determination of the un-Constitutionality up to the Supreme Court*.
Dang, missed it by just that much.