Two Posts in One Day... same topic though

I wanted to post this in a separate post. First of all, I haven't been posting much as we collectively held our breath waiting for the Heller decision. Now that we have it in our hot little hands, I couldn't keep my views inside for very long. I had to vent. So, round two of my venting comes here.

I have serious concerns about a quote from the minority opinion penned by Justice John Paul Stevens. I haven't had a chance to read all of the opinions yet... I admit I have only skimmed them at this point. I will read them all in the near future. I understand the main points from the majority and wanted to read it last because I knew the minority opinions would get my blood pressure up and the majority opinions would help restore my faith in the Justice System. So, without further ado, here is a wonderful quote from Justice Stevens' opinion:

"[The majority] would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

I have shocking news for Justice Stevens... that is EXACTLY what the Framers of the Constitution wanted to do. The Framers were the same people that wrote the Declaration of Independence. They are the same people that were watching British forces kick in doors and confiscate firearms from citizens because the Crown wanted to try and disarm their subjects before a revolution began. They are the same people that lived in an oppressive government and knew they had to have the ability to defend themselves from that government and overthrow it if necessary. They are the same people that risked their lives, their livelihood, and their families to make this country free.

They are the same men that watched their friends die at the hands of the British. They are the same ones that nearly froze to death at Valley Forge. They are the brave, free men that wanted to make sure no government of this magnificent nation could oppress her people again.

Yes, Justice John Paul Stevens... that is exactly what they meant. And it terrifies me to my very core that you don't understand this.... and that more Justices like you may soon sit along side you.

Sirius

Supreme Court gets it right... barely

The supreme court produced its verdict on Thursday June 26, 2008 in the case of Washington DC v. Heller. In it, they upheld that the DC gun ban was unconstitutional and that the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right. This right is now the same as all of the other ones in the Bill of Rights in that it applies to individuals and keeps governments from improper use of their authority in the oppression of a free people.

This is wonderful news.

Yet, it needs to be noted that we should be horrified. The vote was 5-4. 5-4. That vote means that we were one Justice away from loosing our second amendment rights. One vote. There were four people on the bench that thought it was perfectly OK to not allow people to own a functional firearm and that outlawing pistols was perfectly fine. One vote.

Now, we need to think very carefully about this... there will be vacancies on the Supreme Court during the next Presidency. Possibly as many as three. If Barack Obama gets the presidency he has pledged to put Justices on the bench "...who have enough empathy, enough feeling, for what ordinary people are going through." He has pledged to put people on the bench like Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter... all of whom voted in the minority on this case with the fourth vote being Paul Stevens.

If Obama is president, we will loose our right to keep and bear arms.

This is not a threat. This is fact. If he is able to appoint justices such as Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Stevens to the vacancies then the next vote can be as high as 6-3... but in the opposite direction. At this moment, lawsuits are being filed in New York City, San Fransisco, and Chicago to fight their gun bans based on this ruling. Some, if not all, will make it to the Supreme court but that will take time. 5-10 years of time. During the time it takes to make it to the Supreme Court of the United States the entire composition can be different. We can, and will, loose our fundamental right to self defense if we allow an Obama presidency.

I am not the biggest fan of McCain. There are things within his policies that I do not like. There are reasons I would prefer a different candidate. Yet, I know he will nominate judges that believe in the Constitution and in the founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence. I know that McCain will hold the course in the most important item of the next presidency... appointing the right, constructionist judges.

Appointments to the Supreme Court are for life. Whoever has the power to nominate judges will leave a legacy that will stretch for decades. Never before in my life have I been a one topic voter. This year I will be. As I consider the candidates I will use six words to guide me.

Supreme Court. Supreme Court. Supreme Court.

Sirius

What is the Militia?

As the debate about D.C. vs Heller rolls around, I was compelled to find out what the legal definition of a "Militia" is within the United States. The 2nd 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."

To give a touch of background, I come from a very liberal family. My mother never wanted me to own a toy gun because it "promoted violence". My sisters live in the most liberal part of the state and think that guns are evil incarnate. So, I was raised to believe that the 2nd amendment only applied to a militia and that meant the National Guard. Now, I know better. If you read below, you will see the analyses of the sentence structure provided by the 2nd Amendment Sisters. Also, any time the words "the People" is used in the framing documents, it refers to individuals and individual rights. This fact is lost on the rest of my family, so I decided to take a different tack. What is a militia?

After much searching over the past few years, a friend of mine on a discussion forum posted a link to the actual law defining a militia. I will quote it below, but it can be found HERE. I do have to thank the Cornell School of Law for providing a searchable database of Federal Law. The part we are concerned about (if you want to find it through an impartial reference) is US Code: Title 10, Subtitle A, Part 1, Chapter 13, § 311 which states: (bold/italics added for emphasis)

§ 311. Militia: composition and classes
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

The other piece I wanted to quote was an answer to "Who is exempt from the militia?" This is covered by US Code: Title 10, Subtitle A, Part 1, Chapter 13, § 312

§ 312. Militia duty: exemptions
(a) The following persons are exempt from militia duty:
(1) The Vice President.
(2) The judicial and executive officers of the United States, the several States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.
(3) Members of the armed forces, except members who are not on active duty.
(4) Customhouse clerks.
(5) Persons employed by the United States in the transmission of mail.
(6) Workmen employed in armories, arsenals, and naval shipyards of the United States.
(7) Pilots on navigable waters.
(8) Mariners in the sea service of a citizen of, or a merchant in, the United States.
(b) A person who claims exemption because of religious belief is exempt from militia duty in a combatant capacity, if the conscientious holding of that belief is established under such regulations as the President may prescribe. However, such a person is not exempt from militia duty that the President determines to be noncombatant.

So, what this means is that every able bodied man who is between the ages of 17 and 45 and every woman who is in the National Guard are members of the Militia unless they are exempted by § 312.

That means, I am a part of a well regulated Militia. Since a well regulated Militia is necessary for the security of this great nation and our freedoms, I have the right to keep and carry a firearm. This right will not be infringed. That is the Law. That is the Constitution. That is a right that is protected by the formation of this great country.

God bless the founding fathers.
God bless those fighting to keep our rights.
God bless Mr. Heller.
God bless the USA.

Michigan celebrates 6 years of Right To Carry

Below is an editorial from the Lenawaee Connection Daily Telegram

EDITORIAL

Wednesday, January 9, 2008 10:23 AM EST

State figures dispel anti-gun predictions

At issue: A look back at Michigan’s concealed carry gun law, six years after it took effect.

Our view: Data indicates law-abiding citizens, given a chance to make good choices, have led to improved safety as well as to more freedom.

Laws tend to restrict citizens, if only — we’re told — for our own good. The ever-growing “do not” list now includes smoking in your own private business (unless, for now, it happens to be a bar or restaurant), not wearing a motorcycle helmet, failing to buckle your seat belt, playing dodgeball or tag on certain playgrounds, gambling on the Internet, refusing to buy health insurance (if you live in Massachusetts) or, in other areas, serving food cooked with trans fat.

So imagine a law that not only gives the public more individual freedom but, six years after implementation, seems to have contributed to a safer society.

According to a Detroit Free Press story published Sunday, Michigan now has more than 155,000 residents (about one in 65) legally licensed to carry a loaded firearm. That’s a six-fold increase since the state’s concealed carry law took effect. Most of us remember how nanny-state supporters objected to the law, assuring us that giving people more freedom to exercise their Second Amendment rights would “obviously” produce a flood of violence. Hundreds more people, they predicted, would die in shootouts on highways, city streets and businesses.

Instead, the opposite occurred. As permits have gone up, shootings have gone down and so has violent crime. In fact, the FBI reported Tuesday that violent crime in Detroit fell a surprising 12 percent in the first sixth months of 2007. This came despite a terrible economy that caused one university criminologist to anticipate a crime increase.

While it is not scientific to assign a cause-and-effect relationship to this phenomenon, similar results have been reported for years in most of the approximately 40 other states that have less restrictive concealed-carry firearm permits. On New Year’s Eve in Indianapolis, a shopper with a firearm stopped a supermarket armed robbery in progress and detained the suspect for police, without needing to fire a single shot. It was just another example of how more law-abiding citizens are protecting themselves and others.

The current data should be considered by Michigan lawmakers. They have a chance to pass House Bill 5162 that could give state teachers who try and who pass background checks and CCW permit training the option to legally protect their classes with a concealed firearm. The exasperated protests that students would be less safe if schools dropped their “gun-free zones” is identical to the claims we heard six years ago, claims discredited by experience.

It’s time to acknowledge that society is more free — and more safe — when criminals are not the only private citizens who might be carrying a firearm.

Empty holsters on campus

This is an article printed in the October 24th, 2007 Washington Times. It can be found here.

All I can say is "way to go, Scott!"

Empty holsters on campus

By W. Scott Lewis
October 24, 2007

Should you ever find yourself perusing the newspaper archives at your local library, take a few minutes to track down and compare the August 2, 1966, and April 17, 2007, editions of any American newspaper. You'll undoubtedly find that, for two papers written more than four decades apart, they tell strikingly similar stories.

In both editions you'll likely see that coverage of American soldiers fighting a publicly unpopular war overseas is pushed to the back pages by news of a mass shooting on the campus of a major university. But although the headlines suggest a classic case of "history repeats itself," the facts lurking beyond the newsprint actually tell a very different story.

On the morning of Aug. 1, 1966, few people had ever considered the possibility that they might die in an indiscriminate shooting spree. But shortly before noon on that fateful day, a 25-year-old former Marine climbed to the top of the University of Texas bell tower and created a worldwide reference point for such fears.

As police rushed to the scene, officers already on the UT campus struggled to formulate a plan. At that time, the Austin Police Department had no SWAT team. Officers were armed only with service revolvers and shotguns, both useless against a sniper firing from a fortified position high above the ground.

Seeing that something had to be done, students quickly retrieved hunting rifles from dorm rooms and fraternity houses, took up defensive positions throughout the campus and returned fire. In the August 2006 edition of Texas Monthly magazine, Bill Helmer, a graduate student at UT during the shooting, recalled the experience to journalist Pamela Colloff: He said he remembered thinking, "All we need is a bunch of idiots running around with rifles." But what they did turned out to be brilliant. Once the shooter could no longer lean over the edge and fire, he was much more limited in what he could do. That's why he did most of his damage in the first 20 minutes.

Flash forward 40 years, eight months and 15 days to the campus of Virginia Tech. Once again students and faculty on a college campus find themselves under fire from a madman. But this time there are no armed citizens to fend off the attack. Students and faculty are left with little recourse but to hide under their desks, as surviving victim Emily Haas told CNN, "waiting and hoping [the shooter] wouldn't come in." Sadly, the shooter did come into Emily's room. She survived with only superficial wounds, but her professor and 10 of her classmates lost their lives to a killer whose only advantage over his victims was a complete disregard for Virginia Tech's "gun-free" policy.

Though the notion of an indiscriminate shooting spree was a foreign concept in 1966, it's now very much a part of the national consciousness. Terms like "going postal" now populate the American vernacular. Students at elementary schools now practice what to do in the event of such an attack, much the same way their grandparents practiced "duck and cover." And yet, despite this awareness of and apparent desire to prepare for such threats, any suggestion that future shooting sprees might be mitigated by armed citizens — as was the UT sniper attack — is met with scorn and ridicule.

In the decades between these two college massacres, a pervasive idea took hold in America. Many individuals, particularly those in academic circles, began to view firearms as barbaric tools of violence symbols of machismo and false bravado only carried by men with small egos and smaller anatomies. Today, anyone who advocates carrying a handgun for self-defense is called a "cowboy" and accused of having a "John Wayne complex."

Whenever anyone suggests that concealed handgun license holders be allowed to carry concealed handguns on college campuses, the same way they're allowed to at movie theaters, office buildings, shopping malls and most other places, laughter, not intelligent rebuttal, is the response. Whenever proponents of "concealed carry" point to the success of concealed-carry laws throughout the nation, as well as studies showing that concealed handgun license holders are significantly less likely than non-license holders to commit violent crimes, they are answered with mockery, rather than intelligent discourse. In the world of academia and intellectual free expression, some issues are apparently not open for discussion.

This week students on more than 100 college campuses throughout the United States are wearing empty holsters as they go about their daily routines, as a reminder to everyone who sees them that they are defenseless against anyone not concerned with following the rules. These students understand something that students at the University of Texas were able to take for granted in the summer of 1966. All people have an innate right to defend themselves.

W. Scott Lewis, a commercial real estate agent and freelance writer from Austin, Texas, serves as the media coordinator for the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

DC Gun Laws Story

Here is an interesting article. It is from The National Review and can be found here. It details the real side of the helpless populace that is ignored by the politicians who continue to support a "gun ban" in Washington D.C. and make the entire district a "guaranteed victim" zone.

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Print Version

October 10, 2007 6:44 AM

Just Stand There While I Die
The D.C. government has that right, and exercises it frequently.

By David Freddoso

The first time someone tried to mug me in Washington D.C., I ran away as he threatened to shoot me from behind.

DCThe second time, when the exact same situation arose, I knew better. I stopped and turned around to confront the robber as soon as he threatened to shoot: “Hey, buddy!” I said confidently. “Who do you think you’re fooling? Guns are outlawed in the District of Columbia — I know you don’t really have one.”

He shot me in the face with a crossbow.

Okay, sorry, I’m just making that part up. What really happened is I ran like hell and got away, both times. Both times, the cops showed up about an hour after I dialed 911.

I have no idea whether either of my muggers actually had a gun — they each chased me from behind, and I was too busy running to ask. But a few years back, my best friend and his brother knew for sure that real guns were being trained on their heads as they were forced for several minutes to lie face-down, just blocks from the Capitol, on the red-brick sidewalk in front of their D.C. rowhouse. They both survived the robbery (two blocks from the local police precinct), but neither of them thought to ask the important questions: “Excuse me, were those guns legally registered before 1977? Are they grandfathered under the District of Columbia Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975?”

I hope that now you can understand where I am coming from when I read District of Columbia Attorney General Linda Singer’s hysterical court filing in the Heller case, which may strike down the District’s 31-year-old comprehensive ban on gun ownership.

“Whatever right the Second Amendment guarantees,” wrote the District’s chief law enforcer, “it does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die.”

What an excellent example of unintended humor — the District’s government is a national leader in standing by while its citizens die. Our homicide rate hit a 20-year low in 2005 — just 29 victims per 100,000 residents. That is slightly better than New York City’s rate (30.7) under Mayor David Dinkins in 1990, when the Big Apple suffered 2,250 homicides.

In 1991, the D.C. murder rate reached an astounding 81 per 100,000 — that was two years after Mayor Marion Barry famously told the Washington Press Club, “Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.”

D.C. residents are strictly forbidden from owning handguns, even in the privacy of their homes. Any long guns must be registered and kept “unloaded and disassembled.” It is not even legal, strictly speaking, to assemble and load your gun when you hear an intruder downstairs. A lower court ruled the ban unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court will decide later this year whether to take up the case.

In the debate over the gun ban, there is a strong statistical case that an armed citizenry is safer than one disarmed by unconstitutional laws, but this argument is not even necessary. There is absolutely no valid case that the District’s gun ban makes me safer as a District resident. When Singer and Mayor Adrian Fenty (D., of course) penned a September 4 Washington Post op-ed stating that “The handgun ban has saved countless lives,” were they really suggesting that without the ban there might have been 1,000 murder victims in 1991, instead of just 482? The implication is that D.C. is so totally ungovernable that only a total deprivation of constitutional rights can make it barely livable.

It is bad enough that the District government takes away constitutional rights in the name of safety, and then fails even to provide safety. But the story is actually better than that. In their response to the attorney general’s brief, Heller and the other plaintiffs in the case responded to Singer by noting the following irony:

Petitioners correctly note that the Second Amendment “does not require the District to stand by while its citizens die.” … Yet the city consistently fights to secure its right to stand by while its citizens are victimized by crime.

Yes, you read that correctly. The plaintiffs’ attorneys refer to a series of cases in which the District literally asserted its right to “stand by” while its citizens are victimized. The most dramatic is Warren v. District of Columbia, in which three women were sexually violated because of gross negligence on the part of Metropolitan police officers responding to their call. In the early morning hours of March 16, 1975, two men broke down the back door of a D.C. townhouse in Northeast and began raping a woman on the second floor. Her two roommates, hiding one floor above, called the police. According to the court’s opinion, a squad car responded, and the officer failed even to exit his car before leaving. The two women, listening to their roommate scream, called the police again. This time, an officer went so far as to knock at the door, but then left without further inspection.

Once the attackers discovered the other two women, they had their sick, twisted way with all three of them for the next 14 hours (I will not describe any of the details). The women sued the District of Columbia, which argued that “a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen.” The District won the case based on what is actually a long-standing legal principle.

Singer, with her silly, dramatic argumentation, has reminded us of this fact — something for which we should all be grateful.

It is our misfortune in Washington to be governed by such simpletons, but it is also a hidden blessing that their legal team shows this level of incompetence. It may be our best chance as District residents to take our safety out of their hands and put it back into our own.

— David Freddoso is an NRO staff reporter.

Gun Control Isn't Crime Control

Gun Control Isn't Crime Control
Stricter Gun Control Laws Wouldn't Have Prevented Va. Tech Tragedy
OPINION by JOHN STOSSEL
April 26, 2007—


This past Tuesday the governor of Virginia announced he would close the loophole that allowed Seung-Hui Cho to buy the guns he used to kill 32 people -- and himself -- on the Virginia Tech campus. OK, it's a good idea to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable. But be careful about how far the calls for gun control go, because the idea that gun control laws lower gun crime is a myth.

After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns. Britain seemed to get safer by the minute, as 162,000 newly-illegal firearms were forked over to British officials by law-abiding citizens.

But this didn't decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.

Might stricter gun laws result in more gun crime? It seems counterintuitive but makes sense if we consider one simple fact: Criminals don't obey the law. Strict gun laws, like the ban in Britain, probably only affect the actions of people who wouldn't commit crimes in the first place.

England's ban didn't magically cause all British handguns to disappear. Officials estimate that more than 250,000 illegal weapons are still in circulation in the country. Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these weapons now have a much easier job, and the incidence of gun-related crime has risen. As the saying goes, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

It's true that if gun control laws had been stricter in Virginia, Seung-Hui Cho would have had a more difficult time getting ahold of the weapons he used to gun down innocent students and teachers. But it's foolish to assume that stricter gun laws will prevent maniacs like Cho from committing heinous crimes. A deranged criminal will find a way to get his hands on a gun. Or a bomb.

The sad truth is that if gun laws had been less strict in Virginia, there is a possibility that the tragedy at Virginia Tech could have claimed fewer lives.

In January 2006, a bill was proposed in the Virginia State Assembly that would have forced Virginia Tech to change its current policy and allow students and faculty members to legally carry weapons on campus. Teenage college students carrying guns makes me nervous, but shouldn't adults be able to decide if they want to arm themselves -- just in case? When the bill was defeated, a Virginia Tech spokesman cheered the action, saying, "This will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."

However, one gun rights advocate lamented the bill's failure with chilling accuracy: "You never know when evil will pop up."

Back in 2002, evil arrived at Virginia's Appalachian School of Law. A disgruntled student opened fire on the school's campus, killing three and wounding more. The law school also prohibited guns on campus, but fortunately two students happened to have firearms in their cars. When the pair heard gunshots, they retrieved their weapons and trained them on the killer, helping restrain him until authorities arrived.

There's no way to know whether Seung-Hui Cho's murderous rampage could have been stopped in a similar way, but what's certain is that strict gun control laws do not always have the effect that legislators intend. More guns (in the right hands) can stop crime, and fewer guns (in the wrong hands) can make for more crime. Gun control isn't crime control.

First Note

The Second Amendment, as passed by the House and Senate, 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.

”

The copies distributed to the states, and then ratified by them, had different capitalization and punctuation:

“

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.

”

Both versions are commonly used in official government publications. The original hand-written copy of the Bill of Rights, approved by the House and Senate, was prepared by scribe William Lambert and hangs in the National Archives.

The above from Wikipedia (I hate quoting Wiki, but it served the purpose)
I have been reading about the literal interpretation of the 2nd amendment. Being a geek, I want to know as much as possible to be able to validate or change the things I have considered. The language of the 2nd amendment has made it open to interpretation. The question becomes "does the 2nd amendment only apply to militia members?

In my research, I found a great interpretation at the "Second Amendment Sisters" website. http://www.2asisters.org/unabridged.htm Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that the rights of the individuals that are safeguarded by the Bill of Rights are assumed to have always been present. They were, and are, there and granted by the Creator and not by the Bill of Rights itself.

This brings me to my concerns about the current gun debates. It seems that those that want to prevent firearms from being in civilian hands have forgotten that the same people that founded this country were they ones that fought to overthrow it's previous ruler. They did this because they had the right to have the weapons required to do this usurping of authority. They had the same equipment as the governing military. Without this, we would have remained under the the oppression of British rule.

Any discussion of the 2nd Amendment would be fundamentally flawed if the Declaration of Independence was not included. Of the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, 6 also signed the Constitution. This austire group of 56 also produced several Presidents of the United States, Presidents of the Continental Congress, and other that built the foundation of freedom upon which we have built.

As Benjamin Franklin left the Constitutional Convention, on September 18, 1787, a certain Mrs. Powel shouted out to him: “Well, doctor, what have we got?,” and Franklin responded: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” We need to stand up for Franklin, Washington, Hancock, and the other men who stood up and shouted "No more!" We the People must fight to keep this Republic and to preserve our unailable rights, granted to us by our Creator. We must be stalwart and stand for truth and original intent.