Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Providence Journal:

The Rhode Island GOP’s attempt to raise money by raffling off guns, including Smith & Wesson’s version of the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle linked to the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre, is stirring controversy even within state Republican ranks.

State Republican Chairman Mark Smiley said the winners of the party’s gun raffle this Sunday at the South County Rod & Gun Club will have to pass background checks.

“The weapon will be held, and the winner given a certificate,” Smiley said. “That certificate will be redeemable at the gun shop that donated the weapon. After the winner passes both state and federal background checks and has waited the required week, they will take possession of the weapon.”

Nonetheless, three of the potential major party candidates for governor panned the idea, including Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, the potential GOP candidate. The attorney general and his potential Republican opponent also criticized the idea.

Among the words the high-profile critics used to describe this latest GOP fundraising tack: “outrageous,” “disgusting,” “insensitive.” A sampling of their comments:

“While I am a supporter of the Second Amendment, as a former criminal prosecutor I have strong reservations against the raffling of a semiautomatic weapon,” Fung said. “This is not something that I would ever do to raise campaign funds.”

Do you understand now?  Do you still believe that there is any real difference between the Republicans and Democrats?  Folks, I just don’t know else to say it other than to keep pointing out the obvious.  Some places are irrecoverable.  They cannot be saved.  Rhode Island is just such a place, and if you’re a liberty loving gun owner who lives in Rhode Island, your best bet is to get out of there to a free state.  Quickly.

Maryland is sued in federal court over recent gun laws:

Gun-rights activists in Maryland have filed a federal lawsuit to block the state’s new gun law before new requirements on assault weapons and large magazines go into effect Oct. 1.

In the lawsuit in filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Maryland, the plaintiffs argues the the Second Amendment and case law protect their right to own assault rifles and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, The Baltimore Sun reported.

The plaintiffs include the Maryland Licensed Firearms Dealers Association, the Maryland State Rifle and Pistol Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Associated Gun Clubs of Baltimore, and several other organizations, individuals and gun shops, according to the report.

Maryland responds that it’s too little, too late.  I question this move on both a tactical and strategic level.  First of all, the tactics of a challenge in federal court is like turning to the Leviathan to defang the Leviathan.  It’s unlikely, and a bit strange.

Strategically it might also be a mistake.  As I’ve said before, the Second Amendment doesn’t speak to states.  It frames the federal planners to restrict their actions.  The best option would have been to deal with this issue locally and within the state of Maryland.  If Maryland is too far gone to turn the tide of totalitarianism, then it’s time to move.

David Codrea notes some activism in Ohio.

An email sent by the president of the League of Women Voters of Hudson (Ohio) to its membership yesterday recruited support to overturn the state’s preemption laws on guns.

“If you are concerned by gun violence, you may be interested in Oberlin’s request for help on getting legislation to allow home rule with regard to banning firearms in city parks,” President Karen Swedenborg advised members. “This is a grass roots effort, if you are interested, contact me.”

Read the rest at Examiner.  Goof grief.  The League of Women Voters still exists?  David is right to have been involved in fighting attempts to overturn state preemption laws.  North Carolina still has a form of those on the books for cities and municipalities, as well as CLEO approval of handgun purchases.  We have our demons to deal with as well.

But the state is the right place to fight the fight until we secede from the union, after which it will be the only place to fight the fight.

CBS Connecticut:

The Paradis and D’Avino family knows guns. They’ve owned them and enjoyed hunting and target shooting. Shooting was just part of life, like the time after Thanksgiving dinner in 2009 when a guest of husband and wife Peter Paradis and Mary D’Avino brought out an AR-15 rifle he had in the car.

Together, with their children, the couple spent time shooting at a tree in their backyard on five acres off heavily wooded Route 61.

Paradis and his stepdaughter, Hannah D’Avino, recalled that holiday afternoon recently. They sat their kitchen table and reminisced about Hannah’s sister, Rachel D’Avino.

Rachel D’Avino died Dec. 14, 2012, inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Twenty first-grade students and six staff members died when Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old Newtown resident who had attended that elementary school, stormed into the building with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle. He shot his way through classrooms, then killed himself as police converged.

The rifle that killed their stepdaughter and sister was the same kind of military-style rifle the family had shot together that Thanksgiving Day. They’re commonly called assault weapons, a term once applied to fully automatic weapons used on the battlefield but now applied to semi-automatic military copycats given the same look, but not the ability to fire continuously with one pull of the trigger.

Let’s pause there for a moment and review the media explanation of guns.  The term “assault weapons” was not once, ever in history, used to describe what the military uses (which is technically referred to as assault rifle).  As we’ve discussed before, the concept of assault rifle involved three features: intermediate cartridge, mild recoil and selective fire.

Since the typical working man cannot afford the cost of owning a fully automatic weapon (only automatic weapons manufactured before 1968 stayed in circulation and their price is extremely high – see the Hughes Amendment), we have only two of the three features.  The phrase “assault weapon” is a fabricated bastard concocted by the Brady Campaign to scare people.

The next part of the article is very interesting and important.

Rachel’s murder has not marred her family’s memory of that holiday afternoon. For a family of marksmen, it also has not changed their views about guns.

After months of silence, Hannah D’Avino and Peter Paradis said they feel compelled to speak publicly: They are not happy that Rachel D’Avino’s name and her memory are being used to push for more and tougher gun legislation.

Their tragedy, they say, has been hijacked for political gain, to further a message with which they disagree.

“We’re very frustrated mainly because the 26 families got lumped together. We’re 26 families made of individuals that all have different opinions,” Hannah D’Avino said. “It’s like people are speaking for me and speaking for my sister. They don’t know her and they don’t know us.”

Paradis and D’Avino note that the only firearm-related injury or death in their family happened when Rachel was killed. She joined them in target shooting and was a good shot, they said.

That’s not all they remember of her _ it is a small detail of a life remembered mostly for her short career as a behavioral analyst and her work with autistic children and their families. Rachel D’Avino carried a passionate desire to help autistic children, to improve their quality of life and their families. The family home’s solarium is filled with gifts sent by strangers: drawings, letters, jewelry from people touched by her story, and by her tragic death. The family continues to raise money in Rachel’s name for research and services for autistic children and their families.

The family has been reluctant to talk publicly, largely because of unprofessional treatment by media representatives. Days after Rachel’s death, they were inundated with requests for interviews. They were frustrated by repeated attempts by producers and reporters who hoped to land their angle of the Newtown story.

Hannah D’Avino “friended” a woman on Facebook after the woman said she was a friend of Rachel’s. That woman later turned out to be a producer asking to interview her. Another woman got past a state trooper stationed at the front of the family’s driveway, saying she was a friend of Rachel who wanted to bring a basket of packaged muffin mix to the family. Inside was a card containing a business card from a producer at CNN.

So there you have it.  The D’Avino family wants to help the families of autistic children in memory of their beloved Rachel.  The media wanted to foist their political views into the tragedy in order to score points, and CNN lied in order to gain access to the family.

It seems that the term “assault weapon” isn’t the only bastard in the story.

David Codrea:

That leaves one last logical place where a public inquiry could and should be conducted, but Mr. Issa hasn’t shown much interest in following up on things of late, and the Republican leadership hardly seems inclined to encourage him to do so, for reasons we can only speculate.

Put on your hard hat and other PPEs and prepare for a working man’s article.  David takes us on an adventure race down memory lane to rehearse just how bad Fast and Furious really was, now that subject weapons are again in the news.  There are lots of reference links and some technical discussion, but it’s well worth the time.

And take note that even the previously fervent and well-intentioned are disinterested, or worn down, or know that the administration won’t be truthful.  Unfortunately we don’t know, but the sad state of affairs is that people are still perishing at the hands of an administration trying to construct a case for an “assault weapons ban” by rigging the statistics with U.S. weapons.

I also noticed The Washington Post, citing yet another pointy-head academic paper, is still pressing the meme of U.S. weapons flowing South to Mexico as the catalyst for the cartel violence.  Hey, if people don’t know the truth, you can tell them anything you want.  And academics do.  And the main stream media does.

Kurt Hofmann:

Quinn, readers may remember, is an enthusiastic advocate of banning so-called “assault weapons,” being one of those who considers them to be “weapons of war that belong on a battlefield, not on our streets.” He has been, in fact, willing to violate both the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois state constitution to write his own AWB bill, because, he claims, “the proliferation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines undermines public safety and the right of personal security of every citizen.”

We discussed this in Bilderberg, The New American Century And The Rise Of Intelligence.  It is difficult to achieve the status of arming orders for National Guard troops (it involves training, range qualifications, military approvals, knowledge of rules for the use of force, etc.).  The National Guard sent to the border weren’t under arming orders, and thus they did paperwork and clerical duties.

Kurt’s article made me think once again about the Governor’s threat to use National Guard troops.  Such an action would be both illegal and immoral.  But if he deployed the National Guard to the city to quell violence without arming orders or ammunition for their weapons, he is turning them into sitting ducks.

The Governor can’t win.  If he deploys them with weapons and ammunition he is committing an immoral action against the citizens.  If he deploys them without arming orders, he is being an immoral leader for the troops.  And actually he can win in this scenario.  It’s easy.  Don’t deploy the troops at all because that’s not the proper use of those troops.

And for someone who decries the use of weapons of war on the streets, perhaps he should be a little more concerned about unleashing SWAT teams to terrorize citizens.  “Weapons of war.”  The administration sent them to Mexico because they don’t want us to have them – we aren’t the cartels.  The SWAT teams want them, but they don’t want us to have them.  The Governor is prepared to unleash them in the city to quell violence, but not if it involves innocent citizens protecting themselves.

One could begin to think that this all had to do with a little more than “weapons of war,” this quest to arm certain men and disarm others, no?

Read David and Kurt.

The Guardian:

Moviegoers were lucky to escape unhurt after three men and a teenage girl armed with guns and a machete stormed the foyer of a Sydney cinema in a “brazen and shocking” robbery, police say.

The incident at the suburban Roseville Cinemas on Monday night put the lives of families and children at risk, north shore Detective Inspector Carole Dowsen told reporters.

“It was a very brazen attack, something that we actually think is shocking,” Dowsen said. “They’re going to a movie cinema, it’s early and there could be children around, and they’ve got a shotgun.

“It’s extremely lucky that nobody was hurt.”

The NSW opposition police spokesman, Nathan Rees, said it reflected a sad state of affairs in Sydney.

“Nobody expects to be threatened with a machete or a shotgun as they go to the cinema,” he said.

Shocked, the police are!  Shocked!  This is ruining the narrative, you know, this gun related crime stuff in Australia.  With their gun laws, they are supposed to be Shangri La.

The Washington Post:

President Obama, addressing yet another memorial gathering after a deadly mass shooting, said Sunday evening that he senses “a creeping resignation” in the United States that homicidal lunacy like the Washington Navy Yard massacre “is somehow the new normal.” But he said “it ought to be a shock to us all” and should spur Americans to demand “a common sense” balance between gun rights and gun control.

“We cannot accept this,” Obama said of the Sept. 16 attack that killed a dozen people at the Navy Yard. “As Americans bound in grief and love, we must insist here today there’s nothing normal about innocent men and women being gunned down where they work.”

Obama was addressing about 4,000 people, including loved ones of the slain, who gathered outdoors at the Marine Corps Barracks at Eighth and I streets SE, a few blocks from the Navy Yard. The president did not vow to throw the weight of his presidency behind an effort to enact gun-control legislation, as he did in December at a memorial service after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Instead, he urged the nation to demand such measures.

He used a shotgun – a gun most often used in America for hunting Turkey and water fowl.

Uh huh.  Did the Syria “crisis” evaporate Mr. Obama?  Do you need another crisis to deflect attention from the horrible economy and impending doom of Obamacare implementation?  Do you want people to waste their time figuring out how to make shotguns illegal instead of how to handle the clouds of economic meltdown on the horizon?

Move on.  Nothing to see here, go look at … yea, that’s it … guns again.

We’ve seen how the Department of Homeland Security has pressed for biometric identification of American citizens, and how American police have adopted COIN tactics, techniques and procedures in the policing of America, including more than seventy federal agencies.  These are cogs in a larger machine.  In an event that went completed ignored in the Main Stream Media (ignored, not missed), Wikileaks recently released 249 important documents on global intelligence contractors.

Today, Wednesday 4 September 2013 at 1600 UTC, WikiLeaks released ‘Spy Files #3′ – 249 documents from 92 global intelligence contractors. These documents reveal how, as the intelligence world has privatised, US, EU and developing world intelligence agencies have rushed into spending millions on next-generation mass surveillance technology to target communities, groups and whole populations.

WikiLeaks’ publisher Julian Assange stated: “WikiLeaks’ Spy Files #3 is part of our ongoing commitment to shining a light on the secretive mass surveillance industry. This publication doubles the WikiLeaks Spy Files database. The WikiLeaks Spy Files form a valuable resource for journalists and citizens alike, detailing and explaining how secretive state intelligence agencies are merging with the corporate world in their bid to harvest all human electronic communication.”

WikiLeaks’ Counter Intelligence Unit has been tracking the trackers. The WLCIU has collected data on the movements of key players in the surveillance contractor industry, including senior employees of Gamma, Hacking Team and others as they travel through Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brazil, Spain, Mexico and other countries.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ publisher, stated: “The WikiLeaks Counter Intelligence Unit operates to defend WikiLeaks’ assets, staff and sources, and, more broadly, to counter threats against investigative journalism and the public’s right to know.”

Documents in Spy Files #3 include sensitive sales brochures and presentations used to woo state intelligence agencies into buying mass surveillance services and technologies. Spy Files #3 also includes contracts and deployment documents, detailing specifics on how certain systems are installed and operated.

Internet spying technologies now being sold on the intelligence market include detecting encrypted and obfuscated internet usage such as Skype, BitTorrent, VPN, SSH and SSL. The documents reveal how contractors work with intelligence and policing agencies to obtain decryption keys.

The documents also detail bulk interception methods for voice, SMS, MMS, email, fax and satellite phone communications. The released documents also show intelligence contractors selling the ability to analyse web and mobile interceptions in real-time.

Analysis & Commentary

An important reddit comment follows this up.

Would you like to know more?

Revolution in Military Affairs

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_in_Military_Affairs

Former DoD analyst Franklin Spinney

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_C._Spinney

“At the core of the RMA is a radical hypothesis that would cause Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and George Patton to roll over in their graves. That is, that technology will transform the fog and friction of combat – the uncertainty, fear, chaos, imperfect information which is a natural product of a clash between opposing wills – into clear, friction-free, predictable, mechanistic interaction.”

Project for the New American Century

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

In its “Preface”, in highlighted boxes, Rebuilding America’s Defenses states that it aims to:

ESTABLISH FOUR CORE MISSIONS for the U.S. military:

1. Defend the American homeland;
2. Fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars;
3. Perform the “constabulary” duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions;
4. Transform U.S. forces to exploit the “revolution in military affairs”;

CONTROL THE NEW “INTERNATIONAL COMMONS” OF SPACE AND “CYBERSPACE”

Section V of Rebuilding America’s Defenses, entitled “Creating Tomorrow’s Dominant Force”, includes the sentence: “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor” (51).[15]

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. ”

-Zbigniew Brzezinski, geopolitician, former US National Security Advisor, and member of the Bilderberg Group. Quote lifted from his book “Between Two Ages”

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zbigniew_Brzezinski

It’s a brave new world that the rulers envision, no doubt.  No more conventional warfare, not even fourth generation warfare since the rulers know what we’re doing, who we are, where we are, what assets we have, to whom we’re connected, and how to stop “trouble-making” before it gets started.  Iraq was a laboratory for stability operations, and the story about the “snake-eaters” using a synthesis of organic intelligence, signals intelligence and smart analysis and finding the bad guys in order to end the insurgency only plays into the hands of the collectivists.  But can it really work like this?

The narrative about the “snake eaters” bringing an end to the campaign in Iraq is greatly overblown.  It was primarily the U.S. Marines who brought stability to the Anbar Province, and it was the hard work of thousands of Soldiers in the balance of Iraq that brought the modicum of success that we had in Iraq, for what end I don’t really know.

The Chicago police department cannot even stop gang violence in their own city, and the Governor is considering the use of National Guard troops to quell the violence.  It won’t work, and I seriously doubt that such troops would even be under arming orders, any more than the National Guard sent to the Southern border were under arming orders.

There is another intersection of this paradigm with collectivist intentions.  In order to find money for redistribution to the masses, they need to gut the military.  Notwithstanding the ongoing debate in our community over a standing army, the point is that the collectivists are going after money, and before they target 401Ks and IRAs, they willl use defense dollars in their designs for control.  It’s easier for them that way.

But this is all well and good for the rulers until the bullets start flying.  Obamacare was and continues to be a big deal.  Confiscation of 401Ks and IRAs might be the event that pushes typical Americans over the edge.  Watching the death of loved ones due to decisions by government death panels (while their wealth goes to funding the medical care of illegal aliens) might be another.

In the end, the hives the government has created (like Chicago) don’t work because they undermine values and the organic family unit.  Whatever the final straw, if the government cannot control violence in the very hives that they’ve created, they certainly can’t accomplish that in suburbia America, where fences, yard dogs and guns every fifty yards would make the hedgerows in Normany look like inviting terrain.

To be sure, the degree of electronic control over Americans makes the situation hard, and the government knows almost everything about us.  But for the Bilderberg group and the elitist rulers, I have a suggestion.  Try a test case in which you announce gun and wealth confiscations, and send one of the many federal policing agencies up Highway 276 in South Carolina, through Marietta, and turn left on Highway 11.  Within a few minutes make a turn to the right towards Jocassee Gorges, and start your confiscations up in those hills.  My bet is that the your vehicles will be blown to smithereens.  If you do make it up the road, it’s likely that they boys with scoped, bolt action hunting rifles will make life very difficult for you.  With all due respect to the tactical trainers (which training is very good and necessary, I’m sure), there won’t be small unit maneuver warfare.  No one will ever see the boys hiding behind the trees.  They won’t go on the run as a lone wolf because you won’t ever know they were involved in anything.  The best planning, the best troops and the best equipment couldn’t handle an insurgency in America – if one ever develops.

Or try to do confiscations in Murphy, North Carolina, or any one of a multitude of places in Idaho or Montana.  To be reminded of the value of a good rifleman, I strongly recommend an article in the most recent American Rifleman magazine (October 2013).  Sometimes this publication becomes annoying with its advertizing and product reviews.  But occasionally the magazine crafts a winner, and this one is meets the criteria.

The article is entitled “Where will we bury them all?,” and in my paper copy it begins on page 95.  It’s the story about the communist invasion of Finnland in 1939, and the value of basic combat rifles and good fieldcraft.  It summarizes:

The winter war proved a costly victory for the Soviets.  The Red Army lost approximately 126,875 dead or missing, 264,908 wounded and appriximately 5,600 captured.  In addition, they lost about 2,268 armored vehicles.  The Finns suffered greatly to preserve their freedom.  In the four months of combat, Finnish losses numbered approximately 26,662 dead and more than 39,000 wounded.  A tiny nation of riflemen had held off the communist Red giant.

It would be easy to conclude that the 50% of America which is still working is on a direct collision course with the elitist rulers.  It would be just as easy for the collectivists to conclude that biometrics, numbers, cards, decryption, cameras and aggressive policing will enable their designs.  The former conclusion seems more likely every day.  The later conclusion seems dangerous for the collectivists.

Of course, everything in this article is for educational purposes only.

Concerning the recent shooting in Chicago:

The perpetrators of a late-night attack in a southwest Chicago park in which 13 people were wounded, including a three-year-old, used an assault-style weapon to spray the crowd with bullets, making it “a miracle” no one was killed, the city’s police superintendent said on Friday.

Ballistics evidence shows that those behind Thursday night’s attack used a 7.62mm rifle fed by a high-capacity magazine, police superintendent Garry McCarthy told reporters. That type of weapon, McCarthy said, belongs on a “battlefield, not on the street or a corner or a park in the Back of the Yards”, the neighborhood where the shooting took place.

“It’s a miracle in this instance that there have been no fatalities based upon the lethality of the weapon used at the scene,” McCarthy said, calling on lawmakers to restrict the sale of such weapons and choke off the flow of illegal guns into the city.

Bah.  Ballistics evidence can’t demonstrate one way or another whether the gun had a high-capacity magazine, and a .308 shot from distance using a high powered scope and bolt action rifle would have proven to be more lethal.

But the chief of police has some words of wisdom for us.

“Illegal guns, illegal guns. Illegal guns drive violence.”

Strange, that.  I thought they said it was gang related violence?  The mere fact that there are guns around “drives” violence, we are led to believe.  I have a physician friend who went on a mission trip to Haiti a couple of years ago, and other than Scabies (which he was unprepared to treat because he didn’t carry the medications for it), the most common injury or sickness with which he dealt was machete wounds – deep wounds.  The gangs walk around taking things from people and swinging machetes.

Machetes, hammers, baseball bats, and in the Far East, acid thrown in the eyes of victims (according to one close friend who spent several years in Hong Kong).  Things don’t drive violence.  Evil in the heart of mankind drives violence.  You can’t ameliorate evil by banning guns.  You can only be prepared to deal with it when it happens.

I recently heard an interview with the base commander at the Navy Yard in Washington speak to the issue of how it feels to be defenseless in the face of an active shooter.  What bothered me most was the cavalier way in which he approached the subject.  Twelve people perished today, not including the shooter, and the sad part is that it didn’t have to happen.  David Codrea gives us his initial thoughts on one of the root causes.

… one fact is indisputable. The killer(s) took advantage of a “gun free zone” at not only the facility, but one that extends throughout Washington. D.C.

Security at the center utterly failed at stopping a murderer bent on killing defenseless personnel. And even acknowledging special security conditions at a military installation, in the absence of a special legal relationship the government has no duty to provide protection to people it prevents from protecting themselves, meaning there is no attendant liability should they fail to do so.

“Special security conditions” will never stop a determined shooter, and it didn’t in this case.  The folks are defenseless, and they have been made that way intentionally and with malice of forethought.  It’s the same way in church worship services.

HOLYOKE, Mass. (AP) — Holyoke police are looking for a man they say interrupted a church service and robbed several members of the congregation at gunpoint.

Lt. James Albert says the masked suspect entered the Pentecostal church at about 2 p.m. Sunday, announced the robbery, and took personal items, including cellphones, from several of the roughly 20 worshippers.

The fact that he stole from them rather than killed them is a blessing and a second chance.  They should never voluntarily be in a gun free zone (or a gun free state) if they have any other choice.

But leave it to the progressives to learn the wrong lessons.

Gun enthusiasts say it is inappropriate to talk about gun violence at the time it occurs. Better to wait … and wait … and wait … until time has passed, and the weeping next of kin have vanished from TV, and it’s safe to return to business as usual. The idea of the gun enthusiasts is that the way to show respect for the victims of gun violence is to do everything possible to multiply their number … better mental-health provision would contribute to the reduction of gun massacres. But America’s uniquely grisly record of gun death cannot be addressed without addressing guns.

I don’t know his state of mind, and thus I don’t know if David Frum really believes his propaganda that making guns illegal will stop the perpetration of crimes, or if he’s just too invested in his idiotic notions to turn back now, or if he is a full-orbed totalitarian.  But Frum wants to discuss guns, and wants to do it right now.

Very well.  I’m okay with that.  Here’s a note to Frum.  If you or your ilk ever try to take away my guns, I’ll use them to ensure that you don’t.  There.  I’m glad we had that conversation.  Tell me if you want to talk again.

Concerning the Colorado recall:

In an emotional concession speech, Mr. Morse called the loss of his seat “purely symbolic” and defended the record of the last legislative session as “phenomenal.”

“We made Colorado safer from gun violence,” he said afterward, as his supporters trickled away from a hotel ballroom here in his district. “If it cost me my political  career, that’s a small price to pay.”

[ … ]

Mr. Morse’s hand was on the tiller during much of that debate. A former police chief, he said he found himself in a position of not just rounding up votes, but actually explaining the mechanics of guns to fellow Democrats. He brought a magazine to show his colleagues how it worked. In an emotional speech in March, as the debate reached its peak, Mr. Morse stood on the Senate floor and spoke of gun violence and “cleansing a sickness from our souls.”

I had followed the Colorado recall elections for the simple reason that some of my readers forced me to.  But this is the first time that I have seen the theological undertones in the debates.  Now, take note how people like me, conservative Christians, are repeatedly mocked in the national discourse.  Trotting out our religion, we always are.  Forcing it on other people.  It’s incorrigible – they cannot help but mock us.

While it’s true that I do see theological issues surrounding the right and duty of self defense, it is Morse who forced his views into the law-making proces.  I never demanded the freedom to do such a thing.  For instance, while I see the historical and interpretive value of knowing that colonial citizens were required to own weapons, I do not support such a thing today.

Note his language.  He believes that his actions were “cleansing a sickness from our souls,” and he is willing to sacrifice himself in a vicarious sort of way in order to effect this redemption.  Good grief.  Morse thinks he is Jesus.

I thank God that I have been spared such theological confusion (does that make me sound like a Pharisee?).  If I ever declare myself to be Jesus, I think my astute readers will hold me accountable.

UPDATE: David Codrea doubts that anyone else wants to be Jesus.

While the successful recall will not be enough to shift the legislative balance of power in Colorado, it will no doubt show activists there and elsewhere what is possible when they apply themselves, and give a boost of confidence to retry recalls in efforts where not enough signatures were gathered, or to start new efforts where success seems possible. And it will no doubt energize gun owners to participate in the next election … Fear of that unpleasantness may be enough to rein in legislators seeing gun owners realizing a newly-discovered power. At the very least, recall actions can cause anti-gun politicians and their patrons to use up their resources defensively, as opposed to launching new aggressive campaigns against gun ownership …

Yes.  This is a battlefield victory.  But there are more battles to fight.  We’re just beginning.