Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Star Tribune:

Howard Kidder has traveled to Egypt, Pakistan and places all over the globe on medical aid missions, but the 90-year-old got the scare of his life right outside the St. Paul church where he earned his Boy Scout badges and has worshiped for 78 years.

Kidder was making one of his regular trips to Mounds Park United Methodist Church on the East Side about 12:30 p.m. Thursday when a suspect donning a Halloween mask from the hit horror movie “Scream” accosted him and asked for money. The confrontation escalated within seconds, and the suspect flashed a gun at Kidder.

“I doled out a five dollar tip and told him he had a spectacular costume, or words to that effect,” Kidder said Friday with a laugh. “Things deteriorated at that point.”

The suspect, whom Kidder believes is a teenager, took the $5 and pulled up his shirt to reveal the butt of a handgun protruding from his pants pocket. Kidder, a retired Honeywell electrical engineer who knows a thing or two about guns, didn’t toy with the suspect.

“Well, it got my attention right away,” Kidder said with a mix of humor and seriousness. “I backed off right away because I was afraid I was going to be shot.”

Kidder threw his billfold to the ground and the suspect fled with it, joined by two plainclothes teenagers who had been standing off to the side.

“It was pretty obvious to me that they knew the character in the mask,” Kidder said of the two teens. “We didn’t introduce each other.”

The wallet contained more cash and two credit cards.

The crime is especially egregious, said those who know Kidder, because Kidder has served as a cornerstone of the community and church, and has spent his life giving back to causes that benefit the less fortunate. Kidder lives in his childhood home just blocks from the church, and has been a member longer than anyone else.

“He brings me flowers all the time,” said church secretary Kaite Knack. “He brings me lunch. He’s too sweet a guy for something like this to happen to.”

But criminals and bad people don’t care.  This is yet another case study for carrying guns to church.  Church as a gun free zone – whether by law or voluntarily – enables this sort of thing.  We’ve discussed this before, how in Colonial days men were required to carry guns to worship.  We should resurrect this practice, and crime around churches would drop to virtually nonexistent frequency.

David Codrea:

The prevalence of guns in the Philippines is complicating efforts to bring relief to survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, the diplomatic correspondent for The Daily Telegraph asserted yesterday.

[ … ]

He appears to be getting those numbers from GunPolicy.org, a project of the Sydney School of Public Health that “promotes the public health model of firearm injury prevention, as adopted by the United Nations Programme of Action on illicit small arms.” It’s hardly an endeavor sympathetic to private gun ownership, but nonetheless provides a useful resource for unwittingly showing the utter failure of globalist citizen disarmament edicts at living up to their promise of a safer world. And as with other countries this column has reported on that used the website as a resource, a summary of gun laws for the Philippines is instructive.

“The regulation of guns in the Philippines is categorised as restrictive,” the policy assessment reports, but adding “In the Philippines, private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is permitted.”

That would seem to exclude rifles …

Read the rest of David’s piece.  When the report came out I looked at what they’re citing as the rate of gun ownership, and concluded that this couldn’t possibly be the cause of the problems.  The problem is that this is on the other side of the world, they should have evacuated people before the storm, and the government is inefficient (what government is efficient?).  Guns have nothing to do with it, or so I concluded.  It’s just another chance to bring up personal freedoms and stomp on them if they can.  Oh, and by the way, I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of using what used to be the most effective and violent fighting force on earth, the United States Marines, for missions of benevolence.  We need to find another way to conduct relief efforts.

Kurt Hofmann:

LA Times columnist George Skelton nevertheless takes Governor Brown to task for not being anti-gun enough, because one of the vast number of models of rifle the vetoed bill would have banned is supposedly the one used in the LAX “gun free zone” killing. From the LA Times:

Not that it would have mattered for Gerardo Hernandez, 39, the TSA agent who was murdered. The bill would not have taken effect until Jan. 1. And Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, the disgruntled, alleged assassin, could have kept his semiautomatic rifle by registering it.

And, yes, he also could have armed himself with a handgun and probably inflicted the same damage.

Yep–Skelton admits that the incident he is using to bolster his argument condemning Brown’s veto would not have turned out any differently if Brown had signed the bill …

Kurt is doing what he does best.  He’s undermining the arguments of the gun controllers by examining their inconsistencies.  Gun control, like control of everything else, doesn’t work.  A person bent on killing will always do it, even if he has to learn to fabricate the tool himself.  The Texas tower shooter, Charles Whitman, used primarily bolt action rifles to inflict most of his damage.  The best option is always deregulation, i.e., get rid of gun free zones.  Gun free zones are for killers and their protectors, the lawmakers.

On another front, I didn’t know that we have U.S. federal agents doing the bidding of the Polish government?  I guess they don’t have anything else to do.

Chris Christie:

“If you look at what we’ve done in New Jersey, we want to control violence,” Christie told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “And some of that may involve firearms, but a lot of it doesn’t.”

Just reminding you again of what we’ve already discussed.  Chris Christie is an anti-gun nut from way back.  There could almost be no better reason to stay home during the next presidential election than if the GOP were to nominate him for office.  There isn’t a dime’s worth a difference between Hillary Clinton and him.  The former is a cackling, collectivist, totalitarian control freak, the later is the same thing except with a loud mouth.

Here I discussed my good experience with Springfield Armory.  It looks like I’m not the only one.

Michael Bane has some interesting comments:

… we have been having a “dialog” about the role of firearms in American society at least as long as I’ve been alive. IMHO, the “dialog” ended when the war began.

Let me say this again…we are at war with a segment of society whose sole goal is total civilian disarmament. We are not in a dialog. We are not in a debate. We are not in a healthy give-and-take in the Cornell University academic lounge. The primary weapon used by our blood enemies is the Big Lie.

It works like this…our enemy states a Big Lie, and I could list dozens, and we run around like little bitty chickens with our heads cut off, marshaling our arguments, footnoting our learned responses, bullet pointing our facts…and after the whole charade is over the enemy repeats the Big Lie, the lapdog media reports it as truth, and WE LOSE AGAIN!

Look at the thoroughly discredited “a gun in the home is 43% more likely to harm rather than protect the homeowner.” Probably more words have been written debunking that fake piece of trash than all Shakespeare’s plays and the complete transcribed Wikipedia, yet 2 weeks ago I read it presented as gospel truth in a daily newspaper website.

During the fight on the Colorado gun laws earlier this year, thousands of us came with our carefully prepared remarks, charts, studies, bullet points, facts — real honest to goodness facts. Our blood enemies, most notably Michael Bloomberg, shipped in a parade of liars…heads of fake organizations created by Bloomberg, a presentation of “polls” that wouldn’t meet even the most basic rules for polling, etc. We had the “indisputable” facts; they had the Big Lie. Who won?

Hint: It wasn’t us.

Good points all around, Michael.  But then, I’m not sure sure about this from Michael!  By the way, concerning Metcalf’s position that I discussed here, I don’t back down one bit from my position that the state is the right level for regulation of any kind, including firearms.  Of course, that’s not to say that there should be onerous regulation of firearms even at the state level.  Recall our previous discussions where I have said the fight is at the level where the founders wanted it, i.e., near the people and not with a centralized government.  The state constitutions, all of them if I am not mistaken, recognize the right to bear arms, although Illinois was late to the game (and some states are stronger than others).  The corollary to my position, of course, is that all laws made at the federal level are unconstitutional.  All of them.  Every last one.  When the states are weak, voters need to fire the politicians and put in honest men.

Josh Horwitz:

By now, it’s clear to most Americans that dangerous, suicidal individuals like Ciancia have ready access to military-style firepower because of the lobbying of groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA). They might not be aware, however, that the pro-gun movement is also equally responsible for disseminating violent, anti-government rhetoric, much of it aimed at the TSA specifically.

[ … ]

Pro-gun bloggers have follow the NRA’s lead and directed their own attacks at government agents, including the TSA. Robert Farago, a blogger at “The Truth About Guns,” called TSA agents “blue shirted goons” after Nugent’s wife was arrested for illegally carrying a gun into a terminal at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in August.

Mike Vanderboegh, the former Alabama militia leader and Fox News commentator who made national headlines after calling for the offices of Democratic Members of Congress to be vandalized during consideration of the Affordable Care Act, referred to TSA agents on his blog as “nanny state fascist perverts.” Pro-gun activist Andrew Johnston chose a similar slur, describing TSA agents as “filthy perverts.” And so on…

Oh good grief.  There he goes again blaming the big ole’ bad NRA.  Frankly, I’m deeply offended that he didn’t mention me for my coverage of TSA and TSA Ineptitude.  But I would have thought the major animus against the TSA had to do with the facts that their programs don’t do one thing to help transportation safety, and the department being a jobs program for ne’er-do-wells, abusers of the elderly, child molesters, ignorant hicks and uneducated morons who cannot find productive work any other way.

I guess you learn something every day, including the fact that you’d better watch your six (and twelve, and three, and nine) when the TSA gets hold of guns (via Glenn).

During this day at the range in Pickens, S.C., the range officer that day, a gunsmith named Donnie Lostraglio, noticed that the discharged casings from my Springfield Armory .45 XDm were scorched on one side.  He felt that the barrel was possibly out of round, and pointed this out to me and recommended that I take the gun by a gun shop where I live.  I had put perhaps 2000 rounds through the weapon and either I hadn’t noticed this or the issue developed over time.

Several weeks later I took the weapon by Hyatt Gun Shop, where the gunsmiths are excellent.  They measured the barrel to be 4 mils out of round, and recommended that I send it back to Springfield Armory to see if this might be an issue covered by warranty.

I began interacting with Mr. Robert Dominacki of Springfield Armory, and I noticed that it did take several e-mails to flush out exactly what I should do.  Springfield wanted my entire weapon as opposed to just sending in the barrel in order to see if any other part of the gun was malfunctioning.

In order to make this happen, Robert issued a return merchandise authorization to have the Springfield technicians examine my gun.  Springfield paid for the shipment through FedEx, both to the factory and back to me.  While Robert told me that it could be up to six weeks, I received it back within a week of receipt by Springfield with a new barrel, tested by their technicians to function just fine with the replacement barrel, a match grade 4.5″ .45 ACP just like I sent to them.

My interaction with FedEx wasn’t so precise.  The shipment back to me was made in such a manner that it could not be held at the FedEx hub because it is a firearm.  Furthermore, when you call FedEx you cannot reach their hubs, you can only reach their national number.  I started an account with FedEx in order to hold my shipment at the shipping hub but that option wasn’t allowed for this shipment.

FedEx attempted to deliver the package once and left a door tag because I wasn’t at home (I have a job).  I just happened to be at home when FedEx made the second attempt so I got my package.  Had this been attempted three times by FedEx I’m not sure what would have happened (would it have gone back to Illinois?).

I have complaints about FedEx being unreachable and unwilling to work with me on shipment of the firearm.  I have absolutely no complaints about Springfield Armory.  Some readers may complain that the barrel was out-of-round to begin with, but with that many firearms being made, some issues will be found.  I don’t expect manufacturers to be perfect.  I expect them to make good on their promises.  Springfield Armory did exactly that, and I continue to enjoy my fine firearm from them.  All around, this was a good customer experience.

David Codrea, discussing the firing of gun writer Dick Metcalf:

From a strictly human point of view, it’s a tragedy. Being a professional gun writer is a specialized craft, and opportunities to earn a living at it are few and far between. Devoting oneself to that as a career, getting it right most of the time and suddenly becoming not just unemployable, but widely excoriated, is a terrible outcome.

It’s fair to ask if some of the concerns raised by writer Bob Owens might soften demands for Metcalf’s head, and the uproar also raises inevitable comparisons to the way gun owners have reacted in the past to similar major foul-ups.

Bob Owens makes the following statement:

A modern well-regulated militia—one that is smoothly functioning and in proper working order as an irregular small unit militia force of the kind the John Mosby and Max Velocity train—requires blood, sweat, and tears. It’s hard work. It’s exhausting duty. It’s a promise to future generations that you ready, willing, and able to fight and live (any unprepared idiot can die) to preserve liberty for posterity.

On the other hand, “shall not be infringed,” taken without any responsibility, is a hedonist’s choice. It implies no responsibility, obligation, or duty. It is the cry of, “Why, we should have anything and everything, just because!”

Some of us are very selective in cherry-picking which parts of the Second Amendment we want to support, aren’t we?

I’ll speak to the subject of tactical training viz. Max Velocity and John Mosby later.  I don’t have that difficulty because of my methodological approach.  The Second Amendment circumscribes the power of the federal government, and its limitations are complete and comprehensive.  The Second Amendment doesn’t speak in the least to the power of the state, and we’ve discussed this before (please don’t slip in an argument over the fourteenth amendment at this point without reading the history of that subject here at this web site).

The State does indeed have the right to regulate firearms just like they have a right to regulate traffic laws, and this places both the authority to do so and the ability to remove those leaders from office who abuse that authority, right where it should be, near the people.  For example, the State has a right to expect that I will secure my weapons in such a manner that they will not become a danger to the neighborhood children should they come over to play (while at the same time no one has a right to illegal search or seizure to inspect my home “just because“).  The State also has a right to prohibit drunk driving.  I have never argued, nor will I ever argue, for anarchy or having everything I want just because.  God gives me rights, and the state recognizes those rights.  If it does not, I must hold the state accountable because God says I must.  All of life is a covenant, and the government is just as much in covenant with me as I am with it.  The wise founders left the centralized government out of this conversation as they should have.

As to the issue of gun owner reaction, to me this is simple.  Gun owners have the right to expect what they want in publications, and to refuse to purchase products if they don’t get what they expect.  Do consumers of other products not have that right as well?

Kurt Hofmann continues the conversation we engaged here concerning the closure of the last lead smelter plant in the U.S.

This could carry dire consequences with regard to availability and price of ammunition, prompting some to speculate that the anti-gun Obama administration’s EPA is motivated less by the claimed concern for “cleaner air” than by desire to squeeze private gun ownership from a new, less obvious angle.

Perhaps, perhaps not, but regardless, the squeeze is likely to be felt quite keenly by gun owners. All the more keenly because of longstanding federal law banning the use of many other materials in the construction of bullets used in “handgun ammunition.” If lead is unavailable/unaffordable (and now verboten, to California hunters), and if a great many other possible bullet materials are illegal, the remaining options are both few and of limited utility.

Yes, and that’s why this may be problematic as we discussed.  It isn’t as simple as substituting steel balls for lead, copper for brass, or steel for anything else like casings (which can tear up chambers).

Mike Vanderboegh reminds us yet again why it is an awful idea to talk to the police.  I know that some people have a hard time considering the exercise of their right to silence, but you need to watch all of this video again.  Please.  Watch it all.  And don’t ever talk to the police about anything.  They are an arm of the court, and exculpatory evidence discovered during questioning is inadmissible because it is hearsay.  Again, watch the entire video.  So have you watched the video, or just listened to me talk about it?

From Instapundit, a gun rights issue at Gonzaga:

SPOKANE, Wash. – Two Gonzaga students are facing possible expulsion from the University after they pulled a weapon in self defense as a six time felon attempted to get into their on campus apartment. According to the student handbook, students may not possess handguns on campus or university owned property.

That’s because the disciplinary board is being immoral.  Now to Philadelphia:

Philadelphia Police are searching for two suspects wanted in connection with a violent home invasion Friday night in the city’s Oxford Circle section.

The incident was reported at the 1500 block of Rosalie Street.

Police tell Eyewitness News a 28-year-old woman was tortured in front of her two-year-old daughter and her four-year-old nephew.

Police say a pair of men broke into the back door of this home on Rosalie Street, attacking the people inside including the 28-year-old woman, her two-year-old daughter and four-year-old nephew, her 54-year-old mother and an electrician working at the house.

“These two individuals tied up all the three adults. They tied up their wrists and their ankles,” Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small said.

Beating up the electrician in the process, police say the pair started demanding money, something the 28-year-old said she didn’t have. That’s when one of the attackers allegedly picked up a kitchen knife, turned on the stove, and put the blade in the flame.

“And then four separate times burnt the 28-year-old female, burnt her face, both of her arms and her stomach,” Small said.

Still she refused to speak, so the crime went further.

“Then picked up the 28-year-old’s two-year-old daughter and threatened to kill the daughter if she didn’t say where the money was,” Small said.

Finally she caved, and gave up some money she had.  So did her mother and the electrician.  The pair got away with nearly $4,000.

Notice that the police were there to write their reports, take descriptions and perhaps clean up a little of the mess.  And then again perhaps they left the mess to the poor victims.  The police aren’t there to protect you, and couldn’t even if they wanted to.

This is the way collectivists and statists would have it.  They would rather you be tortured and abused to the point of death than recognize your right to own and use weapons.

Purchase guns and ammunition.  Use them to defend yourself and loved ones.  If you live in a place that doesn’t allow your ownership of weapons, you are being irresponsible by staying there.  Two home invasions, two different outcomes.  Which will it be for you?

I don’t particularly like the SCAR, and I get along just fine with my RRA AR-15.  I would also be interested in what brand of AR-15 Jerry would choose for 3-gun competition if S&W didn’t sponsor him.  Finally, this isn’t as comprehensive as something like “Art Of The Tactical Carbine” with Travis Haley, but in 20 minutes it can’t be more than it is.  Jerry does try to sell his complete version, which might be a good Christmas present.

Toronto Sun:

Outdoorsman Marco Lavoie, rescued Wednesday after three months in the deep woods near James Bay, made the heartbreaking decision to kill and eat his beloved German shepherd to stay alive.

A source close to the amazing story told QMI Agency that Lavoie, 44, sacrificed his dog when he became stranded at the Nottaway River, roughly 800 km northwest of Montreal.

A bear had eaten Lavoie’s food and destroyed his boat in mid-July, leaving him alone with the dog.

A few days after the bear attack, the person who spoke to QMI on condition of anonymity said Lavoie used a rock to kill his dog before eating the pet.

By the time provincial police airlifted him out three months later, Lavoie was barely able to speak or eat. He suffered hypothermia and dehydration and had lost about 90 pounds.

Survival expert Andre Francois Bourbeau said Lavoie did what he could to live.

“He survived because he made ‹good decisions. Eating his dog was one of them,” said Bourbeau, author of a survival guide.

Bourbeau has researched hundreds of similar stories, some of which include cannibalism.

“You have to be desperate, but there’s no shame in (eating the dog),” said Bourbeau. “He had to use reason.”

The survival expert says that after 30 days in the wilderness with no food, Lavoie’s body would have gone into shock from starvation.

“Hunger squeezes you so much that you would accept food that’s not normally possible,” said Bourbeau. “You can crave slugs and bugs.”

Lavoie is an experienced hiker who often spent weeks in the wilderness by himself. But the Nottaway River is considered too dangerous even for the hardiest outdoorsmen.

Andre Diamond, a Waswanipi Cree who lives on an island at the mouth of the river, said he warned Lavoie to stay away.

“He said it didn’t scare him, but it’s not a river to travel alone,” said Diamond. “Other adventurers have gone there over 20, 30 years and never came back.”

I don’t want to sit in judgment of the fellow for what he did.  My dog is one of my best companions, my friend, my partner on hikes, camping trips, and walks, my travel companion, and partner for playing at night time and on the weekends.  She is sad when I leave, and overjoyed when I return.  I would have made a different decision concerning the dog, but as I said, I don’t want to sit in judgment of the fellow.

But I do have one bone to pick, and it has to do with the downright obscene and objectionable expectations of people who travel into the wilderness.  As to the statement “he survived because he made ‹good decisions,” I would respond, “he almost died because he made awful decisions.”  My demurral goes farther than the dog – it goes to preparation for the trip.

Had he carried weapons (a good, scoped bolt action rifle and large caliber handgun such as a .44 magnum revolver), the bear would be dead and eaten, the gentleman would still be alive, and he would be hugging his dog.  Instead, he apparently had to watch as a bear nearly cost him his life.  Furthermore, if he had access to firearms, it is quite possible that he could have killed game (fowl if he had carried a shotgun, small game, or even large game with a rifle or shotgun with slugs) to eat instead of eating his companion.

Let’s suppose that Canadian law prohibits the carrying or even ownership of weapons such as the ones that I mentioned, and let’s further suppose that shooting the bear would have been illegal (or in other words, there is no such thing as a bear tag in that Province of Canada).

It doesn’t matter.  The trip nearly cost him his own life, and it is immoral for the Canadian government to make or enforce such laws.  Immoral, obscene and unrighteous laws not only need not be obeyed, but they must be disobeyed.  When a government makes unrighteous laws, it has become unrighteous.

Congratulations to the “libertarian” voters in Virginia who today voted for Robert Sarvis.  How does it feel to know that you threw your vote away and could have made a difference in the outcome of the election of communist Terry McAuliffe to the Governor’s mansion?

We discussed it.  Instead of driving to the voting booth, you’re in a fight for your rights now, and will probably lose your liberty to own guns, your liberty to purchase them, and maybe even your liberty to purchase ammunition.  You own it now boy.  Oh, and make sure to sign up for Obamacare tomorrow.

Gird your loins, or move.

UPDATE: Via commenter HempRopeAndStreetlight, this:

Mark Levin wrote in a Monday Facebook post that the RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only, wanted McCauliffe to win on Tuesday. “Many in the GOP establishment, from major fundraisers and consultants, to GOP officeholders such as the GOP Lt. Gov and mayor of Virginia Beach, have either trashed Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli or endorsed McAuliffe outright. The GOP national machine has done next to nothing for Cuccinnelli,” Levin wrote. 

In addition to all of those GOP establishment figures who were key operatives for Cantor, McDonnell, the RNC, and actual state GOP lawmakers, national RNC chairman Reince Priebus spent Tuesday in New Jersey to back up Chris Christie, whose re-election was never in question, rather than in Virginia using his celebrity to get out the vote in Cuccinelli’s nail-biter race.

There is also this report on Cuccinnelli in his own words concerning being abandoned by the GOP.  This might have happened under the radar fifty years ago, but in this day and age they can’t hide it.  The establishment GOP is in a scorched earth war on conservatives.  So be it.  Go ahead and nominate an establishment GOP candidate for the next office, gubernatorial, president, senate, house or whatever.  Watch as conservatives stay home like they did in the last presidential election.

I had previously said this:

I am a long standing and diehard advocate of State’s rights, even to the extent that I don’t think the federal court system should be invoked when local gun control is concerned.  All gun politics is local, I have said.  The corollary is that in order to prevent local hicks, ne’er-do-wells and criminals from acting out their Napoleon fantasies upon other men, association with the state means that – assuming robust gun rights laws already exist – local municipalities and townships shouldn’t be able to preempt state laws.  The state is the right size for law-making and control.  Our founding fathers were wise.

And true to form for the little Napoleon child-emperors, Wisconsin gun laws may soon be a mess.

Wisconsin wildlife officials’ decision to drop rifle restrictions going into this month’s gun deer hunt was supposed to make things simpler. But hunters better do their homework before they head into the woods because local governments now are weighing whether to impose their own bans, potentially creating a patchwork of rules.

The DNR lifted its rifle ban earlier this year in the nearly 20 counties where it remained in effect. The move makes more powerful and accurate weapons available to deer hunters who had been limited to shotguns during the nine-day gun hunt.

Local governments can still restrict rifles, however, and a number have been working to pass limits before the season starts Nov. 23. That could leave hunters sifting through a patchwork of regulations to figure out whether they can use a rifle in their favorite patch of woods.

“Hunters will have to literally check the specific rules for every community they hunt, and don’t think that a single round of phone calls will be sufficient for your whole season,” Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, one of the most avid hunters in the Legislature, warned in a statement. “The bottom line here is that the hunter still has (to do) the homework.”

The DNR banned rifles decades ago in a number of southern counties to limit the deer kill and grow local herds. Hunters in those areas were forced to use weapons with less accuracy and range, such as shotguns, muzzleloaders, pistols or bows and arrows. As the deer population grew, justification for the regulations shifted to protecting the public from far-traveling rifle rounds.

But over the past 15 years or so, the DNR has lifted the restrictions on a county-by-county basis. By last spring, the ban was still in place in all or part of only 19 counties.

The agency’s board decided in May to lift the ban completely. DNR Administrative Warden Matt O’Brien wrote in an October memo the change was meant to streamline deer hunting rules. It also had become difficult for the agency to back up the idea that shotguns were safer when rifles had always been legal for hunting coyote, fox and bear, he wrote.

Or a better way of saying is that Wisconsin gun laws have always been a mess and will continue to be so because of patchwork regulations.  And isn’t it interesting that the original justification (i.e., game management) had to be replaced with something else (i.e., public safety) because the government likes laws and reflexively regulates and controls, whether the justification exists or not.

I have advocated disobedience to unrighteous laws, but it’s still true that one pleasure the righteous man enjoys is obedience to righteous laws.  The good man knows that a truthful hunt for perpetrators of murder and theft won’t roll him into the tide because he is not guilty.

But untruthful and indiscreet law enforcement works just like patchwork regulations and laws.  They frustrate the righteous man because what’s legal over here isn’t over there, and what’s legal now won’t be tomorrow.  If you get caught not knowledgeable on all of the impossible nuances, evolutions and exigencies of the laws, you’re turned into a lawbreaker by prosecutors who have no concept of true justice.  They know the law, but not intrinsic good.

The justification against preemption of state laws by the federal government is the same as that by localities, municipalities, cities and townships.  Patchwork regulation frustrates and mocks the righteous man, and replaces intrinsic good with the law.  Patchwork regulation is fundamentally wicked.