Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Jay Carney:

Addressing President Obama’s planned announcement on measures to reduce gun violence tomorrow, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made a comment that raised some eyebrows both inside the briefing room and on Twitter.

Carney pushed the president’s plan for action over the status quo, paraphrasing a comment Obama made at his press conference yesterday as “if even one child’s life can be saved by actions taken in Washington, we must take these actions.”

Veteran CBS News Washington Correspondent Mark Knoller was the first to quote Carney’s statement on Twitter and it quickly garnered a barrage of outrage from conservatives who took exception.

Then came the demands to ban football, cars, and so on.  The twitter posts briefly point out what a hypocritical fake that whole argument is (along with the people who make it).

If a child’s life (or an adult’s life) is worth regulation and disarmament, then disarm the police.  After all, poor Mr. Eurie Stamps was killed by a SWAT officer who stumbled over his prone body while (the officer’s) finger was on the trigger of his weapon, causing sympathetic muscle reflex to shoot his weapon, thus killing innocent Mr. Stamps.  Mr. Stamps isn’t the only innocent human victim who has been killed by police.  Dogs also die by the score in SWAT raids across America as a routine practice by police.  They simply couldn’t care less.

Oh, you say, but it has to be different for law enforcement officers?

Those kinds of guns are made to kill people, and no one should be killing people, except in the line of duty.

But why should anyone kill anyone else in the line of duty?  Has this author read the Supreme Court decision in Tennessee versus Garner?  Law enforcement officers can only shoot in self defense, i.e., to save their lives.  Use of weapons to enforce the law isn’t allowed.

So the author is only allowing shooting in the line of duty, and duty only includes self defense.  Does that mean that it applies to me too?  I see self defense as my religious duty.  God requires it of me.

In reality, following their arguments to their logical conclusions isn’t in the game plan. They aren’t interest in your safety.  That argument is fake, and they quickly give it up when challenged.  They’re only interested in allowing government-sanctioned violence.  They don’t want to admit it, but they’re Fascists.  So the next time you read another advocacy commentary for gun control in the name of your safety, make a mental note of that person as a complete fraud and dismiss it as another Fascist attempt to fake his way through the issue.

Explained by the black man for whom I would vote for President before any white politician I know. Two minutes into the video.

From Dr. Keith Ablow:

… gun control advocates also ignore the potential widespread psychological harm that disarming Americans could cause.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote to his nephew Peter Carr in 1785, “A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the Body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind . . . ”

The right to bear arms is a critical component of feeling competent and autonomous as individuals, rather than relying on the goodwill of a super-powerful, unassailable government.

A disarmed population is, by definition, a population that has completely ceded the power to defend its homes against local, state or federal authorities. This implies a level of trust much more consistent with that which children have for parents than that which thinking adults have for the institutions they have created to perform vital functions like defending the nation, keeping the peace, maintaining schools and providing clean water.

A disarmed population is allowed the toxic luxury of feeling as though our way of life and our safety from oppression comes without the tremendous responsibilities and moral complexities of wielding force. The same people who passively pay taxes that put tanks on the streets and fighter jets in the skies over our enemies’ nations can cringe at the idea of owning guns themselves — projecting their survival instincts onto an all-powerful father figure (the state).

History is replete with examples of cultures in which taking guns away from law-abiding citizens foreshadowed catastrophic abuses of the power thereby invested in government. One need look no further than Nazi Germany.

While gun control advocates point not only to episodes of terrible violence, but also to the toll of accidental deaths and murders involving firearms, I believe such tragedies highlight the need for citizens to take more personal responsibility for the handguns they own, not any justification for them to be infantilized by banning them from owning handguns at all.

It may well be that putting more—not fewer—guns in the hands of law-abiding American men and women and training them to safely store those guns would actually be one immediate way to immunize the population from feeling like potential victims of the Adam Lanzas and James Holmes among us.

It may be that putting more—not fewer—guns in the hands of law-abiding American men and women would be a way of immunizing them from feeling like passive participants in history and in safeguarding what we value about our way of life.

The psychological truth is that every gun privately and legally owned in America is a tiny impediment to the citizenry assuming a docile, nearly delusional perspective that the world will always be predictable, that one’s home and loved ones will always be safe and that government will always tend toward light and never toward darkness.

We’ve recently heard from all manner of statists pretending to be liberals, and also pretending that the reason they’re pressing for gun control has to do with the our own safety or the greater public good.  The truth of the matter is that this is a misdirect and smokescreen.  Statists are always interested in laws and regulations that increase the power and scope of control of a centralized government.

The second amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with personal or public health, shooting at squirrels or deer, or personal defense.  It pertains to holding a tyrannical government at bay, something that causes the statists to be aghast at our temerity and jurists like Robert Bork to ridicule the notion that we could stop a government who owns nuclear weapons.

But just occasionally it’s nice to be able to push back and show the gun control argument to be impractical, unhealthy and unsafe.  It’s also nice that Dr. Ablow mentioned the example of Nazi Germany.  Since the Obama administration began it’s gun control push in earnest it has become fashionable to deny the history of Germany’s gun control in the holocaust.

I deal with this issue in Obama, Hitler And Gun Control.  Gun control certainly turned out to be very unhealthy for the Jews under Hitler.

Mike at Sipsey Street Irregulars gives us a nice report about a real Sheriff.

“My office will not comply with any federal action which violates the United States Constitution or the Kentucky Constitution which I swore uphold.”

And far from worrying about repercussions for doing this, Peyman sees the gun control push as a sign of weakness that will crumble in the face of real opposition: “Just a few of us have to be willing to stand up to political opposition putting our people at risk. The other side will back down.”

Rock on, brother Peyman.  And you’re right.  The statists will back down when they see the horrible cost and the impossible task of implementing their unconstitutional laws.  This isn’t the only report of massive resistance.

Other law enforcement officials, like numerous state legislatures, are pursuing nullification in an effort to void any unconstitutional statutes within their jurisdictions. Gilberton Borough, Pennsylvania, Police Chief Mark Kessler, for example, is asking local lawmakers to adopt the “Second Amendment Preservation Ordinance,” which cites the state and U.S. constitutions to invalidate any further assaults on the unalienable rights of residents in his community.

“Hopefully this will spread like fire throughout the country, and the people will stand up and say, you know what, enough is enough, and under the Tenth Amendment, which grants the power of nullification of unconstitutional laws, we’re going to recognize this as unconstitutional, we’re not going to enforce it, we’re going to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Chief Kessler told The New American in an interview, adding that the Second Amendment was clear. “We want to do this peacefully, we don’t want any kind of violence whatsoever — I’m totally against that — I just want to see a peaceful resolution to this. And under the Tenth Amendment, hopefully we can accomplish this through the nullification process.”

Elected county sheriffs are also expected to be on the front line in any potential showdown between an out-of-control executive branch and the American people. Former Graham County, Arizona, Sheriff Richard Mack already has experience protecting residents in his jurisdiction from federal lawlessness. And he says that as the top law enforcement officers in their jurisdictions — with power to arrest federal agents for violating the law — sheriffs have a duty to protect the people and their liberties.

“The sheriffs need to be united in letting the federal government know that we’re not going to allow it,” he told WorldNetDaily in a recent interview. “Out of 200 sheriffs with whom I’ve met, I’ve only had one give me a wishy-washy answer. That one said he would try to take the federal government to court. Most of them have said they would lay down their lives first rather than allow any more federal control. They also said they would do everything they could to stop gun control and gun confiscation…. If the federal government wants to start a new Civil War, all they need to do is go ahead with gun confiscation.”

And just like I predicted would happen, states are looking for ways to preempt federal regulations.  They (i.e., the federal agents) will know we’re serious when state police begin arresting the agents for attempting to enforce federal laws within the borders of their particular states.  Some cooling off time in the state penitentiary might be just what the DHS agents need.

I see that use of the search words “Hitler Gun Control” has recently become popular.  Of course it has.  And this is an easy question to answer.  The former assault weapons ban and the proposed assault weapons ban find their roots in Nazi Germany, as I have pointed out before.

This comprehensive study shows that Hitler’s Nazi Germany prohibited at least the following things: silencers, tactical lights on weapons, high capacity magazines (more than five rounds) and telescoping stocks.

The Obama administration.  Following the lead of Nazi Germany since January 20, 2009.

UPDATE #1: This is rich.  Alex Seitz-Wald writing with Salon has penned a piece entitled The Hitler Gun Control Lie.  Let’s examine just a bit of it.

This week, people were shocked when the Drudge Report posted a giant picture of Hitler over a headline speculating that the White House will proceed with executive orders to limit access to firearms. The proposed orders are exceedingly tame, but Drudge’s reaction is actually a common conservative response to any invocation of gun control.

The NRA, Fox News, Fox News (again), Alex Jones, email chains, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, Gun Owners of America, etc., all agree that gun control was critical to Hitler’s rise to power. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (“America’s most aggressive defender of firearms ownership”) is built almost exclusively around this notion, popularizing posters of Hitler giving the Nazi salute next to the text: “All in favor of ‘gun control’ raise your right hand.”

In his 1994 book, NRA head Wayne LaPierre dwelled on the Hitler meme at length, writing: “In Germany, Jewish extermination began with the Nazi Weapon Law of 1938, signed by Adolf Hitler.”

And it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense: If you’re going to impose a brutal authoritarian regime on your populace, better to disarm them first so they can’t fight back.

Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone’s guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn’t make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.

University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review. As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler’s, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.

The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. “The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition,” Harcourt wrote.

What happens next would be amusing if it wasn’t such a horrible train wreck.

Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.  The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general.

Alex acknowledges that his interpretation might be a bit problematic, and then in the span of two sentences, he demolishes his own argument.  More to the point, and again referring to the paper I cited above (Stephen P. Halbrook, Nazi Firearms Laws And The Disarming Of The German Jews):

… the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state.

Alex treats the disarming of “enemies of the state” as worthy of honorable mention as a stipulation to his argument just so that you know he is really scholarly and hasn’t completely ignored the real facts.  We know it to be the primary and fundamental point of the argument.  It’s the hinge upon which the entire conversation turns.  Leave it to a Fascist to overlook that point.

UPDATE #2: Thoughts from Michael Bane.

The strong possibility of executive action to regulate firearms was initially discussed by Jim Kouri with Examiner in November 2012.

An anti-gun owner initiative considered in Washington could lead to massive civil disobedience and a severe domestic crisis, gun law expert John M. Snyder warned on Friday.

“According to confidential information,” he said, “forces linked with the administration suggest the government classify semiautomatic firearms and multiple capacity ammunition feeding devices as Title 2 National Firearms Act items under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Americans familiar with federal gun laws understand that under this scenario, semiautomatics and high capacity magazines could be acquired only with great difficulty and at great expense by America’s estimated 100 million law-abiding firearms owners, notes Snyder.

Additionally, after observing the Obama administration for four years now, I and a number of gun rights experts and journalists (such as David Codrea) had discussed this via e-mail.  The possibility that Congress wouldn’t go along with the unconstitutional laws and regulations being proposed is non-trivial, and Obama’s history demonstrates that he would have a work-around planned.

I decided to run with this report in What To Expect On Gun Control In The Coming Months, using a report at World Net Daily.  I feel rather exonerated that crazy uncle Joe has now spoken for the administration and informed us exactly that Obama intends to do.

“The president is going to act,” vowed Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Obama tapped to head the task force on the issue. “There are executive orders, executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help [of] the attorney general and all the rest of the Cabinet members as well as legislative action we believe is required.”

But it’s more than just being right, although it pays to be right.  This is about the constitution, and whether America will allow the dictator to get away with this.  Will the republic be saved, or will we just acquiesce to totalitarianism?  Our future is at stake.

In his own words.

Former Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who led the war in Afghanistan, endorsed strong gun control laws Tuesday on Morning Joe.

“I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56 mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that,” McChrystal explained. “That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.”

“We’ve got to take a serious look—I understand everyone’s desire to have whatever they want—but we’ve got to protect our children, we’ve got to protect our police, we’ve got to protect our population,” McChrystal said. “Serious action is necessary. Sometimes we talk about very limited actions on the edges and I just don’t think that’s enough.”

“The number of people in America killed by firearms is extraordinary compared to other nations, and I don’t think we’re a bloodthirsty country,” he said. “We need to look at everything we can do to safeguard our people.”

First of all, when McChrystal carried a weapon it had selective fire capability, unlike my own rifles, but I don’t want to press that difference too far because I think it should be legal for mine to have selective fire capability too.

But the irony is that McChrystal, who issued the most restrictive rules of engagement ever promulgated on American troops, waxes know-it-all on what it takes to keep our people safe.  He can micromanage the campaign, release a bunch of inept, bureacratic, PowerPoint jockeys into highly protected mega-bases to command the troops under fire in the field, turn so-called general purpose troops into constabulary patrolmen, and become a laughingstock when his juvenile staff turned party-animal with Rolling Stone.  But he didn’t manage the campaign in such a manner as to keep our children in uniform safe in Afghanistan.  If he didn’t do that, why should I care what he has to say about anything else regarding my safety?

This is what happens when media stars think they know somethng about policy.  So here is a suggestion for Mr. McChrystal.  You go read the lamentations at this article from the families and widows of SFC Kenneth Westbrook, Gunnery Sgt Aaron M Kenefick, Corpsman James Ray “Doc” Layton, and others in the Ganjgal engagement.  You know the one I’m talking about, even if others have forgotten.  You and I will never forget.  The one where they left our men to perish without fire support because of your rules of engagement.  You sleep with this reality, if you can, you ponder on those men and their lives morning and night, and you lament with the widows and families.  And then you tell me why I should give a shit what you have to say about anything, much less what it takes to keep my children or loved ones safe?

UPDATE: Hot Air also weighs in.

Reprimands in the Marine Deaths in the Ganjgal Engagement

Problems with the Applied Rules of Engagement

Why Marines in Afghanistan Want The Taliban To Open Fire

More Rules Of Engagement Examples From Afghanistan II

More Rules Of Engagement Examples From Afghanistan

Afghanistan Policy In Disarray

The Side Effects Of Afghanistan Rules Of Engagement

Rules Of Engagement Too Prohibitive To Achieve Sustained Tactical Success

AR 15-6 Investigation Of Marine Deaths In Kunar Province

Rules Of Engagement Slow Progress In Marjah

Marine Force Protection In Garmsir?

Micromanaging The Campaign In Afghanistan

We’ve discussed it many times, this proposed extended and expanded assault weapons ban proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.  The new legislation may fail, but the White House has it’s own front in this war on firearms.  But their own propaganda betrays a serious weakness in their approach.

The White House is also developing strategies to navigate the rocky and emotionally fraught terrain of gun politics once final policy decisions are made. The administration is quietly talking with a diverse array of interest groups, including religious leaders, mental-health professionals and hunters, to build as broad a coalition as possible, those involved in the discussions said.

The president is expected to face fierce opposition from the NRA and its allies in Congress, including most Republicans and some Democrats.

But Biden signaled to those involved in the policy discussions that the White House is not afraid of taking on the NRA, the nation’s largest gun rights group. At the Dec. 20 meeting, according to Stanek, when one law enforcement leader suggested focusing on only the most popular proposals, Biden responded: “Look, what I’m asking you for is your candid opinion and ideas about extreme gun violence. Leave the politics to the president. That’s our job with Congress.”

They want to turn hunters against the NRA and modern sporting rifles.  Fat chance.  That didn’t work out so well for David Petzal or Jerry Tsai.  Their plans to divide and conquer the NRA will meet with disastrous results.  Every minute spent on such a tactic is wasted, and thus we have to hope that they expend a lot of energy on it.

But the later part of the strategy, i.e., politics, is far more fearsome and they have proven very adept at that approach.  Gun Owners of American (h/t Mike Vanderboegh) gives us an inside baseball look at the current tactics.  In summary, John McCain is working against gun owners by pressing (along with the Democrats) for a rule change that would essentially be a work-around of the filibuster rule.  Lindsey Graham has vowed to vote against new gun control measures, but since he is McCain’s lap dog, he may be looking for cover as he works silently behind the scenes to assist in Feinstein’s plans.  Joe Manchin has backed off of his public calls for new gun control measures, but he may be playing the same game as McCain and Graham.

Currently in the Senate, Rand Paul is the only immovable champion of second amendment rights.  If new laws pass the Senate, they must also pass the House before going to the President’s desk.  It isn’t clear what the House will do.  If history is any indication, they are in a weakened state, and lack any backbone anyway.

However, the Republicans stand warned.  If – controlling the House of Representatives – they allow new gun control measures to pass to the President’s desk, the GOP will cease to exists as a viable political party.  Voters are having difficulty finding differences between them and the Democrats anyway.  Caving on gun control would seal the fate of the GOP as a historical relic rather than a future possibility.

If new gun control measures don’t pass the Senate and House, the game is far from over.  The Obama administration is investigating the possibility of executive orders reclassifying semi-automatic firearms as title 2 weapons, thus doing by fiat what the legislative branch rejected.  The fight will continue, just in a different locale than the Senate and House.

Finally, if new gun control measures pass to the President’s desk (in which case he will surely sign the measures into law), it means more than just new background checks.  All semi-automatic firearms will be taxed, required to be submitted to the ATF for approval, controlled from crossing state lines, and prohibited from being bequeathed to your children or grandchildren in your wills.  Violation of any of these rules will turn you into an instant felon.  Of course, this would mean a resistance for which America isn’t prepared.

Karl Denninger writes:

It is time for We The People to take a stand, as did John Hancock, Richard Stockton, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Penn, Arthur Middleton and others.

Your right to life is not bestowed by government. Your right to liberty is not bestowed by government. Government never possessed those rights and you cannot bestow what you do not first lawfully possess.

You right to life and liberty were bestowed by your creator. Those rights inure to each and every one of us by virtue of being human. And here’s the point which many of you wish not to discuss:

A right without the ability and willingness to defend it is no right at all.”

Bob Owens writes:

“The Second Amendment of the United States was never written to protect hunting or target shooting. It was written by men who had just fought a successful armed revolution against the most advanced military of their day, and who wanted to ensure that future generations would be armed with weapons of contemporary military utility in order to stand against the day that once more, tyrants would attempt to consolidate power and lord over the people as their betters.

“Any attempt to take the contemporary arms of military utility our Founders wanted us to have, which includes the standard magazines and clips used in these firearms, is an act of tyranny that the Founders would recognize as an event justifying the use of force to retain our freedoms.”

“Tread carefully.”

Brandon Smith writes:

“There is no ambiguous or muddled separation between the citizenry and the government anymore. The separation is absolute. It is undeniable. It is vast. It is only a matter of time and momentum, and eventually there will be unbridled oppression, dissent, and conflict. All that is required is a trigger, and I believe that trigger has arrived…”

Mike Hendrix writes:

“This is a society preparing for war,” writes Bob Owens.

“Reluctantly, almost unwillingly, it should be noted. But the sad truth is, war is already being made upon it, and has been for a long time now. Said society has been more than patient, more than tolerant. But eventually, enough is enough. Everyone has their limit; freedom-loving Americans’ has very nearly been reached. A few more steps over the line, and the kettle is going to boil over.”

“Any liberal-fascists who think we’re all going to go gently into that good night really, really need to reconsider. We all have to hope they do. But we all have to be prepared for the possibility, the likelihood, that they mightn’t. “This far, no further” is more than just an empty slogan.”

“Gird your loins.”

Alan Halbert writes:

“We are in far more danger from these actions of our own government than from another Sandy Hook atrocity by a crazed killer.”

“The Second Amendment’s purpose is to provide for the citizens’ defense from all who would deny their natural God- given right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” against a criminal, a foreign or domestic enemy, or our own government. We will witness the end of the Republic if this proposed legislation is passed, since all of our rights flow from the citizen’s ability to defend them.”

“As for this citizen, I will never disarm or surrender my Second Amendment rights, much less willingly comply with such a traitorous act of Congress if enacted… it is actions like these that light revolutionary fervor in a nation and its citizens. It did so in 1776 and it will do so again.”

John Jay writes:

“…when it is done, and the regime defeated, no one will talk about what he did in the war. It shall have been terrible, and brutal. Executions, murders, assassinations and the inevitable collateral damage shall be the issue of the day. This is the price that those who attempt to impose a totalitarian regime in the America’s shall face. Many of us will die, and some shall become iconic photos hanging from lamp posts, stripped naked and hoisted by their ankles, as final witness and testimony to their arrogance.”

“Those who seek to take our weapons trifle with history, heritage and firmly held belief. It should be remembered, those of us who believe this way are god fearing, and shall invoke and beseech our God for support. We have a religious underpinning and faith that shall carry us through this, as opposed to those who seek to suppress us. They have nothing but naked ambition to sustain them.”

“Do Obama, Pelosi, and Feinstein have the stomach for this sort of conflict? Are they willing to initiate, in order to try and gain the rule they aspire to? We shall find out.”

Western Rifle Shooter’s Association writes:

“Understand that once the ball opens, there will be no stopping the righteous fury of viciously-indignant Americans, especially once the 2013 versions of Waco and Ruby Ridge are re-enacted by Regime loyalists across the nation.”

“No one associated with the Federal government or its mutant-twin ruling parties will be safe.”

“Especially once the guys with the scoped hunting rifles come in.”

Mike Vanderboegh writes that there would be a revolution if the government confiscates weapons, and Herschel Smith warns that there will be resistance and writes that the resistance won’t be “the peaceful kind.”  If it goes to the point of forcible implementation of the proposed legislation, it will be awful, bloody, violent and extreme.  Right now we don’t know for certain what will happen in Washington.  But depending upon that outcome, what will happen all across America has been written.  1.6 billion rounds of handgun ammunition won’t be nearly enough for the government.

You’ve been warned.

UPDATE: “Class II” has been changed to “Title II.”  I appreciate Glenn’s attention to this article.  Also, David Codrea gives a link.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to John Richardson for the attention.

UPDATE #3: Thanks to Mike Vanderboegh for the attention.

I’ve dealt with this issue in significant detail before, but occasionally it pays to rehearse the case again for those who missed it, or become weak of heart, or become confused amid all of the sophomoric commentary.

In The Christian Answer To Gun Violence? Eliminate Guns, Dan Webster makes a case that Jesus was a pacifist.  The point here isn’t what Dan thinks, because his commentary is silly and trite.  Much better commentary is delivered in the comments where I discussed this issue with a reader.  I cannot possibly rehearse the entire conversation (you can read it for yourself), but it pays to have this conversation with people.

In large measure, American Christianity has become a free-for-all hermeneutic, with classical doctrine being replaced by bohemian hippie love-fest manifestations of the social gospel.  This causes people to believe that Jesus was a pacifist, that they must be doormats, and that they must reject all forms of self defense.

But put in visceral, real-to-life applications for them, they must admit that defense of themselves with whatever means necessary reflects the importance of God’s image in them.  A fortiori, from the lesser to the greater, protection of their families is even more important.  As I previously observed:

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers.

Failing to confess the truthfulness of this, Christians would have to admit that what they believe is both logically incoherent and existentially unappealing.  Cowards allow the little ones to be harmed.  The morally righteous and strong of heart protect and defend them.

There are always the pretensions of scholarship that distract us from the main points.

I personally would feel better if I, uniquely, had a gun in hand to use against the perpetrator. But I would not prefer a situation in which everyone was carrying guns, all the time, and ready to open fire on anyone who looked threatening. Or even if a lot more people were doing so. Thus for me, a “more guns” policy fails the categorical imperative test. It’s better for me if I do it, worse for us all if everyone does it.

Not a single second amendment defender is advocating that “everyone” carry guns, or that we “fire on anyone who looked threatening.”  The author (James Fallows) has erected a straw man to cloud his moral failure, and I’m not impressed by the invocation of Kant.  This man would allow his children to be killed by assailants rather than defend them, or if he did defend them out of reflex, he would choose in the detached, unemotional comfort of his home to give himself a low probability of dealing with the assailant.  Thus, he is voluntarily choosing (by high probability) to perish, along with his children.

This is both cowardly and immoral.  And even if it’s the bohemian hippie position, it’s most certainly not the Christian position.

A Duke University student named J. Travis Smith waxes on about firearms, and he’s convinced that the U.K. is all that and more concerning the prevention of crime and firearms related injuries.  He should do more research.  But the most amusing part of the commentary is this statement.

Today, with high ammo clips, a single person can enjoy the ability to take on the masses, as enabled by a constitutional statement intended for militia.

High ammo clips.  This is horribly reminiscent of High Magazine Clips and The Shoulder Thing That Goes Up.  Young Travis should seek legal counsel against his professors at Duke for allowing him to become a senior without learning to do research.  Clips have a very specific connotation, with stripper clips being distinguished from en bloc clips.  These are almost certainly not the magazines to which he refers.  Son, the correct term is “high capacity magazines.”

Travis is likely on a pathway to being among the ruling elite in the country, perhaps with a degree in International Studies, where he lives inside the beltway, writes regulations and develops policy directly out of college for a progressive administration.  I’m also willing to bet that Travis has never held a firearm, doesn’t know anyone who currently has firearms, has never used a firearm, and doesn’t know the history of firearms in America.

I’m willing to teach him, or even host a shooting clinic for him, but he has to be willing to learn about his subjects before writing about them.  That’s included in college skills 101 … or at least, it used to be necessary to pass other college courses.