Why Do Gunners Oppose Universal Background Checks?

Tom Sheppard

5/4/2020

Supporters of the Second Amendment, often referred to as “gunners” or pro-gun rights advocates, often come out in opposition to a common-sense gun reform called universal background checks.  

Why?

As a law-abiding gun owner the term “universal background check” seems to mean, you check the background of every gun owner to make sure they aren’t criminals or mental defectives.  After all, no one wants to be “that guy” who sold a gun to the whack-o who killed a bunch of children at some school.

So, why would anyone oppose universal background checks?

To understand the resistance, we need to pull back the covers on this particular bed and see the little bed bugs crawling around between the covers waiting to bite us.

Those supporting this common-sense gun reform are often referred to as anti-gun, anti-gunners, gun-banners, or just banners.  This various names reflect the belief that those supporting gun control laws have as their ultimate aim the banning of all gun ownership by private individuals.  

To be fair, not everyone lumped into the gun-ban group wants that.  Regardless of the benign motives some of some gun-control advocates, history definitively shows that preventing the general populace from having access to weapons is a generally effective method of ensuring that they cannot overthrow a government, no matter how corrupt, predatory, or despotic it may be.  

Ancient history shows that feudal lords maintained power over their subjects and their serfs, despite their despotism, because they could afford arms and armor. If they found a peasant with an unauthorized sword or armor they killed him or her.  One of the privileges of being knighted was the freedom to carry a sword anytime you wanted.

In more recent times, the American Revolution got kick started when British troops marched from Boston to Concord with the intent to confiscate guns and ammunition being stored there by the colonial militia. The British wanted to confiscate these weapons and ammunition in order to keep the colonists under the rule of King George.

Modern history has also shown that first controlling, and then confiscating private firearms has been effectively used by several despotic regimes to control their populace.  One of the best know examples is Nazi Germany.  However, this also is a hallmark of the Soviet Union, Castro in Cuba, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Chavez in Venezuela.

For many gunners, nearly any gun-control law is seen as part of the slippery slope that leads to gun confiscation.  Because of that, some gunners reflexively oppose universal background checks as part of that slippery slope.

I consider myself a reasonable person.  I try to see things from viewpoints other than my own and recognize that at times, I might be guilty of being short-sighted or reactionary.  When I first heard the term universal background check for gun purchases, I thought it sounded reasonable and was supportive of the notion.  As I continued to see strong opposition to it from some other gun owners, I decided to look a little closer to see why some seemed so adamantly opposed.

Universal background check laws are designed expand the existing requirements beyond commercial firearms sales to regulate 100% of private firearms exchanges.  By private, I mean between you and your cousin, you and your neighbor, and even your yard sale (or classified ad sale).

Today, there are both federal and state laws which heavily regulate the sale and transfer of firearms handled by licensed firearm dealers.  To buy a gun from a gun store or manufacturer, whether in their storefront or at a gun show, you have to pass a federal background check.  This sort of transaction is what most of us are thinking about when we hear the term universal background check.

Universal, in this case, really means universal. 

Universal background checks would make you a felon if you gave a gun to your brother or to your adult child.  It would make it a felony for an estate to allow heirs to inherit firearms from their parents.  In both cases, the transfer of the gun cannot occur without the execution of a federal or state (or both) background check.  This is true even if the firearm is an antique flintlock that no longer works but which has been handed down through your family since Revolutionary War days.

Not only is it incredibly intrusive to authorize the government to get in the middle of private, non-commercial, firearm transfers it also sets an incredibly horrible precedent for our economic freedoms in general.

If the government can make you a felon for giving away a gun, or selling it to someone you know, without first going through the government for clearance, they can make you a criminal for anything and everything you sell or give away.

The Yard-Sale Felony Caper

In most neighborhoods during the Spring and Fall in most parts of the US on any given weekend you can find dozens of yard sales, garage sales, and “tag” sales happening throughout your town.  Maybe you have hosted more than one yourself.  Probably, you have visited more than one.

In many cases the adage applies that the difference between a yard sale and garbage collection is how close the items are placed to the curb.  Regardless of this, often one person’s trash is another’s treasure.

Now, imagine that some agent of the Internal Revenue Service is tasked with showing up at each yard sale, monitoring the transactions and making sure that not only are sales taxes collected on each sale, but the transfers themselves are recorded and your yard sale earnings are properly recorded for reporting on your income tax.  And, if you aren’t doing all that at your yard sale, that government agent simply calls the police who come to your yard sale, arrest you and all your family who are helping in the sale, and then confiscating all the stuff you were trying to sell.

You and every member of your family are now economic criminals.  Because this involved federal taxes, you are now indicted felons.  When you get convicted – and you will be convicted because you were blatantly guilty – you are now convicted felons.  Even if you never serve a day in jail your life and that of each member of your family are now changed forever.

Note: If you can afford a good lawyer, you might manage to avoid getting convicted.  If you can't afford a good lawyer, then kiss your "law abiding citizen" moniker goodbye forever.  You are going to become just another felon.  Your public defender is unlikely to prevent this.

As a convicted felon you will never be able to hold a job anywhere in the financial sector, at all.  No bank, insurance company, or finance company can hire you because you cannot be bonded – insured against financial misconduct.  And that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Just ask any convicted felon how hard it is to find a really good job, or any job, after they get out of jail.  One reason for criminal recidivism is that it is incredibly difficult for a convicted criminal to ever make an honest living.  Your yard sale did this to you, and to all your children as well.  That felony will follow them for the rest of their lives.

Universal tax collection, like universal background checks makes millions of ordinary citizens into criminals.  Even today economists refer to the “gray market” and the “black market” economic activities within the US and other countries.  The gray markets are un-taxed transfers of legal goods between private individuals in non-commercial quantities.  The black market is based on either commercial volumes of business of lawful goods, or when the products are illegal.

I know this yard-sale-felony scenario sounds crazy.  However, it is a logical next step after the government turns your Uncle into a felon for giving you your great grandfather’s pistol without first registering the transfer with the government and running a background check on you.

I believe that the common-sense gun reform of universal background checks is a nice sounding wrapper on a big candy-coated bar of dung.  Currently we have both federal and state laws which require licensing for firearms dealers, and which require them to run background checks on everyone who buys a gun from them.  Common sense says that is universal enough.  Extending the requirement for background checks to private, non-commercial gifting, inheriting, or sale of guns is not common-sense, and it will inevitably lead to much worse things.

FYI- According to the laws today you are supposed to report the money you earn from your yard sale along with your other income on your tax returns.  However, today there aren't any federal agents looking to lock you up for failing to report the $532.18 you recouped for selling your old junk, outgrown clothes, and that ready to did lawn mower you sold at your last yard sale.

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Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

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Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
 Godvernment: Government as God

The Constitutional Right And Social Obligation To Carry A Gun

Tom Sheppard

3/20/2019

I was looking at a website promoting products related to lawful concealed carry of firearms.  The site included a video testimonial in which the piece below was referenced.  Curious, I looked up the reference and found the article below.  Originally penned more than a decade ago it is a little dated, however its fundamental points are unaltered by time.  If you are wondering about whether or not is right to carry a firearm, you should give this article serious consideration before deciding.  You should also consider whether or not everyone has an inalienable right to defend themselves.  

"if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."

  Cicero

The Constitutional Right 

And Social Obligation To Carry A Gun

By Robert H Boatman

The Author and his estate have granted permission to reprint it in full or in part as long as attribution is given to Robert H. Boatman

There’s an old wisecrack, true as witticisms, proverbs and aphorisms usually are. It goes like this - funny the things you see when you don’t have a gun.

Suzanna Gratia (now Gratia Hupp) was having a pleasant lunch with her parents in Luby’s cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when she saw a pickup truck come crashing through the wall. A man armed with two guns and plenty of spare magazines emerged from the truck and started shooting everyone in sight, including Gratia’s mother and father. Al Gratia was shot fatally in the chest. Ursula Gratia was shot point-blank in the head. More than 20 other people in the cafeteria were murdered in cold blood before the killer turned one of his guns on himself and blew his own brains out.

Suzanna hid under a table, clutching her purse which normally contained a .38 revolver. In deference to Texas law at that time, which prohibited carrying concealed weapons on one’s person, she had left her gun in her car. Several more dead diners had guns legally and inaccessibly locked in their cars. Suzanna Gratia Hupp has vowed never to make that mistake again, though such pronouncements always come far too late.

“The decision to follow the law cost me the lives of my parents,” she says. “There is not a day that goes by when I do not think about that.”

Not long after the Killeen massacre, John Taylor and Craig Godineaux knocked on the locked front door of a Wendy’s restaurant in New York City. They called out to the manager, Jean Dumel Auguste, by name. Taylor was familiar with the operation and layout of the restaurant, having worked there for a short time before he was dismissed for theft. The manager opened the door for Taylor and Godineaux and led them to his basement office. Minutes later, he used the store’s intercom to summon his entire night crew of six employees down into the basement for a meeting. What followed was one of the worst massacres in New York history.

The two armed killers herded all seven Wendy’s employees into a walk-in refrigerator, bound their hands, gagged their mouths, covered their heads with plastic bags, ordered them to kneel on the floor, and methodically shot each person in the head with a small-caliber pistol at point-blank range. They then stole about $2,000 in cash and left. New York law and Wendy’s corporate policy had prohibited the victims from arming themselves.

All of the people involved in these incidents were, in a profound way, responsible for their own deaths or the deaths of loved ones. They were equally responsible for the deaths of innocents who dared associate with them and, by abstract extension, for the deaths of everyone ever killed in similar circumstances. Anti-gun laws and policies are always complicit in the execution of innocents. And it’s appropriate that survivors are always ashamed of their inadequacy.

In the final analysis, to face evil with impotence - whether out of cowardice or feeble-mindedness or submission to foolish laws - could well be responsible for the death of society.

Suzanna Gratia Hupp decided to fight back. She set out to change the foolish laws. She turned her anger on her legislators who had “legislated me out of the right to protect myself and my family.” She joined the crusade for the right to carry concealed weapons in Texas and she ran for the state legislature. She was successful on both counts, though not in time to save the lives of her parents.

Today, Rep. Hupp has some harsh words for those gun-control fanatics who come out of the woodwork every time there’s a mass slaying like Columbine. “Why is it that mass shootings now seem to always take place in schools and post offices, places where guns are not allowed? They’re always in these so-called gun-free safety zones.” Like Luby’s cafeteria.

Five Wendy’s employees - Ramon Nazario, Anita C. Smith, Jeremy Mele, Ali Ibadat and Jean Dumel Auguste - took their shame to their graves. There was no good reason on earth why it had to end that way.

A scenario almost identical to that of Wendy’s in New York began to unfold at Shoney’s restaurant in Anniston, Alabama. Two armed robbers took over the restaurant, which was filled with two dozen customers and several employees, and started to herd everyone into the restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator. But this time a smart employee, Thomas Terry, drew his concealed .45 and shot both of the bad guys before this particular mass execution could take place. In a matter of seconds, one criminal lay dead, the other incapacitated, and more than two dozen innocent people had been handed back their lives thanks to a man who had a gun and was not afraid to use it. Thomas Terry, bleeding from a grazing wound to the hip, was happy to play the hero with so many lives at stake.

And still they ask, Why do you carry a gun? What are you afraid of? Do you think some nut is going to drive through the wall and start shooting everybody? Do you think a couple of hardened criminals are going to shove you in the refrigerator and execute you? To which you can only reply, Do you think when you walk out of here and cross the street you’re going to be hit by a truck?

Only when the custom of carrying a gun once again achieves its deserved high level of social legitimacy and political priority will this country get back on the track of respect for human freedom and dignity that has set it apart from the rest of the world for two centuries.

The Anti-Freedom Zealots

Ask any American and he’ll tell you he believes in liberty. To a point, of course. All too often, when liberty goes beyond the inalienable right to choose one’s own brand of mouthwash, the cold fear of freedom begins to seep into the bones.

Cheering on the fear of freedom are those quivering souls steeped in terror at the thought of independent decision-making and freedom of action on the part of their distrusted fellow man. These anti-freedom zealots are members of the well established international community of political ideologues who have brought you such gun-control activists as Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao. And since at least the 1930s it has been clear that even The Land of The Free has its share of these political low-lifes. We must face the fact that the anti-freedom zealots have made their American home in the left, or “liberal,” wing of today’s Democratic Party.

Anti-freedom zealots live in a wayward universe of their own making, a cosmos where nature is contradicted at every turn, where responses to every problem are suicidal measures as certain to make the problem worse as showering gasoline on a housefire. The upended logic of these fanatics is stunning: If there’s a problem with bad guys shooting good guys, then let’s make sure the good guys don’t have guns.

Criminologist Cesare Beccaria, writing in the 18^th century, had a word to say about anti-freedom zealots. “False is the idea … that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it … The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. [emphasis added]  Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides …”

Many Americans today have been taught by propaganda disseminated in the mass media that guns lead dangerous lives of their own. Thus the notorious anti-gun politician, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) describes a rare and highly desirable sporting rifle in the following terms: “This kind of weapon can blow up a limousine, a helicopter, can take out a vehicle, armored vehicle, maybe a mile away. It can shoot through seven buildings!”

One wonders why the rabid Mr. Waxman and his ilk don’t use similar words to describe the lethal five-gallon bucket, an evil instrument of death which drowns twice as many children each year as are shot by America’s 250 million guns.

Anti-freedom zealots are both helpless and hopeless. They are like decaffeinated coffee, de-clawed cats, or poorly bred dogs who’ve been easily persuaded to forego their natural hunting instincts in order to avoid minor electrical shocks and so tend to have recurring problems with their weakened nervous systems.

Sarah Brady of Handgun Control Inc, has said, mimicking Clinton’s pathetic duck-hunting argument, that “the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes.” Anti-freedom zealots like the Bradys and the Clintons need to be informed that to save one’s life is not a sporting purpose. There’s nothing sporting about it. If it takes a full battle-dress M-16 or AK-47 to get the job done, well, that’s what they’re for.

In their terminal confusion, anti-freedom zealots pay lip service to a Constitution they don’t really understand, but in every act and every thought, whether out of total ignorance or deliberate intent, reveal that their mission is to facilitate the destruction of the Constitution and its replacement with an unnatural ideology most of us thought rusted to bloody dust a long time ago.

Anti-freedom zealots are a malignant danger to all life on Earth as we know it, because their anti-self-defense, anti-gun position is an expression of the most utter contempt for individual human life it is possible to conceive.

Anti-freedom zealots see nothing wrong with leaning on their neighbors to provide them with personal protection even though they would never consider returning the favor. They worship their effeminate fantasy of an all-powerful government with true religious fanaticism [my point exactly in Godvernment].  They believe all other humans are as mentally weak, irresponsible, incompetent and self-hating as they know themselves to be. And they encourage only civilization’s most self-destructive tendencies.

To be charitable, anti-freedom zealots are unthinkingly naïve, stone-blind and cowardly. To be frank, they are the evil seeds ultimately responsible for all the crime, war and needless violence the planet has ever seen.

Paradise Lost

In the beginning, weapons grew on trees.

In the lost paradise of our species, every man, woman and child was armed to the teeth with the finest state-of-the-art killing machines society could produce, and all was well. As man grew more sophisticated and his weapons grew even more effective at protecting weaker citizens from stronger ones, the first evil caveman genius saw that, as a precursor to the enslavement and destruction of his intended victims, all who would dare resist him must first be disarmed. In the name of peace. In the name of social harmony. In the name of common sense. To save the children. Evil geniuses, and evil idiots, have been singing that tune ever since. And the more gullible among our species have all too often danced to it.

The now-dead Peter Shields, founder of the radical anti-gun Handgun Control Inc, sings, “If attacked, put up no defense. Give them what they want.”  [they may just want to kill you, like Johnny Cash sings, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die."]

The aforementioned anti-gun politician, California Rep. Henry Waxman, sings, “If someone is so fearful that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all!” Few politicians in today’s unabashedly socialist Democratic Party have not at some time joined in the anti-gun chorus or made up worse verses of their own.

In the recent past, half of American voters demonstrated that they are capable of dancing to anything if it has a simple beat and a catchy tune. They cheerfully elected and reelected to the highest office in the land a psychopathic criminal and traitor of the lowest order, a thoroughly dishonest and evil man who devoted his entire personal and political life to the eradication of timeless human liberties Americans take for granted.

Few American voters have even read the Bill of Rights, brief as it is, much less understood its meaning and significance. How do you think they’d feel on any given day about a total re-write? As the ghost of Bill Clinton fades back into the putrefied swamp from whence it came, we must remember the lessons learned.

Niccolò Machiavelli cautioned as early as the 16^th century that the demise of the armed citizen meant the end of civic virtue and, with it, the end of the people’s control over their own destiny - and a very fast end at that, as he observes in The Art of War: “Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.”

Whom are we to trust with our lives and our liberties, other than ourselves?

Carrying A Gun Is An Absolute Right

The framers of the Constitution were under no pressure from the NRA when they wrote “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

In the same spare sentence, they reaffirmed their historical preference for a “militia” over a standing army, and indicated that this militia should be composed of armed citizens - citizens of a “free state” whose right to keep and bear arms must never be infringed. Anti-freedom zealots, including academic invalids and the hypocrites of the mis-named American Civil Liberties Union, have stood on their pointy heads in tortured attempts to misinterpret this sentence ever since. Those of us who know how to read the English language have no trouble at all.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall NOT be infringed. The right of the people TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS shall NOT be infringed. The right of the people to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. What part of NOT do the illiterates out to subvert the Constitution NOT understand?

The Constitution of the state of Pennsylvania (adopted September 28, 1776) allocated more words to make the point even more unmistakable: “XIII. That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.”

Indeed, the individual right to keep and bear arms for personal defense is based on exactly the same principle as civilian control of the military. One wonders if the ACLU would argue with that.

The Second Amendment, like most other articles in the Bill of Rights, was adopted from the English Bill of Rights of 1689 which, in turn, was based on centuries of English Common Law. English jurist Sir William Blackstone observed that the English Bill of Rights clearly meant that Englishmen possessed “the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense” and that “having arms suitable for their defense” was one of the five auxiliary rights people possessed “to protect and maintain inviolate the three great and primary rights,” the first of which is “personal security.”

Unfortunately for the English people, they have been persuaded by their own far-left government and insidious anti-gun activists to allow the English Bill of Rights to be, as they might say, shat upon. Today, the English do not have the right to keep and bear arms for self-preservation and defense. As a direct result, they live in a crime-ridden society that grows worse with each passing day.

The recent 2000 International Crime Victims Survey published by the Dutch Ministry of Justice, a highly respected and accurate measurement of the percentage of people by nation who are victims of violent crimes, ranked England far ahead of the United States (which ranked 8^th), and second only to Australia (where English-style anti-gun laws are also in effect) as the most violent nation. A recently disarmed England now has twice as much violent crime as the United States.

The English Home Office, which cooperated in the survey, has refused to publish these findings in England. It’s better not to remind the gullible subjects how empty were the promises of safety and security for which they so eagerly traded away their very real and priceless freedoms and responsibilities.

The great Roman philosopher and senator, Cicero, immortalized armed self-defense as an “inalienable right” more than 2,000 years before the U.S. Constitution did so. Cicero said:

There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.

Even people to whom armed self-defense is but a remote abstraction often endorse, without even realizing it, the unquestionable principles underlying the right to carry a gun. Jaron Lanier, writing in Discover Magazine (Feb. 2001) said in reference to new copyright-protection technology - “In a democracy, citizens are supposed to act as partners in enforcing laws. Those forced to follow rules without being trusted even for a moment are, in fact, slaves.”

It is perfectly obvious that we have a natural right to arm ourselves and to kill any criminal or other force that threatens us just as surely as an elephant has a right to kill an attacking lion and a mother bear has a right to kill a wolf grinning suspiciously at her cubs. Animal-rights extremists extend the animals’ right to the killing of humans under such circumstances.

Even the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize and all, said in May of 2001 during a speech about “nonviolent resolutions to conflict” to 7,600 Oregon and Washington high-school students - “But if someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” So said the Dalai Lama.

There are criminals among us who are both homicidal and incorrigible. Their parents took a shot at civilizing them and failed. Their school teachers took a shot at them and failed. The odds are overwhelming that government welfare programs and penal institutions took a shot at them and failed. If it ever becomes your turn to take a shot at them, don’t fail.

Carrying A Gun Has Always Been Both Right And Duty

There have been many societies in which not carrying a weapon was a serious and severely punishable crime. This was true in Greece, Rome, Europe, Britain and, though seldom enforced, is still true in certain places in America today. This is as it should be. A citizen who shirks his duty to contribute to the security of his community is little better than the criminal who threatens it, and is better off living in a society that places lesser demands on his capacity to accept responsibility. As cowards from the Vietnam era discovered, that’s what Canada is for.

English scholar Granville Sharpe, who helped bring about the abolition of slavery in England and supported American independence, wrote in 1782 that “No Englishman can be truly loyal who opposes the principles of English law whereby the people are required to have arms of defence and peace, for mutual as well as private defence … The laws of England always required the people to be armed, and not only armed, but to be expert in arms.”

In 1785, William Blizard, chief legal advisor to London’s mayor and city council, stated that “The right of his majesty’s Protestant subjects, to have arms for their own defence, and to use them for lawful purposes, is most clear and undeniable. It seems, indeed, to be considered, by the ancient laws of this kingdom, not only as a right, but as a duty…”

Commenting on the early legal requirement that every American male and every American household be armed, attorney Don B. Kates says that citizens “were not simply allowed to keep their own arms, but affirmatively required to do so.”  He further says that these statutes reflect the classical world view that “arms possession for protection of self, family and polity was both the hallmark of the individual’s freedom and one of the two primary factors in his developing the independent, self-reliant, responsible character which classical political philosophers deemed necessary to the citizenry of a free state.”

You don’t have to have lived in ancient Greece or Rome or Middle Ages England or revolutionary America or on the west side of L.A. during the Manson massacres, as I did, to know that anyone who lives in a house without a gun is a dangerous fool.

There have not always been police. England had none until 1829, America had none until 1845, and only in the so-called modern era have police officers been armed. At one time, fear of anything resembling a standing army was so intense that police were, in fact, the only citizens not allowed to carry guns. Throughout much of 19^th century England and America, the policy of forbidding police to have arms while on duty was the only form of gun control.

Police were expected to rely on a fully armed citizenry to come to their aid when armed enforcement of the law was necessary - a circumstance that occurs with growing regularity today.

Armed Citizens Of The 21^st Century

On January 3, 2001, the Citizens’ Self-Defense Act of 2001, intended “to protect the right to obtain firearms for security, and to use firearms in defense of self, family, or home, and to provide for the enforcement of such right” was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. Given the current sorry state of our elected representatives, the bill was never expected to pass into law, but rather to serve as a symbol of just how timid, disconnected from reality and contemptuous of liberty most Washington politicians - who would never consider voting for such a bill - have become.

It doesn’t matter. The fundamental liberties reaffirmed in H.R. 31 were never granted by politicians in the first place. The source of these liberties is as old as the first free man. And, as long as man is free, the source will remain.

Included in the Citizens’ Self-Defense Act of 2001 are the following Congressional findings:

(1) Police cannot protect, and are not legally liable for failing to protect, individual citizens, [emphasis added] as evidenced by the following: (A) The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. For example, in Warren v. District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981), the court stated: “[C]ourts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community.” (B) Former Florida Attorney General Jim Smith told Florida legislators that police responded to only 200,000 of 700,000 calls for help to Dade County authorities. (C) The United States Department of Justice found that, in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence for which police had not responded within one hour. (D) Currently, there are about 150,000 police officers on duty at any one time. (2) Citizens frequently must use firearms to defend themselves, as evidenced by the following: (A) Every year, more than 2,400,000 people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals - or more than 6,500 people a day. This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. (B) Of the 2,400,000 self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse. (C) Of the 2,400,000 times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, 92 percent merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than eight percent of the time does a citizen kill or wound his or her attacker. (3) Law-abiding citizens, seeking only to provide for their families’ defense, are routinely prosecuted for brandishing or using a firearm in self-defense. For example: (A) In 1986, Don Bennett of Oak Park, Illinois, was shot at by two men who had just stolen $1,200 in cash and jewelry from his suburban Chicago service station. The police arrested Bennett for violating Oak Park’s handgun ban. The police never caught the actual criminals. (B) Ronald Biggs, a resident of Goldsboro, North Carolina, was arrested for shooting an intruder in 1990. Four men broke into Biggs’ residence one night, ransacked the home and then assaulted him with a baseball bat. When Biggs attempted to escape through the back door, the group chased him and Biggs turned and shot one of the assailants in the stomach. Biggs was arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon - a felony. His assailants were charged with misdemeanors. (C) Don Campbell of Port Huron, Michigan, was arrested, jailed, and criminally charged after he shot a criminal assailant in 1991. The thief had broken into Campbell’s store and attacked him. The prosecutor plea-bargained with the assailant and planned to use him to testify against Campbell for felonious use of a firearm. Only after intense community pressure did the prosecutor finally drop the charges. (4) The courts have granted immunity from prosecution to police officers who use firearms in the line of duty. Similarly, law-abiding citizens who use firearms to protect themselves, their families, and their homes against violent felons should not be subject to lawsuits by the violent felons who sought to victimize them.

[Thankfully, in the years since 2001 many states have issued so-called Stand Your Ground laws which have nearly eliminated such abuses of law-abiding citizens defending themselves.  TKS]

In 1987, a year after Glocks were introduced to the U.S., Florida enacted a pioneering “shall-issue” right-to-carry law that has served as the model for the rest of the country. The Florida law affirmed the right of a private citizen to carry a concealed gun and eliminated the abuses so typical of “discretionary” right-to-carry laws that resulted in gun permits being awarded arbitrarily to the political cronies of petty officials, limousine liberals, movie actors, athletes and various other celebrity representatives of the rich and famous crowd, but denied to so-called “ordinary” citizens. The Florida law made it crystal clear that any citizen with basic firearms training and a felony-free record would be issued a concealed-carry permit upon request, period.

Florida’s landmark right-to-carry law was supported by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Sheriffs Association, Florida Police Chiefs Association and other law enforcement groups. And it was supported by Florida voters.

The media, however, was predictably vociferous in its opposition to the exercise of Constitutionally guaranteed rights, and in its total submission to the party line of radical anti-freedom, anti-self-defense and anti-gun forces. Headlines predicted vigilante justice and wild-west shootouts on every corner. “Florida will become the “Gunshine State.” “A pistol-packing citizenry will mean itchier trigger fingers.” “Florida’s climate of smoldering fear will flash like napalm when every stranger totes a piece.” “Every mental snap in traffic could lead to the crack of gunfire.”

Such dire and colorful predictions, of course, proved totally false. Nevertheless, that same hysterical fear-mongering and bald-faced lying are used even today every time a new state gets ready to pass an enlightened right-to-carry law. In actual fact, the only notable thing that happened for the first five years after Florida passed its right-to-carry law was that, as homicide rates in the U.S. soared, Florida’s homicide rate fell a dramatic 23 percent. A few of the opponents of concealed carry actually had the courage to admit they were wrong.

Thanks to the intensive lobbying efforts of the NRA, along with the tireless grassroots work of politically aware gunowners, 33 states now have Florida-style laws which require the prompt issuance to their citizens of legal permits to carry concealed weapons. Well over half of the U.S. population, more than 60 percent of all handgun owners, live in these free states, yet no more than one to five percent ever apply for such licenses.

Notwithstanding the fact that most people do not carry guns, the mere possibility that an intended victim could be armed with a handgun eliminates millions of crimes every year. 

According to the FBI, states with “shall-issue” right-to-carry laws have a 26 percent lower total violent crime rate, a 20 percent lower homicide rate, a 39 percent lower robbery rate and a 22 percent lower aggravated assault rate than those states that do not allow their citizens to legally carry guns.

Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, Gary Kleck, in Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America (Aldine de Gruyter Publishers, 1991) found that “robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all.”

Convicted felons reveal in surveys that they are more afraid of armed citizens than they are of the police. And well they should be. Armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. And only two percent of civilian shootings involve an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal, whereas the error rate for the police is more than five times that high.

Kleck’s research shows that private citizens use firearms to protect themselves and thwart crime about 2.5 million times a year. Citizens use firearms to prevent mass killings, bank robberies, gang attacks, carjackings, rapes, kidnappings and hostage-takings. They use them to help capture prison escapees and murderers, to come to the aid of outnumbered or ambushed law enforcement officers. Yet only a handful of these 2.5 million life-saving uses of firearms are ever reported in the mainstream press.

If a lot more people carried guns, what kind of a society would we have? Certainly not the kind predicted by anti-gun fanatics. Those hysterical doomsayers have been proven absolutely wrong one hundred percent of the time. Would we have a crime-free society? 

Certainly not. Criminals are as natural and immune to total eradication as fruit flies. But a better-armed society would severely limit the violent damage criminals wreak before they are stopped. Criminals are naturally self-destructive. The reasons they are so doesn’t matter. To assist them in their self-destructiveness is the polite and civilized thing to do. Thus another ageless axiom: An Armed Society Is A Polite Society.

In his essay, Behavior Modification And Self Defense, Michael Mitchell writes that laws do one thing and one thing only - provide a penalty for wrongful behavior. The function of laws is to punish people, and punishment is a form of behavior modification. But laws are obviously only effective on the law-abiding populace. Criminals, by definition, don’t respect the law; they make their living breaking it. And fear of punishment is only effective if it is swift, sure and severe.

In these days when the legal system cannot be relied upon to provide effective punishment for criminal behavior, armed self-defense can. It’s definitely swift, as the gun will appear during or immediately after the negative behavior. It’s sure, since, if the criminal doesn’t stop his assault, he will be shot. And most people would definitely call a bullet to the chest severe.

The beauty of armed self-defense is that, because of its immediate, sure, and severe nature, the mere threat is usually enough to stop the behavior. Is it any wonder that states that pass concealed-carry laws experience immediate and obvious drops in crime rates? The violent criminal in these states isn’t nearly as worried about being arrested for his crime as he is about being shot by his would-be victim. This fact fits perfectly with well-established principles of behavior modification.

On the flip side, the crime facilitators (gun control advocates) with their notions that we should submit to criminal assault, reward criminal behavior. The criminal gets what he wants - your money, your dignity, and maybe your life. Since positive reinforcement - reward - is the strongest, most effective behavior modification tool, that criminal behavior is likely to be repeated. In other words, by submitting to criminal demands, you are encouraging criminal behavior.

Mitchell did not say, but I will, that the most effective way to modify the behavior of a criminal is to modify it to the extent that he is no longer capable of any behavior at all.

In 1998, John R. Lott, Jr., senior research scholar in the School of Law at Yale University, authored the most comprehensive and exhaustive study of crime and gun control laws ever conceived, based on the largest data set on crime ever assembled. His landmark book, More Guns, Less Crime (The University of Chicago Press, 1998, 2000), now available in an updated second edition, includes thorough analyses of more than 54,000 observations and hundreds of variable factors across more than 3,000 counties in all 50 states for 18 years.

The assiduously researched conclusions reached by Lott immediately set off a wave of panic among anti-gun fanatics and drew organized, systematic personal attacks of the most vicious and dishonest nature, including death threats leveled at Lott and his wife and children. Yet not a single serious academic challenge of Lott’s research, his methodology or his incontrovertible conclusions has ever been successfully mounted. In fact, Lott’s conclusions have reluctantly been called “bulletproof” even by the liberal mainstream press. Among those conclusions are:

• Gun ownership saves lives. 
• Gun ownership also saves money. Nationwide, each one percent increase in the number of people owning guns reduces crime victim costs by over $3 billion.
• Concealed handgun carry by private citizens reduces violent crimes, including rape, murder, aggravated assault and robbery, throughout the entire community and in surrounding communities.
• When a state passes a right-to-carry law, crime reduction is immediate and substantial, and crime-reduction benefits continue to grow the longer the law is in effect.
• The greater the number of concealed handgun permits issued, the greater the reduction in crime.
• Mass shootings in public places are reduced to virtually zero within four or five years after right-to-carry laws are passed - except in designated “gun-free” zones, such as schools, where self-defense is known to be prohibited.
• The largest drops in violent crime from concealed handgun carry occur in the most urban areas with the greatest populations and the highest crime rates.
• Citizens who do not carry guns benefit equally from the crime reduction which results when other citizens carry guns. The people who benefit most from this “halo” effect are women, children, the elderly and blacks.
• Of all the methods studied by economists, the carrying of concealed handguns is by far the most cost-effective method for reducing crime. Each and every concealed handgun permit issued reduces total economic losses to crime victims by $3,000 - $5,000. 
• Accident and suicide rates are unaltered by the presence of concealed handguns.
• The effect of increased penalties for using a gun in the commission of a crime is small.
• The Brady Law, other mandated waiting periods, safe-storage laws and one-gun-a-month laws all increase crime, especially rape.
• Background checks, training requirements and age restrictions have no crime-reduction benefits.

Bottom line, in keeping with the title of his work, the more guns there are in society and the more these guns are carried by private citizens, the less crime there is.

These are some of the reasons why police, who fight crime for a living and are well aware of the realities of street criminals, support right-to-carry laws for private citizens by an overwhelming three-to-one margin. This is an even higher margin of support for right-to-carry than the strong support voiced by the civilian population.

Policemen are nobody’s personal bodyguards. Their jobs are to find and arrest people who have committed crimes, not to prevent such potential crimes from happening in the first place. Clearly, the responsibility for victim-prevention lies with the victim-to-be.

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (Bowers v. DeVito, 1982) did not mince words when it ruled, “There is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen.” 

What It Means To Carry A Gun

That loaded Glock in your holster is a powerful expression of your Constitutionally guaranteed liberty as an American citizen, your recognition of the solemn duty you have to your fellow man, and your willingness to accept the full weight of a life-and-death responsibility.

When you are prepared to defend yourself, you are equally prepared to defend all of society and all of its guiding principles. Your responsibilities are therefore many - moral, legal and tactical. That is why most people, including lifelong gunowners, experienced hunters and competitive shooters, even in states that freely issue concealed carry permits, do not choose to carry a gun.

Your moral responsibilities are to fire your gun into another human being only when the line of necessity has clearly been reached, and then to fire without hesitation and to full effect. Remember the words of Cicero.

Your legal responsibilities are to justify your actions to those who would call you a criminal at the drop of a hat, and quite possibly to a jury of your peers, most of whom have neither the competence nor the courage to carry a gun in their own defense. Read the findings of the Citizens’ Self-Defense Act of 2001.

Your tactical responsibilities are to carry your gun with confidence, to be well trained in your ability to operate it effectively, and to have instilled in yourself an iron will to use deadly force to prevent or end violence committed against yourself or others. Most of this book is dedicated to your tactical responsibilities, because that’s what will save your life.

Violence happens either at random, or directed toward the obviously vulnerable, or toward someone in particular for a reason. You can rest assured it will not happen at the shooting range when you are all suited up in your speed rig with a plan of action worked out for the coming run-and-gun stage. It will happen when you are home sleeping in your bed, shopping at the grocery store, walking out to get the mail, mowing the grass, at dinner, at church, at the theater.

The most dangerous places in the world are those called “gun-free safety zones” by their ignorant political creators and known by criminals and psychopaths as “safe-to-kill zones.” Even an adolescent school kid can figure out that an advertised killing field where no one is allowed to shoot back is the safest location in the world to carry out a mass shooting. Don’t even consider going to a place like that unarmed, whether it’s your kid’s school or a national park. If you can’t handle breaking the law, don’t go.

The assistant principal of a high school in Pearl, Mississippi, broke the law. He kept a .45 in his car parked on the school grounds. When a deranged student opened fire, Joel Myrick ran for his gun. Two students were killed because Myrick had to retrieve his gun from his car instead of his holster. But the .45 eventually prevailed, and Myrick stopped the massacre long before police arrived on the scene. God only knows how many lives he saved. But assistant principal Joel Myrick wasn’t awarded any medals. Of the several hundred newspaper and television stories about the incident, only a few even mentioned his name. Almost none revealed the fact that he used a gun to stop the killings.

When you bodyguard someone for a while, or when you just live a normal life with your eyes wide open, you realize how vulnerable we all are to becoming another tidbit-of-opportunity in the relentless food chain that sustains the life of this unpredictable world. It’s a realization not of paranoia but of reality. That’s the way it is, always has been, always will be. You can ignore it out of faint-heartedness, deny it out of lunacy, submit to it out of a fatalistic contempt for your own life and the lives of others, or you can face it with courage and intelligence and prepare yourself to deal with capricious reality’s predisposition toward danger.

Most of those dangers can be met with nothing more than a strong I’m-not-a-victim mindset and body language. Many others may shrivel with the demonstration of superior verbal skills. Still others may require a fundamental knowledge of martial arts, a container of pepper spray, a makeshift club, the presence of a well-wielded knife or the sight of a firearm. A few, perhaps one in a lifetime, will not be affected by any kind of less-than-lethal response and will not end until you churn your attacker’s dreams and determination into a chunky red stew and spew it all over the street with a couple of big-bore hollowpoints. The trouble is, you never know when or where that last one is coming.

If you ever find yourself under attack by an armed criminal, you will be on the defensive and he will be on the offensive. In other words, he will have a strong advantage going in. And, though he will not have trained himself to shoot nearly as well as you have trained, he will be far more experienced in the art of killing. The odds are, any criminal who is intent on killing you has probably killed men before, knows how to do it, knows how it feels and likes it. You’re not going to talk him out of it, scare him out of it, or wound him out of it. You’re going to have to kill him.

Studies show that simply brandishing a weapon saves many lives, but I am personally against the idea of waving a gun around while your adversary thinks. The way to overcome his offensive advantage is to strike without warning. Once you make the decision to free your Glock from its holster the entire situation should be over and done with in a second or two. The most important component in practicing your draw is firing the instant you have a sight picture on your target, and continuing to fire until your assailant no longer exists.

More than a century of military and police research tells us that most people, including up to 85 percent of trained soldiers and cops, are psychologically unable to use deadly force in a life-or-death situation no matter how compelling the circumstances may be. If you can’t kill, there is no reason for you to carry a lethal weapon.

Carrying a loaded gun with the ability and will to use it is not a casual fling meant to bring some excitement into your boring life. It is an all-embracing lifestyle and must take precedence over your respect for law, your fear of social criticism, your love of humanity, your wardrobe and your drinking habits.

You can never be unaware of the weight you carry on your hip or under your arm. You can never forget your responsibilities. You must wear your Glock with the same allegiance as your wedding ring. If you’re not married, your Glock is your wedding ring. Wear it for life. Don’t even think about leaving home without it. Be prepared to use it at a moment’s notice. Carry it all the time. And shoot to kill.

“Liberty or death,” the meaning of which is clear and absolute, is but a trivial phrase if you do not carry a gun. For freedom-loving Americans, the five most important words in the English language are, and always have been - from my cold dead hands.

Before his death in 2009, Robert H Boatman authored at least six books on firearms.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

 The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

(c) Copyright 2019 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Dems Sit-in to Bully for Gun Control

So today, the Wall Street Journal has a front page picture of Democrats staging a sit-in on the floor of Congress in order to force a vote on gun control legislation.

Ostensibly, their agenda is to pass legislation that will prevent suspected terrorists from buying guns.

While that sounds like a noble idea, as I pointed out the other day in my Pulse Frame Up article, the noble title of their effort is actually simply a way to frame a discussion that is, in reality, a very bad idea.

The Dems say, "don't let suspected terrorists buy guns."  That sounds pretty reasonable.  But, if they put their cause in practical, realistic terms, what they are really saying is, "deny constitutional rights to people who we suspect might someday commit a crime."

Of course, that doesn't make a good sound bite and it certainly doesn't wrap their unconstitutional desires in the flag and mom and apple pie.  Instead, it reveals it for what it truly is, another attempt to put power in the hands of federal bureaucrats and take issue of guilt and innocence out of the courts.

It is past time for people to look past the hot button headlines and think about the underlying meaning behind the laws that are being pushed by "progressives" of all political parties.  If we don't we will end up saluting the functional equivalent of the Nazi Swastika as jack-booted liberal fascist empowered bureaucrats walk all over our rights and our selves.

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

 The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

 (c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. 

 Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

After Shooting Up Pulse - The Real Frame Job

In the wake of the Orlando Pulse Club shooting, the hottest debate in Washington these days is about keeping guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists.


Like so many of the moves by the anti-constitutional elements of the left, a bad idea is put inside a pretty inarguably "good" wrapper.  The left is consistently more adept at framing really bad ideas in good frames, and this is another example of just that.


After all, who wants to be labeled as someone who said it is ok to let suspected terrorists on US soil buy guns and ammo?  The whole thing is just chock full of potential sound bites the opposition can use to sink any politician who uses this frame to discuss the issue.


What is so bad about the idea of keeping guns and ammo out of the hands of suspected terrorists?


The wrongness of this idea begins to come clear when you examine the key phrase in this idea, "suspected terrorists."


First, let's talk about the word "suspected."


US criminal law is founded on the premise that a person is considered innocent until proven guilty.  This means that simply because you are suspected of a crime, doesn't mean they can throw you in jail for it.  The justice system requires evidence, and the evidence has to meet certain standards to be sufficient to justify an arrest warrant.  And it needs to meet even higher standards to get a conviction in a court of law.


Most of the activities our clandestine services such as the CIA and NSA use to gather information on terrorists are not designed nor intended to be used as evidence in criminal prosecutions.  So, wire taps, spy cams, moles, bugs, etc., all or most of which require a judge to issue a warrant in the US can be used on foreign nationals regardless of whether or not the information on hand is substantial enough to withstand a judicial review.


Our clandestine services aren't cops, they are spies.  They aren't looking to arrest and convict the bad guys.  They are looking to keep them from doing bad things.  Yes, "keep them from doing bad things" often means to kill them.  That is real life in the world of spies.  To get found out can easily be a death sentence.


For US citizens, and on US soil, the intelligence community usually has to provide sufficient evidence to a judge to get a warrant for things like wire taps, bugs, and other forms of surveillance.


Mateen, although his parents were foreign born, was a US Citizen.  That means he was not a foreign national on US soil, like the 9/11 bombers were.  As a US Citizen, he is accorded all the rights of any other US Citizen.  So, until there was sufficient evidence for an arrest warrant, and a conviction, it is a dangerous thing for all of us to breach his constitutional rights.  It is in fact, a very slippery slope.


What does it mean if a US Citizen is "suspected" of being a terrorist?


At its lowest common denominator it means that some faceless government apparatchik decided to add your name to a list of "suspected terrorists."  The process this apparatchik goes through to add you to this list could be rigorous, or it could just be because his/her boss said so.  Either way, we won't know what the process is, because it is done in secret.


And, because it is done in secret, there is no way to know what level of evidence was used, if any, to decide that your name should be on the list.


It could be because you once served in the US Military and the apparatchik (or her bosses - all the way up to the POTUS), decides that former members of the US military are dangerous to our government and our people.  Presto! Your status as a veteran has landed you on the suspected terrorist list and you can no longer buy guns and ammo.


It might be because some apparatchik, or the POTUS, decides that "all paramilitary organizations" in the US are threats and all members of those organizations are suspected terrorists.  Presto, all The Boy Scouts and their leaders are now "suspected terrorists" and they cannot buy guns or ammo.  Yes, The Boy Scouts of America are categorized, at least by the former USSR, as a paramilitary organization.


But, don't just take my word for it.  Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:


"Organizations that have been described as paramilitary are as diverse as the Minutemen, youth groups (from scouting to the Pioneer movement), and even military-themed boarding schools."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramilitary

It could be you wrote a blog post that seriously angered the apparatchik.  And so s/he slipped your name on the list of suspected terrorists in order to intimidate you into silence.


Or, perhaps you made it onto the same list that the Administration of Barak Obama gave to the IRS as charitable organizations that should be investigated for denial of their legal status.  That list included Tea Parties of various flavors, along with their members, and a list of sundry other groups that were vocal critics of the Obama Administration.


In any of these scenarios, the key elements supporting the denial of a citizen of their constitutional rights are:

1. Lack of transparency on the process
2. Lack of legal due process
3. Opportunity for abuse through administrative diktat

And, once your constitutional rights have been denied in secret, without your knowledge or your ability to face your accusers in court, what recourse do you have?


You can, after you discover why you cannot buy any guns or ammo, or cannot buy a plane ticket, you can petition some faceless government committee to have them reinstate your constitutional rights at their whim, because you believe it is a mistake that you were labeled a "suspected terrorist."


And no, they won't tell you who decided to put you on the list or why. So, your ability to refute the assertion is limited and you have no way to seek recourse against some apparatchik who may be using the power of the bureaucracy to further a personal grudge against you.


Why stop at denying guns and ammo?
And while we are at it, denying constitutional rights to US citizens who are "suspected terrorists", why stop at the 2nd amendment?


Since this is such an important issue, how about let's toss out their "Miranda" rights and their rights against self incrimination (the 5th amendment).  We can waterboard, beat, and otherwise torture these US citizens all day long until they admit that they are actual terrorists, not just "suspected terrorists."


The simple fact is that if the government can deny a US Citizen of one constitutional right because of their being a "suspect", there is no reason stopping the government from denying a US Citizen of ALL their constitutional rights.


This is why Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governer, 11 November 1755, Benjamin Franklin, http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&page=238a

When you trade you liberty for security, you get neither, because you turn yourself into a subject of the government, keeping only the rights the government bureaucrats and potentates decide that you merit or need.


I call on our elected representatives and all citizens to think this through clearly and calmly and not allow themselves to be stampeded into bad legislation simply because it is well framed by those whose objective is to rule over us, whether we want them to or not.


Our freedoms were purchased with the blood of both patriots and tyrants.  To lose those freedoms out of fear and lazy thinking is an insult to those who risked their all to win it for us.  I pray that we are not put into a situation where we have to buy it all back again at the cost and risk which our Founding Fathers bore in the first place.


Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).


The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.


(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.


Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Lafayette Theater Shooting and 4 Dead Marines in Chattanooga - Fear and Anger, An Obama Master Stroke?

At breakfast, my wife and I were talking about the recent killing of four Marines and one Sailor in Chatannooga Tennessee and the shooting last night in a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.  She mentioned that with Obama's directives that our military aren't allowed to carry firearms on base, that he was making our military into soft targets for terrorists.  She speculated that he is trying to arrange things to create a culture of fear and anger.

That got us talking and thinking.  What is to be gained by inciting the average American to fear and anger?

The fear part seems clear to me.  

Obama's former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel is credited with giving voice to the horrifyingly crass idea that politicians should, "never let a serious crisis go to waste."  This remark is so notorious that it has now been labeled "Rahms Rule."  And it means that

"Major crises can provide cover for distributing benefits to targeted special interest groups. The greater the magnitude of a given crisis and the shorter the interval for forming legislation to deal with it, the larger the spread of pork that can be packed into the final legislation." 

It is a very short step from using crises for political gain to creating crises in order to leverage them for political gain.  Of course, creating crises means that the one taking advantage of the crises must appear blameless in causing the crises.  Which is one of the reasons why plausible deniability is so important to politicians.

Getting the American people whipped up into a state of fear makes them more willing to accept tighter limits on their freedoms "to keep them safe."  Don't believe me?

Consider the fact that when you want to fly these days, you willingly submit to x-ray scans and body searches that are more universal and intrusive than the targeted "stop and frisk" program that caused such outrage over invasions of privacy and public humiliation in New York City.

Glen Beck wrote a novel that explained this principle of using crisis to change our view of what is acceptable in fairly large increments.  His book, The Overton Window, was a fun read, but I am afraid too many readers may have enjoyed the story so much that they missed the prime point he was making.  I hope I am wrong on that last point.

The anti-Second Amendment crowd has relentlessly used crises such as the Sandy Hook school shooting, the SC Church shooting and now the Lafayette Theater shooting as rallying cries for greater restrictions on gun ownership.  They certainly won't let any crisis go to waste in their unrelenting campaign to transform us from citizens into subjects by disarming us first piecemeal and then wholesale.

The angry part is less clear to me, and much more dangerous to all concerned.  

I guess the most logical way to use an angry American people is to get them to take the streets in violent protests.  Such widespread violence, regardless of its direct cause, would provide an excuse to implement martial law and immediately suspend nearly all civil rights.  Then, we could, almost in an instant be transformed from a Representative Republic into a dictatorship.  After all, with widespread unrest, we couldn't be expected to be able to hold elections, right?  So, we would have to continue with the crowd we have until things are settled enough (by the standards of those in power) to hold elections again.

And what would have to occur before things are "settled" enough?  Likely that would entail the suppression and elimination of those elements in society deemed as destabilizing.  In other words, all those opposed to the current power elite.

Under this state of fear and anger, troops would be authorized and used to actively attack groups and individuals all over the country until everyone finally got the message that you better toe the party line, or risk being named an enemy of the state and either killed or imprisoned.

By the time the majority of the people realized they had been hoodwinked, it would be too late to do anything about it unless they were willing to see lots of people die to change things.  All your guns would, at the least be registered, and the worst they would already be confiscated.  And peaceful and passive forms of resistance and opposition would be handled with the same level of ferocity and violence accorded those "subversive" actors who the military had been called in to put down.

It is instructive to note that "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord and Lexington was fired when the "federal" government of England moved to confiscate the guns and ammunition of the civilly authorized militia.  The English Generals and Governors recognized that if their subjects retained their arms and ammunition, they could not be easily forced into compliance with laws dictated by a monarch and his parliament that were increasingly arbitrary and hostile to the best interests of the people.

I mentioned that the anger part is much more dangerous to all concerned.  

What I am thinking of here is that while the people are angry, individuals and groups often do things that, in a more rational moment they would never consider.  As was seen in the "Rodney King Riots" in LA and the more recent riots is Ferguson Missouri and the Baltimore Riots of 2015, a rampaging mob of people protesting violence against blacks is as likely to destroy black-owned businesses as they are to destroy those of whites or asians.  The looters really don't care who owns what they are stealing.  They just want to take things without paying for them, and then sell them for a 100% profit.

Mobocracy is both violent and mindless.  Its creators aim it in the direction they want it to go, and then they work the edges to either take advantage of targets of opportunity, or to push the mob closer toward the ultimate target.  Just to be clear here, when I speak of the creators of mobocracy, I am not usually referring to the people who actually started a rally or a march.  Those folks are often innocent pawns of those who use the rally or march to start violence.

Blacks in this country historically should be most opposed to mobocracy.  Mobocracy is what the KKK relies upon to achieve its ends.  After all, two of the appealing aspects of being in a mob is strength in numbers and the anonymity of the crowd.  Covering your face with a mask and then roaming the streets with a bunch of similarly masked people is the essence of public Klan action.  It also marks the activities of many Anarchists.  And, it is what was used to faciliate the lynching of countless blacks in the South right up through the Civil Rights era.

The issue here, for ordinary Americans, is to not allow the anger and fear of the moment, or even of the moments, to be used to drive you into supporting action that will ultimately turn you and the rising generation from citizens into subjects.

The Crisis Users like Rahm Emmanuel and his former boss, Barak Obama, and their allies jump on a crisis with both feet.  They make public statements that are filled to the brim with emotion.  They decry the tragedy and call for laws that will prevent such tragedies in the future.  And the laws are never aimed at the root causes of the problem, rather, they are aimed at the leaves of the bush of evil and are calculated to reduce the freedoms of law-abiding citizens rather than actually punishing the wrong-doer.

What do I mean by leaves and roots?  Renowned US author Henry David Thoreau is credited with saying that, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."  When politicians call for stricter gun laws in the wake of a shooting, they are functionally blaming the car for the deaths caused by a drunken driver.

Why would they make such a silly and egregious error as to blame a car for the actions of a drunk driver?  Why would they blame guns for the actions of a deranged person?  Clearly, there are only two reasons any reasonably intelligent person would blame an inanimate object for the actions of a person.  Either 1) they believe that Stephen R King's horror story "Christine" about a car with a mind of its own was a true story rather than a novel and these inanimate objects are actually animated by some ancient spirit and we are about to be overrun by Killdozer. Or 2) they have a hidden agenda which involves restricting the access of law-abiding people to inanimate objects which they are lawfully entitled to have and use.

Why do I say they have a hidden agenda?  Quite simply because they are not being open and honest about their motives.  If they were, they would say things like, "there is no reason any person outside of the military or law enforcement need guns, so I want to take them away from everyone who is not using them for military or law enforcement as part of their job."

You won't find many (if any) politicians who will be this open about their objective, because they know that Obama was right when he said that Americans cling to their religion and their guns.  Although he was totally wrong when he ascribed that behavior solely to folks who are bitter, unemployed, or racist.  Americans cling to their religion because it has a proven track-record of keeping this country from becoming as self-serving as the nations of Europe.  And they cling to their guns because they know that responsibility for feeding the family and protecting the family ultimately rest with the family, not with the police or any other arm of the government.

So, now that another lunatic crashed a car into a store trying to kill people, don't let the politicians and mainstream media brainwash you into accepting the hare-brained notion that banning cars will keep lunatics from killing.  Oh, excuse me, rewrite the above and replace "crashed a car" with "used a gun" and replace "banning cars" with "banning guns."  Other than that, the arguments are the same.

Don't let fear and anger take over.  Instead, call, email, fax or write your elected officials in Washington, citing the news stories, and tell them to stand firm in defending the rights of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against gun wielding lunatics by doing away with legalized "soft targets" in the US.

After all, what crazy killer is going to go into a theater to shoot people, if he knows that half the folks there are carrying concealed and for every one round he sends downrange, he will see four or five coming right back at him?

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.

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