A Farewell to Arms: Why Guns equal Liberty

In the wake of the horrible events in Connecticut in the last week, I felt I needed to say a few words.

As a new father I have to say that I can’t even begin to imagine the pain…the destruction that the families are feeling now…As I read about this as it unfolded I was made ill…As a father I can’t even contemplate this possibility, as it makes me physically bothered.  My family is my life, my daughter is the most important person in my life, and I never knew how much a person can love another until she was born.  I also want to say that I never have bad feelings towards any parents who have experienced the tragedy of losing a child and become proponents of something i am opposed to.  In the case of Cindy Sheehan I was bothered by the message conveyed but I couldn’t bring myself to condemn her, as losing a child, even in war has to be the most horrific and destructive experience in anyone life.

However what I am bothered by is how tragedies, whether individual or  en masse are used by groups to further an agenda that predated any such event, to put their ideology before fact, before truth and before the lives of those lost.

I have to say this, and before you leave in disgust, I ask that anyone from any side of the issue reads the whole post.

Guns Kill people, Guns were used to kill those little children and its (pardon my french) FUCKING COWARDLY AND DISGUSTING.

Guns are created for one purpose, and even we who support further gun ownership have to own this fact…they are designed to kill.  To kill animals that we hunt and to kill those that threaten our lives. In the wrong hands they can be used to kill innocents or to take from those who cannot protect themselves. That is fact, undisputed regardless of your position.

HOWEVER

The most controversial sentence in all of human history in relation to weapons of any kind is the 2nd Amendment of the United States.  It says as follows, and passed by Congress.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Often Gun Control advocates like to say these things about this Amendment

• It pertained to Muskets (which were the standard Firearm at the time in the lat 18th Century) and the founders could not have imagined the capabilities of firearms in the modern era.
• It regards rifles for hunting and not sawed off shotguns, hand guns, “Machine guns” or “Assault Rifles’
• It is talking about arming the Militia, which were called upon by the states, which nowadays is the National Guard, not the individual citizen

For those of you who are “pro gun” keep reading, it helps to have knowledge to let others who may disagree know the truth, and why they are wrong

For those of you who are “gun control advocates” keep going….

THEY MEANT MUSKETS!

Unfortunately this is not the case, The founders were not some backwoods illiterates who decided they liked guns and didn’t have the imagination to realize we MIGHT…JUST MIGHT advance in weapons technology at some point in the future.  There was not Article 1…2…3… stating, as long as the weapons didn’t have the capability to commit mass murder, or that they should only be considered for the time period as of the writing….Its very explicit.  The never even noted that it was just “FIREARMS” but “ARMS” there was no provision against having a Ship of the line or that cannons could not be owned.  These were some of the most, if not the most, forward thinking and imaginative men of their generation, they did not lack imagination nor foresight.  I will comment at the end as to why they didn’t care how ‘futuristic’ or ‘out their’ it might be, they had other reasons.

ITS ABOUT HUNTING

Well just like muskets I never heard anything at in that sentence that indicated that deer and elk were the subject of the Amendment?  That the Right of the People to keep and bear arms to get deer shall not be infringed? It’s not about hunting and that is one of the most common threads you hear thrown around.  Doug Lemon of CNN in a wonderful case of Objective Reporting  asked (rhetorically and I will paraphrase) “Why do people need Armor Piercing rounds to hunt? and even if they did get something it would be useless to eat after you shot them with Armor Piercing rounds from an Assault Rifle?”  Well the issue is many things.

1) ‘Armor Piercing’ Rounds are a misnomer in the non gun community, usually what people refer to as “armor piercing” are what can penetrate a “Police Bulletproof Vest” Well your grandpapa’s 30-06 bolt-action can do that easily.

2) If you shot a deer with AP rounds it would actually cause less damage as its made to penetrate and not expand causing more damage.  Thus even if you yourself were shot with them you would stand a better chance of surviving since the expansion would be less causing a smaller permanent cavity, but that’s a little heady for gun control people who like to use ‘scary words’.

3) It wouldn’t be useless It would taste delicious.

ITS THE NATIONAL GUARD NOT YOU AND ME!

Sorry Bradyites, it’s not, about the Militia.  I mean for all the other excuses thrown around, do you not think that the Founding Fathers when writing this document might have said…oh hey this is about hunting, or about manning militias, nahhhh lets leave it ambiguous. No they were very exacting individuals, that if they meant an amendment was pertaining a pastime, survival necessity or an entity of the state.

Now Lets talk about a few other misconceptions thrown around the news and uninformed Blogs every time there’s a shooting.

Assault Rifles

These are referred to as “Military Weapons” as well, however these are no more “military weapons” than the Jeep is a military vehicle.  An Assault Rifle refers to a weapon that can fire Burst or Automatic Fire.  I have yet to see, and correct me if im wrong here, any of these shootings having any fully automatic weapons involved in it.  Why? Well because there EXPENSIVE the government makes you go through local PD, a background check, a 200+ “Tax stamp” and then you have to buy one that is considered “transferable” this means that there are LOTS of full auto weapons out there, but they belong to the military, Police, Homeland Security, i.e. the state.  The rest is a small amount that are legally able to be TRANSFERRED from one individual to another, since there are so few they can range in the 10-80000 dollar range, depending.

Another misconception is that somehow a fully automatic weapon is anything like what is shown in movies, in truth full auto weapons take a lot of training to get used to and most people miss more than they hit, they rise up naturally and it takes a lot of force to keep on target.  So in truth if i had to face down someone with a shotgun or a full auto M4 i would choose to face off with the M4.  That person is going to run out of ammo quickly, and miss A LOT. My experience tells me as well, if this kid HAD used a real full automatic Assault rifle, fewer people would be dead.  Assault rifles are more often referred to their appearance and not capability which often leads to misconceptions because Senators and “journalists” have no damn idea what they are talking about, and the whole of their experience is a google search and watching “Red Dawn”

One of my favorite things is when “Journalists” talk about how “fast they fire” ive heard they shoot “10, 20, 30 rounds off at the same time” (Doug Lemon CNN) or that they can fire “hundreds of rounds a minute”.  Every time i hear this i realize they have no idea what they are talking about.  Ive never fired 30 rounds at the same time, does he refer to it as a timeframe? If so how long? 30 seconds, 1 hour?  What they do is they google the weapon see what the “rate of fire” is and spout that off as what the realistic implementation is.  Because i have no idea what he is talking about because they must have some new fangled weapon ive never seen or used, because ive never been able to do that, whether i was in the Marines or Contracting.

OK NOW ITS QUIZ TIME!

HERE ARE TWO WEAPONS

And Two Bullets

Which bullet goes to which?

Which is the most “dangerous”

Well the one on top fires the bullet on the right, the .223 (5.56) which is the round used by the U.S. Military

and the weapon below fires the diminutive .22LR that many a country boy have killed squirrels with.

The one on the bottom looks “scarier” though right?

SO WHY ARE GUN RIGHTS SO IMPORTANT?

The Second Amendment like the others were not to limit us, but to limit the government.  The Founding Fathers recognized that no matter whether it was 500 B.C., 1776 or 2012 there is a simple and unwavering fact that always remains true.  Men wish to rule other men, they have a thirst for power, Just because we have Twitter and Cell phones, doesn’t mean this is any less the case.  The Second Amendment was enshrined in the Bill of Rights because it was always considered the last resort to Tyranny, to resisting a government bent on ruling other men.  The rights of people to resist unjust government was the basis for our countries founding.

The Fathers did not state Hunting Rifles as the basis, or the right to kill a deer, but very plainly stated the right to keep and bear arms SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED. Its pretty simple.

If you only have a 3 shot bolt-action rifle how will you stand up to a state entity that has “Assault Rifles”, perhaps eventually you can as a society through attrition, but that is a messy and bloody affair. The belief that it was “just about muskets” then must mean that the government should only employ 18th century technology as well, because the government used the same weapons as the people at the time, perhaps different manufacturers, but basically the same thing.

Leaving that aside, we as a society have come to believe that with just enough ink and paper we can stop disturbed individuals from doing bad things.  Murder has been illegal in every country and society since time began to be recorded, yet we still have it.  You cannot stop a disturbed person from doing a bad thing once they set their mind to it.  Sending bombs in the mail was illegal, Old Ted Kaczynski still did it.  Timothy Mcveigh took effing Fertilizer and was able to take down half a building.  Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan used Black powder and Propane tanks to kill, if you have the will you can take things available in your daily life and make weapons out of it, The government has published whole manuals on that very subject.

What can we do?

Now I’m not saying nothing can be done.  Do i think every teacher should be made to have a weapon? No but they should have the freedom and ability to do so if they feel they need to.  The use of “Gun Free Zones” has been proven to be a pipe dream or liberals and gun control advocates, but yet this isn’t discussed.  All that was done was that law-abiding individuals who abided by their states regulations were unable to defend themselves in those places.  The Shooter in Aurora had 12 different theaters in a 30 minute drive from him that were playing the Batman movie, he didn’t go to the closest one, he went to the one that stated “No guns allowed”.  Now no on has yet proven this was something he did on purpose, as the facts have yet to be released but it is interesting?

Another falsehood put out there is that if people did have guns and someone like that walked in there would be more bloodshed from people just “shooting everywhere” Well there is a lot of evidence to contradict that, even just recently.  However this doesn’t fit the narrative the media wants out there, nor what the administration wants, so it’s buried.

In Portland Oregon at the Clackamas Mall, a shooter with a AR15 “Assault Rifle” opened fire killing two and wounding one, his gun than jammed.  A licensed concealed carry citizen named Nick Meli drew his weapon and aimed at the shooter who was trying to unjam his weapon.  Nick however didn’t fire, since there were innocents behind the shooter, and he didn’t want to hit them accidentally (but yeah probably would have just sprayed shots randomly) However the shooter saw him, ran off into and hid then cleared the weapon and killed himself.  Have you heard about this? Maybe, but probably not on CNN, MSNBC or others.

Lets look at a few of the mass shootings in the last 4 years

• North Carolina Nursing Home, 8 dead. Gun Free Zone
• Virginia Hampton University, 3 dead Gun Free Zone
• New York Civic Center, 13 dead Gun Free Zone
• Texas, Texas Southern University, 6 dead Gun Free Zone
• Alabama, Univ. of Alabama, 3 dead 3 wounded, Gun Free Zone
• Colorado, Theater, 12 dead 58 wounded, Gun Free Zone

An excellent Article by Col. David Grossman who ive mentioned before, wrote books on the psychology of killing and how we train our military and how many things contribute to desensitization.  He talks about how there are many things in schools that are to prevent fire, from the building construction to fire extinguishers to fire drills, how many kids have been killed in school fires? None.  However there are no standard training practices for teachers and students on how to react to this? What have we done? stuck an overweight or under trained and unarmed person at the front door.  He’s not a guard as he points out he’s a “run off and call the cops because he can’t do anything guy”  There needs to be concerted standard practices for things like this, because well psychos will continue to wreak havoc in our society as they always have done.

We can’t stop disturbed people from getting things they aren’t supposed to, where there’s a will there’s a way.  The “Controls” put up in Connecticut worked, the kid tried to buy a gun was denied then had to kill his mother to steal here weapons, but its the “gun culture” that’s at fault.  I am so saddened by these events but we cant react by saying lets take away the rights of hundreds of millions of Americans because of a nutjob, we can take away any right because of bad apples, and by bad apples i mean one or two in a cargo ship full of apples.

This is about more than isolated incidents, this is about our rights.  I don’t want to talk about our rights at a time when we should be mourning and praying for the children and their families however the vultures that have been pushing this agenda waste no more than 2 minutes to jump on the bodies of the fallen to push their views.