Udge Jeanine Pirro’s Speech to the NRA Convention

In the same vein as the post below this……….

Need Some Reasons You Shouldn’t Trust Anti-Gun People?

There are quite a few of them enumerated in this column at the Iowa State Daily. A sample:

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because in a single breath they tell us that the Second Amendment is irrelevant today and should be repealed because semi-automatic weapons didn’t exist when the Bill of Rights was written, then turn around and say the First Amendment protects radio, television, movies, video games, the Internet, domain names, Facebook and Twitter. Carrying liberal logic on the Second Amendment through to the First Amendment, it would only cover the town crier, and hand-operated printing presses producing only books and newspapers, and nothing else. Even anything written with a No. 2 pencil or ballpoint pen would not be included. And those of you belonging to religions that formed after the 1790s? You’re screwed under liberal logic, too.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because, while liberals seek to expand government regulation and services — things that may not be bad or ill-intended on their own — they simultaneously try to curtail the Second Amendment. We don’t trust anti-gun people for this reason because history shows us that every genocide and democide is preceded by expansion of government power and gun control. We don’t trust anti-gunners because here in America, gun control is rooted in slavery and racism, with some of America’s modern anti-gun laws being direct copies of former Nazi laws that banned gun possession for Jews, blacks, gays and other “undesirables.”

There’s a lot more at the link and it is one of the most comprehensive synopses of the debate over guns I think I’ve seen.

Read the whole thing.

Obama Donor Reportedly Buying and Gutting America’s Top Pro-Gun Media Outlets.

I was just forwarded this Daily Caller article.

Employees of Obama donor Leo Hindery Jr.’s media conglomerate Intermedia Partners, which now owns most of the top gun-culture media outlets in the country, believe that Hindery plans to gut and destroy all of them as part of a business plan that has already led to numerous layoffs and the virtual shuttering of prominent television production facilities in Minnesota and Montana.

Apparently this Leo Hindery Character is setting out to gut all the pro 2A media outlets, e.g. Guns & Ammo and many other magazines and production companies. He is one of two managing partners of a private equity fund called Intermedia Partners. If this is true, I have to wonder if the other investors in this fund know about it and how they feel about a managing partner deliberately setting out to destroy the value of their holdings. Last time I looked it is the fiduciary duty of fund managers to try and maximize the value of their investments.

Last December Glenn Reynolds suggested that GOP investors  acquire some of the women’s interest media outlets in an effort to get a more positive message (Hell, any message at all) out to women. Perhaps conservative investors should also be looking to buy up some of the pro 2A media properties too, if only to rescue them.

Argument from Intimidation–A Favorite Debating Tactic of Bullies With No Other Argument Otherwise

Not only was Ayn Rand prescient when she wrote “Atlas Shrugged” in 1957 she did it again with this essay from 1964. It’s a bit shorter than “Atlas Shrugged”. It’s about what she identified as another logical fallacy that she called the Argument from Intimidation which is closely related to Argumentum Ad Hominem. From the essay:

The essential characteristic of the Argument from Intimidation is its appeal to moral self-doubt and its reliance on the fear, guilt or ignorance of the victim. It is used in the form of an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy. The pattern is always: "Only those who are evil (dishonest, heartless, insensitive, ignorant, etc.) can hold such an idea."

Argument from Intimidation is the type of “argument” employed by Piers Morgan as he debated Ben Shapiro of Breitbart.com last week but Shapiro recognized the tactic and wouldn’t be intimidated and as Roger Kimball put it a PJ Media, Morgan was deftly filleted by Shapiro.

Go and read the whole essay. It isn’t long and it’s well worth the read if you want to recognize and defeat the tactic.

An Open Video Letter to Senators Franken, Klobuchar and Rep. Nolan

This is an excellent demonstration of why an “assault weapons” ban is nothing more than an attempt to limit our freedom to defend ourselves. Gun control is about controlling people, not guns. Stewart Mills, owner of sporting goods retailer Mills Fleet Farm in Minnesota demonstrates very convincingly that a 12 gauge shotgun is far more destructive than an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. The shot gun inflicts far more damage in a little over 3 seconds than the AR-15 inflicts in over 33 seconds.  Watch and learn.

(via Power Line)

If They Come for Your Guns, Do You Have a Responsibility to Fight?

That is the question Dean Garrison, a blogger I haven’t heard of before, is asking. It’s a question we should all be asking ourselves. He’s made it clear where he comes out on the question.  You’ll have to answer it for yourself though.

An important reminder from the post:

About a month ago I let the “democracy” word slip in a discussion with a fellow blogger. I know better. Americans have been conditioned to use this term. It’s not an accurate term and it never has been a correct term to describe our form of government. The truth is that the United States of America is a constitutional republic. This is similar to a democracy because our representatives are selected by democratic elections, but ultimately our representatives are required to work within the framework of our constitution. In other words, even if 90% of Americans want something that goes against our founding principles, they have no right to call for a violation of constitutional rights.

Our founders did not want a “democracy” for they feared a true democracy was just as dangerous as a monarchy. The founders were highly educated people who were experienced in defending themselves against tyranny. They understood that the constitution could protect the people by limiting the power of anyone to work outside of it much better than a pure system of popularity. A system of checks and balances was set up to help limit corruption of government and also the potential for an “immoral majority” developing within the American People. We have forgotten in this country that we are ultimately ruled by a constitution.

Read the whole thing.

Is There An Inalienable Right to Self-Defense?

That is the question Mike McDaniels asks over at Pajamas Media in the context of the British riots and our own Operation Gunwalker/Fast and Furious scandal:

It all comes down to this: Is there an inalienable right to self-defense? If there is, each man has indisputable, inestimable value, value that he may rightly preserve even if the life of another man is forfeit. A man may kill another in lawful self-defense even if the policy preferences of the state would prefer his death. If a right to self-defense actually exists, it is in a very real sense the highest law of the land and all lesser laws must pay it deference. It fundamentally defines the social contract, the nature of the relationship between man and the state.

But if there is no such inalienable right, the entire nature of the social contract is changed. Each man’s worth is measured solely by his utility to the state, and as such the value of his life rides a roller coaster not unlike the stock market: dependent not only upon the preferences of the party in power but upon the whims of its political leaders and the permanent bureaucratic class. The proof of this analysis surrounds us.

Irony abounds in that England, the cradle of the common law and of our doctrine of self-defense, has utterly done away with even a government-condescended privilege to self-preservation. Not only have the English allowed themselves to be virtually stripped of firearms, British politicians have made attempts with varying degrees of success to ban knives. Attempting to protect the self or others from brutal criminal attack can and will lead to lengthy jail sentences in jolly old England — for the victims. Attacking criminals often go free, and often successfully sue their victims for daring to harm them in the process of depriving them of property or their very lives.

Why did the riots in London occur?

England has seen riots because the English allowed those who rule them to place what value they choose on the lives of Englishmen. They chose the indolent, the parasites, the criminals, the barbarians over honest, productive Englishmen and denied them their very right to exist when attacked by members of the parasitical class, the class established by the state and the class which perpetuates the state lest its very nourishment be cut off.

And what value is our own government placing on the lives of individuals such as Brian Terry, a Border Patrol Agent murdered with a gun that our own government knowingly allowed to fall into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels?

And now the Obama administration has revealed its assessment of the value of the life of a Border Patrol officer: Zero. Agent Terry is of no value, for the crime was committed not against him, but the state, which in its wisdom and mercy is far more concerned with protecting feckless bureaucrats and politicians than American citizens.

I happen to believe my right of self defense is inalienable and absolute. The instinct for self defense is hard-wired into the DNA of every creature on the planet and this right may not exist solely at the whim of the state.


Read the whole thing.
(via Instapundit)
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A Handy Guide for Anti-Gun Journalists On How Not to Sound Stupid on the Subject of Guns

Via Instapundit, we have a little help on how to write about guns if you are an anti-gun journalist. This point in particular is worth repeating in light of last wee's events in Tucson:

1. Don’t assume criminals follow laws.

In a way, this goes right to the heart of the gun-control debate. It is a conservative talking point that only the law-abiding will follow — and thus be disarmed by — gun laws.

.........

Jared Loughner left his house that day intending to assassinate Representative Giffords. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a more restrictive concealed-carry regime would have changed that. If he was willing to violate laws against murder, he was willing to violate laws against concealed carry. Suggesting otherwise just shows that you haven’t bothered to think things through.

This is the (regrettably often fatal) flaw in thinking that because you might post a sign that says "No Guns Allowed" somewhere that someone bent on murder is going to think twice about carrying out the act. No, you might as well put up a sign that says "Unarmed Victims Inside. Have At It;" Spree killers, sometimes also called active shooters, look for places like this. They often do not intend to come out of the incident alive themselves but want to kill as many others as they can before they take their own lives or are killed themselves.

A "cooling off period" has been employed in some places, requiring a gun buyer to wait a few days to pick it up from the store. Perhaps what would serve society better is a requirement for a cooling off period before anyone tries to pass poorly conceived law that won't solve the problem it is trying to address or make any of us safer.

 

What the Second Amendment is Really For

Stay with it to the end......

Evidence That "Gun-Free" Zones Actually Attract Killers

Cincinnati station WCPO reporter Brendan Keefe ran this story about gun free zones and their attractiveness to "active killers," e.g., the kind of killers that go into a place like a school or a post office and kill a number of people before ultimately turning their weapons on themselves. It seems they actually seek out these designated gun-free zones for their crimes because they are pretty much assured their victims will be defenseless.

The other statistic that emerged from a study of active killers is that they almost exclusively seek out "gun free" zones for their attacks.

In most states, concealed handguns are prohibited at schools and on college campuses even for those with permits.

Many malls and workplaces also place signs at their entrances prohibiting firearms on the premises.

Now tacticians believe the signs themselves may be an invitation to the active killers. The psychological profile of a mass murderer indicates he is looking to inflict the most casualties as quickly as possible.

Also, the data show most active killers have no intention of surviving the event.

They may select schools and shopping malls because of the large number of defenseless victims and the virtual guarantee no on the scene one is armed.

As soon as they're confronted by any [my emphasis] armed resistance, the shooters typically turn the gun on themselves.

Trying to protect people by designating a place as gun-free makes sure that the only people who don't have guns are the people who are law-abiding/rules following in the first place and is no deterrent at all to someone bent on mayhem.

A couple of the commenters chided the reporter for referring to his sources in generalities. In the comments he responds by naming his experts and providing links to his data sources.

(via Instapundit and Arms & the Law)

Gun Control, Free People, and the Threat to Britain

A month or so back I commented on a column by Theodore Dalrymple on Tony Blair's departure from the office of Prime Minister of Great Britain. I expressed a concern at the end of that post about how easy it would be for an organized minority to take over the country with the law-abiding populace disarmed.


Yesterday the Instapundit linked to a post by Michael Moynihan at Reason Online's Hit & Run blog. It is mostly concerned with the effects of gun control in Britain on gun crime (it's been counterproductive) and links to a much more extensive 2002 article by Joyce Lee Malcolm that details the chronology of the gradual disarming of the law-abiding British populace, starting in the1920's and continuing to the present day.

In the 1950's, while he was at medical school in the UK, my father was introduced to the sport of marksmanship by a friend. He decided to acquire his friend's .22 caliber bolt-action sport rifle (said friend probably wanted to get a better/fancier one for himself), the kind I could walk into any Wal Mart and buy without any problem today. Before he could complete his acquisition, he had to get the permission of the Chief of Police and so he dutifully went down to the police station where he spent several hours being questioned by a detective about why he needed a firearm, what he would do with it, etc. Eventually he convinced the detective that he wasn't about to stage a coup and he was allowed to complete his purchase. This was around 1954/5. In 1957 he emigrated to the US, making the trip on the ocean liner Ile de France. He disembarked the ship in lower Manhattan, carrying the same rifle, slung over his back and no one even questioned him about it. I still have the rifle.

As the Malcolm article points out, not content with disarming the people, the British Government has not only disarmed them, it has steadily eroded the people's rights to any meaningful right of self-defense. She presents this mostly in terms of its effects on crime. What she doesn't talk about though, and to be fair it's a subject for another article, is the potential for an armed uprising by an organized minority that could stockpile guns and use them to take control. It takes relatively few armed men to control a large number of disarmed people. And if those people have been conditioned to wait for someone else to help them, it is easier still because they have lost the basic instinct hard-wired into the brains of every creature on the planet to fight back when threatened.

Going back to 2002 again, perhaps Bill Whittle said it best in one of his epic essays, "Freedom":

"Ask yourselves why intellectual elites so love totalitarian states where people are unarmed and dependent sheep. Look at the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, and Saddam, and the horrors they have inflicted at will on their own people. And when contemplating your ever-so-sophisticated foreign policy, ask yourselves what compassionate and non-violent options you are left with when facing a determined, heartless bastard like Hitler, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan or Attila.

Some say that the time for real evil like that has finally gone. I hope you are right, I really do. I don't want to go fight those bastards; I'd rather barbeque and watch the Gators. I'm sure the Jews in 1930 Germany thought such things could never happen again, not in the heart of European culture and civilization. I'm sure every bound and beaten musician, surgeon, philosopher and painter being lined up at the side of a ditch thought exactly that.

Freedom is preserved by free people. Our 40th President wrote that “no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

I believe gun ownership is the truest form of freedom, and here's why: It says you are your own person, responsible for your own actions. You are, in other words, expected to behave as an adult. It says, furthermore, that you should not be collectively punished for the misdeeds of others. In fact, those that abuse this freedom by committing crimes are thought of and dealt with much more harshly by gun owners, as a rule, than Hollywood celebrities, precisely because a free person understands the responsibility that comes with freedom.

This, to my mind, is the fundamental difference between the Europeans and the U.S.: We trust the people. We fought wars and lost untold husbands and brothers and sons because of this single most basic belief: Trust the people. Trust them with freedom. Trust them to spend their own money. Trust them to do the right thing. Trust them to defend themselves. To the degree that government can help, great -- but TRUST THE PEOPLE. "

I only hope that the British people will find again their collective will to live as free people before it's too late.

Update 9/9: Glenn Reynolds links to an article in The Times that reinforces the point that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them:

".....Why is it, even after the Virginia Tech massacre, that Americans still resist calls for more gun controls?

The short answer is that “gun controls” do not work: they are indeed generally perverse in their effects......"

Maybe it's not too late for Britain to wake up after all?