Ummm, No, I Do Not Agree…

From Today’s Wall Street Journal:

Some Gun Rules We Can All Agree On

By MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG and THOMAS M. MENINO
June 30, 2008; Page A11

Finally. After decades of ideological debates over the meaning of every word and comma contained in the U.S. Constitution’s one-sentence Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has issued a ruling that should largely settle the matter.

Isn’t it funny how the gun-banners start this article out by pretending that an historic defeat for their side is really a “good thing?”

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the court found that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms, while also affirming the constitutionality of reasonable restrictions aimed at preserving public safety and deterring criminals from acquiring and using firearms. Now it’s time for all elected officials to start working together to enact creative new solutions to violent crime.

Because the old solutions aren’t working?  Or because we aren’t keeping the killers and robbers and rapers in prison where they belong?

For years, shouting matches over the Second Amendment drowned out reasoned discussion of any middle ground. One side argued for a handgun ban, the other for repeal of an assault-weapons ban. It made for good political theater, but it prevented progress on common-sense proposals that would achieve what both sides say they want: keeping criminals from illegally purchasing and possessing guns.

So, already they have used the terms “reasonable restrictions” and “common sense.”  Two of the gun-banners’ key catch phrases.  When they trot those out, keep your hands on your guns.   Well not everyone has the same level of common sense there buckaroos, and I decline to depend on your over-inflated ego to be able to rate your own “common sense” and “reasonableness” when it comes to infringing on MY rights.

Two years ago, a group of 15 mayors came together to begin reclaiming this middle ground and working to toughen enforcement of federal laws. Today, our coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns has more than 300 members from every region of the country and from both major political parties.

Criminals, by definition, obtain their “illegal guns” illegally!  You could make laws from now until Aunt Martha kicks the bucket, and guess what?  criminal will still obtain guns.  Illegally.

Mayors – often the ones in charge of police departments – recognize that the constitutionally sound middle ground is large enough for all those who have a good-faith interest in keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and protecting public safety.

You keep using that word (middleground) I do not think it means what you think it means…

Every day, 34 Americans are murdered with a firearm. That’s the equivalent of a Virginia Tech massacre. And like the Virginia Tech killer, most murderers purchase or possess their guns in violation of federal law. Our bipartisan coalition of mayors has identified four key reforms that would fix the federal government’s primary tool for preventing illegal gun sales: the background check system.

You just admitted (twice) that criminals violate laws to obtain guns.  Can you honestly, and with a straight face, claim that more laws would solve the problem.  “The criminals didn’t obey those laws over there, but these laws over here, they’ll obey these laws…”  Or, are you saying “What we have been doing isn’t working, so we’ll just do it more and harder“…Dumbasses.

– Close the gun-show loophole. Currently, licensed gun dealers are required to run criminal background checks on all buyers, but a loophole in the law enables criminals to avoid these checks if they buy from “occasional sellers” who don’t have federal licenses. These unlicensed sellers, who often operate at gun shows, shoot a hole through the background-check system that allows criminals to purchase guns. That is why the major presidential candidates have called for this gun show loophole to be closed.

Liar.  There is no “gun show loophole.”  Federally licensed firearms dealers are required to perform background checks on all buyers of their inventory at gun shows just like they would if they were in their own retail establishments.  That “occasional sellers” term that you just coined out of thin air really refers to individual citizens engaging in the sale and transfer of of private property.  No different than if they were selling a gun to their neighbor while standing in their own living room.  Why should a citizen have to adhere to a different set of rules that depend on where he is standing when he transfers ownership of a privately and legally owned item?

– End gun-dealer fire sales. If the federal government shuts down gun dealers for selling illegally, it nevertheless allows those dealers to sell off their inventory without conducting the background checks that it normally requires them to do. Imagine if a liquor store was shut down for selling to minors. Would anyone support a policy that would allow the owner to sell off all the remaining liquor without checking IDs? Of course not.

So, what are you going to do with the inventory?  Oh. I already know the answer because you are socialists.  You are going to confiscate it right?  Are you planning on compensating the firearms dealer for his legally-owned inventory?  And if so, does that mean taxpayer money is going to be used?  And, please cite your statistics for how many gun dealers are “shut down” each year for “selling illegally.”  How many is that?  I know the BATFE harasses law-abiding gun dealers who sell guns legally, but I don’t hear much in the news about federal firearms-licensed dealers being “shut down.”  I think you are really on the slippery slope of getting to your “one gun a month” proposal because, after all, that is “reasonable” and “common sense” “middle ground” isn’t it?

– Require gun dealers to do background checks on employees. Under the current law, if a person can’t buy guns – because he or she has a criminal or mental-illness record – that person cannot sell guns, either. But the law fails to require dealers to conduct background checks on their employees, even though they already have background-check machines in their stores.

Huh?  Again, I would like to see your statistics that point out that this is a systemic problem…How many firearm retailers each year hire criminals or insane people?  And what kind of person who sells expensive firearms would hire someone without doing a background check on them?  Really…numbers please…

– Close the “terror gap.” If the federal government can prevent a potentially dangerous person from getting on a plane, shouldn’t it also be able to prevent that person from buying guns? Last year, the Bush administration endorsed a bill that will close the terror gap. Congress should make it law this year.

WTF!?!?!?! “Terror Gap?”  “TERROR GAP?”  What the freck do “terror” or “terrorists” or “terrorism” have to do with this issue?  “Terror Gap?”  You freely admit that the multitude of “gun laws” currently on the books at the city, state and federal level do not keep criminals from acquiring guns.  From the dawn of time, men have found a way to acquire the tools to kill other men.  The liberal mind-set that thinks “One more law will do it” is beyond me.  Do you really think that someone who is willing to commit murder or rape is going to be detered from getting a gun because you made it illegaler? (See – I can make up words too)…..Your egos are showing gentlemen.  Do you really think that your little coffee clutch of mayors has found a way to do what no one before you could?  Keep guns out of criminals hands.  “Terror Gap.”  Heh.

Recently, our coalition of mayors commissioned a bipartisan public opinion poll to ask Americans what they thought of these four ideas. In each case, more than 80% of Americans – including more than 80% of gun owners – stated their support. This is the vast middle ground shared by mayors across the country, and now that the Supreme Court has swept aside the old ideological debate, the only question remaining is whether Congress has the courage to join us.

Bipartisan my ass.  Why don’t you show us the survey?  Let the public read the questions and how they were worded, phrased and slanted…Show us your statistically sound samples and the breakdown of who you talked to by age, race, gender, location and political affiliation.  Tell us who conducted the poll and how they recorded, tabulated, crunched, interpreted and reported the data from their poll.

Because guess what?  I just took a bipartisan poll of everyone named Curtis Lowe in this room, and that all agree 100% that you are a bunch of grandstanding, socialist pieces of shit.  Scientifically speaking.

Mr. Bloomberg is the mayor of New York City. Mr. Menino is the mayor of Boston. They are the founding co-chairs of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (link removed – I won’t give them the traffic)

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What The Hell Did They Expect?

From Fox News: 16 Accidentally Wounded by French Military in Shooting Demo

PARIS —  A military shooting demonstration in southeast France on Sunday left 16 people wounded, including children, when real bullets were used instead of blank ones, officials said.

What the hell did they expect giving ammo to a Frenchman?  How the hell was he supposed to know a blank round from a live one?  He’s French for Pete’s sake…

Four of the wounded were in serious condition, including a 3-year-old child, Bernard Lemaire, chief of the regional administration in Aude, said on France-3 television. Fifteen of the injured were civilians.

A Defense Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks. The official said investigators will look into why real bullets were used.

That’s an LOL moment right there.  The French are practicing “hostage-freeing techniques.”  WTF?!?!  Is that the part where they say in their best Monty-Python voice “I spit upon you, you dirty English pig-dog!”  What could possibly be in the French military (oxymoron alert) repertoire (see how I used a french word there?) of “hostage-freeing techniques?”  “Geeve oop ze ‘ostages orrr we will be force-ed to surrrend-air ay-gen!”????

No information was immediately available about what kind of weapon was used.

That’s because the French wouldn’t know a weapon if it jumped up and bit their croissant…It probably went off when he dropped it, that’s the only combat maneuver the French have perfected.

The soldier who fired the shots has been detained, Lemaire said. He said the injuries were likely an accident but that it could have been a “criminal act.”

I would think that in France, the knowledge of how to discharge a weapon, let alone actually doing it, would be a criminal act…

In a statement, President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his “horror” at Sunday’s incident at the base, which houses the 3rd marine infantry parachute regiment.

See, as a real Marine that right there pisses me off.  “3rd marine infantry parachute regiment.”  They couldn’t clean a real Marine’s skivvies.  And there are so many things wrong with that phrase “3rd marine infantry parachute regiment.”  To most people familiar with the military, a “3rd” regiment would imply that there concurrently existed a “1st” regiment and a “2nd” regiment.  But as we all know, the French couldn’t get enough “men” to volunteer to simultaneously field 3 regiments of cub scouts, let alone anything with the words “marine” or “infantry” in it.  Shit, that’s why they have the foreign legion, they’ve always had to ask someone else do their fighting for them.

And another thing… they spell “marine” with a lower-case “m.”  That just shows you how non-committal they are to the whole thing.  It’s like saying, “Well, we’ll try this marine thing, and if it doesn’t work out we can always go back to the cafe and drink Perrier…”  I guess this is as should be, because I don’t really think anyone would really believe that the French had real Marines.  try spelling it “United States marine Corps” or British Royal marines” or “ROK marines” in front of anyone who ever served in one of those organizations, and see how quickly you get corrected.

Oh, and they try to make it sound soooo tough by putting in all those really cool-sounding military terms…”marine,” “parachute,” “infantry…”   Marine infantry????  No shit there Pierre,  That’s what real Marines are – infantry…every last freking one of them.  Every U.S. Marine has two jobs…infantryman and whatever else they do until the shooting starts.  Look, if you have to put the word “infantry” in with “marine” its kind of a tip-off that you really don’t know what being a Marine is all about.

Hell, they probably call the deck the “floor,” the hatch the “door” and the shitter the “latrine.”

And “parachute?”  I know you want to impress the girls and all (although being French – the reason escapes me) but I give up – are you trying to be the Rangers or the Marines?  because, while some Marines do get their jump wings,  more often than not, we arrive horizontally on the beach or vertically from helio-kopters.

The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, with the most seriously wounded taken to Toulouse

Couldn’t even kill ’em right.  Sheesh.  Just for the record there Jean-Louise, this is what real Marines look like…And they would kick your ass in half a heartbeat…

Technorati Tags: French 3rd marine infantry parachute regiment – I can’t even type that without laughng.

What Ted Said…

A “SUPREME” COURT?  I CAN DO BETTER

by Ted Nugent

It is glaringly obvious that a critical lesson in history 101 is due in America, for it appears that not only does a lunatic fringe of anti-freedom Americans dismiss our founding father’s clear declaration of independence and succinct enumeration of our God given individual rights, but some Americans have the arrogance and audacity to question whether the right to self-defense is indeed one of these individual rights. Dear God in heaven, who could be this soulless? How about 4 out of the 5 so called “Supreme” justices of the land. God help us all.

Who could be so asinine as to believe that a free man has no such right to keep and bear arms for self-defense? What kind of low life scoundrel would know that courageous heroes of the US Military would volunteer over and over again to sacrifice and die for such self-evident truths, then turn around and spit on their graves by discounting the very freedoms that these brave men and women have died to protect?

Will these supreme legal scholars also affirm an individual right to chose the religion of our individual choice? Do they authorize our individual freedom of speech? Can you imagine? Them is fighting words my friends, and the line drawn in the sand has never been more outrageous.

Recent USA Today and Gallup polls showed a whopping 73% of good Americans know damn well that we are all created equal, and that we each have an individual right to protect our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. What kind of jackass doesn’t know this? Allow the guitar player to translate for the soul-dead amongst us.

Keep—this means the gun is mine and you can’t have it. This does not mean I will register it with a government agency. The government works for “we the people”, not the other way around, regardless of what Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein or Barack Hussein Obama or 4 supreme justices may try to tell you.

Bear—this means I’ve got it right here, on me, either in my grasp or damn near. This does not mean locked away in a safe, trigger-locked or stored at the local sporting club.

Shall not be infringed—this of course is another way of saying Don’t tread on me, for we will not be your willing crime victims, subjects, servants or slaves, so don’t even think about it.

When the evil King’s gangsters came to collect unfair taxes from Americans, we tossed their tea into the drink. When they came to disarm us into helplessness against their old world tyrannical ways, we met them at Concord Bridge and shot them dead till they quit treading on us. Any questions children? I didn’t think so.

Corrupt men cannot be trusted, hence the right of “the people” to chose the individual church of our choice, to speak our individual ideas and beliefs, to have individual freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures, and ultimately, to exercise our individual right to keep and bear arms so that evildoers cannot do unto us that which we would not do unto them. Get it? I would love to meet the human being who would argue these points with us. We would be looking at a fascist, and of course fascists, by all historical and empirical evidence, must be eliminated.

If you value the American Way, if you believe in the words and spirit of the US Constitution and our sacred Bill of Rights, if you know in your heart that you have the right, the duty, the spiritual obligation to protect yourself and your loved ones from evil in all of its forms, then you had best contact each and every one of your elected officials right away and let them know that you know exactly what the Second Amendment says and stands for. Remind them about the “shall not be infringed” clause.

It will not be the fault of the rotten anti-Americans out there who don’t believe in individual rights that rape and pillage our Constitution, it will be the fault of those who know better but failed to speak up. Now is the time to fortify America, and we better inform the Supreme Court just who truly is the “Supreme” Court of America-We the people. Individual people with individual, God given rights. The real America. Live free or die.

Technorati Tags: Second Amendment,Ted Nugent,Supreme Court,Heller

Skin of Our Teeth

Want to know how close we came to losing the right to keep and bear arms?

From Steve at Hog On Ice:

“Look at this: “Petitioners and today’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service.”

That should send chills down your spine. Look how close we came to losing the right to bear arms. If you’re one of the many idiots who do not understand that a vote for a liberal President is a vote for judges who will destroy your rights, you need to have your face rubbed in this sentence over and over. And if you’re stupid enough to stay home as a protest or vote for Bob Barr, helping Obama get elected, you deserve to live in North Korea. All four far-left judges wanted to repeal the Second Amendment, and the only thing that saved us was the presence of that perpetual embarrassment, Kennedy.

Had Al Gore won the 2000 election, we would not have Alito or Roberts, and the individual right to bear arms would no longer exist, and every one of us would be facing the possibility of total gun confiscation, with no constitutional remedy. We would have to rely on the good judgment of our state and local governments to protect us.”

As I commented elsewhere, it was like walking away from a horrific automobile accident.  You are really, really happy about the outcome, but just thinking about how it could have turned out gives you the shivering heebie-jeebies…”

Technorati Tags: Heller

Today in History

June 26, 1898: Chesty Pullers (PBUH) Birthday

Some great Chesty quotes

“All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us…they can’t get away this time.”
“Great. Now we can shoot at those bastards from every direction.”

“We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.”

“Remember, you are the 1st Marines! Not all the Communists in Hell can overrun you!”

“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the real Marines.”

“Alright you bastards, try and shoot me!” (to Korean forces)

“Where do you put the bayonet?” (upon seeing a flamethrower for the first time)

“You don’t hurt ‘em if you don’t hit ‘em.”

“Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.”

Ooh-Rah and Semper Fi

Quote of The Day

Uncle – distills the Brady Campaign’s reaction to the SOCTUS Heller decision:

“Even though these windmills keep kicking our asses, we will continue to charge them.  So send money!!!!! Getting your ass kicked is expensive.”

Heh.

Ain’t it funny how that 5-6 paragraph word-smithed, polished press release was on their website within minutes of the decision being announced?  Kind of makes you think they wrote that ahead of time because they were expecting an ass-whoopin’…Or something.

Heller Opinion

Available here thanks to Scotusblog.

So many gun-grabber arguments shot down in one opinion, where to begin?  How about – “It’s a state’s right, not an individual right!”

Suck on this:

Quoting the syllabus:   “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Also: “The handgun ban and trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment“  – emphasis mine

The court also did away with the whole “the Second Amendment was written so states could have militias” argument, saying that the “prefatory clause (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,”) does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause (“the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”).

Now, what about the whole “The Founding Fathers didn’t foresee modern, high-powered repeating weapons!” argument?

BAM!

And you know the argument that “We should just repeal the Second Amendment”?  It turns out that SCOTUS agrees with many people’s opinions (including mine) that the bill of rights GRANTS NOTHING.  It merely codifies and recognizes a pre-existing right.

 

Then there the argument from the gun grabbers that “It was meant to allow states to create an armed militia.”  Um – no.  The Court determined that the militia also pre-existed the bill of rights as well.

“But, but…but “Well-regulated means the writers of the Constitution wanted government to be able to regulate and restrict guns for public safety!”  Yeah, not so much…

Heh.  You know, its probably a good thing all the Brady Bunch followers don’t like guns.  As badly as they got spanked this morning, they might want to self-medicate with one.

I mean, can you imagine your entire lifetime codicil of core philosophical beliefs being torn apart so completely, piece by piece, bit by bit, argument by argument?

Smarter people than me comment….

Scotusblog

David Hardy

Kim du Toit

Tamara

Uncle

Nicki

Wonder how much coverage this’ll get by the Lame Stream Media?

Technorati Tags: Heller Decision,Heller Opinion,SCOTUS,Supreme Court

Heller Decision in One Hour!

Woot!  It is like being a kid on Christmas morning waiting for your parents to wake up…yes, I predict a (qualified) victory for our side.  Like Tam said…It’ll probably something along the lines of: “It’s an individual right, but only not”

Check here for live updates!

Technorati Tags: Heller Decision,SCOTUS,Supreme Court Decisions

Quote of the Day

Hat Tip to Kevin at The Smallest Minority.

This comes from Mike, in Wheel of Fortune at MIKE-ISTAN

“I am incredibly lucky. I exist in the middle of the American middle class – the graviest of the gravy trains in the history of the planet. Hell, if I had a blindfold, a million darts, and a map of the world, nine-hundred-thousand throws would land me in a place worse off than here and now, and a lot of those would be traumatically worse.”

Too true, that.  And since Mike is an accountant from Ohio, he cannot be wrong…

Sadly, I too am a Nerd

H’T to Breda:

Click the pic and take the quiz