Why we have the Second Amendment

I recently participated in a discussion about why we have the second amendment and how to support gun rights. As was pointed out in that discussion, the second amendment was added to make sure that people have the right and the ability to defend themselves from tyrannical governments.

In 2002, the JPFO published a list of genocides in the 20th century that have occurred in countries with gun control.

# 1915 - 1917 Ottoman Turkey, 1.5 million Armenians murdered;
# 1929 - 1953 Soviet Union, 20 million people that opposed Stalin were murdered;
# 1933 - 1945 Nazi occupied Europe, 13 million Jews Gypsies and others that opposed Hitler were murdered;
# 1927 - 1949 China, 10 million pro communists;
# 1948 - 1952 China, 20 million anti communists;
# 1960 - 1981 Guatemala, 100,000 Mayan Indians Murdered;
# 1971 - 1979 Uganda, 300,000 Christians and Political Rivals of Idi Amin murdered;
# 1975 - 1979 Cambodia, 2 million educated persons murdered.
# 1994 Rwanda 800,000 Tutsi's murdered.
# 1992 - 1995 Bonsia 200,000 Muslims murdered.

When this is pointed out to many people on the left of the political spectrum they respond with "That could not happen here."

But it has happened here, with the Native Americans and members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Gun Control laws in the south were often aimed at prevent African Americans from being able to defend themselves, enabling lynchings.

And for things that could never happen here, point out the number of things that were said that could never happen here that after September 11th, have happened here. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Warrentless Wiretapping.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Google's Bias against Guns

When researching information on Gun Control for a future posting, I discovered Google's bias against guns showing. I executed a search for information about John Lott, and all pages with information about him showed that the websites would harm my computer, including the wikipedia entry for John Lott.

The Gun Show Loophole

The Washington Post has an editorial today about Virginia having an opportunity to close the "gun show loophole." I have been to several gun shows in Virginia, as has my wife. We have both purchased guns at gun shows and always went through the exact same process as when we have bought guns in stores. In fact, I have never seen a person at a gun show in the Commonwealth who has purchased a gun without a background check.

Why is it that the anti-gun advocates are so obsessed with the gun show loophole?

They claim 35% of guns purchased at gun shows are purchased from unlicensed dealers. This may be the case, I don't know, but I do know one statistic, only 0.7% of guns used by criminals is obtained at gun shows. The same survey states that 8.3% of guns used by criminals were obtained from retail gun stores. All of the retail purchases needed background checks. Clearly the background check process is not perfect, but there is not a significant flow of guns from gun shows into the hands of criminals.

Virginia Restaurant Concealed Carry Ban Petition

As I have been reminded by a reader, everyone should sign the petition to repeal the restaurant ban.

Virginia Restaurant Concealed Carry Ban

The VCDL reports that Virginia SB 1035 has passed out of committee. This bill would repeal the ban on carrying a concealed handgun in a restaurant that has an ABC license (can serve alcohol on premises). In the report is some quotes that illustrate what is wrong with the reactionary thinking and lack of analysis by many of our politicians.

Senator Marsh took the cake, however. He said that if a concealed handgun permit holder came into a restaurant with the intent to "pop" someone in the restaurant, and the permit holder couldn't find someone to declare that he has a concealed gun, he might just go ahead and kill his victim anyhow, without notifying the restaurant of his concealed gun.

Senator Cuccinelli had fun with that one, saying, "So, Senator Marsh, the permit holder, determined to commit murder, would not do so because he was worried about getting charged with a Class 3 misdemeanor?"

Marsh just sat there with a blank look on his face.

This is an argument that I hear again and again from people wanting to ban guns. If we let people carry guns legally, they'll commit murder. Well folks, I think Senator Cuccinelli has it right, if you are going to commit murder, a couple of misdemeanors won't stop you.

Another example of backwards thinking came from a representative from the Alcoholic Beverage Commission:

We are concerned that this is a public safety issue... What if someone carrying concealed has their gun taken away from the by a drunken customer and used to shoot someone.

Um.... It is currently legal to open carry in a restaurant serving alcohol in Virginia. So people carrying concealed handguns might have them seized by drunks, but people carrying openly won't?

How is Obama like a fish out of water

He's flip flopping all over the place.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed piece, Charles Krauthhammer points out the follow changes Obama has made since "winning" the democratic nomination.

1. The Flag Pin. Obama had said he didn't wear a flag pin because after September 11th it had become "became a substitute for, I think, true patriotism." Obama is now wearing a flag pin. I gues he needs to substitute something for his lack of true patriotism now.
2. Guns. When the Supreme Court came down in favor of Heller, and declared that the Second Admendment is an individual right, Obama declared that he agreed with the Supreme Court decision. However, he is previously on record as having stated that the D.C. gun ban is constitutional. Additionally, Obama is probably the most anti-gun politician out there next to Carolyn McCarthy and Mike Bloomberg.
3. NAFTA. Told the Canadians, his anti-trade rhetoric was just populist posturing.
4. Warrentless Wiretaps. Obama now will vote in favor of the new FISA bill.
5. Campaign Finance Reform. Changed opinion on public financing when he released that he needed to abandon public financing to maximize how much money he could take in.
6. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Talks would no longer be unconditional. How long until there will be no talks?
7. Iraq. No longer unconditional fixed 16-month timetable. He now states "we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable." and that "when I go to Iraq . . . I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies." How long until reality meets Mr. Obama and he realizes that you can't have a fixed timetable.

Obama is a slick orator. Obama is charismatic. Unfortunately these thing don't help you be a good leader.

The Roberts Court seems to get it

I have to applaud the Roberts Court, they really seem to be beginning to undo some of the damage done by previous courts and the Bush administration.

First of all we have the D.C. v. Heller decision.

The right of habeas corpus was restored in Boumediene v. Bush

In Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics the court also is beginning to reign in patent abuse.

Hopefully the court will continue to promote liberty and reign in the executive branch.

Gun ban in Seattle

Over at The High Road they are reporting that Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle has issued an executive order baning guns in the city.

Previous on December 23, 2007, Mayor Nickels office released a press statement that:

the City of Seattle [...], with funding from the Joyce Foundation

With funding from the Joyce Foundation, very interesting. First of all, why is a private organization funding a city event? Secondly, the Joyce Foundation want to end gun violence, by ending the right for american citizens to keep and bear arms.

According to the Joyce Foundation's mission statement they are focused on issues related to the area around the great lakes, so what are they doing in Seattle? And who exactly is the Joyce Foundation. Well among some of the groups they support include the Violence Policy Center, one of the most anti-gun groups in Washington, D.C. (and interestingly enough, the holder of Federal Firearms License in the District of Columbia). And who do you think was on the board of the Joyce Foundation? None other than Mr. Change himself, Barack Obama.

I guess if you want to see more total gun bans, in blatant disregard of the Second Amendment, then Obama's your man.

What if the First Admendment was treated like the Second

I saw an amusing analogy using what Obama is proposing regarding the second and applying it to the first amendment.

It would include:

1. Free speech, would require a permit, with education requirements, before a person may criticize the government.
2. Imprisoning anyone who "falsely accuses a government official of misconduct"
3. Outlawing "speech that offends anyone without reasonable cause

Extending the analogy I would add:

1. Permitting a person to only criticize the government once a month.
2. Requiring any written speech to be stamped with a unique identifier which identifies the speaker.
3. Banning the poor from having free speech.
4. Banning criticizing the government within 5 miles of schools
5. Banning of hiding documents on your person which are critical of the government.
6. And banning free speech to individuals 21 years old or older.

Gun laws and war

Most states in the United States allow citizens to use a gun to defend themselves. When you can use a gun for self defense is subject to restrictions. The most common restriction is that when you use a gun for self defense it must be in response to an imminent perceived threat of bodily harm. That is to say, a reasonable person in your situation, must believe that they are about to lose life or limb.

In his article "Government, War and Libertarianism", the Cato Institutes Justin Logan states

In the international arena, it is important to note that security—the first-order concern of any state—is ultimately contingent on a state’s ability to defend itself.

So should a state be subject to the restriction that it only go to war when it perceives an imminent threat to the loss of life of its citizens?

This is the position of Randy Barnett in his book The Structure of Liberty. Barnett states that this is a reasonable restriction

because of the enormous knowledge problem that would be confronted if we were to permit self defense actions prior to a threat becoming imminent.

There are two key points to the restriction.

1. There must be a perceived threat, one that a reasonable state would make given the same information the available prior to going to war.
2. And the perceived threat must be imminent.

In light of these two key point lets take a look at some recent actions by the United States government.

The war in Iraq
So, is the war in Irag justifiable as self defense? Was there a perceived threat? We know that the United State Government believed that Iraq possessed Chemical and Biological weapons. But were they threating to use them against the United States? Not that the public was informed of. Were they giving them to terrorists, and training the terrorists on how to use them? Again, not that the public was informed of. So the war in Iraq fails to meet the criteria of self defense.

The war in Afghanistan
What about the invasion of Afghanistan? Was the Afghan government threating the United States? Not directly, but they were harboring agents (Usama Bin Laden and associates) who were threating the United States. They were providing areas for them to train in the use of arms in order to wage war against the United States. So it can be argued that a threat existed.

Was the threat imminent? This is a harder question to answer. We do know that Special Forces were in Afghanistan prior to the main invasion. If there was an imminent threat in Afghanistan it is conceivable that these forces could and would address it with use of deadly force. But the overall invasion was a slower process and not designed to eliminate an imminent threat. So the main invasion was not justifiable as self defense.

But was it justifiable? It was designed to capture fugitives that killed citizens of the United States. The threat from these fugitives was real, if not imminent. The United States Governments actions can be justified by looking at the September 11th attacks as murder and the Afghan government as an accomplice to the crime.

Gun Rights

I've been finding that lately I've been questioning basic assumptions that I've held since I was young. One of those assumptions is that Gun Control is a good idea and helps reduce crime and protect the general population. I know that this assumption came from my parents. When my parents moved to Florida several years ago, my father meet several people in his community that regularly went Trap Shooting. My dad tried this and enjoyed it, eventually purchasing his own shotgun. When he passed, I inherited his shotgun. Now that I was a "gun owner" I thought that it was import that I reflect on how I feel about owning a gun. After much thinking and research I came to the follow conclusions:

1. guns are not inherently "evil"
2. most gun control laws were initial written or enacted to allow for groups to commit human rights violations. In the United State, especially in the south, many gun control laws can be traced to keeping guns out of the hands of African Americans so that members of the KKK would not get shot when they went to lynch someone.
3. Self defense is a basic human right
4. During the 20th century more people have been murdered by there own governments (http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/deathgc.htm) than have been murdered as a "crime" by fellow citizens. These murders are always proceed by gun control. One of the goals of the Nazi gun control laws were to make resistance to the Nazi government impossible. This is one of the reasons that uprisings among the Jewish population in Nazi occupied lands were very uncommon.
5. Gun control laws don't prevent criminals from obtaining or using guns to commit crimes. If someone intends to commit a crime such as armed robbery or murder, they generally will not be stopped by a law prohibiting ownership of a gun. Look at D.C., they have very strict gun control laws but still have a huge number of crimes committed with guns.

One of the problems is that groups that wish to control access to guns work to confuse the issue and the general population. The assault weapon ban of 1994 (which expired in 2004) was a perfect example of this.

There is a military class of weapons call "Assault Rifles" which an automatic M-16 would be an example. There is a similar rifle that is available to civilian as only a semi-automatic version called an AR-15, which has been referred to as an "Assault Weapon" but many people do use these rifles as hunting rifles. Cosmetically, the two rifles look similar, but functionally they are very different. The M-16 is a select fire weapon. That means that there is a selector switch which can be used to select how many bullets are fired for each pull of the trigger, with one of these options being fully automatic. A fully automatic rifle is one in which as long as you hold down the trigger, the gun will continue to fire until it is out of ammunition.

The AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle. For each pull of the trigger, the gun will only fire one bullet. If you want to fire more than one bullet, you must pull the trigger more than once, releasing the trigger between each pull.

Now with a name like the Assault Weapon Ban, you'd think that it would ban fully automatic assault rifles, but it didn't. In fact it did nothing about fully automatic rifles. If you could afford to purchase one, and pay a $200 transfer tax, you could still have an automatic rifle.

What it did do, is restrict inexpensive guns that had cosmetic similarities to fully automatic rifles. What I think is interested and appalling, is that the effect (and intent) of many of gun laws is to prohibit gun ownership by the poor. And in many respects a lot of gun legislation creates two classes of people, privileged and allowed to have guns and unprivileged and denied their second amendment rights.

Why is Senator Webb allow to carry a concealed handgun in the District of Columbia, but other CHP (Concealed Handgun Permit) holders are not? They have both been through the same background checks?

Why do states not honor the full faith and credit clause of the constitution when it come to a CHP? CHP holders are statically less likely to commit a crime than police officers, who are allow to carry concealed in all 50 states. States honor the full faith and credit clause of the constitution with driver's licenses, yet more people (by far) are kill with cars than with guns.