Here's a chart showing U.S. defense spending relative to that of other nations.
Here's one of those cartogram things showing U.S. defense spending relative to our space on the globe.
Here's a pie chart showing U.S. defense spending as a total of all discretionary spending.
Go here to read an account of THE SECOND mass shooting at Fort Hood, Oklahoma. Fort Hood is one of the largest U.S. Army bases. This time the gunman killed 3 people and wounded 16 others.
Look at the spending. Read the account of the shooting. The victims were having to call 911 (the emergency police number in the U.S.) to get help. On a military base.
Does this make any sense at all? I hate that these innocent people lost their lives. I'm not making light of this tragedy.
But if they aren't allowed to protect themselves, what the hell are they doing for us? Am I missing something?
6) Participated in 9/12 marches and had speakers at 9/12 meetings
7) We would’ve participated in Peace Marches, but the Peace Movement doesn’t really exist during Democrat administrations, and we don’t have the numbers to shut down the streets by ourselves.
8) Supported anti-Eminent Domain candidates for our regional Water Board. And won!!
Stuff like that makes for a diverse group off allies. But those groups have something in common....
Economic conservatives generally fear the Fed the government.
Pot smokers fear the police the government.
Gun owners fear the anti-2nd amendment lobby the government.
Gays and Lesbians fear the influence of religious conservatives the government.
Tea Party activists, supposedly neutral on social issues, fear the national debt the government.
The 9-12 groups, as best I can tell, fear socialists the government.
The Peace Movement fears the military-industrial complex the government.
Eminent Domain opponents fear thieves the government.
Most members of these sub-groups will tell you that they oppose Democrats. Or Republicans. This is like declaring your loyalty to The Crips because if you stop supporting The Crips, then The Bloods will take over. Republicans and Democrats might go at each other like cats and dogs, but at the end of the day, neither group is going to endanger the oppressive system that makes their leadership (and their leaches) very, very wealthy and very, very powerful.
Our challenge, as Libertarians, is to convince those who fear the government to merely oppose the government in all its unholy acts, instead of trying to kill off Dr. Jekyll while saving Mr. Hyde. On almost every issue, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi are different in degree, not in kind. And I'm struggling to think of any issues (maybe guns?) where Bush/Obama differ by a significant degree.
(No, I take that back. They don't even differ on guns. Barack approves of giving guns to Syrian rebels, and to Mexican Drug Lords via Operation Fast And Furious.)
When government gets big enough, it prints money, oppresses non-conformists, confiscates citizen weaponry, determines who can and can’t marry, racks up a lot of debt, nationalizes industries, starts wars, and confiscates property. That's all part of the package.
Any government big enough to abuse the group you dislike is big enough to abuse all the rest.
Let’s stop talking about Red vs. Blue. Let’s reframe the debate as Free vs. Slave.
Note to the Brits and Aussies and Kiwis who hit this site..... Mayberry is the fictional small town in the 1960's sitcom "The Andy Griffith Show". Andy played the sheriff who never had much to do.
This is one of the best 2nd Amendment rants I've ever heard. The guy, Cam Edwards, makes some great points in a standup comedy format. A brief excerpt:
If gun control worked, Chicago would be Mayberry right now! And Weld County and El Paso County would be Thunderdome! You guys wouldn’t have [Weld County] Sheriff [John] Cooke, you would have Tina Turner and Mel Gibson running around! It would be horrible! But that’s not real life! Real life is gun control not working in Chicago. Real life is gun control failing in Camden, New Jersey and Oakland, California, and a lot of other communities in this country . . .
We are pushing back with the lawsuits, with the phone calls to our legislators, by electing officials and supporting elected officials who listen to us. But we’re also pushing back by being grownups, and by being okay at it. By having hundreds of people show up at a range and fire thousands of shotgun shells . . . and everybody’s okay! And now we’re enjoying cigars and drinks and we’ll all get home safely tonight, right?
Because we can control our lives! We can manage our lives! It’s not too difficult. We’re not perfect. We may eat a little too much dessert every now and then. We may not be able to beat that one bad habit, like smoking cigarettes, whatever. But we’re a heck of a lot more capable than our government gives us credit for, aren’t we?
Enjoy. Put it on while you're doing the dishes or balancing your checkbook, or whatever. Great, great stuff.
I'm shamelessly ripping this off from the Lew Rockwell website for future reference. Written by Michael Snyder. It's a brilliant collection of links about gun control.
18 Little-Know Facts That Prove Guns Make Us Safer
#1 Over the past 20 years, gun sales have absolutely exploded, but homicides with firearms are down 39 percent during that time and “other crimes with firearms” are down 69 percent.
#3 The nine European nations with the lowest rate of gun ownership rate have a combined murder rate that is three times greater than the nine European nation with the highest rate of gun ownership.
#4 Almost every mass shooting that has occurred in the United States since 1950 has taken place in a state with strict gun control laws…
With just one exception, every public mass shooting in the USA since at least 1950 has taken place where citizens are banned from carrying guns. Despite strict gun regulations, Europe has had three of the worst six school shootings.
#5 The United States is #1 in the world in gun ownership, and yet it is only 28th in the world in gun murders per 100,000 people
#6 The violent crime rate in the United States actually fell from 757.7 per 100,000 in 1992 to 386.3 per 100,000 in 2011. During that same time period, the murder rate fell from 9.3 per 100,000 to 4.7 per 100,000.
#7 Approximately 200,000 women in the United States use guns to protect themselves against sexual crime every single year.
#8 Overall, guns in the United States are used 80 times more often to prevent crime than they are to take lives.
#9 The number of unintentional fatalities due to firearms declined by 58 percent between 1991 and 2011.
#10 Despite the very strict ban on guns in the UK, the overall rate of violent crime in the UK is about 4 times higher than it is in the United States. In one recent year, there were 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people in the UK. In the United States, there were only 466 violent crimes per 100,000 people during that same year. Do we really want to be more like the UK?
#11 The UK has approximately 125 percent more rape victims per 100,000 people each year than the United States does.
#12 The UK has approximately 133 percent more assault victims per 100,000 people each year than the United States does.
#16 The city of Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States. So has this reduced crime? Of course not. As I wrote about recently, the murder rate in Chicago was about 17 percent higher in 2012 than it was in 2011, and Chicago is now considered to be “the deadliest global city“. If you can believe it, there were about as many murders in Chicago during 2012 as there was in the entire nation of Japan.
#17 After the city of Kennesaw, Georgia passed a law requiring every home to have a gun, the crime rate dropped by more than 50 percent over the course of the next 23 years and there was an 89% decline in burglaries.
#18 According to Gun Owners of America, the governments of the world slaughtered more than 170 million of their own people during the 20th century. The vast majority of those people had been disarmed by their own governments prior to being slaughtered.
Good stuff. Go here to read Snyder's intro and conclusion.
TCU's Young Americans For Liberty and The Tarrant County Libertarian Party proudly present "The Great Debate - Guns In Texas".
This event will feature the Democratic Party's State Representative Lon Burnam, Texas House District 90 debating 2nd Amendment activist Scott Harmon, National Rifle Association volunteer coordinator.
These two fine men will be debating some of the central issues of our time - Who can carry a gun? What can we carry? Where should we be allowed to carry a weapon? What was the intent of the founders, and what does the 2nd Amendment mean today?
This promises to be the best discussion you'll hear on this important topic. Patrick Dixon, the Texas LP's State Chair, will be the moderator.
Free Admission - Saturday April 27th, 2:00 p.m.
Brown-Lupton Auditorium on the TCU campus, 2901 Stadium Drive, Fort Worth, TX 76129
I read this in The Atlantic Monthly (hardly a right-wing Tea Party rag) a few days before the shooting in Connecticut.
It's easily the most reasonable piece I've seen on the subject of guns in America. Jeffery Goldberg is the author.
But even some moderate gun-control activists, such as Dan Gross, have trouble accepting that guns in private hands can work effectively to counteract violence. When I asked him the question I posed to Stephen Barton and Tom Mauser—would you, at a moment when a stranger is shooting at you, prefer to have a gun, or not?—he answered by saying, “This is the conversation the gun lobby wants you to be having.” He pointed out some of the obvious flaws in concealed-carry laws, such as too-lax training standards and too much discretionary power on the part of local law-enforcement officials. He did say that if concealed-carry laws required background checks and training similar to what police recruits undergo, he would be slower to raise objections. But then he added: “In a fundamental way, isn’t this a question about the kind of society we want to live in?” Do we want to live in one “in which the answer to violence is more violence, where the answer to guns is more guns?”
What Gross won’t acknowledge is that in a nation of nearly 300 million guns, his question is irrelevant.
Defense Distributed, a libertarian student partnership, is announcing a project they're calling the Wiki Weapon. This project's goal is to test and prove a design for a completely printable, one-use ABS plastic .22 handgun, and to take that design from CAD and port it to a .STL file that will then be freely shared across all major file-sharing platforms to the world. DefDist is anticipating a world where 3D printing becomes much more economical and ubiquitous, and the Wiki Weapon will be one step in providing political and personal leverage to the peoples of that world. The value of such a file's existence in the future cannot be overstated.
We ask that you please share the project or its video, located at http://PrintableGun.com and http://Indiegogo.com/wikiwep, with your readers and help spread the word that there are intellectual entrepreneurs dedicated to preserving Liberty in a time of almost unopposed statist planning.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
Sounds simple, doesn't it?
The Bill Of Rights is a list of ten rules to protect citizens from their government. If the government gets to have a militia, then the people get to have guns.
So why the controversy about gun rights? If crazies, outlaws, and criminals have guns, shouldn't the populace be allowed to defend itself? That's the subject for our next Liberty Speakers Series. We're getting together at the Radisson Hotel at 2540 Meacham Boulevard in north Fort Worth, 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 2nd.
We have a great trio of speakers from two great organizations.
Scott Harmon is a Political Event Volunteer Coordinator with the National Rifle Association. He (and his family!) have worked tirelessly for years to protect the 2nd Amendment, publicize threats to your gun rights, and to educate the public about the pressures that are brought to bear on lawmakers in Washington and Austin. Scott comes to us highly recommended by the NRA's national office. After a few telephone conversations, it's safe to say that this won't be Scott's last speaking event for a Libertarian audience (Hello, Dallas County !) Scott makes some of us sound like Marxist Vegetarians. You don't want to miss hearing Scott Harmon talk about your gun rights, especially in today's political climate.
David Stroud is the First-Vice President of the Texas State Rifle Association, an organization founded in 1919 to protect (and expand) the rights of Texas gun owners. David got into the TSRA to participate in some of their competitive shooting events, liked what he saw, and began working in various administrative and leadership jobs in the organization. David will talk to anyone, anywhere, and any time about gun rights. He once took the TSRA booth to the Texas State Democratic Convention. Now that is commitment !!
Larry Keilberg is head of the National Association For Legal Gun Defense, an organization that provides legal aid for anyone who fights back against a criminal. (Larry and his management team are a recent addition to this event.) All members of the NAFLGD have an automatic $10,000.00 defense fund at their disposal should they be involved in a defense-related incident. Their team of lawyers (Fort Worth based, BTW) is at your disposal.
After we hear from Scott, David and Larry talk about their organizations, their importance, the latest threats in the state and national legislatures, they'll be taking some questions from you.
This will be an oustanding evening with some great speakers for a great liberty-minded audience. Hope to see you there ! Thursday, August 2nd, 7:30, at the Radisson Hotel at I-35 and Meacham Boulevard.
Here's the philosophical principle known as Occam's Razor:
Occam's razor is the law of parsimony, economy or succinctness. It is a principle urging one to select from among competing hypotheses that which makes the fewest assumptions and thereby offers the simplest explanation of the effect.
In other words, the simplest explanation is usually the best one. If you are in Texas and hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
Let's apply that principle to the magnificent abortion known as Operation Fast And Furious, where the people responsible for the Post Office, VA Hospitals and the DMV decided to let a bunch of guns "walk" across the Mexican border. Just to see where they would go.....
The fuss over the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” scandal must be mystifying to voters who don’t know why Second Amendment types think the seemingly insane operation was launched–namely to establish a predicate for gun control here in the U.S..** Powerline bloggers debate the issue here & here. Don’t wait for the MSM to fill you in on this crucial bit of undernews. …
What I don’t understand is why, according to both Powerliners, the “gun control” theory requires the administration to have wanted to “increase bloodshed in Mexico”? Why increase? It requires more paranoia than even I’m able to muster to think that the Holder Justice department’s goal was to produce more violence and death (in order to grab headlines, etc.). Why isn’t there a far more plausible and mundane possible purpose: The administration wanted to document that the guns used in Mexican drug gang crimes–including violent crimes–came from the U.S.. There might be more crimes, there might be fewer. There could be less bloodshed, there could be increased bloodshed–but that wasn’t the point. The point was that gun controllers could argue that X% of the guns, or X number of guns, found at crime scenes were sourced from this country–whatever the overall level of crime. That would establish the factual basis for gun control the same way the Dartmouth studies and Atul Gawande’s articles allegedly established a factual basis for Obamacare. Entirely plausible, and not criminally evil! Just amazingly stupid. …
P.S.: I’m not sure Second Amendment enthusiasts should argue that letting lots of guns “walk” across the border will inevitably “increase bloodshed” or “promote violence.” Isn’t that the gun-controllers’ argument–that More Guns = More Violence in some kind of rigid equation?…
Guns don’t kill Mexican gang war victims. Mexican gangsters kill Mexican gang war victims. …
Go here for your very own Operation Fast And Furious T-shirt !!!
This editorial actually ran on the CNN website yesterday.
Swear to God, they published it.
It's about the "Fast And Furious" debacle, the one where the government sent thousands of guns across the Rio Grande to prove that American guns were crossing the Rio Grande. Then a couple of Federal Agents got shot with them.
By allowing guns to infiltrate Mexico's drug cartel, we thought we could trace them up the ladder to the leaders. Take off the head and the body dies. As for the innocent people who lost their lives? Collateral damage. That's the uncomfortable backstory to this scandal. And there are likely other operations like it in our nation's history that we don't even have a clue about.
And maybe it's better for us not to be so nosy, not to know everything because, to paraphrase the famous line from the movie "A Few Good Men," many of us won't be able to handle the truth.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Go back to watching "Dancing With The Stars". Take some happy pills. Don't be "so nosy".
You probably couldn't handle the truth: We're trying to continue the War On Drugs, maintain the Drug Lords' monopoly, plus prove that you really shouldn't be allowed to keep those pistols in your house.
Don't be so nosy.
Nothing to see here. Move along, people, move along.
I can't believe I haven't written anything on "Operation Fast And Furious" yet.
There's been too much insane competition for subject matter. That's my only excuse.
Here's the story as I understand it.....
The Obama administration wanted to prove that American guns were going across our border with Mexico. They wanted to show that it was guns, rather than our insane Prohibition laws, that were causing the violence along the border.
As usual, the crowdsourced explanation from Wikipedia is the best one:
The ATF gunwalking scandal came to national attention in the United States in 2011 after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gunwalking” sting operations between 2006 and 2011. This was done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the U.S. “Gunwalking” or “letting guns walk” was a tactic whereby the ATF knowingly allowed thousands of guns to be bought by suspected arms traffickers ("gunrunners") working through straw purchasers on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.
The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher−level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels. The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers. Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest "gunwalking" probe, led to the sale of over 2,000 firearms, of which fewer than 700 were recovered as of October 20, 2011 (2011 -10-20). A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high−level cartel figures have been arrested.
Firearms "walked" by the ATF have been found at violent crime scenes on both sides of the US−Mexico border, and have been found at the crime scenes involving deaths of many Mexicans and at least one US federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The “gunwalking” operations became public in the aftermath of Agent Terry's murder. As a result, dissident ATF agents came forward to Congress. As investigations have continued, the operations have become increasingly controversial in both countries, and diplomatic relations have been damaged as a result.
These weapons have been found at more than 170 crime scenes in Mexico. Another of our Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Jaime Zapata was murdered with one of the guns. Eric Holder has been trotted in front of Congress to lie about what emails he did and didn't receive about the operation.
Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, is in a little trouble because of this mess, but not at the level you would expect. The White House is circling the wagons, and is putting on the Full-Nixon.
Let me repeat what happened here....
There are two explanations for the violence in Mexico - 1) American Prohibition Laws, or 2) American Guns Crossing The Border.
In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.
In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.
In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.
I know that a lot of people love Barack Obama, and he's thrown a lot of taxpayer money to his supporters (more than any other president) and he makes good speeches that make Statists nod along with a warm damp glow of contentment. There's a competing school of thought that claims he's the dumbest human to ever step foot in the Oval Office, much less work there.
Here's CNN's Anderson Cooper on the anguish of the Zapata family. They're not letting Holder or Obama off the hook, no matter who was programming The Teleprompter during the operation:
The solution to this mess? Stop voting for Fascists.
I don't speak for every Libertarian running for office in 2012, but I don't think we'll ever, ever, ever purchase guns, sell them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords, WATCH as they cross the border, and then lose track of them.
We will never, ever do that.
Hell, the slowest students in a Special Ed class would never, ever do that.
Buzzfeed has a list of 10 Things That Are Banned In San Francisco. Since I hope you'll go to their site and click on some of their ads, I'm deleting the last one. Hit the link and see it for yourself, and then avoid opening any kind of business in that Statist Hellhole.
1. Happy Meals
Or more specifically, toys in Happy Meals. But, what kind of Happy Meal doesn't include a toy?
2. Plastic Bags
Plastic bags are currently not allowed at large chain supermarkets and drug stores, but they are considering expanding the ban to all stores.
3. Bottled Water
City money cannot be used to purchase bottled water and it cannot be sold from vending machines on city property.
4. Smoking
Tobacco cigarettes are not allowed to be smoked in buildings, and clove cigarettes are not permitted to be sold in the city at all.
5. Baby Animals
It's illegal to sell baby chickens, ducks, and rabbits in San Francisco.
6. Segways
Segways are not allowed on sidewalks or bike paths because the mayor of San Francisco thought they promoted laziness.
7. Soda
Soda and juice drinks with no real fruit juice cannot be sold from vending machines on city property.
8. Arizona
As a protest to the state's strict immigration policies, city employees (except for police officers investigating a crime) are not allowed to travel to Arizona.
9. Firearms In Advertisements
Advertisements in San Francisco cannot “promote the use of firearms or advocate any violent action.” The poster for The Other Guy had all the weapons removed just for San Francisco's Muni system last summer.
Remember to hit that link up to for the full list. Note to Arizonans: Come to Fort Worth, Texas ! Ride your Segway to McDonald's and have a soda and some bottled water. Put the leftovers in a plastic bag, along with the baby chicken you bought for the kids. Smoke like a chimney on the way to the shooting range. Then sit and rest for a while, anyplace you feel safe. We don't care. You belong to you.
Topics from last night's dinner table conversations....
First some background. My two sisters, my brother, my mother, one of my aunts, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law have all been teachers. So education issues (like the protests in Wisconsin) are a hot topic.
My sister-in-law teaches 2nd grade. One of her 2nd grade kids recently got suspended for 3 days because he brought a set of brass knuckles to school.
I somewhat sheepishly showed everyone the scar over my left eyebrow, a remnant of a college fight I got into that (ahem...) didn't go well for me. The other team had brass knuckles and I didn't.
My mother-in-law graciously turned the topic away from my 1983 defeat to a proposal that's going through the Texas House Of Representatives:
AUSTIN — Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.
More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he's in favor of the idea.
Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its gun culture and its size, with 38 public universities and more than 500,000 students. It would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and several have allowed handguns.
Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back.
I'm not a Rick Perry fan, but I like the idea of a governor carrying a pistol while working in a 5K before breakfast.
I can only think of one thing that could guarantee that The Aggie would never, ever be the victim of a mass shooting. And that's to authorize her to shoot back.
I have a minority opinion on that, though.
One of The Aggie's male friends recently gave her a rifle. I've never met the guy, but I can tell you two things about him.
1. He likes my daughter.
2. He's not a psycho. Psychos don't like armed victims.
My mother-in-law then brought up a legit question. What would've happened if I'd been armed in 1983? What if my opponents (yeah, it took two of them) had been armed with more than brass knucks?
I honestly don't know. But either way, I don't think I would have a scar over my left eyebrow.
That eventually got us around to politicians and the protests in Wisconsin. My mother-in-law can say the words "Rick Perry" and make it sound like "malignant tumor". Her hot-button is that Texas once paid 10 grand a month for a temporary governor's mansion, while cutting back on education.
Yes, 10K for rent is too much. As I've stated numerous times on these pages, electing a governor or a president should be no more important than selecting a lawn service. If the decision really matters to you, then your government has gotten too big. Once we start building Executive Mansions or Governor's Mansions, the Battle For The Minds Of The People has already been lost.
Here's the comparison that I brought up....The U.S. pays about $11,000.00 per year per child for education. My sister-in-law has 21 kids in her classroom. At 11K per kid, she's making $231,000.00 per year !!!
Well, no, she isn't. She's probably making a fourth of that. So what is happening to the other 75% of that money? The other $170,000.00 ???
It's being wasted, wasted in quantities that make Rick Perry's temporary governor's mansion rental look like a bargain along the lines of The Louisiana Purchase.
Folks, for the amount we're pouring down the Department of Education rathole, we could start hiring freakin' Socrates to teach our kids. You could turn the $11,000.00 per kid into, say, an $8,000 voucher. Cut the spending per kid by 3K. Then turn teachers loose. My sister-in-law could rent a room. Feed the kids via a catering service. Select and purchase her own curriculum. Hell, she's already having to supply pencils, crayons, and a ton of other supplies out of her own check, because even at $11,000 per kid, the school district doesn't have the money to do it !!!!!
What in the name of Thomas Tocco is going on there ???
One last thing, and this is something I didn't think of until I woke up this morning. My sister-in-law used to teach kindergarten, but got moved to 2nd grade. She's going to request a permanent spot in 2nd grade because one of her best friends in the kindergarten area is retiring, and kindergarten doesn't have the same appeal without this friend as a co-worker.
Here's the catch. The friend is something like 53 years old, and is going to retire with pay.
According to Wikipedia, this friend will probably live to be 80 years old. Can any organization fund 53-year-old retirees?
Is anyone surprised that the retirement funds are now in trouble? We've made some extravagant promises to teachers that we aren't going to be able to keep. It's that simple.
Here's Sonny Green, doing a forgotten classic "Don't Write A Check With Your Mouth (that yo' body can't cash.)"
I'm not going to make a habit of transtribing dinner conversations. People would stop talking to me. I wish y'all could've been there. Last night was interesting. Good food for thought. And if I'd had a .357 magnum in 1983....
Go here to marvel at the website of "Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership"
The site refers you to the chart I've included below. Here's some info on where these guys are coming from:
Why must all decent non-violent people fight against "gun control"? Why is the right to keep and bear arms truly a fundamental individual right? You can find the answers in this new book.
People frequently ask why we are so dedicated to our cause? This book answers that question by collecting the key facts and arguments in one place.
The message is simple: Disarmed people are neither free nor safe - they become the criminals' prey and the tyrants' playthings. When the civilians are defenseless and their government goes bad, however, thousands and millions of innocents die.
Professor R.J. Rummel, author of the monumental book Death by Government, said: "Concentrated political power is the most dangerous thing on earth." For power to concentrate and become dangerous, the citizens must be disarmed.
What disarms the citizens? The idea of "gun control." It's the idea that only the government has the right to possess firearms, and that citizens have no unalienable right to use force to defend against aggression.
Death by Gun Control carefully examines the "gun control" idea: its meaning, its purposes, its effects. It comes in many forms, but in every form it enables the evildoers and works against righteous defense.
"The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms or other types of arms. The possession of these elements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to permit uprising." - Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japanese Shogun, August 29, 1558
Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.
The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.
This is in a very large part due to Switzerland's unique system of national defence, developed over the centuries.
Instead of a standing, full-time army, the country requires every man to undergo some form of military training for a few days or weeks a year throughout most of their lives.
Between the ages of 21 and 32 men serve as frontline troops. They are given an M-57 assault rifle and 24 rounds of ammunition which they are required to keep at home.
Once discharged, men serve in the Swiss equivalent of the US National Guard, but still have to train occasionally and are given bolt rifles. Women do not have to own firearms, but are encouraged to.
The nation (Switzerland) is ready to mobilise on a moment's notice. Said one Swiss citizen-soldier, "If we start in the morning, we would be mobilised by late afternoon. That is why the gun is at home, the ammunition is at home. The younger people all have automatic rifles. They are ready to fight."
From Wikipedia (granted, not a reliable source, but I can't read the linked references in German.)
Police statistics for the year 2006 records 34 killings or attempted killings involving firearms, compared to 69 cases involving bladed weapons and 16 cases of unarmed assault. Cases of assault resulting in bodily harm numbered 89 (firearms) and 526 (bladed weapons). As of 2007, Switzerland had a population of about 7,600,000. This would put the rate of killings or attempted killings with firearms at about one for every quarter million residents yearly. This represents a decline of aggravated assaults involving firearms since the early 1990s. Some 300 deaths per year are due to legally held army ordnance weapons, the large majority of these being suicides.
Remember, Switzerland has a population of 6 million. And that's 34 killings or attempts that weren't necessarily succesful. Now, let's bring it all back home. Here's the Washington Times:
If Chicago were serious about bringing its violent crime problem under control, it would recognize the constitutional right of residents to use firearms to protect themselves.
Chicago's population is around 2.8 million, for purposes of comparison to Switzerland's 6 million.
The city's troubles are so extreme that a pair of state lawmakers are calling on a fellow Democrat, Gov. Pat Quinn, to deploy the National Guard to help restore calm. The latest figures show that Chicago had racked up 122 homicides for the year, exceeding the 116 killings over the comparable period in 2009, a very bad year. Among the top 10 U.S. cities, Chicago is within shooting distance of advancing from second place to win the dubious distinction of being the U.S. murder capital. It's no coincidence that the Windy City is already the U.S. gun-control capital.
Since 1982, Chicago has banned the private ownership of handguns and rifles by requiring a convoluted registration process designed to be impossible to complete. Exceptions to the rules enable politicians and their personal friends to own and even carry handguns - but nobody else. This unconstitutional scheme has been a colossal failure. Before the ban took effect, Chicago's murder rate had been falling relative to the nine other largest cities, the 50 largest cities, the five counties that border Cook County, and the United States as a whole. After the ban, Chicago's murder rate rose relative to all these locations. During the first 19 years of the ban, there were just three years when the murder rate was as low as when the ban started.
Here's some video. Be sure to catch the part where the government actually supplies ammo for recreational target practice and shooting events.
Best quote in the video: "The key to freedom is the ability to be able to defend yourself, and if you don't have the tools to do that, you are at the mercy of whoever wants to put you away."
When time permits, look up the Nazi invasion of Switzerland.
1) The police in the movie are portrayed realistically. They're ineffective. (One of my truck windows was vandalized a couple of nights ago. I didn't even bother to report it.)
2) "Kick Ass", the male lead, gets tired of being hassled, mugged and assaulted and decides on his own to do something about it.
3) "Hit Girl" is home schooled.
4) The public school that Kick Ass attends is portrayed realistically. In the opening sequence, he has to go through a gauntlet of metal detectors just to get in the door.
5) "Red Mist" smokes some weed but maintains his ability to drive.
6) The mandatory SUV that the villains use to pursue Kick Ass and Red Mist is a GMC. (Government Motors Corporation)
7) Hit Girl is a poster child for gun control. She hits what she aims at.
8) If you don't think a Personal Jet Propulsion Pack (with twin Gatlin guns) is cool, well, stay home. Watch Dancing With The Stars.
Israel now has a libertarian movement. Go here. (Check out the blogroll while you're there. Ha !)
What are the odds? The country was founded by a gaggle of Socialists. Israel is the only country in the world, as far as I know, that can make anything like the kibbutz system work. And they now have a libertarian movement !
1. We believe in the individual rights to Life, Liberty and Property as the basis for a just political system.
2. We believe in the principle and practice of free market capitalism as the only sustainable and moral economic system, the only one compatible with life, liberty and property. 3. The organization is a broad-tent one, to include anyone committed to the ideals of free markets and individual liberty. 4. Members of the organization recognize the necessity of advancement towards greater individual liberty in both personal and economic matters – and in fact, the inseparability of individual and economic liberty. 5. Members of the organization recognize the need to establish a political order guided by the overall principles of individual liberty and free markets.
Do any U.S. Libertarians see anything there that they couldn't support?
And check out this post on Israeli gun control: Go here to read the rest. It's perfectly illustrated by this picture of a rabbi, his daughter, and their assault rifles.
Many foreign citizens – and in fact, many citizens of Israel – hold the belief that the Jewish state is an amazingly pro-gun entity. American citizens who return from trips to the Holy Land will tell of how many armed men they see in the streets – usually, reservists or settlers carrying their government-issued rifles, and of how this armed citizen or another had stopped a terrorist act with his pistol.
This is even true to some extent – because most legally-held firearms in Israel are pistols held for the purpose of self-defense, the citizens here have a far greater tendency of carrying the arms they own then Germans or Frenchmen. But – and this is an incredible fact even for most Israelis – Israel is one of the most anti-gun states of the civilized world.
Here's where it will get interesting. You may have read or heard about a group called the Palestinians.....
Good luck folks.
Now that I think about it, compare the goals of these Israeli Libertarians to those of the United Kingdom's Libertarian Party. Compare both of those sets of principles to the U.S. version.
Let's make this a worldwide movement, with a worldwide semi-organization, where we get together once a year and vow to leave everyone else alone. Let's all band together in solidarity and march on Tel Aviv and London and Washington and insist that our governments give us.....nothing. Nothing at all.
