0 comment Sunday, November 2, 2014 | admin
Some thoughts that come to mind in light of the recent shooting in North Carolina:
First, it seems that the crime, bad as it is, was given more publicity than this, which was in some ways even more horrific
Why was there the difference in coverage? Because the North Carolina killings fit the leftist media's template; they like to play up 'gun violence', as if a gun in and of itself renders the crime worse. And then there is the race factor: the killer in the North Carolina case is a White middle-aged male, of the type that the media like to dwell on. I leave it to my readers as to why that is.
By contrast, the Massachusetts killings involved immigrants, and nonwhites at that, so the same kind of coverage will not be given to that story.
Likewise, this story involving Laotian and Vietnamese immigrant families who were involved in drug dealing.
White male+gun crime=Sensationalized coverage.
Nonwhites (especially immigrants)+other weapons=little coverage
The message that is received by people especially in other countries is that America is one of the most dangerous places on earth, where murder is supposedly commonplace, while in fact many other countries have higher murder rates and higher crime rates in general.
According to the Time Magazine article linked in the previous sentence, the United States crime rate has been dropping.
I can't count the number of times I have heard from someone that America is the most dangerous place on earth, or that our murder and crime rates are the highest. People outside the United States seem to believe this even more fervently than native-born liberal Americans, who like to believe the very worst about their own nation and people.
I often find it nearly impossible to convince them that the average crime rate is skewed by the fact that we have large numbers of minority groups who commit proportionately more crimes, and we have urban areas where the demographics add up to a very high crime rate.
Apart from these anomalies, America is not a crime-ridden nation, and there are many quiet towns and suburbs where people live in safety. In my county, there are many people who, believe it or not, still do not lock their doors. There is very little crime in the town where I live, as yet, though with the demographic changes that are surely coming, that will not always be the case.
There also seems to be a disturbing trend towards the widespread use of psychiatric drugs which seem to cause violent behavior, and there is no question but that our doctors and medical establishment actively push anti-depressant and other psychiatric drugs on patients, even those who are not seeking help for depression or other emotional problems. Many of these mass shootings seem to be related to these drugs.
And in our stressful and chaotic times, I suspect there are more people who are likely to 'snap', and how can we protect against such behaviors? Can we lock people up pre-emptively? We no longer commit people who are mentally disturbed; thanks to liberal policies, we ended involuntary commitment, so we are compelled to wait until someone has acted out to be able to confine them. Then it is too late, in many cases.
Still, America is nevertheless a great deal safer than much of the Western Hemisphere nations. Our neighbor to the North, Canada, used to be quite crime-free, but now they have been smitten with the diversity mania, and the crime rate will increase, despite their prohibitions against gun ownership.
One of the things that might be said about the safest parts of these United States is that the safest areas, I would venture, are areas where more citizens own guns. Liberal areas, which usually include the large cities and their immediate suburbs, are usually areas with fewer legal guns and more illegal ones in the possession of criminal or criminally-prone people.
So lack of guns does not lead to a peaceful community; just look at Washington, D.C. which has an astronomical crime rate and strict gun laws. Still, it's in the air: the media are on one of their anti-gun crusades, and they are doing that in lockstep with the current regime, which would love to diminish and ultimately do away with our Second Amendment rights.
Here are some facts from a pro-Second Amendment website, which are interesting even if a bit dated:
Americans use firearms to defend themselves from criminals at least 764,000 times a year. This figure is the lowest among a group of 9 nationwide surveys done by organizations including Gallup and the Los Angeles Times. In 1982, a survey of imprisoned criminals found that 34% of them had been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim." In about 5 years since enactment of the Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban in 1993, there have been 9 "school massacres." Washington D.C. enacted a virtual ban on handguns in 1976. Between 1976 and 1991, Washington D.C.'s homicide rate rose 200%, while the U.S. rate rose 12%.
And from the Second Amendment Foundation's Q & A:
14. Should Guns be Banned?
We believe absolutely that guns should not be banned. We believe that in our constitution, gun ownership is protected just like freedom of speech, and the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. We believe that the Bill of Rights are interdependent, in other words that you cannot pick which ones to honor, and which ones to ignore. If this is allowed, no civil rights are safe. We also believe that the right to defend one's self is a basic human right, and that banning guns would deprive law-abiding citizens of the ability to defend themselves from armed criminals. We also believe that gun ownership keeps crime down, and that that claim is supported by scientific research. John Lott, Jr., a researcher at Yale University, found that on average, violent crime dropped by 4 percent for each 1 percent increase in gun ownership. Also, firearms are used defensively 2.5 million times every year, more than four times as many as criminal uses. This amounts to 2,575 lives saved for every one taken by a gun. ''
[...]
19. Why do people want guns?
There are as many different reasons for wanting to own a gun as there are guns to own. First, a gun can be a sporting tool. Target shooting is incorporated in many different Olympic competitions. Target shooting has always been very popular in the United States. On the sporting aspect of things, guns are also a vital part of hunting. Hunting, again, is a very popular pastime.
Guns are also a valuable tool for self-defense. A gun is an equalizer. This means that a gun allows a small or un-athletic person to defend themselves from a criminal no matter how big or strong the criminal may be. Guns are also a great crime deterrent. When a criminal thinks you might be armed, he is less likely to choose you as a victim. The right to defend oneself from criminals is a basic human right, and a gun is one of the best tools to protect yourself, as well as your family, from crime. Forty-six percent of gun owners report owning guns for protection from crime.
Finally, the founding father's believed that gun ownership was necessary for a country to truly be free. If the government distrusted the people so much as to disarm them, then that government no longer truly represented the people. In other words, in our structure of government, the power is supposed to lie in the hands of the people. How would it make sense for that government, of the people, to take away the most effective means of self defense from those people? ''
It seems, though, that our homegrown liberals will never come around to seeing the importance of the Second Amendment, and our natural right to self-defense; to the liberal, guns=bad. No argument will persuade them otherwise. Likewise with many of our cousins across the Atlantic who consider us barbaric and backward to even want our Second Amendment rights. If the rest of the world could vote on it, they would vote to disarm us and feel quite virtuous about doing it.
This, to me, is confounding: from where we sit on this side of the Atlantic, it looks as if Europe is about to be overcome by Moslem and other Third World invaders, many of whom have violent proclivities. Why would one consider being unarmed a good thing in those circumstances? Do our European cousins not even consider the possibility of the need for self-defense and basic self-preservation? As we, from our side of the ocean, see French cities burning, and violence in the U.K, along with authorities who are at best indifferent to the lives of their citizens, the situation looks alarming.
And we here in the U.S. are increasingly seeing drug-related violence crossing our ''border'' with Mexico, while our government blames us for supposedly arming them, and hopes to curtail our rights to self-defense, while the same government makes no effort to protect us from invasion. What will happen if the gun banners get their way and we no longer have the means to defend ourselves? We will be easy prey, sitting ducks, as our disarmed cousins across the Atlantic seem to be.
I think any honest, thinking American acknowledges the wisdom of our Founding Fathers; they were a sight wiser than most of today's sorry leaders. And they were absolutely adamant that American citizens ought to be armed, and have the right to self-defense.
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press."--Thomas Jefferson
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms..." - Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Member of the First U.S. Senate.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well-armed, and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." - James Madison, 4th President of the United States, I Annuals of Congress 434
"...but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 29.
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." - James Madison, Federalist No. 46, 243-244.
"[S]elf-defense is justly called the primary law of nature� [It] cannot be taken away by the laws of society." - William Blackstone
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation." - Thomas Jefferson
"Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and therefore any state of society in which the sword is all the time suspended over the heads of the people must at last become intolerable." - President James Buchanan
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" - Patrick Henry, 1788
"...to disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them..." - George Mason
"Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ...the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." - Tench Coxe, 1788
"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms." - Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
"Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest." - Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." -- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." (meaning "a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand".) -- Seneca the Younger
"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes."- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted in Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave". - from "Political Disquisitions", 1774
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..." - Samuel Adams, 1789
The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage. - Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93
[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression. " - Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders"
The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." - Henry St. George Tucker
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." - Aristotle
First, it seems that the crime, bad as it is, was given more publicity than this, which was in some ways even more horrific
Why was there the difference in coverage? Because the North Carolina killings fit the leftist media's template; they like to play up 'gun violence', as if a gun in and of itself renders the crime worse. And then there is the race factor: the killer in the North Carolina case is a White middle-aged male, of the type that the media like to dwell on. I leave it to my readers as to why that is.
By contrast, the Massachusetts killings involved immigrants, and nonwhites at that, so the same kind of coverage will not be given to that story.
Likewise, this story involving Laotian and Vietnamese immigrant families who were involved in drug dealing.
White male+gun crime=Sensationalized coverage.
Nonwhites (especially immigrants)+other weapons=little coverage
The message that is received by people especially in other countries is that America is one of the most dangerous places on earth, where murder is supposedly commonplace, while in fact many other countries have higher murder rates and higher crime rates in general.
According to the Time Magazine article linked in the previous sentence, the United States crime rate has been dropping.
I can't count the number of times I have heard from someone that America is the most dangerous place on earth, or that our murder and crime rates are the highest. People outside the United States seem to believe this even more fervently than native-born liberal Americans, who like to believe the very worst about their own nation and people.
I often find it nearly impossible to convince them that the average crime rate is skewed by the fact that we have large numbers of minority groups who commit proportionately more crimes, and we have urban areas where the demographics add up to a very high crime rate.
Apart from these anomalies, America is not a crime-ridden nation, and there are many quiet towns and suburbs where people live in safety. In my county, there are many people who, believe it or not, still do not lock their doors. There is very little crime in the town where I live, as yet, though with the demographic changes that are surely coming, that will not always be the case.
There also seems to be a disturbing trend towards the widespread use of psychiatric drugs which seem to cause violent behavior, and there is no question but that our doctors and medical establishment actively push anti-depressant and other psychiatric drugs on patients, even those who are not seeking help for depression or other emotional problems. Many of these mass shootings seem to be related to these drugs.
And in our stressful and chaotic times, I suspect there are more people who are likely to 'snap', and how can we protect against such behaviors? Can we lock people up pre-emptively? We no longer commit people who are mentally disturbed; thanks to liberal policies, we ended involuntary commitment, so we are compelled to wait until someone has acted out to be able to confine them. Then it is too late, in many cases.
Still, America is nevertheless a great deal safer than much of the Western Hemisphere nations. Our neighbor to the North, Canada, used to be quite crime-free, but now they have been smitten with the diversity mania, and the crime rate will increase, despite their prohibitions against gun ownership.
One of the things that might be said about the safest parts of these United States is that the safest areas, I would venture, are areas where more citizens own guns. Liberal areas, which usually include the large cities and their immediate suburbs, are usually areas with fewer legal guns and more illegal ones in the possession of criminal or criminally-prone people.
So lack of guns does not lead to a peaceful community; just look at Washington, D.C. which has an astronomical crime rate and strict gun laws. Still, it's in the air: the media are on one of their anti-gun crusades, and they are doing that in lockstep with the current regime, which would love to diminish and ultimately do away with our Second Amendment rights.
Here are some facts from a pro-Second Amendment website, which are interesting even if a bit dated:
And from the Second Amendment Foundation's Q & A:
14. Should Guns be Banned?
We believe absolutely that guns should not be banned. We believe that in our constitution, gun ownership is protected just like freedom of speech, and the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. We believe that the Bill of Rights are interdependent, in other words that you cannot pick which ones to honor, and which ones to ignore. If this is allowed, no civil rights are safe. We also believe that the right to defend one's self is a basic human right, and that banning guns would deprive law-abiding citizens of the ability to defend themselves from armed criminals. We also believe that gun ownership keeps crime down, and that that claim is supported by scientific research. John Lott, Jr., a researcher at Yale University, found that on average, violent crime dropped by 4 percent for each 1 percent increase in gun ownership. Also, firearms are used defensively 2.5 million times every year, more than four times as many as criminal uses. This amounts to 2,575 lives saved for every one taken by a gun. ''
[...]
19. Why do people want guns?
There are as many different reasons for wanting to own a gun as there are guns to own. First, a gun can be a sporting tool. Target shooting is incorporated in many different Olympic competitions. Target shooting has always been very popular in the United States. On the sporting aspect of things, guns are also a vital part of hunting. Hunting, again, is a very popular pastime.
Guns are also a valuable tool for self-defense. A gun is an equalizer. This means that a gun allows a small or un-athletic person to defend themselves from a criminal no matter how big or strong the criminal may be. Guns are also a great crime deterrent. When a criminal thinks you might be armed, he is less likely to choose you as a victim. The right to defend oneself from criminals is a basic human right, and a gun is one of the best tools to protect yourself, as well as your family, from crime. Forty-six percent of gun owners report owning guns for protection from crime.
Finally, the founding father's believed that gun ownership was necessary for a country to truly be free. If the government distrusted the people so much as to disarm them, then that government no longer truly represented the people. In other words, in our structure of government, the power is supposed to lie in the hands of the people. How would it make sense for that government, of the people, to take away the most effective means of self defense from those people? ''
It seems, though, that our homegrown liberals will never come around to seeing the importance of the Second Amendment, and our natural right to self-defense; to the liberal, guns=bad. No argument will persuade them otherwise. Likewise with many of our cousins across the Atlantic who consider us barbaric and backward to even want our Second Amendment rights. If the rest of the world could vote on it, they would vote to disarm us and feel quite virtuous about doing it.
This, to me, is confounding: from where we sit on this side of the Atlantic, it looks as if Europe is about to be overcome by Moslem and other Third World invaders, many of whom have violent proclivities. Why would one consider being unarmed a good thing in those circumstances? Do our European cousins not even consider the possibility of the need for self-defense and basic self-preservation? As we, from our side of the ocean, see French cities burning, and violence in the U.K, along with authorities who are at best indifferent to the lives of their citizens, the situation looks alarming.
And we here in the U.S. are increasingly seeing drug-related violence crossing our ''border'' with Mexico, while our government blames us for supposedly arming them, and hopes to curtail our rights to self-defense, while the same government makes no effort to protect us from invasion. What will happen if the gun banners get their way and we no longer have the means to defend ourselves? We will be easy prey, sitting ducks, as our disarmed cousins across the Atlantic seem to be.
I think any honest, thinking American acknowledges the wisdom of our Founding Fathers; they were a sight wiser than most of today's sorry leaders. And they were absolutely adamant that American citizens ought to be armed, and have the right to self-defense.
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press."--Thomas Jefferson
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms..." - Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Member of the First U.S. Senate.
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well-armed, and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." - James Madison, 4th President of the United States, I Annuals of Congress 434
"...but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 29.
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." - James Madison, Federalist No. 46, 243-244.
"[S]elf-defense is justly called the primary law of nature� [It] cannot be taken away by the laws of society." - William Blackstone
"A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation." - Thomas Jefferson
"Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and therefore any state of society in which the sword is all the time suspended over the heads of the people must at last become intolerable." - President James Buchanan
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" - Patrick Henry, 1788
"...to disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them..." - George Mason
"Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ...the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." - Tench Coxe, 1788
"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms." - Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
"Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest." - Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." -- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." (meaning "a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand".) -- Seneca the Younger
"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes."- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted in Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave". - from "Political Disquisitions", 1774
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms..." - Samuel Adams, 1789
The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage. - Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93
[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression. " - Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders"
The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." - Henry St. George Tucker
"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." - Aristotle
Labels: Constitution, Gun Control, Right To Keep And Bear Arms, Second Amendment, Self-Defense