There isn't "two sides to the gun issue" any more than there are two sides to free speech or two sides to being free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Leftists just don't get it. There is no common ground to be had on the discussion. They don't believe in natural rights, as evidenced in this article, and we do.

So right you are....It makes you wonder how a "leftist" could even function in today's society being one-sided, ignorant of the facts, and down right putrid human beings.....

Why We Are Losing the Fight for the Second Amendment and What We Can Do About It

The author continues on to make several more points and recommendations on how the fight for the 2A can be turned around. Interesting read.

You want your voice heard? Stop voting for liberal idiots and union thugs for school board and maybe in twenty years we'll start having a crop of intelligent young adults again who will vote these liberal idiots out of the legislature.

Your city counsel, school board member, county commissioners, and sheriff have the most direct impact on your liberty. And this trickles up.

No truer words could be spoken.

It is EXACTLY the reason that the left is so fucking good at circumventing and undermining the constitution and the freedoms it acknowledges.
...specific use of that word because the Bill of right does NOT give anyone "rights"
The document ACKNOWLEDGES the rights that we are all imbued with as existential freedoms.
The government didn't give us these rights.
Our founding fathers simply chose to put in writing the acknowledgment that there exists a set of rights that shall not be infringed...

However, the modern politician respects no one and serves no one. They rely on the ignorance and sloth of the masses and pretend that when something happens it is simply a matter of luck -good or bad - unless it is their opponent, in which case it is a matter of malevolence.
"Luck" is bullshit - there is no such thing. Put an idiot across the chess board from a determined chess master and the idiot will lose every time.
...unless the master ignores what is happening and becomes complacent

THAT is NOT luck - it is a failure on the part of the master. The idiot did NOT "get lucky"
...the left is neither stupid nor lucky nor incompetent but it is always to their benefit to appear as such. Stupid and incompetent people pose no threat and they are easily ignored.
When such a charade is successful, the malevolent that feign ignorance will strike with ruthless intent.

Such is the downfall of the chess master. The master views his opponent as an idiot when in fact the opponent is a highly skilled strategic thinker. The master is lulled into complacency by hubris and arrogance - and suddenly: defeat materializes "out of nowhere"

They use recreational outrage to distract their opponent and they feign ignorance of the law when they are called out for their behavior.
...but make no mistakes: these people are lawyers - lawyers trained and polished in Ivy League Law Schools
Lawyers in federation with OTHER lawyers
A consortium of lawyers that will remind you that they studied constitutional law in college...
...lawyers that pretend they don't know what the Bill of Rights communicates to the people


And just like was mentioned... their end game is not to "lead" the end game is to "rule"
Nothing more, nothing less


This behavior has not materialized "out of nowhere" - the left side of the spectrum in this country has been doing this for 200 years

Box,

As always, you are hitting the proverbial nail on the head with a 16 pound sledge hammer.....

Agreed. Votes - and voting as a process - counts most here. It's the ground you'll have to defend. Make sure that the values that matter to you are the ones surrounding you.

Don't make your litmus test of freedom be "well, things are OK because they haven't taken my guns yet." Meanwhile they are surveilling the hell out of you & teaching your grandkids about ABCDEFG-identity-awareness, and the block-minder in your neighborhood reports on caustic comments your spouse made on a social media platform (which also means you need to have a talk). If you have your pitchfork but no liberty anyway and aren't allowed to take your pitchfork in front of city hall & shake it angrily within 1000 feet, you've already got a problem.

We need to stop being a little too civil with public servants who aren't serving the public. So find out who in your immediate area is pushing what agenda or supporting whatever curriculum, or voting to accept 'XYZ' federal grant because "hey, free stuff" forgetting about the $tring$ that are always attached. Let there be no ambiguity in your voice when you talk to these people.

From CIA.gov library
 

Found an interesting PDF from CIA.gov. It is an article published by The Minutemen on November 1, 1963 approved for release, (CIA), 2004/10/13.

The notes of the meeting reported, how to disarm US citizens, law enforcement and finally the military and notes that a UN treaty supersedes the US Constitution. The link follows;

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00540023-8.pdf

I have not researched the validity or the history of the article.

V/R

Bob

Follow up, Minutemen publication
 

From the article,

Public Law 87-297

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUT...E-75-Pg631.pdf

General Plan Publication 7277

http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/arms/freedom_war.html

US Arms Control & Disarmament Agency

http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/acda/

V/R

Bob

The late ‘50’s and early 1960’s were indeed interesting times.

The agency of which you speak was merged into State and reportedly focuses on foreign arms reduction and nonproliferation strategies.

Missed this opinion piece from a few months back. Most readers are well aware of the failure that is Venezuela - but there are various subplots unfolding in that nation which are specifically relevant to this thread.

Venezuela - a communist/socialist government stripping its citizens of firearms, cementing government dominance over the citizenry - and then BIGGOV using firearms to kill and control political opposition.

Excerpt below and complete article at link.

“Providing the Maduro regime with a façade of deniability, the colectivos perpetrate the killings for which the Maduro regime wants to avoid public recrimination. Heavily armed, colectivos have even utilized machine guns against protesters.

How could such sophisticated weaponry fall into the hands of private citizens, given the nation’s stringent firearms prohibition? In 2017, the dictatorship announced that it was providing weapons to approximately 400,000 “militiamen.”

In other words, the Maduro regime stripped Venezuelans of their right to self-defense and then transferred the confiscated firearms to its loyal thugs.

When the public is disarmed, ordinary criminals have greater impunity to rob and murder the innocent. So do criminal governments.”

<snip>

In the wake of a gun ban, Venezuela sees rising homicide rate

BY DAVID KOPEL AND VINCENT HARINAM, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 04/19/18 02:00 PM EDT
The Hill

Since April 2017, at least 163 pro-democracy protesters in Venezuela have been murdered by the Maduro dictatorship. Venezuela serves as an example of how gun prohibition can sometimes encourage gun crime.

In 2012, the communist-dominated Venezuelan National Assembly enacted the "Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law." The bill’s stated objective was to “disarm all citizens.” The new law prohibited all gun sales, except to government entities. The penalty for illegally selling or carrying a firearm is a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Despite criticism from the democratic opposition, the bill went into effect in 2013.

Ostensibly, the motive for gun prohibition was Venezuela’s out of control violent crime. In 2015, Venezuela’s homicide rate was the world’s highest, with 27,875 Venezuelans murdered that year. More broadly, the Bolivarian Republic is the only South American nation with a homicide rate that has steadily risen since 1995. In the year prior to Maduro’s disarmament initiative, the Venezuelan capital of Caracas had a homicide rate of 122 per 100,000 inhabitants, nearly 20 times the global average of 6.2.

By comparison, the U.S. homicide rate in 2015 was 4.9; the U.S. gun homicide rate was 3.03 (based on calculation from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports).

In 2011, 40 percent of homicides in Caracas stemmed from robberies. The 2009 National Survey of Victimization and Perception of Public Safety found that 70 percent of all major crime incidents in Caracas were armed robberies, 40 percent of which involved cellphones that were resold on the Venezuelan black market.

Communist economics, particularly the government’s seizure of private property without compensation, have been disastrous for Venezuela. As a result, 87 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty; 64.3 percent lost an average of 11 kilograms of weight in 2017. Given the statistical associationbetween poverty and crime, Venezuela’s rampant violent crime and economic problems are linked.

The nicest explanation of Venezuelan gun confiscation is that, for a government that would never loosen its deadly stranglehold on the economy, its best alternative was to actively engage in reducing crime. Given that all legal firearms in Venezuela were already registered, complete disarmament should have been an easy task.

There are an estimated six million firearms (registered and unregistered) in Venezuela. However, voluntary surrenders were close to nil. For example, in 2013, only 37 firearms surrendered, while 12,603 were confiscated. More importantly, the national homicide rate rose from 73 per 100,000 in 2012 to 90 per 100,000 in 2015. The real figures are likely higher as the Maduro regime is well known for purposely undercountingcrime.

One effect of gun prohibition has been the increase of lethal violence against law enforcement. Venezuelan law enforcement are targeted specifically for their firearms with 252 officers being killed in 2015.

Nevertheless, the Maduro government has intensified efforts to disarm Venezuelans, investing $47 million in 2014 to establish 60 centers for voluntary firearm trade-ins and publicly destroying 1,939 confiscated firearms in 2016 as a show of political might.

As has been typical of tyrannies since the dawn of time, arms prohibition has aided in the suppression of dissent. Indeed, the Venezuelan Violent Observatory has reported a notable increase in state violence; lethal extrajudicial force is frequently used against criminals and against political dissidents.

In 2014 and 2017, many Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the Maduro regime’s looting of their economy and destruction of their democracy. In response, the dictatorship employed asymmetric warfare. Heavily-armed state officials and pro-government groups used lethal force against protesters who could defend themselves only with improvised arms such as rocks, fireworks, and giant slingshots that launched jars of paint and human excrement.

As Human Rights Watch reported, the Venezuelan government used live ammunition against protesters, but also fired rubber bullets and teargas canisters at point-blank range with the intent to kill. More than 30 protesters have lost their lives to these methods.

Pivotal to the suppression of protesters (and thus to the perpetuation of the Maduro dictatorship) are colectivos (or “collectives”): pro-government citizen gangs that carry out the regime’s rule by violence. Conceived by Hugo Chavez and trained by state security officials (who are in turn trained by the Cuban secret police), the colectivos paramilitaries are government proxies. They prevent the publication of unfavorable news, decide union disputes, and stifle political protests. Similar gangs are operated by Nicaragua’s Cuban-trained communist dictatorship, for similar purposes.

Moreover, the colectivos have impunity to injure and murder protesters. Providing the Maduro regime with a façade of deniability, the colectivos perpetrate the killings for which the Maduro regime wants to avoid public recrimination. Heavily armed, colectivos have even utilized machine guns against protesters.

How could such sophisticated weaponry fall into the hands of private citizens, given the nation’s stringent firearms prohibition? In 2017, the dictatorship announced that it was providing weapons to approximately 400,000 “militiamen.”

In other words, the Maduro regime stripped Venezuelans of their right to self-defense and then transferred the confiscated firearms to its loyal thugs.

When the public is disarmed, ordinary criminals have greater impunity to rob and murder the innocent. So do criminal governments.

http://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/...-homicide-rate

Thanks - article is totally relevant.

For those that would deign to engage the commies in this country in actual discussion or debate about this subject (I won't):

It has been postulated & fictionalized before that it could happen in a disarmed USA, where the feral bands - rather than the official gov't - are the ones that bend the populace to their will through terror. Venezuela serves as a post-20th century reminder of where motives of despots go when exercising their "wisdom" of knowing what's best for the peasants.

Oddly, progressives seem to admire places like Venezuela - free health care and cheap government gas...

...all the bad stuff is just an inconvenience caused by conservatives and their right wing ideology

LOL...I'll chip in for a One-Way Ticket, it can become the "New Venezuelan State of California"....We can send them on Progressive Airlines...:p

The Failed State of Venezuela.....let's ration our food for the masses...starve out the population....These extreme Socialist States will always fail because their ideology is not about "free for all"; it's always about Control.....Absolute power in the hands of a few ....:munchin

Forewarned can be forearmed
 

Britain’s Failed Weapons-Control Laws Show Why the Second Amendment Matters
By DAVID B. KOPEL
& VINCENT HARINAM
August 28, 2018 6:30 AM
National Review

Edited excerpt below - complete article at link.

”The English government prioritizes the safety of criminals over the safety of their victims. As England shows, the slippery slope of gun control doesn’t end with the confiscation of handguns, but with destruction of the right to self-defense itself.”

Despite very severe anti-knife laws, Great Britain has been suffering from a surge in knife crime. Some Britons propose making the laws even harsher. Others are offering more constructive solutions to get to the root causes of the problem.

Britain’s experience demonstrates the importance of the Second Amendment. Under the logic of the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia v. Heller decision, knives are certainly among the “arms” protected by the Second Amendment. Courts in Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Washington are among those that have recognized as much, with courts in the first two states finding that particular knife controls went too far and were unconstitutional.

Although England’s 1689 Bill of Rights recognized the right to possess defensive arms, that right is now a dead letter, as are many of the others enumerated in that document. So today, Great Britain has trapped itself in a vicious cycle of rising crime and intensifying repression.

By the government’s count, knife crime in Britain rose 36 percent between 2013 and 2017. Some of the statistical increase can be attributed to changes in the recording practices of police departments, which have long underreported all sorts of crime. But the Home Office, whose functions include collecting crime statistics, acknowledges that knife crime is up sharply.

National Health Service hospitals reported a 13 percent increase in admissions of victims of knife-related assaults between 2015 and 2016. The next year, between 2016 and 2017, there was a further 7 percent increase. London mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted, “No excuses: there is never a reason to carry a knife. Anyone who does will be caught, and they will feel the full force of the law.”

The problem certainly isn’t a lack of laws against carrying knives. As Joyce Malcolm details in her book Guns and Violence: The English Experience, since the 1950s, the British have banned carrying anything with the intent to use it for self-defense. This even includes a hatpin, if a woman were to use it against an attempted rapist. In the Orwellian language of British law, the willingness to use something for self-defense makes it an “offensive weapon.”

According to a British police website, it is illegal to carry any “product which is made or adapted to cause a person injury.” Britons are allowed, for example, to carry colored dye spray to mark an attacker, but if they spray the dye in the attacker’s eyes, it “would become an offensive weapon because it would be used in a way that was intended to cause injury.”

An American tourist was even convicted of carrying an “offensive weapon” after she used a pen knife to stab some men who were attacking her. Then, in the 1996 Offensive Weapons Act, carrying a knife was made presumptively illegal, even without the “offensive” intent to use the knife defensively. A person accused of the crime must “prove that he had a good reason or lawful authority for having” it to avoid punishment.

And even then, in practice, having a good reason is no protection. The first victim of the anti-knife law was Dean Payne, a man whose job at a distribution plant was to cut the straps on newspaper bundles. During what a local newspaper called “a routine search of his car,” the police found a lock knife, a small printer’s knife, and a Stanley knife. The magistrate readily accepted Payne’s testimony that he had no intention of using the knife for “offensive” purposes, but nevertheless sent him to jail for two weeks.

The persecution of crime victims and laborers seems to have emboldened rather than deterred violent criminals. So in 2016, the government banned the sale of so-called zombie knives, horror-film-inspired blades that are marketed as collectors’ items. Furthermore, online knife purchases cannot legally be delivered to residential addresses, and all sales to persons under 18 are prohibited.

Earlier this year, Poundland, a British chain of discount stores, terminated the sale of kitchen knives at its 850 locations in the U.K. and Ireland. The company expressed hope that “other retailers will join us.” Dr. John Crichton, chairman of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has urged lawmakers to prohibit the sale of pointed kitchen knives. Luton Crown Court judge Nic Madge has proposed a national program to file down the points of kitchen knives.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Great Britain had very low homicide rates, and knife controls were close to nil. So what’s driving the present surge in knife attacks? According to the British Home Office, gang and drug activity are significant, interrelated contributors. Between 2014 and 2017, the proportion of homicides involving drugs increased from 50 percent to 57 percent. Conversely, non-drug-related homicides decreased.

Burgeoning crack-cocaine markets have mainstreamed the use of knives (and guns) among British youth. As in the U.S., illegal crack markets incentivize weapons possession and violence. For example, British gangs routinely engage in “taxing” — a new term for old-fashioned violence in territorial battles between gangs. Reporting on a particular method of drug distribution favored by British gangs, U.K. police forces recorded increased knife and firearm possession.

Meanwhile, weapons possession by gangsters has prompted non-gang-affiliated youth to arm themselves for protection.

In short, the U.K. has a drug and gang problem masquerading as a knife problem. Knife control is, by itself, a shallow solution. The futile effort to restrict the supply of knives and anything else that could possibly be used as a weapon ignores the root causes of criminal activity: As is the case everywhere else, crime in the U.K. is strongly associated with broken homes and poverty.

Making things worse, the number of police officers was reduced from 143,734 in 2010 to 123,142 in 2017. Leaked Home Office documents acknowledge that the police cuts “likely contributed” to rising violence, notwithstanding public denials from the Conservative government. Meanwhile, between 2010 and 2016, youth services were cut by £387 million, and 603 youth clubs were closed. Idle youth, broken families, and police cutbacks are a deadly combination.

Fortunately, the Home Office’s recent Serious Violence Strategy offers some sensible ideas, including early intervention and prevention with youth and community partnerships. Somewhat belatedly, there is now also a greater emphasis on hot-spots policing, which allocates scarce policing resources to the areas most affected by violent crime.

But there is more to be done. The U.K. might consider Cure Violence’s violence-interruption program, in which ex-convicts are trained to work in the community to prevent homicides. In the U.S. the program lowered shootings in seven Chicago neighborhoods (reductions of 41 percent to 73 percent), four in Baltimore(reductions of 34 percent to 56 percent), and two in New York (reductions of 37 percent and 50 percent). Perhaps this might help in Britain too.

Arms rights in England were never as robust as in the United States. The U.S. Second Amendment, ratified in 1791, declares that the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” The more limited 1689 English Bill of Rights allowed “subjects” to “have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” Today, there are no conditions under which English subjects may possess a suitable defensive arm in public. The English government prioritizes the safety of criminals over the safety of their victims. As England shows, the slippery slope of gun control doesn’t end with the confiscation of handguns, but with destruction of the right to self-defense itself.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/...efense-rights/

— David B. Kopel is an associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Vincent Harinam is a law-enforcement consultant and incoming Ph.D candidate at the University of Cambridge.