Protecting the Second Amendment – Why all Americans Should Be Concerned

[tonyz]

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

Students at Florida high school stage walkout in support of Second Amendment
Fox News

A group of students at a Central Florida high school walked out of class Friday as part of a protest in support of the Second Amendment.

Some of the students who participated in the walkout at Rockledge High School told WFTV that when the movement to honor the victims and survivors of the shooting in Parkland became political, they felt silenced.

A group of students at a Central Florida high school walked out of class Friday as part of a protest in support of the Second Amendment.

Some of the students who participated in the walkout at Rockledge High School told WFTV that when the movement to honor the victims and survivors of the shooting in Parkland became political, they felt silenced.

“I’m pro-Second Amendment,” Rockledge junior and protest organizer Anna Delaney told the station. "I wouldn’t mind deeper background checks, of course, but the Second Amendment will not be infringed upon.”

Many Rockledge students walked out of class March 14 as part of the National School Walkout that was held in support of the Parkland school shooting victims and to protest gun violence and call for new gun control measures. They stood on the football field and formed a huge heart.

About 75 students participated in Friday’s walkout at Rockledge, Florida Today reported. The protest lasted 20 minutes.

They walked onto the schools track carrying the American flag and signs that said “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and “I support the right to bear arms,” the paper reported. Some wore Trump “Make America Great Again” hats and camouflage clothing.

“We were built on certain rights and that was one of the original rights, that we should have the right to bear arms,” sophomore Chloe Deaton told the group. She helped Delaney organize the walkout.

Zachary Schneider, a junior, was quoted by the paper as saying, “It’s all over the news right now that all students hate guns. I wanted to show that not all students feel that way.”

Rockledge principal Vickie Hickey said the school treated the Second Amendment walkout exactly like it treated the walkout that took place two weeks ago, the paper reported.

She said both events were completely student-driven

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/03/31...amendment.html

[bblhead672]

To my former countrymen,
Paul Waldman in "The Week" recently wrote an article titled "America's made-up culture of guns." http://theweek.com/articles/763866/a...p-culture-guns. He uses many words attempting to explain how we must better understand your positions and make concessions to you. He talks about these things to make himself and you feel better about your positions, and ends up denigrating us deplorable people anyway, because that is the default position of progressive socialists. He wants us to be more "accepting" of your culture and understand how you don't want guns in your society.
Mr. Waldman asserts household gun ownership has fallen from 50% to 32%, mostly due to more people living in big cities and not rural areas. Yet, he fails to note than millions of citizens living in those big cities are unable to own firearms due to the anti-2A policies of the left, while armed criminals terrorize and kill unarmed law abiding citizens without fear of encountering an armed victim.

It’s not just your anti-gun culture that is in opposition to the culture of those of us who exercise our 2nd amendment rights. Your culture of depravity in media, lifestyles choices, pseudo science, nanny state, killing unborn children, open borders with unchecked illegal immigrants, forced acceptance of behaviors that not too long ago were considered mental illnesses, assault upon our freedom of religion and speech and general willingness to demonstrate that you despise us for being unlike you that is in opposition to values we hold.
Every inch we’ve ever yielded to you in the culture war has only emboldened you to push for a mile.
Well, we’re just not going to take it much more. Your side has pushed and derided and declared war upon us. Now that you can see there may be unintended consequences to your actions you want to extend an olive branch?
Sorry, experience shows us that you don’t mean it and next week you’ll be slapping us with your gloves in challenge to something else about us you don’t agree with.
We have shown a willingness to allow you your depravity in some states while desperately trying to keep some states for ourselves. Yet, you are unwilling to let us be as we have been to allow you to live as you see fit. We see that you will never be satisfied until you have crushed those who think and act and live their lives differently than you.
There exists no longer a “united” states of America, you progressive socialists have destroyed it. So, I leave you with this,
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

[sinjefe]

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.

[rsdengler]

Originally Posted by sinjefe

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.....

[bblhead672]

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

We are losing the fight for the Second Amendment. We are losing it in the courts. We are losing it in the legislatures. We are losing it in the media, in the schools and with young people. The approach we have been using to protect the Second Amendment for many years has failed, is failing and will continue to fail. That approach has basically focused on lobbying, elections, voting and using the litigation process without any serious attempt to change the philosophical or ideological bent of the country or to change the ideological trajectory of the country to the left which in the last five years has been accelerating, and without any attempt to change the basic progressive mindset which has dominated American politics for many decades. The tactics we have used are archaic, dated, spent, don’t work and there has been no attempt to use bold new innovative tactics and unless that changes, we are going to lose this fight.

First, we need to recognize that gun control is a progressive idea. If we don’t understand what progressivism is, then how can we understand the basis for gun control proposals and refute and defeat them? It’s like trying to cure a disease when you don’t know the cause. Progressivism has been the dominant political mindset for many decades, so failing to understand exactly what it is renders us helpless to respond to progressive policy proposals on any number of issues. In a nutshell, progressivism is the notion that there is a governmental solution to every human problem that can be executed without cost or harmful consequences.

Second, a huge problem, the anti-private gun left controls virtually all idea-disseminating institutions in society. They include: K-12 schools, the media, college, Hollywood and the large social media companies. The non-left has some talk radio, some podcasts and the School of Hard Knocks. With this monopoly, anti-Second Amendment propaganda sweeps though society very quickly. Because the schools are propaganda mills, we have lost young people. If we don’t get them back, we are toast.

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

[MR2]

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.

[Box]

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant

There’s no doubt in my mind that the left-wing/progressives/socialists “leaders” know exactly what the second amendment says and what it means.

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

[bubba]

Box,

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

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by MR2

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.

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.

[RCummings]

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

[RCummings]

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

[tonyz]

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.

[tonyz]

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

[Badger52]

Originally Posted by tonyz

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

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.

[Box]

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