Self defense and by extension the defense of a community
article source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/19818I don't like gun violence anymore than Starbucks does
By John Longenecker, Monday, February 8, 2010
When it comes to gun control, the issue has been intentionally misframed by the left. Not surprising, since the left misframes gun control in every country it touches. When we see the anti-gun activist articles, speeches, press releases and interviews, they seem to consistently talk about gun violence. Every day, I scan the news items and I see the same old cliches: 'gun violence.' One of the things we'll grapple with as the November elections draw near is how the issues are framed. Will they be accurate or meaningless? Is there such a thing as a gun violence and no knife violence or rape violence or beatings or abduction violence? You'd better believe that 90 million gun owners are not only against violence, but also against so-called gun violence. For 90 million gun owners, gun violence – the idea of having to shoot – is the very last resort. We dislike the idea of robbery, rape, mayhem and murder so much that we are willing to bring lethal force to bear on the situation. We choose to have that force at hand and battery ready. We have the legal authority to do it (anyone has all legal authority to stop a crime in progress, including their own murder) and we have resolved one thing: it is better to bring lethal force to bear on an aggressor than to permit lethal force on an innocent, namely yourself. 90 million Americans have likely thought this through, and have concluded – they have resolved – that it is better to live with stopping a crime than to live with the scarring of a crime you did not try to stop, and that includes not only yourself, but loved ones. Sometimes, on behalf of the life of a stranger.
As one Chief Of Police put it once, stopping a robbery doesn't mean you believe that possessions are worth killing for, it's up to the robber to weigh whether committing a robbery is worth dying for. The perspective of self defense and by extension the defense of a community, thereby, has been warped by the anti-gun movement into a way of thinking which says that self-defense is murder, excessive, and contributes to violence. Gun owners have strived to educate their friends, neighbors and communities that robberies and mayhems aren't about killing the aggressor, but of protecting the life of the innocent. Laws are in place to determine whether what force was necessary, and this is a useful safeguard. Meanwhile, gun owners understand one thing: in time of resisting grave danger, there is no one else to do it.
If you believe in the authority of police, then you must believe in the authority of the very people who gave police their authority to summon up when in the absence of police. Hiding this is part of the warping of gun control's misframing the issues. Self-defense is not only a right, it is within one's legal authority, and it is this which the anti-gun activists seem to sort of leave out when they pressure companies to do as gun control insists. Some won't. Starbucks has taken a very brave position on their customer's wearing sidearms in their coffee houses. The Brady Campaign has obnoxiously tried to pressure Starbucks into kicking second amendment customers out of its outlets. Starbucks took the position that it will respect the state and local laws, which, for many of its outlets, are in right-to-carry states, and that means armed citizens are within the law. It's a very patriotic move which affirms the dignity and safety and sovereignty of everyone who might visit a Starbucks. In a time when corporations are playing left-sided politics, Starbucks takes up the patriotic position in support of the United States, not against it. It's getting a lot of attention with some keen observations from second amendment writers who point out the benefits of Independence safe from the foibles of public servants and non-profits who second guess the second amendment.
I'd be willing to bet that 90 million gun owners don't like "gun violence" any more than anyone else. So-called 'gun violence' is usually criminal aggression. The silly part about misframing the issue is that I bet that 330 million Americans don't like knife violence either, nor the silent violence of abduction, or the violence of rape or robbery. When that criminal aggression is discouraged by the thug's realization that he could be stopped rather quickly, then you see the second amendment at work. Subtle, but safer. Safer streets. Safer streets independent of silly public officials is the second amendment at work.
With all the talk of Corporate Citizenship, I applaud the corporate citizenship of Starbucks. Where Corporate Social Responsibility was born as a leftist concept of coercion and control around the globe, Starbucks is showing that there is such a thing as Patriotic CSR that can thrive independent of coercion. And in America, Independence is what we live for.
At this hour, there are conflicting reports coming from Starbucks search terms and stories that individual stores are refusing armed customers in right-to-carry states, but this remains to be sorted out. Corporate has issued a release that it abides by state and local laws as I mentioned, and we may be seeing individuals at some outlets who are going not only against state law, but also Corporate. The story would be worth following. If Starbucks really does support state law, they deserve praise. Gun control does not support law, it seems, and pressuring others is what gun control lives for. Still, this is huge, and if Brady hadn't opened its fat face, it might not have become an issue with the potential of becoming a highlight of the 2010 election. We might see a lot more of it before November, 2010.
Safer Streets 2010: Part I
article source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/24992
McDonald, gun ownership, and the non-violent restoration of safer streets
By John Longenecker Sunday, July 4, 2010
Since McDonald v. Chicago, wherein the Supreme Court incorporated the second amendment for all fifty states, you might expect to see some affirmation also within the electorate of the United States. Even though private gun ownership has swelled recently from around 80 million to more like 90 million, I would expect to see an even greater increase in acquiring firearms. This would be an expression of confidence in self and less in government. Gun control in America has failed like liberalism in general has failed. The affinity for the criminal from the so-called 'conscience of the people' has proven to be a boondoggle for a transfer of wealth and a further centralization of power. This is how gun control affects us all. It undermines a safeguard of the country purely to increase centralization. One reason gun control has failed tragically is because the claim of easy access to guns is untrue: emotionally, it is provocative, but it is untrue. Instead, crime is due to the liberal agenda of permissiveness of violence in being soft on crime for this eventual purpose such that what is easy is the thug's easy access to society time and again.But what if we see more guns in society? Don't more guns bring more violence? Says who: Liberals? Leftists who like crisis? Liberals who were soft on crime and promoted recidivism and repeat offenders? Says who? More armed citizens means more of a deterrence effect. If you increase the odds that a thug will encounter someone willing to bring lethal force to resist them, you can look forward to a reduction in violent crime. This deterrence effect will arise from a realization of what gun control was trying to do all along: break the spirit of resistance, for one thing. And once the thugs get the message of more who refuse to be a victim, violence will fade.
Crime meeting a resurgence of the spirit of refusing to be a victim: With crime meeting a resurgence of the spirit of refusing to be a victim, you can expect something you never anticipated: a reduction in the centralization of government, the kind that depends on crisis. After the thugs get the message, officials will get it. Make sure they get it this November, just to be sure. Vote. Without violence as a foundation for so many programs, centralization can fade as nonsense, exposed for the fraud that it is. Tenth Amendment movements can gain even more widespread support, and realize benefits denied them as whole states resisting more and more centralization. No wonder thirty-seven want to get out from bigger government as much as individuals do. Who would have thought that some states actually oppose big government? Maybe they don't have the Potomac Fever.
McDonald is going to have sweeping results, much of which will be spiritual in nature. A lot of assertion and exercise of our freedoms and independence have been warmed up in the last twenty-four months, and brought to bear on our own servants in a sort of political self-defense. Some of those spiritual effects will be the epiphanies that Independence impeaches the very arguments the servants make for centralization.
Let Independence shine, and anyone who even suggests more bureaucracy looks silly.
The second amendment plays a vital role in this restoration of our sovereignty and our move to safer streets once again. One of the best is that it will be such a deterrent to violent crime that Americans will begin to see how predatory our servants have been in selling us a bill of goods in nearly every single thing they urge. In centralization, servants have hidden the ball of Independence which establishes beyond dispute how little they are really needed after all.
Independence. Greater and greater Independence of our very own public servants.
Be sure to register for my Liberty News / Safer Streets Newsletter and Commentary
Safer Streets 2010: Part II
article source: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/25069
McDonald, gun ownership, and the non-violent restoration of safer streets
By John Longenecker Tuesday, July 6, 2010
In Part I, I wrote about the spiritual reawakening of Independence and the epiphany that Independence itself serves to discredit government programs which operate as a poor substitute for the armed citizen. I used the word 'impeaches' for those boondoggle programs.
In Part II and Part III, let us look at how this is done non-violently to further impeach the anti-gun hysteria and the smear which the left is offering as its best evidence against the armed citizen. As if there were any best evidence against personal Independence.
I often speak of the ubiquitous armed citizen, the idea that armed adults are in such sufficient numbers that thugs begin to notice the increase in the odds that their target will be armed with lethal force. This ubiquitous armed citizen becomes a ubiquitous deterrent of crime for both business and pleasure.
The epiphany even for non-gun owners is in how they soon discover when living in freedom once again that they, too, have been had right along with gun owners. Their money and freedoms had been lifted by the ton along with gun rights. In order to loot us all, the gun owners had to be vexed first, Americans divided. It is clear now that everyone else was next. Who would have thought that this McDonald would actually unite Americans?
The epiphany and spiritual awakening comes in the moment one discovers that guns were not taken from thugs, but that Independence itself was what was being hidden.
Independence speaks for itself you might say, and shows how unneeded so many anti-violence-based programs are. Once someone tolerates your taking their means of self-defense, it's easy to take the rest. The deeper objective of gun control was to hide the ball of independence which, if it were truly respected, would have been present to embarrass automatically any official suggesting the stupid things they suggest. No such embarrassment attaches to official nonsense since that hour the optimal safeguard of sovereign independence from public servants was concealed from the sovereign. Once independence is forgotten, silly programs can be made to look necessary.
Independence speaks for itself you might say, and shows how unneeded so many anti-violence-based programs are. Once someone tolerates your taking their means of self-defense, it's easy to take the rest. The deeper objective of gun control was to hide the ball of independence which, if it were truly respected, would have been present to embarrass automatically any official suggesting the stupid things they suggest. No such embarrassment attaches to official nonsense since that hour the optimal safeguard of sovereign independence from public servants was concealed from the sovereign. Once independence is forgotten, silly programs can be made to look necessary.
But when Independence shines, then it becomes so clear how people in freedom don't need servants making their choices for them, even under penalty of fines and criminal charges. Under Independence, the wild leftist solutions to problems cannot be forced. They are not tolerated. Too many better safeguards in place. Freedom.
Leftism is not made to look just, it is made to look stupid when there exists something so effective and righteous that nothing can take its place: the armed citizen as the optimal deterrent to violence. Thus, independence from our servants had to be hidden, discouraged, punished as hostile and hateful.
It almost worked. Almost.
But what about more guns and violence if more Americans begin to exercise their freedom from their abusive public servants and begin by buying a handgun? The better question is this: what happens to society if more Americans depend on themselves instead of upon absentee policies which first disarm them, then are never around when citizen meets thug?
This is the formula which has changed your grandfather's liberalism of 'conscience of the people' into a crazy quilt of ruining safeguards and then substituting centralization for you, yourself. It is no longer a nanny state promising to take better care of you than you can of yourself: it is now a competition for supremacy, and centralization competes with you for that supremacy.
Here is the part the left hid from view, the real crime: Independent action on the authority within every citizen trumps the authority of the state in even contemplating taking your place, especially when that delegated authority is absentee. Especially when that authority originates within the citizen and is merely delegated to officials, temporarily at best. It can be revoked. It was revoked in McDonald. Actually, in being remanded to the lower court under incorporation, the gun ban was impeached.
The second amendment itself impeaches the need for gun bans and other claims to public safety.
That authority to stop a violent act never left the citizen, it was only frustrated. Ignored. Hidden. Punished. The depredation – the real crime – occurs when the state promises to take your place and then does not. It is part of the formula that in order for the state to succeed, its programs must always fail. Epiphany.
McDonald restores the path back to Independence from our public servants by its incorporating 2A, saying the states can no longer punish carrying a gun as if shall not be infringed applies only to the feds. The Supreme Court has a habit of handling one single issue, and leaving the rest to the people to summon it and to utilize it. Now it's been handed to you; what're we going to do with it?
The first order of business is to understand that the second amendment will not bring more violence, but will non-violently protect whole communities from violence such that violence cannot be an excuse to order costly programs with centralization as the real goal. Along with the banishment of gun bans, we hope to see the banishment of tons of anti-violence programs as boondoggles, and soon, the better, wiser re-assignment of our tax monies. Maybe smaller taxes instead.
It seems almost as if there is nothing left to do, but there is. Non-gun owners don't need to buy a gun, but they do need to connect the dots and see how the ubiquitous armed citizen fights crime the moment it strikes, and with all legal authority to act. America needs to see how gun control hid this honest authority of ours and for the sinister purposes of undermining the United States by the assumption of powers never granted them by us.
The beauty of McDonald is that crime and violence can no longer be used as an excuse to increase taxes, punish people, indoctrinate or intimidate Americans into surrendering the rest of their sovereign authority and our very spirit of refusing to be a victim.
It is amazing that our Independence shows how the armed citizen in very large numbers is a deterrent to violent crime in every large numbers, all done non-violently. Instead of gun control's discouraging our Independence, our independence discourages crime. And silly, costly programs which feed on violence.
The mission of safer streets as a reflection of our self-rule in Independence demands only one sacrifice: our involvement in instructing our public servants and our hounding supervision of them from now on.
See Part III.
For more, please opt-in to my Liberty News / Safer Streets Newsletter and Commentary.
Safer Streets 2010: Part III
McDonald, gun ownership, and the non-violent restoration of safer streets
By John Longenecker Saturday, July 10, 2010
Safer streets is a confirmation of a healthy self-rule. When we have a healthy self-determinative relationship with our public servants, safer streets will follow. The less violence goal of safer streets will not come as long as officials presume to be smarter than the electorate and quarrel with the people.
McDonald v. Chicago is a case of reversing a gun ban – and reversing one such quarrel with the people – reversed on the grounds that the second amendment applies to the states and cities as much as it applies to the federal government. But if more guns come into the hands of citizens, will there be more violence?
In Part III here, we'll see that the answer is No.
Why not? Because there are already 'more guns', something on the order of 300 million in the hands of some 90 million people. Why are the crime stats concentrated in the gun ban zones and not everywhere there is high gun ownership? Something else is at work. Taking the people's ability to resist is at work in the high crime zones.
Violence is not a matter of easy access to guns, it is a product of thugs' easy access to society. Gun control and early release, for instance, collude in the same purpose: more chaos in order to cultivate more and more spending.
One of the things that I choose first to educate the electorate about is that the authority police have derives from the authority we have since the nation's inception. We had the legal authority to stop a crime 90 years before there were police departments and 130 years before there was a National Guard. We give it to servants until we revoke it. Some places in California, whole police departments have been replaced.
Consequently, we do not arm our police for protection of the citizenry, but for their self-protection in their service to the people. Any person – policeman or not – has the right of self-defense, and we recognize that also for our officers. We do not arm officers to catch the bad guys – they use the authority we gave them to do that; we arm them for their protection when they take risks in using their authority in their enforcement of the law.
We reserve that same right and we retain that authority for ourselves when investigating a bump in the night or resisting a criminal encounter away from home. The authority we give police never diminished the authority we retain for ourselves to do the very same thing in the absence of police. Gun control hides knowledge of this authority from you: gun bans hide your authority, too. Gun owners and forty-eight states affirm it for you.
How are safer streets restored non-violently by more citizens armed with lethal force? Violence is stopped the moment it strikes by the only person who can really stop it, the one present. It means realizing that there is no one else. No one else who is armed with superior force and no one else in authority. Experts acknowledge that in the vast number of cases, the citizen is on their own. They state three reasons why. 1. Police cannot be everywhere. 2. Police have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others, and; 3. Realistically speaking, you are on your own. That is an observation that is passive. For an observation that is active, try this on for size: in the final analysis, the target is their own best first line of defense.
The armed citizen means safer streets non-violently, because the armed citizen is not hostile or anti-social as thugs are; the armed citizen is not aggressive, but defensive; the armed citizen brings superior force to bear which he elects to use if necessary, or not use the moment the threat is de-escalated. The armed citizen observes and adheres to the law and has a love of community thugs do not have.
Be sure to register for my Liberty News / Safer Streets Newsletter and Commentary
John Longenecker - Bio - Most recent columns - John Longenecker is a liberty writer at Good for the Country. - John is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns – Meeting Dependency And Violent Crime With American Spirit, Independence, And Citizen Authority [CONTRAST MEDIA PRESS]. Register for his Safer Streets Newsletter here. John can be reached at John@GoodForTheCountry.com
related, Canada Free Press: http://www.canadafreepress.com
related, Canada Free Press: http://www.canadafreepress.com
American Politics, Freedoms, Media, Immigration, Border Security, Property Rights, U.S. Constitution
American Politics: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/American-Politics
Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Gaia, Pagans
Christianity and Religion: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/Christianity-Religion
Terrorism & War: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/War-Terrorism
Legislation Pending in Congress
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment