End the War on Freedom

From Quotes of the Day:

"Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box." -- Italian Proverb

and:

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

From Gun Tests Magazine:

The National Association of Shooting Ranges, WhereToShoot.org, Web site has a fresh new look. It's the first place to look online for a shooting range near you and features complete descriptions of range offerings with information on handicap accessibility.

I found the gun club I use by looking in the white pages of the phone book for the name of each city listed on the cover. Most gun clubs are called "Cityname Rod and Gun Club" or "Cityname Sportsmen's Club" or similar.

My latest abortion screed:

I've never understood the pro-life agenda. As far as I'm concerned, until the baby is born and breathing on its own, it's a parasite, living off of the mother. Most mothers are happy, nay overjoyed, with this arrangement, but if one isn't, her contracting for medical assistance to abort the fetus, with her own money, is as much my business as it would be if she got medical assistance to get rid of a tapeworm.

If you want to attempt to convince her to bring the baby to term and you contract to take care of it, go for it, but I can't agree with attempts to convict no-longer-pregnant women and abortion doctors of murder. In my opinion, a fetus is not yet human. And that distinction is to my mind the kernel of the entire abortion argument. It is a religious issue with no rational resolution.

in response to an angry, fire and brimstone, reply:

Figured I'd get a rise with that one. Of course, most parents don't consider their unborn babies to be parasites, they consider them to be blessings, but if you look at the definition of parasite, IMHO an unborn baby qualifies.

I have two children. Their conceptions were both intentional. I am committed to their well-being. If their conceptions had not been intentional, why should I have had to pay for 10 minutes of fun with twenty years of responsibility? It just doesn't make sense to me.

But, as I said, that's because I don't consider an unborn baby to be human yet. I'm not sure when the boundary is crossed, but birth makes a lot more sense than conception to me. Or maybe humanity begins before conception and a woman is guilty of murder any time she becomes fertile and doesn't conceive? I'm being intentionally ridiculous, of course, but just to make the point that I don't find anything magical about conception.

"Thou art God." - Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

James Landrith - Taking the Gloves Off is an interesting looking libertarian weblog. Found in my referer logs. Added to my links page.

Vin Suprynowicz at Loompanics - The War Against Compassion: How the federal Drug Warriors are Starting to Piss People Off - This is old, but still worth reading. What kind of monster arrests the sick and dying and destroys their medicine? A d.e.a. agent, that's who.

What federal officials are trying to do, of course, is put back into its bottle the genie of California's Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for medical use on a doctor's recommendation.

We were all taught in high school civics class that "If you don't like the law, the solution is to organize and get the majority of your neighbors to vote to change it."

Californians have done that. In 1992, 77 percent of Santa Cruz voters approved a measure ending the medical prohibition of marijuana. Four years later, Golden State voters -- including 74 percent of those in Santa Cruz -- approved Proposition 215, allowing marijuana for medicinal purposes. By 2000, the City Council had approved an ordinance allowing medical marijuana to be grown and used without a prescription.

Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state have since followed suit.

It would be tempting to say federal drug warriors have taken leave of their senses, walking into a public-relations nightmare by singling out marijuana being grown specifically for the terminally ill under the supervision and with the approval of local authorities.

But that would imply the drug warriors ever had a firm grip on reality -- or a concern for the lives or opinion of decent folk -- in the first place.

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Does the Constitution grant to the federal government any power to restrict the commerce in any drug or medicine? Of course not. That's why -- when the federal government last legitimately (albeit disastrously) attempted a drug prohibition, from 1919 to 1933 -- they had to win ratification of a constitutional amendment (since repealed), banning the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

The High Road - (UD) With out prejudice "Your Signature" - interesting discussion on putting "Under duress, without prejudice" over your signature to avoid signing away your rights.

Steven Yates at LewRockwell.com - Why I Avoid Airports - can you say "Police State?" Thought so. Some have said that Nicholas Monahan's experience in Portland, about which I got all hot and bothered, was a fake. Mr. Yates says that it was not. [smith2004]

This has nothing to do with the "war on terrorism" and everything to do with the U.S. government terrorizing its own people, whether through humiliating treatment at airports, from the amoral John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, or whatever nightmare the feds dream up next. My prediction: someone is going to end up staring prison in the face after a confrontation at a security checkpoint in an airport goes bad. Probably someone who saw his wife being fondled and lost control, or possibly just a guy who lost patience after a bad day at work or a poor night's sleep. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already. I can see the feds trying to make an example of such a person -- a citizen whose "crimes" consisted in believing that there should be limits on what the federal government can do, even in an age of terrorism, and that citizens have an inherent right not to be bullied by their government. When federal employees can bully citizens with impunity, including getting cheap sexual thrills out of it, the citizens cease to be citizens and become subjects: subject to arbitrary federal power. I know of no answer except litigation, which has already begun in the Monahan case. If it should turn out that litigation is impossible, we will know that we are living in a police state.

Katherine Seligman at The San Francisco Chronicle - A lonely fight for gun rights: Scrappy lawyer mounts challenge to state's assault weapons ban - Gary Gorski has been single-handedly challenging Kalifornia's "assault weapons" ban. His lawsuit was overturned by the ninth district court, as reported everywhere a while back, but he intends to take it to the Supreme Court.

Just before it became illegal to own military-style assault weapons in California about three years ago, Gary Gorski went shopping. The suburban Sacramento lawyer already had one high-powered rifle sitting in his home safe, but he rushed out to buy seven more. Just on principle.

He consulted gun advocates -- what were they going to do about this ban, what advice did they have? -- but no one pledged support. So, by himself, he hunkered down in his small office and cranked out a lawsuit to overturn the assault weapons ban.

Dennis Bateman at The Firing Line via JPFO - I Dare You - our freedom was won by metal and wood. And the amendment that affirms our right to own metal and wood is all-important in the preservation of that freedom. The Firing Line copy of this essay is here. [jpfo]

Jaspar at The Firing Line - The Five-Minute Handbook - rules for RKBA activists. A must read. Mirrored here.

THERE IS NO FINAL VICTORY. Preserving RKBA is an ongoing PROCESS. We are winning and losing battles during this process, but the war will never be over. Becoming active to keep your gun rights is a lot like cleaning your house: it's thankless and boring work, but necessary. Like dirt, the antigun crowd will just keep coming back. Forever. Your activism will keep us winning more than losing. Our opponents count on wearing us down. They love it when one of us (not you, of course) gets discouraged and drops out. When you fully understand and accept the reality that RKBA is a never-ending struggle, you're automatically in the top 5 percent of all RKBA defenders. Congratulations.

RKBA ACTIVISM IS BORING. It's especially boring when you are doing things that really make a difference. Most of us want drama. We want to be entertained. Phone bank calling, precinct walking, going to RKBA grassroots seminars -- suddenly, even a trip to the dentist for a root canal will start to look better. Sorry, but there is no workaround on this aspect. Freedom is not free. It's a pain in the ass. Get used to it, get over it, and get to work.

Don Kates Jr at The Firing Line - The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment - a review of Supreme Court decisions concerning RKBA.

United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). Mr. Miller was your typical career criminal, charged with a laundry list of crimes. They threw the book at him, including carrying a sawed-off shotgun, a violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934. When his case came up before the Supreme Court, Miller had skipped; he was a fugitive. No lawyer appeared to argue his side of the case; only the government lawyers showed up. (Some fair trial, huh?) Now, if the Second Amendment only protected the state militia, the case would have been easy. All the court would have had to do was say that Miller could not own a gun because he was not a member of the militia, end of discussion. But they didn't say that. Why not? In effect, they conceded that the Second Amendment protects an individual right, but still said that it was constitutional for the government to prohibit sawed-off shotguns. Their reasoning? "Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense."

There are three interesting things about the court's statement. First, of course it was not in their notice; nobody was present to bring it to their notice! Second, had a knowledgeable advocate been present, he would have brought to the court's notice that short-barrelled shotguns have long been used as ordinary military equipment, from Revolutionary War blunderbusses to luparas in the Spanish-American War to trench-brooms in The War To End All Wars. Subsequently, U.S. troops used sawed-off shotguns in World War II, and "tunnel rats" used them in Vietnam. Third, and most important, is that the court seems to be saying that the Second Amendment only protects the right of individual citizens to have "ordinary military equipment." Very interesting. Using this line or "reasoning", it misght be possible to outlaw "sporting" arms but not so-called "assualt weapons"! What are semi-automatic "assault rifles" if not ordinary military equipment? When California's assault rifle ban reaches the Supreme Court, Miller will present a real problem for the anti-gunners.

...

There were few, if any, gun control laws on the books until after the Civil War. (The few state attempts at firearm regulation had been almost without exception overturned by state courts that considered them in violation of the Second Ammendment, which they considered to apply to the states as well as to the federal government!) Then, suddenly, the Bill of Rights seemed to apply only to the federal government, and every Southern state had a law prohibiting newly-freed slaves from owning guns. (Guess why? It was getting damned dangerous for the Klansmen to lynch blacks.) The Fourteenth Amendment rendered those "Black Codes" unconstitutional, so the Southerners figured out some backdoor methods. One was banning cheap guns (the term Saturday Night Special has its origin in the racial slur "Niggertown Saturday Night," which was similar to "Father's Day in Harlem" or "Chinese Fire Drill.") Another was a permit system/waiting period/ background check, requiring approval of the sheriff, who usually just happened to be a Klansman.

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What the Second Amendment protects is an individual right to bear military weapons, not for hunting, not for target shooting, not for repelling foreign invaders, but for the purpose of preventing oppression of the people by their own government. The historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, prudential, judicial, and legislative evidence is devastating. Any intelligent person who wishes to study the matter seriously should probably begin with S. Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637. Professor Levinson (University of Texas) is a devout liberal who set out to prove once and for all that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right (etc., ad nauseam). To his great embarrassment (hence the title), he found overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He had the academic integrity to admit it, for which he deserves great admiration. He does not like gun ownership, any more than some people like flag-burning or organized religion, but he recognizes that the individual right exists, and is integral to our constitutional protections, whether one likes it or not.

Las Vegas Review-Journal Editorial - Run for the border: Private citizens perform service in rounding up illegal border crossers - property rights trump trespassing "rights". [trt-ny]

A number of activist groups, including the Arizona Civil Liberties Union and the Border Action Network, are asking Arizona Gov.-elect Janet Napolitano to step in and stop private property owners along the Mexican border from engaging in "vigilantism."

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Let's stop and consider this assertion for a moment. Which is the more vital human right -- the one most deserving of defense? The right to work hard, save your earnings, and buy a piece of land, whereupon you then "own" that piece of real estate as your "private property" ... or the right to bypass proper legal procedures in order to enter someone else's country, then further to trespass on someone else's private property in the country you've entered illegally, camping there without his or her permission?

Here's a hint: The first principle -- private property rights -- was the one on which this nation was based, and which helped make it the most peaceful, free and wealth-generating society the world has ever known.

Kurt Nimmo at CounterPunch - Bush's Master Plan for the Internet - oppose the war, lose your internet access. [grabbe]

Bush and his Machiavellian minions will no longer put up with you roaming free into dangerous territory on the internet. You need to be corralled, electronically tethered, kept away from sites promoting conspiracy theories -- in other words, information the corporate media, the official US Ministry of Disinformation, does not want you to read or see. It's now increasingly obvious the Bushites want to lock us up in a hermetically sealed informational box and throw away the key. All the information they consider worthwhile will be pumped in through a one-way hole.

Vin Suprynowicz at The Las Vegas Review-Journal - Jailed for speaking her mind - in August of 1998, Janice Barton said, on being asked a question in Spanish, which she did not speak, "I wish these damned Spics would learn to speak English." She was arrested two weeks later and sentenced to 45 days in jail. The sentence was reversed by the Michigan appeals court, but on the grounds that she was convicted for ""conduct she could not reasonably have known was criminal." She ended up serving only 4 days of her sentence, but the legal precedent was set. Insulting speech, so-called "hate speech", is illegal in many Michigan cities.

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