Equalizer

"People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic
rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's
the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even
an armed one, can only make a successful living in a
society where the state has granted him a force monopoly."

---from the Gun is Civilization By Major L. Caudil, USMC (Ret)

http://homemadedefense.blogspot.com/2009/06/gun-is-civilization.html

Thoughts on firearms from the Revolution

George Mason's Fairfax County Militia Plan, 1775:
"And we do each of us, for ourselves respectively, promise and engage to keep a good firelock in proper order, & to furnish ourselves as soon as possible with, & always keep by us, one pound of gunpowder, four pounds of lead, one dozen gunflints, & a pair of bullet moulds, with a cartouch box, or powder horn, and bag for balls."

Patrick Henry, 1775:
"They tell us that we are weak -- unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Three million people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us."

 
Samuel Adams:
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."

John Adams:
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense."


Patrick Henry:
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."

Noah Webster, 1787:
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."



Tench Coxe, writing as "the Pennsylvanian" in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 1788:
"The power of the sword, say the minority of Pennsylvania, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from 16 to 60. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright 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."


Connecticut gun code of 1650:
"All persons shall bear arms, and every male person shall have in continual readiness a good muskitt or other gunn, fitt for service."


Article 3 of the West Virginia state constitution:"A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state, and for lawful hunting and recreational use."

Virginia Declaration of Rights 13 (June 12, 1776), drafted by George Mason:
"That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power."


A proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution, as passed by the Pennsylvania legislature:"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own states or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals."

The strongest reason...

Where do criminals get guns?

Well according to this, most if them get them from ummm, extra-legal ways.
Look at this, only 19% of firearms used by Federal prisoners were bought from licensed dealers (I am including gun shows, were 99% of buyers go through a FBI background check)
At least some of these guys were not convicted felons at the time of their arrest, so we can assume the system has a less than 15% failure rate. Not too bad for government work. Another thing that is left out of this is the "straw sale" were a person legally barred from buying a firearm gets someone else to buy it for them. There is not a whole lot that can be done to stop such sales, unfortunately. Gun dealers I know have seen a lot of them, and worked with Law Enforcement to have the perpetrator arrested. Nice fact: straw sales are very often done by the convict's mom. For real. Another point to think about when looking at this information is that some of these upstanding gents were no doubt lying. I don't know about the other 6%, but I do think its safe to say they didn't get them legally.

Before you ask - I don't have any documentation to back up this graph. We here at Homemade Defense don't do that kind of shit. Pay here is low.

Who lets someone borrow a gun? "Hey Cletus, lemme see that shotgun, the wife's been cheatin' again"
I mean really.

So, "gun control" advocates, gun grabbers, and the dedicated professionals at the ATF, focus on the largest part of this that you can impact. Dealers and Fences. If it can be proved that you stole a gun, you should receive a heavy prison sentence. Like 10-15 years. The whole point is that legal guns in the hands of adults in this country make up a very small portion of gun violence, and as that is the case, law enforcement and those great folks who feel the need to save the rest of us should direct almost all their efforts towards illegal guns, not legal ones. How about unannounced searches of the homes of those on probation or parole for firearms offences? How about a PSA? Give a gun to a felon, do his time for him? Something like that?

Happy now?

Click to enlarge.

The Worldwide History of Arms Confiscation

Some more interesting facts that I ran across and thought I'd share with you.


In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
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China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
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Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated

Guns in our Culture

I found all sorts of interesting quotes on firearms when aimlessly looking around the other day, so I figured I would share them with you.


Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky: “There's no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them.”


James Earl Jones: "The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose."


U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop: "The ruling class doesn't care about public safety. Having made it very difficult for States and localities to police themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake." - former U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wy.)


Paul Hager: "One of the arguments that had been made against gun control was that an armed citizenry was the final bulwark against tyranny. My response had been that untrained, lightly-armed non-soldiers couldn't prevail against a modern army. I had concluded that the qualitative difference in firepower was such that all of the previous rules of guerilla war no longer applied. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan demonstrated that wasn't true. Repelling an armed invasion is not something that American citizens are likely to face, but the possibility of a despotic government coming to power is not wholly unthinkable. One of the sequellae of Vietnam was the rise of the Khmer Rouge and slaughter of perhaps a million Cambodian citizens. Those citizens, like the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey, were unarmed and thus utterly and completely defenseless against police and paramilitary. An armed minority was able to kill and terrorize unarmed victims with total impunity." – Paul Hagar, "Why I Carry"

Daniel Schmutter: "The tragic history of civilian disarmament cries a warning against any systematic attempts to render innocent citizens ill-equipped to defend themselves from tyrant terrorists, despots or oppressive majorities," Daniel Schmutter, lawyer for Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

Jeff Cooper: "Hoplophobia is a mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons, as opposed to justified apprehension about those who may wield them." Jeff Cooper, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth

Sigmund Freud: "A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." ("General Introduction to Psychoanalysis," S. Freud)

Senator Orrin Hatch: "If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying--that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976--establishes the repeated, complete and inevitable failure of gun laws to control serious crime." Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Committee Print I-IX, 1-23 (1982).

Diane Feinstein: "US Senator, If I could have banned them all - 'Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns' - I would have!" (Statement on TV program 60 Minutes, Feb 5 1995)

Mao Tse Tung: "All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party." (Problems of War and Strategy, Nov 6 1938, published in "Selected Works of Mao Zedong," 1965)


Ted Nugent: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic."


Laurence H. Tribe of the Harvard Law School: "The federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification." (2000 edition of American Constitutional Law)


and lastly...

The Dalai Lama: "If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun." (May 15, 2001, The Seattle Times)

Words to live by

From the man who is more responsible than any other for our way of life in America:


"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. This gives exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball are too violent for the body and stamp no moral character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk."
-Thomas Jefferson

The Gun Show "Loophole"

The Gun Show Loophole

Sounds scary, huh? You hear this phrase on the news and from our idiot politicians. But very seldom is it explained to people. Simply put, it means that a private citizen of our nation can sell a legal firearm ( his personal and private property) to another citizen of his state.

That is it.

If I wished to sell a firearm that I own, I could sell it. At a gun show, if I desired.
Radical, Far-Left, pacifists will have you believe that every 2 months, your local civic center turns into the Mogadishu Arms Bazaar and every criminal and terrorist goes there to get ready to attack us all.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have been to many gun shows. I have rarely seen any private sale guns from the vendors and I have never seen someone buying a gun without the FBI background check, except those whose background checks don't go through fast enough. They get nothing.
(Sorry Smiths and Joneses, that's what you get for having a name doesn't get mispronounced.)
Furthermore, almost all firearms I have ever seen for private sale at a gun show are collector- type guns, many of them for more than $2500. Not likely to be used in a liquor store robbery.

Licensed gun dealers are required to perform background checks on their customers because they are businessmen dealing in bulk. They also have to charge sales tax, if applicable. Private citizens do not have to jump through such hoops on behalf of their government.

And for those who say that people should always have a background check before buying a firearm in a private sale, think about this: Do you have to get your driving record checked to buy a car? Do you even have to have a driver's license? After thinking about that, check the number of deaths in America each year from auto crashes and firearms and then get back to me about how we can best protect our fellow citizens.

One more thing:
" A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."


Seems clear to me.