DON'T TRY THAT IN MONTANA
By Chuck Baldwin
July 26, 2012NewsWithViews.com
July 26, 2012NewsWithViews.com
We Will Never Surrender Our Firearms! Never
By now, everybody in the country knows about the horrific shootings at a packed theater in the metro Denver area last week. Twelve people were killed and scores were wounded. Predictably, gun-control zealots nationwide are shouting for stricter gun control laws. Not only that, some are even calling for the TSA to set up airport-style screening devices in movie theaters.
So, if the TSA is going to set up screening devices for movie theaters, why not grocery stores, department stores, malls, strip malls, churches, boy scout meetings, girl scout meetings, soccer matches, little league baseball games, concerts, rodeos, etc., etc. Heck, let's just put TSA screeners at any gathering that attracts more than, say, ten people! What about the cost, you ask? Who cares? It's all about being safe, right? If big-government toadies have taught us anything over the past several years it is that the American people are a bunch of helpless, defenseless sheep who owe all of their safety and security to the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-caring federal government, right?
Whether the Denver shooter was a plain old wacko or a product of some sort of sophisticated MK Ultra-type assassination program, as some are suggesting, the reason twelve people died and so many were wounded is because the laws of the city and rules of the movie theater demanded that patrons disarm themselves. Had only one or two individuals in that movie theater been armed, the outcome could have been much different. Twelve people are dead, because the movie theater was a gun-free zone! Obviously, bad guys do not pay any attention to gun-free zones, except to note that such zones create a free-killing environment.
Have readers ever noticed that these so-called "madmen" are never crazy enough to try and attack guys at a gun range? Gee! I wonder why not?
One thing the national news media will always ignore is the practice of lawful self-defense. For example, most people are probably not aware of the fact that American citizens use a firearm to defend themselves more than 2.4 million times EVERY YEAR. That is more than 6,500 times EVERY DAY. This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. Furthermore, of the 2.4 million self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual assault. And in less than eight percent of those occasions is a shot actually fired. The vast majority of the time (92%), the mere presence of a firearm helps to avert a major crime from occurring. That is what Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) concluded after extensive research. According to Rep. Bartlett, the number of defensive uses is four times the number of crimes reported committed with guns.
John Lott, senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, agrees with Bartlett. His book "More Guns, Less Crime" documents the fact that firearms in the hands of private citizens are actually a major deterrent to crime--instead of being a cause of crime.
One thing America's founders unanimously agreed on was the necessity of free people to keep and bear arms. In light of the Denver shootings, Thomas Jefferson's counsel makes even more sense. He said, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." If the Denver killings prove anything, they
prove Jefferson's perceptive pronouncement.
determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." If the Denver killings prove anything, they
prove Jefferson's perceptive pronouncement.
But civilian disarmament has consequences even greater than those of a lone gunman attacking people in a movie theater.
Some years back, Alan Rice of the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) wrote, "Since 1900 at least seven major genocides have occurred resulting in the murder of 50-60 million people:
• Ottoman Turkey, 1915-17; 1-1.5 million Armenians murdered;
• Soviet Union, 1929-53; 20 million anti-Communists and anti-Stalinists murdered;
• Nazi Germany & Occupied Europe, 1933-45; 13 million Jews, Gypsies, and Anti-Nazis murdered;
• China, 1949-52, 1957-60 & 1966-1976; 20 million anti-Communists murdered;
• Guatemala, 1960-1981; 100,000 Mayan Indians murdered;
• Uganda, 1971-1979; 300,000 Christians and Political Rivals of Idi Amin murdered;
• Cambodia, 1975-1979; 1 million murdered."
• Soviet Union, 1929-53; 20 million anti-Communists and anti-Stalinists murdered;
• Nazi Germany & Occupied Europe, 1933-45; 13 million Jews, Gypsies, and Anti-Nazis murdered;
• China, 1949-52, 1957-60 & 1966-1976; 20 million anti-Communists murdered;
• Guatemala, 1960-1981; 100,000 Mayan Indians murdered;
• Uganda, 1971-1979; 300,000 Christians and Political Rivals of Idi Amin murdered;
• Cambodia, 1975-1979; 1 million murdered."
Rice continued to say, "In all seven of the genocides summarized above, gun control laws were in force before the genocide occurred, in some cases decades before. In five of the seven genocides, the lethal law, the gun control law was in force before the genocide regime took power."
Rice also said, "Gun control laws are usually enacted during a crisis or a perceived crisis." He then said, "Government officials, not hate groups or common criminals, were responsible for these seven genocides. In most of these cases the murder victims outnumbered their murderers; yet they were powerless to defend themselves because they were disarmed."
It should not be lost to the American people that tomorrow (Friday, July 27, 2012) President Barack Obama is scheduled to sign the UN Small Arms treaty. See this Fox News report.
Many people are rightly concerned that this treaty, instead of doing anything to thwart terrorists, could be a tool of anti-gun politicians in Washington, D.C., (including Mr. Obama) to try to confiscate the firearms of the American people.
I really don't know how to say this gently. And, of course, I cannot speak for everyone, but I suspect I'm speaking for millions of red-blooded Americans all over the country when I say that if the government—any government--tries to disarm us, it had better bring a lot of body bags, because, treaty or no treaty, law or no law, we will never surrender our firearms! NEVER!
And, for all of those potential "crazed killers" out there who are thinking about duplicating the Denver shootings someplace else, don't try that in Montana! I promise you, in virtually every public gathering place of any size in this State, a substantial percentage of the citizens in the crowd are packing heat--and are well versed on how to operate their "pocket cannon," and have the internal fortitude to do it, and to do it quickly!
Subscribe to the NewsWithViews Daily News Alerts!
|
So, if there are any lessons from this horrific incident in that movie theater outside Denver, Colorado, they are that an unarmed citizenry is a very foolish and vulnerable citizenry, that the American people cannot—and should not—depend on government to protect them, that they must be responsible to protect themselves, and that they must not allow any government—no matter how large or small—to disarm them! In other words, if you don't own a gun, go buy one--and learn how to use it; if you have a gun, carry it; and if you live in a city or State that will not allow you to carry a gun, MOVE TO A PLACE THAT WILL!
• If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link.
And please visit my web site for past columns and much more.
© 2012 Chuck Baldwin - All Rights Reserved
Share This Article
Chuck Baldwin is a syndicated columnist, radio broadcaster, author, and pastor dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. He was the 2008 Presidential candidate for the Constitution Party. He and his wife, Connie, have 3 children and 8 grandchildren. Chuck and his family reside in the Flathead Valley of Montana. See Chuck's complete bio here.
E-mail: chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com
E-mail: chuck@chuckbaldwinlive.com
Website: ChuckBaldwinLive.com
===========================================================Gun Control: We escape tragedy by searching for control and this is an obscene gift that we give to liberalism and its counterpart, the police state
So That This Never Happens Again
 | - Daniel Greenfield Monday, July 23, 2012 (3) Comments | Print friendly | Email Us |
The first reaction to the Aurora Massacre was the usual call for making sure that “this never happens again”. Everyone from New York City Mayor Bloomberg to author Salman Rushdie to mystery writer Patricia Cornwell called for imposing gun control to insure “this never happens again”.
And yet if we were to confiscate every privately owned firearm and outlaw the manufacture of new ones in the country, if we were to forcibly institutionalize anyone suspected of being mentally ill, and if we added naked scanners to movie theaters; we still could not insure that this will never happen again.
And yet Colorado has half the murder rate of Illinois, as adjusted for population. Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and New Hampshire, all full of guns, have far lower murder rates than gun control states like New York, California and Illinois. According to Bloomberg, “If we had fewer guns, we would have a lot fewer murders.” But guns are not proportional to murders.
Utah has the second highest gun ownership rate in the country and the eighth lowest homicide rate. Wyoming, the state with the fourth highest gun ownership rate has the fourth lowest homicide rate. Meanwhile, New York is 48th in gun ownership, but is the 18th highest in its murder rate.
We escape tragedy by searching for control and this is an obscene gift that we give to liberalism and its counterpart, the police state. Both promise us a better and safer world in exchange for our freedom. After every tragedy they promise us that they can keep it from happening again. They can’t. No one can.
The illusion of control attempts to tie James Holmes to some larger issue, whether it’s gun control or movie violence. It ignores the banality of individual evil, to make him into some larger monster that we can fight. But sometimes there is no meaning to evil except that it exists. No way to make sense of it or transform into a social crusade. Evil just is.
We can make war on organized or semi-organized enemies. We can bomb Hiroshima, round up the Mafia, launch drone strikes on Al-Qaeda leaders and break up cartels. We cannot, however, make war on the evil that lurks unexpectedly in human brains.
The edifice of government towers over public life. It is built for fighting systems, groups and “Isms’” and it can be used to ban guns, lock up the mentally ill or launch another one of its incessant public education campaigns. Its ability to stop an individual bent on causing harm to other individuals is highly limited at best.
That is where the illusion of control breaks down. The system can promise to stop gun violence, but it can’t stop a man with a gun. All it can do is exploit the tragedy for more power. Only individuals can stop individuals. The only control we can possibly have comes from living in a society where the people do the right thing… and are empowered to do the right thing.
But that is not the society that the gun-controllers and police-staters want to create. The society they want is a place where everyone sits quietly, offers no resistance, contacts the authorities and waits for the accredited branches of the government to do something. A place where everyone knows that if they do something, they may be arrested or sued by the criminal afterward. A place where people are expected to be willing to die, but not fight back.
It takes a great deal of conditioning to break the reflex of leaving things up to the proper authorities. It takes something like seeing two towers fall in burning rubble while sitting on a plane that is clearly headed toward a similar mission. But shortly afterward, the proper authorities will be back on the job, reminding everyone to fly planes, submit to some profiling-free groping, and pay no attention to the man with the beard and the itchy underwear chanting “Allah Akbar” to himself in the window seat.
Bloomberg replied to a suggestion that if more people in the theater had guns they might have been able to fight back, with, “To arm everybody and have the wild west all the time is one of the more nonsensical things you can say.” And in Bloomberg’s world it is nonsensical. By “Wild West”, he means anarchy and when you’re running a major city that has more employees than some countries have people, the last thing you want is anarchy.
Systems respond to a failure of control by intensifying control
Systems respond to a failure of control by intensifying control. Going the other way is “nonsensical” to them. To Bloomberg, the Aurora Massacre was a failure of control, which every “rational” person has to respond to by agreeing that we need more control. Find the “loopholes” and close them. Tighten the noose and this will never happen again… until the next time it does, when it will be met with the same response.
More loopholes, more nooses and more zero tolerance. Make a law, name it after a murdered child and sit back, confident that nothing like this can ever happen again because the big book of laws just had another forty pages added to it.
That is the government world, a place where every problem can be solved if you throw enough money, manpower and laws at it. And that world is as imaginary as the comic book world playing on the movie screen during the massacre. That is why gun control is so appealing. Unlike murders, guns can be banned.
Government is not god, though it often seems to aspire to the job. No amount of regulations can exercise complete control over the world around us. All they do is create a hedge maze within which both we and the criminals operate. And criminals will always be better at navigating that hedge maze.
Those who follow the law will always be proportionally more dis-empowered by regulations than those who do not. The flip side of a police state in the anarchy boiling underneath. The more laws there are, the more they are broken. The more control is centralized, the more corrupt the controllers become until the criminals are in power and those who are in power are criminals.
A police state is not a perfectly-controlled society where everyone follows the law or gets locked up. It’s thugs with shotguns, tattoos and uniforms, dark sunglasses covering their eyes, collecting bribes from the criminals they are in league with. It’s a president with forty mansions to his name and an entire apparatus of party loyalists who feed the bribes up to him. It’s not a place that’s free of crime; it’s a place that’s saturated with a crime, where everyone is a criminal from the leaders down to the little boy picking your pocket because otherwise the gang leader who runs the block will beat him.
We can turn America into that place in 10-15 years. All we need to do is spread the failed liberal policies that destroyed the country’s greatest cities to the rest of the country. Then try to lock down that anarchy with gun control, SWAT teams and 5 million regulations. Give it time and we’ll manage to achieve the current Democratic Party platform of being just like Mexico.
In America the police state has emerged as an attempt to manage the consequence of liberal social policies. Import enough immigrants from lawless countries, put them side-by-side in major cities and it will take a police state to manage the consequences. Destroy values, promote cultural anarchy while running regulatory totalitarianism, and you will need a police state. Destroy manufacturing and keep enough men of all races out of work, and the police state will be needed to manage the violence. Import enough followers of a religion in which terrorism is a mandate, and it will take a police state to maintain even temporary normalcy.
Officially liberals don’t like the police state very much, and yet the police state is the only thing that prevents the countries afflicted by their policies from completely melting down. And when faced with a problem, whether it’s a man filling in a swamp on his own property or individuals owning firearms, they resort to the power of the police state. Right now they are telling us that if we just had a police state where all the firearms were controlled by the police, this will never happen again.
Adulthood means knowing that this will happen again. That madmen will kill people and it is our responsibility to prevent that not by passing a few laws that invest more power in a police state, but by being aware and taking action when necessary. And knowing that this too may not be enough.
We have some impressive technologies, but those don’t make us gods. We have information at our fingertips, but that is not the same thing as control. We do not control the world and we certainly do not control other people. And it is important that we remember that.
The actions of James Holmes are not a reflection on us or on that imaginary village that raises all of us. It is a reflection on him. To forget that by assigning responsibility to the gun or the movie is to abdicate individual responsibility and throw up our hands to the liberal gods of government and the police state to come and save us from ourselves. And they will eagerly answer the call.
The power of the individual to do good comes from a sense of individual responsibility. Take away that responsibility and the country begins to rot. Bury it deep enough and there are only sheep waiting for a wolf.
Sorry that the order is jumbled as I want to add another comment and it seems that further down the it is corrupted
"The most important thing to remember about violent criminals is that they are not acting rational. They do not say "wow, I'm not going to rape/murder/rob someone because they might have a gun." "
Really? No criminals are rational actors who weight costs v benefits?
James D. Wright and Peter Rossi, "Armed and Considered Dangerous", (Aldine 1986, 2nd ed 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0202362427), the NIJ Felon Survey 1,874 felons convicted of armed crime, 18 prisons, 10 states.
Some results of the armed felon survey, according to Wright and Rossi:
81% will try to determine if a potential victim is armed.
40% had been deterred from a crime because they believed the victim was armed.
34% said that they had been scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed citizen.
74% indicated that burglars avoided occupied dwellings, because of fear of being shot.
57% said that most criminals feared armed victims more than they feared police.
Sorry that the order is jumbled as I want to add another comment and it seems that further down the it is corrupted
"The most important thing to remember about violent criminals is that they are not acting rational. They do not say "wow, I'm not going to rape/murder/rob someone because they might have a gun." "
Really? No criminals are rational actors who weight costs v benefits?
James D. Wright and Peter Rossi, "Armed and Considered Dangerous", (Aldine 1986, 2nd ed 2008, ISBN-13: 978-0202362427), the NIJ Felon Survey 1,874 felons convicted of armed crime, 18 prisons, 10 states.
Some results of the armed felon survey, according to Wright and Rossi:
81% will try to determine if a potential victim is armed.
40% had been deterred from a crime because they believed the victim was armed.
34% said that they had been scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed citizen.
74% indicated that burglars avoided occupied dwellings, because of fear of being shot.
57% said that most criminals feared armed victims more than they feared police.
Daniel Greenfield
Most recent columns Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and freelance commentator. “Daniel comments on political affairs with a special focus on the War on Terror and the rising threat to Western Civilization. He maintains a blog atSultanknish.blogspot.com. Daniel can be reached at:sultanknish@yahoo.com CommentsThank you for a very well written thought out article that included facts rather than emotion.If a person is of the mind to kill they can always find away even without guns. Look at his apartment.
Posted by AEE on 07/24 at 02:44 PM | #
Before you gun-control, how about doing some pornography-control, some violent murderous movie and video game-control, some police brutality-control, come big bank and big business lying, cheating and stealing-control. But until then, taking guns away from everyone will only increase the number of these insane events. Why, because one of the best measures against more of them happening is that there ARE other people around with guns.
Posted by JC Lincoln on 07/24 at 05:49 AM | #
Mr. Greenfield, This is an excellent article pointing out the obvious to those that are willing to see facts as facts. The biggest issue we have here is that the gun haters will NEVER accept that argument that an armed society is a polite society. The reason the crime rates are so low in the areas that allow personal ownership of firearms as-well-as concealed carry is because the "bad guys" never know who is or isn't armed. The very idea that an unstable/criminal mind will obey a "Gun Free Zone' is absurd at its core. Criminals do NOT obey the law or pay attention to posted no gun zones, hence the tag "criminal". An unbalanced mind, or whatever other tag you wish to identify it with, is hell bent on accomplishing a "mission" and nothing will prevent the completion of the mission. If guns were to be outlawed, does anyone out there really believe that he would not have found some other means of dishing out his vengeance? The guns in this or any other scenario are not the cause of the act. They are the tools used to carry out the act. Take them away, and other tools would be found to accomplish the task. Although this situation is tragic, it took place in one location. The death toll for the city of Chicago one weekend ago was 23 and I see no one pounding the drum for these victims. Keep in mind, Chicago has some of the most stringent gun control laws on the books, throughout the nation. Yep, those gun laws really helped the Chicago victims, didn't they? Look at the atrocities taking place in Africa where thousands of rival tribes have been murdered with.....machetes, sticks, axe handles, clubs and bare hands. So what do we do, outlaw all of these "weapons" too? Controls over the tools will not stop the violence. Reasonable counter measures will. End the "Gun Free Zones", they are an exercise in futility and only invite tragedy and violence.
Posted by AJ on 07/23 at 02:30 PM | #
Just some more comments after the tradgey at the kindergarten. Just what are the right words to say, and knowing that it will never make sense. |
December 16th, 2012 at 8:55 am
December 16th, 2012 at 9:01 am
December 16th, 2012 at 9:05 am
That is enough for a 20 year war in Iraq!
December 16th, 2012 at 9:07 am
December 16th, 2012 at 9:10 am
December 16th, 2012 at 9:13 am
December 16th, 2012 at 9:15 am