Was there ever a more appropriate title for a major newspaper’s editorial? In the September 3, 2006 edition of The Los Angeles Times, this was it: Deadly, Intentional Ignorance on Guns. Man, oh man!
The piece writes about the President’s lock down on gun data and Congress’s taking it further. The complaint is that they won’t be able to access data on any connection between gun sales and gun crime.
Alright. But what if there is no such connection to be seen? We know – and some states know it so they repealed their one-gun-a-month law – that crooks don’t buy their weapons through legal channels. Duh.. Talk about ignorance . .
But they do steal weapons bought through legal channels, and newspapers mislead the public by saying that the guns were bought legally. Kind of forgot something, didn’tcha? Kind of left something out . .?
Here is my complaint: the last paragraph, if I may, says, “The gun industry says this kind of information has no value to the public at large and that law enforcement agencies could use it to harass dealers. That’s nonsense. What they’re probably worried about is that such information could show how to make gun-control laws more effective.”
This is where that ignorance on guns comes in: gun control laws are not effective, unless you’re trying to disarm the law-abiding, then, as unAmerican as they are, they are effective. They are effective at disarming the citizen to put them at the mercy of the thugs in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C. Brilliant. That’s your idea of Order?
Not surprising that the gun makers are for the freedom of the people in guns, but so are many other liberty civil rights groups. As I said in my last piece, the Second Amendment is absolute, as it guards against disarming the citizenry by way of so-called reasonable due process. [See Thank You, California Legislature, Mens News Daily and elsewhere.]
There is no legitimate due process anywhere in America which can legally disarm citizens short of a Constitutional Amendment Repeal, and that’s not likely in a post 9/ll era – with the exception of taking the right from felons, and of not selling weapons to under-age persons, not selling to non-citizens (they don’t have a right if they’re not a citizen) and people with restraining orders and so forth. That’s fairly reasonable, but that’s where it ends. We have our share of responsibilities just like the First Amendment does. Meanwhile, gun control is a method of fooling the non-gun-owning public into thinking that the subject is open to discussion.
It is not. I bet you can think of several privacy or sovereignty rights you would assert are not even open to discussion, if you thought about it. I’ll bet you could think of several not open to discussion.
Imagine, a newspaper advocating unwinding a civil right while it insists on keeping its own rights.
Los Angeles Times, please name any civil right subject to being unwound by due process, beginning with editorials. Just one, please. It would be a shameful example of having such an open mind that your brains fall out. You unwind someone else’s right and you’ve already begun to unwind your own.
Let’s try the First Amendment first, beginning with the cause that people engage in false advertising, mail fraud, lying under oath and other abuses of their right while hiding behind that right of freedom of speech. Why should The Times, which advocates unwinding another civil right, keep its own amid such widespread, irresponsible abuses nationwide?
Show us how it’s done, Times, first, please, so that we can understand just how people should let their civil rights be open to discussion, open to being talked out of their right. Just a little bit more adjustment for modern times. Please submit yourself to opening the freedom of speech to discussion by your enemies. Set the example.
Because if the reasons of censors sound more reasonable than you had expected, and if they invoke due process and push fairness, you just might talk yourself out of your right to a free press. Your failure to see how your rights are backed by force in the citizenry is proof positive that you do not understand the nature of the relationship between the official and the governed: namely, that officials take orders from us, and that no official can legally oppose the People. [How often has The Los Angeles Times taken positions against the LAPD and prevailed as evidence that the People can effect change from here? The citizenry is still quite powerful for those who use their authority. Why silence them? Ah, that is the question.]
Meanwhile, political opponents fool cooperative citizens into thinking that the subject is open to discussion, but it’s not. The Times has been fooled into thinking that gun control is reasonable and can be enacted through a due process frontal attack for the sake of community safety and Order, but they are in fact attacking a right and not attacking crime or violence. Gun control doesn’t work, unless you have an entirely hidden objective, then it works, and how!
Gun control won’t stop crime. Gun control is nothing more than unwinding a civil right.
While the Press keeps their rights. And their jobs, and their readership and their advertisers. It’s another complex which feeds on crisis and can take either side, editorially, and even if the right is snuffed out, the business remains..,along with the jobs, the readership and the advertisers. It’s wrong to take the side of the criminal by disarming the victim in the name of Order or anti-violence.
If you want reasonable, look at the majority of states who have their citizens walking around carrying guns and look at the difference in crime problems between those states and California.
If someone is really interested in Order, and in the law, then the only way out is to respect the rights of the honest and to understand that these people are the first line of defense and always have been. The legal, authorized and practical first line of defense.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, two witnesses to a teen rape were shot to death by the rapist. Check it out. They were seen by the rapist, then hunted down as they tried to hide in a grassy area, and were shot to death.
Gee, folks, do ya think an armed citizen — with authority and training as hundreds of thousands of gun owners have – would have been able to hold the bastard for police? In case The Times didn’t know it, the FBI already has a great deal of data on crime and guns every year, and shows in its Uniform Crime Report that though about 47,000 people are shot to death each year – these dead witnesses now to be included this year – citizens stop a crime in progress more than 2.5 million times a year. On their legal authority, and often without firing a shot.
It’s really something the interested head of household should look into. Imagine the editors at major newspapers going home to their loved ones and saying that they cannot be counted on to protect them in time of violent crime. “Well, dear, don’t you know what I do for a living? I can’t be counted on to use force to protect you and I stop other people from protecting their loved ones. That’s what I do at work, dear.”
Ask yourself, not as Editors, but as fathers, husbands and heads of household: Do you really believe the idea of personal self-defense should even be open to discussion on someone else’s idea of what is Order?
The Times, intentionally ignorant on guns?
You bet they are.
And how do you imagine that kind of ignorance impacts Order and our governance?
______________________
John Longenecker is author of Transfer Of Wealth – The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry, now in its second edition available in bookstores late September, 2006. See www.TransferOfWealth.net
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DrDamage said,
There is no legitimate due process anywhere in America which can legally disarm citizens short of a Constitutional Amendment Repeal, and that’s not likely in a post 9/ll era – with the exception of taking the right from felons, and of not selling weapons to under-age persons, not selling to non-citizens (they don’t have a right if they’re not a citizen) and people with restraining orders and so forth
Unless said restraining order is based upon acts determined beyond a reasonable doubt, I’m not so sure this is reasonable or wise.
September 4, 2006 at 2:23 pm
John Longenecker said,
September 4, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Roger Knight said,
Or whatever the judge decides constitutes DV. In Washington, he does not even have to set forth what specific facts he found that constitutes the domestic violence.
That is like being charged with robbing the Washington Mutual Bank on Tuesday, but being unable to prove that crime beyond reasonable doubt, the prosecution presents evidence that you robbed the Bank of America on Friday, without previously notifying that you were accused of such thing! Then on the conviction slip, the jury found that you robbed a bank, without any specific finding as to which bank on which day you robbed!
Mind you, it often does not matter that said female party was the aggressor in the altercation, EVEN IF SHE WAS CONVICTED OF A CRIME OF ASSAULT HERSELF. She can be a screaming banshee throughout the relationship, but no restraining order court will hold her to account for any contribution she makes to the sturm und drang of the relationship.
As for the underage person possessing and using firearms, please consider the following scenario:
Your daughter is 15 years old and drop dead gorgeous. Down the street there lives your Friendly Neighborhood Level III Registered Sex Offender. His history indicates a preference for 15 year old girls.
If it was me, I would enroll my drop dead gorgeous daughter in the NRA’s Eddie Eagle Progam and get her trained in the use and safekeeping of firearms.
I would also make damn sure well that she knew exactly where the firearms are kept in the house and how to check them, load them, and use them.
And I would make damn sure she was able to get her hands on these firearms in an emergency, such as the registered sex offender coming by to pay her a visit.
Oh and by the way, for every registered sex offender, there was a first time. When they weren’t registered.
September 4, 2006 at 4:13 pm
John Longenecker said,
I understand TRO, the hearingprocess and the final order, but what about the legitimate instances?
Felons? No way.
Furriners? Same here.
Rights of citizens belong to citizens alone. Governments do not have rights, they have only powers. Only citizens have rights, and rights trump powers.
No guns for under-age, aliens or felons.
September 4, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Roger Knight said,
1994 was 12 years ago, and for those of over 30 it was “just yesterday”. I mean, didn’t that Challenger space shuttle blow up just a few years ago? How easy it is for college professors to forget that to their students, John Belushi has always been dead.
That was when the Brady Bill passed. And the Democrats lost Congress because the NRA rallied to punish them for infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.
Before the Brady Bill passed, and before the Washington Legislature passed the Violence Reduction Act containing changes in our state’s firearms laws to harmonize with the Brady Bill, convicted felons were not actually prohibited from owning firearms.
That is right, CONVICTED FELONS WERE NOT ACTUALLY PROHIBITED FROM OWNING FIREARMS.
They were only prohibited from owning “short” firearms, meaning guns with barrels shorter than 12 inches. Pistols.
They could still own rifles and legal shotguns, with barrels longer than 12 inches.
And that only applied to those convicted of certain felonies, not all felonies. Those conmvicted of non-violent felonies, such as fraud or false info on a tax return, had no restrictions on firearms ownership whatsoever.
I kid you not!
There has arisen a number of cases where those with old felony convictions challenged as ex post facto laws, the legislative extension of the firearms prohibition to include long firearms. The Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court of Washington (5-4 split, give the dissenting justices credit for actually knowing what an ex post facto law is) each avoided a strike down with the following cutie-pie conclusion: Because the convicted felons already had a long list of firearms ownership restrictions (I know, pistols shorter than 12 inches is not a long list) the changes in the Brady Bill and the Violence Reduction Act were only “administrative” and “incidental” adjustments in these restrictions and therefore were not ex post facto laws when applied to those with old felony convictions.
However, this dodge does not work with the fraud convict who was not deprived of ANY firearms ownership until 1994 when Congress and the Washington Legislature deprived them of the Right by legislative fiat.
Such legislative fiat is also called a bill of attainder, which is also prohibited by the Constitution.
If we are not seeing any cases that address this question, it is probably because prosecutors are WISELY using their prosecutorial discretion when it comes to charging those with old non-violent felony convictions of unlawful possession of firearms. Like, they don’t.
As for under-age, there was a time when 15-17 year olds owned firearms, kept them in gun racks in their pickups in the high school parking lot, and went hunting after school and NOBODY thought there was anything wrong with this picture.
It made for an Army that could go into war with greener troops than anyone else and still win its battles. The kids were inducted already knowing how to shoot.
September 4, 2006 at 7:22 pm
John Longenecker said,
We didn’t mess up: officials mess things up.
In repealing all gun laws, we’ll sort it out. We repeal all gun laws first. The second thing we need to do is remind our fellows that our Document puts limits on government, on subjects not open to discussion.
Liberty
September 5, 2006 at 8:01 am
nighthawk said,
Agree with most of the stuff about restraining orders. I know some folks who were victims of what I guess we could call abusive/paranoid/retaliatory restraining orders.
I also know some folks who were urged by local law enforcement to purchase a firearm to protect themselves and their families from abusive ex-husbands that were not expected to obey the restraining order. In one of these cases, he violated the order and shots were fired in response. He has not been seen since.
The bottom line: restraining orders are too easy to use as a weapon, and they are not effective.
“…… could show how to make gun-control laws more effective.”
“This is where that ignorance on guns comes in: ……..”
This, my friends, is where the Times slipped up. They’re not ignorant, they’re hoping we are. Of course, they’re also working hard to keep the American public ignorant.
To them, effective gun control means disarmament of the law-abiding.
We have many instances of this kind of journalistic malfeasance going on lately.
Some examples:
In Ohio, the newspapers are publishing personal information about concealed carry permit APPLICANTS.
They are pushing for (and succeeding) ballistic fingerprint legislation. Totally ineffective, unless tou want to use it for a registration scheme.
Remember Ronnie Barrett’s letter to the LAPD? Where they misrepresented the type of firearm that they wanted to ban.
Truth means nothing to these people.
September 5, 2006 at 10:22 am
Roger Knight said,
But ONLY if such provisions are on the statute books at the time the crime is committed, and ONLY if such are specifically included in the sentence notifying the defendant of these legal restrictions.
I am extremely offended by judges who make up cutie-pie reasons for not enforcing the provisions of the Constitution and the state constitutions.
I believe we all agree that there are extremely important reasons for prohibiting bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and requiring equal protection of the laws, meaning that ALL citizens are affected by a piece of legislation and not just some.
If we tolerate stripping a citizen with an old felony conviction of any civil right that he was not stripped of at the time of sentencing, by a new legislative fiat, then next thing we will see are noncustodial parents with old child support orders and old CS arrearages being stripped of the privilege to operate a motor vehicle by new legislation without even the requirement that such penalty being written into an order on modification of the CS order.
Oh, that’s right, that has already happened.
I want to caution you to please consider that those with old felony convictions and noncustodial parents are the guinea pigs upon whom are tested the new technologies and techniques of tyranny.
And if they can get away with doing such garbage to divorced fathers never convicted of any crime other than being unable to pay the support due to the rampant outsourcing of our jobs and insourcing of dirt poor Mexicans who will work for less than what Americans can afford to work for, then do not think that they will stop with divorced fathers and those with old criminal convictions.
They can always find an excuse to do to you what we allow done to divorced fathers.
September 5, 2006 at 10:39 am
John Longenecker said,
The move is on to take that force to pave the way for total dissolution of Marriage, privacy, and for hi-tech surveillance by having officials have all the force.
No plug intended, but you can get some content insight at http://www.TransferOfWealth.net
Write me with your hard address.
September 5, 2006 at 11:50 am
Black Bear Blog » Blog Archive » Intentional Ignorance On Guns said,
September 5, 2006 at 1:43 pm
John Longenecker said,
Go Black Bear.
September 5, 2006 at 2:48 pm
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September 10, 2006 at 11:08 pm