Another Church Shooting... And How To Avoid The Rest To Come.

I’ve remarked before about school shootings and just how it is counterproductive to disallow and even punish licensed concealed carry of handguns otherwise permitted throughout a right to carry state.

Now we have a spate of church shootings.

Nobody could see this coming? Well, gee . . . some of us could.

Concealed carry licensees are instructed as to where they may not carry their weapons – schools, churches, airports, civil aircraft, public buildings and workplace – and vociferous objections to these limitations seem to have made a lot of sense over time: namely, that anywhere police can be summoned for violence or the threat of violence, law-abiding should be able to carry there, simply because no place is exempt from violence. Who thinks it is?

There is a reason a community elects right to carry over defenselessness.

What gives me some small measure of satisfaction is that the predictions of the gun-control nuts seem to have never come true – blood in the streets, anarchy, road-rage shootings, you’ve heard them all – yet the forecasts of the law-abiding have always been true. We could see these church shootings coming.

The former is based on hysteria and politics, and the latter is based on the public record and consistency. That is, there is no record of the dire predictions of the anti-gun crowd having come true, and there is a pronounced record of poor preparedness coming true.

And that’s part of the argument: preparedness.

To ban guns from places where violence can erupt just as easily as anywhere else is to prepare for nothing. As one professional put it, if you fail to prepare, you might as well prepare to fail.

Agencies which bar otherwise legally carried handguns from their airports, schools, public buildings, workplace or businesses such as banks and restaurants, have positively no trust in the very individuals they serve.

Not very smart. It might be very constructive to file civil rights lawsuits against those who tragically insisted on such destructive policy of disarming lawful carry when they just as easily could have respected the right to carry and perhaps even entirely avoided the violent encounter on their property! Who is proximally responsible?

Instead, the violent ones know where they can shoot the defenseless uninterrupted.

In this case, I might point out that it is not up to the agencies to say. It is up to the People to say, and they have spoken, and it is then incumbent on the public servants to do as they’re told.

But this seems to be a real problem in Ohio, where the constituents there have made their wishes clear. Ohio is a right to carry state, and concealed carry there is being met with some stubbornness from officials such as in Toledo and Cleveland, who don’t want to carry out the oath of their office and the rule of law: they quarrel with licensed constituents, find issues to make, they generally harass and punish lawful carry any way they can. [One such case now involves Bruce Beatty, a retired USAF Sergeant now living in Toledo who is cited for carrying in the park; Beatty disputed the ticket in court as unlawful and harassing and the other side didn't even show! The City of Toledo even argued through counsel that the Park was private property (that's news to the Judge!) and that Beatty can't carry there. The Judge advised the City of Toledo they'd better show up for the new calendar date.]

In effect, terribly misguided officials seek to disarm people who have duly elected to be armed, and who have instructed officials of same. You'd think!

There’s always something going on somewhere to thwart the will of the People. My theory is that officials keep violent crime alive like some keep racism alive; it serves them. Right now, it’s in Ohio, in Wisconsin and a few other states. Officials sworn to uphold the law disregard it for their own social engineering. Then they wonder aloud how to stop murders; privately, the political fact is that they need those murders.

Until it’s reconciled, you might as well hang a No-Guns sign in the window or ring the predator’s dinner bell for all the shootings that occur where criminals know no one will stop them until they're finished. They know how long it takes police to arrive, and they know what they can do until they do. A lot can happen in 60-seconds, and does.

Now they’ve come to houses of worship (in addition to airports, schools and workplace!) and not only with shootings, but in reports of knifings, a few hostage situations and some frightening numbers of killings in a single incident (a knife doesn't run out of ammunition), all made possible by an expected delay in arrival of police.

Brookfield, Wisconsin . . or in Sash,Texas, August 29th, 2005. . .

. . and it’s a good bet more are on the way. Because they've demonized the lawful carry, then broadcast that they're defenseless. Smart.

You can’t hang this one on the cops, friends. They can't be everywhere. And the authority they have derives from the constituents. This is why the officials cannot legally stop the Minutemen even though they certainly would like to. Citizens grant the authority to law enforcement. The People are already the law, and any citizen may reasonably enforce a law. Citizens may also act reasonably in self-defense or defense of another. The expression taking the law into one's own hands is a silly and meaningless one, since the People are source of all authority. Confusing or discouraging that would run counter to established public policy and interest, which is the most direct explanation for the stubbornness of officials. Crisis = political capital.

Interference such as harassing lawful carry or denying carry in enumerated locations is a reflection that elected officials thwart the will of the people to avoid controlling the problem. The answer is really so simple. Criminals don't fear Police. But they do fear armed citizens, and being very unclear on who is armed has a very positive effect making violent criminals think twice, and they do think twice about armed citizens.

For the head of a household with a family to think of, one may have to choose between personal safety and being wrongly accused of breaking the law in Ohio, where it’s legal to protect yourself – only not in airports, public buildings, restaurants, banks, schools or churches.

The real frightening part is the public servant’s unabashed quarreling with the certified will of the People in the law, and for now, the law is right to carry. There should be no quarrel at all, should there?

The only solution is to use lawful concealed carry to the fullest to achieve the reach the law was intended to reach: self-protection or protection of another anywhere police can be summoned for grave danger, the only time a person (including a CCW holder) is permitted to draw and shoot. (Same as police!) Any of these reported incidents qualifies as grave danger. [There are reports of concealed carry persons stopping incidents of immediate grave harm. Under-reported to be sure, but easily discoverable nationwide.]

Concealed carry of current licensees should be recognized nationwide through reciprocity of other states, and should be permitted in schools, all airports, civil aircraft throughout the nation, in workplaces, including office and parking lot, personal vehicles, public buildings, including courthouses, businesses, including restaurants and banks . . .

. . and in churches.

It's good for the community.

And it's good for the country.
__________________________________

John Longenecker is author of The Battle We Fight - Battling Potomac Fever To Recapture Our Homes And Communities available at all booksellers. His website is www.nationwideconcealedcarry.com

This week's TALKRADIO Bookings . . .

August 31st, 2005 KFNX, 1100 AM
Phoenix, Arizona
7 a.m. Pacific Time.

and

WVNE, 760 AM - Worcester, MA
10 a.m. Pacific Time
Engaging Your World with Tom Crouse.

________________________________

When Grief Becomes A Weapon.

Unassailable?

Who says that the parents used for their anger against the President and the war in Iraq are unassailable? The media ushering them into the limelight so gleefully?

For those parents and the media presenting them to accuse the President of killing their children, it’s not only the media: both are to blame.

Exposing the Left’s connection doesn’t assign all of the blame: the parents seem now to have an axe to grind and don’t know how they’re being used... But they should.

Nothing new here, sadly.

As always, the Left coaching them doesn’t know Thing One about compassion. They don’t know anything about patriotism and they know nothing about justice. They’re too pre-occupied with adolescent, inner anger of their own.

Nothing new here, either, tactically speaking.

Grief is, for some, a series of stages, a progression of emotional management depths or milestones of working it all through to a return to tranquility which never really returns.

Inherent in most persons is the deeply internal desire to manage this; to get better again. Profound grief is disabling, and doesn’t much permit such vociferous or vicious involvement as we have seen in some parents in the media. But usually, it’s normal to go through this as a process toward a recovery, of a kind, that is.

Inserting oneself into the process as the Left’s connection is exposed, it’s absolutely predatory to keep a suffering person in any one stage– such as an anger stage – for political purposes. [Note: The liberals have glommed onto Anger and keep it there; once it leaves the anger stage, the parents are of no further use to the liberals. When will the innocent parents be released from their service to the Left?] You might say those parents are now political prisoners of the Left using them, conscripted and sentenced for a crime they didn’t commit, and most important, probably for a view they didn’t previously hold - trapped in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome of identification with their captors. Suddenly, she can relate to the Left's anger?

On Grief, there are five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Understand that, even in a time of acceptance, grieving never really entirely remits.

Other experts believe that grief never really moves through stages, recognized more as a flow of gray areas with less defined borders, and which remains as a permanent change you only overcome partially with time. Whatever it is, it is deeply painful, and can easily be unwelcomely summoned with a comment, any reminder at all for the rest of one's life.

It can also be manipulated by persons as the Left.

But no one escapes sorrow. The Left's anger betrays its adolescent view, as their own personal pain eclipses all they see and traps them in adolescent time so that they actually believe that they can change politically what hurt them so long ago. In that futile process, they will use anyone, do anything. This is the major defect in liberal thought (or lack of it).

Sorrow is a fact of life, we know, and we know that it is most painful, and we also know that some losses seem so very unnecessary and unjust. Are you very surprised that a sense of justice or a sense of injustice attaches to a loss so powerfully in the grieving process? Did a loved one die after a mature life, or did one die prematurely? Did one die for something?

This is key to managing grief under circumstances such as a battle death, and where one’s life may have such a sense of purpose, the road to recovery can be a little brighter, the way it was most probably meant to be by the deceased themselves.

This is especially true for a volunteer military, and changing the sense of mission of the deceased to describe them as fools is just another liberal hijacking.

Would the deceased wish for anger to prevail, and is rage what he or she dies for? Or the freedom to speak responsibly and by the rules of fair play in a homeland of liberty they felt so deeply a part of?

What were they attached to when they left on a mission: foolishness or purpose? Did they understand poorly or did they understand fully that someone must go if people like their parents are to be safe and free – people who cannot go?

Giving meaning to a life and a death helps enormously for the living to deal with the loss.

Gratitude, whether the loss was foisted upon them or not, could be integral to grappling with the sorrow and to give the loss meaning, not in illusion, but in reality. Using the loss for another gutter rabbit punch to the conservatives and the more mission-oriented parents might as well mop up the floor with the uniform, as the Left states that every soldier dies for nothing, which is to say that our nation is nothing worth protecting. This is their adolescent anger talking.

I have one answer to the Left in this country: Yet you choose to live here of all places.

Irrespective of your political position on the War – the grieving process is being hijacked, delayed for a tour of duty of its own: a war against its own nation. In a way, the parents have become 2005's useful idiots, to muster a viciousness that perhaps wasn’t even in their character beforehand. Were these people this vicious before? How are they changed for the better?

In interrupting and arresting the grieving process, the Left is nothing but a band of hijackers, helping themselves to something they do not own, ‘borrowing’ someone’s grief for the duration, but not returning it in the condition in which they found it, certainly.

Nothing new in that.

The Left is not fellow Americans of a different, constructive view: these people are sick, spreading their disease by a kiss of death - (Keep It Socialist, Sally).

Cruel. Heartless. I suspect they like it.

Nothing new in that.

The democrats are no longer an American political party. They are a disgrace to the idea of fair play, the party of underhandedness they somehow feel necessary. The Democrats are an insertion of anti-liberty persons, for they have now attacked the non-combatants, the parents of servicemen and women for propaganda, inflicting wounds anew, interfering with the healing process without regard for their overall health and recovery.

The Left is going to keep turning up the heat until they've utterly ruined the nation, without regard for the innocent non-combatants; there is no longer a difference between the Left in America and suicide bombers: it's not how you attack -- it's who you've attacked.

Whether the evolution of the Democrat Party and its minions follows recognizable stages or is a series of incremental gray areas of one depressing movement, the result is, itself, nothing but a source of pure grief now for the entire nation.

But then, nothing new in that, is there?
_____________________________________

John Longenecker is author of The Battle We Fight - Battling Potomac Fever To Recapture Our Homes And Communities, available at all booksellers. His website is www.NationwideConcealedCarry.com

___________________________

August's TALKRADIO Bookings . . .

August 18th, 2005 at 2 p.m. PST
Drive Time with Roy Brassfield
WKCT NEWSTALK/93, Bowling Green, Kentucky

Aug. 31st WVNE, 760 AM - Worcester, MA
Engaging Your World with Tom Crouse 10 a.m. PST

John, I'm Not For Guns: How Does No-Guns Affect Me?

Grab a cup. This is another long one.

Of the several popular questions I take when I speak, one of the most popular is just how the Second Amendment affects Americans who don’t like guns and who won't support ownership for others.

As you’d expect, much of the pro-liberty argument begins with the Second Amendment’s being a civil right, just like the rest of the first ten amendments, but although this should be all the argument really needs, some Americans aren’t persuaded by this.

Here is my answer: It’s not about guns: the First and Second Amendments are all about self-governance, just like the rest are.

Quick summary of U.S. History: The Founding Fathers broke from the Crown because the reach of King George intruded on the lives of the Colonists much more than it did on the subjects at home in England. Settlers imagined life to be as consistent as always, and were perfectlywilling to live in the colonies as they lived at home, but there was more and more imposition, taking them further away from their way of life. The War of Independence was more about being left alone than about change as revolutions go.

This is important to understand, because today, Americans still think life is just heavenly if only we’re left alone, not stagnant, not the same thing, but free from intrusions of neurotics who believe we don’t know what’s good for us and who hand us destructive change, not positive change. In many ways, we will always be fighting this war. We’re fighting it now.

In reality and on the idea of intrusion, over-reach and interference, there is no disconnect between the harassment of then and now, no respite. There will always be jerks who won’t leave you alone, and who use government clout to impose their idea of improvement, usually encountering righteous objection and steering it with coercion. It’s increasing, it’s morally wrong and it’s suspicious.

Jump ahead to the Constitutional Convention: having just won independence, the Founding Fathers had a very good idea by then of precisely what they didn’t want any more of, and they spelled it out in a document that doesn’t empower government, but which clearly limits government. Nioce move.

Language such as Congress shall make no law... and shall not be infringed are pretty clear in delineating what was not wanted anymore, what they just got through escaping.

Jump to the present.

In running their households, couples, singles and others plan for life insurance, medical coverage, budget, vacations, everything else. We like to run our kitchens our way.

But the most neglected issue is how a household will anticipate and manage violent crime.

At present, though crime does not reach all households, crime to others affects you in terms of enforcement, incarceration, recidivism, court costs, probation, debate, redirection of fiscal assets, legislative time and energy... Well, the list goes on, doesn’t it?

More precisely, how this affects the impartial or those opposed to carrying weapons is this: a no-weapons policy for others ties the hands of everyone’s willingness to keep their own encounters with violence from escalating. This changes communities, including those in which the impartial reside. Call it a blowback if you like.

This is the point: the individual can keep aggression from escalating when they are on their own as we all are. Tying the hands of others takes the choice out of the hands of other heads of their households and removes the ability of others to de-escalate a dangerous situation. No choice.

No matter what you believe about violence, having a would-be-victim in charge of an incident de-escalates the situation.

More than 2.5 million times a year, individual citizens thwart a crime by the use of a gun, and often without firing a shot. The significance is this: most, if not all of those incidents (as reported to the FBI annually by law enforcement agencies) report citizen involvement in keeping a lid on things, which is to keep the incident from escalating.

In the life of a person who could have been murdered, this is everything. It is also just.

2.5 million times a year.

That is fifty-three times the number of persons shot by criminal activity. Not murdered with all weapons, but specifically shot. The good, practical and proper use of a gun outnumbers the criminal/accidental use of a gun 53 to 1.

Most crimes are not solved, and when they are, law enforcement commonly finds a great deal of previously committed crimes in the individual’s past.

Most murders are not solved.

And in those states which are liberty friendly, they have not regretted placing their trust in their constituents. Presently, two-thirds of the states carry weapons. Vermont and Alaska have no opposition at all, and do not require a person to obtain a permit.

How an anti-gun (anti-liberty) policy to others affects the rest of the nation is in disarming the law-abiding without ever reaching the criminal.

The important part is that about 2.5 million times a year, the citizen reaches the criminal alright (or the criminal reaches the citizen) in an encounter the citizen doesn’t permit to escalate.

This is good for the household and it's good for the country.

Indifference to the issue, being impartial, and hysteria over shoot-outs or vigilanteism permits the anti-liberty crowd (and criminals) to gain more ground every day, each making a living on the issue. Peer pressure, disinformation, media slanting of news reports, increasingly intrusive rules and impositions, and even punishing self-defense as in the costal liberal states all work against all of us, sooner or later reaching even those who thought no-guns for anybody is a good thing. It's not, because a no-guns policy (such as bans) will never stop the criminal from getting or using one. It never has and it never will.

This grants a freer hand to the criminal, because criminals don’t obey laws.

It all works to reach the household in a massive transfer of wealth in supporting anti-crime costs as mentioned above, even further as new rules punish moral response, and in personal loss, of course, when a homeowner mistakenly chooses non-resistance; the victim's overly generous mis-read of their intruder/aggressor can turn a foray for a quick snatch of CD’s into a rape or murder in a moment. Often it does, tens of thousands of time a year. The condition escalates due to non-resistance.

The net effect is that it can destroy all that you have worked for.

And it is entirely unnecessary.

How can a head of a household address the issue?

By making the more informed, practical decision on devotion to the home over the emotional, ineffectual decision of avoidance/denial of the unsavory realities, i.e. violence. Anti-conflict propaganda has turned a lot of otherwise courageous persons into advocates of non-resistance. Translation: transfer of wealth by consent. This erodes what will be handed down to our children in terms of knowledge of history, values of personal strength and general product of hard work.

By treating violent crime as an issue to be managed like any other issue for the management and well-being of your household, you’ve begun. Think eventuality, like you think eventuality or contingency in illness, unemployment and other contingencies. Households face those, why not treat violent crime the same way?

It empowers the household; indifference puts the household at the mercy not only of the aggressor, but of the misguided system as well, as PC legislation mounts without very much protest on the record from homeowners. The consequences of ignoring new legislation and of non-preparedness are painful and irrevocable.

Let’s go over some of this preparedness thumbnail. I like those classes offered by Department Of Justice certified instructors. First on the list is to be alert.

Individuals need to be aware of their surroundings inside the home and outside the home, and to develop a sense of suspicion, anticipation, and readability of potentially dangerous clues oftentimes available in nearly any environment. Learn how to develop a subtle radar and keep it on.

Going to the store could become a mugging or worse. For many, it certainly has been, and if you believe that crime can’t move to your neighborhood, or that a mugging is something you can absorb, please think again. Being alert can make all the difference in someone’s even selecting you or not.

Second is to be resolved. Being resolved means to understand the situation as a reality and to participate in mitigating it. For many who oppose violence and conflict, I strongly suggest you dump that notion fast, and understand that your personal resistance can save your life, which, itself, may play a big part in the life of another. You can effect the outcome of your encounter.

Kidnaping the head of a household is as popular as ever. Carjacking is a reality, too. The responsible adult point of view is that you have others to think of – and that you and they figure first over the so-called needs of your aggressor. What if your aggressor completes the acts he’s started? How will it profoundly change your household?

For those who believe that a mugging is a small event, understand that muggings have a way of escalating into battery, and that batteries have a way of escalating into serious injury.

Violence is often the product of moral resistance meeting aggression. Sometimes violence is also aggression meeting no resistance at all and prevailing.

Often, often enough, your moral resistance is necessary for the sake of your household, and if you have loved ones, you owe them, and your neighborhood, the resolve to take care of yourself courageously. It's one of the ingredients that makes a community a community.

Resolve means to elect to not be a victim.

What sort of plan of action do you have? You can run, which experts advocate (don’t worry about your ego, just be smart) and if you can’t run, you can resist. You can scratch and you can bite (Bruce Lee advocated biting) or you can train to carry a weapon to utilize the 21-foot rule and other conventions to protect your life.

Understand that, most often, the only language an aggressor understands is superior force; in your life, in your neighborhood, who do you want to have the superior force: the aggressors or the homeowners? Think about it.

Without your having a plan or not being alert, an aggressor's bare hands can be superior force enough for rape, robbery, mayhem or murder. Non-shooting injuries and murders of beatings, knifings, number in the millions. How many more would there be without people refusing the allow the incident to escalate?

Finally, every household needs to understand and remember its own existing legal authority in managing criminal violence. Whether it’s a gun or a shocking device, a German Shepherd, a baseball bat, or the heel of your wife’s shoe – individuals already have the legal authority in most states of the union to use lethal force under certain conditions. [One state makes it a crime to remain in your home and to resist an intruder; would you like to live there? What’s the physics behind that?? How does this affect those households?]

The household must understand that legislation seemingly aimed at reducing gun violence too often applies also to any other resistance you might apply, gun or not. This is not good for the household. In obtaining community support for such no-gun legislation, a community can unknowingly give away it's right to protect itself even without guns.

One of the biggest obstacles to utilizing this authority is the erroneous believe that only the police can do these things. Individual citizens may do many things in their own defense in the absence of police. Sometimes it’s hard to go through this within the legal system after the fact, yes, but at least the individual is alive and able to go on. And that could be everything.

Crime is not a cost of doing business in a free society.

What will you do in time of violent crime? Learn and plan what’s right for you.

Take training from weapons professionals offering courses to individuals, even though you may not wish to own a weapon. Contact Department Of Justice certified Instructors to learn about special courses in how to defend the home and person away from home. Prices are most reasonable. The courses are most illuminating, even if you choose not to own a gun or wish no one would own a gun.

Though you may elect not to own a gun, you can learn a lot about the legal and practical methods of protecting your home in time of crime, not locking doors but in managing an aggressive encounter -- what you may do and what you may not do; many homeowners do not know these among the choices they have.

What makes all of this necessary is that – as I often mention – police have no mandate to protect individuals. Never did. And to add another affirmation to the books, the Supreme Court of the United States held on June 27th, 2005 in Castle Rock v. Gonzales that we’re all basically on our own.

But then, we’re adults. Heads of households.

In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter whether official imposition is well-meaning or sinister; the net effect is the same: disarming the law-abiding will never reach the criminal, and disarming the law-abiding makes us utterly defenseless. Officials have an interest in keeping this crisis alive.

How we protect our households – the household as the stronghold of resistance to adversity – is entirely up to us. We need to do this unfettered.

Whether guns and personal resistance in keeping a situation from escalating are praised or infringed is a real clue on whether we will self-govern.

Or not.

Does that answer the question?

______________________________________

John Longenecker is author of The Battle We Fight - Battling Potomac Fever To Recapture Our Homes And Communities available at online booksellers. His website is www.NationwideConcealedCarry.com

_______________________

August TALKRADIO Bookings . . .

August 3rd, 2005
KGDP/660 AM - Jim Zimmer
California Central Coast - 4 p.m. PST

August 9th, 2005, 6.am. PST
Mark Shannon, The Morning Show
WKY, SuperTalk 930
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

August 8th, 2005
Mike Thomas, Livewire on KWRE, St. Louis MO
9 a.m. Central Time

August 10th, WVKO Columbus, OH
WHAT’S WHAT with Mike Cole
2:00 p.m. PST

August 11th, 2005
WLVL, Buffalo, NY
DIALOG with Scott Leffler
6 a.m. PST

August 12th, 2005
WICH, AM 1310 - Norwich, CT -
The Mark Wayne Show
8 a.m. Eastern

August 18th, 2005 at 2 p.m. PST
Drive Time with Roy Brassfield
WKCT NEWSTALK/93, Bowling Green, Kentucky

Aug. 31st WVNE, 760 AM - Worcester, MA
Engaging Your World with Tom Crouse
10 a.m. PST

________________________________

S.357 Keeps The K in Kalifornia.

Today, FOX News.com reported nationally on the movement of S.357 in Kalifornia. (I spell California with a K whenever it exhibits such oppressive tactics as this one.) Visit That FOX News piece here.

Kalifornia’s S.357 calls for the semi-automatic handguns, such as those worn by police officers and owned by millions of law-abiding givers in society, to be designated as ‘unsafe’ by the year 2009 if their ammunition is not stamped with a serial number "as they fire", which weapon must be in compliance by Jan 1st, ‘09. For the millions of weapons already in the hands of law-abiding, I don’t know how those owners will comply.

Assuming the technology is actually usable – workable and reliable as evidence, which, I trust, is its feel-good intent – this legislation is oppressive for a few reasons. I’ll start with my best evidence argument here, which any adult, including public servants, should already know:

1. Criminals don’t obey the law.

For all the professional experience of the Sacramento, Kalifornia public servants supporting this bill, they’ve shown a profound conflict in hating liberty and America by failing to remember that, no matter what law Kalifornia writes, it will never reach the criminal. It will affect only law-abiding, those safe to insult and vex, and making the law abiding criminal is what put and what keeps the K in Kalifornia.

This will stop violent crime?

No, it will not, and here’s why it will not only not stop violent crime, but make things harder on people who don’t commit crimes. Here is also how it affects you: it can name an innocent person for indictment. It has an intimidation effect on the givers in our society, those who don’t commit crime.

[Author’s note: I don’t mean to imply that gun owners lack courage, but that most very thoughtfully and fully understand the effects of this in terms of legal uncertainties, legal expenses, time investment to answer filings, the idea of facing gun confiscation, general punishing of their resistance and other realities; there are their families to think of; this is the intimidation of the K in Kalifornia. This is unethical for anyone who has taken an oath of office.]

FOX News.com understates the oppressive nature of such legislation as that legislation intentionally targets again those who will usually take it, bite the bullet, so to speak, and try to live with it against the backdrop of costly and painful punishment and for what?

What have the law-abiding done to merit this legislation which will affect only the law-abiding?

2. Bullets are already traceable to the owner of the gun. The bullet is the projectile portion of an intact fixed cartridge, the casing being the container which houses the primer and the powder. The striker pin strikes the flexible primer which ignites the powder which then drives with explosive force the bullet down the channeled interior of the barrel. As the bullet travels, it changes shape, adapting somewhat to the lands and grooves inside the barrel, emerging with a unique etching reflecting the interior of that unique barrel.

But, as FOX reported, "Forensics investigators currently have the ability to match the unique signature on every bullet to the gun it was fired from. The problem then becomes, for detectives and law enforcement, finding the gun itself and the person who fired it."

Oh, yeah? Think again, please. You’d still have that problem. It is not the casing that kills, but the bullet, and there is no scientific or evidentiary way to connect a spent casing in time or discharge event to a criminal shooting as anticipated it would in S. 357 when the casing is stamped but the bullet is only rifled. How do you know the casing found matches a bullet found? How do you know the casing found even matches a criminal act? How do you know when that casing was spent?

Case in point: barrels change with time and use, and barrels can be legally changed by their owners. There goes your ballistics match as one part of the equation vanishes.

There is also the question of when the casing was ejected on discharge and how it is factually connected with any single bullet recovered. Casings are more easily recoverable, and, if introduced as evidence, do they prove the shooter? Can they be placed to frame an innocent person? One can fire ten rounds or two rounds which could be days apart. In proving perhaps the identity of the owner, and in trying to pin down a timeline, how does this prove the identity of the shooter?

It does not. S.357 puts law enforcement no closer to the identity of a shooter than it was before. The only thing they could ascertain is the Owner, but not the shooter, even when the casing in fact furnishes a lead. It then becomes intimidation not of the criminal, but of the lawful.

For individuals against crime, they sure have found, for their own use, a new weapon of intimidation.

Brilliant, Kalifornia, just brilliant. When Kalifornia tries to hit the target of crime, it misses and hits an innocent bystander again.

And for people so ardent and unrelenting on the issue of loopholes for lawful gun purchases, Kalifornia sure is stupid on the subject of how criminals can elude legal technicalities simply by not obeying them.

Brilliant.

3. What if the anticipated criminal simply uses a revolver? Lots of criminals use revolvers. What if criminals went with shotguns, or just went with currently banned rifles? How do you reach criminals who use a knife?

Criminals don’t obey laws, no matter what you write. They just won’t use an automatic from now on (as if they were the legal owner of that weapon anyway! As if they cared!) and Kalifornia has then managed to harass lawful owners again, innocent bystanders.

[Another Note: Criminals flee the scene and don't hang around a shooting like a law abiding person would in a self-defense situation he/she could explain and prove. How in the world, Kalifornia, do you expect this legislation even to touch criminals?]

4. Now, what about current police weapons? Police departments buy new weapons all the time – automatics – and will probably buy them in 2009, too; sometimes police shootings need to be investigated with the best tools and technology available; will all of their weapons meet the new law? What if they don’t? For police shootings, it would be positively useful, in many ways even more useful. (If you have a known shooter, the officer, at a known incident, matching up who shot whom could be most useful.)

My suggestion is to impose this on law enforcement as a test with known shootings and known shooters before imposing anything on the givers of society. See if it really works first, then we’ll talk.

I’ve already discussed previously how this would apply to confiscated weapons which oftentimes move into private collections, and the adverse impact it will have on the munitions industry, which supplies, by the way, law enforcement. If some of those providors go bankrupt, how will that affect crime?

I’ve already addressed stolen weapons; How does this law prove the identity of the shooter if, say, they steal Dianne Feinstein’s weapon? Will she be exempt somehow?

Then there’s reloaded ammunition. Millions of owners reload their own, and many do not buy new guns; is S.357 going to criminalize weapons already in the ownership of individuals who reload their own ammo and who do not buy ammo covered under Kalifornia's companion bill calling for the numbering and registration of cartridges sold? How will that reach criminals?

In fact, how are such weapons to be deemed ‘unsafe’ in the first place, today, only to be deemed safe later with a new law that applies only to the law-abiding? How is the weapon in the hands of the criminal shooter made safer by S.357?

It isn’t safer. A weapon in the hands of the criminal is no safer to a community in 2009 than it is today, no matter what law Kalifornia writes.

In the area that needs the most attention - violent crime - how will this law ever reach the people committing the violent crimes?

Brilliant, Kalifornia, just brilliant.

As I’ve mentioned, anyone who is against guns — especially when it profoundly affects the law-abiding and never touches the criminals – is against liberty, because they will not let law-abiding people be. For all its genius, transparent underhandedness and pure hatred for our way of life here, it all amounts to wasting resources and harassing people it’s so comfortably safe to harass – law-abiding.

But if we were really asking a more germane question, such as meeting crime more directly, could we reach a more effective solution for the overall goal?

Why not focus on citizen involvement in time of violent crime?

Thumbnail, more than two-thirds of the states support concealed carry of handguns. (What makes Kalifornia so smart?) In America, individual citizens thwart a crime in progress more than 2.5 million times every year, compared to the 47,000 shootings per year. That’s a lot of non-violent numbers of handling violent crime, more than 53 to 1.

Experts point out that resisting improves chances of non-injury and uncompleted acts. That's something that's understated a lot. Where do you come down on that?

Finally, of course, you’ve heard me say this before: police have no mandate to protect individuals; police cannot always arrive within a life-saving response time.

Concealed carry states have no so-called curbside justice, shoot-outs, blood in the streets or any of the other hysterical predictions. It’s a lot less action, sure, but a lot more safety, and apprehending bad guys just bringing them to justice to begin is a lot more thanwhat Kalifornia has found so far. Kalifornia hasn't done a darned thing right in fighting crime.

With more than 7,000 Los Angeles County felons unlocatable by their Parole Officers as of Spring, 2005 compounding the numbers of us against them, there will never be enough officers to protect people.

I have two words for Kalifornia: Gerry Ortiz. Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Ortiz was (allegedly) shot and killed by a man who should have been in jail still serving.

And with the Supreme Court’s ruling of Castle Rock v. Gonzales on June 27th, the Supremes' reiteration is that we’re on our own anyway. Have been since the inception of law enforcement in 1845. (Police never did have a duty to protect individuals since the very inception of law enforcement.)

The key to successfully battling violent crime is to untie the hands of the law-abiding where Hornbook, Black Letter Law recognizes self-defense on the one hand, but mounting and mounting, counterproductive legislation taketh away with the other.

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John Longenecker is author of The Battle We Fight – Battling Potomac Fever To Recapture Our Homes And Communities, available at all online booksellers. His website is www.NationwideConcealedCarry.com


This month’s Talkradio bookings . . .

August 3rd, 2005
KGDP/660 AM - Jim Zimmer
California Central Coast - 4 p.m. PST

August 9th, 2005, 6.am. PST
Mark Shannon, The Morning Show
WKY, SuperTalk 930
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

August 8th, 2005
Mike Thomas, Livewire on KWRE, St. Louis MO
9 a.m. Central Time

August 12th, 2005
WICH, Norwich, CT - The Mark Wayne Show
8 a.m. Eastern

August 18th, 2005 at 2 p.m. PST
Drive Time with Roy Brassfield
WKCT NEWSTALK/93, Bowling Green, Kentucky