SaveOurGuns.com

Gun seized after Katrina - Target - the law abiding citizen (easy targets): It's about the Bill of Rights.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4

A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden.

Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that countryÃÔ current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent.

President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine!
...
But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or theyÃÍl kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

Former FBI director J Edgar Hoover had a plan to arrest 12,000 Americans he deemed a possible threat to national security, declassified papers reveal.
The FBI chief sent his proposal to US President Harry Truman just after the start of the Korean War in 1950, The New York Times newspaper reports.

He asked the president to declare the mass arrest necessary to counter "treason, espionage and sabotage".

There is no evidence any part of the plan was ever approved.

Mr Hoover wanted the president to suspend the centuries-old legal right of habeas corpus, which protects individuals against unlawful arrest.

The FBI director planned to detain the suspects - whose list of names he had been compiling for years - in US military and federal prisons.

"The index now contains approximately 12,000 individuals, of which approximately 97% are citizens of the United States," wrote Mr Hoover, in the now declassified document.

The New York Times gave no details about the identities of those targeted.

The US Department of State declassified the plan, along with other Cold War-era documents from 1950-55 this week.

Congress has given gun owners in America a Christmas gift: a blade in the back, according to officials with Gun Owners of America.

The organization said the plan supported by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and others, and known as the Veterans Disarmament Act by opponents, is being forwarded now to President Bush.

While other gun groups have endorsed H.R. 2640, a comprehensive plan to expand the powers of the Brady Bill gun restriction plan, Gun Owners of America has opposed it vigorously, and described its provisions for banning individuals, especially veterans, from owning guns as unreasonable.

"The core of the bill's problems is section 101(c)(1)(C), which makes you a 'prohibited person' on the basis of a 'medical finding of disability,' so long as a veteran had an 'opportunity' for some sort of 'hearing' before some 'lawful authority' (other than a court)," the organization said in a new criticism of the plan. "Presumably, this 'lawful authority' could even be the psychiatrist himself," the organization said.

(Story continues below)

The National Rifle Association has done it.

Again.

Having advertised itself for more than a century as the nation's foremost defender of the Second Amendment, the NRA has once again given aid and comfort to politicians -- all of the "usual suspects": Carolyn McCarthy, Charles Schumer, Patrick Leahy, Harry Reid, and that perennial Judas goat John Dingell -- as well as to pressure groups like the Brady Campaign, who are determined to destroy that right, by assisting passage of a law with the potential to strip hundreds of thousands of military veterans of their basic right to own and carry weapons.

This latest slap in the gun owner's face by the overstuffed suits at the NRA -- the same gang who eagerly signed off on the Gun Control Act of 1968, despite its origins in Hitler's Germany -- establishes the "principle" that individuals with the slightest of mental health "problem" (anyone, for instance, who ever sought professional help for mild depression or difficulty sleeping) have no inalienable right to self-defense.

(For more information on the Nazi roots of the 1968 Gun Control Act, be sure to see Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny, available at: http://shop.jpfo.org/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=24)

For politicians, it's a payoff: precisely the response they wished for, to the latest series of what more and more observers now believe (however reluctantly) are purposely contrived incidents in which armed criminals feel free to attack crowds of people they know are unarmed and helpless because the law -- and some corporate policies -- demand it.

For the psychiatric profession, it enshrines their practitioners as powerful arbiters of who may or may not exercise their individual rights.

For America's gun owners, it's just another aspect of the long, continuous, cruel hoax perpetrated by the NRA, which collects millions of dollars in membership money under the false pretense of defending rights that they have proven willing to bargain away on the slightest excuse.

In doing so, they have empowered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to commit larger and more frequent atrocities of the kind we've become so familiar with over the years. Given past behavior, it would not be above them to pay informants, including those psychiatrists, who will attest to anybody's mental instability, trusting to the increasingly crooked court system to back the Bureau up.

(To learn more about BATFE history, strategy, and tactics, see the JPFO documentary The Gang. Go to: http://www.TheGangMovie.com )

Don't let the NRA suits put a fancy spin on it, it's really very straightforward: first, there was no extra gun law; then there was one -- thanks to the NRA. The last thing this country needs is another gun law. It already has 25,000. It needs to start repealing them. All of them.

There's no way to avoid a simple but apalling truth: the NRA's crawling into bed with the Brady Campaign is exactly like the Anti-Defamation League endorsing the American Nazi Party, unthinkable, unspeakable, and disgusting. And, given the vital role that privately owned arms have played historically and currently in reducing violent crime and deterring foreign aggression, it is probably treason, as well.

Weak, submissive behavior of this kind is not the way for Second Amendment defenders to enter an era of liberal Democratic political dominance.

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership calls upon NRA President John C. Sigler, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, Executive Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action Chris W. Cox (and any of the 75-member board of directors who approves their reprehensible actions) to resign their positions, forfeiting all pensions or "golden parachutes". Not for the first time, by helping to pass yet another infringement of our rights, these people have brought shame upon themselves, their organization, on gun owners everywhere, and especially their country and the Constitution that is its highest law.

~The Liberty Crew
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Other links of interest .........

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/19/national/main3633663.shtml
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=5571
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071220/pl_nm/usa_guns_dc

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mirror Site: JPFO.net
All Rights Reserved 2006 JPFO

P.O. Box 270143 | Hartford, WI 53027
Phone (262) 673-9745 | Fax (262) 673-9746 | jpfo@jpfo.org

CLARKSBURG, W. Va. -- The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.

Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement here. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas E. Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, which operates the database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.

The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. Critics say that such government initiatives should not proceed without proof that the technology really can pick a criminal out of a crowd....

In order to bring about a North American Union (NAU), the public first has to be conditioned to think of themselves as North Americans. In that regard, Thomas Donohue (president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) on June 16, 2006 remarked that "for CEOs, North America is already a single market, and business decisions are no longer made with a Mexico strategy---or a Canada strategy---but, rather, with a North American strategy....I think it's pretty clear now that it no longer makes sense to talk about U.S. competitiveness and Mexican competitiveness---or, for that matter, about the competitiveness of Canada. We are all in this together---we, as North Americans."
...

Gun Owners Get Stabbed In The Back
-- Veterans Disarmament Act on its way to the President

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm

------------------------------------------------------------------

"To me, this is the best Christmas present I could ever receive" --
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), CBS News, December 20, 2007

------------------------------------------------------------------

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Gun Owners of America and its supporters took a knife in the back
yesterday, as Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) out-smarted his
congressional opposition into agreeing on a so-called
"compromise" on
HR 2640 -- a bill which now goes to the President's desk.

The bill -- known as the Veterans Disarmament Act to its opponents --
is being praised by the National Rifle Association and the Brady
Campaign.

The Brady Bunch crowed "Victory! U.S. Congress Strengthens Brady
Background Check System." The NRA stated that last minute changes to
the McCarthy bill made a "good bill even better [and that] the end
product is a win for American gun owners."

But Gun Owners of America has issued public statements decrying this
legislation.

The core of the bill's problems is section 101(c)(1)(C), which makes
you a "prohibited person" on the basis of a "medical
finding of
disability," so long as a veteran had an "opportunity"
for some sort
of "hearing" before some "lawful authority" (other
than a court).
Presumably, this "lawful authority" could even be the psychiatrist
himself.

Note that unlike with an accused murderer, the hearing doesn't have
to occur. The "lawful authority" doesn't have to be unbiased. The
veteran is not necessarily entitled to an attorney -- much less an
attorney financed by the government.

So what do the proponents have to say about this?

ARGUMENT: The Veterans Disarmament Act creates new avenues for
prohibited persons to seek restoration of their gun rights.

ANSWER: What the bill does is to lock in -- statutorily -- huge
numbers of additional law-abiding Americans who will now be denied
the right to own a firearm.

And then it "graciously" allows these newly disarmed Americans to
spend tens of thousands of dollars for a long-shot chance to regain
the gun rights this very bill takes away from them.

More to the point, what minimal gains were granted by the "right
hand" are taken away by the "left." Section 105 provides
a process
for some Americans diagnosed with so-called mental disabilities to
get their rights restored in the state where they live. But then, in
subsection (a)(2), the bill stipulates that such relief may occur
only if "the person will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous
to public safety and that the GRANTING OF THE RELIEF WOULD NOT BE
CONTRARY TO THE PUBLIC INTEREST." (Emphasis added.)

Um, doesn't this language sound similar to those state codes (like
California's) that have "may issue" concealed carry laws -- where
citizens "technically" have the right to carry, but state law only
says that sheriffs MAY ISSUE them a permit to carry? When given such
leeway, those sheriffs usually don't grant the permits!

Prediction: liberal states -- the same states that took these
people's rights away -- will treat almost every person who has been
illegitimately denied as a danger to society and claim that granting
relief would be "contrary to the public interest."

Let's make one thing clear: the efforts begun during the Clinton
Presidency to disarm battle-scarred veterans -- promoted by the Brady
Anti-Gun Campaign -- is illegal and morally reprehensible.

But section 101(c)(1)(C) of HR 2640 would rubber-stamp those illegal
actions. Over 140,000 law-abiding veterans would be statutorily
barred from possessing firearms.

True, they can hire a lawyer and beg the agency that took their
rights away to voluntarily give them back. But the agency doesn't
have to do anything but sit on its hands. And, after 365 days of
inaction, guess what happens? The newly disarmed veteran can spend
thousands of additional dollars to sue. And, as the plaintiff, the
wrongly disarmed veteran has the burden of proof.

Language proposed by GOA would have automatically restored a
veteran's gun rights if the agency sat on its hands for a year.
Unfortunately, the GOA amendment was not included.

The Veterans Disarmament Act passed the Senate and the House
yesterday -- both times WITHOUT A RECORDED VOTE. That is, the bill
passed by Unanimous Consent, and was then transmitted to the White
House.

Long-time GOA activists will remember that a similar "compromise"
deal helped the original Brady Law get passed. In 1993, there were
only two or three senators on the floor of that chamber who used a
Unanimous Consent agreement (with no recorded vote) to send the Brady
bill to President Clinton -- at a time when most legislators had
already left town for their Thanksgiving Break.

Gun owners can go to http://www.gunowners.org/news/nws9402.htm to
read about how this betrayal occurred 14 years ago.

With your help, Gun Owners of America has done a yeoman's job of
fighting gun control over the years, considering the limited
resources that we have. Together, we were able to buck the Brady
Campaign/NRA coalition in 1999 (after the Columbine massacre) and
were able to defeat the gun control that was proposed in the wake of
that shooting.

Yesterday, we were not so lucky. But we are not going to go away.
GOA wants to repeal the gun-free zones that disarm law-abiding
Americans and repeal the other gun restrictions that are on the
books. That is the answer to Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, the
House and Senate chose the path of imposing more gun control.

So our appeal to you is this -- please help us to grow this coming
year. Please help us to get more members and activists. If you add
$10 to your membership renewal this year, we can reach new gun owners
in the mail and tell them about GOA.

Please urge your friends to join GOA... and, at the very least, make
sure they sign up for our free e-mail alerts so that we can mobilize
more gun owners than ever before!

********

A Minnesota community college has "a Muslim place of worship" featuring "a schedule for Islam's five daily prayers," according to a local newspaper columnist who visited the campus.

Tax-supported Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn., also has a "sign requesting that shoes be removed" and a barrier that divides men's and women's "prayer spaces," writes Katherine Kersten of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
,,,,

Katherine Kersten: Normandale's 'meditation room' is home to a single faith
By Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune

Last week, I visited a Muslim place of worship. A schedule for Islam's five daily prayers was posted at the entrance, near a sign requesting that shoes be removed. Inside, a barrier divided men's and women's prayer space, an arrow informed worshippers of the direction of Mecca, and literature urged women to cover their faces.

Sound like a mosque?

The place I'm describing is the "meditation room" at Normandale Community College, a 9,200-student public institution in Bloomington.

Until recently, the room was the school's only usable racquetball court. College administrators converted the court into a meditation room when construction forced closure of the previous meditation room.

A row of chest-high barriers splits the room into sex-segregated sections. In the smaller, enclosed area for women sits a pile of shawls and head-coverings. Literature titled "Hijaab [covering] and Modesty" was prominently placed there, instructing women on proper Islamic behavior.

They should cover their faces and stay at home, it said, and their speech should not "be such that it is heard."

"Enter into Islaam completely and accept all the rulings of Islaam," the tract read in part. "It should not be that you accept what entertains your desires and leave what opposes your desires; this is from the manners of the Jews."

"[T]he Jews and the Christians" are described as "the enemies of Allaah's religion." The document adds: "Remember that you will never succeed while you follow these people."
....

From Aaron Zelman, Executive Director Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership www.JPFO.org

Dear friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens:

Most of us remember vividly the way that an entire church full of people, including more than two dozen children, were burned to death in 1993, or died in other ways, while under seige by the Federal Bureaus of Investigation, and Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

In the wake of that and many other BATFE abuses of the unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human rights, in essence, of every man, woman, and responsible child in America, Congress has rebuked this rogue agency often, and often, reforms of various kinds have been promised. Yet somehow, these reforms never quite seem to materialize.

For the past year, for example, a man named Michael Sullivan has been Acting Director of the BATFE, and has made no effort to curb its abuses. Indeed, he has promised to "work with" notorious anti-Second Amendment politicians like Senator Edward M. Kennedy on "gun control" issues.

Judges are complaining of sloppy briefs and missed deadlines in Sullivan's office, but the situation is vastly darker than that. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf, to name just one example, castigated Sullivan recently for tying up the courts with penny-ante street-crime cases.

Unimaginably worse, U.S. District Court Judge William Young has hammered Sullivan's office for evincing "a moral code more suited to the alleys of Baghdad than the streets of Boston" and for adopting a mindset that "reveals such callous indifference to innocent human life as would gag any fair-minded observer." One can't help thinking about Waco.

Sullivan has often stated with typical arrogance, that he doesn't care if he annoys judges. By his reckoning, the more cases one has gotten to trial, the more successful one has been, so he just keeps on pushing more and more cases through each year, in the process racking up some of the longest average sentences of any U.S. attorney in the country.

These days, that's regarded as a good thing.

Go to: http://preview.tinyurl.com/yo8zfb or for full url for direct access ..........

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/maximum_mike_goes_to_washington/

In at least one recent case, when a licensed firearms dealer contacted Sullivan regarding BATFE management practices, the Acting Director responded by sending a pair of armed inspectors to do a "thorough inspection" of the man's records. Even if this inspection had been a legitimate operation, rather than the fascistic retaliatory exercise that it apparently was, inspectors are not supposed to be armed.

Except, of course, as a naked, brutal, authoritarian threat.

Acting Director Sullivan has been fully aware, since taking over at BATFE, of the bureau's use of illegitimate evidence on a scale that surpasses even the bullet-testing and DNA scandals of the FBI, yet he continues to countenance these corrupt practices. Is this what "working with Kennedy on gun control issues" consists of? How can a citizen conform his behavior with the law when no objective test standards exist to see if non-conformance with the law has actually occurred?

Sullivan has also continued a Clinton-era policy of eliminating as many firearms dealers and manufacturers from the rolls of federal licensees as possible. Confronted with the number of dealers being shut down in this manner, he stated, "There is no correlation between the dramatic decrease of nearly 150,000 licensees, and BATFE revocation actions." This, despite the fact that revocations are up nearly six-fold from the 2001 to 2006 period, according to the March/April 2007 issue of Shooting Sports Retailer magazine, page 19.

Meanwhile, Sullivan has ignored requests from Congress and the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General to implement fines and suspensions, rather than just revoking dealers licenses outright.

Why should anyone -- especially members of the non-shooting public -- be concerned over this? Because, as more and more individuals have armed themselves and taken to carrying concealed weapons over the past 30 years or so, America's violent crime rate has plummeted. This means that those individuals who do carry weapons -- as well as those who provide them -- are "net social benefactors". Shutting down firearms dealers is exactly like machinegunning firefighters or paramedics -- a stupid, evil, insane, and antisocial policy, being carried out in your name.

And at your expense.

Sullivan -- who has also been criticized by judges for "going for the jugular" as a U.S. Attorney to establish his career, rather than take plea bargains to avoid tying up the courts and wasting the taxpayers' money in the process -- now continues an old police state tradition by disobeying court orders to return confiscated property and ignoring recurring requests to speak with him about that and other issues.

Here at JPFO, we're curious. Is the head of BATFE fully aware of the Nazi origins of the principal law he is enforcing, and under the aegis of which, he justifies the excesses of his agency, the Gun Control Act of 1968 -- rammed through Congress with the help of the mass media by the corrupt and discredited Senator Thomas Dodd? Does Sullivan approve of that law -- and its origins -- or will he announce an investigation into the sleazy details and circumstances of its passage?

Three guesses and the first two don't count.

Perhaps worst of all, while Sullivan tells representatives of groups like the National Rifle Association one thing -- recently that he would not share "trace request data" with other individuals and agencies -- at the same time, he tells known enemies of the right to keep and bear arms, like Senator Charles Schumer, "I'm optimistic that there will be even more information available than provided in the past."

Even one of the man's former colleages says about him, "If anything ever happens that requires leadership at the BATFE, and Mike Sullivan is at the helm, it's going to be a sad day." A sad day, indeed.

Now, Sullivan's nomination -- by supposedly "gun-friendly" George W. Bush -- to a permanent appointment as the head of the BATFE, is up for U.S. Senate consideration. We are extremely fortunate, thus far, that it has been put on temporary hold by one courageous Senator, but pressure is mounting for him to relent, and to permit the nomination to proceed. Believe it or not, Jews of the Preservation of Firearms Ownership is forbidden by law from suggesting what you should do about this.

It is more than a little ironic that while the government claims to be protecting Americans from terrorists and something they call "Islamofascism" -- significantly, by increasingly curtailing our individual rights and civil liberties -- it is subjecting all of us, through individuals like Michael Sullivan and through agencies like the BATFE, to state terrorism and fascism entirely of the homegrown variety.

When you have to ask yourself who's the greater threat to life, liberty, and property, Al Qaeda or your own government, things are a mess.

Sincerely,

Aaron Zelman Executive Director Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership www.JPFO.org

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mirror Site: JPFO.net
All Rights Reserved 2006 JPFO

P.O. Box 270143 | Hartford, WI 53027
Phone (262) 673-9745 | Fax (262) 673-9746 | jpfo@jpfo.org

Former Border Patrol agent Gary Brugman has begun a new life as the owner of a new MATCO Tools franchise, following a 24-month sentence in federal prison for a minor scuffle with an illegal alien at the U.S. border in January 2001, an offense for which he was prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton.

"For many years after what happened to me, I lost faith in the United States of America," Brugman told WND.

"But today is a whole new day for me," he continued. "I now realize that when you say the United States of America, you don't mean the government. The United States of America is 'We the People.'"

"I would not be sitting here today in the cab of this truck in my new business if it weren't for the people," Brugman said.
...

Comment: Government employees catering to a foreign government, and Americans are paying for it!

Comment: English... is our language, NOT mexican or spanish etc... .

CORAL GABLES, Fla. The Republican presidential candidates sought to embrace Hispanics in a Spanish language debate, striving to mark common ground with a growing voter bloc while softening the anti-illegal immigration rhetoric that has marked their past encounters.
...

DENVER The female security guard who shot and stopped a gunman at a Colorado Springs church yesterday is crediting God for helping her to resolve the threat by killing the assailant...

"This has got to be God, because of the firepower that [the gunman] had vs. what I had was God. I did not run away and I didn't think for a minute to run away, I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse. I just prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide me." ...
"I heard shots fired. It was chaos. There were a lot of people in the church," she described.

"The halls cleared out and I saw him coming through the doors. I took cover, waited for him to get closer, came out of cover and identified myself, engaged him, took him down," she said.

Church officials said they have a contingent of volunteer security officers because of the high profile of the church.

"Obviously if we had not had an armed person on our campus, 50 or 100 people could have lost their lives," the pastor said. ...

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Eight more innocent
Americans have been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness at
Omaha's Westroads Mall this week, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to
Keep and Bear Arms said today that the real outrage of this crime is that it
happened in a "gun free zone" where law-abiding private citizens are disarmed
by mall rules and state statute.

"In the wake of this horrible crime," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, "gun
control extremists are already demanding more useless gun control legislation.
A prohibition on firearms at Westroads Mall did not stop Robert Hawkins, but
it did give him a risk-free environment in which to unleash his rampage."

Gottlieb, co-author of the recently released America Fights Back: Armed
Self-defense In A Violent Age, said the common link between virtually every
mass shooting in recent history in this country is that they all happened in
so-called "gun-free zones" such as shopping malls and college campuses. He and
co-author Dave Workman detail the colossal failure of this "Gun Free Folly" in
their new book.

"What happened at the Westroads Mall can happen anywhere that political
hysteria results in victim disarmament," Gottlieb stated. "Blaming firearms
for this crime is like blaming cars for drunk driving. The argument doesn't
wash. Published reports all suggest that Hawkins was troubled and had
emotional problems, and he reportedly had a felony drug conviction on his
record which prohibited him from owning firearms. This proves that restrictive
gun laws do not prevent determined perpetrators from getting their hands on
guns, but they do prevent law-abiding citizens from having the tools to defend
themselves.

"Remember that a similar shooting at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square earlier
this year was interrupted by an armed, off-duty police officer from another
city," Gottlieb said. "In essence, that man was an armed private citizen. In
Tacoma, Washington two years ago, an armed citizen confronted a gunman at the
Tacoma Mall and although he was seriously wounded, his intervention brought
the shooting to a halt.

"Gun owners, the gun industry, nor our constitutionally-protected individual
right to keep and bear arms are at fault for the Westroads outrage," he said,
"and the gun control lobby knows it. Restrictive laws that disarm honest
citizens and provide risk-free environments for criminals and lunatics are at
fault, and so are the people responsible for passing such laws and enforcing
such prohibitions.

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens
Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the
nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the
Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active
lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun
rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation

Alan Gottlieb of Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,
+1-425-454-4911

Many years ago, cartoonist Rex F. "Baloo" May and I tried to sell a daily comic strip to the newspaper syndicates called Atlantea the Beautiful. Ostensibly, it was about the final days before Atlantis sank beneath the waves, but it was actually a satire of contemporary American politics, being written and drawn during the George H.W. Bush Administration.

What's significant about it is the way we portrayed the Atlantean Supreme Court: nine old men in black dresses sitting atop a giant slot machine, as lawyers below jump up absurdly to pull the lever. Judging from the reactions in the media to the real court's decision to accept a case about the right to own and carry weapons, Rex and I were spot on.

A word here, first, about that right.

Despite the pathetic lies of ideological opponents to individual weapons ownership and the act of self-defense, what the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment to express is abundantly clear. All that anybody needs to understand it is to put himself in their position.

Imagine that you (as one of the Founders) have just astounded the world -- and probably yourself, as well -- by defeating the biggest, richest, most powerful and ruthless empire that our species has ever witnessed, in your fight for independence from it. You were able to do this because all but the poorest household in your tiny country was armed with a straighter- and farther-shooting weapon than the enemy possessed.

The last thing on Earth you ever want to see is your children, or your children's children back under the thumb of that brutal tyranny. If Imperial armies can be beaten by private armament, you can answer the question yourself: what do you want the Second Amendment to mean?

And, as a Founder, would you really agree that a right like this, "necessary to the security of a free state", can be regulated by the very entity that it may become necessary to defend one's family against?

Would it even occur to you -- especially since the Revolution started when the government attempted to confiscate privately-owned weapons -- to write a Constitutional amendment guranteeing to the government, not the individual, the right to keep an bear arms? Precisely how stupid or crazy do gun prohibitionists think everybody is?

And precisely what do these high-tax, anti-property rights schemers have planned for us, that they don't want us able to defend ourselves?

The present case, District of Columbia v. Heller -- not that the specifics actually matter -- is all about the District's outright prohibition of pistols and revolvers, and its ridiculous insistence that rifle and shotgun owners dismantle their weapons and lock them up. What's against the law in D.C. -- and it's perfectly apparent in that city's violent crime rate -- is not so much firearms themselves, but the successful act, always embarrassing to those in authority, of self-defense.

After all, If Americans can successfully defend themselves, then they'll need many fewer police officers, and hardly any bureaucrats at all.

But as many writers have already observed, there's a lot more at stake here than just another interpretation of the Second Amendment. The National Rifle Association believes (and for once in a very long while, I agree with them) that it was a strategic error of the highest magnitude to trust the right of the people to keep and bear arms -- or any other right, for that matter -- to a deeply-flawed body like the court.

Go to: http://tinyurl.com/2rhfdb

Also: http://www.jpfo.org/alerts/alert20070716.htm

The Second Amendment is "merely" one of ten, the first amendments to be added to the then-new American Constitution. Together, they comprise what is generally known as the Bill of Rights. They are the highest law of the land, and they were the price Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party -- those individuals who desired "a strong central government" -- was made to pay by Thomas Jefferson's Anti-Federalists, before the latter would consent to the entire Constitution being ratified.

It was considered a package deal.

Thus any Supreme Court ruling weakening the Second Amendment is, by logical necessity, a ruling weakening the other nine amendments, as well. And any ruling against the Bill of Rights -- that undoes the deal between Federalists and Anti-Federalists -- undoes the whole Constitution.

So, I pretend to hear you ask, what? Isn't the U.S. Constitution just an old scrap of paper -- as our Glorious Leader contends? Also, isn't it hopelelessly outdated, utterly obsolete in this age of iPods, nuclear power, Palm Pilots, wireless Internet communication, and spaceships?

Not exactly. To begin with, it isn't really paper, it's parchment -- animal skin -- and the main body of the Constitution is the working charter, the operating system, if you will, for the strong central government that Hamilton and his Federalist buddies wanted so badly. Without it, you have no government -- at least no government operating by the consent of the governed -- just as, without an actual operating system, all the computer hardware in the world is merely worthless junk.

Thirty years ago or so, I predicted that, if the Supreme Court ever rules against the Second Amendment, that will be the end, not of the Second Amendment, but of the Supreme Court. It should be clear now that, without the rule of law -- without a legal government -- there's no need for a Supreme Court. All that we have left is a dictatorship, running on terror and brute force. Maybe that's what those currently in power actually want, but the age in which an arrangement like that is stable has been over for quite a while. It is most likely to come to an end more quickly than its proponents anticipate, and also very badly.

Goodbye to the Second Amendment, goodbye to the United States of America.

Is the court likely to understand all that? I don't know. Despite their august public image, they are hardly rocket scientists or brain surgeons. It's important to remember that what they are is lawyers, and, if my information about how lawyers become judges holds water (they mostly get "kicked upstairs" so they won't be an embarrassment to the firm), not very good ones. The 1856 Dred Scott v. Sanford case http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott is early evidence of that.

In 1918, despite the clear language of the 13th Amendment outlawing "involuntary servitude of any kind", the court upheld the draft, saying it was a necessary part of the Constitutional power of Congress to raise an army. Apparently the dullards sitting on that particular court were unaware that amendments invariably supercede whatever was written in the main body of the document. If this were not so, Bill Clinton and George Bush would be free to run for a third term.

Go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription

Apparently George Orwell didn't invent Orwellian language. What the court actually said was: "Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement."

In other words, "It isn't involuntary because we say it isn't".

The year 1939 brought us the deeply bungled case of U.S. v. Miller, in which, among other things, the court ruled that short- barrelled shotguns, which had been effectively outlawed by the Roosevelt Administration in 1934, were to remain illegal because they had no military application, and therefore were not protected by the Second Amendment. This pronouncement must have come as a surprise to the veterans of World War I who had relied on short-barrelled shotguns -- military issue and otherwise -- to keep their trenches free of "Huns".

Go to: http://www.jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/miller.htm

More recently, we have Kelo v. City of New London (2005), which, if taken seriously, spells the end of private property in America. The court held that a municipality (and by extension, a county or state) is perfectly free to steal a private individual's real estate and hand it over to some other private individual or corporation, if the city gains more tax revenue from whatever new use the real estate is put to.

Go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

It appears that throughout its long, awkward, anchorless history, the Supreme Court is simply willing to do the dirty work politicians that politicians can't get done (or don't want to be seen doing), themselves.

Now this same cross-dressing gaggle of criminals, idiots, and lunatics who slipped Dred Scott the purple shaft, cancelled out the Thirteenth Amendment, gave government a green light to infringe on your right to own and carry whatever weapon pleases you, and decided that whatever you own is up for grabs by any crook or corporation that can bribe a city councilman, is about to decide whether or not -- like any other man, woman, and responsible child -- you have an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon, rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything, any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

People within the general freedom movement complain all the time about the "Nanny State". Now we're all about to learn who the real nannies are: those nine old men and women sitting atop that giant slot machine.

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"Men cannot be governed and remain men. Domesticate the wolf and he changes both physically and mentally. His muzzle shrinks, his teeth diminish, he loses size, speed, and strength, He grows spots. His ears flop. His brain withers. He becomes a dog. Men are on the verge of becoming dogs -- the changes are underway already -- unless we do something to stop it."

-- The Ceo Lia Wheeler, Phoebus Krumm, forthcoming

Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has been writing about guns and gun ownership for more than 30 years. He is the author of 27 books, the most widely-published and prolific libertarian novelist in the world, and is considered an expert on the ethics of self-defense. His writings may be seen on the following sites:

The Webley Page: http://www.lneilsmith.org

The Libertarian Enterprise: http://www.ncc-1776.org

The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel, Roswell, Texas, and TimePeeper (August 2007): http://www.bigheadpress.com

LNS at Random (blog): http://www.bigheadpress.com/lneilsmith/

LNS at JPFO: http://www.jpfo.org/smith/smith-nra.htm

(Find other articles by L. Neil Smith)

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The above quote highlights all you need to know about Michael Sullivan, the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Sullivan was, unfortunately, nominated by President Bush to permanently take over ATF this year. Right before Thanksgiving, the Senate "hotlined" his name for unanimous consent approval. (Hotlining is a parliamentary maneuver which allows non-controversial bills or nominations to be unanimously approved by the Senate without debate or a vote.)

GOA immediately sent a letter to each Senator's office, urging them to oppose the Sullivan nomination. Thankfully, one senator subsequently objected to Sullivan's approval, and his nomination was put on hold. However, that legislator is now coming under fire from other senators, who are asking him to withdraw his "hold."

That's why it's important for gun owners to contact their two Senators. Under Sullivan's leadership, the ATF has gone berserk. Sure, the problems at ATF didn't originate with him, but Sullivan has certainly done nothing to put out the fire.

While discussing the agency's 2008 appropriations bill, the House Commerce & Justice committee issued a stinging rebuke for the ATF:

The committee has heard reports that ATF has pursued license revocations and denials against firearms dealers based on violations that consist largely of recordkeeping errors of various types that are unlikely to impede tracing investigations or prosecution of individuals who use firearms in crime. The Committee encourages ATF to consider lesser gradation of sanctions for recordkeeping errors. [House Committee report on HR 3093.]
The strategy, that was begun long before Sullivan arrived, has continued unabated under his tutelage. ATF inspectors try to find any violation they can, usually focusing on clerical mistakes.

A family gun business that had been in operation for years in Baltimore, Maryland was attacked because of the "wanton, repeated crime" of abbreviating Baltimore as "Blto" on the teeny, tiny spaces on the 4473 forms.

Now, the agency has turned their collective guns on Red's Trading Post in Idaho, among others. Even though one ATF agent told the manager that Red's was "one of the best small gun shops" he'd ever seen, the ATF has continued its assault on this gun shop (which has been in business for decades) for minor clerical mistakes and failing to put up a poster.

According to WorldNetDaily, one judge who is familiar with the Red's Trading Post case found "the ATF speaks of violations found during the inspections of 2000 and 2005, but fails to reveal that additional investigations in 2001 and 2007 revealed no violations or problems." The judge also noted the ATF was exaggerating the situation by "double counting" some violations.

The agency holds a continuing animus against gun owners and dealers. Inspectors have no handbook under which to operate, and the absence of such written procedures allows them to be arbitrary and capricious.

Americans don't need an anti-gun cop from Massachusetts as the Director of the federal gun police.

CONTACT: Please ask your Senators to oppose anti-gunner Michael Sullivan as the Director of the BATFE. You can use the pre-written message below and send it as an e-mail by visiting the GOA Legislative Action Center (where phone and fax numbers are also available).

---------- Pre-written letter ----------
Dear Senator:

I urge you to OPPOSE the nomination of Michael Sullivan for the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Under his leadership, the ATF has gone berserk. Sure, the problems at ATF didn't originate with him, but Sullivan has certainly done nothing to put out the fire.

In July, a House committee report on HR 3093 rebuked the ATF for pursuing license revocations and denials against firearms dealers based on "violations that consist largely of recordkeeping errors of various types" that are unlikely to impede tracing investigations or prosecution of individuals who use firearms in crime.

Red's Trading Post in Idaho is one of the many gun dealers that have been frequently harassed by the ATF. Even though one ATF agent told the manager that Red's was "one of the best small gun shops" he'd ever seen, the ATF has continued its assault on this gun shop (which has been in business for decades) for minor clerical mistakes and failing to put up a poster.

According to WorldNetDaily, one judge who is familiar with the Red's Trading Post case found "the ATF speaks of violations found during the inspections of 2000 and 2005, but fails to reveal that additional investigations in 2001 and 2007 revealed no violations or problems." The judge also noted the ATF was exaggerating the situation by "double counting" some violations.

Finally, the fact that Ted Kennedy wants to work with Sullivan on gun control is reason enough to find another candidate to head up the ATF. Kennedy said, "We'll miss him in Massachusetts, but heÃÍl be a strong leader at ATF, and I look forward to working with him on key issues on gun control."

Because of these concerns, I would ask that you please oppose the Sullivan nomination, and instead work with Gun Owners of America and the NRA to find a nominee who will protect the rights of innocent gun owners.

Sincerely,

********

Members of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association say they have documented hundreds of safety violations by Mexican trucks rolling on U.S. roads under the Department of Transportation's Mexican truck demonstration project.

"The Department of Transportation is allowing Mexican long-haul rigs to operate in the United States without requiring U.S. rules and regulations to be enforced," Rick Craig, the director of regulatory affairs for the group, told WND in a telephone interview yesterday.

"The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is providing exemptions from U.S. safety rules that the FMCSA claim are covered in a Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and Mexico," Craig continued.

"It's a clear double standard," he said. "Mexican truck safety regulations are being accepted by the FMCSA as equivalent to U.S. rules, even though the FMCSA refuses to provide any real detail about how or why the decision was made."

...

It's called the Mexican Invasion of the USA and our government is promoting it, and You, the American Citizen, are paying for it.

The Bill of Rights are not rights "granted" to us by government. They are God given rights. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to act as a bulwark against tyranny and oppression from government. We the people, retain the ultimate right to take back by force of arms, as a last resort, our freedoms and liberty in the face of tyranny and oppression by those seeking to govern us.

As such, a purported "repeal" of the individual right to keep and bear arms would be null and void. Such act would itself constitute justification for resorting to that foundational right of self defense to combat tyranny and oppression.