Taco Bell

Sitting at home tonight, the lovely wife and I were trying to decide what to have for dinner.
You know the conversation..what do you want...I don't know...what do you want...repeat until something sounds good. After 2 days of Thanksgiving leftovers, we decided on Taco Bell.
I...being the great hunter/gatherer had to go out in the cold drizzling rain to procure said Taco Bell. While standing there waiting for their crack staff of employees to figure out what a taco was I noticed their employee signs. One in particular gave me pause. It shows a Taco Bell employee getting held up at gunpoint by the hoodie wearing thug.
The caption on top of the sign read
PREVENT HOLIDAY CRIME...COOPERATE.

Isn't that like having a sign saying...PREVENT DRUNK DRIVING...BUY THE DRIVER A BEER

Yes..I know the lawyers write the sign and if I had children I wouldn't want them to "risk their life for someone else's money" but...give the screaming two year old what he wants and he'll stop screaming...until he wants something else. It works pretty much the same way with crooks. Once they learn how easy it is to rob a Taco Bell...they'll have to start taking appointments.

Flying the Gadsden flag

There's an idea floating about on AR15.com and a couple of other forums on flying the Gadsden flag on election day. Actually...some of them want to fly the American flag upside down, a signal of distress, on Election day. I'm good with either idea.
America is about two inches away from falling down a dark well of socialism with Obama and Biden.
Now..before you dismiss this as another right wing attack..I voted today. My ballot was basically a 50/50 split between Republican and Democrat candidates. I never have and never will vote the party line. I am not a Republican or a Democrat, I am an American...and I vote as such.
Now..for those who don't know what the Gadsden flag is...


Sounds about right. From gun rights to From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs...it sounds like OBamas plan for our great nation. From Obama himself talking about I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you – that they’ve got a chance at success too.” to Barney Frank...Yes, I believe later on there should be tax increases. Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of very rich people out there whom we can tax at a point down the road and recover some of this money."

Seems like everyone has their hands out wanting to take your money and give it to someone else. That is part and parcel socialiam..hell full blown communisum at it core. It saddens me to see so many Americans taken in by their own greed and short sightedness as to believe the crap thats spewing forth from the mainstream media. If CNN, Fox, MSMBC would vet ALL the canidates equally I firmly believe Obama would be NObama as in no way in hell would he even have gotten the nod from the DNC.
God help this country...looks like we're in for a bumpy ride. Threats of violence if Obama loses, threats from abroad per Biden if OBama wins, hell....we're pretty much screwed either way. I'm not sure at this point which would be worse.

The best answer to "Why I carry a gun"

Here's the best answer I can give anyone who why I carry a gun. These SOBs have no reason to live any longer than it takes to load the rifles.
The story:
Three people were arrested Thursday night in connection with the murders of a Garland recording studio owner and his friend. One of the victim's cars, which was stolen from the murder scene, was also recovered.
Garland Police spokesman Joe Harn said the trio was arrested somewhere in East Texas along the I-30 corridor, but could not provide further details.
Police said Matthew Butler, 28, and Stephen Swan, 26, had been shot several times and there was spent ammunition scattered around the bodies.
A passerby on a bicycle discovered the bodies in downtown Garland around 1 a.m. Thursday.
The men were lying in a pool of blood outside the Zion Gate recording studio on State Street.
Butler owned Zion Gate, and Swan was his chief engineer and best friend.
Butler's wife Jamie said the studio and music were her husband's passions.
She had spoken to him around 12:30 a.m. and he told her they were wrapping up for the night. Not long after, she received a phone call from police informing her that her husband was dead.
Jamie had a message for the person who took away her husband and the father of their children.
"I hope that whoever did this that they would come to know Christ," she said.

"I hope and pray that my husband gets a chance to meet them in heaven and gets a chance to shake their hand and gets a chance to forgive them himself."




These people are out there. Not everyone is a fine upstanding citizen. There ARE people all over the "good" areas where YOU go that WILL KILL YOU FOR ANYTHING.

Get used to the idea.
Accept it
Plan for it
Equip and train yourself to deal with it if it comes up.

Make sure YOU go home to YOUR family.

Why "citizens" need battle rifles.

I flatly refuse to call AK-47s and AR-15s "assault rifles" A object that is incapable of moving cannot assault anyone. Stories like this will become more common as our government officials do nothing but pay lip service to securing our southern border. When the Canadians start attacking us with hockey sticks...we'll talk about northern border security.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Late on the night of June 22, a residence in Phoenix was approached by a heavily armed tactical team preparing to serve a warrant. The members of the team were wearing the typical gear for members of their profession: black boots, black BDU pants, Kevlar helmets and Phoenix Police Department (PPD) raid shirts pulled over their body armor. The team members carried AR-15 rifles equipped with Aimpoint sights to help them during the low-light operation and, like most cops on a tactical team, in addition to their long guns, the members of this team carried secondary weapons — pistols strapped to their thighs.

But the raid took a strange turn when one element of the team began directing suppressive fire on the residence windows while the second element entered — a tactic not normally employed by the PPD. This breach of departmental protocol did not stem from a mistake on the part of the team’s commander. It occurred because the eight men on the assault team were not from the PPD at all. These men were not cops serving a legal search or arrest warrant signed by a judge; they were cartel hit men serving a death warrant signed by a Mexican drug lord.

The tactical team struck hard and fast. They quickly killed a man in the house and then fled the scene in two vehicles, a red Chevy Tahoe and a gray Honda sedan. Their aggressive tactics did have consequences, however. The fury the attackers unleashed on the home — firing over 100 rounds during the operation — drew the attention of a nearby Special Assignments Unit (SAU) team, the PPD’s real tactical team, which responded to the scene with other officers. An SAU officer noticed the Tahoe fleeing the scene and followed it until it entered an alley. Sensing a potential ambush, the SAU officer chose to establish a perimeter and wait for reinforcements rather than charge down the alley after the suspects. This was fortunate, because after three of the suspects from the Tahoe were arrested, they confessed that they had indeed planned to ambush the police officers chasing them.

The assailants who fled in the Honda have not yet been found, but police did recover the vehicle in a church parking lot. They reportedly found four sets of body armor in the vehicle and also recovered an assault rifle abandoned in a field adjacent to the church.

This Phoenix home invasion and murder is a vivid reminder of the threat to U.S. law enforcement officers that stems from the cartel wars in Mexico.

Violence Crosses the Border

The fact that the Mexican men involved in the Phoenix case were heavily armed and dressed as police comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed security events in Mexico. Teams of cartel enforcers frequently impersonate police or military personnel, often wearing matching tactical gear and carrying standardized weapons. In fact, it is rare to see a shootout or cartel-related arms seizure in Mexico where tactical gear and clothing bearing police or military insignia is not found.

One reason for the prevalent use of this type of equipment is that many cartel enforcers come from military or police backgrounds. By training and habit, they prefer to operate as a team composed of members equipped with standardized gear so that items such as ammunition and magazines can be interchanged during a firefight. This also gives a team member the ability to pick up the familiar weapon of a fallen comrade and immediately bring it into action. This is of course the same reason military units and police forces use standardized equipment in most places.

Police clothing, such as hats, patches and raid jackets, is surprisingly easy to come by. Authentic articles can be stolen or purchased through uniform vendors or cop shops. Knockoff uniform items can easily be manufactured in silk screen or embroidery shops by duplicating authentic designs. Even badges are easy to obtain if one knows where to look.

While it now appears that the three men arrested in Phoenix were not former or active members of the Mexican military or police, it is not surprising that they employed military- and police-style tactics. Enforcers of various cartel groups such as Los Zetas, La Gente Nueva or the Kaibiles who have received advanced tactical training often pass on that training to younger enforcers (many of whom are former street thugs) at makeshift training camps located on ranches in northern Mexico. There are also reports of Israeli mercenaries visiting these camps to provide tactical training. In this way, the cartel enforcers are transforming ordinary street thugs into highly-trained cartel tactical teams.

Though cartel enforcers have almost always had ready access to guns, including military weapons such as assault rifles and grenade launchers, groups such as Los Zetas, the Kaibiles and their young disciples bring an added level of threat to the equation. They are highly trained men with soldiers’ mindsets who operate as a unit capable of using their weapons with deadly effectiveness. Assault rifles in the hands of untrained thugs are dangerous, but when those same weapons are placed in the hands of men who can shoot accurately and operate tactically as a fire team, they can be overwhelmingly powerful — not only when used against enemies and other intended targets, but also when used against law enforcement officers who attempt to interfere with the team’s operations.

Targets

Although the victim in the Phoenix killing, Andrew Williams, was reportedly a Jamaican drug dealer who crossed a Mexican cartel, there are many other targets in the United States that the cartels would like to eliminate. These targets include Mexican cartel members who have fled to the United States due to several different factors. The first factor is the violent cartel war that has raged in Mexico for the past few years over control of important smuggling routes and strategic locations along those routes. The second factor is the Calderon administration’s crackdown, first on the Gulf cartel and now on the Sinaloa cartel. Pressure from rival cartels and the government has forced many cartel leaders into hiding, and some of them have left Mexico for Central America or the United States.

Traditionally, when violence has spiked in Mexico, cartel figures have used U.S. cities such as Laredo, El Paso and San Diego as rest and recreation spots, reasoning that the general umbrella of safety provided by U.S. law enforcement to those residing in the United States would protect them from assassination by their enemies. As bolder Mexican cartel hit men have begun to carry out assassinations on the U.S. side of the border in places such as Laredo, Rio Bravo, and even Dallas, the cartel figures have begun to seek sanctuary deeper in the United States, thereby bringing the threat with them.

While many cartel leaders are wanted in the United States, many have family members not being sought by U.S. law enforcement. (Many of them even have relatives who are U.S. citizens.) Some family members have also settled comfortably inside the United States, using the country as a haven from violence in Mexico. These families might become targets, however, as the cartels look for creative ways to hurt their rivals.

Other cartel targets in the United States include Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement officers responsible for operations against the cartels, and informants who have cooperated with U.S. or Mexican authorities and been relocated stateside for safety. There are also many police officers who have quit their jobs in Mexico and fled to the United States to escape threats from the cartels, as well as Mexican businessmen who are targeted by cartels and have moved to the United States for safety.

To date, the cartels for the most part have refrained from targeting innocent civilians. In the type of environment they operate under inside Mexico, cartels cannot afford to have the local population, a group they use as camouflage, turn against them. It is not uncommon for cartel leaders to undertake public relations events (they have even held carnivals for children) in order to build goodwill with the general population. As seen with al Qaeda in Iraq, losing the support of the local population is deadly for a militant group attempting to hide within that population.

Cartels have also attempted to minimize civilian casualties in their operations inside the United States, though for a different operational consideration. The cartels believe that if a U.S. drug dealer or a member of a rival Mexican cartel is killed in a place like Dallas or Phoenix, nobody really cares. Many people see such a killing as a public service, and there will not be much public outcry about it, nor much real effort on the part of law enforcement agencies to identify and catch the killers. The death of a civilian, on the other hand, brings far more public condemnation and law enforcement attention.

However, the aggressiveness of cartel enforcers and their brutal lack of regard for human life means that while they do not intentionally target civilians, they are bound to create collateral casualties along the way. This is especially true as they continue to conduct operations like the Phoenix killing, where they fired over 100 rounds of 5.56 mm ball ammunition at a home in a residential neighborhood.

Tactical Implications

Judging from the operations of the cartel enforcers in Mexico, they have absolutely no hesitation about firing at police officers who interfere with their operations or who dare to chase them. Indeed, the Phoenix case nearly ended in an ambush of the police. It must be noted, however, that this ambush was not really intentional, but rather the natural reaction of these Mexican cartel enforcers to police pursuit. They were accustomed to shooting at police and military south of the border and have very little regard for them. In many instances, this aggression convinces the poorly armed and trained police to leave the cartel gunmen alone.

The problem such teams pose for the average U.S. cop on patrol is that the average cop is neither trained nor armed to confront a heavily armed fire team. In fact, a PPD source advised Stratfor that, had the SAU officer not been the first to arrive on the scene, it could have been a disaster for the department. This is not a criticism of the Phoenix cops. The vast majority of police officers and federal agents in the United States simply are not prepared or equipped to deal with a highly trained fire team using insurgent tactics. That is a task suited more for the U.S. military forces currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These cartel gunmen also have the advantage of being camouflaged as cops. This might not only cause considerable confusion during a firefight (who do backup officers shoot at if both parties in the fight are dressed like cops?) but also means that responding officers might hesitate to fire on the criminals dressed as cops. Such hesitation could provide the criminals with an important tactical advantage — an advantage that could prove fatal for the officers.

Mexican cartel enforcers have also demonstrated a history of using sophisticated scanners to listen to police radio traffic, and in some cases they have even employed police radios to confuse and misdirect the police responding to an armed confrontation with cartel enforcers.

We anticipate that as the Mexican cartels begin to go after more targets inside the United States, the spread of cartel violence and these dangerous tactics beyond the border region will catch some law enforcement officers by surprise. A patrol officer conducting a traffic stop on a group of cartel members who are preparing to conduct an assassination in, say, Los Angeles, Chicago or northern Virginia could quickly find himself heavily outgunned and under fire. With that said, cops in the United States are far more capable than their Mexican counterparts of dealing with this threat.

In addition to being far better trained, U.S. law enforcement officers also have access to far better command, control and communication networks than their Mexican counterparts. Like we saw in the Phoenix example, this communication network provides cops with the ability to quickly summon reinforcements, air support and tactical teams to deal with heavily armed criminals — but this communication system only helps if it can be used. That means cops need to recognize the danger before they are attacked and prevented from calling for help. As with many other threats, the key to protecting oneself against this threat is situational awareness, and cops far from the border need to become aware of this trend.

Heller Decision

First let me say I'm glad that SCOTUS came down on the side of legal gun owners. I'm having a hard time understanding why it took so flippin long for them to take a 2nd amendment case in the 1st place. I can't see what all the fuss is. It's not like it was written in some ancient language. I believe that it was kept short and simple for clarity's sake. Leave it to lawyers and politicians to screw up the meaning of a comma. I think a 5 year old can understand the 2nd amendment. I shudder to think what the people that want us to be unable to protect ourselves would be doing to the laws today if for some reason they came down the other way. A bunch of gun owners would be buying up PVC pipe and looking for land I believe. Now..Chicago and San Francisco are “in the crosshairs” so to speak. It will be interesting to see what the outcome will be.

Now..Gun owners all over America are happy…and with good reason. My personal belief is SCOTUS didn’t go far enough. They left to door cracked open for the Bloomberg’s and the Brady’s in this country to try to convince people that the mere fact that there is a gun in their home that somehow this will make them turn into serial killers. The sad part is…some people WILL believe them. What amazes me to this day is there are people who…without doing ANY research on their own will fall lock step behind whatever some taking head on television tells them. God forbid you attempt to disagree with them. They have no time for the truth, only what someone tells them. What they fail to realize is the people who preach gun control are surrounded by guns, controlled by their security details. Try to take THOSE guns away and let’s see what happens. They will pull any string they can in order to make sure THEY’RE protected, while you sit cowering in fear while 3 or 4 bad guys, who by way way don’t care if there a ban on guns…are banging down your front door, all armed, ready and willing to rob, rape and kill at will because you, as a law abiding citizen have no means to protect yourself. Screw that. I am not willing to hand over the protection of my family to anyone other than myself. Anyone who sits back and waits on the government or the police to “do something about it” will be either sorely disappointed…or dead.

People who take the position that ALL guns are bad, no one should have guns, I hate guns….I used to want to change their minds. Anymore, I don’t care. If you don’t like guns, if you’re scared of guns, whatever, that’s your problem. When the bad guys show up, you’ll be easier for them to work with. I’ll stay “clinging to my guns” and making sure my ass is covered. My family’s life is worth much more to me than some holier than thou attitude that guns are bad.

TN: Naifeh screws us twice in one day

The TN house Republican party needs their collective heads examined (or pulled out of their asses) for allowing this piece of crap to keep the job as Speaker. Again he used his position to keep the full House from voting on bills he personally doesn't like.

Owners' permit records will stay open to public

Naifeh's actions help reverse earlier passage

By THEO EMERY
Staff Writer

A proposal to make secret the names and addresses of Tennesseans who have handgun carry permits died in a whirlwind of political intrigue Wednesday, aided by state House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh.

First, freshman House member Henry Fincher engineered a vote on the bill while two of its opponents — two of his more senior colleagues — were out of the room.

In turn, Naifeh reversed the vote with the help of the House's newest member, Karen Camper, who had been sworn in only about an hour earlier.

The end result: The names and addresses of permit holders will remain public for now.

"When the majority party finds it doesn't have the votes it needs to accomplish what it wants to accomplish — in this case, trampling on the Second Amendment rights of Tennesseans — it massages the rules and finds a way to get it accomplished," House Republican Leader Jason Mumpower said.

The House Criminal Practice Subcommittee had a calendar of nearly 90 bills to consider Wednesday.

The group first approved the bill in question — voting to close the gun permit records — when two members of the committee who opposed the idea, Reps. Rob Briley and Janis Sontany, were out of the room.

When the two Nashville Democrats were gone, Fincher, a Cookeville Democrat, called the bill up for a vote, and it was quickly approved without debate.

A short time later, Naifeh arrived at the subcommittee meeting from the swearing-in ceremony for Camper, a Democrat recently appointed to fill a vacant House seat from Shelby County.

Naifeh added Camper to the subcommittee. The two then joined with the bill's opponents to reverse the earlier vote and banished the legislation until 2012.

The speaker afterward said he had not talked with Camper about the vote beforehand, and that they went to the committee hearing only because she had said she was interested in being on the House Judiciary Committee.

"That's just how it happened," he said.

Mumpower said the voting was not "the proper way that things should have been run."

Naifeh said that he would prefer not to have to cast committee votes as speaker, "but when it's a matter of importance, I do."

Publication spurred bill

The legislation was proposed after The Tennessean posted on its Web site a database listing the names and counties of residence of every handgun permit holder in the state. The Senate version of the bill is scheduled for a floor vote today.

This was not the first time that Naifeh had cast votes to kill gun legislation.

Two weeks ago, he dropped in on the same subcommittee to vote against several other gun-related bills. House rules allow him to make such votes as speaker.

And a year ago, Naifeh also brought a newly sworn-in House member to the House Agricultural Committee, where she cast a key vote that helped pass a cigarette tax increase.

Fincher defended his decision to call up the bill when Sontany and Briley were out of the room, saying, "We voted with the members that were in the room, as we have on every bill that we had a quorum with today.

"I'm a strong supporter of gun owner rights, and their confidentiality, and I believe that that is an important value to be upheld by the legislature," he said.

Fincher said he didn't take the reversal of the vote as a reprimand.

"I didn't take it that way. I think they had strong feelings on the bill, as did I. They had the votes."

Frank Gibson, director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, said that the gun permit records should be open to scrutiny and that the bill was initially approved in the subcommittee without any discussion or debate.

"There has to be some way for the public and the press to know whether the program is being properly administered and to ensure that permits are not given to people who by law are not supposed to be able to carry them," he said.

The chairman of the full judiciary committee, Rep. Kent Coleman, a Murfreesboro Democrat, said he was taken by surprise when Fincher called the bill up for a vote.

He said he didn't like the idea of closing the gun permit records, but he initially voted in favor of the bill in a parliamentary tactic, so that he could later make a motion to have that vote reconsidered.

Bill to allow handguns in bars dies

By THEO EMERY
Staff Writer

A bill that would have allowed gun owners to bring handguns into bars and other establishments serving alcohol died on Wednesday at the urging of House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, the bill's sponsor said.

The so-called "guns in bars" bill had been introduced and defeated numerous times in previous years. It was recently the butt of a segment on the Colbert Report television show, with video footage of Senate sponsor Doug Jackson, a Dickson Democrat, at a gun range shooting at an apple pie, a hot dog and a baseball.

House sponsor Joe McCord, a Maryville Republican, said a pre-hearing discussion Wednesday with Naifeh and fellow committee member Rep. Rob Briley made him "painfully aware" that the legislation could not be approved in its current form.

He told the committee that "responsible" legislation would require legal definitions of bars and nightclubs that don't exist under state law. Further study was needed to hammer out those definitions, he said.

"Over the summer, we are going to have to try to come up with a definition of nightclub or a definition of bar that currently does not exist in codes," he said. "That is the only way I think that we can accomplish the goal."

Naifeh, a Covington Democrat, appeared briefly in the House Criminal Practices Subcommittee on Wednesday, conferred with lawmakers and lawyers for several minutes, and then left.

He didn't vote on the "guns in bars" bill, although he could have. He is allowed to vote under House rules.

He later returned to the same subcommittee meeting Wednesday to reverse another vote on a bill that would have made private information about people who have state-issued handgun carry permits.

__________________
"If I was an extremist, our founding fathers would all be extremists," he said. "Without them, we wouldn't have our independence. We'd be a disarmed British system of feudal subjectivity."

The Six Things Americans Should Know About the Second Amendment

The Six Things Americans Should Know
About the Second Amendment

by Richard W. Stevens

The text of the Second Amendment:

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

FIRST: The Second Amendment protects an individual right that existed before the creation of any government. The Declaration of Independence made clear that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are created to protect those rights.

A. The unalienable right to freedom from violent harm, and the right to self-defense, both exist before and outside of secular government.

1. Torah: Exodus 22:2.

2. Talmud: Jewish law set forth in the Talmud states, “If someone comes to kill you, arise quickly and kill him.” (Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin. 1994,2, 72a; The Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Berakoth. 1990, 58a, 62b).

3. Roman Catholic Doctrine: Christian doctrine has long asserted the right and duty of self defense. “Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.” See Catechism of the Catholic Church 1994, sections 2263-65 (citing and quoting Thomas Aquinas).

4. Protestant Doctrine: Individual has personal and unalienable right to self-defense, even against government. Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex [1644]1982, pp. 159-166, 183-185 (Sprinkle Publications edition.) Jesus advised his disciples to arm themselves in view of likely persecution. Luke 22:36.

B. John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690) aimed at reforming Britain’s monarchy and parliamentary system and limiting the power of government, and profoundly influenced the Founders and all Western Civilization. John Locke explained that civil government properly exists to more effectively protect the rights that all individuals have in the “state of nature.” The individuals have the rights to life, liberty, and property. They give civil government the power over themselves only to the extent that it better protects those rights. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, specifically declared that the ideas of John Locke’s Second Treatise were “generally approved by the citizens of the United States.”Jefferson mandated that Locke’s Second Treatise be taught in theUniversity of Virginia.

C. Christian religious thinkers, such as Samuel Rutherford (in Lex, Rex, 1644) argued that man’s rights come from G-d. Using Biblical principles and examples, they argued against the notion that kings ruled by divine right. To be legitimate authorities, all governments must uphold man’s rights and do justice. Otherwise, the people owe a lawless and tyrannical ruler no allegiance at all.

D. Cicero, Rome’s leading orator, had early argued that the right to self-defense was natural and inborn, and not a creation of the government.The right to use weapons was a necessary part of the right to self-defense — any view to the contrary was silly nonsense. [Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution of A Constitutional Right (1984), p. 17, fn 76-77.]

E. The right to keep and bear arms simply implements the unalienable right to individual self-defense against aggression of any kind. The Second Amendment refers to “the right of the people” (not the state) as a pre-existing right that government must respect.

F. The United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez, indicated that the word “people” in the Second Amendment referred to individuals, not to states. [494 U.S. 259 (1990)] (This was not a holding or ruling of law, but an observation by the Court).

SECOND: The language of the Second Amendment prohibits the Federal Government from “infringing” on this right of the people. There is nothing ambiguous about “shall not be infringed.” (See Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed.1983, p. 941.) The language of the Second Amendment is about as clear as the First Amendment’s prohibiting Congress from infringing the right to freedom of speech, press, and religious expression. There is no logical reason to read the Second Amendment as a weak statement, while treating the First Amendment as a strong protector of rights.

A. The Second Amendment protects a fundamental right and should be read broadly because it implements the right of self-defense. Self-defense is the ultimate right of all individuals to preserve life. The rights to a free press, free speech, assembly, and religion are extremely important — but none of them matters very much if you can’t defend your own life against aggression. None of them matters very much when an evil government is fully armed and its citizens are disarmed.

B. Article I, Section 8, clauses 15 and 16 of the U.S. Constitution refer to Congress’s powers concerning the state militias. Clause 15 empowersCongress to “call forth” the state militias into national service for specific purposes. Clause 16 empowers Congress to organize, arm and discipline the state militias, and to govern the militias while they are in national service. The Second Amendment confines Congress’s power by guaranteeing that the Congress cannot “govern” the militias right out of existence and thereby disarm “the people.”

THIRD: The Second Amendment refers to “a well-regulated militia.”The right of the people to form citizen militias was unquestioned by the Founders.

A. The Federalist Papers, No. 28: Alexander Hamilton expressed that when a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.[Halbrook, p. 67]

B. The Federalist Papers, No. 29: Alexander Hamilton explained that an armed citizenry was the best and only real defense against a standing army becoming large and oppressive. [Halbrook, p. 67]

C. The Federalist Papers, No. 46: James Madison contended that ultimate authority resides in the people, and that if the federal government got too powerful and overstepped its authority, then the people would develop plans of resistance and resort to arms. [Halbrook, p. 67]

D. There was no National Guard, and the Founders opposed anything but a very small national military. The phrase “well-regulated” means well-trained and disciplined — not “regulated” as we understand that term in the modern sense of bureaucratic regulation. [This meaning still can be found in the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. 1989, Vol 13, p. 524, and Vol 20. p. 138.]

E. The Federalists promised that state governments and citizen militias would exist to make sure the federal military never became large or oppressive. To say that the National Guard replaces the notion of the militia runs contrary to what the Founders said and wrote.

F. The Third Amendment: Expressly restrains the federal governmentfrom building a standing army and infiltrating it among the people ...and at the people’s expense ... in times of peace. The Third Amendment runs against the idea of a permanent standing army or federalized National Guard in principle, if not by its words.

FOURTH: The Second Amendment begins with the phrase “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State.” Some people argue that this phrase limits the right to keep and bear arms to militias only ... which they say means the National Guard. Very recent research shows, however, that it was the style of writing legal documents in the late 1700’s to include a preamble. The Constitution has a preamble, the Bill of Rights has a preamble — yet people don’t argue that the Constitution is limited by the preamble. Professor Eugene Volokh at the UCLA Law School has examined numerous other state constitutions of the same general time period, and observed this kind of preamble language in many of them. (The Commonplace Second Amendment, 73 N.Y. Univ. Law Rev. 793-821 (1998)). The preamble states a purpose, not a limitation on the language in these government charters.

A. Examples:

• New Hampshire’s Constitution in 1784 contained a preamble for the freedom of the press: “The Liberty of the Press is essential to the security of freedom in a state; it ought, therefore, to be inviolably preserved.”

• Rhode Island’s 1842 state constitution recited a preamble before its declaration of the right of free speech and press: “The liberty of the press being essential to the security of freedom in a state, any person may publish his sentiments on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty...”

• New Hampshire’s Constitution in 1784 also contained a detailed preamble and explanation of purpose for its right to a criminal trial in the vicinity where the crime occurred.

• The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, the 1784 New Hampshire Constitution and the 1786 Vermont Constitution, all contained preambles or explanations of the right of freedom of speech and debate in the state legislatures.

• The New Hampshire Constitution also gave an explanation, right in the text, for why there should be no ex post facto laws.

B. The Second Amendment falls right within the style of legal drafting of the late 1700’s. The “militia” clause emphasizes the individual right to keep and bear arms by explaining one of its most important purposes. The militia clause does not limit the right.

FIFTH: Before the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment, many states enacted laws that made it illegal for slaves and for free black people to possess firearms (unless they had their master’s permission or a government approval). [See list, with sources in law reviews, in Gran’pa Jack No. 4 ]

A. The Second Amendment did not protect black people then, because(1) it was understood to limit the federal government’s power only and (2) black people were not considered citizens whose rights deserved to be protected. [Dred Scott decision, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) (Judge Taney observed that if blacks had the privileges and immunities of citizenship, then they would be able to freely possess and carry arms ... unthinkable to Southern slave owners.) [Halbrook, pp. 98, 114-15]

B. The Second Amendment was designed by people who did not want to become slaves to their government, but they were unfortunately and tragically willing to permit private slavery in some states. Now that slavery is abolished,however, all citizens of all races should enjoy the Second Amendment’s legal protection against despotic government.

SIXTH: Several Federal Circuit Courts of Appeal have held that theSecond Amendment does not confer an individual right, but only a collective right of states to form a militia. The federal court decisions cite United States v. Miller as precedent. The 1939 Supreme Court case, United States v. Miller, did not make that ruling. Even in Miller, where only the prosecution filed a brief and the defendant’s position was not even briefed or argued to the Court, the Supreme Court held that the federal government could only regulate firearms that had no military purpose. [307 U.S. 174 (1939)] [See JPFO special report about Miller case]

A. Nowadays, gun prohibitionists want to illegalize firearms unlessthey have a “sporting purpose.” The “sporting purpose” idea was part of the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938. JPFO has shown that the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968 imported much of its organization, content, and phrasing, from the Nazi Weapons Law. [See ... Zelman, Gateway to Tyranny]

B. In contrast, even under the U.S. v. Miller case, the Second Amendment protects the individual right to keep and bear military firearms. Learn how the federal courts deceptively and misleadingly employed the Miller decision to deny the individual right to keep and bear arms in Barnett, Can the Simple Cite Be Trusted?: Lower Court Interpretations of United States v. Miller and the Second Amendment, 26 Cumberland Law Review 961-1004 (1996).

C. A federal judge recently struck down a federal “gun control” statute as unconstitutional in United States v. Emerson, 46 F. Supp. 2d 598 (N.D. Tex. 1999). In his scholarly written opinion, District Judge Cummings exten-sively reviewed the law and historical foundations of the Second Amendment to conclude that the right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment is an individual right. The Emerson decision remains pending an appeal in the Fifth Circuit as of this date.

Before a government can become a full-blown tyranny, the government must first disarm its citizens. The Founders of this nation, from their own experience, knew that when government goes bad, liberty evaporates and people die ... unless the people are armed.

CHALLENGE TO AMERICANS

As you read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:

(1) Look at the enumerated powers of the federal government;

(2) Look at the express limitations on federal power as set forth in theSecond, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments;

(3) Ask yourself, where does the federal government get any power at all to regulate firearms?

(4) Ask yourself, why don’t the high school and college textbooks devote any time to the history, philosophical basis and practical meaning of the Second Amendment?

And then consider that law students and future lawyers likewise have received precious little education about the Second Amendment.

Realize, too, that the judges know just about as little. Then imagine how little the average American knows — based on the average public school coverage of the Constitution.

The protection of our sacred right of self-defense against both petty criminals and oppressive government — the right of civilians to keep and beararms — is in your hands.

The Bill of Rights Sentinel, Fall 2001, pp. 31-33

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