In the days leading up to the recent Presidential popularity contest, I tried to make my posts nonpartisan, attempting not to single out any one party’s candidate(s). But now that Donald Trump is the President Apparent (not “Elect” just yet, despite most news services referring to him as such), his plans and policies are fair game: what he does will affect Americans.
Current reports have it that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani is on The Donald’s short list for Secretary of State, and possibly Attorney General.
Freedom lovers in general, and RKBA supporters specifically, should be extremely concerned. As even Bloomberg’s anti-gun The Trace has it…
Rudy Giuliani Has the Kind of Gun Control Record That Gets Presidential Appointees Savaged By the NRA
Would the NRA and Senate GOP apply to Giuliani the same unrelenting pro-gun litmus test they’ve applied to President Barack Obama’s nominees for the better part of a decade? Or would they retreat from their principled, uncompromising gun-rights stance in deference to a new Republican administration’s nominee?
Giuliani also constructed NYC’s “stop & frisk” program. The one that was found to be unconstitutional. These days, “unconstitutional” is a pretty high bar, with virtually anything allowed. “Stop & frisk” was tossed not merely because it violated the highest law of the land, but because it didn’t work: the vast majority of stops resulted in no prosecution whatsoever; weapons (the main justification for the program) were found in only a tiny fraction of one percent of stops. Minorities were overwhelmingly selected for searches. “Stop & frisk” couldn’t even meet the incredibly lenient “unconstitutional but necessary for public safety” test applied by moronic courts.
President Apparent Donald Trump’s choices of high level appointees almost seem designed to validate the worst pre-election fears of those who noted the man’s past disregard for human/civil rights.
When I saw this, I automatically grabbed the link for next Monday’s Alert Newsletter. But… whew. This shouldn’t wait for another week (for those of you not yet familiar with Larry Correia, and his great books).
A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership
That title isn’t joking. This post is aimed at my liberal readers. I’m a libertarian leaning Republican and gun expert, who thinks you are wrong about a lot of stuff, but I’m not writing this to gloat about your loss. For the record, I disliked all the presidential candidates.
Judging by your social media over the last few days many liberals have been utterly terrified that your government might turn tyrannical or that evil people will now be emboldened to hurt you. I’m going to let you in on a little thing the other half of the country is familiar with to keep those unlikely, yet catastrophic, events from happening.
[…]
Many of you have been sharing every second hand account, rumor, and urban legend about some random doofus in Somnambulant, Wisconsin or Bumfight, Louisiana, shouting an ethnic slur or spray painting a swastika on a wall. Newsflash, in a country with a third of a billion people, some percentage of them are going to be assholes. I hate to break it to you, but the assholes were there before, and they will be there forever. Just right now the news has a self-serving incentive to report about these assholes in particular.
[…]
Calling the cops is awesome. If they get there in time they will be happy to save your ass, but that’s assuming they get there in time. Violent encounters usually happen very quickly. Good police response time is measured in minutes. You can be dead in seconds. Plus, your side is the one that doesn’t trust the cops anyway. It isn’t Republicans out there protesting the police. So why is it you expect agents of the state to risk their lives to save you? Gratitude?
[…]
So no, you can’t just shoot somebody walking down the street in a Trump hat. That would be Murder. Or considering most liberals don’t understand basic marksmanship, more likely Attempted Murder. However, if somebody dressed entirely in Confederate flags walks up, screams DIE GAY ABORTION VEGAN and tries to stab you with his commemorative Heinrich Himmler SS dagger, it’s game on (don’t blame me, I’m basing this hypothetical scenario on what most of your facebook feeds sound like).
[…]
Contrary to what Barack Obama told you, Glocks are not easier to get than books. Hell, I’ll trade an autographed copy of each of my published novels for a Glock if you’ve got any spares lying around.
[…]
That’s the real meaning of the 2nd Amendment. So don’t screw around with it. If you do you’re no better than the fat wannabes running around the woods in their surplus camo and airsoft plate carriers… You don’t get that, but all my gun culture readers know exactly who I’m talking about. They are the morons CNN trots out whenever they need to paint all gun owners as irresponsible inbred redneck violent dupes for your benefit.
Seriously; read the whole thing. Forget TL;DR. He’s right, and entertaining. Forward his piece to all your lib friends huddling with crayons and play dough in their safety-pinned safe spaces.
Alex “Shaya” Lichtenstein was a “fixer”. He facilitated obtaining goods and services from within systems rigged against free, peaceful, consensual, trade, by the interference of government. Like smugglers, prostitution, and so many other industries, the “fixer” provides (often for outrageous fees, and from dubious sources) what would be readily available in a free society.
Mr. Lichtenstein was a leader in the “Shomrim” (private, neighborhood security) in the Borough Park area Brooklyn, New York. Why, given the size of the NYPD, would there even be a market for such a thing in a decidedly poor, urban, predominantly Orthodox Jewish, Borough Park?
Well, like in so many other neighborhoods in large cities, these folks live right next door to some of the most violent criminals in the U.S. So bad is it, that even if the NYPD focused their efforts on these neighborhoods, they are overwhelmed.
Additionally, as in most similar cases, the citizens of this neighborhood are left without effective means of self-defense. Knives, guns, and other modern tools are legally prohibited, or severely restricted. The common man walking the streets, taking the subway or bus, is a juicy and low-risk target for any predator. And there are thousands.
Oh, you _can_ get a gun permit in Brooklyn, if you jump through the right hoops, know enough powerful and connected people, pay enough money, and wait long enough. Maybe. Meanwhile carry a sock full of nickels and try not to look anyone directly in the eye, an hurry get home before dark. And try to be in sight of the “Shomrim” patrol, or the odd NYPD cruiser (those are the guys so gleefully ticketing the double-parked cars).
So, just like in any ghetto, there was a ready-made market for folks like “Shaya”, to grease the skids a bit. He knew everyone at the precinct. Especially in the gun permit department. Buddies. The going rate to “expedite” the system was about Ten Thousand Dollars. Yes. FIFTEEN TO TWENTY TIMES the cost of the gun, itself. And people paid. Lots of people paid.
Mind you, I’m no fan of Mr. Lichtenstein, or any other fixer. They are skunks. Then, again, consider the risks he takes. No, I reserve my fury, my anger, my disgust, for the system that creates these things. That is the institution that really has blood on their hands. The blood of our friends, our families, our countrymen. They are the truly guilty ones.
Kristallnacht began on 12th April 1928. The event itself took place on November 9th and 10th 1938. No, this is not a typo. When I interviewed Moshe Feiglin, leader of Zehut, he asked me when WWII started. I told him the night hitler was born. He agreed with this viewpoint. So I would maintain that Kristallnacht started on the 12th of April 1928. That was when the Reich Law on Firearms and Ammunition was enacted. That law enacted weapons purchase permits, and only authorized persons were allowed to buy and possess firearms. Mandatory registration allowed the authorities the ability to access the weapon and or it’s owner at any time. No doubt to check for “mandatory safe storage”. Manufacture and sale of weapons was also allowed only by permission of the authorities. The carrying of weapons in public also required a permit. In 1930 bladed weapons were added in. All this was to maintain only trustworthy people had weapons. Trustworthy as determined by the authorities.
In April 1933 the nazis enacted laws that prevented Jews from being in civil service, universities and most professions. In September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. These determined who was a Jew, who wasn’t, how much Jewish, and deprived Jews of their civil rights. In fact, Jews were no longer considered citizens of Germany. When hitler first came to power and started his anti-Semitic odure the German people wanted none of it. But after time, the media, the entertainment industry, the schools and the constant blaming had their desired effect, the German people began to despise the Jews and see them as other than humans.
It was easy to begin disarming the Jews, the authorities knew who had weapons, what they were and they could go into homes at any time to search for weapons, and their owners. Or anything else they took a notion to search for. By this time since Jews were perceived as less than human or trustworthy and helpful citizens and bureaucrats doing their job were happy to join in if needed.
In March 18th, 1938 came the German Weapons Act, which superseded the 1928 laws. These in general appear more lenient. Only handguns would be regulated now, not rifles, shotguns or ammunition, and it deregulated their purchase and transfer. The legal age at which you could acquire a gun was lowered from 20 to 18 years of age, and the permits were now good for 3 years instead of 1 year. Before the more lenient laws of 38 only officials of the government and states, and employees of the German Railways were excused from the mass of hoop jumping. The laxer laws of 1938 added to the privileged group, holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and nazis were now deemed reliable and trustworthy enough not to need gun ownership restrictions. This was determined by the authorities, the nazis. Manufacture of arms and ammunition though still required a permit. And those permits would no longer be issued to Jews. Any company even partly owned by Jews could no longer manufacture arms, or ammunition or sell them. As determined by the ……authorities.
Under all regulations though, manufactures and sellers were required to maintain lists of who bought guns, and the serial number of the gun. These records were turn into the ATF police every year for inspection.
On October 27th of 1938 Hitler ordered 17,000 Jews of Polish origin to be shipped back to Poland. They were allowed one night to leave Germany with one suitcase. They were put on a train and taken to the Polish border at Zbaszyn. There they were dropped off. Poland would eventually allow 4,000 in, but the rest were trapped at Zbaszyn with no food, virtually no money, no place to stay and no clue what was going to happen.
One of the families affected was the Grynszpan family. Zindel had moved from Poland to Hanover and established a store in 1911. When they were stranded at Zbaszyn one of the daughters sent a postcard to her brother, Herschel, who was living with his uncle in Paris. Herschel was livid when he received the postcard on November 3rd . He bought a gun and some bullets on November 6th and headed to the German Embassy intending to kill the Ambassador. The German Embassy was fresh out of Ambassador that day, and he ended up settling for the third secretary in the German Embassy, Ernst von Rath. The secretary died 2 days later on November 9th. This provided joseph gerbils (yes, I do know it’s goebbels, but this seems more fitting for the rat-faced nazi) the excuse he needed to label the act a conspiratorial attack by “International Jewry” against the Reich and, against the Fuehrer. When gerbils and nazi party officials found out about the death, gerbils gave a speech that urged all good Germans to take to the streets and make the Jews pay for von Rath’s death. Reinhard Heydrich said business could be destroyed but not looted. CNN and MSNBC The German newspapers claimed the Jews were murderers, and blamed the Jewish people as a whole for the killing of von Rath. And so the all the propaganda, the disarming of the Jews, the dehumanization erupted in a conflagration of hatred.
On the nights of November 9th and 10th the mobs throughout Germany and the territories of Austria and Sudetenland attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship. At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, more than 2,000 synagogues were burned, almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The mobs knew that it would be easy, who could fight back? And just to make sure that peace remained in Germany, the next day on November 11th new laws were passed that forbade any Jew from owning any weapon.
I read a column in Salon on line that maintains that gun control is good and wonderful, and just because hitler misused it doesn’t mean it can’t be just peachy. That the very idea of Jews fighting back is absurd. Really? באמת
I only have two words for them, the idiots. WARSAW.GHETTO.
A fearful price was paid the 9th and 10thof November 1938, but it started long before that. People live and learn.
Gun control will prevail regardless of next president, says researcher
It doesn’t matter which candidate is elected the next leader of the free world next Tuesday, stricter gun control is inevitable — at least according to one onlooker.
[…]
Alpers notes that automobiles have endured decades of “evidence-based public health measures” with licensing and registration that didn’t lead to mass confiscation, an argument often presented by public health researchers. “Cars remain objects of maleness, power and freedom,” he says.
Cars = “maleness”? Tell that to my 4’11’ sister in her SUV.
Wait…
“Maleness…”
I don’t think so. -psst!- Alpers, I don’t think “autoeroticism” means what you seem to think it means. But what else should we expect from a victim disarming anti-gun “researcher” of dubious credentials.
Perhaps he’ll “man up” and come to America to personally implement that inevitable post-election gun control.
Gilbert Randolph, writing in the UKMC University News, has delusions of being the voice of sweet reason is yet another gun control debate. Sadly, he’s just another idiot.
“I hope to reframe our current political discourse and put it into the historical, even global context of human violence.”
How well does Mr. Randolph manage that? From the beginning, he displays an unfortunate lack of knowledge of firearms- their design, intent, and use.
“Guns are designed to kill. That isn’t inherently evil. Bows were designed to kill. The teeth of wolves are designed to kill. It’s the usage of that ability that has moral and social implications.”
No. Guns are mechanical/chemical devices designed to direct a projectile at a target. The vast majority of targets outside of a war zone are paper.
“Guns are inherently dangerous. Does it then follow that danger is inherently evil or at the very least, needing to be tightly controlled?”
No. TATP, FOOF, and old nitroglycerin are inherently dangerous. They are so unstable as to spontaneously explode.
A firearm requires some external force in order to activate. Typically, that is a person pulling the trigger, although there are rare cases where indirect human stupidity does the job, or a critter. But the firearm is still an inanimate device; of its own, it does nothing, and never chooses its target. Never once, in decades of firearms experience, has one of my firearms spontaneously discharged.
Randolph’s ignorance extends to the Second Amendment he pretends to understand so much better than “the far right.”
“When neighborhoods are controlled by violent gangs, such as the cartels in Mexico and other nations, the power is merely transferred. The danger of someone else is also not without problems. What happens when that person abuses their power? Then there is a demand that we become dangerous to the institutions we set up to protect us.
This paradox seems to me to be the heart of the Second Amendment. I suggest that whatever route we choose, regulation or deregulation, we always remember these tensions.”
That is the very heart of the Second Amendment: That the power be distributed amongst all the People, not concentrated in one power group.
As for “discourse” on the regulation of firearms…
We’ve had that discussion. In 1776 — two hundred and forty years ago — George Mason drafted the “Declaration of Rights” for Virginia, which included the people’s individual right to keep and bear arms. It was debated and adopted by the state. Eleven years later, Mason drafted the original Bill of Rights based on Virginia’s Declaration. It was debated, refined, and approved by the Constitutional Convention. From there, it –completed with the Second Amendment — was sent to the states for further discussion. The nation agreed to it and formally adopted it. In the time since, every state admitted to the union has specifically agreed to and adopted the US Constitution complete with the Second Amendment.
If that weren’t sufficient for Randolph, we have the the US Supreme Court’s Miller decision that the people have a right to bear arms of common military type. We have the Heller decision that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. If that still isn’t clear enough (and for Chicago it wasn’t), the McDonalddecision expressly stated that the right to keep and bear arms applies to all the individual people of all the states. And it extends to US Territories, too.
End of discourse. Unless you plan to amend the Constitution again, to rid us of that troubling human/civil right. Be careful what you wish for.
But good luck with that. The late Major R. Owens [Dimwit-NY] made an annual attempt at the discourse of repeal. Upon discussion in the House, it was likewise annually rejected. (I do give him partial credit for recognizing that there is a Constitution, even if he hated it.)
End. Of. Discourse.
Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!
I see a lot of stories daily about how carrying a concealed weapon has saved someone’s life, or the life of someone they love. These stories usually take place in a urban setting. It might be a fairly empty parking lot at 2200 or someone’s home, but most of the stories are more urban. I suppose that makes sense, more people.
But when many people think of the rural areas, they tend to think more of the tough, self-reliant type of folks, like Roy Rogers, the Cartwrights or Little House on the Prairie.
What set me down this thought path was a story I saw the other day and it reminded me of when I first moved to my current home, many, many years ago. I considered living places and found the pet deposit for two horses, a flock of chickens, four cats and three dogs was very spendy. I also am temperamentally unsuited to living in a city, so farm it was and I moved from a smaller farm to this one. When I would go to the barn to do chores I took all the dogs with me, family outing as it were. Not long after I had lived here I was coming back to the house from the barn and a man I had never seen was standing near the stock gate. Not a dog had barked, the wind must have been blowing the other direction. Nothing happened, he had heard from someone that I might be someone to talk to about training a horse. But it made me very aware of my vulnerability. No matter what else was going on in my life, this was something I needed to address. I didn’t really know any of my neighbors yet, so most people that stopped by would have been “strangers”. It was long before concealed carry laws or castle doctrine laws were in effect. It’s not that I didn’t have tools, I did. I needed to have them where they could be used. A .357 is dandy, unless it’s in the house, so I started doing things differently. But while laws weren’t in place to protect me, I could get access to the tools that would allow me to protect myself. Some states have laws protecting you only in your home or car, some, anyplace you legally have a right to be including any place on your property, not just your home.
So how did I get to thinking back all those years ago? I saw a story about yet another Jewish farmer in Israel who might be facing charges for shooting an Arab. I will never say farmers in America have it easy. I’ve known better since I was two. But farmers in Israel have a whole different set of dangers. The arabs and bedouins there cut fence, steal livestock, kill livestock, ruin orchards, poison guard dogs, attack the farmers and their families and sometimes kill them. Sadly, sometimes the government forces that are tasked with protecting the farmers seem to favor protecting the arab farmers. Whether it is yet another example of trying not to offend the world, or the police just don’t want to bother with it, I don’t know. Some farmers have been driven off their land, some have had to give up raising livestock, but it is most certain that many farmers in Israel face challenges and dangers that we over here do not face on a daily basis. The case that had been going on was of a farmer that had three arabs show up to steal his truck. He heard a noise and went outside, there they were with a metal bar and three to one odds. He fired in the air and was unaware that he had even hit one. When security forces finally showed up they found the body in a nearby field.
“Sunday’s shooting in Beit Elazri was justified,” Naim concludes. “It was an act of self-defense, and prevented innocent people from getting hurt. Every thief must know that he might die. It must be anchored in law, just as in the cradle of democracy, the United States, where every citizen has the right to self-defense of his body and his property, including the shooting of trespassers.”
I don’t know that we shoot trespassers all that much, but his point that we should have the right to defend ourselves, and criminals know we have the right and ability to defend ourselves, and that should slow them down some. Unless you live in a state with a lot of liberals where ever criminal life is sacred, yours not so much. This is made possible by electing liberal politicians because they think rights come from them, not G-d.
Farmers have gone to jail for defending themselves against four to one odds, for example Shai Dromi. While he was acquitted on manslaughter charges he was convicted of having an illegal weapon. It was his father’s. The good thing that came of the mess was it did start to make people aware of what the farmers face on a daily basis.
Now happily the farmer accused this time, has been cleared by the police of any wrong doing, so he won’t be spending time in jail.
Another good thing that came out of this is MKs Amir Ohana and Eitan Broshi submitted a petition that called for a emergency meeting to discuss the issue of self-defense in rural areas. Hopefully more than discussion will come of it. Since MK Ohana is involved, I am kind of thinking something more will.
Another thing I found very interesting was comments by Dr. Jodi Broder, Head of the Clinical Social Law program. I’m the one that put some of this in bold, not Dr. Broder.
Dr. Broder explained why, in his view, proactive self-defense is justified: “We, as citizens, gave the State all the rights over our defense and our property, under the assumption that it would uphold those values, but what happens when the State doesn’t defend its citizens?” he asked. In such a reality, he asserts, the right of a citizen to defend himself and his property returns to him.
Broder qualifies this assertion, however, noting, “not under every circumstance, but within the parameters of self-defense. You are allowed to defend yourself when there is an immediate danger to your life or property. In such a reality, when nobody else is around to defend you and you react in a proportional manner, not in order to punish but only to defend; when the burglar is endangering me or another or our property, I am allowed to defend as long as immediate action is required and the State is not present to supply this defense.”
In response to the question of whether there is an ethical problem with the fact that the same State that does not supply defense for citizens also limits citizens’ ability to defend themselves, Broder replied, “It is impossible to live in a situation in which there are no rules and each man is his own lawmaker. A burglar also has rights which we, as a state, choose to uphold. You may defend, but not punish.
“One of the problems in the State is that the government does not supply adequate defense of property in certain communities, and people feel existential danger and danger to their property; we may see reactions that seem disproportionate at first glance, but when you consider that the Police are probably not coming, and there’s nobody who’s going to help, and it’s my property and my life, the picture changes.”
First, I don’t think we should ever give over our rights to protect ourselves, I’m not suggesting we do so. I also find it interesting that the Israelis are allowed to use force when the criminal is stealing things. In America it’s usually only to defend life. Of course what they are stealing may well affect your livelihood, but I find this variance interesting as well. Second and I think this applies to any of us, the prosecutor in their nice warm, well lit office, reading over the police report as they thoughtfully sip their fresh cup of coffee is going decide someone’s future, or lack of one. They will decide if your response was proportional or not. Consider having someone like Kathleen Kane as the prosecutor. Kane was a Bloomberg backed anti-gun candidate. YESH! But I also see how his comments could apply to gun free zones, they chose to forbid us the ability to defend ourselves, then they have chosen that responsibility. An old discussion, I know. I’m not talking burger joints, I’m thinking more like hospitals, government buildings. Places of worship are targets as well, but I think their response to how they wish to handle these things has more autonomy, but I could be wrong. But back to the prosecutor, you have a person in their nice office, possibly who has never been in a rural area deciding what is going to happen to you based on what has already happened to you, when you were all alone at 0300 in the middle of a field.
And realistically? Whether a field in the middle of the night or supermarket parking lot during the day, it doesn’t matter much. If something bad happens, and you “need” someone else to come help you there is a good chance that may not happen in time.
Just some things to think about as election day looms and you might have a chance to ask your state candidates some questions.
Another thing that popped up as I was poking around to see how this particular farmer came out was that some of the farmers in 2008 began to band together forming modern versions of HaShomer. It was founded by Yoel Zilberman when his father told him he was going bankrupt and going to have to leave the farm. HaShomer HaChadash, The New Guardians, was formed to help protect the farmers and allow them to continue farming in a financially sound manner. It is now a big active program.
Founder Yoel Zilberman, can tell you about it. It’s a very interesting story. Subtitled, luckily.
So thinking back on when I first moved here, and looking at the dangers these farmers in Israel face daily I’ve had some thoughts. Urban or rural, we all face dangers. The dangers these Israeli farmers face are more like the things someone living in the gun free zone utopia of Chicago would face, with just about as much help from the system at times. But then any raw milk or organic farmer may have faced the same dangers in America. Only instead of from Bedouins, from a alphabet soup of state and federal agencies. The big difference is, when it’s the farmer rather than the Chicago resident that faces the danger it can affect a lot of people. The farmers produce food, and when that doesn’t happen it causes problems for a lot of people. The Israeli farmers are getting help now, not from the government so much, as regular people all pitching in to help. It’s sort of like a program we had in America for a while called “Ranch Rescue”. But the foundation of all these programs was the same as the old days of the Cartwrights and Roy Rogers. It was people pitching in to help each other to over come challenges and threats. People that weren’t relying on the system, but each other. As the weather changes and we prepare for storms knowing our neighbors and having plans and ways we could help each other might be a very good idea. We’ve had hurricanes in one part of the country, we will have snow and ice coming for other parts of the country, and then we move into tornado and rain and flood season. Sometimes you know there’s bad weather headed your way, and sometimes, it’s just there.
And because I like to end with something a little nice, here’s a short little scene from Eish Kodesh. It really is beautiful isn’t it?
Author and script writer Robert Avrech was an old friend and colleague of Aaron Zelman’s. Unlike Aaron, he is still with us and still going strong.
Although he wrote this piece a month ago, it’s timeless and a must-read.
A sample:
Before our son Ariel Chaim ZT”L passed away in 2003 at the age of twenty-two, he and I spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews – overwhelmingly liberal and secular – aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens.
During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, my wife Karen and I, Ariel and Offspring #2, were inside a film theater. Abruptly, an angry mob congregated outside; soon they were trying to break down the doors. Trapped inside, we were all terrified. I held Offspring#2 in my arms; she shivered like a frightened rabbit. Karen gripped Ariel’s hand.
“Don’t worry,” we were assured, “the police will be here soon.”
But the police did not arrive that night, nor did they protect the city from arson, looting and murder. In fact, we watched in disbelief as news cameras captured images of police officers standing idly by while looters gleefully committed their crimes.
A few days later, I purchased a pistol, a 1911 .45 ACP.
I bought a gun because I realized that the day will most certainly again arrive when civil order breaks down and we are flung into a cruel Hobbesian landscape.
As Ariel’s conservative political opinions took form, he logically and ethically fell on the side of legal gun ownership. But because he was first and foremost a Torah Jew, first and foremost a Talmudic scholar, Ariel placed gun ownership into the framework of Jewish law, halacha.
Ariel wanted to put down his ideas on paper. Unfortunately, he never had the opportunity to write an article on halacha and gun ownership.
And so I humbly jot down a few of Ariel’s ideas. This article is not meant to be comprehensive. It is but a snapshot of our discussions. Any mistakes in this article are mine and mine alone. I write from an imperfect memory, from conversations with my beloved son held years ago, and from the few notes he managed to scribble while sick and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.
What happened to Robert Levy? Back in 2007, the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute was the organizer and financier behind District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court Case that established the Second Amendment as affirming an individual right to gun ownership.
Today Robert Levy is waxing ridiculous about Second Amendment compromises gun owners and gun rights advocates should consider.
The short answer to that CATO Institute report inviting Americans to consider grounds for compromise on gun control is a simple, short “No.”
As if we haven’t been compromising and getting our rights shredded for decades!
Second Amendment rights are not absolute, Levy says.
Yeah? What does “shall not be infringed mean?”
“Everyone understands that children can’t carry automatic weapons to school,” he claims.
Yeah? “Can’t” and “shouldn’t” are different things. And if a child carries an automatic weapon to school, but harms no one with it, threatens no one with it, and merely bears this particular arm, as specified in the Bill of Rights, whose right is being violated, other than the child’s? This reductio ad absurdum is stupid and unworthy of a libertarian scholar.
“Assault rifles” are common and regularly used for hunting and shooting sports. Attempts to buy them back would backfire, like they did in the past, he admits. But yet, Levy identifies these rifles as a major area for possible compromise.
Now about NO! We tried that whole ban thing once. You know what happened during it? Columbine! Law abiding citizens dutifully stopped purchasing these weapons. Murderers intent on causing harm got them anyway.
Homicides with firearms were already on the decline prior to the implementation of the 1994 ban, and they continued to decline during and after the ban.
No! There’s no compromise that is acceptable to relieve people of their rights – especially for absolutely no benefit.
Some weapons can be banned, Levy says. After all, machine guns have been banned for all intents and purposes since 1934, right? No, you clueless traitor to the Constitution, who has never owned a gun. People still own them. They just have to jump through a myriad of expensive, bureaucratic hoops to legally do so. And they’re barely ever used in crimes. Again, what part of “shall not be infringed” is not clear?
And yes, the courts did say some regulation is legal. But if, according to Levy, “the government bears a heavy burden to justify its regulation. Government must show (a) public safety requires the proposed restrictions, (b) they will work, and (c) they are no more extensive than necessary,” show me where the hell these three requirements are being met!
Maybe we should compromise on high-capacity magazines, Levy says.
How about NO!
According to Gun Facts, The number of shots fired by criminals has not changed significantly even with the increased capacity of handguns and other firearms. The average magazine swap time for a non-expert shooter is 2-3 seconds. In the case of the Newtown Sandy Hook massacre, the murderer performed 10 magazine changes before the police arrived. A 10 round restriction would have saved nobody.
So why compromise away the right, if it will help no one, save no lives? Once again, none of the requirements to meet the government’s burden to justify its regulation – the test that Levy puts forth as grounds for regulation.
And then there are the universal background checks, which Levy admits felons easily avoid by either purchasing firearms illegally or stealing them, but still thinks gun owners should compromise on.
…even staunch Second Amendment proponents might be receptive to background checks for private (non-dealer) sales at gun shows, over the Internet, and through published ads. The key is quid pro quo — concessions to gun rights advocates in return for closing the “gun show loophole.” That was essentially the deal offered by the 2013 Manchin-Toomey bill, which garnered 54 Senate votes, but not enough to meet the 60-vote threshold.
How about HELL NO?
There is no “gun show loophole,” since less than 1 percent of guns used in crimes are sold there.
There is no such thing as a “legal” Internet purchase without going through a federal firearms license holder, who is obligated to run a background check before handing you that gun you just purchased on the webz.
What they’re really talking about is outlawing private purchases. Period. (Which, by the way, will disproportionately affect the poor, who will have to pay more than they normally would to legally purchase a tool of self defense from another individual, because they would have to absorb the cost of an FFL performing a background check.)
Oh, I’m sorry. Rich lawyers don’t care about the poor.
Since when does CATO have so little respect for private property that it advocates abolishing it for a specific set of purchases – constitutionally protected ones?
I suspect my buddy Miguel is correct when he says that the libertarian intelligentsia is so desperate for relevance, they’re willing to take a large, steaming dump on the rights they once held dear. I guess they’re tired of being known as “extremists,” and they would rather compromise on their basic principles than be waved away as some radical zealots who are unwilling to negotiate away their fundamental rights.
Looks like CATO would rather be taken “seriously” by those who despise individual rights and freedoms and would sacrifice them at the altar of “common good” in hopes that the alligator will eat them last than stand up to protect what is right.
Last week I posted about a new Ken Burns documentary, Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War. I linked to a New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof, who rightly praised the courage of the Sharps and other “righteous Gentiles” who risked their lives to save Jews from Hitler’s beastiality. He spoke of how world governments rejected Jewish refugees, dooming many of them to death, while individuals (including a few “rogue” individuals within government bureaucracies) saved Jewish lives.
Unfortunately, Kristof also used his NYT pulpit to try to guilt-trip contemporary readers and leaders into being more liberal in acceptance of today’s headline refugees, Muslims from the chaotic Middle East.
Now comes another article on the documentary, this time from the Washington Post, which is less agenda-driven, but still quotes a White House official who uses a screening of the film to promote more U.S. acceptance of Muslim refugees:
“The Sharps are the better angels of America,” said Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken last week at a White House screening for scholars, diplomats, Holocaust survivors and other dignitaries. (The Obamas did not attend.) The film, Blinken said, humanizes relief work at a time when the world needs to do far more to aid refugees from war-torn Syria and elsewhere.
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In the NYT, Kristof wrote: “As today’s leaders gather for their summit sessions, they should remember that history eventually sides with those who help refugees, not with those who vilify them.”
And generally, that’s true. Generally.
I’ve lived among immigrants all my life, including spending a couple of years in a neighborhood of resettled Southeast Asian war refugees. Although the first members of my mother’s family arrived in the American colonies before the Revolution, on my father’s side I’m not far removed from starving Irish peasants who arrived in “coffin ships” and were caricatured by the natives as dumb apes. I’ve seen first-hand how immigrants have been stereotyped. And I know how refugees have enriched, and continue to enrich, our culture.
I am also an individualist who believes that every person deserves to be considered on his or her own merits. So it pains me on two counts to say this. But urging acceptance of Muslim refugees based on the fact that other refugees, in other times, have enriched our culture — or based on guilt because “we” didn’t aid WWII-era Jewish refugees who deserved rescue — is bogus.
From Paris to Minnesota, wherever in the West communities of Middle Eastern or African Muslims have been settled, terrorism has followed. Free speech becomes a capital offense. Women suffer. And Jews are in particular peril. Just ask the Jewish population of France — formerly of France, now fleeing the country.
Elitists, from their WaPost or Gray Lady perches, urge toleration for those who won’t tolerate us, acceptance for those who won’t accept us, and peace toward those who bring with them random violence in the name Allah. But of course Nicholas Kristof and his kind aren’t going to have to live in the Muslim neighborhoods where even police dare not go. They’re not going to be shopping in the malls or attending the schools that will be attacked. They’re going to be comfortable in their gated communities. When horrors happen, they can continue pontificating about tolerance — and oh by the way, the need for fewer guns in the hands of We the Peasants, more surveillance, more “security,” and less of that nasty, messy freedom.
Some Jews, whose ancestors were granted life in the West when they were desperate refugees from Nazism, now join the call for embracing Muslim refugees. Maybe it’s a generous, kind-hearted, and decent impulse.
But these remind me of the Jews who meaninglessly cry, “Never again!” while actively working to disarm all innocents, leaving us at the mercy of anyone with few scruples and evil intentions.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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As if we haven’t been compromising and getting our rights shredded for decades!
Now about NO! We tried that whole ban thing once. You know what happened during it? Columbine! Law abiding citizens dutifully stopped purchasing these weapons. Murderers intent on causing harm got them anyway.
