That’s Right Nate

Will we surrender the rights that old-timey people like this fought so hard to defend?

It was like Martin Luther King’s famous March on Washington, but with guns.  Literally dozens of conservative second amendment activists marched in Virginia where open carry  is legal to let the government in Washington, DC know that they would not be ignored.   Said protester Robert  Cooper, “A lot of the time people think of us as quiet types who keep to ourselves, but that’s not true.  I’m on the HAM Radio most every night and I know some of these guys have wi-fi in their bomb shelters.  It’s time we stand together and be counted.”

“We’re in a war. The other side knows they are at war, because they started it,” said Larry Pratt, president of the Gun Owners of America. “They are coming for our freedom, for our money, for our kids, for our property. They are coming for everything because they are a bunch of socialists.”

Rep. Paul Broun, R-Georgia, said “we must declare war against oppression and against socialism, and you are the people to do that” adding that he was in no way advocating violence and it was merely a coincidence that the rally was held on the anniversary of Timothy McVeigh’s attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Rally members were naturally on edge that any moment martial law could be declared and they could have their guns confiscated and be put in detention caps.  One thing’s for sure, those socialist baby stealers will think twice about messing with these brave patriots whether they drink their own urine or not.

President Obama has been working with other world leaders to keep nuclear weapons only in the hands of a limited number of governments throughout the world in a misguided attempt to protect us from terrorists and rogue states.  This little story has been ignored by the main stream media, which comes as no surprise to me.  However, I am shocked and appalled that conservative sources have also ignored this affront to civil liberties because it is not a threat to our current freedoms as much as our future freedoms.

The second amendment of our beloved Constitution clearly says that we have the right to bear arms.  Due to current technology, this right to bear arms is often limited to the right to bear guns.  This is not what our founding fathers had intended.   Anybody like myself who has hoped to one day have a small suitcase nuke as the ultimate deterrent to criminals should be likewise outraged by the attempt to withhold nuclear armaments from law abiding citizens.   Mark my words, 20 years from today if you make nuclear weapons illegal, then only the criminals will have them.

I know what some of you are thinking.  Why should an individual have the right to have a nuclear weapon capable of destroying a city?  They shouldn’t.   However, a miniature nuclear device that would be portable, easy to use, and destroy at most a couple of city blocks should be available for the defense of law abiding citizens.  One of the great things about out founding fathers is that they did not allow the limits of 18th century technology to limit freedoms.   If we allow Obama’s shortsighted policies to strip us of our future freedoms when nukes become smaller and more tactical, then we will be the ones who suffer for it.  If we allow governments to keep a monopoly on nuclear weapons, then we are forever going to be enslaved by those same nuclear weapons.

On Thursday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a law permitting Indiana residents to bring their beloved firearms to work.   The law which takes effect July 1, showed broad support in clearing the Indiana House 74-20 and the state Senate 41-9.  I am glad to finally see second amendment rights being extended to those Hoosiers who choose to work for a living.  However, this legislation is still flawed.

Unfortunately, some employers employers including schools, child care centers, domestic violence shelters, and some utilities and chemical plants are exempted from having to give their workers second amendment rights on the job.   Daniels himself suggested lawmakers in the future might want to clean up some “ambiguities” in the law that prohibit 100% of all employees from having their rights.

This still doesn’t go far enough.  Half of the fun of having a gun is keeping it out of sight, but close at hand.   The current law will require employees to keep their guns locked in their cars.   That seems to defeat the whole point of having a gun.   If you want to clean your firearm on your lunch break you actually have to  go out to the parking lot like a smoker or something.

There are all sorts of benefits to employers who do allowed concealed carry.  The increased productivity of workers who don’t make eye contact at the water cooler could save a medium sized company thousands of dollars per year.   Meanwhile, customer service speed will increase when complainers know that the person they’re talking to knows where they live and is packing.  When our founding fathers wrote the Constitution they recognized how important the right to sneak a gun into the office is to a healthy functioning democracy.  Let’s honor them by giving these rights to all employees.

For years, residents of Washington, DC have lived with an oppressive city government that has steadfastly denied the city’s residents their most precious right of all–The right to bear arms.   Gun owners who wanted to peacefully enjoy their right to hunt or shoot at targets in the city have forever been penalized because of the overreaction of the government to the city’s criminal element.   The honest residents of Washington have had to suffer this ridiculous oppression while they waited for somebody to stand forward and challenge this unjust law.

Much like a modern day Rosa Parks, NBA Star basketball player Gilbert Arenas stood forward to say, “I will not sit on the back of the bus and I will not ride the bus without my gun.”   Like all who stand up to oppression, Arenas has been persecuted for stepping forward.   There is some disagreement about exactly what happened, but it is clear that Arenas was storing 4 handguns in his locker.   After a disagreement over gambling debts, Arenas jokingly entered into gun play with teammate Javaris Crittendon.

Did the NBA praise Gilbert Arenas for standing up to an unjust law?  No!  Did the NBA laugh at Arenas’ clowning around?  No! What the NBA did was to side with the man and call Arenas unfit to be on a basketball court.  “The possession of firearms by an NBA player in an NBA arena is a matter of the utmost concern to us,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern.

I’m sorry, but he is a basketball player.  He works in a basketball arena.   Where is he supposed to keep the guns he doesn’t keep at home?  In his car?  The NBA would probably have a problem with that too.   I applaud Gilbert Arenas for his courageous stand on behalf of millions of other law abiding gun owners, who wish the right to engage in some harmless gun play at work.   If only the NBA could be made to understand just how wrong they are here.

I am so proud of my fellow gun owners for their united opposition to Obama’s health care proposals.   The Gun Owners of America group recently warned it’s 300,000 members that if the health care bill passes, the government could declare citizens medically unfit to carry a gun.   This is the same thing Hitler and the communists did, when we take away the rights of the mentally unbalanced to own firearms simply because they may have issues with rage or paranoia or may pose a threat to themselves or others, we lose our second amendment rights.   Executive Director of the group Larry Pratt called for resistance saying, “you end up having a gazillion people lose their gun rights because of some medical record that someone doesn’t like, where they say, ‘Oh, that might be a danger to their self or others.”

I cannot abide having these hard earned rights taken away from my fellow countrymen simply because they’re mentally unbalanced.   President James A. Garfield gave his life protecting the rights of the mentally unhinged to own firearms.   He was fatally shot by Charles Guiteau on July 2, 1881 when his assassin decided that God had commanded him to kill the ungrateful president who refused to hire him.   There are hundreds of thousands of people like me inspired by Garfield’s sacrifice who will not let it be in vain by taking away gun rights for the criminally insane.

The other reason that gun owners like myself oppose any kind of health care reform is because as private citizens we have to pay for not only a gun, but also for ammunition for that gun.  If we shoot somebody, it hardly seems fair that our tax dollars also pay to treat them for that gun shot wound.  In fact, since the reason you shoot somebody is to do harm to them, many of us would just as soon that the person we shoot not be able to get medical care in the first place.

Unfortunately, since the days of the Old West, medicine has improved greatly.   In those days, a belly shot was almost a sure death sentence.  Today, doctor’s are able to do a remarkable number of things to treat gun shot wounds and unfortunately, gun manufacturers have simply not kept up, especially in the area of causing infection.   This is definitely a call for both gun and ammunition manufacturers to step up their games.   If all gun shot wounds can be easily treated, do we really have the right to bear arms.

Long time readers of this blog will remember Tom the Bartender from our discussion on politics and his views on Limbaugh and Obama.  I saw him as I was driving home from work, not at the bar, but on a busy street corner.   Instead of pouring drinks, I found him performing a public service by using a squeegee to clean the windshields of passing drivers.

“Tom!  How are you doing? I didn’t expect to see you out here,” I called to him

“Hey Nate,” he smiled at me and immediately began cleaning off my windshield, “I got my hours cut way down at work.   I’m doing the squeegee guy thing to help out with my bills.”

“Things bad?” I asked.

“I’m getting by Nate.   I get welfare, but that cow of an ex-wife keeps taking everything she can get her hands on for those brats of mine.  It is giving me more time to work on my manifesto though,” he said.

“Well that’s good,” I smiled reassuringly, “I really think you want to use a typewriter.  Computers make them seem very impersonal.  It sounds like you have a lot of things to worry about.”

“Oh yeah,” he shook his head, “Obama keeps trying to raise  taxes and take away my guns.  I try and promote the tea parties, when I squeegee windows unless the driver looks Arab or something.  We keep paying all this money and what do we get?”

“Good point,” I said, “as the honks behind me started getting louder.   You’re still really anti-Obama aren’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” said Tom, “Why do you think he’s in Arabia now?   Its cause he’s a Muslim.   Now that he’s elected he doesn’t have to deny it anymore”

“You think he’s going to admit being Muslim?” I asked.

Tom laughed, “No of course not, but if you watch his speech in Egypt he keeps looking to the left,  that’s code to let Islamists know he’s facing Mecca.   I think I’m going to join one of those citizen Grand Juries to indict Obama for not being born in this country.”

“Well, how can you prove that,” I asked.

“Come on.  His name is Barrack.   You grow up with anybody named Barrack?  Kind of a foreign sounding name isn’t it?” he asked.

“You know I can’t deny it Tom.  I think the guy behind me is going to get out of his car if I make him miss another green light so I better go.   Here’s something for your troubles.  I hope to see you at the bar again,” I said as I flipped him a quarter.

“Thanks Nate,” he smiled, “You’re one of the good ones.”

This we saw another casualty of the teacher unions and the bloated educational bureacracy in this country.  An 8 year old Arizona boy was charged with premeditated murder after he shot and killed his father and another man with a .22 caliber rifle methodically stopping and reloading as he killed them.

This is hot on the heels of the case of another 8 year old boy from Massachusetts who shot himself in the head while firing an uzi.  Now, from everything we have heard this Arizona boy was well adjusted and not a discipline problem.  His father tried to do all he could by teaching him to shoot prarie dogs, but how is a working parent supposed to have enough time to teach his child about proper gun safety including that you never ever point a gun at another person and shoot them.  This is the job of our schools and it is a job they are neglecting.

Fortunately, since the boy is 8 he can be charged as an adult in Arizona and not coddled by juvenile justice, but this tragedy should never have happenned in the first place.  Firearm safety is as important to our children’s future as math or reading and if scholars are right about this being the end times maybe moreso.  Until we start holding school boards responsible for making sure that every 8 year old in this country is able to properly care for and safely fire a gun we are all at risk.  While some parents might opt for homeschooling I really believe that children gain more responsibility by handling firearms around other children–something that parents simply cannot provide as readily.  Let us begin to demand more of our schools.  Let’s hold them accountable so that tragedies like this do not happen again.

I had to think long and hard about whether I would post this or not because I did not want to sensationalize a child’s death.  However, I was saddened to hear about the senseless loss of life and I thought something must be said.  An 8-year-old boy died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while firing an Uzi submachine gun under adult supervision at a gun fair.  The boy lost control of the weapon while firing it Sunday at the Machine Gun Shoot and Firearms Expo at the Westfield, Massachusetts Sportsman’s Club, Police Lt. Lawrence Valliere said.

This was the boy’s first time firing an uzi.  This should never have happenned.  When are the schools going to start dealing with gun safety.  If he had begun with small caliber handguns in first grade when he should have, by the time he would have been fully experienced in firing submachine guns by the time he was 8.

Unfortunately, the boy lived in Massachusetts where liberals refuse to fund and legislate an adequate fire arms training curriculum in the public schools.  How many more senseless accidents will there be before politicians get serious about this?  If our children do not have firearm training, how are they supposed to defend themselves against predators who outweigh them by 100 or 150 pounds?  Let’s get serious about education and stop leaving children behind from gun safety.

In 2007, Rabid Gun Control Freak Senator Frank Launtenberg (D-NJ) tried to further infringe on the Constitution by introducing legislation allowing the Justice Department to prohibit gun sales to terrorism suspects.

Stepping forward was defender of the second amendment and now McCain’s top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann. As a lobbyist for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Scheunemann knew that in this country people are innocent until proven guilty and for some people nothing would help them more through the trauma of being mistakenly charged with terrorism than an afternoon of hunting.

The problem is if we take guns away from the people wrongly accused of being terrorists, the only people who will have guns will be the actual terrorists. Scheunemann made it clear that he has advised McCain on matters of gun rights so I have no doubt with McCain in charge that no terrorism suspect will be deprived their constitutional right to bear arms without due process. As a former POW, nobody knows more about what being deprived of rights is like than John McCain.

When I came upon David’s Right Way of Thinking earlier today I knew I had found a kindred spirit.  His blog David’s Right Way of Thinking (http://davidsright.blogspot.com/) is spot on in agreement with me on a whole host of issues, but I recently read about the troubles in England and I reallized, well I reallized that David was right. 

David posted a list of the violent crimes from just one week in the UK:

Two women have been arrested after a female cyclist was stabbed to death in the Anfield area of Liverpool. The unidentified victim was riding a bicycle on Whitfield Road on Friday night when a car pulled up alongside her and an argument broke out.

A HAUL of shotguns, air weapons and other firearms that have been handed in to police were set to be destroyed in Edinburgh today. Around 800 weapons have been handed over to Lothian and Borders Police during an amnesty over the past six months.

Muslim leaders have condemned an attack on an Anglican clergyman calling the assault “cowardly and despicable”.  Canon Michael Ainsworth, 57, was beaten by youths described as Asian in the grounds of St George-in-the-East, Shadwell, east London, on 5 March.

A 35-YEAR-OLD man suffered serious head injuries after an attack at a petrol station on Wednesday night.  Police said they were treating the incident, at Sainsbury’s petrol station in Woodlands Road, Glasgow, as attempted murder. The man was said to be in a serious condition at the Southern General Hospital.

Three teenagers who left a 16-year-old boy minutes from death and broke a 15-year-old’s cheekbone in what a judge called an “insatiable desire to inflict injury” have been jailed indefinitely. The three youths were 15 when they spent an afternoon hunting victims in Boston, Lincolnshire. They set about the 16-year-old with such savagery that he was left for dead, having fits on the ground and with blood spilling from his mouth.

Could you imagine if the United States had a crime blotter like that for just 7 days?  The liberals in this country would be outraged and running around with their hands up in the air like they are for this ridiculous Earth Hour.  To quote David:

“Gun control laws are considered the solution but don’t address the problem – the violence and crime. While it is easier to kill with a gun, UK is considering a knife registry and ban on samurai swords. Why? Because the reason for crime and violence has not been addressed. “

So what would happen in this country after they take away our right to bear arms? I don’t know, but I think it would go a little something like this:

Don’t think that gun control doesn’t affect you because you don’t have a gun–it does.