Guns, Guts And Glory

Gun-Control Victims - Poland

"God created Men and Sam Colt made them equal!"

Being a seventh-generation Texan, I have spent my entire life with guns.  I started shooting at around 4 years old, got my first .22 rifle for Christmas when I was 8, and at one point I owned more than a dozen guns of all different types and calibers.  At no point in my life have I ever pointed a gun at a human being, and only once did I expose a side arm to diffuse a potentially nasty situation.

I was a member of the National Rifle Association from almost the time I could walk, much less hold a gun.  I was a competition shooter rated as Marksman at 100 feet for .22.  Thursday was Skeet Club at my high school, and on those days there were more guns and ammo in my school than in a battalion of some armies.  At one point, I even had a callous on my right shoulder and permanent specks of gunpowder in the skin of my trigger finger from shooting guns.

Growing up on the farm, it was the norm to see 12-year-old boys driving pickup trucks around the area with an entire arsenal in the front seat and gun rack just to plink beer cans down by the creek on Saturday afternoon.

When I say arsenal, I mean everything from .410 snake guns to 30-30 shoulder cannons and .45 semi-auto handguns, not to mention hunting bows, throwing knives and various other goodies.  We all knew safe handling like we knew breathing.  There was never horseplay with guns.  That was a serious offence, even among kids.

I never knew anyone that was injured by a gun, other than two relatives that ate their own bullets for whatever reasons they had to do that.

There wasn't much crime, either.  No one in their right mind would try to rob a bank or store when just about everyone else in the store was packing heat.  Occasionally, the news had stories of shoot-outs over in the bad side of town between a bunch of drunk rowdies, or maybe the rare fugitive holed up against the cops.

In the aftermath of events like Las Vegas, the whiners all come out in force saying guns need to be banned.  Well, folks, opioids killed 64,000 Americans in 2016, while gun homocides were about 12,000 (the actual number is almost impossible to find). 

Just for comparison, automobile accidents killed 35,000 people in the US.  Both cars and opioids are licensed, controlled and sanctioned by the US governments at all levels.  For a bit more perspective, cigarettes killed around 480,000 people last year, and tobacco is also licensed, controlled and sanctioned by the government in the US.

In fact, lightning strikes about 260,000 people, and kills roughly 24,000, per year annually, which means you are FAR more likely to be hit by lightning at any given point on the planet, than killed by a gun in the US - approximately the same odds as winning the lottery.

While events like Las Vegas are indeed very tragic, politicians and media calously use them to advance agendas that have nothing to do with our safety.

You see, America was founded by folks who clearly understood that government itself was the most dangerous force ever unleashed by humanity on itself.  They knew that the only way for humans to protect themselves from the vile force and power of government was to equal the playing field by guaranteeing that the populace would, in the aggregate, constitute an army that no government could ever conquer.  They ensured that the rights of religion, speech, assembly, and the press would be backed up by the right of the people to destroy by whatever means necessary any force that tried to take them away.

That is the true, if often unacknowledged, purpose of the US Second Amendment.  The right to own guns was not for hunting or self-defense (though they are valuable benefits), it is for the express purpose of eliminating a tyrannical government.

And that is why the government keeps trying to take away guns, whether by vile abuse of tragedies, or by creating tragedies to try and stampede the majority into giving up guns.  Put simply, no government can have absolute power as long as the people under that government have the power to fight back, and with 90 admitted guns per 100 people in the US, that's a mighty force for a tyrant to overcome.

Ask the victims of Hitler, Stalin, Ho Xi Minh, or any of the other tyrants of just the last century if they agree with gun control.  I'm willing to bet almost all of them would gladly have accepted a gun to even the fight just a bit.

To my mind, the only agreeable situation that might encourage me to give up guns would be for all the governments of the world to disarm first.  Even then, I'd be hard-pressed to let go.  With well over 100 million people dead at the direct hands of governments in the past 100 years, it makes good sense for all people everywhere to keep and bear arms.

Offense Or Defense?

Well, it appears that Dallas is once again the center of a major sniper attack.  This further confirms my contention that the Red River should be re-routed south of the city and the whole mess conceded to Oklahoma.

More to the point, though, there is a deep, steaming pile of bullshit around this shooting.  Half the folks are blaming the cops, the other half are blaming this or that race or group or ideology.  I have a rather different take on things (surprise!).

I had a cousin who was a cop, now retired.  In the line of duty, he never once drew his gun in 20+ years of service.  Of course, this was back in the days when cops wore button-down shirts, trousers and in street clothes, looked like any other person in a crowd.

Nowadays, cops in the US wear black para-military uniforms, shave their heads and treat every individual and situation as a terrorist threat.  In addition, most cops now are former military and don't understand civilian law enforcement.  Not that they are supposed to, though.  The government now considers all civilians a threat and acts accordingly.  With a bunch of trigger-happy paranoid soldiers doing civil patrol, it's no wonder people are getting shot right and left.

And no, it's not a white or black thing.  That is a media lie designed to get everyone fighting each other while the "rulers" hide the sausage in the halls of power.  I even read one article that claimed the NRA (National Rifle Association) weren't jumping up and down about the Castile killing because, even though the man was licensed to carry a gun, he was black and the white cop was acting out of racist prejudices.

Good lord.  What a lost society America has.  I don't remember the NRA jumping up and down over Waco either, and that was a bunch of white folks who had licenses to manufacture guns being bar-b-qued by white FBI and BATF federales.

As much as the media are trying to make all this a "race" thing, the truth is it's a police training issue.  They are told they are at war on the streets and are trained to be so paranoid that they will shoot you for scratching your nose the wrong way.  Doesn't matter what color you are.  Hell, I've had a "black" cop draw down on me and damn near shoot me because I laughed at him, simply because I drove an extra 100 meters to get off a major road and onto a quiet and safer back street, instead of stopping and surrendering to his "authority" the minute his lights came on (I beat the ticket too).  It was a pure power trip on his part and had nothing to do with colors.

A large number of US cops today are war veterans who don't have many other options when it comes to jobs.  Amazingly, there's just not a lot of positions for trained killers who don't know much else.  Furthermore, the rules of combat are much different from civilian law enforcement, but these people are given military weapons, armor and taught that everyone is out to get them.  This is trouble waiting to happen.

In fact, many people suspect, as do I, that this is the plan.  "Civil unrest" is easily used as an excuse to curtail liberty and inhibit freedom.  It's a very old tactic.  The Romans used it.  The Nazis used it.  The US is using it.  All empires, in their dying days, become paranoid and start causing problems in order to justify clamp-downs on domestic populations, because it's just easier than worrying about all these damn liberties.

One could argue rather easily that this militarization of civilian law enforcement has been in the planning and execution phases for a long time.  Huge military build-ups under Reagan, followed by endless wars starting with Bush I have produced a large number of ex-military who are then funneled into civilian policing.  The militarization of the police then creates an equal/opposite reaction in the populace, which tensions bound to boil over at some point.  Especially with paranoid trigger-happy cops shooting everything in sight.

This is not a matter of "white" cops shooting "black" citizens.  It's a matter of all cops shooting all citizens because they've been trained to react that way, first in the military, then on the beat.  It doesn't help that government is making everything, including breathing (produces CO2), illegal.

To all of this, add TeeVee shows like COPS and all the rest that glamorize this behavior and condition folks to accepting lawlessness and over-heated responses as normal.  Top it all off with media that loves sensation and blood and guts to draw eyeballs, and you have a potent stew of conflicting goals clashing on the streets of Dallas.

Now, for the real conspiracy buffs out there, any reason not to think that the Dallas snipers were positioned by federal agencies at a Black Lives Matter rally to stir up racial division and promote gun control?

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution made it a sacred right of the people to own firearms, because every man was supposed to be trained to fight, should the country ever be invaded.  The other part of the concept was to ensure that the people had the ability to defend themselves from out-of-control governments.

As difficult as it is to admit it, wern't the Dallas shootings really just citizens protecting themselves from tyrannical government?

Time to start asking the tough questions, don't you think?

By the way, go read 18 USC 521, and compare the federal legal definition of "street gangs" to what we generally see of cops in the US.  Makes for an interesting thought experiment.

Lead Poisoning

It's times like these when you wish they still taught civics in high school.  Apparently, no one knows the laws in the US, nor are they able to look them up.

As the debate about gun control rages across the US, and even across the world (China for instance), it behooves us to go back and take a look at the laws that allow US citizens to own guns, and why.  First, a look at the Second Amendment in the US Bill of Rights:

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.

So far, so good.  Now we ask ourselves, how is the militia defined in law?  For that, we turn to 10 USC Sub. A, Part I, Chap. 13, Sec. 311 - Militia: Composition and Classes:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are—

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

Source

(Aug. 10, 1956, ch. 1041, 70A Stat. 14; Pub. L. 85–861, § 1(7),Sept. 2, 1958, 72 Stat. 1439; Pub. L. 103–160, div. A, title V, § 524(a),Nov. 30, 1993, 107 Stat. 1656.)

While you're checking my facts, keep in mind that the US Constitution and Bil of Rights was written on hemp paper, just in case you think hemp should be illegal and that the Constitution allows government to do that.

Now, a quick history lesson.  During the American Revolution (Part I), the regular army was hopelessly outmatched in every way by the British army.  Oh sure, they had some good strategists, but they were broke and ill-equipped, so when they marched onto the field of battle, they were mostly mowed down like a hay harvest.

What made the difference?  A bunch of farmers with hunting rifles ambushing the British and wearing them down bit by bit.  It was guerrilla warfare, much like what is kicking the US army's butts in Afghanistan and other places.  Instead of everyone wearing pretty uniforms and lining up in a field and blowing each other to bits until the last man standing, the militia looked like farmers and non-combatants.  They could blend into the population, be anywhere in a town or on a country road, and they knew the land in a way that a general with a map could never know it.

The writers of the Bill of Rights knew this and knew that governments that had a monopoly on power (like the one they had just defeated) inevitably become totalitarian police states.  One only need to scan a history book to discover that fact.

So they made it a codified right that every member of the unorganized militia should be armed and have some basic training and practice in order to protect the nation from invasion...and from out-of-control governments.

Now, some people read the "well-regulated" part and think in terms of rules and regulations, but that is not the meaning intended here.  In military terms, well-regulated means trained and equipped.

Back in the old days, when I was a kid, we were trained as militia.  I received my first gun for Christmas at 8 years old.  It was a Browning .22 rifle, and boy was I excited!  However, in order to quality for that gun, I was trained to shoot from the age when I could hold a gun.  From my earliest memories, I was going out to the farm with Dad and other friends and relatives to plink can and bottles down at the creek.  I distinctly remember my first real lesson.  I was handed a .12 gauge shotgun and told to shoot a coffee can thrown in the air.  I had a bruise the size of Rhode Island on my shoulder for a week.  I learned really fast to respect guns.

Then there were the NRA camps.  We would spend a summer learning to carry, clean and shoot all sorts of guns.  We went to competitions to earn patches and pins for 50-yard, 100-yard and 150-yard targets.  I earned my Marksman patch at 12.  For a time, I could put a bullet through the hole made by the previous bullet at 50 yards.  If it weren't for the spotters, you might have thought I missed the target.

My first year in high school was in a small town called Shiner.  We all drove to school, though us freshmen and sophmores didn't have licenses.  They sheriff didn't bother us unless we were being crazy.  Pretty much every car and pickup in the parking lot had at least two guns and plenty of ammo.  It was a way of life.

The next year, I transferred to a school in downtown Houston.  Every Thurday, the skeet club met after school.  Those days, there were probably 30 or 40 shotguns with ammo at school.

Never once was there a problem.  No one every pulled a gun in anger or made threats.  No one ever went on sprees down the hall killing and maiming.  Maybe some folks thought about it, but given the fact there were dozens of other guns in the school, they would have been a damn fool.  If someone ever tried it, they wouldn't have made it ten steps down the hall without having their brains decorating the wall.

Then there's folks like my idiot liberal sister.  She's one of those bleeding-everything pacifists that would gladly hang a sign in her yard saying, "This is a gun-free home."  Even mentioning the word 'gun' gets her all hypoplectic.  Yet, when push comes to shove, she's more than happy to throw a cop at it, which is nothing more than gun violence by proxy.

Whether I point a gun at you, or I have someone else do it for me, the result is the same.

Now comes the question of things like body armor.  Well, as I read the Second Amendment, it says, "well-regulated," meaning equipped.  Therefore, any member of the militia should be able to own guns, body armor, silencers, etc.  If the army can have it, then the militia can have it...by law.

So what's the solution to so-called 'gun violence' that doesn't cross the boundary of law?  Easy!

All males 17 to 45, and females in the National Guard, should be required to attend training for some amount of time and be certified as militia members.  Then, they should have to attend annual refresher courses.  Finally, they should all be required to keep and bear arms at all times, just like the Swiss.  If the simple requirements of the law were followed, no one would ever think of going on a shooting spree.  They wouldn't make it ten feet without a couple of dozen militia members putting a quick stop to it.

Imagine if the law was actually followed.  There'd be millions of trained and armed citizens everywhere.  Anyone who thought of robbing a store or shooting up a mall would have to remember that they'd likely be mowed down before they could take two shots.  The theater shooters would face down 20 armed militia members.  A mall shooter would have dozens of well-regulated individuals ready to stop them.

The problem here is not the need for more laws, but proper enforcement of existing laws.  The only reason why the current laws would not be enforced is because there is an agenda to rid the common man of his means of defense.  And the only reason to do that is to allow government free reign in the public sphere without fear of reprisal.

At the moment, there are millions of law-abiding gun owners in the US.  This fact alone has forced the government to attack rights by stealth and by propaganda.  Without all those gun owners out there, the bastards who like treating people like slaves would have free reign.  They wouldn't have to nibble at the people's rights, they could gulp until satiated and no one could stop them.

Like the old saying goes, "If you criminalize guns, then only criminals would have them."  We can safely assume that government wants to ban guns in the hands of everyone except government agents.  So what does that make the agents?  Why, criminals of course.

One last note...there is no such thing as an 'assault rifle'.  Any weapon used to assault someone is an assault weapon, whether it's piano wire, water boards, electricity to the gonads, or a gun.  In the hands of a law-abiding citizen, all rifles are defensive, just like a shield.  Stop using 'their' terms and think for yourself.  That's the first step in becoming a free individual.

By the same token, any government that bans guns is protecting itself, not the people.

A free man defends himself.  A slave is defended by his owner.  We are either property, or we are free individuals.  Take your choice.  The battleground is the right to be armed and defend yourself and your family.

And if you are worried about school shootings, then home school your children.  You will all be better off.  After all, the first school shooting in the US was Kent State, and the 'authorities' were the bad guys.

Farce and Flatulent

It has been suspected for years, by the tin-foil crowd, that the US government has pursued a policy of using crimes involving guns to further an agenda of undermining the Second Amendment to the Constitution.


When I say "using", I am referring to the best case scenario, because the worst case scenario is that it has actually had a hand in causing the crimes in order to further a political agenda.


It is worth rereading the text of the 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."

The first part, up to the word "State" is an adverbial phrase, providing more information about the active verb 'infringed'.  It does not limit the right, merely provides one of the conditions influencing the negation of the main verb.  Regulated, in the sense that it is used here, is a gerund (verb being used as an adjective), meaning, "to adjust so as to ensure accuracy of operation."  Militia, as defined in 18USC, is all males between the ages of 18 and 59.


In other words, all prime-aged males kept in good working order (trained) are necessary to protect a free country, and so their right to own and carry weapons (of any kind) can not be changed in any way, shape or form.


Seems pretty straight-forward to me, and with sound reasoning.  There's no ambiguity in the "shall not be infringed" part of the statement.  No weasel words or legalese...just plain ol' English (not that many folks speak it any more).


Where all this gets a bit hairy is the current administration has been caught creating crimes in order to use them to 'infringe' on the rights of individuals to own guns.  It's called Operation Fast and Furious, and the key event took place in Arizona, which seems to be a battleground right now for these sorts of things.

Seems that the federal agencies, particularly the Bureau of Alcoholics, Tobacco Subsidies, and F**k Ups (BATF), were under direct orders from the White House to violate federal law by executing 'strawman' gun purchases at local, legal gun shops, transferring the guns to Mexican drug runners, and then waiting for the inevitable murders that could be traced back to gun sales in the US.  This, in turn, would be hyped in order to create a national backlash and create more 'infringement' on personal rights.


The murders would be combined with the attempted assassination of CONgresswoman Giffords way back at the beginning of last year.  She was chosen because her husband is a big hero astronaut, so they could tie all the nationalistic pride up into it.  They used a brainwashed Jewish kid who went to the same synagogue as Giffords, and who vlogged all kinds of nonsensical claptrap and was amped on psychotropic drugs (again those damn pills).


These gun-related incidents in a state with fairly liberal gun laws would then be spun into a national froth to disarm everyone (except the criminals, of course).


But then, a BATF agent was killed in Arizona using guns that were purchased under Operation Fast and Furious.  That led to questions, which led to cover-ups, which have now led directly to the door of the Oval Office.  You may recall some time ago, Obama said that they 'had a plan to institute gun control,' just wait and see. He was obviously referring to Fast and Furious, though that egg has exploded in his face, it seems.


At this point, we're going to do a thought experiment.  I'm going to mention a term, and I want you to consciously record the images and feelings that pop into your mind.  Here goes...


ASSAULT WEAPON


Now, if you've been a good little citizen and taken your daily propaganda fix, then the images that came to mind in the first instant included military-style rifles, criminals, drugs (non-prescription), feelings of fear and anger, etc.


The legal definition of assault is to attack someone, and a weapon is anything used to hurt someone.  As such, an assault weapon can be pretty much anything you can imagine, including words, used to attack someone.  A slice of bread and duct tape can be assault weapons.  A high-ball glass or piano wire can be assault weapons.  In fact, just reading Agatha Christie and P. D. James novels will give you a veritable what's-what of assault weapons.  So why, in particular, did a military rifle come to mind?


Because you are mind-controlled.


So here's the thing: from all appearances, the White House gave the order to a federal agency to make illegal gun purchases using tax dollars, sell those guns to criminal drug runners and look the other way while they crossed the border, and then plan to use any and all murders committed with those guns to force a political agenda down everyone's throats.


Things that should be coming to mind at this point are conspiracy, RICO, high crimes and misdemeanors.  There's no way out of this one.  A BATF agent is dead, the murder weapon is a gun registered to a BATF strawman purchaser, there's recordings that make conspiracy to commit crimes and to cover them up fairly plain, and there's documents tying it all back to the White House.


This is de facto proof that the US federal government can and has conspired to kill US citizens to further political agendas.  This opens dozens of lines of inquiry into things like 9/11, OKC, Ruby Ridge, Waco and many other similar incidents.  Even the Miller incident which started gun control and created the BATF back at the beginning of the 20th century.

Add to this today's headline that the CIA targeted and assassinated an American citizen, a Muslim cleric and non-combatant living in Yemen, a country against which the US does NOT have a declared state of war.  The killing was approved by the DOJ and there were no Letters of Marque or Reprisal issued.


In fact, Anwar al-Awlaqi was a guest at the Pentagon right after 9/11 occured, and was an operative for the CIA/military.  Obviously, he was getting too expensive.


What you have here is clear proof that the federal government is no longer acting to protect its citizens, and in fact, is using blatantly criminal acts and conspiracy to target and subdue its own citizenry.  There is not the least shred of plausible deniability and the acts are clearly documented and lead to the highest offices in the government.


That anyone needed THIS level of proof is rather amazing, considering the tin-foil crowd has been crowing about this sort of thing for decades.  But the fact is now on the table and it is incontrovertible: at least some elements of the US government have acted in criminal conspiracy to target and kill US citizens, both at home and abroad, to achieve political goals.


There is only one question remaining: What are we going to do about it?


We have a long list of scandals and abuses, that individually might be written off, but which collectively display a policy of aggression at the highest levels of government against its own citizens.  At the VERY LEAST, this information should weigh heavily on your voting decisions.  But it should be causing a massive uproar demanding accountablity and jail time for those guilty, regardless of what position or authority they have.


Of course, what will actually happen is that Obama will retire to Uruguay, next to the Bushes.  Perry will be elected president, and a couple of bureaucrats will be fired with cushy pensions.


And the beat goes on...