Paul Helmke of the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence is wrong again, this time the week of November 28th, 2008.
Helmke enunciated that a gun ban is the will of the People. This might sound reasonable, but it is tragically misleading to the people who want to understand what the Supreme Court's hearing D.C. v. Heller and gun bans are really all about. Gun bans cannot be made a desire of the people any more than ownership of another person can be a ‘desire of the People.’
The Second Amendment is as absolute as the Emancipation Proclamation is. It cannot be adjusted by the will of the people, not allegedly for safe streets, not for anything.
The Second Amendment was written to be absolute for two important reasons:
1. The Founders hated abuse of due process enough to revolt against the Crown of England. They vowed that in the new nation, abuse of due process must never happen again, so they wrote that the Citizen is Supreme Authority, not officials. With me so far?
2. They knew, further, that if the new nation was to survive, that Citizen Authority had to be backed by lethal force, and forever. This is is an example of Original Intent. The Second Amendment wasn't written to be forgetful of guns of the future -- it was written to be mindful of abuses of due process of the future.
Citizen authority is backed by lethal force so that it won't be subject to boondoggles such as using crime as an excuse to disarm the supreme authority of the nation. Gun control policy obfuscates citizen authority to act when facing grave danger alone.
Crime is an interesting demographic: you see it expressed in terms of results, namely the injuries, broken hearts and costs – immense costs. Citizens interested in the facts are not informed as to the numbers of crimes foiled, also an important demographic in the issue of Crime.
How many people de-escalate a violent act from completion using their own gun? Is it important? Is it legal?
The question is uppermost, because it brings focus to the issue of what a gun within easy reach is really for: personal safety. Because police cannot be there immediately - and they have no such duty to begin with - the target is the first line of defense. You always will be, and nothing will ever change this.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 in the case of Castle Rock v. Gonzales that police have no duty to protect individuals. They said, no constitutional right to police protection.
For the 10,177 gun-related homicides in 2006, you can look forward to another finding of a rather consistent 2.5 million times in 2006, 2007 and 2008 where armed citizens de-escalated a crime, perhaps their own murder, rape or abduction. Compare.
Why would the Founders be so unyielding about everyone's having a gun within easy reach at all times? Because they lived abuses of the law against them, and one of those was confiscations, and then impositions with the inability to fight back against abuses of due process. Crime could then reign. Life was Hell on earth on many levels, and they knew how to keep it from recurring. They wrote Law for the new nation.
Do we have Tyranny today? Do we have abuses of due process today? Any fight will not likely eventually be between citizens and armed government troops – the fight will come in the form of unrighteous enforcement of abuses of the law, in takings, and the indolence of fellow citizens.
Gun Control Policy is an abuse of due process, an abuse of law. Any gun control, regulation, or so-called sensible gun laws is nothing more than an attack on the very force which backs citizen authority in this country. That includes heavy emphasis on the frauds of gun control, anti-violence measures and the industries of electronic surveillance, all of which thrive on continued violence to survive.
But where armed citizens can impeach the need for these, citizen authority is obfuscated and even punished. Abuse of the law.
Right-to-Carry states don't seem to have this problem with citizen authority nor violence. What do the RTC states know the gun ban states refuse to hear? Well, it could be that officials there have not regretted placing their trust in their constituents - where it belongs.
There are forty RTC States. Forty of them.
Abuse of the law today comes in the form of using crime as an excuse to disarm the people who could stop it best – the first line of defense – and making honest citizens believe they can’t act legally or morally in the absence of first responders.
This increases numbers of killed citizens, from stabbings, rapes, robbery, mayhem, burglary, home invasions and, of course, abductions. It’s not poverty or guns doing the killings, it’s Anger and the desire for No Witnesses, guns or no guns.
Utah, previously a concealed carry state, has now gone open carry along with their concealed carry. You may see citizens there carrying their iron on their hip now as a matter of routine. Most, you wouldn’t know they’re armed. Criminals don’t know, either.
For all the medical professionals who see gun shot wounds, and who demand a gun ban, what they are really seeing is Crime – they will never see in their Emergency Room the 2.5 million that were stopped using citizen authority and superior force.
Mr. Helmke is wrong when he states that a gun ban is the will of the People. Far from it. The will of the People is to fight crime, and to prevent as much as possible. An armed citizen prevents much, much more violence than Helmke’s center to prevent violence ever will. Ever.
2.5 million times more. I bet it’s easy to understand the will of those 2.5 million who are alive today and who did not need to go to an Emergency Room with a criminal injury of rape, robbery, or mayhem.
That is the will of the People, is it not, for any serious-minded approach to fighting crime.
And it’s good for the country.
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John Longenecker is author of The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns available worldwide. His website is www.GoodForTheCountry.com