John Longenecker is author of Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns. It's not all about guns: it's all about liberty and who is in authority. A new upcoming source of information is the Second Amendment March scheduled for April, 2010. Go to secondamendmentmarch.com

Now the question has some meaning, since the Republicans seem to have woken up and discovered what has happened to them.

____________________

I write for the non-gun owners in America. Often, I say is that what it is about guns isn’t even about guns. It is the thesis upon which I base my book, Safe Streets. It is about how we manage our Burdens, beginning with the very first one, Personal Safety, as opposed to assuming that someone else will do it for us (which cannot be done). This presents America with another example germane to the 2008 election for all offices.

In Part I of Guns And 2008, I spoke of how the Candidates have an opportunity to unify Americans by recognizing how we respect one another on various levels when we carry these burdens - from home ownership to parenting to business ownership - and how fighting Crime by recognizing Citizen Authority can be that common ground on an even broader scale. They key, of course, is to understand how 80 Million gun owners and many more non-gun owners understand the concept, and not to try to get constituents to appreciate how officials understand it. Which brings us to part II, wei ji.

Wei ji is the pinyin Chinese symbol – really two symbols – meaning danger and opportunity. Don’t think for a second that the wrong choice in November isn’t Danger! And don’t think for a minute it isn’t an opportunity to change it. Be sure to get out the vote and get out and Vote, because, as I like to say, it doesn’t take guts to change America, but it takes guts to keep it. Keeping our burdens and not transferring them to officials is integral to keeping America, and it takes guts to know this.

With many, many more Americans looking to media coverage of Crime since the D.C. v. Heller decision as to how all this relates to them, one has to understand the lay questions. Those questions of people outside the so-called gun culture begin with, "What does this do for me?" "I follow the logic, so: but what does this do for me?"

It is the Right Brain getting involved in processing information in one’s self-interest. One side of the brain can follow the logic of a subject, but it is the other side of the brain which processes the value versus fears and works to sort it out. This right brain gatekeeping function could be put a dozen different ways: "What has this got to do with me? I don’t even want to own a gun." It’s a safeguard function to screen ideas as much for protection as for spotting opportunities for self-interest.

"I’m not into Guns."

You get the idea. It’s not entirely emotional, it’s more: it’s reactive to the sum total of experiences, good and bad, how they were interpreted, correctly or incorrectly, and gives the opportunity to overcome old misgivings and relate value to the person. And to emphasize, it still isn’t even about Guns. It’s about Burdens, nearly all our personal burdens. And it’s not about killing, it’s about staying alive.

How do we summon the forces to resist the lifting of our burdens to insist on keeping our burdens, and what does it have to do with November? Simply by supporting facts with answering that one question of the Right Brain. And by seeing both danger and opportunity in the election.

First, we need to clarify (factually and logically) that GunOwners are not working exclusively for their guns, we work for freedom of all rights. Gun owners have found a way to address all rights in this country rather economically with one endeavor, and it is the concept that the Second Amendment protects all the other rights because it is the lethal force which backs citizen authority in oversight of officials. In this country, the citizen has the monopoly on force, from citizen arrest to oversight of police, the Military and everything in between. It’s not that we want to shoot – it is that with Independence and under our authority, there is little need for so many policies such as National ID Card and gun control. They are made to look ridiculous because they cannot do as good a job - legally and morally – as the armed citizen can. They are boondoggles, because this is not where crime is fought.

In this way that many anti-crime polices are not even needed, more Liberty for all becomes liberty for all, and liberty for all keeps liberty for all, and that’s worth everything to everyone. Once this concept is grasped as a dynamic of each of us protecting ourselves and often each other and whole communities, it begins to contact and touch that gatekeeping part of the brain in answer to the chief question of how this subject relates to you, someone who doesn’t like guns. .. Especially in the absence of first responders.

It’s not about guns. It’s about your depending on yourself and not falling for silly policies which try to take your place, and it’s time this is pointed out before a major election. [I’ll bet you can think of three policies that freeze you out of the process of problem-solving, only to hold you to a stupid mandate of one sort or another. They are related to a Gun Control Formula]

Now there’s another question, some of those past experiences I mentioned: what if one doesn’t want to depend on himself? This issue is going to be in that right brain when you and your brain enter the voting booth in November. Forget about charisma, forget about being articulate, forget about bitterness – some people are going to be casting their vote for, as Yogi Berra put it, "Include me out!" The vote for the wrong candidate is going to amount to one referendum: take care of me.

But that has historically been a promise which has never been kept. Not ever. Think of one. Just one. It’s a great political carrot, but an illusion that never materializes. It has become the wei portion of the dual Chinese symbol, Danger. In plain English, Dependency.

We believe that every election is yet another turning point, yes, ji, and the 2008 election is going to be critical. Will we elect more Dependency in America, or will we elect Independence? Independence is the scary freedom of movement based on your carrying your own burdens such that no one else can even ask for the job of carrying them for you. This applies to specific individual burdens that no one can assume for you.. No matter what they say politically.

Your Independence and the success and personal preference for it makes the very overture ludicrous. Independence – depending on yourself more than you can depend on any policy conceived by the mind of activists – comes with the price that you do for yourself, hard or not, consequences or not, but it means that you’re free. You are independent of the executives we hire.

Officials may assume authority we did not grant, and they may back it with official force, but it does not change the truth that we are Independent of them. We may rely on them (hire them) to print money, deliver the mail, fire suppression and rescue, inspect food, specific policing and law enforcement actions we deem essential, and other things, but when it comes to those things only we can assume, then the proper call might be to keep your hands off my burdens.

This is what is at stake in 2008, the vote in the polling booth, "Take care of me."

It’s a Helluva Danger – wei – but it’s also one whale of an opportunity, ji.

Does this answer that one question?

_______________________

John Longenecker is Publisher of CONTRAST MEDIA PRESS at CONTRASTMEDIAPRESS.com.

John Longenecker, Publisher, Contrast Media Press

_____________________

What is it about Guns? . . a question addressed by many except Presidential Candidates where the subject seems to be Verboten. Here’s a new wrinkle: As the 2008 Presidential Candidates remain mute or vague on Liberty questions, especially in light of the recent Supreme Court Decision that gun bans are unconstitutional, you’d think they’d comment.

Are they missing a bet?

There are more than 300 million guns in the hands of some 80 million adults (I said Adults) in America, and most of these adults believe that non-gun owners don’t have a clue as to what Guns are really all about. It’s like Fishing: it may not be at all obvious that catching a fish isn’t what fishing is all about.

Much of the deeper understanding of what Guns are all about usually begins only after one elects to buy a gun. Sometimes, the election to buy a gun is often based on having been a victim of crime, and coming to a decision to fight back. Next time.

[A new Liberty Interest emerging in Washington, D.C. is Capital Gun Owners. They reminded me of one of the truths gunnies know very well: that Guns are not about killing, they are about staying alive. See their site at CapitalGunOwners.org and please note that most Americans are in fact Not in favor of Gun Control as some were led to believe.]

This isn’t the very best beginning for a Candidate to let such an issue go unaddressed. Gun owners – millions of them and not a so-called Lobby – think in terms of during-the-fact, or, put another way, Preparedness. Many gunnies mention the fire extinguisher in the home as analogous. In fact, more than one placed around the home. (Both fire extinguisher and gun)

Many gunnies are also very much aware of something else the Candidates have not addressed, and only paid lip service, and that is Citizen Authority.

The Second Amendment in the United States is that the Citizen is Supreme Authority and that this authority is backed by lethal force. This is 2A, plain and simple. Through Just Powers, the monopoly on force rises from the citizenry to officials as we see fit, and not the other way around. This is why someone cannot have a credible opinion against guns per se – it would be to oppose one’s own authority as a citizen, perhaps even to surrender it. That's not very credible, is it? (One may elect not to own a gun, personally, but may not ban weapons, thereby opposing the very force which backs our authority. It would be to speak out of ignorance. The right is among the inalienable rights, and one may not interfere with (infringe) the force backing their very own authority which is superior to that of our servants.)

Another point 80 million gun owner constituents are waiting to hear from the Candidates is that the responsibility of gun ownership is not chiefly about safely operating a dangerous item (the core belief of gun control), but chiefly in rising to meet the obligation (responsibility) to self and to loved ones on one inescapable reality: No one can take your place as the first line of defense for yourself and loved ones. No one else really has that obligation. In your most critical moment in facing grave danger, you are alone. This has never changed, and it never will. A cell phone won’t change it, spray won’t change it, a big dog, a whistle, and a bat by the bed won’t change it. It also trumps morally and legally another's desire to regulate how much authority you have to act.

More than a Right, it’s all about your own Authority and how you are free to exercise it. Or how some want to give theirs up. Or worse, how some want to obfuscate and punish it for political gain. That is not only unconstitutional, it is unconscionable when people are made to believe that guns and responding are wrong. Meanwhile, self-respect and carrying one’s own burdens -- beginning with the primary burden -- is most respectable, and this can be a powerful unifying force when it comes to how a community fights crime and wins prosperity.

People come together in fighting blight, in beautification, in other programs where politics are set aside and people discover what they have in common, more than what they don’t. Safe Streets would one such example. Judging by the numbers of concealed carry permits issued over the last year and the increasing acceptance of the Castle Doctrine of armed self-defense, people are re-discovering their own authority to act, not out of fear, not in anger, but in purpose. A gun in the home isn’t about killing, it’s about staying alive.

Some of the concern of constituents is how so-called Change will effect our liberties. My slogan is that it doesn’t take courage to change America, it takes courage to keep it. It takes guts just to discover what America is all about (because it means burdens). Carrying our own burdens such that others may not lift them and our freedoms along with them is what the lethal force backing our authority is all about.

As we overtake the Nanny State and move into a deeper state of Dependency on officials (change), the issue becomes of greater and greater concern when candidates are silent on just how they will handle Crime when forty-eight states already have a powerful model. (Concealed Carry of handguns based on official recognition of citizen authority as supreme. Forty-eight states don't quarrel with it.)

Finally, think of this in what we expect from our Candidates for President: at the core of American Liberty is the idea that officials who like to lift our burdens (change) usually make a mess of it, and we all groan and bear it. Crime is an exquisite example, especially in the major cities who ban guns within their right-to-carry states. (They hide the ball of Citizen Authority.) This is because officials struggle for the wrong goals and try to take the place of the head of household in promises of helpfulness and assurances of compassion, but no matter what you propose, it can’t be done. In the final analysis, policy has by then excluded head of household from the process and Nanny State then becomes Dependency State more with every passing policy. So much for Change.

In 2008, America will decide whether she wishes to be more a nation who carries her own primary burdens in all things, or wishes to be a majority to be carried by others in more and more things. The Candidate who enunciates this in the campaign will clarify what millions are waiting to hear: more Nanny State, or back to self-rule with all of its burdens? With the right position coming from a Candidate, so much costly violence may diminish so that officials – and all of us – may get on better then with the People’s business of prosperity on so many levels.

_______________________________

Encouraging Those Non-Gun Owners Voting For Concealed Carry. . . And With Heartfelt Thanks.
_________________________________________

A great deal of ink and disc space are being given to officials who are supporting individual concealed carry of handguns. A big pat on the back to them for their courage as much as their conscience, I know it's not easy... Until they discover, if they haven't already, two things: the support of their constituents, which had been silenced and punished a great deal but ever-present, and the pure correctness of the measures they supported.

. Reports from around the country are showing how college campuses are examining student concealed carry. Students For Concealed Carry On Campus (SCCC) has been most successful in bringing the issue to public attention and in getting favorable results. The best to them and their supporters.

. States are voting for The Castle Doctrine. State Legislatures are also voting to blow off the National ID Card, another interference with liberty as profound as gun control policy. Mercy, are there twenty Castle Doctrine states now??

. There is a widespread increase in random shootings. These increases are very suspicious as the hearing date of D.C. v. Heller draws near, this March 18th. But then, this is common; as increasing anti-gun legislation or an interesting gun case surfaces, large or small, there are increased reports of shootings, or haven't you noticed? It's interesting to look back and note that the dire forecasts of the anti-gun movement – blood in the streets, aircraft shot down, lover shootings and more – did not appear in the decades passed as forecast, but they sure do show up before high-profile gun cases.

. The Microstamping technology is becoming a scandal for its sole-source interest and heavy-handed, arm-twisting push, and a recent finding of experts casts a pall on the technology itself as simply not being ready for prime time as touted. [Internet Search Term Report advises against new national database of ballistic images]

.  31 Attorneys General have filed Amicus Briefs with the Supreme Court against D.C.’s gun ban. More than forty states affirm concealed carry and have not regretted it. More than 2 Million adults carry concealed weapons.

. More general attention is coming to the issue of concealed carry as being more in the public interest than gun bans have proven to be, certaintly, and persons and groups never before concerned with handguns and who had remained patient are coming forward on the issue not on guns, but as heads of household concerned with armed self-defense at home and away from home as they make the connection of how gun ban policy begins to affect non-gun owners.

The issue is not Guns, but infringement of Citizen Authority and oversight guaranteed by the Bill Of Rights and the lethal force which backs that authority. The question is not subject to any decision as an issue might ordinarily be; the subject is rooted in the framing-era intent of the Founders in foreseeing this very taking in 2008 and eliminating the folly of it all, that is, having dealt with it and making their intent known. 

In foreseeing abuses of power in the future of the United States, and to forbid such abuses of power [as in the banning of personal weapons], the Founders of the framing-era declared the Citizen to be the Sovereign and not the government, which includes all anti-violence activists and officials in D.C., for instance. The language of this concept described the Citizen as Supreme Authority with oversight, the ultimate legislators of the nation, and other expressions of Original Intent, and exactly why it must be so, and guarantee only a bundle of rights to citizens with great limits placed on officials throughout the Constitution. The prime apprehension was public service abuse of power against the individual in his/her own nation of self-rule as D.C.’s gun ban is today.

When it came to the Second Amendment, then, the framing-era intent was more about governance than guns, and was concerned with abuse of power in that governance, so the framing-era thinking in declaring Citizen as Supreme Authority was to guarantee the Citizen a singular lethal force to back our authority (especially against political boondoggles, opinion and majority sway as so-called anti-crime policies are), and is it this lethal force backing citizen authority against frauds which shall not be infringed. Any regulation whatsoever is a move against the force backing sovereign authority of this nation, the Citizen. (Furthermore, we know the Militia of the time was the everyman, not Military, since the Founders loathed a standing army as a return to a centralization of power, and since the concept of National Guard did not even come into existence for another 130 years following signing of the Constitution.)

In 2008 and beyond, no legal brief can disarm the supreme authority of this country. Gun bans are against the law. There is no such thing as sensible gun laws any more than there could be a sensible ownership of another human being for the sake of the same argument: safe streets.

2A is absolute, and beyond the reach of officials, beyond the reach of due process short of another Amendment. Officials simply have no such authority to regulate guns, because the Citizen is the Sovereign and in supreme authority at that.

If you're watching D.C. v. Heller calendared before the Supreme Court for March 18th, then note these dicta in an earlier First Amendment case: