2d Amendment - Do you believe?

Some problems require a 7.62 solution.

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The beauty of the second Amendment is that it is not needed until they try to take it. T JEFFERSON
 
What part of "shall not be infringed" do the politicos not understand? Technically, none, I say again, none of the first ten amendmants we know and love as the BOR can ever be deleted or even changed. Likewise under the dictates of our Constitution, Stae Legislatures are supposed to choose Senators and the Federal Government is only in charge of interstate commerce, our borders and the national defense. The sad commentary is the only guidelines the current politicians follow are those dictated by their offshore bankers. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the time has come for us to go back to a two party system by folding the Republican tares in with the Democrats and gleaning the Republican Wheat to form a second political party that abides by our Constitution. Sound out of line? Remember, it happened once before when the Whigs became disgruntled over the slavery issue among other things and started the Republican party.
 
Rigby,

Republican supporters and I have an honest difference of opinion.

You say, “The Republicans are still considerably different from the
Democrats.” I agree.

Most Democrats apparently want to void the Rights guaranteed by our
Second Amendment - their proposals indicate little else to me. They
make the most outrageous recommendations (with absolutely NO hope of
their proposals becoming law).

Most Republicans, regardless of their rhetoric, compromise away our
Second Amendment and other Rights, then help the Democrats’
proposals become law. Grrrr!

The Republicans and the Democrats have different rhetoric but together
they achieve the identical eventual outcome. Our Rights are being
outlawed.

We all agree we must vote. Jack99 proposes, “... we get off our bike,
beat the crap out of dog A, get back on our bike, pedal over and beat the
crap out of dog B, and live without fear and in peace as we go about our
business in a law-abiding manner?”

Jack’s right! He has the key! And the best part is we only have to get
off our bikes once! Several of us already are off the
Republican/Democrat bicycle built for two. We’re fighting in the best of
the American tradition.

We need not fear situations such as Waco and Ruby Ridge when we get
off our bikes. We’re not proposing force or isolation. We simply vote the
buggers out! We starve both dogs by depriving them of our support.

The two major parties continue to cooperate, propose and compromise.
They will not forward candidates who will reverse this degradation of our
Rights. Therefore, we can not expect to reverse the methods of the two
major parties by continuing to vote for the two major parties. They will
continue to nibble away at our freedoms - they will not stop until the
freedoms are outlawed. They are bleeding us to death through our
capillaries.

We must return to the limited government described by Judge Blackhawk
as he quoted the Constitution. As Will Beararms notes, the two parties
are (for the most part) just one big party! As disgruntled Whigs left their
party (to formed the Republican Party) it is time for us to leave the
Republican Party.

Vote the buggers out.

So who will we vote for? We don’t know yet. But voting Republican
merely to slow the demise of our Constitution just can not be the answer.

We must unite. Gun owners and others who believe in the original intent
of the Constitution must come together - ignoring our opposing political
and religious views - to save our Constitution.

It is more important to save the Constitution than it is to save the
Republican Party. The Constitution protects us. The Republicans
compromise us away.

There is no sense and no hope in continuing to vote for those who will
legislatively make us all criminals.

We MUST find someone to vote FOR rather than merely voting AGAINST.

The closest thing I have found to a Second Amendment Party is the
Libertarian Party. In the next few months, let’s rake ALL the political
parties over the coals! Let’s dissect them! Let’s analyze their rhetoric
and their actions and see who tells the truth.

Let’s get off our bikes and kick some doggie butt!
 
On another thread, the Posse Comitatus Act was declared dead.

Did the Democrats do that all alone?
Which Republicans voted to have the U.S. Army as our contingency police force?
 
Rigby: I'll indulge this dog metaphor a little. Why could you afford to take the route less bitten, why could you afford to get bit at all? Because dog bites eventually heal. Gun control laws don't. So in terms of the ulitimate result, it doesn't matter if Democrats pass gun control fast, or Republicans pass it slowly; We still lose ALL our rights, just on a diferent timetable.

Suppose those dog bites wouldn't have healed; Suppose those dogs had been rabid? Then you wouldn't have taken road A or B, you'd have racked your brains to find some way of avoiding those dogs, or muzzling them. If all else failed, you'd have offed them! I'd say that's the situation we're in now; A choice between Democrats and Republicans is a choice between a fast train and a slow train to Aschwitz. And maybe if I refuse to buy a train ticket, the SS will march me onto the fast train anyway, but at least I won't have voluntarilly hopped on board!

Ok, let's drop this metaphor, and look at what's REALLY at issue: Gun ownership is a civil right, just like voting. Now, did the civil rights movement pick as a strategy voting always for Democrats, voting always for Republicans, or did they go the third party route? No, they did none of the above: They used civil disobedience!

And so could we, if we weren't so programed to worship the law that we won't consider openly violating even unjust laws. There are, what, 80-90 million of us? suppose 10% of us, or even 5% of us just said tommorrow, "Forget it! I'm not obeying your stinking gun laws anymore!" Suppose we just started packing heat openly wherever we went.

What could they do? Arrest us all? Not enough cops. Jail us all? Not enough jail cells. Prosecute us all? Not enough courtrooms. Send the army against us? Fine, let's have that civil war NOW, when we've got the numbers to win it.

What could they do, I ask you? Either start a civil war, or back down, and that's about it.

The bottom line is, if we REALLY want to, we could put an end to this stupid farce tommorrow. We have that power, we have always had that power, and until they've reduced our numbers far, far below what they are now, we will have that power. They can only do to us what we LET them do to us, because we DO have the guns!

So why don't we end this stupid farce; Pick a day, get the word out, and DO IT!

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Sic semper tyranus!
 
I'm going to take a stab at identifying a Route 3 -- the path around dogs A and B (and frankly I think this metaphor is great).

Where will the battle for guns be won or lost? In Congress? In the Courts?? With the Executive departments and bureaucrats???

No, not ultimately. Ultimately, this is a minds and hearts exercise. IDEAS will win; not political parties. IDEAS will win because ultimately they cannot be corrupted. IDEAS win because they don't die. IDEAS win because they don't need to compromise to keep their job or otherwise survive.

The objective has got to be to control the long term, broad perception of the necessity of being armed. And the target audience is the mind of the average citizen.

I have had one continuing problem with what I will characterize (not entirely fairly) as the "NRA approach" to date. That approach has been to try to intimidate the hell out of politicians by threatening to defeat them at the next election.

The perception (and perceptions ARE reality in a democracy) is that NRA is a special interest, protecting big money making arms industrialists (even tho that's clearly not the case) and that NRA (and by extension its members) are hate filled paranoids. This is the picture, albeit stereotyped, of the contemporary gun owner in America.

And the approach taken in response to the recent round of law suits has reinforced this view. What did the NRA do? They tried to get special interest protection legislation passed at the states barring the law suits.

Frankly, those lawsuits represent a great opportunity to get out the message. Rather than try to "fix" the suits at the legislature, why not use them as educational, i.e., propoganda, tools.

How? Why not file a third party complaint to bring into the suit as a defendant the local school board? What did you teach our children? Bring in the local church? Where have you been in our kids upbringing? How about the local tv station for glamorizing the firearm as the best way to resolve disputes. How many people are shot EVERY NIGHT on American television?

And go another direction. If guns are alleged to be a public nuisance, that requires a court to balance the good and the bad. So let's go get some real nationwide surveys on the use of guns in defensive situations.

The survey in Florida that was used to extrapolate to the fact that guns are used in 2 million defensive incidents a year was criticized (fairly or not, I don't pretend to know) as being too small a sample, something like 5,000 homes.

So let's do surveys of a 100,000 homes in every state in the union! That's evidence. And let's get the survey designed by the best statisticians in the world, not a paid whore easily challenged.

In short, let's confront the issue on the merits, heads up, in public and trust the democracy we pretend to believe in to ultimately make the right decision.

Remember the definition of an honest politician: a sombitch who once bought, STAYS bought. Why would we ever trust our fate to any individual politician or political party. They will ALWAYS sacrifice principal for power. ALWAYS!!!

We have got to invest in the power of our idea. That ultimately will determine the success or failure of the right to bear arms.

PS - (Remember the dog analogy) When I played high school football 35 years ago as a 120 pound terror, our coach always said,

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

Our approach is based on size in the sense that we have one of the biggest ideas going -- the notion that the second amendment is the people's guarantor of all other rights -- speech, assembly, religion, travel, etc.

But size is not the issue in terms of short term political majorities in Congress. Winning a specific election on a specific day is not as important as winning the battle for the minds and hearts.

That requires a lot of fight in the dogs.


PPS And here's another idea. Why not have TFL intervene in one of those lawsuits (I know, now you think I'm trolling for clients, but some of us just can't resist litigating) Intervene as a citizen whose right to bear arms is threatened by the suit placing the arms industry in jeopardy. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24 (a)(2) sets out the criteria for mandatory intervention; 24 (b)(2) sets forth the criteria for permissive intervention. The law books are filled with decisions protecting rights of persons affected by suits against others.

Use the suit for political theatre. Remember when Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin announced they were going to bury a litter of beagle pups(there's that metaphor again!) alive? The press showed up in droves. And Abbie said to them something like, we were kidding but you showed up to see this and put it on TV,but you refuse to show children napalmed in Vietnam (this is not an attempt to refight the Vietnam War, by the way). Their point was made. It was theatre, and they won. Minds and hearts. Ideas. Power.

[This message has been edited by abruzzi (edited October 17, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by abruzzi (edited October 17, 1999).]
 
Abruzzi...

Amen and hosannahs! Excellent

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
I'll take another stab at this Republican/Democrat/Third party business. I'm feeling sassy.

The GOP and the Dems have shared power for the entire 20th Century. They have owned our government. What has this got us? One great depression, two massive world wars which killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, two long expensive forays into the jungles of Southeast Asia, a desert romp for cheap oil and weapons testing, and numerous interventions into countries few of us had ever heard of before the bombs started landing on civilians there.

Now, we are seeing our rights, our natural rights as guaranteed by the BoR, stripped away by these same two parties. We all agree that members of both parties are voting for more governmental control and less individual freedom. Who cares if the Democrats are the ones to propose most gun control legislation, they still need the Republicans to pass it. In fact, since '94 the GOP has had control of Congress; no gun control bill need even have come to the floor for a vote, had they not wanted them to. Would that it were so.

GOPs are just as interested in power as the Democrats are, they simply differ in their PR campaigns. The Dems appeal to the folks who like big government, who want the nanny state, mainly because they're curled up in nanny's arms sucking at the bottle full of my tax dollars. The Republicans appeal to the guys who like to quote the words of the founders, but still want governmental control over those godless homos over there, and aren't real fans of the idea that people own their own bodies. Sure, they want government a wee bit smaller than the Dems; they don't want to actually decrease the size of government, just to increase it at a slower pace. Yes, they know just enough about economics to give us more intrusive government less expensively than the Democrats, which is akin to saying, "Sure this used car is a piece of crap, but it costs less than that other piece of crap over there."

Stop using circular reasoning to talk yourself into voting Republican. Of course the third party candidate can't win if you don't vote for him. Stop listening to Clinton, Daschle, Schumer, Lott, Bush, Rather, Jennings and Brokaw when they assure you that third parties are not "viable". They are as fine a pack of liars and whores as you will ever see hop into bed together. Show me a true pro-gun, pro-freedom Republican, and I'll show you a Libertarian in wolf's clothing. And yes, I mean wolf, 'cause we're the sheep.

If you are actually serious about stopping the train of abuses by our government, then you cannot vote for either the Republicans or Democrats. It's just that simple. I'll continue to stretch the dog analogy: when your dog bites you, do you:
A. Reward the dog by giving him a treat and asking meekly, "Please, will you stop biting me?"
B. Punish the dog with stern voice and possibly a swat on the fanny, and tell him not to bite you anymore, and you mean it, this time.
C. Take him out for a last hunt, because no dog of mine bites me or my family. A beast with no loyalty is a danger to all.

It's your dog,you decide.

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"...the probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master in a slave plantation."
Prof. Frank H. Knight


[This message has been edited by Ipecac (edited October 18, 1999).]
 
I think the participants in this thread are far more intelligent than any politician in DC. This thread is excellent.

The comments by all here are excellent ideas and conclusions. I like the dog thing Jack so I'll continue to use it. So many of you are right on track. We should stop fooling with dog A and B and do something else. Well said but next to impossible ** at this point**. Several of you have said,"let's vote them out and support a true Consitutional candidate - a third party. I agree completely.

It won't work.

Here's why. Um, we don't have enough bikes and riders. Who exactly, is going to elect Ron Paul or Alan Keyes or Jesse? Hell, I will, and you here will. But who else?

The root of the helplessnes is that the majority of American voters are ignorant (not stupid necessarily) to the realities of what we are losing. They have their TV, car and rent covered - so they're happy, period. The majority of Americans will not vote third party because it would be, well - scary. They are massively uneducated about the issues at stake so you can essentially count them out.

So, it seems the question now is, "How do we educate millions of ignorant voters?" Media is not on our side, not yet at least (until the gubmint starts to limit their speech), the Republicans and the Demo's will certainly paint a Ron Paul or Alan or Jesse as a Right Wing extremist candidate - and prople will listen (after all he's our President).

What's the answer? I'm still waiting for that one to appear in my feeble little mind. I'll letcha know when it does. Until then, how do we convince millions that the goverment is: bad, too big, not concerned with our Rights and "the children", involved in unConstututional practices (schlong jobs in the oval office aside...) and heading us for a socialist nation (oops, we first have to convince all of Al Gore's voting supporters that socialism is bad to being with...)?

No, this war is a war of education. Every immigrant that staggers across our border, pennyless and non-english speaking - is told that the democrats love them, will help them, will provide for them, etc. Result? - lots of demo votes.

I move to direct some discussion to HOW we can accomplish this education. We all seem to agree on the "what" part (woof!).

CMOS
 
oberkommando

In Breaker Morant they called it rule 303

But I think we still need to spend more time on the first of the three of the four boxes Soap, Ballot and Jury
 
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