Quote of the day…

First there was: “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.”

Now we have:

“We felt that, for a variety of reasons, the collective rights model was under represented in the debate, and wanted to give scholars an opportunity to enhance or further illuminate the collective rights position. Sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium. I did not, therefore, invite anyone who I knew subscribed to the individual rights model.”

-Carl Bogus, June 12, 2001

Erm, what was that again? I’m beginning to think that George Orwell was right, he was just off by a few decades…

Read the post at Joe’s blog (link above) and then the linked article by David Hardy.

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Obama’s “Brown Shirts”

It would appear that the Obama campaign has about as much respect for the first amendment as it does the second. They call them “Truth Squads”, I call them something else…something I can’t post on a family oriented blog.

Again from the Rustmeister:

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Dear Senator Biden

NEWS RELEASE
CCRKBA TO BIDEN: IT’S NOT YOUR GUN OBAMA WANTS, IT’S EVERYONE ELSE’S

BELLEVUE, WA – Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was trying to convince rural Virginians the other day that he’s a devoted gun owner who will not allow presidential nominee Barack Obama to “fool with my Beretta.”

“Senator Biden must think America’s gun owners are dumber than rocks,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Here is a man who has supported every restrictive gun control and gun ban law that ever landed on his desk, suddenly telling Virginia residents that he’s a gun owner, and very pro-gun.

“Biden tried to sound folksy in Virginia, talking about his ‘little over and under’ Beretta,” Gottlieb noted. “Senator, it’s not your Beretta that concerns American gun owners, but their own Colts, Smith & Wessons, Kimbers, Winchesters, Marlins, Remingtons, Mossbergs, Springfields, Kahrs and Brownings.

“If Biden really does own an over-and-under Beretta, has he fired it lately,” Gottlieb wondered. “What model is it, what’s it chambered for, and where is it? Why does he think that’s a more worthy gun to own than, say, an AR-15, or a Benelli semi-auto? What makes a Beretta shotgun more deserving of protection against Draconian legislation than a .45-caliber Model 1911, a .357 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk, a .50-caliber Thompson/Center or a .22-caliber Colt Diamondback? Would Joe Biden know the difference between any of these guns if he saw one?

“Joe Biden has spent the last three decades on Capitol Hill voting not merely against guns, but against the law-abiding American citizens who own these guns,” Gottlieb stated. “He has voted against their civil rights, and against their traditional values, and now he is running as second fiddle to a Chicago suburbanite who has dismissed such citizens as bitter, and clinging to their guns and religion.

“And now we are supposed to believe that Joe Biden is a gun-toting defender of the Second Amendment, after years of trying to dismantle it,” Gottlieb concluded. “This guy has spent a career in Washington, D.C. assaulting the civil rights of gun owners. Now he’s insulting their intelligence.”

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Carolyn McCarthy Sued for $5 Million

Can’t say I blame him:

An outspoken Long Island gun owner’s home was raided by Nassau County detectives, who seized two dozen weapons he lawfully owns just one day after Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s office made a 911 call about him.

Freeport resident Gabriel Razzano claims he was targeted in the spring raid for his “unpopular” political beliefs.

He’s now filed a $5 million federal lawsuit against the Nassau PD and McCarthy, charging they joined forces to strip him of his guns unconstitutionally.

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Unrest in the Magic Kingdom

Disney claims they are exempt from the Florida law allowing employees to keep a gun in their car on company property. Now a security guard is willing to risk his 13 year career at the Happiest Place On Earth to challenge this claim.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — A Disney security guard told Eyewitness News he’s okay with being fired rather than go to work unprotected. Disney claims it’s exempt from a new state law that allows employees to keep handguns in their cars.

The employee Eyewitness News talked with is not concerned about safety at the park. He’s concerned about a rise in crime everywhere else.

As a security guard, Edwin Sotomayer works strange hours and says he has a right to feel safe when he is commuting to and from the theme parks. He has been a Disney security guard for more than 13 years, but he’s willing to lose his job to stand up for his right to bring a gun to work.

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Plaintiff in San Francisco Gun Lawsuit is Gay

In an interesting, and I think appropriate move, the man at the center of the new lawsuit targeting San Francisco’s gun ban law is gay. As a group, this minority is beset by violence from without and definitely need a means to protect themselves. It’s not an orientation issue, it’s a human rights issue. I wonder how the left is going to react to this one?

SAN FRANCISCO — Using the new judicial muscle provided by the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the right to bear arms, the National Rifle Association and another pro-gun group sued San Francisco and its housing authority on Friday to invalidate a ban on handguns in public housing. The lawsuit said the ban violated the Second Amendment and “renders responsible, law-abiding adult public housing residents especially vulnerable.”

…

In an interesting turn in a city known for its embrace of gay rights, the chief plaintiff in the suit against the city is a gay man living in a public housing development, owned by the federal government, who wants to have a gun to protect himself from potential hate crimes.

…

A city of about 725,000, San Francisco has 12,000 residents living in public housing, all of whom are required to sign a lease that forbids a broad variety of weapons, including pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, automatic rifles, BB guns, as well as nunchucks, brass knuckles and stun guns. This blanket ban was begun in 2006, and the penalty for violation of the lease is eviction.

In the case filed on Friday, an anonymous gay man said that stipulation had deprived him of “any effective means of self-defense.”

The story goes on the describe the horrors of living in the “gun plagued” projects. They quote a guy who says it’s not hard to get a gun there. If so, it makes me wonder why they haven’t been evicted if this is the case.

Powered by ScribeFire.

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Judge tells woman buy a gun and learn how to use it

Judge Advises Crime Victim To Arm Herself After Attack

General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon said Friday that crime in Chattanooga “has become so rampant that it is no longer possible for the police department to protect our citizens.“

He told a woman who had been pulled from her car and beaten in the head that she or her mother needed to “purchase a weapon, obtain a gun permit and learn to protect yourself.” The woman moved back in with her mother after the May 4 incident on E. 17th Street.

Judge Moon said, “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that all citizens have a right to purchase a weapon to defend themselves, their families and their homes - unless there is some disqualification that prevents them from owning a weapon.”

He said, “All area of our city are subject to crime, and some areas have very high crime rates and need to be ‘overpoliced.’”

Judge Moon said Coolidge Park is one area that needs to be “overpoliced.” He said, “I frequently hear of break-ins, thefts and robberies to tourists and citizens in that area. Having a high police presence there is one way you are going to abate it.”

Judge Moon raised the bond for Dewayne Beard from $65,000 to $130,000 on especially aggravated robbery and from $15,000 to $50,000 on theft. He bound both cases to the Grand Jury.

The woman said she was driving on E. 17th Street when Beard came riding up on a bicycle and pulled a gold handgun on her. When she refused to get out of the car, he began hitting her in the head with the gun.

He then pulled her out and drove off with her gold 2001 Toyota Corolla.

Police found the woman semi-conscious with severe head injuries. She had to have eight stitches in her head and 10 stitches in her leg, where she was also hit.

Police located Beard at 4724 Tomahawk Dr. and arrested him as he walked out of the residence. He told officers the stolen car was being driven “by one of my goons.”

Officers located the vehicle a couple of blocks away on Bella Vista Drive. Blood was found inside the vehicle, and the woman’s purse was also inside.

Beard said he threw the gun out of the window while driving through Highland Park.

Beard was allowed out on an OR bond when the case was not ready for a hearing within 10 days.

On May 31, he picked up new charges of aggravated rape and aggravated burglary.

A woman said she was lying nude in her bed and a man began performing a sex act on her. She said when the man then began having sex with her using a condom, she realized it was not her boyfriend.

She said she pulled the sheets up and saw it was Beard.

That case was bound to the Grand Jury earlier.

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Supreme Court rules in favor of “Individual Right”

We won! Mostly…

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States, today issued a ruling, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, that the 2nd amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear a firearm. The ruling can be downloaded here.

From SCOTUSblog:

Answering a 127-year old constitutional question, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun, at least in one’s home. The Court, splitting 5-4, struck down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession.  Although times have changed since 1791, Justice Antonin Scalia said for the majority, “it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

Examining the words of the Amendment, the Court concluded “we find they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weaons in case of confrontation” — in other words, for self-defense. “The inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right,” it added.

The individual right interpretation, the Court said, ”is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment,” going back to 17th Century England, as well as by gun rights laws in the states before and immediately after the Amendment was put into the U.S. Constitution.

What Congress did in drafting the Amendment, the Court said, was “to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to fashion a new one.”

The decision however left the door open for registration and licsensing, and banning unusually dangerous weapons (whatever they might be) and did not abrogate the prohibition on carrying weapons in schools etc.  Likewise, felons and the mentally ill are still barred from owning a gun.

Justices Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas ruled in favor of Heller, while Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg and Breyer came out in favor of D.C.’s gun ban, finding that the 2nd amendment is a “collective right.”

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Utah man harassed by cops for open carrying

It would seem that some cops in Utah aren’t up on the legality of open carry. From the article here:

Deveraux said he was walking around his neighborhood to exercise last December, when he was stopped by a Granite School District officer and “was informed that if I touched my gun, I would be killed.” The officer called the West Valley City Police Department, Deveraux continued, three squad cars arrived, and he was detained and his gun taken from him - then, after a few minutes, he was released.

Those were violations of his federal and state constitutional rights, said the Swede who became an American citizen this January. And they are civil rights abuses that he has only encountered in West Valley City, Deveraux said.

“I don’t blame them for being a little bit extra careful,” he said, noting that the crime rate is high in Utah’s second largest city, “but there’s a line they crossed between being a little bit careful and a little bit too careful.”

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Washington Times Editorial

The Washington Times came out with an editorial today supporting the individual rights definition of the second amendment.

EDITORIAL: The right to arm

Most Americans believe that owning a gun is the right of every citizen. According to a Gallup poll, 73 percent of the U.S. public believe that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to gun ownership. Therefore the Heller decision, which is expected any day now, could play a pivotal role in the 2008 presidential campaign. Former Ohio Secretary of State-turned-pundit Kenneth Blackwell calls it “the Roe v. Wade” of gun rights and suggests that the case (and its results) will ripple beyond District borders to impact “90 million American gun owners.”

It was six D.C. residents, fed up with escalating crime and the inability to protect themselves in they city they love, who filed suit in 2003 to challenge the constitutionality of the District’s ban on handguns. The lawsuit was dismissed but reversed on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which found that the petitioner: 1) had standing to bring the lawsuit, 2) is protected by the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms (handguns) and 3) therefore, the District “is not open to ban them.”

Last year, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty failed in his petition to rehear the appeal, paving the way for both defendant and plantiffs to petition the Supreme Court. That brings us to where we are today, in the midst of a presidential election when opinions on every matter are measured at every turn and the issue of “gun rights” is beginning to weave its way in and out of the political debate.

Generally speaking, more gun owners identify as Republicans (53 percent) than identify as Democrats (39 percent), according to Gallup. And a Harris poll, out this week, backs that up. It found that 51 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats support an individual’s right to bear arms.

While the justices are expected to make their decision based on rule of law, not public opinion, the weight of whether the two presumptive presidential candidates are in sync with the public’s views on the issue should not be lost among voters. But nailing either candidate down on the matter is dicey. We know Barack Obama referred to Hillary Clinton as “Annie Oakley,” suggesting that she attempted to pander to gun owners during the primary campaign. But Mr. Obama didn’t do himself any favors with with his “they cling to guns” remark. Mr. Obama has also opposed “right to carry” laws, voted to ban almost all rifle ammunition and has endorsed a complete ban on handgun ownership.

John McCain has caught grief from gun advocates for his support for closing gun-show “loopholes.” But he is seen by many in this same group as the “lesser of two evils.” Mr. McCain also joined close to 300 other lawmakers in signing a court brief which supported lifting the D.C. gun ban, and he delivered a laudable speech to the National Rifle Association’s annual conference last month, addressing what he considers Mr. Obama’s glaring contradiction on gun rights: “Let’s be clear if … Obama is elected president, the rights of law-abiding gun owners will be at risk.”

The Gallup poll cited also found that the majority of Americans don’t actually own a firearm (only 35 percent say they do). But that doesn’t mean they forfeit the right to purchase one if they so desire. We hope the majority of justices agree.

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