Category: Uncategorized

And You Should Rely On the Government that Disarms You….Why?

Kim du Toit links to this story:

CS SPRAY MAN FACES LEGAL ACTION

I acted in self-defence says disabled robbery victim

A DISABLED man who used CS spray to fight off a robber is now facing the threat of legal action.

Wheelchair-bound Nicholas Ashworth, aged 22, sprayed his alleged attacker in the face with the CS spray.

He then climbed out of his wheelchair and limped across the road as the man screamed in pain. A passing police patrol spotted him in distress and stopped at the scene. Officers then arrested both men.

Why arrest both, you might ask?

A police spokesman said that they were investigating the illegal use and possession of CS spray.

That’s right! You can’t carry mace! Or pepper spray! Or anything else the State considers an “offensive weapon” – even if you use it in self-defence as this poor guy did. England – where it’s safe to be a mugger, or a home invader, or a carjacker, or…

Read the whole story.

Dig Out Your Wallets

I’m not going to do this except on extremely rare occasions, but here I feel I must. Keepandbeararms.com has a fund drive for the Silveira v. Lockyer appeal to the Supreme Court, and here’s their 10 reasons SCOTUS should hear the case:

(1) The Supreme Court has not heard a case on the fundamental right to keep and bear arms since United States v. Miller in 1939 — 64 years ago. The Court hears First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment cases virtually every year. And if only four of the nine Justices decide to hear the case, it will be heard.

(2) There are conflicts between federal circuit courts that need to be resolved by the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling in Silveira is directly contrary to the Second Amendment findings in the Emerson case from the Fifth Circuit Court. Furthermore, six Ninth Circuit Court judges dissented in Silveira because they thought Judge Reinhardt’s ruling on the Second Amendment was wrong. Six dissents are rare and a huge factor in the U.S. Supreme Court deciding to grant certiorari (to hear the case). Those six votes in Silveira may be the most important votes for the individual right to keep and bear arms in the entire past one hundred years.

(3) The conflict of circuits is long-standing, another factor in granting certiorari. Emerson conflicts with the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh federal US Courts of Appeal. The Supreme Court may have refused to hear Emerson because the certiorari petition (the formal request that the Supreme Court hear a case) focused primarily on the commerce clause, instead of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

(4) The certiorari petition in Silveira is thorough and complete but for minor edits and additions. Hundreds and hundreds of careful hours of research and writing have gone into this important project. It cleanly presents the clear Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights of individuals to keep and bear arms for family, home, business, and community defense. It is a civil case, not a messy criminal defense. And it does not have wasteful side arguments that clutter other firearms litigation.

(5) Extensive modern scholarship suggests that Emerson and the dissenting views in Silveira have the better argument regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment. The Silveira certiorari petition references over twenty of the relevant books and articles, and develops the points succinctly.

(6) Since 1939 the Miller case has been cited to support negative decisions in every federal circuit but the Fifth in Emerson. The Silveira cert petition exposes the poor reasoning of Miller thoroughly and asks that those parts of it that are historically and constitutionally wrong be overruled.

(7) Silveira presents the Supreme Court with an opportunity to write on a clean slate, to overrule Miller, and to overrule Presser v. Illinois, which refused to apply the Second Amendment to the States. There is an overwhelmingly powerful argument on our side: the Fourteenth Amendment, and the fact that most of the “individual right” amendments have been ruled as applying to the states. For example, Massachusetts cannot deny its citizens freedom of the press, because they are protected by the First Amendment; nor Wyoming force its citizens to testify against themselves, because they are protected by the Fifth Amendment.

(8) The lower court decision in Silveira was written by the most-reversed federal circuit judge, Stephen Reinhardt, a notorious liberal activist judge. The dissents, however, were written by several very well respected circuit judges: Kozinski, Kleinfeld, and Gould, and joined in by an unusually large group of additional dissenters. They send a strong message to the Supreme Court to hear Silveira and reverse Reinhardt.

(9) Specific detailed issues about different kinds of firearms, i.e., what the anti-gun crowd mendaciously calls “assault weapons”, are reserved for trial by the Silveira certiorari petition, since there has been no trial to determine facts as yet. The Supreme Court is not a trial court and will only hear the fundamental constitutional questions raised by the Silveira certiorari petition — that is, does the Second Amendment, like so many other Amendments, apply to the states? And is it an individual right, like all the other rights spoken about in the Bill of Rights? These questions have become extremely important in both legislation and in politics in the last few years. The Court will have to deal with them — and we believe they will deal with them now, rather than later.

(10) The certiorari petition, brief and other materials in Silveira make a deliberate, carefully crafted effort to persuade all nine Supreme Court Justices of the need to recognize a strong individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Arguments are being developed that should resonate with the various viewpoints held by the different Justices. The individuals working on Silveira have decades of experience in Bill of Rights litigation before the Supreme Court with a great deal of success in other very difficult areas of law. Earlier Second Amendment activists largely slept through the civil rights movement and made no progress at all for individual Second Amendment rights until Emerson. Every effort is being made to present the Silveira arguments in ways that maximize prospects for success.

If this means anything to you, go over to their site. Go to the bottom of the page AND DONATE.

This is the best chance we have to get the question answered – are we or are we not still a nation of the rule of law? SCOTUS can, once again, dodge the bullet, but this is the best case we’ve ever had. And the NRA isn’t being helpful here.

YOU Are Responsible for Your Protection

I heard about this on the radio this morning, but Instapundit had the link to the story: Man tried to hijack, crash Qantas plane – TRIED being the operative phrase.

Money quote:

The 40-year-old man stabbed two flight attendants and injured two other people before he was overpowered by crew and passengers aboard QF1737.

No more “Let the experts handle it.”

Another Vote for the Competition

Wyatt over at Giant City has a short post up on “Second-Guessing the Second Amendment“.

Money quote:

Has she just gotten caught up in pop culture’s latest wave of anti-American angst, the most notable aspect of which (lately) is this notion of an outdated Second Amendment? When she declared her disdain for gun owners, she did so with great conviction and a big smile. I smiled back at the time, simply marveling at the sort of hubris – or ignorance – that must be required to second-guess some of the greatest political and philosophical minds of the 18th century.

I can’t decide if I should invite her to the range or buy her a ticket to Rwanda.

She obviously believes that the State will protect her.

I HATE Blogger…

Checked in this morning, I get HALF of ONE post.

Marvelous.

OK, Check My Logic On This:

The Violence Policy Center, that [sarcasm] stalwart unbiased source of nothing but facts in the gun debate [/sarcasm] has a new scaremongering publication out:

Bullet Hoses: Semiautomatic Assault Weapons—What Are They? What’s So Bad About Them?

There’s this ten-point list of their EEEEEEVil features:

1. Semiautomatic assault weapons (like AK and AR-15 assault rifles and UZI and MAC assault pistols) are civilian versions of military assault weapons. There are virtually no significant differences between them.

Well, they’re SEMI-automatic. I call that “significant.”

2. Military assault weapons are “machine guns.” That is, they are capable of fully automatic fire. A machine gun will continue to fire as long as the trigger is held down until the ammunition magazine is empty.

Nice of you to make the distinction

3. Civilian assault weapons are not machine guns. They are semiautomatic weapons. (Since 1986 federal law has banned the sale to civilians of new machine guns.) The trigger of a semiautomatic weapon must be pulled separately for each round fired. It is a mistake to call civilian assault weapons “automatic weapons” or “machine guns.”

Well, hell. Nice of you to FINALLY make the distinction after telling all your buddies back in 1998:

Assault weapons – just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, COUPLED WITH THE PUBLIC’S CONFUSION OVER FULLY AUTOMATIC MACHINE GUNS VERSUS SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT WEAPONS – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

Seems you were encouraging confusion back then.

4. However, this is a distinction without a difference in terms of killing power. Civilian semiautomatic assault weapons incorporate all of the functional design features that make assault weapons so deadly. They are arguably more deadly than military versions, because most experts agree that semiautomatic fire is more accurate—and thus more lethal—than automatic fire.

Wait a minute. What?

5. The distinctive “look” of assault weapons is not cosmetic. It is the visual result of specific functional design decisions. Military assault weapons were designed and developed for a specific military purpose—laying down a high volume of fire over a wide killing zone, also known as “hosing down” an area.

Which is it, “accurate semi-auto fire” or “hosing down” an area? Make up your damned mind.

6. Civilian assault weapons keep the specific functional design features that make this deadly spray-firing easy. These functional features also distinguish assault weapons from traditional sporting guns.

Again, accurate fire or spray fire. Which is the deadly one again?

7. The most significant assault weapon functional design features are: (1) ability to accept a high-capacity ammunition magazine, (2) a rear pistol or thumb-hole grip, and, (3) a forward grip or barrel shroud. Taken together, these are the design features that make possible the deadly and indiscriminate “spray-firing” for which assault weapons are designed. None of them are features of true hunting or sporting guns.

And who said the Second Amendment was a protection for “sporting guns?” If I recall correctly, the 1939 U.S. v Miller case hinged on whether or not Miller’s “shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches” was a suitable militia weapon. Well, if semi-automatic “assault weapons”, by your definition “incorporate all of the functional design features that make assault weapons so deadly” then they fill the bill, don’t they? They meet the Miller test, and are then protected by the Second Amendment, right?

8. “Spray-firing” from the hip, a widely recognized technique for the use of assault weapons in certain combat situations, has no place in civil society. Although assault weapon advocates claim that “spray-firing” and shooting from the hip with such weapons is never done, numerous sources (including photographs and diagrams) show how the functional design features of assault weapons are used specifically for this purpose.

Well, as you yourself pointed out, this is less lethal than aimed fire. Pick a position and stick to it, would you?

9. Unfortunately, most of the design features listed in the 1994 federal ban—such as bayonet mounts, grenade launchers, silencers, and flash suppressors—have nothing to do with why assault weapons are so deadly. As a result, the gun industry has easily evaded the ban by simply tinkering with these “bells and whistles” while keeping the functional design features listed above.

Aw, gee, sorry that the rules were so stupid? So were we. But we were sorry that they were stupid and passed. Your buddies tell us that the “Assault Weapons Ban was a big success” and needs to be renewed, but you’re telling us it was useless? And still needs to be renewed?

10. Although the gun lobby today argues that there is no such thing as civilian assault weapons, the gun industry, the National Rifle Association, gun magazines, and others in the gun lobby enthusiastically described these civilian versions as “assault rifles,” “assault pistols,” “assault-type,” and “military assault” weapons to boost civilian assault-weapon sales throughout the 1980s. The industry and its allies only began to use the semantic argument that a “true” assault weapon is a machine gun after civilian assault weapons turned up in inordinate numbers in the hands of drug traffickers, criminal gangs, mass murderers, and other dangerous criminals.

Don’t lay that off on US. You guys were the biggest marketing boost these weapons ever had. Every time you try to ban something you quadruple the market, if not more.

Get this straight: I bought my POST-ban AR-15 because you morons were trying to make it illegal for me to have one. It’s my “militia” rifle. My “sport-utility” rifle. My “homeland security” rifle.

You can’t have it. Period. End of story. Bite me.

Besides, if I follow your logic it means I ought to be able to get a less-lethal fully-automatic assault rifle. That would make you happier than my tack-driving precision rifle does now.

Doesn’t this doubleplus ungood newthink make your heads hurt?

Socialized Medicine – Equally Bad Care for All

Dad Dies Waiting for Surgery (New Zealand – nod to Kiwi Pundit for the link)

A 43-year-old father died of a heart attack at home after bypass surgery at Wellington Hospital was postponed twice this month.

Kapiti man John Russell was admitted to hospital for the scheduled operation both times but was sent home because of a shortage of intensive care beds. He died on his kitchen floor the following week, on May 17.

He had been waiting five months for his operation.

Capital and Coast District Health Board papers issued yesterday show Mr Russell is one of 12 heart patients to have their operation postponed recently.

The postponements occurred despite figures showing the health board has reduced the number of patients waiting longer than six months for elective heart surgery to 36.

But there’s more. According to Kiwi Pundit:

Wakefield hospital was available just around the corner, but last year the state hospital board terminated a program that would have allowed patients to be referred to the private hospital if necessary.

And he has a link to this business story with details about how the private hospital’s cardiac surgery unit is underutilized.

Oh yeah – I want the government put in charge of health care in the name of “fairness” – NOT.