By "these people," I mean, of course, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, or The Organization Formerly Known As The National Coalition To Ban Handguns...
http://csgv.blogspot.com/2008/07/freedom-vs-responsibility.html
As German theologian and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "Responsibility and freedom are corresponding concepts. Factually, though not chronologically, responsibility presupposes freedom and freedom can consist only in responsibility. Responsibility is the freedom of men which is given only in the obligation to God and to our neighbour."
There are at least a couple of ironies here, both of which apparently escaped Michael Beard and his evil minions. One is the fact that Beard talks about responsibility at all. After all, I've said it elsewhere, and so have many others, including Kurt Hofmann over at Armed and Safe: Freedom IS responsibility. This responsibility includes watching out and being responsible for yourself in all areas of life, and this includes self-defense, against everything from petty criminals to tyrannical governments bent on your enslavement. And Michael Beard and his cohorts don't support using lethal force for defending yourself from anything on that continuum. On one end, we have Beard saying, "The privatization of public safety is a dangerous issue in our society. And I've always seen that as the beginning of the loss of liberty." If you'll recall, he said this after Arlington, Texas grandmother Susan Buxton made national headlines when she was recorded on a 911 tape shooting an intruder who broke into her home. So that leaves one to think that Beard and his organization thinks Ms. Buxton should not have done anything to protect herself, that she should have waited for the Arlington police to show up and take care of it, or just "given him what he wanted" -- in short, that Ms. Buxton should have just let the Arlington Police Department take responsibility for her safety, despite the fact that various courts have ruled over the years that the police are not responsible for individuals' safety, but only that of the public at large. On the other end, we have Beard's colleague Ladd Everitt contending that "the government should have a monopoly on force." Which brings me to the next irony.
You'll note that Beard quoted a member of the Nazi resistance. Where's the irony in that, you ask? Well, it lies in the fact that if Beard, Everitt and the rest of that gang had their way, there would have been no way for the opponents of the Nazi regime to mount a resistance that was anywhere near effective. After all, while Hitler was not directly elected, he came to power directly through the democratic process.
(http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/hitler.html)
The Nazis gradually devised an electoral strategy to win northern farmers and white collar voters in small towns, which produced a landslide electoral victory in September 1930 (jump from roughly 3% to 18% of the votes cast) due to the depression. Refused a chance to form a cabinet, and unwilling to share in a coalition regime, the Nazis joined the Communists in violence and disorder between 1931 and 1933. In 1932, Hitler ran for President and won 30% of the vote, forcing the eventual victor, Paul von Hindenburg, into a runoff election. After a bigger landslide in July 1932 (44%), their vote declined and their movement weakened (Hitler lost the presidential election to WWI veteran Paul von Hindenburg in April; elections of November 1932 roughly 42%), so Hitler decided to enter a coalition government as chancellor in January 1933.
Upon the death of Hindenburg in August 1934, Hitler was the consensus successor. With an improving economy, Hitler claimed credit and consolidated his position as a dictator, having succeeded in eliminating challenges from other political parties and government institutions.
In light of that, I have to ask -- do Beard, Everitt and the rest of that gang think Hitler's "undesirables" should have rolled over and taken what Hitler and his forces eventually handed to them? I can't help but think the answer is yes. How do these people look themselves in the mirror every morning?! On with the show...
The recent Supreme Court decision in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller has set the principle that there are legitimate restraints on the constitutional rights of individual citizens to own firearms. This is consistent with the view of our Founders that government regulation was an integral part of not only the Second Amendment, but ordered liberty in general.
I'd love to know who wrote the history book Beard got that out of, and why in the hell he hasn't demanded his money back, because he was woefully mis-informed. As has been covered on numerous occasions, the regulation mentioned in the 2A referred to training with one's weaponry to assure proficiency with it -- NOT government regulations of and restrictions on the business of selling arms. After all, anyone who's read what the Founding Fathers had to say about government in general knew that they regarded it with extreme distrust, as a necessary evil, one might say -- with an emphasis on the evil part, because the Founders had seen up-close and personal what government could do when it was left to its own devices. They regarded it with so much distrust that they made sure the people would have the means to overthrow it if it got to be too big for its britches. Once again, the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
Do Beard and his cohorts really think the Founders would have approved of the government telling the people what kinds of arms they could and could not own? That the Founders would have approved of the government imposing certain conditions on the ownership of said arms? Does that jibe AT ALL with the words reproduced above that the Founding Fathers penned 232 years ago? If so, how?
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