What Planet Are These People From?

More idiocy from the aforementioned Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Ownership:

"If we love to say that we’re the freest country, then why [do]… our elected representatives… talk about getting government out of people’s lives? If you’re so proud of democracy then acknowledge that government had some role in that."

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over? I believe it was Ronald Reagan who said, "that government which governs best, governs least." The only roles the government has in a nation of free people is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to (the people) and (their) Posterity." And I for one will acknowledge those roles, but beyond that the only legitimate role the government has is to stay the hell out of the way. Personally, I think that the more the government meddles in people's lives, the more it undermines the role of insuring the domestic tranquility. And that's why elected officials talk about getting government out of people's lives, and furthermore, it's also why those who act on that talk are held in such high esteem by freedom-loving people.
And there was something I don't think I addressed before, namely Everitt's being so aghast at the prospect of the overthrow of "our democratically elected government." I just have to ask myself, have he and his acolytes even read any of the documents this country was founded on? Specifically the Declaration of Independence? I mean, the men who wrote that document freely and openly acknowledged in said document that such action was THE RIGHT AND DUTY OF A FREE PEOPLE. Don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself, if of course you haven't already:

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.

We hold that document in such high esteem that we have been celebrating its creation -- and the actions those men and many more took to back it up -- for the last 200-plus years. And this is but one more reason I can't ascribe the motives of Everitt and his minions to ignorance any longer. One more time, folks, these people are evil to the core. Somehow I think they speak so frankly because they're frustrated at the lack of progress of their insidious agenda, and I don't think it's too late yet to keep working within the system of government we have set up -- but even so, I said it at 45superman's place yesterday and I'll say it here:
The more I hear talk such as that coming from Everitt and people like him, the more I agree with a quote posted on David Codrea's blog by Mike Vanderboegh that led into one of his essays:
"Hell, let's just start shooting the bastards. Let's get this crap over with while I'm still young enough to march in the victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue."

...do these people think we're stupid?

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?

Another Anti Slipup...

or, one more reason gun controllers are evil to the core...

"We need your help," National Council of Churches President Michael Livingston implored of the WCC’s “Living Letters” team while they were in Washington, D.C. "We need your help to turn around this terrible situation we have." No doubt sincerely, he told the ecumenical group: "We want to learn from you, and from our own stories, to make this world a world of peace."
Mostly Livingston wanted the “Living Letters” to help advocate stricter gun control in the U.S. He was joined by Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who bewailed: "We have a real pride in violence in our country." He likewise exclaimed, "We also profit from it,” fingering the U.S. films that “glorify violence and promote vigilante justice,” according to a WCC account.
More revealingly, Everitt insisted that “the government must have a monopoly on force,” according to an account by my assistant Rebekah Sharpe, who attended the meeting. He identified the obstacles to fuller gun control as “hardcore gun owners” who have a “profoundly, virulently anti-government attitude.” Many of these hardcore zealots adhere to the National Rifle Association’s ostensible belief that “if our government becomes tyrannical they have a right to take over that government, our democratically elected government!”

The government must have a monopoly on force? After the events of the 20th century, in which almost 175 million people were murdered by government agents who by and large had the monopoly on force? Once again, I cannot find the words to describe just how evil, how rotten to the core these people are. I know well what Occam's Razor might say to this -- never ascribe to evil what can be attributed to ignorance -- but in the case of the gun-grabbers I just don't buy that anymore. And what to say of this "World Council of Churches"? I have spoken of the Religious Left before, but still I found it breathtaking that supposed "men of God" would lend their names to efforts to leave God's people defenseless. And, once again, there are no wors to say just how evil that is. Evil and quite ironic as well, considering the radical Muslims seem to be taking over various parts of the world across the pond. Maybe it's wrong of me to think this, but I can't help but think the people who advocate that monopoly on force deserve to live under that boot of tyranny, and all the attendant characteristics and consequence of that tyranny. Let them live as second-class citizens, be stoned to death or have their heads cut off. At this point I am more than willing to tell them to their evil faces, "you scumbags asked for it."
(h/t Armed and Safe)

Hey, it's their culture, right?

Enshrined in the laws passed by their government, right? So who are we to judge?

This month a Pakistani court sentenced...45-year-old Asia Bibi, to death, not because she killed, injured or stole, but simply because she said something.
Prosecutors say Bibi, who is a Christian, broke Pakistan's strict blasphemy law by insulting Islam and the prophet Muhammad, a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment according to Pakistan's penal code.

Now, I'm sure you longtime readers remember one Ladd Everitt mewling about "Second Amendment remedies." Well, it deserves to be asked what those like him would do if our democratically elected government got to the point of passing laws like this. It'd be a long process, considering something like the above-mentioned law is blatantly unconstitutional in the United States, but it's still a question worth asking.

Oh, now, that's nice...

or, as the old saying goes, When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is readying indictments that could send Blackwater Worldwide guards to prison for at least 30 years for their involvement in the deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting of Iraqi civilians, people close to the case said.
Charges could be announced as early as Monday in the shooting, which left 17 civilians dead and strained U.S. relations with the fledgling Iraqi government. People familiar with the charges said they may include an aggressive Reagan-era anti-drug law cracking down on assault weapons.
...
Though drugs were not involved in the Blackwater shooting, the Justice Department is pondering the use of a law, passed at the height of the nation's crack epidemic, to prosecute the guards. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 law calls for 30-year prison terms for using machine guns to commit violent crimes of any kind, whether drug-related or not.

Come on now. You knew it was coming. It's just the way government rolls — you give them certain powers and they will eventually misuse said powers. We know what's been said before — as long as you have a War on Drugs, you will have a War on Guns — and really, we should have seen this coming. We should have foreseen the day the government would use laws for the first to fight the second. And you know it's just a hop, skip and a jump from using the law for this purpose to using the law to prosecute folks like you and me for whatever reason, from being a day late on renewing their gun registrations (if it's ever put into place) to a failure to, as Dianne Feinstein said, "turn 'em all in." I'd like to think that if that last thing happened the government would be too busy dealing with other things (if you know what I mean) to be filling the prisons even more than they're already being overfilled, but it should never have been assumed that those laws would have always been used in the limited scope they were supposedly intended to be — just as the federal racketeering laws weren't. Of course the U.S. Supreme Court slapped that last tactic down, but I don't expect them to do the same here. Honestly, though, it's frightening to think our government would have so little respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. Really makes Ladd Everitt and his kind look even more like the clueless Eloi they are. Something tells me the Founders would have gone for tar and feathers long before now...
h/t David Codrea)

I think he missed the irony...

Some idiot leftist blogger, on the shooting of the kids by the Wisconsin cop:

Well.. here we are again. A tiny town in Wisconsin, 7 young kids are dead and no one knows why. A deputy sheriff who was 20 years old apparently got into a jealous rage and went after a girl, taking the others in his path.

He was a deputy sheriff. He was a cop. He was obviously dangerous and he was armed.

So when, oh when will there be gun control in this country? How many more have to die?

"When will there be gun control"? Hey Sparky, guess what? They HAVE gun control in Wisconsin. As a matter of fact it's one of only two states where you cannot lawfully carry a firearm on your person under any circumstances -- in other words, it's exactly the conditions you and your emasculated gun-hating brethren want us all to have to live under. You could even say that "the government...(had) a monopoly on force" here. (Ladd Everitt, call your office, you evil son of a bitch!)
And as Dave Hardy points out, the Big Three of the gun-grabbing organizations in the U.S. are all conspicuously silent on the matter. I wonder why that is? Maybe because what happened up there put the lie to the statement that only the police and the military should have guns? Or maybe they think that if they ignore what happened, it'll be swept under the rug or maybe those people that evil bastard killed will all come back to life?Whatever it may be, they can all go straight to hell, the whole sorry lot of them.
(h/t Nicki)