"I would ask gun control advocates one question:  name a single place in the entire world where murder rates fell after gun control laws were passed."

Australian Magazine:

  An interesting letter in the Australian Shooter Magazine this week, which
  I quote:  "If you consider that there has been an average of 160,000 troops
  in the Iraq theater of operations during the past 22 months, and a total
  of 2112 deaths, that gives a firearm death rate of 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

  The firearm death rate in Washington , DC is 80.6 per 100,000 for the same
  period. That means you are about 25 per cent more likely to be shot and
  killed in the US capital, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in
  the US , than you are in Iraq .

  Conclusion:  "The US should pull out of Washington."

Printed in the DeLand Beacon Midweek June 28-30, 2010

In response to William Hall's "Keeping and Bearing Arms"
I beg to differ with your assessment sir; "It is rather clear that the writers of the second Amendment were not proposing a universally armed population."

I will include the words of the founders, and the current US Code on militias. I don't see how you could dispute the facts but all I really care about is that the readers see the facts so they can make up their own minds.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson

"That the people have a Right to mass and to bear arms; that a well regulated militia composed of the Body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper natural and safe defense of a free State..." - George Mason

"A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms...To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." - Richard Henry Lee

US Code Title 10, Sect 311-313 (as of Jan 3, 2007): The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

Now, I need to add one more that should open even your eyes:  "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." - Adolf Hitler   (National Socialists or The Nazi Party always hated citizens having guns. They call them right-wing when they are really left-wing, but that is another story.)

Our founding fathers knew that absolute power corrupts and they gave us the three co-equal branches of government along with the right of the citizens to bear arms. All of this was designed to keep that power under control. We have weakened and misinterpreted the Constitution to the point of danger. I am glad to say that the citizens of Volusia County are waking up by the thousands and Americans are waking by the millions. You are welcome to come learn the true history of America with us and what we can do to restore the country. Visit www.deland912.org

Keith Wilson
DeLand

The Gun is Civilization

 by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret) 

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it. 

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some. 

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. 

The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender. 

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. 

People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly. 

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.

People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. 

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable. 

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act. 

Firearms Refresher Course

"A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."
~George Washington

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not." ~Thomas Jefferson

"Those who trade liberty for security have neither." ~John Adams

Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.

An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.

Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

You only have the rights you are willing to fight for.

Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.

You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

Assault is a behavior, not a device.

64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.

The United States Constitution (c) 1791 - All Rights Reserved.

The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.

What part of "shall not be infringed" do you NOT understand?

Guns have only two enemies; rust and politicians.

When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

Alexander's Essay – March 4, 2010 from Patriot Post newsletter
Second Amendment -- Still 'The Palladium of Liberties'

    "The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. ... The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition." --James Madison

James Madison's words regarding the "ultimate authority" for defending liberty (Federalist No. 46) ring as true today as in 1787, when he penned them.

Likewise, so do the words of his appointee to the Supreme Court, Justice Joseph Story, who wrote in his 1833 "Commentaries on the Constitution," "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."

In recent decades, the "enterprises of ambition" and "usurpation and arbitrary power" among Leftist politicians and their corrupt judicial lap dogs have become malignant, eating away at our Essential Liberty and our constitutional Rule of Law. This has never been more so than since the charlatan Barack Hussein Obama duped 67 million Americans into seating him in the executive branch.

Now more than ever, armed Patriots must stand ready, in the words of Patrick Henry, to "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel."

In June 2008, the Supreme Court, by a narrow 5-4 vote (Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Kennedy), reaffirmed, in District of Columbia v. Heller, that the people's inherent right to keep and bear arms is plainly enumerated in our Constitution. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment ensures an individual right, that DC could not ban handguns, and that operable guns may be maintained in the homes of law-abiding DC residents.

This was an important decision affirming the plain language of our Second Amendment and its proscription against government infringement on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."

However, Heller pertained to a federal district, and while our Bill of Rights has primacy over state and municipal firearm restrictions, a Supreme Court case to give judicial precedent to that primacy has yet to be decided.

In his dissenting opinion in Heller, 89-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens expressed concern that the case "may well be just the first of an unknown number of dominoes to be knocked off the table," should "the reality that the need to defend oneself may suddenly arise in a host of locations outside the home."

One might only hope!