The Unfortunate Truth About Gun Control

 

The media loves gun control just as leftist political forces because they support government control without the ability of the people to resist. What will never be told about the United States Second Amendment is that it was the right to protect all the other rights of the Bill of Rights. To quote George Mason, principle author behind the Bill of Rights, who advised defining the Second Amendment, “What is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.” He added to this stating, “A well-regulated militia, composed of the Gentlemen, Freeholders, and other Freemen was necessary to protect our ancient laws and liberty from the standing army.” Mason wanted each man to suitably furnish for himself weaponry, supplies, training and armaments comparable to those of the military itself free of limitations as anything less could, and likely would, lead to a tyranny as the government would be unstoppable. For the definitive reason behind the Second Amendment, please allow us to quote James Madison from his writings in Federalist No. 46.

 

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, are the ones to be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it.

 

The Second Amendment was never meant to protect hunting, skeet shooting, target plinking, or other sport or casual use; and in addition to the protection it provides the household and the general public, it was meant first and foremost to defend the people from the overreach of the government. The Founding Fathers believed that where the people are armed, the government is limited; but where only the government is armed, freedom will inevitably become limited. What your history teacher likely left out about the start of the Revolutionary War with the ambushes at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, was the reason that the British troops were marching on these towns. Their orders were simple and straightforward, find the cache of weapons held by the militias and confiscate all the weapons the colonists held. This was to be performed as a precaution and to defend the rule of the Crown of England over the colonies. The British were aware that armed colonists were a threat to their ability to continue to collect taxes and hold irresistible and uncontested power in the colonies. Their fears were apparently quite valid as the fact that England no longer rules the American colonies and that the United States subsequently declared and gained their independence in the ensuing war. This was also what was behind their writing of the Second Amendment such that a tyranny such as what they lived under before the revolution. But we will still argue over the trivial of hunting and sport shooting because the government would rather leave the people as ignorant of the real reasons as their public school education left them. Were the people to understand that they could end up living in a government imposed straightjacket where freedom of speech is limited to only approved speech and hate speech being made a crime where such speech is defined by the ruling elite. Imagine a preacher being arrested for quoting the Biblical rules on certain protected actions as has occurred in Canada. Imagine being required to apply for a travel permit from the government in order to leave your sector for a vacation. Travel limitations have often been considered another function for control over the population. Such is also the concept behind curfews. But by alerting the people to the that fact, they have the final say in their governance which those in government would prefer the people never understand. Thus, the conversation is steered to hunting, sport shooting and anything other than its actual intended use all with the careful guidance of the mainstream media.

 

President Ronald Reagan

 

President Ronald Reagan stated the truth about the edict and responsibility which the heroes and valiant revolutionaries who fought for the independence and the Founding Fathers who crafted a Constitution and Bill of Rights which imbedded within it the means for the people to retain these freedoms. The precious words by President Ronald Reagan are below and a video of an excerpt further below but there is one thing required to be added, and that is that the Second Amendment is the promise keeper they handed down to the ensuing generations, and they prayed that it would never be forgotten, though it appears to have been exactly that by the majority of the people today.

 

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

 

 

We remember when we would mention the true reason for the Second Amendment to people during our run for office and generally the shocked, horrified and, yes, even hatred we received in return. We were called such honorable names meant as scorn such as revolutionaries, trouble-makers, rabble-rousers and insane-lunatics, and their accusations rang in our ears as the clanging of the chains of bondage awaiting the masses in the future. When President Ronald Reagan made his timely comments, there really were to be generations and those generations have passed and now the clock has ticked down to two or three elections. Should the people vote for government coddling and continue to demand protection from every imagined evil while seeking the warm arms of promises given for a perfect future while granting the promise-makers another restriction of freedoms after another believing that it really will make them safer to have the government hold that power rather than defend themselves, as that requires something from them and these are the times of retiring men and faded patriots. When the people seek political and government provided freedoms and surrenders their own responsibility to protect and defend their own freedoms, then freedom becomes a gift from the government and rights will evaporate faster than the morning dew at a desert’s edge. The American promise was freedom for as long as the people keep the responsibility for its protection in their own hands and with their own arms. Once they started down the slippery slope of reliance on the promises of those seeking power, that they were giving, to those whose will was to enslave them, the power to prevent their enslavement disappears. Now it will simply be time until they surrender their final resistive abilities to the very people regulating their freedoms into extinction. The American people are fighting a slow withdrawal from responsibility into slavery; the only question is how long can patriots slow the eventual loss of the American dream.

 

There are many in the United States who daily portend violent resistance to the elected President simply because he threatens their political views. These are largely the same people who scream that the Second Amendment be repealed because the police and government have sufficient weapons to protect the people. Do they realize what the government would be required to do in order to protect everybody in every situation taking place in any place throughout the nation? Well, consider knowing that wherever you went each and every day there was a law enforcement officer armed and close by to assure that all of your government protected freedoms were protected. This would require that a large percentage of the population be employed as law enforcement officers and be placed every fifty yards blanketing much of the land. This coverage would be required in every metropolitan area with the urban regions requiring a far lower level of coverage, but still significantly more than currently employed. Of course such a level of coverage would be impractical if not impossible. Still, to guard everyone as completely as has been the promise coming from the enemies of the Second Amendment and gun ownership would leave everyone guarded to a great extent by the government which would allow the government to be able to watch your every move, thought, personal interaction and action. But then, the government is already very close to having that exact capability with the resources they currently employ. This is something which has many already nervous but allows us to explain their current levels of overseeing every action you make outside of your house, or even inside if so desired. Baltimore City has cameras placed over most, well, honestly almost all of the city under surveillance presumably to prevent crimes (see image below).

 

Baltimore City Surveillance Cameras

 

The Federal Government has every person under unbelievable levels of scrutiny beyond what most people are aware. If people were aware of the level of this intrusion into their lives and freedoms, they would be far more critical of who they elected and be demanding that they be freed from this overbearing intrusion by the government. They would effectively be telling them to butt out and leave them alone, though many might use stronger language. Every time you make a purchase using any form of credit, that information is given to the government. All of your online activity can be pulled up should the government decide you are a person of interest. Honestly, every electronic act; phone, ATM, FAX, e-mail, internet visits, searches and any other you can imagine, be assured that the NSA has the ability to store it for future reference. Then there is your daily movement. Ever bother to take notice of the number of Red Light cameras, traffic cameras, speed cameras or other city, county or state surveillance cameras you pass daily going to and from work? Probably not, as watching the cars on the road should be the main concern of your attention. Trust that the government could check their records and tell how often you were late to work. The LoJack in your vehicle or any other antitheft device is another electronic tracking signal which could be activated and used by law enforcement or other government organization who might have even the slightest interest. Crime cameras such as those in Baltimore, Chicago, London and cropping up all over the world along with directional microphones used to triangulate firearm shot are also used to gather needful information on persons of interest. They also double for eavesdropping on conversations on the street in order to track down drug trafficking and other conversations of suspected illegal activities. Should you ever actually become a person of interest to the government, especially the Federal Government, there is literally nowhere you can hide. The government has the ability to listen to and even watch most of things which occur in your own home. They can use little items such as see through walls cameras, laser hear through walls, and a whole bevy of different spyware which have the result that without taking specific and extensive precautions to keep your private life private. How much further does the governments have to intervene into your private lives before the people decided enough is enough. We can only hope that the Second Amendment is still in effect and sufficient people have decided that an armed individual is a free individual. When people get on you about how in Europe they do not allow guns and they do not have much gun crime, you can point to the one nations where violent crime has never been a problem and still there is absolutely no firearm crime simply because every male between the age of twenty to age thirty, thirty-four for officers, is required to have a government provided assault rifle in Switzerland with fifty rounds of ammunition for the defense of the nation. Imagine that, a nation where they are the people and they have no crime and no mass shootings. Switzerland is not the sole European nation with as made obvious by the list of the top ten nations outside the United States for gun ownership. Often there are presumed truths with no validity thrown around by the anti-gun lobby knowing that people are more likely to accept these lies if they are stated with authority rather than checking for themselves. Remember that the next time some fact presented sounds just a little fishy.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Who’s Really to Blame for Government Shutdown?

 

Next time the government, meaning Congress, cannot find some compromise on Immigration and the Budget and the government is shuttered again, who will be to blame? That appears to be one of the big questions in the minds of the media. They have an obvious answer, an objective for making this the pinnacle of political prognostication. They know they have three paltry weeks to turn this entire mess around in the minds of the people. They will have plenty of assistants on social media and across the Internet to repeat the mantra that all government shutdowns throughout history have been the fault of the Republicans. Back in the 1980’s the government shutdowns, and there were more than one, were all the result of Ronald Reagan refusing to sign a very proper and reasonable budget bill. Reagan received so much bad media that he finally caved and it was over budget and immigration where he gave in on amnesty in exchange for border enforcement to be discussed in the new Congress. Somewhere on the way to the next Congress that promise fell through the cracks and enforcement never happened. Then in the 1990’s it was about the budget and Newt Gingrich battled with President Clinton and in the end it was Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House who refused to play ball and shut down the government. So this last shutdown was placed on Chuckie Schumer so we have circled from the President to the House and the Senate so reason would say the next shutdown should start the cycle over and be the President, it is only fair, right? Well, that will be the story, it is the Republican refusal to be reasonable and accept that we cannot afford to build Trump’s wall. These shutdowns should be called the Great Wall of Trump shutdowns. That should sell, the Great Wall of Trump shutdowns.

 

The facts do not matter and the reasonable offer by the Republicans to grant the DACA young adults et al a reprieve as has been offered as a way of addressing their individual cases and allowing those who meet certain expectations to stay and those who have criminal records and other problems and do not speak English being deported was not sufficient. The fact that President Trump insists that his wall be at the very least initiated as the prototypes were impenetrable by special forces who were used to test their effectiveness. We know, totally unreasonable as obviously they could always just blow the wall up or tunnel deep and go under them as they are only going down six feet or thereabouts under the ground. Anyway, walls do not work, history has proven that. Just let us go through some of the great walls built from past to a few present day walls and we will see they failed, and more importantly, how they failed. The most famous of all walls, the Great Wall of China, was build to keep the Mongol tribes from invading from the north. The Great Wall kept the border so peaceful that the Chinese society grew exceedingly wealthy from a century plus of no wars. The Chinese people became soft and refused to have their children taken to guard the wall so the Chinese hired Mongols to guard the gates and that also worked for a few more decades until finally one Mongol warlord forced his tribe’s guards to open one of the gates and raiding parties poured in. Other Mongols saw this and the wall failed. The Roman Empire built walls to keep the Germanic tribes from raiding the norther edge of their empire. Eventually, they ran out of slaves and hired Germanic tribesmen to guard their wall and repair the wall. For some reason this led to the wall failing. Romans also built Hadrian’s Wall to keep the Celts out and it remained a working barrier even after they put British tribal members from the south guarding the wall. Rome stopped paying these guards as they retreated from the British Isles finding them too expensive and not worth retaining and the wall failed.

 

Border Wall Prototypes

 

But what about more modern walls? More modern was the Berlin Wall which was torn down after twenty-eight quite effective years being built overnight on August 12, 1961 and fell on November 9, 1989 and thus the wall failed. Even the Israel Terror Wall, sometimes misrepresented as an Apartheid Wall, has made suicide bombing a rarity but it is still extremely porous as walls go. Hundreds upon hundreds, possibly over one thousand, of Palestinians with proper identification each day pass through to go to work and the occasional terrorist does make it past the border wall officers who check identity cards so it has not been perfect. Should Hamas ever take over the Palestinian authority areas the wall will become relatively worthless, as Hamas prefers rockets to having people carry the explosives. Hamas has made the real wall, the Gaza Wall compromised with who knows how many tunnels and they regularly cross the wall simply by firing rockets over it. India and China have a wall on their border as well as India and Pakistan; and in these cases it is the fact that both nations have military guarding these walls that makes them work. The same goes for the DMZ Wall between North and South Korea where workers are permitted to cross and should North Korea ever fire the artillery and rockets they have poised just on their side of the wall, that wall too would prove worthless. So, we have seen that walls work great until they don’t work and then they fail catastrophically often just being torn down, breached or the gateways left open. What a surprise, walls need to be guarded by the people who built them or those with common fears; and if you allow your potential enemies to guard your wall, no matter how much you pay them, they will betray you and your wall will fail, we are simply stunned.

 

There are less than twenty days before the continuing resolution runs out and the government faces another shutdown. It is time to assess who is really to blame? On one side, we have President Trump who is insistent that his wall begin to be financed and built, period. The President is refusing to budge. The Democrats in the Senate are demanding that the DACA illegal immigrants be granted total amnesty, all of them with one blanket amnesty with no restrictions. The Republicans want a system by which these illegal immigrants must meet some minimal qualification which includes speaking English and a clean record of no criminal activity since breaking the law being smuggled into the United States. This would include drug possession and any felonies being disqualifying them from receiving amnesty and each case be reviewed independently. The Democrats also want extended amnesty for all illegals in the country now for a decade until they can be fairly assessed for citizenship. They do not want even those with criminal records or multiple deportations already to be excluded, blanket that all illegals remain in the country completely free from government harassment in any way. The President insists that any illegal found guilty of a felony being deported permanently, no exceptions.

 

And the final sticking point is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (H.R. 2580), also known as the Hart–Celler Act. This law completely revamped the National Origins Formula for having quotas based on needs and compatibility with American culture which had been in place since the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Representative Emanuel Celler of New York proposed the bill, Senator Philip Hart of Michigan co-sponsored it, and Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts helped to promote it and thus the quota system was abolished and replaced with a lottery system where people from nations less represented were granted entry. This law has some of what you might call unintended consequences though many believe these were more accurately to be called intended consequences. This might have also been called the future will belong to the Democrat Party as these unassimilated people living off the government will be loyal Democrat voters. This was the program which gave start to the lottery visa program which would bring in immigrants by lottery from largely third world countries and this was how Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbeki national entered the United States. ‘The Diversity Visa Lottery Program is a Chuck Schumer program resulting from The Immigration Act of 1990. This modified the Hart–Celler Act so as to make the system even more fair balancing the entry into the United States from its former unfair Eurocentric systems. Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old Uzbeki national who entered under these programs would become the Bicycle Terrorist who plowed a rented pickup truck into a crowd of pedestrians and cyclists in lower Manhattan on Oct. 31, 2017. President Trump wants this program killed until it can include a more strict vetting of the applicants as currently vetting is minimal. Chuckie Schumer is fighting for this wonderful idea he promoted and refuses to have someone as ignorant as Donald Trump to alter his hard work.

 

Those are the sticking points over which the war of words is over though the media will spend all their time covering the personal attacks and ignore the actual reasons that the government may again face a shutdown. But is a shutdown really all that horrible? It is if you reside in Washington D.C. area as that is the economy as the government and servicing the government is almost all that area does. That even includes the stores, restaurants and everything else you might imagine even to bowling alleys. The Federal Government employees will collect unemployment while they are otherwise on vacation and when they come back, they will be given a nice large payment to cover the time they were “out of work.” They are not required to return the unemployment so they make out fairly well, all things included. Some miss the overtime they used to get but the unemployment should cover that nicely. The Democrats always threaten to shut down the payment of welfare, food stamps, Social Security and other such but President Trump can order these be paid as they are a function of the Administration and he can claim them as vital interests. Many such payments are actually done by State government employees such as unemployment. Most of our readers are probably too young to remember the heady days when President Willian Jefferson Clinton and Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich were at war over the budget and from December 16, 1995, to January 6, 1996, they shut down the government completely for a total of 27 days. The world actually managed to continue to spin, the United States was not invaded as the military were considered essential personnel, crime waves did not develop as the Federal Agents were also considered essential and the Post Office is a supposedly independent agency and not directly run by government so the mail continued, and the nations did not grind to a halt. Other than the hyperventilating media, the entire three weeks and six days passed and nobody died as a result, not even a single hyperventilating media type, as they are practiced at that art. President Trump should challenge Chuckie Schumer and allow the government to be shuttered for as long as Senator Schumer can take the heat. We would bet that providing President Trump can still Tweet to his little heart’s content (not to imply he had a little heart as he is rumored to be a generous individual) then he will be able to continue and hopefully be persuaded to watch the goings on with an unattached glee and amused viewing port. The media will of course cast such blame predicting the end of the world, as we know it. If he can manage to allow the government to remain shut down with just the essential personnel and all government checks to the citizens continuing on schedule but with over three-quarters of the government on extended vacation, as that will be what it will be in the end, then he can easily make a speech during ‘prime time’ to the American people to apologize for the extended government shutdown and then propose that each department of the government be required to freeze hiring until further notice with the administration setting up a panel which will mediate any hiring needs during the period in order to make limited exceptions if a position is truly essential, which they will advise that the agency usually fill it from within. If President Trump can keep such a freeze in place his entire presidency and be reelected, perhaps government might finally be parsed to a more manageable size. Just a closing crazy idea.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Congress Allows Government Funding, for Now

 

Congress reached an agreement to fund the government, as most people have heard. Their idea of funding the government is a three-week stop-gap measure and not an actual budget. Reports told that DACA amnesty supporters were furious that the Democrats permitted funding without any guarantee of amnesty. In reality, it should be those supporters of the wall who should be disappointed with this so-called compromise. The DACA amnesty is not the main bone of contention when compared to building protection on the borders. We were wondering if anybody out there has kept count as to how many times the wall has been promised and then pushed off and never considered after gaining the promised prize of amnesty again. Does anybody remember when President Ronald Reagan exchanged amnesty for border security and a wall across the majority of feasible regions to be financed the next session of Congress? We fully expect at some point the Democrat leadership to offer holding a vote next year for funding building the border wall. This is the ruse used by before and even getting to the point of voting for funding initially but when the time was imminent for building, the funding was mysteriously diverted elsewhere. The Democrats have supported a border fence as stated by President Barack Obama in his speech in El Paso, Texas on May 10, 2011. Allow us to first quote the President and then show a picture of his completed fence for discussion. President Barack Obama stated fence along the border with Mexico is “now basically complete.” But he continued on to describe the whining he expected from Republicans over his wall stating,

“We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. All the stuff they asked for, we’ve done. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I’ve got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time.”
“They’ll want want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat. They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics.”

Jim DeMint wrote the response to President Obama stating, “Five years ago, legislation was passed to build a 700-mile double-layer border fence along the southwest border…This is a promise that has not been kept. Today, according to staff at the Department of Homeland Security, just 5 percent of the double-layer fencing is complete, only 36.3 miles.” So, was the fence completed as stated by President Obama or do the Republicans have an argument that the fence was not built as promised. Below is a picture of the fence near San Miguel, Arizona, part of the seven-hundred-mile fence described above.

 

Picture of the Fence near San Miguel, Arizona

 

The promised double fence, does this really appear to be what was promised? Granted, there are two different sized posts but does that make it a double fence? Then we are told that this fence is designed to stop vehicles from crossing the border. We are willing to bet that most of us were under the impression that the entire idea behind a double fence was to prevent people crossing, with or without a vehicle not to mention it is doubtful that most people crossing at this location are coming across on vehicles from dune buggies to recreational vehicles but rather they would probably be walking. We seriously doubt anybody thinks that this fence would prevent people walking across the border or matches the concept of a double fence by any rational concept of a double border fence designed and built to secure the border. Surprisingly, we actually believe a double fence requires two distinct and separate fences in relative close proximity equally difficult to traverse with an enforcement dirt track between them providing an area for ease of enforcement personnel patrolling in vehicles and responding to sensors and other alarms (see image below).

 

This is What We Believe a Border Fence Looks Like

 

Now we have cleared up the definition of a double fence, which is why we advise the members of Congress desiring a real double fence include pictures, diagrams and other necessities so there will be no confusion as to what they mean by a double fence. The coming debate over the fence and the DACA refugees who are, and never forget this part, illegal immigrants who face deportation for crossing the border illegally, granted not of their own choosing as their parents brought them when they crossed the border illegally. The pivotal word is illegally. All the claims to the DACA having Constitutional rights are a bogus argument meant to allow these illegal immigrants to get around enforcement by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agents. Constitutional rights are for United States citizens which illegal immigrants are not. If the government was to dispatch ICE agents to one of the rallies supporting the DACA individuals and they were to arrest those announcing their being a, “proud child of an illegal immigrant whose parents brought them across the border,” to hold for a hearing and potential deporting, they would be well within legal rights to do so. Such has not been done nor have the ICE agents been ordered to even monitor these events. We guess that perhaps those enforcing the immigration laws are not the heartless beasts described in the media.

 

The DACA illegal immigrants should be treated with dignity and understanding with always in the background the fact that they are illegal perched over the proceedings. Those who were too young to have some say in their being smuggled into the United States should have that taken into account. If a DACA individual has no other criminal record should be permitted to stay once they have shown proficiency in English, United States Laws, the Constitution, and American Customs. But those with further felony convictions or several misdemeanor convictions, those should be deported. It will not be up to us to decide their fate, but they should be given a brief and defined period of time to come and apply for asylum, thus having a hearing on whether they deserve asylum or deportation. Those who do not voluntarily apply for a hearing should be deported as soon as possible after the grace period has passed. Providing hope and a fair and reasoned approach with the promise of fairness is what should be offered but making the grace period’s beginning dependent upon completion of the border fence would also be fair. Exchange of a period of a few weeks or months while requiring the completion of the border wall is only a fair and true offer which if refused would reveal whether or not the Democrats are being honest about the wall and remove their ability to later pull the funding by placing the grace period after the wall being completed. The grace for the DACA “children,” as most of them have grown into adulthood, must be placed as secondary to building the wall so as to finally guarantee the wall being constructed this time around. Time will tell.

 

Beyond the Cusp