President Trump Should Say "No" to Federal Gun Legislation

I sent this message to the president. I was surprised to hear conservatives on Fox arguing for federal gun legislation that infringes the right to bear arms, which is unconstitutional.  Such legislation impedes citizens' abilities to form local defense units in the face of federal tyranny.

Dear President Trump:

I appreciate your response to the tragic shootings in El Paso and Dayton. Your response was appropriate, and a call for legislation may have been politically advisable.  Nevertheless, I urge you to back off from any federal legislation regarding guns.

The Constitution is clear on this issue: The right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Such rights are necessary to defend ourselves from federal tyrants, whose emergence we are witnessing in the Democratic Party.

Moreover, if you look at the statistics, more people are killed in two or three plane crashes than have been killed in mass shootings over the last 30 years.  Passing legislation after a horrific event is equivalent to selling in a stock market crash.

Only about 600-700 people have been killed in mass shootings over the past 30 years, but 35,000 a year are killed in car crashes. Death due to plane crash is more common than death due to mass killings. Yet, airline travel is federally regulated. Hence, federal regulation has been a complete failure, resulting in greater, not lesser, death rates.

The calls for legislation have been defined, as too much is, by left-wing ideology that calls for a centralized solution to all issues regardless of the long-term performance of  centralized solutions.

The death rate due to centralized control of guns needs to include the mass murders in Nazi German and communist Russia, where guns were illegal and where elite, centralized parties controlled by the equivalents of the Soroses, Rockefellers, and Clintons murdered at will.  It is not surprising that the party of elites, the Democrats, favors centralized gun control, just as such parties always have.

The psychological distortion process known as salience is that explosive events tend to be considered to be more prevalent than unobtrusive events. Hence, many people believe that it is more dangerous to fly in an airplane than to drive.  Likewise, the sensation America's dumbed-down media creates around the tragic mass shootings are directly intended to encourage legislation that favors their bosses, the Democrats.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Edwin Vieira May Have a Point

Edwin Vieira's point about the absence of state- and local-based militias in America has made me think about the Second Amendment. I'm swamped but eventually want to read Vieira's book. The Second Amendment says this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As Vieira points out, liberal opinion about the Second Amendment since the 1960s has emphasized the individual right to bear arms, but the Second Amendment is not couched in the language of individual rights. Rather, it makes an affirmative statement about militias, namely, that they are necessary to the security of a free state.

As Vieira notes, this reasoning was based on the writings of John Trenchard in "An Argument, Shewing that a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy."

The Second Amendment makes a positive assertion about freedom, which I suspect because of cognitive dissonance, is almost universally overlooked.

The Second Amendment makes this argument: If there is no militia, then there is no freedom. Since Americans largely ended the state militias in the early 20th century, according to the Second Amendment we no longer have a free state--or at least one that is secure.

"Cognitive dissonance" refers to the tendency to avoid accepting contradiction. Since we have been trained to believe that America is a free state and that the Constitution is the document that protects that freedom, we tend to overlook the affirmative claim that without a militia, which we lack except ceremonially, we are not free or that freedom is at risk. Nevertheless, the language is plain.

The lack of interest among liberals in the reconstitution of state-based militias and the institution of universal military training (not necessarily service, but training) is that there is a large inconvenience to being trained and that universal service requires an element of coercion. As well, we tend to confuse individual self-indulgence with freedom.

Freedom does not mean that we are free to be paid without working, and it does not mean that we are free to live in a secure state without contributing to its defense. The voluntary, pay-for-service standing army is coercive because taxes are coercive, and they are necessary to support the standing army.

A citizens' militia is also coercive, but it removes the monopoly on violence currently held in Washington and downloads it to the state, community, and individual levels. That creates a valid resistance point to authoritarian power, and it also enhances the military as a defensive rather than an aggressive institution.

I don't yet have a conclusion to this line of reasoning, but many pathologies of post-World War I America stem from irresponsibility, the breakdown of the family, lack of self-confidence, and de-masculinization that arises from fatherless homes and politically correct indoctrination in female-dominated schools.

A reconstitution of militias may help reinvent freedom in America and may serve as an antidote to a range of politically correct pathologies.
https://www.thedailybell.com/…/anthony-wile-edwin-vieira-o…/ 

America Needs a Militia

This interview  of Edwin Vieira is instructive.  His discussion is based on his book The Sword and Sovereignty: The Constitutional Principles of “the Militia of the Several States.”  Vieira holds four degrees from Harvard, including a Ph.D. and law degree, and as an attorney he has argued landmark labor cases.  I have had a couple of small interactions with him.  As well, Mark Mix, the head of the National Right to Work Committee, has spoken to my classes, and Vieira has worked directly with him.

Some of Viera's points are:

-All competent Americans belong to the Constitutional militia. The chief exceptions involve physical and mental incapacity. The males-only limitation, which was prevalent in the 18th century, no longer applies, so all able-bodied and psychologically fit Americans are members of the militia. That is true legally because the state-based militia codes are  still in effect.

-John Trenchard, in the 1690s, made the case that a standing army is incompatible with liberty. Whoever holds the sword, the ultimate force in society,  exercises sovereignty.  Since the US is a self-governing republic, the people need to hold the sword.  Delegating this authority to the federal government is equivalent to delegating sovereignty to an elite special interest or tyrant.

-Current approaches to homeland security are incompatible with freedom, self-governance, and the Second Amendment.  A true Constitutional militia is the basis for true homeland security.  The Second Amendment says that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of the a state. In other words, only when the people hold military power can the state be secure and free.

- The average person is the object of control of the current homeland security institutions; he is not a participant in them. Hence, America has adopted police state tactics: surveillance, propaganda, lies, indefinite detention, and ultimately assassinations committed by the executive branch without judicial review.  These practices are unconstitutional and incompatible with freedom.

-The current homeland security system directly contradicts the vision of the founding fathers.

-The National Guard is Constitutional, but it is not a militia.  A militia conforms to the historical patterns of militias that existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Vieira says that there are 17 principles associated with a well-regulated militia.   These  include universal service and all militia members' owning their own firearms.

-The militia, although it still exists on paper, withered in importance because of the Dick Act, also called the Militia Act of 1903 (32 Stat. 775),  and The Efficiency in Militia Act of 1903.”  The Act separated organized and unorganized militias. This distinction is unconstitutional.

-Vieira argues that the pro-freedom and pro-Second Amendment  movements have erred in emphasizing the individual right to bear arms, which Vieira says is certainly part of the Second Amendment, but only a small part.  The main purpose of the Second Amendment is to insist that well-regulated militias are necessary to the defense of a free state; in diminishing the importance of the militia itself, the debate has centered on individual rights rather than a full understanding of the founding fathers' vision of freedom.

-Vieira argues for a renewal of legitimate militias that are similar to the current Swiss militia system. To adhere to the Constitution, the states would need to establish universal militia service requirements and training, and the current federal control of homeland security would need to end.  The people should be trained to protect homeland security, which is not a federal function.

Vieira's view is radical, more radical than any left-oriented aim of further centralizing the state and putting more police power in state hands. Institution of universal militia service might lessen the obsession with higher education, which could be in part replaced by militia training requirements for 17-year-olds.

Physicians, Guns and Lawyers

I just received this e-mail from  Robroy4355: A)  The number of physicians in the  U.S.  is 700,000. (B)  Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.   (C)  Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 Statistics courtesy of  U.S.  Dept. of Health  and  Human Services. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Now think about this: Guns (A)  The number of gun owners in the  U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million) (B)  The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500. (C)  The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188 Statistics courtesy of FBI >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> So,  statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.' >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> FACT:  NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT Almost everyone has at least one doctor. This means you are over 9,000 times more likely to be killed by a doctor as by a gun owner!!! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!! >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Out of concern for the public at large, We withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!

Aristotle and the Second Amendment II

"...when citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name--a constitution. And there is a reason for this use of language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but as the number increases it becomes more difficult for them to attain perfection in every kind of virtue, though they may be in military virtue, for this is found in the masses. Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens."

--Aristotle, Politics, 1279b-5.

Aristotle on the Right to Bear Arms

In Book II, chapter 8 of Politics Aristotle describes the city of Hippodamus, the son of Euryphon. Aristotle credits Hippodamus with the invention of the art of planning of cities. As well, Aristotle says that he was "the first person not a statesman who made inquiries about the best form of government."

In critiquing the city that Hippodamus proposed, which was to be of 10,000 citizens divided among artisans, farmers and warriors, Aristotle writes:

"The first of these proposals to which objection may be taken is the threefold division of the citizens. The artisans and the husbandmen, and the warriors, all have a share in government. But the husbandmen have no arms, and the artisans neither arms nor land, and therefore they become all but slaves of the warrior class. That they should share in all the offices is an impossibility; for generals and guardians of the citizens, and nearly all the principal magistrates, must be taken from the class of those who carry arms. Yet, if the two other classes have no share in the government, how can they be loyal citizens? It may be said that those who have arms must necessarily be masters of both the other classes, but this is not so easily accomplished unless they are numerous; and if they are, why should the other classes share in government at all..."

A Message Concerning NY from The National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action

New York State Senate Called Back for Special Session!

Please Contact Your State Senator!

At the urging of Senate Democratic leadership, the New York State Senate will return to Albany for a one-day session on Thursday, August 6.

While Senators are expected to take up the controversial issue of control over the New York City schools, there is the potential for other pending legislation to be acted upon as long as they are in session.

Contact your State Senator and ask him or her to oppose the following list of anti-gun bills should any come up for consideration while the Senators are in Albany.

Senate Bill 4397A and Senate Bill 6005, both micro-stamping bills, would ban the sale of all semi-automatic handguns not equipped with micro-stamping technology.

Senate Bill 4753 would prohibit the possession of concealed firearms in any park or recreational area.

Senate Bill 1598 would require five-year renewals on pistol licenses.

Senate Bill 1715 would impose new restrictions on licensed dealers and require retailers to obtain liability insurance against the possibility of a crime being committed with a firearm any time after it is legally sold.

Senate Bill 5228 would outlaw handguns ”capable” of being fired by anyone five years of age or younger, this legislation would outlaw virtually all handguns in New York.

Senate Bill 2379 would ban frangible ammunition.

Senate Bill 5489 would institute a training requirement for issuance of a pistol license.

Senate Bill 4752 would outlaw .50 caliber firearms.

Senate Bill 3098 would require the mandatory storage of firearms.

Contact information for your State Senator can be found by clicking here.

My Letter to Congressman Maurice Hinchey Re HR 45

Dear Congressman Hinchey:

I oppose gun control and in particular HR 45, Representative Bobby Rush's (D-IL)Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009, the text of which is located at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h45/text.

As you likely know, the Federalist Papers #29, written by Alexander Hamilton, describes the nature of what the Founding Fathers saw as a militia. Hamilton leaves little doubt that the reason for the Second Amendment is protection against incursion against liberty by the state.

Given current developments in Washington, there is little reason to believe that the US government is legitimate or trustworthy. Rather, it is tyrannical. I have written to you previously advocating a 75% reduction in the federal budget, but you obviously have failed to respond in practice.

I would like to know your position on HR 45. I have indicated my e-mail and regular mailing address above.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Obama Tyranny Rising: Military Assault on Firearms

H/t Nancy Razik:

Gentlemen,

I am an 11B [Infantryman] currently assigned at Fort Campbell . I live off post, with my firearms(which I don't bring on post for any reason). A very frightening thing happened at work yesterday.

I was ordered to fill out a list containing my firearm information. This included make, model, caliber, and serial number of all firearms I currently possess. In addition, I was also required to list registration information, location of all weapons individually, and information regarding any CCW permits I posses. If you are like me, then the people you work with know you have firearms. So I had to list at least some. I tried to talk to my 1sg (who is normally approachable through proper channels) to find out what this is for, and I was basically told, "I don't give a !&@%, just put your info on the form."

I don't know how high this goes, but I am hearing that this is going on in other units at Fort Campbell as well. It just seems a little coincidental to me that within 90 days since the most anti-firearm President in history is inaugurated, some of the nastiest anti-firearm laws are put on the table in Washington, and then the Army comes around wanting what amounts to a registration on all firearms, even if they are off post, and doesn't provide any reason or purpose as to why. I fear something really nasty is blowing in the wind here. I have been in almost 8 years, and never have any of my units asked for this information. If any of you out there have any info as to what all this crap is about please chime in. Otherwise consider yourself warned. I have already posted this on every other firearm forum I am a member of to get the word out.

Attached is a copy of the actual memo I received.

The Second Amendment and the Doctrine of Probable Use

There are frequent discussions of whether to limit the ownership of various kinds of weapons such as assault rifles, machine guns and the like. The discussion on this topic has been historically illiterate and has failed to contemplate the fundamental reason for the ownership of guns. Guns are necessary for the public militia to protect the people from state tyranny. Hamilton noted this in the Federalist 29 and the Second Amendment makes this clear when it says that a well regulated militia is necessary for the defense of a free state.

Since the purpose of the right to bear arms is largely to protect the public from state tyranny, the public ought to have the right to own weapons that are at least equal to weapons that the state would probably use in an assault on the public to re-enforce tyranny. Thus, if tanks are likely to be used against the public in a rural area, the public militia ought to have the right to own tanks.

Rifles used against tanks would hardly be effective for the defense of a free state. All legal discussion that fails to balance the weapons that the government might use against the people with the threat that private ownership poses to the public is illegitimate and does violence to the Second Amendment. The government's probable use of a given class of weapons against the public ought to be the basis for the legality of gun ownership.

Every American Is Morally Obliged to Own a Gun

I have previously blogged about the Federalist 29 in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the militia. The militia, the body of citizens which could muster to protect the state and to protect the people, was necessary in Hamilton's view not only to protect the nation from external threat but also to protect the people from tyranny. It is evident that he saw widespread ownership of guns as a fundamental safeguard against governmental tyranny. The Second Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, was adopted to placate not Federalists but anti-Federalists. There was no serious questioning of this view by any American, Federalist or anti-Federalist, during the time of the adoption of the Constitution. The Founders viewed the widespread ownership of guns as an important safeguard against tyranny then. The Second Amendment says that each American is responsible to own a gun. And the protection of freedom from the US government remains as fundamental today as it was in the time of Jefferson, Hamilton and Brutus.

The basis of American society is not the US government nor the Constitution, but freedom. Freedom adheres in the people. The United States can happily exist without the current form of federal government. But it cannot exist without freedom.

The Civil War fulfilled the American belief in freedom by freeing the slaves, but the war was fought not over freedom but over union. Slavery was not the main point for Lincoln and the North, and the freeing of the slaves a military tactic, not a moral statement. While the post-bellum period was unsuccessful in dealing with race, and the problems that resulted from the North's indifference and the South's resistance to equality reverberate today, the North's insistence on union changed the emphasis of American belief from freedom to union. The Republicans did not intend to dismiss laissez-faire, but by insisting on union they opened the door to enhancement of federal power. The federal government would remain limited in their view, but union, hence government, was to take precedence over individual and local choice. This was not new, as Andrew Jackson, the most laissez faire and localist of all presidents, had refused to permit nullification of tariffs by the states. Yet, the Civil War's magnitude and scope asserted centralization and federal power in a way that the founders had not intended. This change in psychology resulted from practical events, but it had philosophical ramifications that few at the time could have anticipated.

The Civil War's thrust toward centralization was re-enforced by the Progressives. This was a philosophical shift that elites advocated. The public was never entirely convinced by Progressivism, but has accepted the transformation of American government that Progressivism initiated. Nevertheless, the fundamental foundation of freedom as the cornerstone of American life and the fundamental principles on which the Constitution was based were never rescinded. The changes that Progressivism and the New Deal wrought were applied piecemeal, and never fully understood. As a result, the question of the state's threat to freedom looms larger now than it has ever before. The central government's arrogation of power appears increasingly inconsistent with the principles on which a legitimate American government based on freedom can be based.

In order to be moral Americans must live up to their responsibilities. Americans have a moral responsibility to protect the public from tyranny. The federal government threatens tyranny. Ownership of a gun, then, is fundamental to each American's responsibility. The Second Amendment says that it is the moral responsibility of Americans to own guns. It is in this light that the Second Amendment needs to be understood:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

A free state is secure only if it is protected from tyranny and external threat. The public must own guns to protect itself from the tyrannical state as vested today in the federal government.

NRA Says No to Obama

Texas Darlin posts this video from the National Rifle Association:



Links are available here

Alexander Hamilton on the Second Amendment

Hamilton's Federalist No. 29 is about the issue of regulating militias. On the one hand, it was necessary to form a "well regulated" militia in order to reduce the need for a standing army. Thus, an armed population was necessary in order to form a militia. As well, Hamilton argued that a select corps of militia ought to be formed, and that in order to eliminate the threat that the militia might pose to freedom, it was necessary for the public to be able to stop any attempt of the government to suppress freedom and therefore important that the public at large should hold firearms. This argument is clear in the Federalist 29. Those who argue just one half of the equation, that the arms were necessary to form the militia and deny that they were necessary to defend against the potential for a government assault on freedom are simply uninformed about the history of Federalism and the liberal spirit in which the United States was founded. Arguably the public can and ought to, in the view of the founders, confront attempts to suppress the ownership of firearms. A Supreme Court that adjudicates in favor of the suppression of the right to bear arms has completely lost touch with the Constitution and is no longer a constitutional body.

Hamilton writes in Federalist 29:

"The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate size, upon such principles as will really fit it for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."

Those historians and political scientists who argue against American exceptionalism would do well to consider that few other major polities have respected the individual sufficiently to consider private ownership of firearms a bulwark against tyranny. In nations like Russia, France, Germany and Italy, guns are routinely regulated. Backward-thinking mercantilists who have cheered Hitler and Stalin, now advocate for a botched interpretation of the Second Amendment that would enhance their own power and the power of government that represents economic elites to suppress freedom.

The Federalist Number 8 and the Second Amendment

The Federalist No. 8, attributed to Hamilton, sheds some light on the Second Amendment debate. As many have pointed out, the Second Amendment refers to the citizens' and the states' ability to resist a federal standing army. As such, it would seem that a robust interpretation as to the right to keep and bear arms is condign. In the Federalist Number 8 Hamilton argues that the threat of a standing army to liberty will not be great since the country, under the Constitution, would not ordinarily need to worry about military threats and so the federal army would not need to be large. He adds that because of the rarity of internal invasions:

"The smallness of the army renders the natural strength of the community an overmatch for it; and the citizens not habituated to look up to the military power for protection, or to submit to its oppressions, neither love nor fear the soldiery; they view them with a spirit of jealous acquiescence in a necessary evil and stand ready to resist a power which they suppose may be exerted to the prejudice of their rights.

"The army under such circumstances may usefully aid the magistrate to suppress a small faction, or an occasional mob, or insurrection; but it will be unable to enforce encroachments against the united efforts of the great body of people."

The Second Amendment reads:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

It seems evident that the Second Amendment, like Hamilton, refers to the public's and the states' ability to resist military incursions on liberty. Gun ownership in this light is not only an individual right, but an individual responsibility. Far from limiting the right to bear arms, the phrase "a well regulated militia" suggests that all Americans ought to bear arms as a defense against a standing army and suppression of the citizenry. Would that the European victims of nazism and communism had taken the advice of the Bill of Rights and formed a well-regulated militia.