The three biggest lies
I grew up with joke about The Three Biggest Lies. One was “The check is in the mail”. The second varied, but was usually rude, crude, or both. The third was “We are from the government, we’re here to help.”
Last month, President “stimulate” Obama signed a Presidential order. It seems now that only Union construction workers will be allowed to work on government projects. With the grand Stimulous spending going on, it might get iffy trying to prove your project *isn’t* a government project. After all, you either pay taxes or file for tax-exempt status, so that makes your construction a “government” construction project, right? The government is going “union only” at a time they claim be stimulating hiring.
After all, the unions, like always, spent a lot of money to put their bought-and-paid-for guy in the White House. Sounds like a really spiffy payoff from Obama to the unions. Old-time Chicago boss Mayor Daley would be proud.
Frank W. James is pretty level-headed. His farming and gun-review blog covers impromptu blinds for “tall road rat” season (upended loading pallets for deer season), costs to repair a heavy farm tractor and describes one farmer’s joys and worries over ground prep, planting, growing season, and harvesting.
Today Frank W. James joins “I Drive My Tractor In Pearls”‘ My Modern Country Home in reaction to our apparently uninformed, or plain deceitful, Attorney General. Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said,
“As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Holder told reporters.
The ABC News article cites Wayne LaPierre, president of the National Rifle Association.
“I think there are a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill cringing at Eric Holder’s comments right now.”
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“A semi-automatic is a quintessential self-defense firearm owned by American citizens in this country,” LaPierre said. “I think it is clearly covered under Heller and it’s clearly, I think, protected by the Constitution.”
I am not a gun authority. My understanding is that an automatic weapon will fire one round after another, as long as the trigger is pulled or activated. A semi-automatic weapon fires a single round every time the trigger is pulled. The other generally related class of weapon is a bolt-action or other single-shot weapon. Automatic and semi-automatic weapons take modern cartridge type ammunition, as do bolt-action weapons.
Many muzzleloading guns, typically using black powder or black powder substitute, assemble the primer (if used), the propellent powder (gunpowder), and projectile ball or shaped bullet just before firing. I haven’t heard of an automatic or semi-auto muzzle loader.
From the ABC News article:
A State Department travel warning issued Feb. 20, 2009, reflected government concerns about the violence.
“Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades,”
Where Holder deceives people, is implying that the assault weapon ban has anything to do with automatic weapons – which are fully covered and monitored by the BATFE. There are no legal, open-to-the-public sales of automatic weapons in the US, unless the dealer and purchaser are properly licensed. And hand grenades are likewise not a publicly available commodity. Using the Mexicans’ concern about automatic weapons and hand grenades is propaganda – lies just like the Bush claims about WMD in Iraq.
The current legislation loosely termed “Assault Weapons Ban” for political reasons – to obscure the real intent – includes a lot of scare procedures. What the Obama White House doesn’t want you to know is scary.
- They really want to remove guns from private citizens
- The Second Amendment is really about tyrants, about resisting an abusive government. About repeating, if the need arises, the American Revolution. Obama and the gun-phobes have plans to make themselves rich and powerful – and when they abandon legal processes, they don’t want you to have weapons that let you resist. This includes firearms. This is the specific reason that the nation’s founding fathers, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, demanded that their people retain the ability to resist. In their experience, no government remains serviceable forever.
- What Holder and others call “gun control”, they mean to be a step toward banning all firearms. They are lying about their intent.
- This so-called Assault Weapons Ban includes registration of every firearm in the nation, limiting who is allowed to register and own guns, banning private sales of weapons.
- Gun control nuts point at the recent California “Santa Claus Shooter” and cry about how this gunmen killed eight people. I like the pundit that pointed out he killed eight people because he was the only one with a gun. The Nebraska mall shooting, the college campus shootings – they all happen in gun-free zones for a reason. The shooter isn’t looking for opposition, the shooter wants a free field. I don’t want to make all of America a gun-free zone.
- Guns permit people to exert immense influence. We arm sheriffs and police for this reason. As long as we can count on authority figures to be honest, compassionate, and law-abiding we shouldn’t see any problem. But it takes a weapon to counter a law-breaker, a bandit – a tyrant. The Mexican warning is a point to ponder. Recent reports of Mexican drug cartel armed kidnapping, drug wars, and armed violence are now regular occurences in all major American cities. All of them. We lament the airplane crashes of 9/11. Think what might have happened instead, if a few responsible citizens had been carrying and ready to intervene.
- Some few cities and towns in the United States have passed ordinances requiring every head of household to own and qualify with a firearm. In every instance – violent and property crime rates declined. Gun-ban enthusiasts don’t tell anyone about that experience.
- When seconds count, the police are just minutes away. (This is a phrase that resounds around the Internet, used to sell Pepper spray and the thought that weapons plus training plus ethical use empower individuals and confront crime.) Also, an armed society is a polite society.
The United States Concealed Carry organization sent me an email.
..while reading an article titled “The Constitutional Right and Social Obligation to Carry a Gun.”
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“A citizen who shirks his duty to contribute to the security of his community is little better than the criminal who threatens it.”
Barry Goldwater pointed out “You can’t legislate morality.” Gun control is about thought control – make everyone feel powerless to counter whatever the government feels like doing.
As “Pearls” puts it (My Modern Country Home) – Pray, praise, and prepare.
Lies are disheartening, as is manipulating words with the intent to deceive.
I don’t have enough knowledge about the gun issue to discuss it intelligently – I just fear the few who use them without responsibility or conscience.
Loving Annie,
One lesson the old westerns taught, and truly. Don’t pull a weapon unless you are going to use it. One reason is – that when you get that weapon prepped and aimed – everyone, from whomever you face to any bystanders – has to assume you are about to use your weapon. Pulling a weapon will cause anyone else with a weapon to fire at you. No one with any sense will ever wait for you to shoot first, so don’t wait once you pull the gun.
The other thing is that when you are prepping and aiming a gun, your focus in on using it well, and using it correctly. That means that the proper time to decide *whether* to use a weapon is before you reach for it. Unless someone is threatening you. Someone’s threat trumps everything else – you have to assume deadly force is about to be used against you.
Loving Annie, you raise valid points. Like any tool or weapon, skill in use, strategy of when to use, and ethics all need to be understood. This applies to the written word, the privilege to vote, a hammer, a recorder, a spatula, a broom, a firearm, and every other tool or weapon.
Many of the firearms that gun-control panic-mongers talk about as “assault” weapons, are retired US rifles, distributed through channels to qualified citizens. Many go to the veterans that qualified on the weapons. Other rifles used on battlefields – assault rifles – make excellent hunting and target rifles. For many, they are historic collectibles, to show and to shoot.
Where people carry concealed guns, by state permit, usually they have had some basic training on when and how to respond to a threat. They have passed an examination about their knowledge of safety and prudence.
Criminals, now, seldom bother with the training or license procedure. They have little problem getting any weapon at all. And we know we have too few police and security guards to protect us. I would think every law-abiding citizen would *encourage* more citizen-held weapons and concealed carry permits. It is certain that drug dealers, muggers, and thieves would prefer, like Obama, to see America disarmed.
The supreme court has held that the police are expected to defend a community – that no individual has a reasonable expectation that the police will protect them. Your father, your sister, you neighbor, trained and carrying a weapon, though, can be counted on to do what they can. Of course, we all pray that we never find out what we can do, to secure our community.