Notez


 

Home   |   2nd Amend Secures an Individual Right    |   Scholarship on Right to Arms

History of 2nd Amend   |   Embarrassing 2nd Amend    |   Death by Gun Control
   Rep Otis Pike Battles NSA   |     Military Wisdom    |   Bible on Guns     |   Short Story    |   Sad SNAFU
Poo-Poo Privacy   |   Spying on Congress    |   Stop Mass Surveillance    |   Notez
 


 

Self  –  defence  is justly called the primary law of nature,  
  so it is not,   neither can it be in fact,  taken away by the laws of society.”
  –  Sir William Blackstone,    Commentaries on the Laws of England   (1765).



 

 

Notes:

The only people disarmed by  “gun control”  are law-abiding citizens.
This aids & abets the armed criminals by assuring them of a
government guaranteed supply of unarmed victims.

Note Well:
  The utterly dismal failure of Draconian gun control laws in England and Australia which resulted in large increases in crime.


We would do well to realize that this country was founded by citizens overthrowing a government who would not recognize their fundamental rights.
The first shots fired in the Revolutionary War were not due to oppression, taxation, abridgment of freedom of the press, religion or due process.
The reason the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord was the Government Authorities’ heavy–handed attempt at disarming the common people.   Governor Gage directed the Redcoats to begin general, warrantless searches for arms and ammunition. According to the Boston Gazette, of all General Gage’s offenses, “what most irritated the People” was  “seizing their Arms and Ammunition.”

They’re stealing our powder!
Laws that aim to disarm the public at large are precisely what turned a political argument into the American Revolution.


The ONLY people that have  “Assault Weapons”  are the military,   police  &  criminals.
The civilian ones are Auto Loading,  where it’s necessary to pull the trigger for each shot.

True  “Assault Weapons”  are in fact light machine guns capable of fully automatic fire.
Machine guns of all types have been severely restricted from civilian ownership since 1934.


 Do you believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution,
           while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution?



 

 

Truth is the Greatest Freedom
Do Not Let Freedom Slip Away

By: Kitty Werthmann,   Austria 1938


The Final Step - Gun Laws:

Then came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns.
Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns.
Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms.
Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns.
The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech.
Anyone who said something against the government was taken away.
We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews,
but also educators, priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly.
it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943,  to realize full dictatorship in Austria.
Had it happened overnight,  my countrymen would have fought to the last breath.
Instead,  we had creeping gradualism.  Now, our only weapons were broom handles.
The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state,  little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria.  Women were raped, preteen to elderly.  The press never wrote about this either.  When the Soviets left in 1955,  they took everything that they could,  dismantling whole factories in the process.  They sawed down whole orchards of fruit,  and what they couldn’t destroy,  they burned.  We called it The Burned Earth.  Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses.  Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized.
  Those who couldn’t,  paid the price.  There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians.

This is an eye witness account.







 


“When the day of conflict came,  the issue of the contest was necessarily changed.   The People of the Colonies had maintained the contest on the principle of resisting the invasion of chartered rights  –   first by argument and remonstrance, and,  finally,  by appeal to the sword.  But with the war came the necessary exercise of sovereign powers.


The Declaration of Independence justified itself as the only possible remedy for insufferable wrongs.  It seated itself upon the first foundations of the law of nature,  and the incontestable doctrine of human rights.   There was no longer any question of the constitutional powers of the British Parliament,  or of violated colonial charters.  Thenceforward the American Nation supported its existence war:  and the British Nation,  by war,  was Contending for conquest.


“Politics ought to be the part–time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.” 
  –   Pres  Dwight D. Eisenhower


As, between the two parties, the single question at issue was Independence  –  but in the confederate existence of the North American Union,   Liberty  –   not only their own liberty,  but the vital principle of liberty to the whole race of civilized man, was involved.”
  –   Pres  John Quincy Adams,   House of Representatives,   Dec. 31st,  1834
          [  Oration on the Life and Character of Gilbert Motier De La Fayette  ]


“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read,  or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
  –   Pres  James Madison


“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech.
  Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.” 
  –  Pres  Herbert Hoover


“Liberty is not collective,  it is personal.  All liberty is individual liberty.”
  –   Pres  Calvin Coolidge


Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny;  for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.”
  –   John Milton


“It is a commonplace that the history of civilization is largely the history of weapons.  In particular,  the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again.  And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward,  I think the following rule would be found to be generally true:  that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will be ages of despotism,  whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple,  the common people have a chance.  Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long – bows and hand – grenades are inherently democratic weapons.  A complex weapon makes the strong stronger,  while a simple weapon,  so long as there is no answer to it,  gives claws to the weak.”  
  –   George Orwell,   You and the Atom Bomb,   essay for the Tribune,   Oct 19th, 1945


Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.” 
  –   Mayor  John V. Lindsay


“Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next.  Well, what of it?   The first one is at least disposed of.”
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
“Unnecessary laws are not good laws,  but traps for money.”
   –  Thomas Hobbes


The possession of arms is the distinction between a free man and a slave: he who has nothing, and belongs to another, must be defended by him and needs no arms; but he who thinks he is his own master, and has anything he may call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself and what he possesses or else he lives precariously and at discretion. And though for a while, those who have the sword in their power [the government] abstain from doing him injury; yet, by degrees, he will be awed into submission to every arbitrary command. Our ancestors [the Caledonians and Picts], by being always armed and frequently in action, defended themselves against the Romans, Danes and English and maintained their liberty against encroachments of their own princes.”
  –   Andrew Fletcher,   (1653 – 1716),  A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militias in Political Works,   1698,  p.47


“General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time.
   They are always provoked.” 
  –   Edmund Burke


“False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience;  that would take fire from men because it burns,  and water because one may drown in it;  that has no remedy for ills, except destruction.
  The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature.” 
  –   Cesare,   Marquis of Beccaria,    On Crimes and Punishments,   1764.


 
 “The tank,  the B-52,  the fighter-bomber,  the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship.  The rifle is the weapon of democracy.  Not for nothing was the revolver called an ’equalizer.
  Egalite implies liberte.  And always will.  Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights:
An armed citizenry is the first defense,  the best defense,  and the final defense against tyranny..”  
  –  Edward Abbey


“Do not be deceived,  God is not mocked;  for whatever a man sows,  that he will also reap.   For he who sows to his flesh  will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.  And let us not grow weary while doing good,  for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.   Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.”
  –   Paul of Tarsus,   Gal: 6


“Politics is the art of looking for trouble,  finding it everywhere,  diagnosing it incorrectly  and applying the wrong remedies.”
  –   Groucho Marx


“Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force,  which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury?  I answer:  self–defence is a part of the law of nature,  nor can it be denied the community,  even against the King himself.”
  –   John Locke,    Two Treatises of Government,     1689


“Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects.”
  –   Lev Tolstoy

 

“In matters of conscience,  the law of majority has no place.
“There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
“Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.”    
  –   Mahatma Gandhi


“Any law which violates the indefeasible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical;   it is not a law at all.”
  –   Maximilien Robespierre


“Who’s more foolish:  the fool,  or the fool who follows him?”
  –   Obi Wan Kenobi


“Be not afraid of any man,  no matter what his size;
  when danger threatens,  call on me and I will equalize.”
  –   Sam Colt,   Slogan of 19th century gun manufacturer


An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
“Justice will only exist where those not effected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.”    
  –   Plato


“An armed citizenry has the means to resist social-engineering efforts by experts.   The highly-credentialed elites and their press allies have a vested interest in disarming the citizenry,  not just (or even especially) the criminal element.   So don’t expect the lapdog big media to mount a crusade to salvage the Second Amendment once the Founder’s paper trail is brought to their attention. The republic and meaningful representative government are being swamped by technocrats and bureaucrats.  We can only hope that Big Brother is as bumbling as President Clinton and his crew.” 
  –   William Tonso,   Professor of Sociology,   University of Indiana



“Gun-control advocates tell us that removing guns from society makes us safer.  But that is simply an impossibility.  The fact is that firearm technology exists.  It cannot be uninvented.  As long as there is metalworking and welding capability,  it matters not what gun laws are imposed upon law-abiding people.  Those who wish to have guns,  and disregard the law,  will have guns.  Paradoxically,  gun control clears a path for violence and makes aggression more likely,  whether the aggressor is a terrorist or a government.  I don’t really believe ’gun-free’ zones make any difference.  If they did,  why would the worst shootings consistently happen in gun-free zones such as schools?  And while accidents do happen,  aggressive,  terroristic shootings like this are unheard of at gun and knife shows,   the antithesis of a gun-free zone.  It bears repeating that an armed society truly is a polite society. Even if you don’t like guns and don’t want to own them, you benefit from those who do.” 
  –   Ron Paul



  Top of Page

 




What does  “the right to bear arms”   really mean?

February 10, 1995

Dear Cecil:

A while ago I saw a tagline on alt.fan.cecil-adams from someone who was darn proud to be a member of the National Rifle Association. I asked if the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution still holds water today since the intent was to provide guns and protection against the other side of the puddle. This sparked a huge debate on the Net about the right to bear arms with, as usual, both sides claiming they are right. I figured it’s time to take it to the top and ask you to settle it all for us. Is it time to reevaluate the Second Amendment? If only so that those who argue can at least now argue an up-to-date amendment?
   —  Colin Joyce
Scranton,  Pennsylvania


Cecil replies:

You mean well, Colin, but you couldn’t write a proper question to save your soul. What you want to know is what the framers of the Bill of Rights intended the Second Amendment to mean, and whether that intention has any continuing legal relevance in view of the (supposedly) dramatically altered social landscape upon which we gaze today. The answer to the second question is easy: yes, else why have a Constitution? But the answer to the first is knottier.

Historically there have been two interpretations of the Second Amendment: the states-rights argument and the individual-rights argument. The states-rights view is that the Second Amendment merely guarantees the states the right to organize militias and citizens the right to join. (Militia here means any armed force raised for the common defense, not just the national guard.) The individual-rights view is that the Second Amendment means what it says: citizens have the right to keep and bear arms. The states-rights view currently prevails in federal case law, but the individual-rights view is probably closer to the framers’ intent. A reasonable restatement of the amendment might go something like this: “Since we as a nation have found it necessary to organize citizen militias to defend against tyranny and may be compelled to do so again, and since these militias are necessarily composed of volunteers supplying their own weapons, the right of individuals to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

OK, some gun-control advocates will concede, but that merely means infringed by the federal government. As an article in Mother Jones put it, “The legal precedents are clear:  Almost any state or local gun-control action is fine; the Second Amendment does not apply.  On the federal level, only laws interfering with state militias are prohibited.”

This is a crock. The legal precedents are far from clear. They’re also pathetically sparse, suggesting a reluctance on the part of the courts and the legal community generally to deal with the issue. (An enlightening article in the Yale Law Journal a few years ago was titled  “Embarrassing 2nd Amendment.” )
In almost every other aspect of law the Bill of Rights has been broadly construed to restrain the states as well as the federal government.  Few today would argue that states can abrogate the right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.  Yet many are prepared to let them gut the second, on the grounds that the framers didn’t foresee urban violence on the scale we face now.  Maybe they didn’t, but so what?  Civil-liberties advocates don’t accept urban violence as an excuse to curtail other constitutional rights, such as the protection against unlawful search and seizure.

Accepting the Second Amendment at face value doesn’t mean you can’t regulate gun ownership.  No one can argue plausibly that the authors of the Bill of Rights meant to make the authorities powerless to disarm criminals.  The framers likely would have objected to a blanket proscription of handguns, which they would have seen as legitimate weapons of self-defense, and arguably they would have opposed a ban on assault rifles, the AK-47 being to today’s oppressed what the long rifle was to those of 1776.  But local gun registration presents no obvious constitutional problems.  Criminals don’t register guns, of course; that’s the point.  Arrest a carful of mopes with guns and no permits and you have a good ipso facto case for throwing the book at them.  How much better to approach gun control on a reasonable basis rather than make a religious war out of it.


Taking another shot

Dear Cecil:

Why is it that you, as well as the NRA, have different copies of the United States Constitution from my own? The Second Amendment in my own library clearly starts out with the words “A well-regulated militia …”  What is well-regulated about a private citizen with a stash of guns in his basement? The opening words of this amendment seem to clearly indicate that the possession of guns was not meant to be beyond control.
— Ed Cohen, Chicago


Cecil replies:

Let’s put it this way: it wasn’t meant to be beyond regulation. The question is whether the power to regulate encompasses the power to ban. So far as guns are concerned, the courts have held that it does. You may say outlawing guns altogether wasn’t what you had in mind. But it’s certainly what some people have in mind, at least with respect to broad categories of firearms such as handguns, and a few would happily prohibit guns, period. Federal case law currently offers virtually no protection against such draconian measures.

Put yourself in a gun owner’s shoes. While the first half of the Second Amendment is no miracle of clarity, the second half is about as plain as it can be: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”  But gun-control advocates deny this sentence means what it seems perfectly evident it says, and the courts have backed them up. Gun owners’ recognition that one of their most cherished rights has been interpreted out of existence accounts for the apocalyptic tone in which their arguments are often framed.

But let’s get back to “well-regulated.”  A number of serious scholars have disputed the idea that this phrase necessarily means “subject to a lot of regulations.”  The historian Robert Shalhope, for example, makes a good case that for the framers it meant “duly constituted”  — that is, subject to civilian authority. The framers, in other words, didn’t propose to have armed gangs of self-appointed militiamen roaming the streets. Some take Shalhope’s argument a step further and say that “well-regulated”  applies only to the militia and doesn’t constrain an individual’s right to keep and bear arms in any way.

A more reasonable interpretation, however, is that if the government can regulate the militia it can regulate the individuals in it, provided it does so in a way that doesn’t make a shambles of their basic Second Amendment rights. For that reason I think even if the amendment had been interpreted more in line with the framers’ intent, the regulatory landscape wouldn’t necessarily look a lot different from the way it does now. But it’s silly to think the framers would guarantee a right in one half of the Second Amendment only to allow the government to unguarantee it in the other half.

However odd the notion strikes us today, the framers regarded private gun ownership as one of the pillars of their liberty. They’d recently defeated one of the most powerful nations in the world using an army that in the early going had consisted of amateur soldiers using their own weapons. They considered these citizen militias vastly preferable to standing armies, which in their experience had been instruments of oppression. They also had no professional police force upon which to depend for defense of their lives and property. It seemed natural to them that ordinary folk should have the right to own guns.

That was then, you may say, and this is now. In the 1990s it may well be foolish, as a matter of public policy, to allow law-abiding private citizens to own guns (although I’m not persuaded this is so). But it seems pretty clear that’s what the founders intended, and it eats at the heart of the constitutional process to simply wave that right away. No one doubts today that slavery is bad, but the constitution as written permitted it, and a duly ratified amendment was required to put the matter right. Likewise we should concede that the Second Amendment means what it seems to mean and that if we want to control guns to the point of prohibition, amending the amendment is the honest thing to do.

— Cecil Adams,   The Chicago Reader

 

 

Number of physicians in the U.S.

       700,000

Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year

        120,000

Accidental deaths per physician

                     0.171

Number of gun owners in the U.S.

 80,000,000

Number of accidental gun deaths per year

      (all age groups)

              1,500

Accidental deaths per gun owner

                       0.000,018,8

Therefore,  doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.
  –   Benton County NewsTribune,   11-17-1999



  Top of Page




 

 

The Hegelian Principle
Explains How the Powerful Got That Way

via Natural News

How did the powerful gain power over the rest of us? In a time when the power and freedom of the average American is being eroded at terrific speed, many of us wonder how this could be happening. What we may not realize it that the powerful have specific tools or principles to use to con the rest of us into surrendering our power to them. One of the most effective principles used in the last several years with great success is the Hegelian Principle.


The principle is simple, consisting of only three steps toward a preconceived goal. Once you are able to see how it works, you may want to analyze many of the events unfolding around you in terms of this principle. As the principle is often used today, it can be explained as:

Step One: Create a problem or conflict
Perceive a problem that exists and build it up out of proportion to its actual importance, or create a problem or conflict where none existed before.

Step Two: Publicize the problem and create opposition to it
Relentlessly place stories about this problem in the major media outlets. Report on it daily until it becomes a steady drumbeat and a truism for the public who then begin clamoring for a solution to this problem.

Step Three: Offer a solution
The best solutions are those that appeal to the emotions of the public,  and make them think something really  *good*  is being done  *for*  them, when in fact, something really  *bad*  is being done  *to*  them. This solution is one that the public never knew it needed until the conditioning of Step Two was successfully completed.



A simple example of the Hegelian Principle at work was the food industries’ conning of the public to throw out their butter and run to buy margarine. It goes like this:

Step One: Food industry is geared up to provide food for soldiers during WWII. When war ends, food industry needs to turn its capacity into something it can sell during peace time. It wants to use cheap ingredients to make a high margin product and decides on the manufacture of margarine, but needs to find a way to get the public to buy it. They decide on a scheme to turn the people against butter.

Step Two: Food companies spread propaganda convincing the populace that butter is deadly to their health. Appeal to fear.
Get doctors and nutritionists to help in the spreading of propaganda. Sponsor medical studies to “prove”  that butter is deadly. Convince housewives who had grown up healthy while eating butter that they are placing their families in jeopardy if they serve butter.

Step Three: Food companies rush in to save the American public from having to put butter on their tables. They present margarine. Women who want their families to love them stampede to buy margarine. Voila!


One of the classic and most sinister examples of the Hegelian Principle involves the Nazi’s rise to power that quickly followed the burning of the German Parliament building, the Reichstag, on the night of February 27, 1933.

Step One: Adolf Hitler, the new Chancellor of Germany, has no intention of abiding by the rules of democracy that installed him into the Chancellor position. He intends only to use those rules to legally establish himself as dictator as quickly as possible, and begin the Nazi revolution. But opposition lurks in his path.

The Nazis, led by Joseph Goebbels, devise a scheme to burn down the Reichstag,  the building where the elected officials of the republic meet to conduct the daily business of government, and blame it on the Communist opposition.

Step Two: Hitler acts as though he is enraged over the fire and speaks out that the German people have been too soft on the Communists, proclaiming that “every Communist official must be shot. All friends of the Communists must be locked up. And that goes for the Social Democrats and the Reichsbanner as well!”  Hitler directs the newspaper’s coverage of the fire. He and Goebbels put together papers full of lies about a Communist plot to violently seize power in Berlin. The newspaper proclaimed that only Hitler and the Nazis could prevent a Communist takeover.

Step Three: Hitler demands an emergency decree to overcome the crisis. There is little resistance, and the decree is signed “for the protection of the people and the State” . According to the decree, “Restrictions on the personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”  The Nazi dictatorship is established.

The Hegelian Principle was first described by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a 19th century German philosopher. The principle defined a method used to produce a oneness of mind on any given issue or thought. Since its conception, it has been used repeatedly and very successfully to gain power, status, money and control. The original terms for the three steps were Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis.

Under Hegel’s theory, one type of government or society (Thesis) would give rise to another that was the opposite of this type of government or society (Antithesis). This would result in conflict between the two types since they were opposites. After thesis and antithesis ideas battle each other for an extended time without either side winning, both sides become ready for change. This change (Synthesis) is then brought about by the creation of a third type of government or society.

These three steps are easily seen in the example of the Nazi rise to power, in which the Democratic government battled the Communist form of government. When the public was conditioned to ask for change, a new government system was installed.



The principle is often seen at work in the downhill slide of education toward the goal of ensuring children grow up unable to be intelligent participants in their democracy.

Step One - The federal government wants to assert control over the educational system, previously the providence of the states. As a way of doing this, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is created as a tool to gain power by doling out money to the school districts if they would accept the strings attached. Slowly but surely the pot of federal dollars that could be had is increased, while state support is undermined. Under ESEA mandates, academic programs are replaced by social programs.

Step Two - As academic programs are displaced, test scores drop, and juvenile problems increase as children become more and more illiterate, and parental and public outcry becomes louder. Teachers are made the fall guys for the illiteracy of their students. Attempts at fixing the problems involve the creation of ever more social programs, and fail to address the issue of children’s failure to learn. Parents are blamed as schools make inroads into controlling the parent/child relationship by pitting parents against their own children over school issues. Education reform is officially sanctioned as Bush announces himself the education president, proclaiming that “The people have been heard. We must do something about our ailing education system.”

Step Three - We are in step three now. Progressive socialist education is forced upon us. We are creating a generation of people incapable of thinking, reasoning, speaking and questioning. The individual will soon be extinct, having been stripped of his uniqueness and become no more than a commodity to be valued accordingly. With the loss of uniqueness goes the loss of independence and the ability to advocate for one’s self.
The new generation emerges as a willing participant in its own enslavement.
Reference:  Hornberger, Jacob   “How Hitler Became A Dictator,”    The Future of Freedom Foundation
  Source URL:   Learn more:   http://www.naturalnews.com/023727.html#ixzz2YqO2tXpo

 


Just another devious plan for the new world order to dumb down the population, ruin their health and keep them poor in order to keep them willing slaves to consumerism and provide the elite and the oligarchy with an easily controllable and expendable manufacturing and tax base.   Wake up, people!
Bizarrely,   Lewis

 

      Top of Page