Do Democrats Want to Take Our Guns? - Does a bear...

Once government knows exactly who has the guns, could confiscation be far behind?

from Pajamas Media
May 4, 2009
by AWR Hawkins

Few things in this life are more politically divisive than guns. Generally speaking, liberals hate them and conservatives love them. Yet both history and experience teach us that few things are as integral to freedom as guns. Therefore, when liberal politicians push for more gun control, freedom-loving Americans panic because they know that an assault on guns is an assault on freedom.

Our Founding Fathers were confident of the connection between guns and freedom, and they were convinced that the American people were freer than others because of the right to keep and bear arms. Said James Madison: “[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

At our nation’s birth, the Founding Fathers tried to institute a political framework that would neither tend toward mob rule (democracy) nor an overbearing central government (tyranny). They knew freedom resided somewhere between the two extremes. To prevent democracy they designated our nation a republic via a written Constitution that established indirect elections for the presidency and gave the citizens no role in electing senators, so as to preserve the rule of law instead of the rule of the majority. (Today’s direct election of senators was established by the 17th Amendment in 1913, under President Woodrow Wilson.) To prevent tyranny, the Founders established checks and balances between the various branches of government and recognized the people’s inalienable right to be armed. Alexander Hamilton surveyed the newly born nation and said: “The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”

The great orator Patrick Henry, who demanded to be given “liberty or … death,” concurred: “The great principle is that every man be armed.”

As long as the government is not tyrannical, the government need not fear the people’s arms. Thus Madison’s observation that the federal government at our nation’s founding was not “afraid to trust the people with arms.” But if the government were to ignore its constitutional limitations and run roughshod over the people’s liberty, our Founders expected the people to rise up and preserve freedom. Said Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.”

Did you catch that? No less a man than Thomas Jefferson described as “patriots” armed citizens who refuse to let go of their liberty, even at the cost of their lives.

During the 1990s, when the Clinton administration pushed for expanded gun control laws, various people warned: “Fear the government that fears your gun.” Law-abiding citizens understood that our Founders’ worldview had been completely flipped on its head, not by ubiquitous gun ownership but by a government that feared the idea of an armed citizenry.

With the election of Barack Obama, citizens are again confronted by an administration opposed to an armed citizenry, the tenets of our Founding Fathers, and thus to freedom itself. Although Obama has only been in office for three months, various gun registry schemes have already been promoted. And during an April 7 appearance on Good Morning America, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put in plainly: “We want [guns] registered.” Of course she assured those watching Good Morning America that Democrats “don’t want to take … guns away.”

We could ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with using registration to create a list of guns and gun owners to which our president has access?” But to ask that question is to answer it. Plus, here’s a better question: “Why weren’t our Founders intent on registering firearms and their owners?” The answer to this question is as profound as it is simple. They wanted “every man” to be armed, not just certain men.

In describing the dangers of gun registration, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said: “Ultimately registration will let the government know who owns guns and what guns they own. History [then] provides the outcome: confiscation. And a people disarmed is a people in danger.”

After Hitler and the Nazis registered all the guns in Germany, millions of Jews, Christians, and handicapped persons knew firsthand the “danger” of which LaPierre speaks. They were rounded up and starved to death, or used in inhumane medical experiments, or killed outright in the death camps.

But what could those Jews, Christians, and handicapped persons do? They couldn’t fight back, for they were without guns and thus without a means to ensure their own survival, much less their freedom.
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Does the Second Amendment give individuals the right to bear arms? Vote your conscience!

Please vote regarding your Second Amendment Rights.

Thanks to Ron for forwarding.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/quickquestion/2007/november/popup5895.htm

MUST READ! - The Gathering Storm Over Guns - Prepare to defend your second amendment rights

If you're not worried about losing your second amendment rights, you will be after you read how Obama as put into place all the people necessary to take away those rights. Read what they've not only said, but individually have tried to do. Imagine what they can accomplish together.

These people are already marching in locketep. They're poised and waiting, and when the time is right, they're going to go for it.
Rees

from Human Events
by Wayne LaPierre
05/01/2009

Barely 100 days into the new Obama-Biden administration, ominous storm clouds are already gathering over your most fundamental right as a free citizen: Your right to own a gun to protect yourself, your family and your freedom.

Betraying all their campaign promises to protect your right to keep and bear arms or your freedom to hunt, the Obama administration has put its chess pieces in place and set in motion its strategy to do just the opposite.

Throughout the West Wing, they’ve appointed a cabinet composed of some of the most experienced and politically effective gun grabbers Washington, D.C. has ever seen.

Meanwhile, powerful members of the U.S. Senate and House have admitted that gun bans remain a top objective, but only “when the time is right.” Which really means “when some awful tragedy conveniently captures national attention.”

Yes, Barack Obama had an extensive and extreme anti-gun voting record as an Illinois senator. Yes, he called for gun bans during the Democratic presidential primaries. But once he won his party’s nomination, Obama reversed that spin and spent millions showering key states with flyers promising voters that he would never try to take their guns. But after winning the presidency, those pro-freedom showers dried up overnight.

Pre-Election Promises Become Post-Election Perfidy

Barely 100 hours after winning the election, the Obama-Biden transition team posted an Internet web page outlining its ambitious anti-gun agenda.

Its legislative goals included permanently reinstating the Clinton gun bans, banning sale or transfer of firearms between private citizens (at gun shows and presumably anywhere else), and requiring that handguns be “childproofed” through nonexistent technology that, even if developed, would make them prohibitively expensive and far less reliable.

American voters immediately and rightfully cried foul. That’s when Obama and Biden -- who’d bragged, “I’m the guy who originally wrote the assault weapons ban” -- quickly deleted that web page from the Internet.

But they swiftly set about assembling an anti-gun all-star cabinet to achieve all that and more. Consider just a few of the gun-ban extremists who populate Obama’s inner circle.

Obama Cabinet Stacked with Anti-Gun Veterans

Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel worked as President Bill Clinton’s point man on gun control. When Clinton administratively outlawed imports of many firearms and accessories, Emanuel bragged, “We’re bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns.”

After leaving the Clinton White House, Emanuel went on to make gun bans his stock in trade as a congressman from the anti-gun mecca of Illinois. There, he co-sponsored a bill to extend and expand the Clinton gun ban and repeatedly voted to expose America’s firearms industry to bankrupting, politically motivated lawsuits.

Attorney General Eric Holder served as deputy attorney general under Clinton, where he tried to make you get a government-issued license to exercise your Second Amendment rights.

He also pushed mandatory waiting periods, “one-gun-a-month” rationing of your rights, mandatory trigger-lock regimes and bans on ammunition magazines.

As signer of a “friend of the court” brief defending the D.C. gun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court, Eric Holder believes that -- as his own Justice Department under Janet Reno asserted -- “the Second Amendment does not extend an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advocated gun bans long before she even assumed elective office. She helped organize the 2000 “Million Mom March,” and said of the protesters, “The moms have it right: we have to license and register all handguns.”

During her first run for the U.S. Senate, Clinton proposed that gun purchasers should be required to pass tests to obtain licenses; that all gun sales be recorded in a national registry; that new guns be logged in a “ballistic database”; that the Consumer Products Safety Commission regulate guns; and that gun purchasers be limited to one per month.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan was named “Man of the Year” by the Illinois gun-ban lobby last year, and upon his appointment in the White House, the Brady Campaign called him a “wonderful selection” for the job. Their praise is telling.

As the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan last year bused Chicago schoolchildren to the state capital -- at taxpayer expense -- to serve as props for lobbyists pushing gun control in the state. He urged schools to have students submit entries in the annual Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence “Essay, Poetry and Art Contest.”

Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein has a long record as a radical animal “rights” advocate. In a speech at Harvard, Sunstein said, “We ought to ban hunting, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”

Sunstein has also said that livestock and wild animals should have legal “rights” and be permitted to file lawsuit; that current uses of animals are akin to “human slavery”; and that meat eating should be eliminated.

An Anti-Gun Strategy in Search of Tragedy

Though the administration and Congress haven’t publicly put gun control legislation at the top of their agenda yet, they’ve admitted they’re just waiting for the right moment to pounce.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said so April 12 on “60 Minutes.”

When “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl asked Feinstein about the new gun bans, Feinstein allowed that she “wouldn’t bring it up now.”

But when pressed whether she would bring it up at all, Feinstein vowed, “I’m going to pick the time, and the place. No question about that.”

Despite Obama’s campaign promises and his stealthy approach to gun control since then, Feinstein made it clear on “60 Minutes” that she and her anti-gun allies are arrayed from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other.

In her interview, Leslie Stahl asked, “Has anybody -- the Democratic leadership in the Senate, or anybody from the Obama administration -- looked at you and said, ‘Back off’?”

“No,” Feinstein admitted. “Nobody said a word to me.”

Like all anti-gun strategists, they’re waiting for the perfect tragedy to exploit. As of press time, the drug-fueled violence devastating Mexico appears to be it.

At a February news conference, Attorney General Holder plainly blamed Americans’ Second Amendment rights for mayhem in Mexico:

“[T]here are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make,” Holder said, “and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed suit at a news conference in Mexico City, claiming, “We know very well that the drug traffickers are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States.”

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D–Ill.), the senate’s second most powerful Democrat, lamented that “an iron river of guns from the United States arms Mexican drug cartels to the teeth,” and he blamed American gun shows for the violence.

Make no mistake: New gun bans and restrictions are very much at the top of the agenda in the White House and Congress -- even if they don’t admit it yet.

If you want to keep your most fundamental rights as a free citizen, get ready. The onslaught is planned, prepared and unprecedented. And it’s coming.

Get informed and get involved. Join the NRA. Keep up with all the news on your rights through NRAnews.com on the Internet or Sirius satellite radio Patriot channel 144.

We must stand united and ready for this fight. Considering the players, their power, their promoters and their war chest, this will be the toughest and most definitive contest to preserve firearm freedoms in America for generations to come.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. LaPierre is Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Rifle Association of America.
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Guns bought this year could outfit 2 armies

WEAPONS OF CHOICE
Report cites surge that coincided with last year's election
Posted: April 30, 200910:55 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
from WorldNetDaily

Guns purchased legally in the United States this year could outfit two armies – and not just any armies, the armies of China and India, according to new government reports cited by a website for sport-shooting enthusiasts.

The federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System database statistics show there were more than 3.7 million background checks during the first three months of this year, compared to about 8 million annually not even a decade ago, according to the documentation assembled by Ammoland.com.

That's not individual guns, that's background checks, the organization pointed out. If a purchaser obtains two, three or even four guns at a time, often there is only one background check.

"You also bought 1,529,635,000 rounds of ammunition in just the month of December. Yeah, that is right, that is billion with a 'b.' This number takes no account of reloading or reloaded ammunition," the report said.

According to the Global Security website, the Indian army is estimated to have about 1 million soldiers. A news report from several years ago estimated the Chinese army at 1.7 million, although recent estimates put that at 2.25 million.

Here is a table documenting the federal gun background checks by month:

The report cites the quote from Admiral Isoruko Yamamota, a World War II leader for Japan, who said, "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

The report said the evaluation on firearms and ammunition purchases are "based on low end numbers."

"The numbers presented are only PART of the overall numbers of arms and ammunition that have been sold. The actual numbers are much higher."

That's because no private individual-to-individual sales would be included, and there's no assessment of how many guns are purchased through each background check.

"Law abiding citizens appear to be concerned about our 'right to own and bear arms,'" said one forum page participant.

The statistics show that U.S consumers sought 3.1 million gun background checks every three months last year, for an annual total of 12.7 million. The annual averages had been about 8.4 million for a number of recent years, but there was a surge starting last October, when check requests rose suddenly from 970,000 a month to nearly 1.2 million. Totals have remained at that higher level.

The answer is finally here to the real reason why guns and church must mix!

Another forum participant added, "It's logical that gun sales took sharp upturn. The concern is that the super majority of Democrats in Washington will make firearms either harder to obtain or outright contraband. … As for myself, I have all the weapons I could possibly need, so I've just been stocking up on ammo because I think ammo will be subject to new regulations and increased taxes under this president and Congress."

Steve Sanetti, the head of a shooting sports organization, said, "Americans concerned about their ability to purchase many types of home defense, hunting and target shooting firearms in the future are continuing to purchase these products in record numbers today."

WND reported that the usually liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms is "deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition" and long has been regarded as the "true palladium of liberty," so it therefore must be applied against state and local government weapon restrictions as well as federal gun limits.

But the decision appears to run counter to the general direction sought by the administration of President Obama three months into his tenure.

He's already advocated for a treaty that would require a federal license for hunters to reload their ammunition, has expressed a desire to ban "assault" weapons, has seen a plan to require handgun owners to submit to mental health evaluations and sparked a rush on ammunition purchases with his history of anti-gun positions.

Obama also supported the handgun ban in Washington, D.C., before it was tossed out last year by the Supreme Court.
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