Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Crazy about Guns

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Dick Hall-Sizemore
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by Dick Hall-Sizemore

It’s going to be a fun G.A. session. Here are some quotes from the rally yesterday at the Capitol in opposition to Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw’s bill to outlaw assault weapons:

Retired engineer from Fairfax County:  “And without semi-automatic rifles, there is no way, not a chance in the world, that the free citizens of Virginia can actually combat tyranny in this state.”  [Does he actually believe that a tyrant could/would be able to seize power in Virginia?]

Pastor and chairman of the Richmond City Republican Committee: Prayer—“Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, we thank you for God, family, and guns.” [The Jesus Christ I was taught about told us to turn the other cheek, not to go get a gun.  By the way, if folks really believe in the separation of church and state, why is a pastor the chairman of a local political party? I would bet he is not a Baptist pastor.]

Former Republican Congressional primary candidate: “We are Americans and our Constitution clearly secures the right to keep and bear arms. That God-given right that is now under assault.” [God gave us the right to have guns? In the Constitution? I thought God handed down the Ten Commandments (which does not say anything about guns), not the Constitution.]

Enough said.

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17 responses to “Crazy about Guns”

  1. sbostian Avatar
    sbostian

    If you use the US Constitution as a standard of comparison to the current government of the Commonwealth, one might reasonably argue that tyrants have already taken control.

    Separation of church and state is not mandated in the US Constitution, but in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church. His letter asserted that the First Amendment is intended to protect churches from the government, not the government from churches.

    Finally, if you read what the founding fathers had to say about the Second Amendment, they asserted that it derived from a God given right of self defense. The right to life is defined as inalienable in the Declaration of Independence. The right to life implies an inalienable right to defend one’s life. Hence, the right to bear arms.

    1. djrippert Avatar
      djrippert

      I wish this website had a “like” button,

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Yep – the gun folks are coming out and making sure everyone including the elected know how they feel.

    I never understood what “arms” mean in a modern world with automatic weapons and all kinds of other deadly weapons that are explicitly designed for the military (militia?) to kill hundreds at a time.

    Can anyone imagine what one of these mass killers would do if they could actually get their hands on the kinds of “arms” the military currently possesses?

    Is that what the gun rights folks really want?

    Some deranged fool can walk into a church and instead of killing 15 or 20, 200-300?

    Somehow, we have jumped the shark on this. Common sense is out the window. Do we REALLY WANT citizens to have access to arms that the Military current possesses as their 2nd amendment right?

    1. sbostian Avatar
      sbostian

      There is a method of addressing your concerns: Go through the constitutionally defined process of changing the constitution – specifically removing or modifying the 2nd Amendment. The issue at stake is not the lack of common sense on the part of gun owners, rather it is an issue of integrity on the part of gun grabbers – they lack it. Either we live in a constitutional republic or we don’t. If you don’t want to live in one change it with integrity or find a society that protects your interests in a way that doesn’t offend you. In the meantime, a relevant question which should be answered by legislators, judges or their enablers is this: What part of “shall not be infringed” do you have difficulty understanding?

      By the way, no mass shooter that I have ever studied has killed hundreds in a single shooting incident. Only tyrannical governments are able to get away with that.

  3. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    Private ownership of automatic weapons (i.e., machine guns) manufactured after 1986 is illegal. Private ownership of automatic weapons manufactured earlier is legal but is under heavy regulation. And the prices for these older weapons alone makes them unaffordable to most. So we really need to make sure that a speaker knows what he/she is talking about when they say “automatic weapons.” A semi-automatic rifle or pistol is not an automatic weapon.

    My Uncle Jim used a Model 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle in WWII as a Marine rifleman. If he had retained possession of it and passed it on when he died, any of my three cousins (his kids) could lawfully own it today if they followed the regulations.

    Second, SCOTUS in U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) held that the Second Amendment protects the private ownership of any weapon reasonably related to those used by a militia (military style weapons). The case involved a prohibition against the private ownership of a saw-off shotgun. Because there was no evidence before the Court that the Army used these weapons, the ban was upheld. However, factually, the Army used thousands of these short-barreled weapons in World War 1, commonly referred to as “trench guns.” But since the defendant did not participate in the argument at the Court due to lack of funds and was, indeed, found shot-to-death before the case was decided, there was no one to inform the Supreme Court that short-barrel shotguns were commonly used by the militia and military.

    I seriously doubt that more than a handful of state legislators know and understand the law.

    I’m not a gunowner but I think we need to be a nation of law and not emotion and simple-minded reasoning — something that permeates the MSM and too many election campaigns.

  4. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” Private ownership of automatic weapons (i.e., machine guns) manufactured after 1986 is illegal. Private ownership of automatic weapons manufactured earlier is legal but is under heavy regulation. ”

    but WHY? isn’t that a “restriction” of the right to bear arms?

    1. TooManyTaxes Avatar
      TooManyTaxes

      Good question, Larry. I’ve read a number of arguments and articles that make the case prohibitions on the ownership of modern automatic weapons (as opposed to regulation) violates the Second Amendment.

      My post wasn’t intended to argue what the law should or should not be but, rather, to attempt to summarize it.

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    If we were going to be truly not hypocritical about gun rights – we’d have no restrictions at all – citizens would be free to buy whatever “arms” the market offered.

    The fact that we actually do restrict and at the same time we argue that “restrictions” are un-Constitutional is a joke.

  6. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    As TMT’s comments illustrate, there are restrictions on the right to bear arms. Some Second Amendment advocates tend to say that any restriction violates the Constitution. However, the Supreme Court has generally held that no right is absolute; there can be reasonable restrictions. For example, although the First Amendment says there shall be no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”, and Justice Black contended that “no law” meant no law, the Supreme Court has never adopted that the rights of free speech and press are absolute. For example, it is against the law to possess or produce child pornography, to threaten the President, to libel or slander someone, etc. Therefore, the debate over any of the provisions of the Bill of Rights centers, not on the absolute right, but over what are reasonable restrictions.

    1. djrippert Avatar
      djrippert

      Hear, hear! The decision in the Heller case upheld gun ownership as an individual right. However, commentary from the justices, especially Scalia, left room for considerable regulation of firearms.

  7. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    The basic premise of the “right to bear arms” is some kind of supposed arms “parity” with the military so that citizens could go toe-to-toe in the advent of a rogue despotic govt.

    But that premise is a joke because the scope and scale of modern military weaponry is such that any such citizen militia would be
    fairly easily dispatched.

    In order to truly fullfill the “army parity” idea- we’d have weaponry in the hands of citizens similar to what we see in place like Iraq and Afghanistan – fully automatic weapons, 50 caliber machine guns, C4 explosives, bazookas and anti-tank weapons, grenade throwers, etc.

    And we could resolve the situation fairly quickly if the “rights” folks would demand “FULL 2nd amendment rights so that anyone could buy any weapon that the military currently has.

    What we have right now is already existing restrictions on arms… it’s the reality. And the argument is that – no matter how weaponry technology evolves that what we have right now – we are guaranteed to keep even if the govt develops laser weaponry that can wipe out someone with a gun in a nanosecond.

  8. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    I suspect legislators will be unable to define what to “ban” by function and will use some cosmetic definition that cannot be enforced or can be easily manufactured around. I’ve read where a lot of that happened when Bill Clinton signed an “assault weapons ban” in the 1990s.

    From a legal (and not a policy perspective), I’m extremely troubled by arguments from the left that a right derived from penumbras and emanations in the Constitution (abortion, stemming from the court-discovered right to privacy from the Griswold case) cannot be restricted at all but a right that is specifically covered by an amendment to the Constitution (the right to bear arms) can be restricted. This is the crappy analysis from our 4th-rate state attorney general. Sorry but I respect only good arguments grounded in statutes or cases. And most of my law professors were on the left but respected the law.

  9. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    No.. you can say that ONE analysis is crappy , maybe two or three but are you saying that ALL of them are and therefore we have no way to regulate at all?

    We can define what is too deadly for civilians to own – it’s not hard. We know the killing power of each. It does not take a rocket scientists to determine that a weapon that can fire 100 rounds in 3 seconds is not the same as one that take a minute or more.

    It’s not hard to say that a semi-auto weapon with a 10 round magazine is less deadly that a full-auto weapon with a 100 round magazine.

    A full auto weapon with a 100 round magazine in the hands of some of these wackadoodle mass killers would multiple the number of victims a hundred-fold.

    We are so “crappy” across the board – all analyzers that we are unable to come up with a standard?

    really?

    what are we REALLY SAYING? That the legal system is populated by a bunch of leftists and therefore we can’t have laws or regulations?

  10. V N Avatar
    V N

    [Does he actually believe that a tyrant could/would be able to seize power in Virginia?] We already have that. Some say that Trump is one.

    [The Jesus Christ I was taught about told us to turn the other cheek, not to go get a gun. By the way, if folks really believe in the separation of church and state, why is a pastor the chairman of a local political party? I would bet he is not a Baptist pastor.]
    Did they not teach about Armagedon? Har Meggido actually? About the warring between good and evil? There is no law that says a pastor can’t be head of a political party. Why should there be? Just because one is a janitor or engineer, they shouldn’t be able to act on their beliefs?

    [God gave us the right to have guns? In the Constitution? I thought God handed down the Ten Commandments (which does not say anything about guns), not the Constitution.] Derived.

  11. warrenhollowbooks Avatar
    warrenhollowbooks

    To me the whole duplicity and dishonesty of the Democrats gun-control position is represented clearly by this focus on long guns, or as Democrats try to label them, “assault rifles” or “assault weapons.”

    Every day on the news in Virginia we hear of people being murdered in urban areas in Central Virginia, Northern Virginia, and Hampton Roads. . . but almost entirely with hand guns.

    How many people have been killed in Virginia, in say the last five years, with any type of long barreled weapon?

  12. warrenhollowbooks Avatar
    warrenhollowbooks

    I doubt the veracity of people who are bent on taking away the weapons that are not being used to kill people, from the people who are not doing the killing, in the areas where people are not being killed . . .and they just happen to be overwhelmingly your political opponents.

  13. warrenhollowbooks Avatar
    warrenhollowbooks

    And need I dwell on the fact that those who are screaming loudest for “common sense gun laws”(as if there are no gun laws in the US extant) are the same ones who will accept NO regulation or restrictions on abortion whatsoever?

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