Finding Common Ground

"These three ideals – wanting to protect innocents from evil, valuing human life, and cherishing peace – are the same for those who are against guns and for those who are not against guns." - Destinee, of FateOfDestinee

I have a son-in-law who devotes himself to his family and to our LORD. I like to believe that I have and do so also. We concur, as Destinee said, with the three ideals, at least I am pretty sure he does and I know I do. I have never specifically asked, though, about his view of guns, since I am pretty sure we don't share the same views.

I may be wrong. He grew up in Idaho, which is certainly not an eastern bastion of disarmament frenzy like Mayor Bloomberg runs. They really do hunt in Idaho. I am quite sure he is familiar with firearms. Maybe I should ask instead of assuming.

Me, I grew up in Oklahoma. I had the Daisy Red Ryder Carbine (my brother had the pump), we got a Savage/Stevens 15-A for Christmas when I was 9, .22 short/long/long rifle, single shot. We later moved to Wyoming and a friend loaned us a Remington .270 to take with us for hunting. In college, I had a Beretta .25 automatic, a Norwegian 1911 in .45 ACP, a Colt revolver in .45 long Colt, and a Smith and Wesson Highway Patrolman in .357 magnum. After college I picked up a Springfield 1903 in .30-'06 to use hunting. Notice, though, that the Beretta is pretty much only designed and used for personal defense, despite what James Bond used to think, the Colt .45 was, well, a Colt .45, after all, the .45 ACP was designed to stop drug-crazed Moro tribesmen with one shot, the Springfield was the assault rifle of 1903, World War I and the start of World War II, and the .357, sorry Dirty Harry, is recognized by many people as being the best self-defense caliber to have around. [OK, you 1911 fans. A Federal 230-grain +P HST in .45 ACP has a muzzle velocity of 950 feet per second and an energy of 461 ft-lb. A Federal 158-grain tactical Hydra-Shok in .357 magnum has a velocity and energy of 1240 and 539.]

Completely stolen from the leadoff link, reproduced in case that page should go away

Ephesians 4:15-16 – 5 ThingsTo Consider In Controversy

Daily Devotional Bible Verse
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16 ESV)
Even amidst our Christian lives, arguments, disagreements, and tension-filled conflict will come, but when it does, here are five Biblical principles to consider before we ever open our lips:

1. Listen. Be silent in your mind as well as your mouth. “Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent” (Proverbs 17:27-28).
2. Be teachable. Are you in the wrong? If so, how can you respond in humility, grace, and repentance? If you genuinely desire to grow in Christ-likeness, then remember that God uses iron to sharpen iron, and frequently, there will be sparks (Proverbs 27:17).
3. Think. Take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). We are in a spiritual struggle against an enemy who seeks to divide us. Don’t let your thoughts grow vengeful, spiteful, or believe lies about others. Be disciplined in your thought life.
4. Seek unity. We are one body with many parts. If this is true (which today’s text says it is), that means each believer’s mission is the same. Think about it, is the eye’s mission different than the heart’s? In its function—what it does—yes. In its mission—why it does it—no. Remember, we are one, a unified whole. Seek unity between yourself and your brothers and sisters because we’re playing for the same team.
5. Model love over winning an argument. Always speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), because love seeks unity over division, and peace over strife (See especially 1 Corinthians 13:1-7). Sometimes, though, people are simply wrong, misled, or in sin. When this is the case, don’t shrink from the truth, but don’t use it as a weapon to wound, either. Love reconciles, pride dominates.

Our lives will not be free of controversy until Jesus returns. Until then, let’s remember his words, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Copyright © 2013 Daily Devotionals

Reproduced with respect but without specific permission

Instead of Gun Control, which is really People Control, let's have enforceable laws to eliminate violence and illegal gun use

Monday, April 8, 2013 at 6:23pm

I was watching the news tonight doing my normal seething at the media and the reports of the legislature over this "gun thing." It ISN'T guns. My guns are hanging in my shop and haven't committed any crimes or killed anyone. They don't run around in lowriders, street racers, junkers or Escalades harassing anyone or intimidating and scaring people. They do not randomly discharge through walls or windows.

In Des Moines there are a lot of people WITHOUT GUNS who commit crimes and kill people. They are not particularly linked, guns and crime; but, Barry Soetoro wants to take advantage of a good crisis and make political points out of the tragedy and the deaths of children about whom I do not believe he really gives much of a hoot (yes, I realize that is an incredibly strong statement. It's my opinion and I'm sticking to it).

So, Mr. Obama says "do the right thing for the families in Newtown."  First, shouldn't he be concerned about doing the right thing for the country, for we the people? As I recall, we're the government and he just executes our laws. He does not proclaim them. He does not propose them in Congress. He enforces them once they are passed. So to meet the needs of "we the people" and respect the families of Newtown, I would think that we would pass laws that ensure that violence cannot occur again.

Instead, he wants to pass laws that would do nothing more to stop the illegal use of weapons, would do nothing to provide defensive capabilities for the school, and would have made no difference if they had been in effect for the last 10 years. Actually, they have been. Senator Grassley commented last week that he really was not looking forward to this week, because we would be talking about laws that criminals would still ignore and law-abiding citizens don't need to follow.

It's the behavior, not the tools. Here's a few things that would make sense to me:
1. Life in prison for anyone who commits a felony using a firearm.
2. 30 years, with at least 10 before parole, for anyone who commits a misdemeanor using a firearm.
3. Life in prison for anyone who participates in either selling or buying a firearm in a straw transaction.
4. Life for selling interstate without a license.
5. Life for selling to anyone unqualified to own a firearm. In Iowa, you need a permit to acquire OR a permit to carry weapons - it's easy to ask to see that before selling a firearm to someone. Out of state you have to ship to a dealer, anyway.
6. Size of magazines (they are not clips) is pretty insignificant. The world's fastest REVOLVER shooter shoots six rounds, empties the brass, reloads six round, shoots them, makes all bullseyes and does so in less than 3 seconds.

7. Kind of rifle doesn't matter. A trained former marine using an obsolete and antique cheap Italian rifle with obsolete ammunition pulled off 3 shots in two seconds at 200 yards, including a head shot and brought the USA to a standstill. The Mannlicher Carcano does not use a magazine. Another nutcase occupied a university tower with a good hunting rifle and an assortment of miscellaneous firearms, killed 17 and injured 32 before being "subdued", into pieces, by two rounds of 00 buckshot from a 12-gauge shotgun. Again, his Remington 700 does not use a magazine.

That would be a good start. It does not infringe on rights to keep and bear arms, either, just identifies appropriate punishments for certain crimes involving arms.

Garbage Collection, Gangnam Style

I am back on Facebook, and even after starting with a stealth name (James Moore, not incredibly stealthy for those of you who already knew my mom's maiden name/my middle name) my beloved convinced me I should truly identify myself as Jim Riddle.

But,

I pledged not to go political on facebook. Now, I will occasionally post something that I think transcends political. Gun control is not in my perspective a political issue as much as it is a legal issue of fundamental right, but I will still control my Facebook postings on the matter. Some things are truly political but to me are common sense, but I will keep them off Facebook. And, that means that the really political things end up here.

Opening Shots:

Brought to you today from Town Hall, if you have not clicked in your own email:

NYC soda ruling just 'temporary setback'

and the law will reappear brought by the ghost of Elvis accompanied by Jimi Hendrix on guitar? Who is Bloomberg trying to kid? His greed for power is now sheerly lunatic as he continues to get away with grabbing rights. If I have the right to choose, that includes Big Gulps. And Super Big Gulps.

Additional: A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum; Emperor Bloomberg was smacked down by a judge that saw a serious problem with separation of power with respect to the controversial large soda ban. The mayor who has taken the nanny state to a level rivaled only by President Obama wants to regulate what we eat, what we use to carry our food and other aspects of our lives that should be protected under that line about pursuit of happiness.In this new realm of redistribution of accountability, he figures Big Macs, Large Gulps, and handguns overpower human will and make us do evil things-he's here to protect us because he's a billionaire and must be smarter than the rest. Talk about executive privilege.

Do our elected officials really believe we are so beaten down that we will forget our rights?

The rule was so absurd it brought together an eclectic bunch to fight back. Action was brought by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (represents 200,00 Hispanic businesses), the Soft Drink and Brewery Workers Union, the Teamsters, the National Association of Theater Owners of New York State, the National Restaurant Association, and the New York Korean-American Grocers Association (representing 4,000 Korean-American grocery, deli and store owners in New York City).

The rest of Charles Payne's column compares Being a Man...Being a Jerk and is also worth reading

Medicare: Did You Really Pay For That?

No. I am sure, arithmetically, that I didn't. In high school, 1963-64, we debated Medicare as the national topic. It was a bad idea then, it's a bad idea now. But, after 50 years of getting used to it and not figuring out anything else to do, we are stuck with it. When life deals you lemons - hey, free lemons!

Speaks completely for itself. Remember, the number is 1.5 billion rounds. For the Social Security Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Park Service ...

If Obama doesn’t show any leadership on this matter it’s an opportunity for. Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, to summon Secretary Napolitano over for a little … national conversation. Madame Secretary? Buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and deploying armored personnel carriers runs contrary, in every way, to what “homeland security” really means. Discuss.

Kim Jong Un, revoked the Korean War armistice

Anyone remember the Korean "Police Action"? Some of us do. I was actually alive then but hardly remember anything about it, other than it was really not nice and was quite a bit uglier than "the big ones", WWI and WWII. Now you have a nation of desperate people led by a total lunatic (Dennis Rodman's buddy?). All bets are off.

'Killer dolphins' escape from handlers

NOT a joke. The finest trained dolphins in the navy armed and dangerous free on the high seas. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up, people!

Educational Rot

Like this is something we didn't know; but, it is still overwhelming to look at all of it altogether.


Have a great day, folks!

Sequestration

This is NOT a scary threatening cut of massive proportions in critical programs, people! It's a little reduction on some stuff that people do NOT have yet - not stealing money out of anyone's pockets, just limiting the amount that they might get from the government if all of the appropriating goes through.

 I hate to see this sequestration situation coming around. It is a no win situation for a lot of us. I'm fixed income (disability), and obviously I should like to have the government paying me more. Also, I should not want to be paying more taxes. It is a mutually exclusive thing - you wants more money you pays more taxes. But I want the sequestration to go into effect, because it's the only way we are going to quit spending huge amounts of money we don't have.

But - the administration is setting itself up to move into a role of socialist dictatorial control by dealing a death blow to the people and to the Congress. Not just to Republicans, or Tea Parties, or Democrats, or blivnaps or whatever. Don't forget: President Obama designed the sequester and where budget items will be cut. So what he is cutting does not make sense to most people and would really hurt everyone. SOOOOOO, if the Congress does not override sequestration by approving exactly what Obama wants, then the cuts come in. If Congress does pass what the president wants, then any good things will be credited to BO himself - Barry will see to that. If bad things happen, it will all be blamed on "the Republicans", "the Right", "the Radicals", "the Lugnuts", fill in your own noun. The Democrats will then play it for all it is worth to ensure that the Republicans get hammered in the 2014 elections, thereby ensuring his permanency in office. 

Politics stink!

And the sad part is: the money in the sequester is really insignificant. None of that gloom and doom stuff is gonna happen. Have you ever seen a general quit fighting because some politician somewhere didn't pass a certain budget line item? No, doesn't happen. Will schools close because their Federal support is minisculely (really, minisculely) diminished? Not a chance. It is all a manufactured crisis. The great Barry Soetoro himself once said "Never fail to take advantage of a good crisis." He has gone on to become expert at manufacturing good crises, building them out of pure cloth if necessary. 

We'll see over the weekend what happens. 

So, what DOES the Constitution mean about guns?

I saw this news article in one of my venerable lugnut feeds this morning: New York will prosecute veteran with high-capacity magazines. The first thing I thought was at least they didn't call them clips.

Magazine:                                                       Clips:


















You can obviously tell how felonious this perpetrator is for possessing 5 of these things that he routinely carried every day when he was in Afghanistan. How dastardly!

Contrary to what you read, the Second Amendment reads:


As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

"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."

 Notice the commas. The version recorded in the records of the Executive Branch, which is the true and correct version, is two clauses instead of the four clauses that are shown many times and truly do show in the one hand-scribed version of the Bill of Rights in the National Archives. Remember - that is a copy of the original text and the law is what was passed by the states.

Notice also: The Second Amendment does not grant a right. The amendment provides that a pre-existing right shall not be infringed. In that it is not granting a right, the Bill of Rights recognizes the validity of the inalienable right to keep and bear arms. Since the right is not granted by the government but pre-existed the government, the government may not alter something that is not its to alter.

At least that's the way my little pea brain breaks down the logic. Being neither an attorney nor a politician I am not invited into the clubhouse to talk about these things though. Nor do any lobbyists pay me to vote one way or the other about this stuff, since I have no vote anywhere. Nonetheless, that's what I think these things say, that's the way I think things are.

Moving Along to More Law that Most People Never Heard of or Know to be Law

Of course, you recognize 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
No. 07–290. Argued March 18, 2008—Decided June 26, 2008

and, I'm sure the words are right on your lips from

130 S.Ct. 3020 (2010)
Otis McDONALD, et al., Petitioners,
v.
CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, et al.
No. 08-1521.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued March 2, 2010.
Decided June 28, 2010.

These two court decisions, both fairly recent if you will notice, clearly state what the meaning of the Second Amendment is. Surprise? Of course it is. The media will never just plain read simple statements from these; they always want to take what the media wants to say and wiggle around the words of the court to support their, probably totally wrong, allegations.

That being said, first a direct comment from DC v. Heller:

The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

 and, from McDonald v. Chicago:

Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense, and we struck down a District of Columbia law that banned the possession of handguns in the home. The city of Chicago (City) and the village of Oak Park, a Chicago suburb, have laws that are similar to the District of Columbia's, but Chicago and Oak
Park argue that their laws are constitutional because the Second Amendment has no application to the States. We have previously held that most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights apply with full force to both the Federal Government and the States. Applying the standard that is well established in our case law, we hold that the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States.

Now, I am not an attorney; and, I never played one on television or in the movies. But this language seems straightforward. Weapons in common usemay be possessed by an individual and used for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that right is fully applicable to the States. In a case where a veteran merely possesses items that are, indeed, commonly used accessories to weapons, and is not using them for any purpose, and they are in his home, I would offer that the State of New York has no jurisdiction to prosecute. Actually, if they show up to confiscate his magazines, I say he has the right to use his weapons to defend his home and property. This would be viewed dimly, and he would undoubtedly be plugged dead by law enforcement officers "doing their duty", but then I would say his estate should be able to sue the bejabbers out of the state in Federal court.

Like any of that would ever happen.

But, think about it ...

Absurdity to the nth degree

OK. What are they drinking in Washington? They need some purple Kool-Aid, I think to clear the benches and start again, but ...

News today: the Department of Homeland Security at the request of law-enforcement agencies has paid $2 million to make new training targets of a non-traditional type. Pregnant women, senior citizens, protective mothers, children in playgrounds. Yes, seriously, all of the above:

WHAT POSSIBLE KIND OF THREAT DO THESE PEOPLE PRESENT?

As far as I am concerned, they are just regular people standing their ground to protect themselves and their families. A "hostile young mother depicting a threat on a playground"? The guys that thought these up suffer from severe craniorectal inversion disorder!! Of course, with that 2 billion rounds of hollowpoint .40 caliber and 9mm ammunition that the DHS bought for training purposes, the desk clerks to whom those automatic pistols have been issued are going to need something to practice on. What better than these realistic targets of the great threat to our country: informed citizens protecting themselves from a government that has become destructive of the inalienable rights among which are quite obviously life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I guess they do not count any more under the current administration and their game rules. Obviously the Consitution and the law-making process are insignificant, since so many Executive Orders and recess actions are being taken and made.

Like I say - arm up so when they take you out you can at least take two with you.