James Shelley talks about Ibn Khaldun and history.
For Khaldun, the symptom of society’s decline is people’s incapacity to act for themselves. When people (presumably distracted by luxury to the point of complete apathy) fail to take concern for the affairs of their tribe (or city, state, or civilization), it is only a matter of time before the very civilization that fostered their luxurious prosperity implodes on itself.
Our civilization is not eternal. Nothing is.
Back in the days of my youth, I was a libertarian, and Libertarian. I believed in as little government as possible, leaving everyone free to run their lives as they wished. (I also, somewhat paradoxically, believed in the ruthless crushing of any threats to the government.) Free, anarchistic, and easy. And ruthless.
To put it in its simplest terms, through my teens and into my twenties I was an anarchistic fascist. (Though even then I favored demand-side economics. I remember when I was 16 and my parents describing candidate Reagan’s ideas for ‘Trickle Down” economics, and telling them, “But it doesn’t work that way.”) I believed in a small, but strong, central government that didn’t actually do very much, but which could be very aggressive in enforcing its laws internally and its will internationally. Sort of like a strong pre-modern monarchy. Personal liberty was fine–a requirement, in fact–for the people worthy of it, but most of the mass of people, I thought, were unworthy of it. Too stupid, too uneducated, too irresponsible. I, of course, was one of the worthy ones. What an elitist bastard I was. (I think this may be a phase many young men go through; certainly many have thought the same way I did.)
The Reagan Administration knocked some holes in the youthful certainty of my convictions. The entry of the religious right onto the political stage, and the ‘War on Drugs,’ gave me concerns about civil liberties, but mostly pushed me in the direction of wanting a smaller government. Thus began my Libertarian years.
I was pretty strongly on-board with the whole Libertarian agenda; the smallest and weakest government possible. Deliver the mail, defend the borders, and leave everything else alone. And maybe not even bother with delivering the mail.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Libertarian Vice-Presidential candidate Nancy Lord appeared on the Tonight Show. Johnny Carson asked her about Ross Perot, who was making his first Presidential run at the time. Lord said something like, “Oh, well you know, he’s the sort of person who would make the trains run on time.” And laughed at her own joke, while Carson and the entire studio audience (and almost everyone watching at home, I’m sure) sat in silent bafflement.
She was comparing Perot to Mussolini, you see, calling him a Fascist, but no one got the joke. In retrospect, years later, I would see that moment as summing up everything that is wrong with the Libertarian Party.
At the time, though, it was just an amusing incident that made me feel superior to the unwashed masses because I got the joke.
As the ’90s went on, I grew dissillusioned with the Libertarian Party’s inability to speak to any meaningful number of voters, and general irrelevance, and began to split my support, voting Democratic in some races and Republican in others. Gun control played a large part in my putting my negligible weight behind Bush the Younger for Governor and then President in 2000.
That was a tactical shift, though, not a philosophical one. I still identified as a libertarian, just not a Capital-L Libertarian. My ideal was still a small, weak government, with little or no power internally, but great power internationally. My method amounted to opposition to whichever party was in power at the moment (on the theory that the party out of power couldn’t do me any harm, and the party in power wouldn’t do me any good).
Then the Bush Administration showed me what that really meant.
With control of both the White House and Congress, the Republicans went wild. They passed the law enforcement industry’s Christmas wish list in the guise of an anti-terrorism law package, started a couple of wars, and gave the corporations a free hand in the economy.
The predictable result was a total disaster. The financial industry looted the US economy, then when the country’s economic destruction threatened them, they asked the taxpayers to cover their bets. The Bush Administration obliged. It was a defining moment in the evolution of my political philosophy. I realized that all the things I’d worried about the government doing–taking our freedoms, spying on us, taking our money–corporations could do as well. And they were.
(Current debates over free speech point this up. The US Government is bound by the Constitution to not restrict our free speech. Corporations are under no such obligation, and Internet companies regularly censor what appears on their sites or services.)
That realization changed my view of government. It went from a threatening necessary evil that should be kept as powerless as possible to being the only possible counterweight to the immense power of huge corporations.
Hundreds of years ago, the typical sort of power struggle that you would see in many countries was between the central government and the powerful noble families. Most of the people–the tiny middle class and the huge mass of poor people–were just pawns, or less, in this game. In the early and middle Byzantine Empire, for example, power was divided between the central government (run by an entrenched bureaucracy), the Church (supported by moral authority and urban mobs), and the rural nobility (supported by the wealth of their vast estates and the army, for which they provided the leadership).
In the modern United States, we only have two bases of power: The State, and the corporations, particularly the banks. The people, the voters who we like to pretend are in charge, line up behind one or the other of these two and do not really form a power base of their own. Our two political parties are aligned on this structure; a corporate party, that seeks to weaken the government; and a government party that seeks to weaken the corporations.
(Yes, this is an oversimplification; there are many nuances I’m glossing over. But I believe the generalization is broadly accurate.)
Put this way, it is clear to me why I do not strongly support either political party, but swing back and forth between them. Neither party is for me, so why would I be for them? I believe in the greatest liberty for the greatest number of people, but neither political party cares about such a thing. They only want to strengthen their power base.
Thus the evolution of my view on the role of government. I still distrust its power, but a central government does perform functions that no other social institution is capable of. Most importantly, in many different ways, it is the only counterweight to the corporations that would otherwise strip-mine both the economy and the environment, leaving everyone but the executive class poor and sick while they remain safe and comfortable in their gated and walled enclaves.
The key is balance between the power bases. If either one becomes too strong, things go badly for the common people. There are more examples of government excesses in recent history, but private enterprise has had its time in the sun as well, from the Roman publicani to the British East India Company and other colonial entrepreneurs, to the corrupt America of the Gilded Age.
Ideally I would like to see the people have some say in how the country is run, but that’s not how our system was set up. This country was founded as an oligarchy, and an oligarchy it has remained. And that is why today, in these United States, a philosophy of encouraging the most liberty possible, for the largest number of people possible, requires a strong central government. Not too strong, but strong enough to stay locked in its struggle with the great corporations, a struggle that we must hope never ends in victory for one side or the other. Because the one that falls will, in falling, crush the people beneath it.
German gun control laws in the pre-WWII period respected the rights of sportsmen and hunters, but took strong action to control and confiscate any weapons that might have a military use. Special permits and authorization were required to buy and firearms and ammunition, and only those with a ‘legitimate sporting purpose’ were allowed. Police, and members of the government, of course, were exempted.
The purpose and goal of the law at hand are to get firearms that have done so much damage from the hands of unauthorized persons and to do away with the instability and ambiguity of the law that previously existed in this area. The difficult task was to find the appropriate limits between this necessity of the state on the one hand and the important interests of the weapons industry that was employing a large number of workers and had been heavily damaged through the peace treaty, the interests of the legal sporting industry, and the personal freedom of the individual.
We all know how that ended up. It’s a good thing nothing like that could ever happen here.
Bruce Krafft runs the numbers and busts a few myths. A whole lot of interesting studies and statistics to bust all the myths about more guns equaling more crime, and the US having a higher rate of violent crime than any civilized country.
K&M do a further drill-down on demographic, historical and geographic which is far too detailed for me to go into here but their conclusions are unsurprising (at least to us “gun nuts”): There is absolutely no positive correlation between firearm availability and violent crime, murder and suicide.
In a sense, this is good information to disseminate. As many people as possible being armed with the actual facts is a good thing.
In another sense, though, it doesn’t matter. The people pushing for more ‘gun control’ legislation know perfectly well that those laws won’t actually reduce crime, or save lives. What it’s really all about is unilateral civilian disarmament.
Here’s something else to think about, while you contemplate government action intended to disarm the civilian non-police population irrespective of any impact such disarmament would have on crime. There are now almost 800,000 police in the US, a number that seems to be exceeded only by Russia, India, and China. These police are increasingly armed with military weapons, up to and including armored vehicles.
(Notice that we don’t even talk about police as ‘civilians’ anymore? There’s an unspoken agreement that our police are a paramilitary force, not quite part of either the population at large or the official armed forces.)
As a paramilitary force, our police would be the third largest in the world. As an army, it would be the sixth largest, between North Korea and Israel.
But we are supposed to believe that this massive police force, with its assault rifles and body armor, its drones and its light armored vehicles is hopelessly outgunned because some citizen can carry 11 bullets in his pistol.
Riiiight.
Security guards assault someone for taking pictures of railroad tracks.
This goes on all the time. Police and security guards pretend that there is a law against public photography and harass or arrest photographers. Isn’t security a wonderful thing? As long as we don’t ask who it is that’s being secured from what.
Army veteran Nathan Haddad has been arrested in upstate New York for having some 30-round magazines. The charge is ‘criminal possession of a weapon’ which I find very interesting, considering that there was no actual weapon involved. (A magazine without a gun is no more dangerous than a picture of a gun.)
What is the benefit to society of turning thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of previously law-abiding and productive citizens into criminals? I’m reminded of when marijuana was outlawed, turning a bunch of innocent potheads who weren’t hurting anyone into instant felons. How has that worked out?
Bruce Schneier is beating the risk analysis drum again this time with some help from Famous Author Jared Diamond
Diamond:
Consider: If you’re a New Guinean living in the forest, and if you adopt the bad habit of sleeping under dead trees whose odds of falling on you that particular night are only 1 in 1,000, you’ll be dead within a few years. In fact, my wife was nearly killed by a falling tree last year, and I’ve survived numerous nearly fatal situations in New Guinea.
I now think of New Guineans’ hypervigilant attitude toward repeated low risks as “constructive paranoia”: a seeming paranoia that actually makes good sense. Now that I’ve adopted that attitude, it exasperates many of my American and European friends. But three of them who practice constructive paranoia themselves — a pilot of small planes, a river-raft guide and a London bobby who patrols the streets unarmed — learned the attitude, as I did, by witnessing the deaths of careless people.
Traditional New Guineans have to think clearly about dangers because they have no doctors, police officers or 911 dispatchers to bail them out. In contrast, Americans’ thinking about dangers is confused. We obsess about the wrong things, and we fail to watch for real dangers.
Schneier:
While it’s universally true that humans exaggerate rare and spectacular risks and downplay mundane and common risks, we in developed countries do it more. The reason, I think, is how fears propagate. If someone in New Guinea gets eaten by a tiger — do they even have tigers in New Guinea? — then those who know the victim or hear about it learn to fear tiger attacks. If it happens in the U.S., it’s the lead story on every news program, and the entire country fears tigers. Technology magnifies rare risks. Think of plane crashes versus car crashes. Think of school shooters versus home accidents. Think of 9/11 versus everything else.
My own example is that someone is much, much more likely to be killed in a traffic accident on the way too or from school than murdered at school–about 1,000 times more likely. But the thousands of kids killed in traffic accidents every year don’t get huge amounts of nationwide media attention. Our instinct is to evaluate risk based on what we see, not on the underlying data.
That’s why we have brains; to dig into the real data, get the facts, and make intelligent decisions based on facts and rational analysis, not fear and panic.
It seems like “I’m a gun owner, but…” is the new “Some of my best friends are Jewish/homosexual/black….”
It always translates to, “I don’t own one of those, therefore no reasonable person would want to, therefore they can and should be banned.”
Everyone is okay with banning things that other people own. No one is okay with banning anything they themselves own.
It’s amazing how the line of what is moral and what isn’t always seems to fall right on the “I own that/I don’t own that” line. Remarkable coincidence.
The Special Forces are mostly talking pretty good sense here. Their letter is reprinted below, in accordance with their desire that it be widely disseminated.
Protecting the Second Amendment – Why all Americans Should Be Concerned
We are current or former Army Reserve, National Guard, and active duty US Army Special Forces soldiers (Green Berets). We have all taken an oath to “…support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.…” The Constitution of the United States is without a doubt the single greatest document in the history of mankind, codifying the fundamental principle of governmental power and authority being derived from and granted through the consent of the governed . . .
Our Constitution established a system of governance that preserves, protects, and holds sacrosanct the individual rights and primacy of the governed as well as providing for the explicit protection of the governed from governmental tyranny and/or oppression. We have witnessed the insidious and iniquitous effects of tyranny and oppression on people all over the world. We and our forebears have embodied and personified our organizational motto, De Oppresso Liber [To Free the Oppressed], for more than a half century as we have fought, shed blood, and died in the pursuit of freedom for the oppressed.
Like you, we are also loving and caring fathers and grandfathers. Like you, we have been stunned, horrified, and angered by the tragedies of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Fort Hood, and Sandy Hook; and like you, we are searching for solutions to the problem of gun-related crimes in our society. Many of us are educators in our second careers and have a special interest to find a solution to this problem. However, unlike much of the current vox populi reactions to this tragedy, we offer a different perspective.
First, we need to set the record straight on a few things. The current debate is over so-called “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines. The terms “assault weapon” and “assault rifle” are often confused. According to Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joseph E. Olson, writing in the Stanford Law and Policy Review, “Prior to 1989, the term ‘assault weapon’ did not exist in the lexicon of firearms. It is a political term [underline added for emphasis], developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of assault rifles.”
The M4A1 carbine is a U.S. military service rifle – it is an assault rifle. The AR-15 is not an assault rifle. The “AR” in its name does not stand for “Assault Rifle” – it is the designation from the first two letters of the manufacturer’s name – ArmaLite Corporation. The AR-15 is designed so that it cosmetically looks like the M4A1 carbine assault rifle, but it is impossible to configure the AR-15 to be a fully automatic assault rifle. It is a single shot semi-automatic rifle that can fire between 45 and 60 rounds per minute depending on the skill of the operator. The M4A1 can fire up to 950 rounds per minute. In 1986, the federal government banned the import or manufacture of new fully automatic firearms for sale to civilians. Therefore, the sale of assault rifles are already banned or heavily restricted!
The second part of the current debate is over “high capacity magazines” capable of holding more than 10 rounds in the magazine. As experts in military weapons of all types, it is our considered opinion that reducing magazine capacity from 30 rounds to 10 rounds will only require an additional 6 -8 seconds to change two empty 10 round magazines with full magazines. Would an increase of 6 –8 seconds make any real difference to the outcome in a mass shooting incident? In our opinion it would not. Outlawing such “high capacity magazines” would, however, outlaw a class of firearms that are “in common use”. As such this would be in contravention to the opinion expressed by the U.S. Supreme Court recent decisions.
Moreover, when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban became law in 1994, manufacturers began retooling to produce firearms and magazines that were compliant. One of those ban-compliant firearms was the Hi-Point 995, which was sold with ten-round magazines. In 1999, five years into the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, the Columbine High School massacre occurred. One of the perpetrators, Eric Harris, was armed with a Hi-Point 995. Undeterred by the ten-round capacity of his magazines, Harris simply brought more of them: thirteen magazines would be found in the massacre’s aftermath. Harris fired 96 rounds before killing himself.
Now that we have those facts straight, in our opinion, it is too easy to conclude that the problem is guns and that the solution to the problem is more and stricter gun control laws. For politicians, it is politically expedient to take that position and pass more gun control laws and then claim to constituents that they have done the right thing in the interest of protecting our children. Who can argue with that? Of course we all want to find a solution. But, is the problem really guns? Would increasing gun regulation solve the problem? Did we outlaw cars to combat drunk driving?
What can we learn from experiences with this issue elsewhere? We cite the experience in Great Britain. Despite the absence of a “gun culture”, Great Britain, with one-fifth the population of the U.S., has experienced mass shootings that are eerily similar to those we have experienced in recent years. In 1987 a lone gunman killed 18 people in Hungerford. What followed was the Firearms Act of 1988 making registration mandatory and banning semi-automatic guns and pump-action shotguns. Despite this ban, on March 13, 1996 a disturbed 43-year old former scout leader, Thomas Hamilton, murdered 16 school children aged five and six and a teacher at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland.
Within a year and a half the Firearms Act was amended to ban all private ownership of hand guns. After both shootings there were amnesty periods resulting in the surrender of thousands of firearms and ammunition. Despite having the toughest gun control laws in the world, gun related crimes increased in 2003 by 35% over the previous year with firearms used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the preceding 12 months. Gun related homicides were up 32% over the same period. Overall, gun related crime had increased 65% since the Dunblane massacre and implementation of the toughest gun control laws in the developed world. In contrast, in 2009 (5 years after the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired) total firearm related homicides in the U.S. declined by 9% from the 2005 high (Source: “FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Master File, Table 310, Murder Victims – Circumstances and Weapons Used or Cause of Death: 2000-2009”).
Are there unintended consequences to stricter gun control laws and the politically expedient path that we have started down?
In a recent op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brett Joshpe stated that “Gun advocates will be hard-pressed to explain why the average American citizen needs an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine other than for recreational purposes.”We agree with Kevin D. Williamson (National Review Online, December 28, 2012): “The problem with this argument is that there is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment right that excludes military-style weapons, because military-style weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear.”
“The purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to oppose enemies foreign and domestic, a guarantee against disorder and tyranny. Consider the words of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story”: ‘The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defense of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers.
It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.’
The Second Amendment has been ruled to specifically extend to firearms “in common use” by the military by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in U.S. v Miller (1939). In Printz v U.S. (1997) Justice Thomas wrote: “In Miller we determined that the Second Amendment did not guarantee a citizen’s right to possess a sawed-off shot gun because that weapon had not been shown to be “ordinary military equipment” that could “could contribute to the common defense”.
A citizen’s right to keep and bear arms for personal defense unconnected with service in a militia has been reaffirmed in the U.S. Supreme Court decision (District of Columbia, et al. v Heller, 2008). The Court Justice Scalia wrote in the majority opinion: “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.“. Justice Scalia went on to define a militia as “… comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense ….”
“The Anti-Federalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.” he explained.
On September 13, 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban went into effect. A Washington Post editorial published two days later was candid about the ban’s real purpose:“[N]o one should have any illusions about what was accomplished [by the ban]. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.”
In a challenge to the authority of the Federal government to require State and Local Law Enforcement to enforce Federal Law (Printz v United States) the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision in 1997. For the majority opinion Justice Scalia wrote: “…. this Court never has sanctioned explicitly a federal command to the States to promulgate and enforce laws and regulations When we were at last confronted squarely with a federal statute that unambiguously required the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program, our decision should have come as no surprise….. It is an essential attribute of the States’ retained sovereignty that they remain independent and autonomous within their proper sphere of authority.”
So why should non-gun owners, a majority of Americans, care about maintaining the 2nd Amendment right for citizens to bear arms of any kind?
The answer is “The Battle of Athens, TN”. The Cantrell family had controlled the economy and politics of McMinn County, Tennessee since the 1930s. Paul Cantrell had been Sheriff from 1936 -1940 and in 1942 was elected to the State Senate. His chief deputy, Paul Mansfield, was subsequently elected to two terms as Sheriff. In 1946 returning WWII veterans put up a popular candidate for Sheriff. On August 1 Sheriff Mansfield and 200 “deputies” stormed the post office polling place to take control of the ballot boxes wounding an objecting observer in the process.
The veterans bearing military style weapons, laid siege to the Sheriff’s office demanding return of the ballot boxes for public counting of the votes as prescribed in Tennessee law. After exchange of gun fire and blowing open the locked doors, the veterans secured the ballot boxes thereby protecting the integrity of the election. And this is precisely why all Americans should be concerned about protecting all of our right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment!
Throughout history, disarming the populace has always preceded tyrants’ accession of power. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all disarmed their citizens prior to installing their murderous regimes. At the beginning of our own nation’s revolution, one of the first moves made by the British government was an attempt to disarm our citizens. When our Founding Fathers ensured that the 2nd Amendment was made a part of our Constitution, they were not just wasting ink. They were acting to ensure our present security was never forcibly endangered by tyrants, foreign or domestic.
If there is a staggering legal precedent to protect our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms and if stricter gun control laws are not likely to reduce gun related crime, why are we having this debate? Other than making us and our elected representatives feel better because we think that we are doing something to protect our children, these actions will have no effect and will only provide us with a false sense of security.
So, what do we believe will be effective? First, it is important that we recognize that this is not a gun control problem; it is a complex sociological problem. No single course of action will solve the problem. Therefore, it is our recommendation that a series of diverse steps be undertaken, the implementation of which will require patience and diligence to realize an effect. These are as follows:
1. First and foremost we support our Second Amendment right in that “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”.
2. We support State and Local School Boards in their efforts to establish security protocols in whatever manner and form that they deem necessary and adequate. One of the great strengths of our Republic is that State and Local governments can be creative in solving problems. Things that work can be shared. Our point is that no one knows what will work and there is no one single solution, so let’s allow the State and Local governments with the input of the citizens to make the decisions. Most recently the Cleburne Independent School District will become the first district in North Texas to consider allowing some teachers to carry concealed guns. We do not opine as to the appropriateness of this decision, but
we do support their right to make this decision for themselves.3. We recommend that Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) laws be passed in every State. AOT is formerly known as Involuntary Outpatient Commitment (IOC) and allows the courts to order certain individuals with mental disorders to comply with treatment while living in the community. In each of the mass shooting incidents the perpetrator was mentally unstable. We also believe that people who have been adjudicated as incompetent should be simultaneously examined to determine whether they should be allowed the right to retain/purchase firearms.
4. We support the return of firearm safety programs to schools along the lines of the successful “Eddie the Eagle” program, which can be taught in schools by Peace Officers or other trained professionals.
5. Recent social psychology research clearly indicates that there is a direct relationship between gratuitously violent movies/video games and desensitization to real violence and increased aggressive behavior particularly in children and young adults (See Nicholas L. Carnagey, et al. 2007. “The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence” and the references therein. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43:489-496). Therefore, we strongly recommend that gratuitous violence in movies and video games be discouraged. War and war-like behavior should not be glorified. Hollywood and video game producers are exploiting something they know nothing about. General Sherman famously said “War is Hell!” Leave war to the Professionals. War is not a game and should not be “sold” as entertainment to our children.
6. We support repeal of the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. This may sound counter-intuitive, but it obviously isn’t working. It is our opinion that “Gun-Free Zones” anywhere are too tempting of an environment for the mentally disturbed individual to inflict their brand of horror with little fear of interference. While governmental and non-governmental organizations, businesses, and individuals should be free to implement a Gun-Free Zone if they so choose, they should also assume Tort liability for that decision.
7. We believe that border states should take responsibility for implementation of border control laws to prevent illegal shipments of firearms and drugs. Drugs have been illegal in this country for a long, long time yet the Federal Government manages to seize only an estimated 10% of this contraband at our borders. Given this dismal performance record that is misguided and inept (“Fast and Furious”), we believe that border States will be far more competent at this mission.
8. This is our country, these are our rights. We believe that it is time that we take personal responsibility for our choices and actions rather than abdicate that responsibility to someone else under the illusion that we have done something that will make us all safer. We have a responsibility to stand by our principles and act in accordance with them. Our children are watching and they will follow the example we set.
The undersigned Quiet Professionals hereby humbly stand ever present, ever ready, and ever vigilant.
1100 Green Berets Signed this Letter
We have a list of all their names and unlike any MSM outlets we can confirm that over 1100 Green Berets did sign. The list includes Special Forces Major Generals & Special Forces Command Sergeants Major down to the lowest ranking “Green Beret”.The letter stands for itself.
Read it and send it everywhere.Team Sergeant
A law from 13th century England:
“These are the articles which our lord the King commands to be kept in his City of London for the preservation of his peace. Firstly, that whereas murders, robberies, and homicides have in times past been committed in the City by night and day, it is forbidden that any one walk the streets after curfew tolled at St. Martin le Grand with sword, buckler, or other arm unless he be a great lord, or other respectable person of note, or their acknowledged retainer, bearing a light; and if any be found doing the contrary they are to be committed to the Tun, and the next day brought before the Warden or Mayor and Aldermen, and punished accordingly.”
A proposed law from 21st century America (emphasis added):
“Mrs. Feinstein’s measure would exempt more than 2,200 types of hunting and sporting rifles; guns manually operated by bolt, pump, lever or slide action; and weapons used by government officials, law enforcement and retired law enforcement personnel.”
(I may update the quote when the full text of Senate Bill 150 becomes available.)
In Feudal Europe, different laws applied to nobles and commoners, and many jobs and government positions were only available to the nobility. Among other things, as noted above, commoners were much more restricted in what weapons they could carry. That helped to ensure that those on top, stayed on top.
One of the fundamental concepts of the American Revolution and the founding of the United States is that “that all men are created equal.” That is, that there should be no legal distinction between nobility and commoner, that all men are equal before the law and have equality of opportunity. You can’t be barred from a certain job, or subjected to different laws, just because of your parents’ social class. This is the concept that made the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century such incredibly radical events, that terrified the established order. Six or seven million people died in Europe in the effort to stamp out the idea of ‘liberty, equality, and brotherhood.’
Increasingly, our elected officials exempt themselves from the laws that the rest of us must follow. Insider trading, OSHA, financial accountability, the Freedom of Information Act, subpoenas, whistleblower protection, and so on. Now they’re proposing a law that would massively restrict the weapons that commoners can own, but exempt the ruling class.
At least we can stop pretending now about that whole, “that all men are created equal” stuff and just admit that we’re the commoners, they’re the noble ruling class. How bad could it be?
