More Bible Study Silliness

A few months ago, I addressed the cases of Bible Studies under fire, including that of Michael Salman, a pastor in Arizona who was put in jail for, according to him, holding Bible studies.  However, as time went on, we found out that the real reason this convicted felon was jailed was because, like a convicted felon, he flouted the zoning rules and broke laws with wild abandon.  Now we’re finding out that Salman broke more laws and is up for more felony jail time for Medicaid Fraud.

Now comes word that another family, this time in Florida, is being fined for their Bible Study.  This case seems a little different at first glance.  Shane and Marlen Roessiger have been holding a Bible Study on Friday nights at their home with 10 participants, posted a small sign outside their home offering a phone number for prayer, and now have been issued fines of $250 per day for their zoning violations.  Obviously, it’s a case of the eeeeeeevil government again, right?

Well…  hold up, kids.

1.  The “victim” in this case is not a random person.  His name is one Shane W. Roessiger and his wife Marlene (I’ve seen it spelled differently), and he has a history of clashes with the law over religious issues.  That’s not to say that the law is always right, but when you have a history, it gives more credit to those who say you are currently in violation of the law.

2.  The neighborhood he lives in is a crowded, dense neighborhood.  Even adding 5-6 cars for 10-12 people could cause major traffic headaches for people driving on the streets, especially on a regular basis on a busy Friday evening.

3.  Take a look at this picture of his home from Google Street View.  See the big honking cross he has in his front yard?  Yeah, well…   that’s not the problem.  The problem is that he’s posted a small sign in his front yard that advertises a dial-a-prayer phone number.  The problem is that while the city ordinances are OK with real estate and political signs, any and all other signs are verboten.  So you can’t even post a “puppies for sale” sign in your yard, by law.

So…  what’s happened here?  Well here’s what I’m seeing:

• A dedicated, well-meaning, but aggressive young man starts a home-based ministry.  While he has a history of clashes with the law, he doesn’t appear to be of the “convicted felon” mode of Michael Salman.  I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here.
• Traffic increases on a regular basis, and while the occasional party would be OK, regular traffic problems cause issues for neighbors.  They ask for help, but get none, and so they go to the city.
• The man puts up a small sign in his yard in violation of local ordinance.
• The city works with the Bible study, offering them ways to mitigate the issue, but are met with defiance.
• After repeated attempts to address the issue, the city issues fines.
• The man, still aggressive and defiant, takes his case to the interwebs and the news media.

Again, we get back to the “vacuum of neighborliness” I mentioned in my previous article, where someone could’ve been a better neighbor, but wasn’t, deciding that it was more important to hold your ground on holding Bible studies than to communicate Godly love to those who live next door to you.  It’s not a government conspiracy – it’s simply a matter of people needing to be good neighbors and show Christian love while they’re supposedly teaching Christian theology, and maybe a little bit of a badly written local sign ordinance.  And let’s be honest: if the government really wanted to crack down on religion, it wouldn’t start with a single homeowner and zoning regs.

That’s why, again, I’m going to post my 7 Rules of Not Being a Jerk About Your Bible Study.  Take heed (again), people:

1. Hosting a Bible Study in your home is a good thing.  Our faith is a critical element of who we are as people, and strengthening that faith through study and fellowship is a wonderful part of growth.
2. Not being a jerk about your Bible Study is an equally good thing.  Just because we have a responsibility to share our faith doesn’t mean we have a right to be a jerk about it.
3. If you’re going to host a Bible Study in your home, be a good neighbor to those around you.  Love your neighbor as yourself by being pleasant about your Bible Study.  Just because you think you have the constitutional right to have a Bible Study doesn’t take away your neighbors’ rights to live in peace.
4. Try to keep your Bible Study size appropriate for your neighborhood.  If you’ve got a 3-bed 1,500 sq ft house in the burbs and you’re hosting 50 people…  you may want to break up into smaller groups.  That way, you limit the amount of traffic on the road and keep transportation around your neighborhood moving smoothly.  You also have less risk of someone ticking off your neighbors by blocking them in their driveways, damaging their lawn, or creating too much noise.
5. Keep lines of communication open between yourself and your neighbors.  Let them know what’s going on and when – and keep to the schedule.  If you say it’s going to be from 7-9 pm, don’t hold things over until 9:30.  Make sure your neighbors have your phone number so that they can contact you if there’s a problem.  If they do contact you with a problem: address the problem.  And invite your neighbors (and don’t get offended if they say no).  Don’t ruin a relationship with someone you share a fenceline with because you’re got a bug up your butt.
6. If you’re holding weekly services with chairs, flyers, a pulpit and a website, you’re a church.  Act like one by providing a safe, friendly environment for worshiping God.  If that means that you’re going to have to move your activities to a more public location, then do so.  Trust God to provide through offerings, donations, etc.
7. Finally, and most importantly: don’t be a jerk.  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating.  If a neighbor calls you to complain that there’s too much traffic and noise, then listen to them and try to work with them.  If the city shows up and says that you need to have clearly marked exit doors, then go down to Lowe’s or Home Depot and pick up some exit signs.  If the city tells you that the structure you’re in is unsafe for the crowd you’re drawing, then by all means, find another structure or split into smaller groups.  If you’re going to represent Jesus to people, then act like He would.

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Bible Studies and Jail Time

The Authorities Have Been Contacted

OK, first, read this story about an Arizona Bible Study guy who’s going to jail because of his Bible Study.

Now read this one about a California couple that was fined for their Bible Study.

It’s a war, right?  Surely, it’s a sign that there’s evil afoot and a war on Christianity and it’s time for us all to get to arms to defend the rights of these gentle-hearted, innocent people who just want to read the Bible and learn about Jesus, right?

Not right.

A lot of my friends and colleagues have brought the first case to my attention over the past few days with the wide-eyed expression awaiting the obvious shock and dismay I must feel at this obvious encroachment by the government upon the rights of the church…    that never comes.  See, while I am of the strong opinion that there is a war on my faith being conducted by secularists and other people who want to use the government to evangelize us all into atheism, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the case in either of these cases.

Both of these cases share a few common points:

1. A family decides to hold a home-based Bible Study.
2. Said Bible Study gets really popular and a lot of people (usually between 25-50) start showing up on a regular basis.
3. The authorities show up citing something about zoning and public safety.
4. The family decides eventually to go to the media to fight their war.
5. Fines and/or jail time plus public outrage ensues.

Simple enough, except that there’s a few points missing, most importantly, between #2 and #3.  This is a spot that I like to call “the vacuum of neighborliness”, where neighborliness should have existed, but instead, we get a gigantic hole in the story.  So, let’s fill that hole with the clues we have, namely: the number of people showing up.  25-50 people typically means you’re getting between 10 and 20 additional cars in your neighborhood, creating traffic congestion, noise, and crowding.  In a rural area, this isn’t really a problem, but in an urban area, this causes major issues for other people who live in the neighborhood, not to mention the ability for emergency vehicles to navigate the area. And so, someone called code enforcement.

I’ve known some code enforcement folks in my time and the general gist I’ve gotten from them is that they really, really don’t want to stir up trouble.  Their lives are happier if they don’t have to play the bureaucratic ombudsman for neighbors who aren’t talking to each other anymore, and they would really rather just let things go.  Typically, this means that people get inspected.  Someone usually tries to contact them informally to see if the issue can be resolved.  If it can’t, then they go to  warning letters.  Then repeat letters.  They try to work with the person in question to see if adaptations can be made to the property to allow them to legally continue their venture.  It goes on and on until it’s obvious that someone’s just being a jerk about the whole mess and that’s when fines start going out.  And I’m willing to bet some reasonably good money that this is exactly what happened in California. The end result there was that the homeowners worked it out with the city and all was well.

In Phoenix, not so much.

What we actually have here is the case of a convicted felon – one Michael Salman, who’d served 6 years for shooting up people’s homes and who tried to bribe a state attorney on the matter.  He was sentenced to 6 years in prison back in 1993 for the crimes.  In 1996, according to his website, 3 years into his sentence, he was ordained by the COGIC and began his ministry, and ended up hosting what he called a Bible Study in his home in the early 2000′s.  Said study would have anywhere from 40-80 people, depending on whether or not people were getting baptized or not.  All the problems actually began back in 2007 when Salman applied to the city for a 2,000 expansion to his “game room”.  It was approved, so long as said expansion wasn’t used for any business or church-related activities due to zoning and safety requirements like fire exits, accessible bathrooms, etc.  By the time it was done, said game room didn’t include much in the way of games, but did include chairs, a podium, a pulpit, and a sign with the name of the church.

In other words: he lied to the city to get his expansion approved without having to meet the standards for a public building like a church.

In 2008, after getting am $18,000 fine issued for safety violations, he was granted the right to label his home as a church by inspectors.  This saved him tax money, but now he has to actually meet the standards for a church building, including safety regulations.  If 40-80 people are going to gather, then  you’re going to have to address issues like emergency exits, bathrooms, and parking.  Salman hasn’t done so.  The City has been fighting him for over 5 years and now he’s getting sent back to his home from the early 90′s to think about what he did.

Is it reasonable for a city to do this?  Well, let me ask you this: would you be OK with me building a structure in a crowded urban neighborhood out of dry tinder with a single 1-person entrance and exit, and holding church services during a lightning storm for 125 people?  You shouldn’t be OK with it because it’s an unsafe situation.  If a fire starts, there will be death, and if there’s cars blocking the path for emergency vehicles, it becomes a threat, not only to those gathered inside, but to the neighbors as well, since fire has this tendency to “spread rapidly”.  Although my libertarian friends may disagree, providing for the general welfare and public safety is one of the most basic requirements of local government.  Throw in the deceitful, uncooperative behavior by Mr. Salman and I’ll say it: yes, it’s perfectly reasonable for a city to require that buildings where people gather en masse for whatever purpose are safe for the people inside, the people outside, and any public safety personnel that may have to enter the structure.

And this, kids, leads us to what I like to call my rules of not being a jerk about your Bible Study.  I’ve used these before, expanded on them, elaborated, but they’re pretty definitive and I think you should pay attention, memorize them, and repeat them over and over.

1. Hosting a Bible Study in your home is a good thing.  Our faith is a critical element of who we are as people, and strengthening that faith through study and fellowship is a wonderful part of growth.
2. Not being a jerk about your Bible Study is an equally good thing.  Just because we have a responsibility to share our faith doesn’t mean we have a right to be a jerk about it.
3. If you’re going to host a Bible Study in your home, be a good neighbor to those around you.  Love your neighbor as yourself by being pleasant about your Bible Study.  Just because you think you have the constitutional right to have a Bible Study doesn’t take away your neighbors’ rights to live in peace.
4. Try to keep your Bible Study size appropriate for your neighborhood.  If you’ve got a 3-bed 1,500 sq ft house in the burbs and you’re hosting 50 people…  you may want to break up into smaller groups.  That way, you limit the amount of traffic on the road and keep transportation around your neighborhood moving smoothly.  You also have less risk of someone ticking off your neighbors by blocking them in their driveways, damaging their lawn, or creating too much noise.
5. Keep lines of communication open between yourself and your neighbors.  Let them know what’s going on and when – and keep to the schedule.  If you say it’s going to be from 7-9 pm, don’t hold things over until 9:30.  Make sure your neighbors have your phone number so that they can contact you if there’s a problem.  If they do contact you with a problem: address the problem.  And invite your neighbors (and don’t get offended if they say no).  Don’t ruin a relationship with someone you share a fenceline with because you’re got a bug up your butt.
6. If you’re holding weekly services with chairs, flyers, a pulpit and a website, you’re a church.  Act like one by providing a safe, friendly environment for worshiping God.  If that means that you’re going to have to move your activities to a more public location, then do so.  Trust God to provide through offerings, donations, etc.
7. Finally, and most importantly: don’t be a jerk.  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating.  If a neighbor calls you to complain that there’s too much traffic and noise, then listen to them and try to work with them.  If the city shows up and says that you need to have clearly marked exit doors, then go down to Lowe’s or Home Depot and pick up some exit signs.  If the city tells you that the structure you’re in is unsafe for the crowd you’re drawing, then by all means, find another structure or split into smaller groups.  If you’re going to represent Jesus to people, then act like He would.

I know all this is a bit of a veer from my usual Obama-bashing, and that may be shocking to some of you, but at the end of the day, conservatives and Christians should be smarter than this.  Don’t give in to conspiracy theories and manipulation by charlatans and criminals.  Be smart.  Listen up.  Learn stuff.

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A Few Thoughts On the Ruling…

1. Obamacare sucks in every possible way.
2. The ruling had a somewhat subtle, but firm slap in the face of Congress, declaring that their use of the Commerce Clause was incorrect and that the authority for the act rested under the Taxation Powers of Congress.
3. In joining with the left, John Roberts may have just handed the November election to the GOP.  Now the GOP has more to run on that “we’re not Obama”.  They’ve got the economy and they’ve got Obamacare.  It won’t be hard for them to point out that the costs of Obamacare will be borne by the taxpayers in the middle of a bad economy – a formula that got them a tremendous victory in the House last November.  The more I think about it, this whole scenario has a very Karl-Rovesque feel to it, with someone playing a much smarter game than anyone’s realizing.
4. The ruling makes Democrats happy today.  I liken it to a team who just got a touchdown in a football game.  They did, however, miss the extra point and now the other team (the GOP) has excellent field position.  The only question is: can our Bringham-Young-graduate QB take it to the paint?

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Gun Week: My Favorite Guns

Everyone who gets involved with guns has their favorites, and when I started this list, I had a nice, large collection of guns that I’ve owned, fired, or just plain fascinate me in every possible way….  and then I realized I have a life and I could easily spend hours making up this post.

So I’m going to keep this simple: my favorite long gun, my favorite semi-auto handgun, and my favorite revolver.  And then you can tell me your favorites.

My favorite long gun:

Winchester Model 1892 – I’m Accepting Donations

Winchester Model 1892

I love shotguns and rifles with varying degrees of love, but there is just something special about the Winchester 92.  The beautiful lever action and its widespread Hollywood-generated mythos just make for an awesome, gorgeous gun.  I have to confess: I don’t own one.  Yet.  I do, however, accept donations.

Runners up: M1 Garand, Mosin-Nagant Model 1944

My favorite semi-auto handgun

Beretta 92fs – How a Semi-Auto Should Feel

Beretta 92fs

There are tons of great semi-auto fans out there and I know I’m going to step on some toes when it comes to those who prefer Glocks, Rugers, Sigs, or God help us all, Hi-Points…  but the Beretta 92fs is one of those guns that just feels right.  There’s a reason it’s been the standard sidearm for the US military.  It feels like a handgun should feel.  I’m not a fan of the feather-light semi-autos that are like air in your hand.  I want a gun that has some heft to it, and the 92fs delivers.  It’s accurate as hell, comfortable and simple to handle, and fun to shoot.

Runners up: Smith and Wesson M&P, Colt M1911A1 (again, accepting donations)

Favorite revolver:

Ruger LCR – Perfection

Ruger LCR

This one’s been a long time coming for me because I’ve toyed with revolvers for a while, but never bit.  Revolvers, especially snubbys, always had too many shortcomings for me: lack of accuracy, too much kick, too tight on the double action pulls.  I’d handled a few, but was never really impressed with them – until now.  I put my hands on this baby for the first time this past February and, following that event, knew that this gun would be mine.  I finally picked one up a couple of months later and I have to say: Ruger got it 100% right.  It’s super-accurate for snubby, handles kick a lot better than expected, and the double action pull is smooth as butter.  Not only my favorite revolver, this has quickly become my favorite gun.  It’s a perfect balance of power and ease of use.  The LCR comes in 3 calibers: .22, .38, and .357.  I recommend the .357 simply because it gives you the option for .38 or .357 and the added few ounces weight help to reduce the kick even on the .38.

Runners up: Ruger SP101, Smith and Wesson Police Special

So what’s your favorite?  What boomstick lights your fancy?  What piece of 2^nd Amendment awesomeness do you hope to add to your collection?  Comment below (or on one of the places where this article pops up).

Thanks for tuning in this week to Gun Week.  We’ve gotten some positive feedback and may do this again in the future. In the meantime, if you own guns, I’d love to get your feedback on these articles.  If you don’t own a gun, but have considered buying one, I highly recommend that you take the advice of people far more skilled than I on the subject.  Massad Ayoob is a master at understanding the laws regarding the use of guns, and any of his books on gun use comes highly recommended.  My other favorite source of information (if anything, just for the great attitude he has towards the subject) is Hickok45, whose Youtube gun reviews and commentary are extremely popular for a reason.

This week’s articles:

What the 2^nd Amendment Really Means

Why You Should Own a Gun

Gun Laws – A Few Basic Facts

Reasonable Restrictions

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Gun Week: Reasonable Restrictions?

We’ve gone over why we should own guns and the various gun law issues.  So the question arises: is the 2^nd Amendment absolute?  Should we be allowed to have nuclear weapons, RPG’s, and other instruments of death that are restricted to the military?  How far should these restrictions extend?

There are extremists on both sides.  One side, of course, denies that the 2^nd Amendment means what it clearly says.  These people should be ignored and mocked.  The other side, of course, says that no citizen should be denied a weapon that the government can’t get its hands on.  These people…   are actually pretty close to the original intent of the 2^nd Amendment: namely, the right to defend yourself against government tyranny.

Exercising My 2nd Amendment Rights

Having said that…  there are reasonable restrictions on guns that reasonable people should agree with.  In deference to the gun supporters, no, I don’t think that citizens have a right to carry an RPG around in public.  While we have the right to repel government tyranny, there has to be a reasonable limit on what a potentially untrained citizen can do with weapons that do more than put a bullet in a bad guy.  During the revolution, there were limited numbers of citizens who owned such devices, but they were limited mostly to rich people who needed to protect goods.   However, I doubt the framers ever considered the concept of a private citizen owning a nuclear weapon that could destroy a city.  Frankly, it was just too foreign of an idea to consider.

And that leads us to restrictions.  Over time, the legislatures and courts around this land have worked to define exactly which “arms” are protected under the 2^nd Amendment.  Recently, the Supreme Court (in DC v. Heller) agreed that handguns are protected as “arms” under that Amendment and that Federal enclaves like DC (later extended to states in McDonald v. Chicago).  However, the SCOTUS has also ruled that there are reasonable restrictions that the government can apply to gun ownership in the interest of public safety.  While traditional purposes for guns like self-defense and hunting are protected, weapons that kill indiscriminately (like RPGs and nukes) are not protected – and this is an example of a reasonable restriction.

So…  what about restricting the places guns can exist?  Is it a reasonable restriction, for instance, to restrict guns on school campuses?  Well, it may be reasonable to restrict access to guns by children, but it’s also a big, fat joke.  “Gun Free Zones” are some of the most dangerous places to be in America because if I’m a criminal who wants to kill a bunch of people, I’m not going to go somewhere where people can shoot back.  Think about it this way: some of the deadliest shootings in American history have occurred at places that were “gun-free zones”.

• Virginia Tech Massacre, VA: Walking Evil walks onto campus armed to the teeth and systematically murders 32 people and injures 17 before putting a bullet in his own head.
• Luby’s Cafeteria, TX: during a time when you couldn’t legally carry a gun in public in Texas, a jerkwad of a human being walked into a cafeteria and killed 23 people and injured 20 before killing himself.
• Columbine High School, CO: 2 douchebag high school students illegally acquire weapons and illegally enter their gun-free high school where they kill 13 and injure 21 before finally finishing themselves off.

All gun-free zones.  All used as target galleries by people who didn’t care about the law.  The Luby’s Cafeteria shooting was interesting because one of the results of that event was that one of the survivors ended up running for the Texas Legislature and worked to get concealed carry laws passed in Texas, meaning that the next time some asshat walks into a restaurant in the Lone Star State and pulls a gun, he’s likely to be facing down a dozen citizens ready to return the favor.

OK, since gun-free zones are a joke, are there other reasonable restrictions?  Surely no one needs clips that hold 30 rounds, do they?  Or automatic weapons?  Or what about those “cop-killer” bullets?  Those are all scary things and normal people wouldn’t ever want those, would they?

Well…   see, that’s just window dressing.  Restricting the number of bullets in clips didn’t keep the Columbine shooters from doing their evil, did they?  It just means that if you want to fire off a bunch of rounds, you need to buy more clips.  Cop-killer bullets?  Any bullet can kill.  The idea that one bullet is more special than another bullet is an absolute joke.  Over the years, gun control advocates have waged war against magic bullets that could supposedly pierce cops’ body armor or could somehow do so much damage that the world would somehow come to an end.  The actual studies on these bullets showed that the fears were unfounded.

Automatic weapons?  Let’s be honest: most people have no idea what an automatic weapon is.  Heck – even the cheesy little NRA video that I had to watch to get my CCW license used “automatic” and “semi-automatic” interchangeably.  Honestly, tho, when it comes to fully automatic weapons, I’m ambivalent.  I can understand the allure and the usefulness of these weapons under the Founders’ standards, but can also understand how dangerous they can be in the wrong hands.  Maybe requiring an additional level of training would be in order.

And this leads me to the one big area that I support that I’m not sure others will: I believe in training.  I believe that good training makes for good gun owners, so much so that I believe that every gun owner should be required to undergo training in matters of use and law before they’re allowed to carry their guns.  HOWEVER…  once they’re trained, I fully believe that everyone who’s not a violent felon or adjudicated mentally unfit should have the right to carry open or concealed without restriction.  And if you think this will lead to a “Wild West” scenario, then you’ve been watching too much TV and not paying attention to places that have looser gun laws where crime rates go down when these freedoms are enacted.

So what kind of weapon should you carry?  Well… we’re going to cover that tomorrow.

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Gun Week: Gun Laws – A Few Basic Facts

First – I updated yesterday’s post because I forgot one big point about why you should own a gun: hunting.

Now, on to guns!  Or more accurately: gun laws.

If there’s anything that the Trayvon Marin case has taught us, it’s that the average citizen – and occasionally, gun owner – knows about as much about gun laws as they do about quantum physics.  On the one hand, you have puppet masters and their marionettes screaming about the evils of “stand your ground” laws.

I’ve already covered the Trayvon case before, but there are some things that bear repeating.  For instance, everything Massad Ayoob says here:

Again, as The Great Ayoob says in the above video, you have a right to defend yourself with deadly force in the United States.  No state in the union can take that right away from you.  They can, however, restrict that right using laws like the “duty to retreat” and “concealed carry”.  We’ll talk about reasonable restrictions tomorrow, but for today, let’s reiterate some basic points.

First, let’s talk basic self defense.  Again, you have the right to defend your life and the lives of those around you if you, as a reasonable person, believe that you are presented with a real and present danger to your life, serious bodily injury, or serious sexual assault.  If a bad guy is coming after you with a knife, you have the right to pull a gun to defend yourself.

Where you live, however, defines how you can use that gun.  A few states require you to at least attempt to retreat, even in your own home (“officer, he was coming to kill me and I tried to get away, but couldn’t”).  Other states have a castle doctrine or stand-your-ground law that removes this duty to retreat, so long as you are in your home or, depending on the state, in your car or your place of business.  Other states have a variety of the stand-your-ground law, where you have no duty to retreat at any time in any situation, and you have a near-absolute right to defend your life without retreating an inch.

As I’ve said before, I am not a lawyer.  You should consult your state’s laws if you have any questions.

Posted Here for Totally Non-Gratuitous Reasons

Second, let’s talk about carrying your gun.  Again, this depends on where you live (hence why you should call on your Senators to back the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which will protect your rights to carry your weapons if you cross state lines into any state that allows you to carry your weapons (Illinois and DC being the only notable anti-freedom locales in the US).  The House has already passed the bill, and now it’s in the hands of Harry Reid’s Senate.

God help us all.

It’s important to know how you can carry your gun.  Most states have some sort of concealed carry license that requires you to receive some level of training and maybe do a background check so that you can carry your gun in a way that it can’t be easily seen by the public – and that shares that rights to some degree with other states.  Some states allow you to carry your gun on your hip in full view of the public.  Some of those states have restrictions on open carry that are, well….  Interesting.  North Carolina, for instance, protects the right to open carry in the state constitution, but the right is whittled down by a restriction that doesn’t allow you to cause terror to the public.  In other words, you have a constitutional right to carry your sidearm in a holster in full public view…  right up until someone gets nervous.  As soon as that happens, you may be found to be “armed to the terror of the populace” and you may find yourself in trouble.  Again, check your state’s laws (and the laws of states you visit) for more information.

Having said that – I’ve got some opinions here.  Surprise, surprise.  My take is this: if you haven’t been convicted of a violent felony or adjudicated by the courts to be mentally deficient or found to have an intelligence quotient that would qualify you as mentally disabled (below 80), you should have the right to open or concealed carry without a license.  If you’ve been convicted of a non-violent felony or a misdemeanor,  you’ve served your full time including probation and parole, and you’ve gone 10 years without having another conviction, then I believe your full gun rights should be restored.

While I’m dreaming, I’d also like a pony and 100 bajillion dollars.

I guess the simplest point to all of the law questions is: be educated.  20 years ago, it was more difficult and sometimes you could slide on simply not knowing things.  Heck, 20 years ago, a woman carrying a gun in her purse often wouldn’t have a moment’s worth of trouble from the police who figured that an armed woman was better than a dead one.  Now the laws have changed, concealed carry is a state law (meaning that the state has a financially vested interest in you following the law that criminals aren’t going to follow anyway), and the cops presume that you’ve Googled all state laws regarding weapons carrying.  There’s a bit more freedom, but far less leeway.  Hunting laws are similar: there’s much less flexibility in their enforcement than there was in previous times, so you need to keep up to date on the laws, limits, and licensing.

Stay informed.  Stay frosty.

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Gun Week: What the 2nd Amendment Really Means

Today, we open up Gun Week here at PachydermsBlog, and we’re going to do so with a doozy.  We’re going to talk about the 2^nd Amendment, that controversial piece of legislation that keeps Americans armed and Gun Control advocates frightened and scrambling to redefine exactly what the Constitution clearly says.

So, I’m going to let Penn Jillette explain it to you:

He explains it masterfully, much more quickly than I’m about to.  First, he takes the text of the amendment, which reads thusly:

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.

For years, the debate has raged over the exact interpretation of this amendment.  Gun rights groups have tended to focus on the 2^nd half (shall not be infringed) while gun control groups have focused on the first half (a well-regulated militia).  The typical GC interpretation of this amendment is that since there’s a qualifier in the passage about a militia, then the 2^nd Amendment only applies to the states’ right to call up a militia, and since the national guard has replaced the militia, there is no need for common citizens to bear arms.

Jillette, however, disagrees – as do gun rights groups.  Their claim is that the qualifier in the Amendment was never designed to restrict access to guns, but instead provides historical context as to why the right of the people should not be infringed.  They argue that since the state has the right to arm itself, the people should be able to preserve the right to rebellion by taking up arms against it.

So…  the truth?  Honestly – a little bit of both.

First – the early nation did rely on the state-risen militia for regional defense.  It didn’t have the money to fully fund a full-time military and so the people, as they had under the English crown, could expect, at times, to be called up to serve as a part of their state’s militia, to act as a supplement to the national military.  However, we also have to understand the historical context as well.  The people writing this amendment had just fought a war for freedom against the British Empire using citizen soldiers and militia.

It’s also important to understand that the early legal theorists who studied the amendment shortly after its inception did so in direct contrast to the English Bill of Rights that allowed the right to bear arms on one hand, and then restricted that right to the very wealthy on the other, by allowing Parliament to pass laws that restricted gun ownership under the guise of protection of wild game.  At the same time, they also recognized that the right to bear arms was conditional: that there were circumstances where the government had the right to restrict the bearing of arms – however, they were very clear in their belief that the ultimate purpose of the second amendment was to allow the people a path to rebellion against tyranny.  And what’s the best way to repel tyranny enforced by military might?  Guns.

Keep in mind: fighting tyranny is exactly what the Bill of Rights is about.  James Madison stated that he supported the idea that “the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.”  The first 10 Amendments are built around this concept: protecting the citizenry and restricting Congress (1^st, 9^th, 10^th, and the later 27^th  – along with the unratified Congressional Apportionment Amendment), the military (2^nd, 3^rd), and the courts (4^th-8^th).  None of these amendments are designed, in any way, to restrict the right of the people.

In fact, as Jillette and Teller point out in the video above, the idea that there’s some sort of “breath” in the amendment doesn’t jive with the simple statement that the 2^nd half of the amendment clearly states: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Usually this is where the discussion turns to the gun control advocates crying like children about how if the 2^nd Amendment allows guns, then it should allow common citizens to carry nuclear weapons, and common sense would dictate that this is a bad idea, right?  RIGHT?

Well, we’ll get to that later this week.  In the meantime, be calm and content with the fact that the framers distrusted the human greed for power enough to stick an amendment in the Constitution that forces the government to remember that its citizens are armed.

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Who Is Brett Kimberlin?

Convicted Speedway Bomber turned Liberal Activist Brett Kimberlin is bullying conservatives who point out that he’s a convicted bomber who’s receiving a lot of money from liberals.  After bombing a few choice locations in Speedway, Indiana and coming up with a few more bizarre plots, he received over 50 years in prison for a string of bombings, but for some reason was granted parole after 17 years, and is now breathing free air, collecting cash from liberal stalwarts like Barbara Streissand and Teresa Heinz-Kerry, and is thuggishly trying to silence anyone who points out exactly who he is, trying to falsely frame some for crimes, forcing some to leave their homes in fear of their safety, and threatening others with lawsuits that point out things that are part of the public record.  He’s gotten Wikipedia to delete his own article, hiding his crimes from history.

There are 3 questions I have:

1.  Why is this convicted felon who shouldn’t be free until, at minimum, 2028, breathing free air?

2.  Why are big-name liberals giving him big money?

3.  Why is this serial litigator still allowed to sue?

Today is Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.  Join me and bloggers around the country in exposing this convicted felon and left-wing activist.

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Liberalism as a Dumb, Hypocritical, Sex-Based Religion

Recently, a friend of mine pointed out this chick:

For those of you who’ve been paying attention for a while, you can guess what the liberal response was.  Here’s a few choice quotes:

Hey, you really seem like one stupid c*nt. That being said, I’d still let you wrap yours lips around my c*ck.”

“This b*tch is Psycho!”

“A hate mongering bigot, she probably supports modern day slavery as well.”

“The Palin legacy, people…..*sigh*”

“She’s bats*it crazy!!”

Yep.  That’s liberals at their best for you!  There’s nothing that says “classy” like Internet-published rape fantasies about a 16-year-old girl who has opinions that you don’t agree with.  That puts her square into, at the very least, stage 2 of the stages of conservative female abuse.  She’s in good company.

I know what you’re saying…   “Mr. Elephant,” because that’s my name, “you called liberalism dumb!  And a religion!  You can’t do that!  It’s just a political philosophy that’s different from yours!  Aren’t you giving in to the same hate you’re criticizing those responders in that video for?”

Silly person.  Let me educate you.  And before we get started – no, I’m not giving in to the hate.  While I despise the philosophy of liberalism, I’m not (and I don’t know a single conservative who is) sexualizing and demonizing a 16-year-old girl who disagrees with me…  because I am an adult and choose to act like it.  I also stand by what I say: Liberalism is a dumb religion.

1. Liberalism is a religion.  That’s why whenever anyone starts quoting from the Bible as the basis for their beliefs, they tend to go ballistic.  Simply put: a Biblical worldview stands in direct contrast to a modern American liberal/socialist worldview.  Their belief in the state as the supreme deity stands in contrast to Christ’s claim that HE was the way, the truth, and the life.  Ann Coulter spent an entire, excellent book pointing out exactly how liberalism is, in fact, a secularist state-based religion, and while I disagree with her conclusions regarding Darwinism (don’t get me started on that stupid debate), her conclusions regarding the cult-like devotion to liberalism by liberals is spot-on.
2. 

   A Complete and Utter Retard.

   Liberals are dumb.  I hate to put it that simply, but when you have a group of people who think you can tax a nation into success and that penalizing success is a good idea (instead of recognizing that success breeds more success) and that catering to the lowest common denominator is a bad idea, then you have to conclude that those who believe this are dumb.  Are you asking me if I actually believe that Karl Marx and all of his derivative socioeconomic systems were dumb?  Yes.  Yes, I do.  Every single last aspect of them.

   “But Mr. Elephant,” you cry like an infant, “what about when someone’s poor, out of work, and lying at home in bed because they got hit by a truck full of the Ebola virus?  Doesn’t the fact that the government can step in and help those poor souls prove that you’re wrong?”

   No, it does not.  No reasonable person would disagree that there is a great benefit to a small group of needy people being assisted in a way that allows them to reach for the maximum amount of their contribution to society, say by assisting them when they are out of work, providing for their medical needs when they are in desperate circumstances, providing them with food, shelter, and the basic needs.  However, where we disagree is in both the source of that assistance and in the quantity of that assistance.  A smart person recognizes that whether the assistance comes from the state or private charity, that ultimately, the source of that assistance (besides God) are human beings who pay for that assistance.  Welfare does not allow you to create assistance out of thin air – the money has to come from somewhere.  A smart person also recognizes that if you give a mouse a cookie, they’re going to want a lifetime of comfortable living on the public dole, with steak and lobster dinners, a nice house, digital cable TV, top-notch medical care, 4 cell phones with unlimited texting, and a partridge in a pear tree.

   A dumb person thinks that the money just appears out of the unlimited government coffers and that helping people forever who don’t contribute to society is a sustainable model.  They scream that, sure, while socialism failed in the USSR, the Eastern Bloc, and Africa, and where it hasn’t failed it keeps people in abject poverty, that it’s just because we haven’t tried the perfect system yet.  If we would just try TROOOOOOO Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, etc., it would work perfectly!  They’re ignorant of the fact that as long as there are people (who are by nature territorial, greedy, and in need of boundaries), socialism is doomed to failure.

3. Liberals are hypocrites.  Liberals hold others to standards that they are unwilling to hold themselves to.  They scream about the separation of church and state, and then treat Obama like a messianic figure when he goes into or sends others into black churches to raise money for their campaigns.  They whine about how voting against gay marriage is based in hate and ignorance – and then ignorantly spew their hate on 16-year-old girls who can’t vote and whose personal politics offend them.  They cry about how women should be able to have taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, but work to block the executions of admitted, tried, and convicted cop-killers because killing is wrong.
4. 

   The Traditional Family Terrifies Liberals

   Let’s talk about sex.  There is no issue that liberals think is more important in the world than the right to government-funded consequence-free sex, to the point where it’s the cornerstone of their religion.  That’s why they parade idiots like Sandra Fluke (30-year-old activists masquerading as 23-year-old college coeds) around to try to get the government to force Catholic institutions to distribute free birth control against the Catholic faith, because they see their own religion’s cornerstone as being far more important than that of thousands of years of Catholic traditions.  Liberals believe that any and all sex should be free of any kind of government interference, unless it’s interfering with the rights of fathers.  To liberals, moms possess a magical device called a “vagina” that magically tells them when it’s OK to murder their unborn infants.  If dad wants to raise the child, it doesn’t matter, because he lacks the magical vaginal ability to determine if a child should be murdered due to its giving mommy stretch marks.  But if mommy wants to bring the child to term, that’s her business (unless she’s Sarah Palin), and the government will be there to lessen the consequence of that decision by ensuring that dad, who had no say in whether the child should be carried to term or not, is forced to give up half his salary so that mom can live more comfortably, and if that means weekends in jail for dad when he can’t afford his payments, well, he should’ve thought about that!

   The irony of this being that if liberals weren’t so dead-set opposed to the traditional family, there would already be a method in place to ensure that sex between 2 consenting adults is an enjoyable process, that there’d be a mom and a dad available to rear their child, and both parents would actively contribute to the family’s needs.

As I said in the title, Liberalism is a dumb, hypocritical, sex-based religion.  And if you disagree with me, I won’t say you’re worse than Hitler…   you’re just wrong.

Now, am I saying that liberals can’t have an occasional smart moment, or that all conservatives are always smart all the time?  No.  I am not talking about incidents – I am talking about consistent patterns of behavior that demonstrate, conclusively, that liberals are members of a dumb, hypocritical sex cult.  Which is perfect, because whenever I think of liberals, I keep thinking “screw you”.

So it all works out.

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Young Minds Full of Mush: Our Corrupt Education System

Very few things get my ire up more than our educational system here in the United States.  “Oh, but Mr. Elephant”, you say, actually believing my first name is “Annoyed”, “teachers are wooooooonderful….  and don’t you know that I believe the children are our future…?”

Silly person.  Sit down and let Mr. Elephant educate you, and by “educate” in that sentence, I mean something completely different from the “education” your children are getting today.

First, let me get this much out of the way: I think the public education system is unconstitutional.  I believe our students would be better off if we had a system of privately-held schools that had a profit motivation for producing high quantities of high-quality students.  I also think they would do so at a much lower cost than we currently blow on our unbelievably mediocre national school system – over $1.1 Trillion dollars annually on all levels of education from all levels of government – compare that to our Defense Budget of $707 Billion.  And yet, here, I am not going to advocate for the dismantling of the system.  No, I’m just going to point out what’s wrong with our current system and what we could to fix it.

1. 

   Seems legit.

   Pedophiles.  Whenever I say that word, I’ll bet you that you start thinking “priests” or “boy scout leaders” or “creepy guy hiding in a white van labeled ‘free candy’”, right?  I mean, obviously, the problem of child sexual predators is surely restricted only to those weird and creepy people who do stuff like “pray”, “build fires”, and “drive around in a van advertising free candy”.

   OK, I’ll give you the last one.

   An organization called “Bishop Accountability” once estimated that 10% of priests were pedophiles.  The problem is that they used a very loose interpretation of “pedophile” that included priests who were merely accused of sexual abuse.  The real number is probably between 2 and 5 percent.  Still a high number, but it’s pretty much equivalent to the rate of the general population.  Still – 64% of people, when you say “Catholic Priest” wonder exactly how many children they’ve diddled.

   If they’re looking for diddlers, tho, maybe they should look at teachers.  There are no hard facts because, shock of shocks, powerful lobbies like the National Education Association have worked to keep government polls from being done.  Fortunately, private polling has been done.  It is estimated that the percentage of abuser teachers is similar to the general population (between 1 and 5%), but the problem is that while the average abuser is exposed to children for only a brief time, teachers are exposed to children on a daily basis for many hours a day.  The result is that between 10 and 15% of students have reported being sexually harassed or abused by their teachers. When the American Association of University Women Foundation interviewed over 1,600 students between 8th and 11th grade, they found that 25% of girls and 10% of boys had been abused or harassed, and identified their abuser or harasser as a school employee.  The same poll found that between 1991 and 2000, over 250,000 students had been sexually abused or harassed by a school employee.

   The response from the schools?  15% were terminated.  38.7% resigned, changed districts, or retired.  54.3% suffered no ill effects other than a stern talking-to or re-education.  While it’s certainly terrible that sexual abuse happens, it’s even more terrible when over 54% of cases are covered up, ignored, or punished with little more than a slap on the wrist.  In New York City, teachers accused of sexual abuse of students are put through the district’s disciplinary system, aka “the rubber room”.  Basically, they’re sent to a room to twiddle their thumbs, get paid their full salaries with benefits, and wait – often for years – until the district decides what to do with them.

   How bad is it in NYC?  Well, we have the case of this lovely man, one Roland Pierre.  He finally retired last year at the age of 76.  He’d spent every day since 1997 in one of the rubber rooms, twiddling his thumbs and collecting his full salary and benefits.  Why was he in the rubber room, you may ask?  Did he give a rich kid a bad grade?  Did he vote Republican?  Nothing that heinous, apparently.  All he did was call one of his 6th grader ESL students into his classroom, hugged her, kissed her full on the mouth (with tongue), grabbed her boobs, and finally reached under her skirt for a good feel of her downstairs parts.  He was arrested and then the school system parked him in a room and paid him $97,000 a year, with full vacation and benefits from the age of 62 (when he could’ve retired) to the age of 76.

   And then there’s Alan Rosenfield.  This man has a $10 million real estate portfolio and has been deemed a walking danger to children when he perved out, made some lewd comments to 8th graders, and grabbed some girls’ butts.  So the NYC schools pulled him out of the classroom and put him in a rubber room, paying him $100,049 a year with benefits (including a currently-estimated $87k annual pension) for the past decade.  Again, he could’ve retired at 62, but decided he’d rather, in his own words, give a big F-U to the school system for denying him his rights to grab 13-year-olds’ hinnies.

   And then there’s Francisco Olivares.  This genius among men impregnated a 16-year-old back in 1978, but avoided any fooferall by marrying her.  Over the next 14 years, he molested and took porno pictures of at least 3 more 12-year-old girls.  The school system…  overturned his conviction on a technicality and later, in 2002, he found himself in trouble again when he fondled yet another girl.  This time, the schools struck back hard and the arbitrator gave him a warning not to stand close to students.  And then the stuck him in the rubber room and paid him $94,154 a year, plus benefits.

   The NYC Schools response, once these controversies were exposed?  They shut down the rubber rooms, sent the teachers home, and paid them their salaries and benefits anyway.

   It’s like the thin blue line, except with chalk.

2. Performance.  There’s a very helpful infographic that will pretty much sum up my problems here.  Non-collegiate American education spends more money, per student, than any major country on the planet, and yet, our students consistently come in average to below average in comparison to the rest of the planet. Obviously, dollars are not helping matters, as nations who spend less money per student get consistently better performance from those students (Canada, Finland, South Korea, etc.).  And yet, at the state and local level, we consistently hear how our schools need more money, more money, more money.  I’m fully convinced that if you offered them every last dime, there still wouldn’t be enough money to spend on making students more and more mediocre.
3. Indoctrination.  Teacher in Rowan County, NC tells her students that it’s illegal to criticize Barack Obama.  Another NC teacher, Diantha Harris, used her classroom to bully a student who supported John McCain.  And lest we forget: Barack Hussein Obama…  mmm… mmm… mmm…A simple question: would this be allowed for George W. Bush?  How about Mitt Romney?  Ronald Reagan?  I’ll go ahead and tell you: hell, no.  Private organizations, like clubs and churches, may voice support for those men, but never, ever would a public school be allowed to be used for such caterwauling praise of a sitting President.  At least, not a Republican President.  And why is that, do you suppose?
4. Student discipline.  There’s a reason people’ve been complaining for years about how schools aren’t paddling students anymore: paddling works.  There’s nothing that’ll cure a desire to bring an AK-47 to the classroom like the thought that you’re going to get your butt whooped by a principal with a 2×4 and the upper arm strength of a major league home run king.  You don’t need to be abusive, but with classroom behavior downtrending like a flushed turd, a logical person would have to somehow conclude that maybe, just maybe, a limpwristed approach to discipline isn’t an effective means of discipline.  Joe Clark took up a baseball bat and chained the doors to his school and got rid of most of the discipline problems at his school.Of course, there’s more than just political indoctrination.  There’s religious indoctrination, too.  If you’re opposed to teachers pushing the religion of Christianity on students, then certainly pushing Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism is equally wrong, right?  RIGHT?

Those are just 4 areas.  There’s more, but let’s just run with those 4 for right now because my solution, frankly, will solve the other problems, too.  And like I said above, I’m not going to advocate for dismantling the schools, even though I think it would probably solve these problems much, much more quickly.

The Solution

1. End teacher unions.  There is no reason in the modern world for a teacher union to exist except to bully the taxpayers and protect a class of citizens that need no protection.
2. End tenure.  There is no reason in the world to allow bad teachers to have extra protection in their jobs.  Good teachers will keep their jobs by being good teachers.
3. Keep testing students.  Like it or not, standardized testing is good.  It lets us know if your students meet the standards.  Yes, there are issues, but at least we have a number we can use to base whether your students are failing to meet, meeting, or exceeding expectations.
4. Pay teachers accordingly.  If your students are expected to be at level 7 and they’re consistently testing at level 9, you should be paid more.  If, however, they’re testing at level 4, you should be fired.
5. Hold all school staff accountable.  Do regular background checks and drug testing of all school staff, from the janitors to the principals.  Hold them accountable if they step out of line.
6. Ban political activity by teachers and hold them to the ban.  Teachers who push a political agenda should be fired immediately.
7. Revoke licenses regularly.  If a teacher crosses the line often or egregiously enough, revoke their license permanently.
8. Fire limp-wristed disciplinarians.  Children need to learn to act like adults and they can’t learn from adults whose solution to discipline problems is to hide in the corner, smile through their teeth, and hippie-hug people into submission.  If you have a child who’s a problem, they’re keeping other children from learning.  Send the child home with a note that says they’re not to come back until they grow up and if the parent doesn’t like it, they can pay for a private education or homeschool their little angel.
9. Give parents an out.  If the school their kids attend sucks, then parents need to have an out, via school vouchers and charter schools.  At the very least, if those kids end up in charter schools, then you’ll get lower classroom sizes at the schools they leave.
10. Keep school boards accountable.  In North Carolina, I’m in favor of removing school taxes from city and county budgets and placing that taxation authority in the hands of the school system – but only giving them taxation authority over families whose students use the school system.  On one hand, if I have no children, then I am receiving a very limited benefit from the school system.  On the other hand, it means that the people who receive the greatest benefit from a public education will have to hold those elected officials responsible for the expenditure of their local tax dollars.  In other states, I dunno.  Just vote the punks out.

Do you have any ideas to make our schools better?  Comment below, man!

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