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?

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid…

So the court says Obamacare is a-OK.  That’s right: the right of the government to force you to spend your money how they see fit is covered under “taxation authority”.  And, as expected, there’s a lot of blame to be passed around, most of it resting on the back of Chief Justice John Roberts.

But I don’t blame Roberts.  Honestly, looking at the ruling, I see the direction he was heading in: Congress has the power to tax you, and forcing you to buy health insurance is no different.  It’s not an argument I agree with 100%, but it’s a logical one.  It also throws the role of healthcare back into the legislature.  No, I don’t blame Roberts or even the left side of the court.

I blame you.

That’s right, America – I blame you.  You’re the one who elected these idiots.  You’re the one who voted for “hope” and “change” instead of thinking things through.  You’re the ones who voted retards into Congress assuring us that they were nowhere near as socialist and liberal as we said they were.  You, and only you, are the ones that I hold responsible for wiping your ass with our constitution, our economy, and our future and flushing it down the toilet.  You were stupid.

You don’t like that, do you?  You don’t like me calling you a bunch of retards?  Well, then, you shouldn’t have voted for retards.

Want to change my mind about you?  Then freaking vote right this time.  Stop sticking your fingers in your ears when someone tells you that Obama and his radical left are lying to you.  Stop feeling bad about your own racism, thinking you can cure it by voting for a black guy who hangs out with domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers.  Stop not thinking things through.

And you Republicans?  Don’t you DARE back down on this.  Take hold of the reins that the people are screaming at you to take hold of and show us some leadership.  Defund this piece of garbage and send it back to hell where it belongs.  Be conservative, not stupid.

In Case You Were Wondering…

I’m waiting on the Obamacare ruling to opine.  Or waiting for something stupid.  Either way, I shant have to wait long…

The Problem With Separation of Church and State

School in the…   wait for it…  liberal Democrat-leaning state of New York…  censored an art student’s contribution to a mural.  They had tons of religious imagery on the wall, but the minute a student who believed that Jesus was the Way, the Truth, and the Life decided to paint a cross and a few song lyrics, the school felt that she’d crossed the line.

Scary!

Painting a mosque?  Fine.  A demonic creature?  A-OK.   The Taj Mahal?  10-4.  A Native American totem pole?  Yee-hah.  A cross?  BLACKLIST THE TWIT!!!

Look, I’m all for not pushing religion on people.  I am a dedicated, strong, stubborn Christian, but I know that there are people who neither share my faith nor want to share my faith.  And while I do believe I am called to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to let you know the Good News that He can save you from your sins and the penalty to come if you only repent and believe in Him…  but I’m also well aware that the best way to communicate the Gospel is to build a personal relationship with people and to meet them where they are so that you can point them to the Cross.  An ineffective method would be sticking students in a classroom and indoctrinating them via a state-approved religious curriculum.

Having said that, there seems to be a mistake made by the anti-religious crowd and bureaucrats, that our precious little angels – and by extension, our precious little public – must be freed from any expression of religious (read: Christian) belief in the public circle.  They crow about the separation of church and state and point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that prayer isn’t allowed in any classroom, ever!  Ha ha ha!

Silly people.  Silly, evil people.

Let’s take a quick look at the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There’s a lot of meat in there, but it’s meat that’s easily identified and served up. Let’s stick with just the stuff that sticks with this case.

1.  Congress shall make no law.  This is pretty simple: the first amendment is a restriction on the actions of Congress, not the people.  Much like the 2nd Amendment protects the right to bear arms, the First Amendment protects the rights of the people.

2.  An establishment of religion.  Again, pretty simple: Congress is not allowed to declare an official religion of the United States.  This was because many of the American colonies were founded by Christian people for religious purposes, and those Christian groups sometimes didn’t get along, sometimes even with themselves.  By avoiding the establishment of a national religion, those debates were rendered moot at the Federal level, even though every single colony still acknowledged Almighty God in their charters.  Today, this has been extended to other religions.

3.  Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  The Federal Government cannot keep you from practicing your religion.  If you want to practice Voodoo, that’s your business (so long as you’re not breaking any laws in doing so).

4.  Or abridging the freedom of speech.  Again, while there are reasonable limits placed on this right (you can’t yell fire in a theater, you can’t threaten someone’s life, etc.), it’s typically accepted that the government is not allowed to tell you what you can and cannot say.  Simple?  Sure.

So where did we get lost?  In my ever-loving opinion, it started in the 1980′s, when the Supreme Court ruled in Abington Township v. Schempp , where they introduced the “secular vs. religious” test.  Later, in Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh ACLU, the court went full retard, ruling that having the words “Gloria in Exelcis Deo” was illegal because that was totally religious, but it was OK to have a Menorah, because that’s totally secular.  By entertaining a micromanagement approach towards the free exercise of religion, the Court empowered those who want to push a secularist religion like atheism.

This leads to incidents like this, where the same people who thought it was evil, wrong, super-evil censorship to ban the sale of 2 Live Crew albums in Florida think it’s perfectly OK to paint over a student’s artistic expression of admiration for her God because, Lord knows someone might see her picture and get magically forced by the school board to join the Baptists.  They’re so busy enforcing point #2 of the amendment that they miss #3 and #4.  They’re taking a very liberal view of the constitution, where one can change the plain meaning of the constitution as it suits the situation (hence why I join Alonzo Rachel in rejecting “progressive” as a label for people who are more accurately described as “liberal”).  This liberal view means that the freedom of those who should be protected by the constitution is subject to the whims of a government bureaucrat.

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

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.

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.