March 8, 2018
Guest Column by Justin O Smith
Let me be as clear as I can be. I don’t give a good damn how many Americans have died in recent shootings, when their lives are placed next to the liberty of millions of Americans, for generations to come. President Trump and Democrat and Republican senior senators, those who beamed at the prospect of exerting greater gun control during their February 28th meeting, seemed to forget that so many more lives have been saved by the right to self-defense, as they attacked the Second Amendment, due process under the law and individual liberty; and regardless of any new illegitimate and unconstitutional “law” they may implement, through coercion or “might makes right” action, they will still be wrong and spitting in the faces of the Founders and the American people.
Today’s criminals are nearly always armed with semi-automatic weapons, so police are not the only ones who need AR15s. Criminals victimize the public, and if citizens are to stand a fighting chance against criminals, they too need effective weapons.
However, America now finds itself saddled with a Trump administration, which is not so different from a Clinton administration on the Second Amendment after all. Trump endorsed the “assault weapons” ban, background checks for private sales at gun shows and raising the age for purchasing firearms to twenty-one. He also contended Congress was “petrified of the NRA”, as he tore into fellow Republicans as tools of the NRA and handed Democrats a propaganda victory.
As Katie Pavlich, journalist and Fox News contributor, recently noted, despite the AR15s popularity, data from Homeland Security shows that handguns are the weapon of choice when it comes to mass shootings. She also stated: “And let’s not forget that during the church massacre in Texas … it was an NRA-certified instructor who used an AR15 to stop the killing…”.
During the case of District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, the Supreme Court stated that the right to self-defense pre-existed government, which had already been confirmed by U.S. v. Cruikshank in 1875 and never overturned. The court went further in Heller, and it articulated the right of the individual to use firearms, that are at the same level of sophistication as firearms one’s potential adversary might have, whether that person is a criminal bad guy, psychopath or a soldier of a tyrannical government. And this must negate any attempt to ban semi-automatic rifles, even those deemed “assault weapons”.
The suggestion to raise the age limit is a non sequitur argument, and once again, a punishment of law abiding Americans. Age is not indicative of good sense or good moral character. Timothy McVeigh was in his late twenties when he bombed the Murrah Federal Building and the Las Vegas shooter was sixty-four. Aside from this, guns aren’t the problem any more than age can denote one’s mental stability, or lack thereof.
Forty-eight years ago at the age of thirteen, I would often walk through the main streets of Dixon, Missouri, with my twelve gauge shotgun slung across one arm and on my way to the fields and backwoods trails to shoot wild hogs, and I would happily wave at the police and sheriff’s deputies, as they drove by. No one thought this to be anything unusual.
Mental illness and its role in gun violence was also part of the discussion, and President Trump revealed his despotic side, when he explicitly denounced due process of the law, saying: “… take the firearms first, and then go to court … because a lot of times, by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court to get the due process procedures, I like taking the guns early … take the guns first, go through due process second.”
Who deems these people dangerous? The government? Family? Friends? It takes more than just one assertion, one allegation, and it must receive due process consideration, as guaranteed by the Constitution. Otherwise, the mere accusation of mental illness might become a subterfuge to disarm thousands of normal people, perhaps political opponents, by any future administration.
Trump’s far left suggestion to grab guns without legal cause was radical, idiotic, fascistic and unconstitutional. Such a comment from any Democrat president would have resulted in armed stand-offs with the police, calls for impeachment and a fury from the American people hotter than a thousand 100 megaton nukes exploding.
Senator Ben Sasse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was the only Republican to openly oppose President Trump, as he stated: “Strong leaders don’t automatically agree with the last thing said to them. We have a Second Amendment and due process of the law for a reason. We’re not ditching any Constitutional protections simply because the last person the President talked to today doesn’t like them.”
At what point are Trump’s supporters going to hold him accountable for his outlandish statements? At what point will they stop excusing him?
God forbid that America should ever descend into real tyranny, however, Trump’s remarks show precisely the reason America must not allow the Second Amendment to be eroded. Modern history is replete with examples of fascist and communist regimes that exterminated a combined total of 160 million of their own people, between 1917 and 1980, and, in light of our own early history under the British, it is ever more important for Americans to retain the right to possess modern semi-automatic weapons, to ensure that our government never feels it is more powerful than its citizens.
Foremost among our unalienable rights, the Framers of the Constitution recognized our right to life and to defend life — one’s self, one’s family and one’s property — by ratifying the Second Amendment. They wrote the amendment understanding that it did not grant this right and the right to self-defense was not dependent on that instrument for its existence. It was written to ensure that all future U.S. governments would respect the right to keep and bear arms, as a natural extension of the right to self-defense, in natural law and God’s law, standing alone and independent of the Constitution.
President Trump is a damned dangerous fool, and anyone who seeks to undermine our right to self-defense and to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, through Trump’s proposals, isn’t a friend to the American people. Those who seek added “security”, in any manner other than targeting the criminals, who mock our existing gun laws, rape laws, robbery laws and homicide laws, only ensure security will not exist, our liberty will be eroded, and we will cease to be a free people. And for everyone who thinks Trump and his fellow despots are right, you can relinquish your rights like sheep, and I’ll keep and defend my God-given Rights Until MY LAST DYING GASP.
– Justin O Smith is a 61 year old journalist who writes a weekly column for The Rutherford Reader in Murfreesboro, TN. He also served in the U.S. Army and worked as a fireman for eight years. He is a father of two daughters and grandfather of five grandchildren.
Justin found my blog and submitted the above article via my contact page last night. It’s a good example of how fast Trump can lose his base if he’s not careful. How many others out there are still fuming over his “take the guns” comment? Whether Trump was playing politics, or 8-level chess, or he merely spoke impulsively, he has quite a few people rattled:
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Trunpster, the lying fraud insider.
And the whirlpool tightens –
Trump has done some excellent things so far, but I remember a lot of really shady things he did/said during the primaries. All in all, I stand by my oft-repeated statement that he is a symptom not a cause, a reaction not a cure, a respite not a resolution.
I wish I could get deeper into this and other articles and comments, but I am really overloaded time-wise lately.
We, the public, have already accepted the NFA soft ban on machine guns and destructive devices, along with the ’86 Reagan ban on manufacture of new machine guns for civilian ownership, that effectively make them highly restricted items that are too rare and expensive for the average person to own.
That’s what I eventually expect to happen to most semi auto weapons, and it is Constitutional to do that as the NFA has never been successfully challenged in Court.
Not banned, you still have the right to keep and bear them, just too expensive and restricted for almost all normal people to actually do it.
Hey, he claimed he was a “germaphobe” and put the boots to some skanky porn queen who’s taken in enough smeckle to build a pipeline to rival the Keystone Pipeline? Maybe the ‘golden shower’ dossier deserves another look.
“America now finds itself saddled with a Trump administration, which is not so different from a Clinton administration…”
How can you have a discussion with anyone who can write something like that and think it’s some kind of reality?
Wake me up when they come for the guns.
Thank you Hardscrabble. The hysteria of these women drives me nuts
A month or so ago everyone was hyperventilating about the Norks and they were convinced that a nuclear war was only a day away and what did I tell them?
Trump is doing big things. Not everybody gets his methods the way you do. I did look up Mr. Smith and read some of his other stuff, we’d like him. I’ll give him a pass the same way as Zman last week.
Everything Trump does should be looked at as a negotiation in progress.
It’s easier to understand him that way.
of course you conveniently left out the remainder of that quote … “on the 2nd amendment” … but hey whatever fits your complaint. Given that verbally, Trump has stated things that even Clinton or Obama wouldnt have said on the 2nd the statement isnt that far off.
HSF,
Your comment about waking when they come for the guns reminded me of this comment below, supposedly written to Dave Hodges by someone in DHS, concerning the actual mechanics of gun confiscation. I found it rather chilling, having seen some fairly small police departments with MRAPS and such, which they have absolutely no use for.
“Mr. Hodges,
I have read much of what you have written about gun confiscation and so-called Fema camps. They are real and generally, the information you provide is accurate. To the best of my knowledge you have not covered the mechanics of a gun seizure operation.
I am not totally on board with what I have been training to do with regard to Americans and their Second Amendment gun rights. I am eligible to retire in three years and my protests will accomplish nothing and I would lose my retirement. So you could say that I go along to get along.
What I am writing to you about is the government sponsored gun confiscation that is coming to this country. There are people in our government who determined to take your guns.
We have trained in mock cities on how we will accomplish this feat. We use a traditional checkerboard pattern similar to what the citizens of Boston experienced after the Boston Marathon bombing.
We have routinely practiced the same scenario, repeatedly. To cover a suburban block, our forces approach with two armored personnel carriers on opposite ends of the street, two per side of the street. One vehicle remains on each side of the street as the accompanying vehicle moves down the block. Our teams approach a house from the front but we also flank the house and enter the backyard. Our support vehicle trains its guns on the house. the assault teams consist of a dozen men each. The armored support vehicle has orders to immediately fire upon anyone appearing in a window with anything that could be construed as a gun. Our personnel, will knock one time on the front door. When the door is answered, we secure the individual or individuals and ask them how many people are in the house and where they are. We also ask how many guns are in the house, what type of guns they own and where they are stored and would anyone have guns on their person. Most often we have trained to assault a house between the hours of 3 and 4 in the morning. Then we clear the house with an emphasis on first entering the bedrooms. We accomplish this task in two man teams. We order any occupants to get on the floor and we secure them and then begin the search for guns. We emply a portable metal detector and gun sniffing dogs if available.
If the occupants are nonresponsive, we enter after knocking down the front door. Before going in, we have already viewed the schematics of the target house. Yes, we have the blueprints for virtually every house in America. We go in hot and are trained to use deadly force against any any all perceived resistance. We don’t use tear gas, we are trained to shoot any resisters.
Upon entering the house we are trained to identify ourselves and order everyone out of the house under gunpoint. We have trained on mock houses in which guns were hidden in the attic, under the bed, in a safe and even in underwear drawers. If the seized guns are legally registered, we seize the guns and let the family return. If the guns are illegal or not registered, we take the entire family into custody. We have practiced transporting families to differential holding facilities re children, men and women are held in different facilities.
Each armored vehicle and their personnnel make their way down the street from opposite ends. The accompanying vehicle stands guard at the end of each block to prevent escape. We prefer to execute the operation in bad weather because it eliminates escape possibilities.
One of the reasons that I am wirting to you is because you have identified Camp Grayling as a detention facility during the Jade Helm drills. during that time my team trained foreign solders at the camp in the art of securing new prisoners. My training of foreign nationals makes me suspect that future gun confiscation efforts will be conducted under the auspices of the United Nations although I have not been told that. This is where I part company with my employer. I will not participate in such an operation.
When you write future articles on potential gun confiscation activities, I am hopeful that you will refer to some of the logistics to evaluate the authenticity of the information that you are given…….”
They’re coming. Whether they are successful or not will be something else. And if they are, who will actually abide by so obvious an unconstitutional, illegal and illegitimate “law”?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5087/text
Most men who are struck by mental illness exhibit it between the ages of 16-21 (women later, but women generally don’t shoot a lot of people). So there is some sense in raising the age to buy a gun until after their family and friends have had an opportunity to see whether they’ve made it to 21 mentally healthy. Of course that logic should then apply to other things – like voting. If the age of majority is 21, let it be 21 across the board. It’d be a deathknell for tattoo parlors.
Regarding taking guns from the ostensibly crazy before due process: it sounds bad – and generally would be – but as with the 4th amendment requirement for a warrant there are exceptions for exigent circumstances and evidence being in plain view. “Red flag” laws could require that a restraining order be adjudicated in court on a tight timeline.
The young are considered children until they’re 25 today, and most of them act like it, so why not 25?
There was a time when a boy became a Man at 18 and was expected to act like it, but those days have passed.
1. Trump the deal maker has made a terrible mistake.
or
2. Trump is actually “one of them” and it is his supporters that were duped.
or
3. Trump is quietly working the chessboard and out of these recent 2A defeats will come a huge advancement for the rights of the individual to protect him/her self.
I’m worried that #2 is looming large as a possibility.
#2 – Of course tRump is one of them. He hired Steven Mnuchin as Secretary of the Treasury.
Boom Boom Boom
TDS living strong inside some still. Perfect example.
screeeee screeeee
I agree with Uncola. Trump is eroding his base at a fast pace. The take the guns first statement is just one issue in a long train of issues he has created.
Here is the article written by Chuck Baldwin regarding the so called “Red Flag” laws being enacted and passed in various states. The “Red Flag law in passed in Washington state has had its first victim in Seattle. Here is the link to the text:
See how quickly this was put in place and used all because Trump opened his mouth like an id 10 t. I hate to say it but Mike Pence made more sense during that meeting than Trump.
God help us all.
Once white Americans are disarmed then the genocide will commence.
None ya biz, the gun idiots aren’t his base. That’s like the Nazis thinking they are his base. If you’re a fringe person you probably don’t like Trump. But then again, you don’t like anybody so what’s the difference? Trump knows that, and doesn’t really care about trying to please people that you can’t please. Like Hardscrabble says, wake him up when they come for the guns.
President Trump “voiced support for confiscating guns from certain individuals deemed to be dangerous, even if it violates due process rights.” Does anyone doubt that the FBI should have taken away Nikolas Cruz’s guns? There are a lot of complaints about what the FBI should have done, if not that, what would you have had them do?
Follow up on the tip they received & communicate with local law enforcement. Although, seeing as local law enforcement was failing to uphold the law in order to gain federal tax dollars, I’m not sure that would have worked.
IMO, the fault lies with local law enforcement. Nikolas Cruz should not have be allowed to legally purchase firearms in the first place. They had the tools needed to prevent this tragedy. They failed to use them.
Busy bee. What “tools” are you talking about? It doesn’t solve anything to focus on who should have communicated with who. That’s a total cop-out. At some point, somebody has to man up, and take action. And it doesn’t matter who. And obviously the action that should have been taken, is somebody should taken that psychopath’s guns away from him before shot all those people. Theory and fear don’t keep our country safe. Men have to act, in the name of doing the right thing.
The tools I am talking about are the laws that are already in place, such as the Baker act. I agree, action should have been taken-the psychopath should never have been allowed to legally purchase a gun in the first place.
To clarify: I believe action by local law enforcement should have been taken earlier in this young man’s life. Why wait until someone is ready to kill others or themselves, and has already acquired the means to do, so before action is taken? It’s too little, too late at that point.
My friend was shot & stabbed by a guy suffering from PTSD. The guy did have his weapons taken away from him, but he was determined-he found a way to get more.
The Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law was passed by the voters of Washington State in 2016 via initiative and went into effect in 2017.
The Seattle man was the first person to have his guns forcibly confiscated by police. Others have voluntarily surrendered their guns because of an ERPO.
“The Extreme Risk Protection Order allows family members or officers to ask a judge for permission to confiscate firearms from someone they believe poses a danger to themselves or others.” What about this is a bad idea, Busy Bee?
I have no problem with the goal of keeping firearms out of the hands of people who are a danger to themselves or others. I am concerned that this new law will violate due process.
I was simply pointing out that this law was not a result of anything Trump said.
From the Chuck Baldwin article.
‘As it stands right now, Donald Trump has opened the door for more damage being done to the Second Amendment than any other president, Democrat or Republican, in our lifetime.’
A man who cheats on his wife is capable of doing anything.
You must be a big Romney guy.
Can’t stand him
We don’t agree on a lot of things, but that was my biggest problem with Trump from day one. And not just the wife, the walking away from his children.
Boggles my mind.
His statement about due process second really was the final straw for me. I pray he was just spouting off, as he does seem to enjoy doing–but even if it was in jest, I am not taking that statement lightly. I’m sorry, but how is it possible that there hasn’t been more outrage about that here, of all places? I see more comments and declarations of support of Trump’s intelligence on the latest Q piece than of anger and outrage on this one, and that to me is rather incredible. I had thought the members of this forum stood first for our liberties and freedoms as Americans, designated at our country’s origins–not for Trump first. If the president has even in jest threatened our rights to due process, how is that something that can be overlooked? I’m more than willing to back Trump if he remains loyal to the folks that got him into the White House in the first place, but this is a huge strike against us. If he capitulates to the left on this issue, what makes us think he won’t do the same on other issues further down the road? I don’t place my faith in anonymous figures like Q who MIGHT be Trump in disguise, and MIGHT just be assholes trying to mindfuck us all. Am I seriously the only one who thinks that the due process comment is the sign of a man at least as equally dangerous as Obama? I know we want to maintain hope that Trump will fix this corruption. But I think it’s foolhardy to ignore what Trump is saying and doing, and put faith in an anonymous poster on a forum instead. Aren’t we always mocking HRC and Obama supporters for their blind adoration of them despite all their heinous hypocrisy? Isn’t this just a different side of the coin?
Portcisco. The only thing you have to fear, is fear itself. Nothing bad has happened. Calm yourself down, anxiety about things beyond your control is no way to go through life. Wait and see what happens, and react to it then. It’s a lot healthier
The Trump Card of the Global Cabal was all set for gun control. Weinstein was ecstatic when he went too far. Then the lock and load happened and that weasel pulled up his pants and walked it ALL THE WAY BACK.
OH SO CLOSE. Just One Mistake and Zardoz will FALL OUT.
Anonymous is your local Parasite Minion. He pooh poohs all the Real Stuff. THE TRAIN IS FINE.
Due process is one cornerstone of a government that endorses liberty. I think that if folks are allowed to take guns without due process then perhaps they can take everything without due process at some point. Hell they are already doing it with Civil Asset Forfeiture .
As I’ve said here a few times…gun confiscation is coming. When my FBI stepson asked me what would I do if he came for my guns I knew that he’d been prompted by his handlers.
NtroP…..I think that the stuff you wrote about confiscation is true but I doubt that a full scale confiscation will be handled by Americans . I don’t think that half of the law enforcement folks would participate . In addition the author assumes that folks will go quietly which once a few hundred folks are killed in this ploy all hell will break loose. The orderly plan they had will fall apart.
Armour vehicles can be made useless with a couple of shots and the armor is not much protection when thermite holes have been cut in the top for gas to be poured down.
I guess the wake me up when they are coming is one way to deal with thing but I’d prefer to put the fight off as long as possible. I have about 10 more years that will probably allow me to be a factor in any fight. After that I’ll be in fuck it mode and go full tilt beast.
The problem with gun confiscation is it has to start somewhere. When it does, that first street will notify all the other streets – and the domestic snipers. Having an armored vehicle is fine – once the soldiers leave it, they will perish, hard and painful, but they will. Their families will bear the brunt of their just “following orders”. And the rest of that city will NOT be a cakewalk.
If each house claims the life of one soldier then it will take DIVISIONS to clean the guns out of one large city – and the next unit to get their marching orders will become EXTREMELY reluctant to do so. What happens when the entire army decides that fighting with their friends’ families is NOT what they signed on for?
Anyway, we won’t know until / if it starts – and then the gates of hell will open. Anyone who imported “rapefugees”, anyone who financed them, anyone who censored blogs and channels will learn what “Quisling” means – and what happened to the original. We will not forget or forgive, and your sins will find you.