Posted on 01/08/2013 10:45:12 AM PST by Red Steel
Editors note: The following was sent to Montanas congressional delegation on behalf of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.
Because there is much discussion among gun owners of Montana about proposals by Sen. Diane Feinstein and others for Congress to enact various types of gun control, I though you would appreciate knowing what I hear from Montanans about this.
I speak to you as a person intimately familiar with firearms, with public policy about firearms, as a person accepted in state and federal courts as an expert on firearms, firearms safety and use of force, and as the president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, Montanas primary organization asserting the right to keep and bear arms, also affiliated or associated with the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Second Amendment Foundation.
On behalf of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, I wish to express our unequivocal opposition to any ban on any class or type of firearms, any new registration requirements on any class or types of firearms, any restrictions on manufacture, sale or possession of ammunition feeding devices of any configuration or capacity, and any government intrusion into firearm transfers between private citizens. Any congressional actions in any of these areas would be an infringement upon the rights the citizens of Montana have reserved to themselves.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article II, Section 12 of the Montana Constitution these sections of these foundational documents are not government permission to keep firearms. They are statements whereby the people have reserved these rights to themselves specifically from government interference.
These statements do not create any rights, but simply recognize preexisting natural rights which are restricted from government interference. As you consider whatever gun control (actually people control) may be offered by Sen. Feinstein or others, I hope you will keep these facts clearly in mind.
Gun-free zones are a terrible failure of public policy. Virtually all mass shootings, including the one in Connecticut that has sparked the current wave of media hysteria, happen in places where public policy has incorrectly assured people that they are safe, but where the policy has actually created risk-free zones for madmen, and pools of defenseless victims conveniently offered up for slaughter by failed policy.
Former police officer Ron Avery says, The only way to check violence in progress, where the victim can neither hide nor flee, is by equal or greater force in a timely manner. If Congress feels compelled to do something in the wake of the Connecticut shooting, it should repeal the pretense of all federally-mandated or federally-inspired gun-free zones.
For any inside the Beltway who actually believe in the effectiveness of gun-free zones, I recommend that the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the U.S. Supreme Court and all federal courthouses be declared gun-free zones, and that all armed guards and protective personnel in those places be removed. If gun-free zones are effective for our kids, theyre good enough for our servants.
Various gun bans, licensing or registration schemes, and/or bans or restrictions of ammunition feeding devices will fail. I wont bother you with discussion of the fact that any such restrictions will have no effect on criminals or madmen. I believe you already know that.
I do hope to inform you about how strongly the gun owners of Montana feel about their right to keep and bear arms. I have asked around among a considerable number of friends, acquaintances and contacts in Montana. I have not learned of anyone who would comply, for example, with a new federal law requiring them to register or surrender their semi-auto rifles to authorities.
Let me be very clear: Montanans will not comply with any new federal restrictions. The most any such restrictions would do would be to create a huge, new, armed, outlaw class of citizens. And I very much doubt that most Montana law enforcement personnel would cooperate in enforcing any such federal restrictions.
Clearly, the vast numbers of citizens who have bought new firearms in the past month, especially the hundreds of thousands of expensive semi-auto rifles, did not buy these new firearms simply so theyd have them available to surrender if Congress should pass a law demanding they do so.
Since Montana law enforcement personnel are unlikely to enforce any such restrictions, the effect of passage of such restrictions would ultimately be for federal officers to come to Montana to enforce them. Because most Montanans will simply not comply with any new federal restraints on a right they have reserved specifically from government interference, the obvious result would be armed conflict between Montanans and federal enforcers. (I offer this not as a threat or a challenge, but simply as an observation.)
I certainly hope you would not set Montana on the path to an armed conflict with federal enforcers by aiding or supporting passage of any new federal restrictions. That would not be in the best interest of your constituents.
Instead, if you feel compelled to pass some actually corrective legislation in response to the media hysteria over the Connecticut shooting, I highly recommend that you get rid of those dangerous and illusory gun free zones.
Gary Marbut, of Missoula, is the president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.
One way or another...
Each Orange Dot Is a Gun Owner
Then the US government would have went into coo coo bird land. If Wacos happen, anti-government guerrilla warfare cells would form all over the US.
The money quote. Advice to gun-grabbing politicians: think and live.
They only got away with this once.
That's the general idea.
Eliminate the US as a effective presence the world stage, provide a free hand for the establishment of ummah.
Ever wonder why we aren't mentioned in Revelation?
what’s never said is, that even without the 2nd amendment, no where does the Constitution allow the federal government to do anything about guns - no registering, no background checks, no permits. Nothing.
Ruby Ridge?
Hundreds of anonymous SWAT raids?
Perhaps “once” has a different definition in your dictionary.
Yet they do.
The government may attack a few fringe groups without serious problems. But trying to take the guns of the population at large has been tried before. It started the most important war in US history.
http://www.davekopel.org/2A/LawRev/american-revolution-against-british-gun-control.html
Smaller country, but still - if America can marshall a few million out of the 80 million gun owners....
I don’t think the Maoists have the balls to really try by making their idiotic and megalmaniac fantasies come true...but we will see.
Test....
I know about RR quite well. The FBI’s Sniper Lon Noriuchi murdered his wife and child. It was entrapment and murder, but not on the wholesale scale of Waco where the government murdered dozens of women and children and used US troops to do it. All the rest were SWAT, ATF and FBI.
The picture is what I was remarking on. It won’t happen again without a rebellion or repercussions.
Are Americans a different species than the people in those countries? Do we really have some magical genetic protection from it ever happening here?
Yes, it’s called individualism. You won’t find that prevalent around the world except in the US.
saw a show on that this morning early. They showed the video of all the ATF agents during the gun battle and after the cease fire was declared.
Certainly not America’s finest moment.
We need to make sure they never, ever, ever have confidence that they can indeed pull it off.
The instant they believe they can get away with it, without any personal loss, they will try it.
So what if a few hundred, or a few thousand LEOs or Military are sacrificed on the alter of the greater good?
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