Posted on 11/03/2013 5:56:29 AM PST by 2nd amendment mama
Click here to download a pdf of Guns & Ammo‘s column Let’s Talk Limits. Technical Editor Dick Metcalf [above] penned the editorial for the December issue. Metcalf, a writer whose technical knowledge (or lack thereof) has earned him brickbats before, bases his editorial on a distinction between “infringement” and “regulation.” “I bring this up,” Metcalf writes, “because way too many gun owners still believe that any regulation of the right to keep and bear arms is an infringement. The fact is that all Constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.” That, dear reader, is a major WTF moment. One of many . . .
Metcalf’s dietribe [sic] turns to the antis’ favorite justification for infringing on our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms: you “Can’t yell ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theater.” Yes. Yes you can. It’s just that you’re legally responsible for what happens next. And what happens next in Metcalf’s editorial is bizarre—especially for an article that appears in a gun magazine:
Many argue that any regulation at all is, by definition, an infringement. If that were true, then the authors of the Second Amendment themselves, should not have specified “well-regulated.”
You’re kidding, right? Metcalf doesn’t know that “well-regulated” is “referring to the property of something being in proper working order“? That it has nothing to do with government regulation? No way!
Way. Sure Metcalf’s bone-headed, uninformed, patently obvious misinterpretation of the Second Amendment’s introductory clause isn’t as bad as the antis’ assertion that the 2A only applies to Americans in a militia, but it’s the next worst thing. Coming from a gun guy, a man who trumpets the fact that he co-wrote The Firearm Owners Protection Act and taught college seminars on Constitutional law, well, I’m speechless.
Too bad Metcalf isn’t. Once again, he turns to the antis’ well-worn fundamentally flawed pro-regulation arguments to advocate gun control. He deploys ye olde auto analogy to defend state-issued carry permits against readers who believe that Second Amendment is the only authority they need to bear arms.
I wondered whether those same people believed that just anybody should be able to buy a vehicle and take it out on public roadways without any kind of driver’s training, test or license.
I understand that driving a car is not a right protected by the Constitution, but to me the basic principle is the same. I firmly believe that all U.S. citizens have the right to bear arms, but . . .
I’m going to stop there. Anyone who says “I believe in the Second Amendment but–” does not believe in the Second Amendment. They are not friends, they are not frenemies, they are enemies of The People of the Gun.
More than that, whether or not these nominal gun rights supporters (e.g., President Obama, Senator Charles Schumer) “believe” in the Second Amendment is irrelevant. As stated above, the right to keep and bear arms is a natural right, stemming from our natural right of self-defense. It doesn’t require belief, faith or political justification.
Equally, the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right. Wikipedia defines the term thusly:
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals’ freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one’s ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.
Civil rights include the ensuring of peoples’ physical and mental integrity, life and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as race, gender, national origin, color, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, or disability; and individual rights such as privacy, the freedoms of thought and conscience, speech and expression, religion, the press, assembly and movement.
I have a major issue with the word “unwarranted” (wikipedia won’t let me delete it). But the point is made: Americans have a civil right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by . . . wait for it . . . the Constitution. Specifically, the Second Amendment. This despite the fact that . . .
Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected, although most democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil and political rights. Civil rights are considered to be natural rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America that “a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
So civil means natural, and natural means inviolable. Except by people who support their violation. People like Dick Metcalf, who ends his pro-gun control polemic by asserting that Illinois’ new carry law—mandating that citizens must complete 16 hours of training to “earn” the right to bear arms— is not “infringement in and of itself.”
“But that’s just me . . .” Metcalf closes. Yes it is. And I believe that anyone who supports a gun magazine that prints this kind of anti-gun agitprop is supporting the diminution and destruction of our gun rights. Or is that just me? [h/t b0b]
You know how one You Tube leads to another? I found this while viewing your link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb8mU_g_f2w
I grew up with American Rifleman as my Dad showed me the many pleasures and freedoms that were associated with the 1950's and 1960s NRA which was not deemed an anarchist organization by the government of the day.
Did you know that the orange “Guns and Ammo” on the cover glows in a black light?
I expect Metcalf will resign and apologize within a week.
I quit taking G&A’s political page seriously years ago when the author of an article went into a diatribe on citizenship.
I knew he had been reading STARSHIP TROOPERS as all his political ideas were exactly like the book.
Back in 1968, G&A was called a “noisy” magazine, by the anti-gun press, for it’s then pro-gun slants.
The good things about the magazine is it does play to the “I want that” desires of the public, which is their real purpose.
A fine example is the AR-15. In the 1960s and early 70s you could not give one away(except to me).
“What good is it?”
“Will it knock down a deer?”
“A Mattel toy!”
Then G&A started a series by Mel Tappan on SURVIVAL GUNS, and suddenly everyone and his dog wanted one.
Of course, Jimmy Carter and his failed Iran policy didn’t help any, and when Americans also discovered the MAD (Mutually assured destruction) nuke policy meant the public was really on their own for survival.
I quit that rag many years ago. They have always been a “joe biden” kind of gun rights business.
Well, actually, I didn’t.
Uh—should I care?
Regulation IS infringement. Look up the definitions. How can you regulate something without infringing on its free exercise? The very nature of a regulation is an infringement.
This editor is dabbling in word games, and coming out much the worse for his effort.
Folks in the ammunition and firearms industry have provided the necessary help for the enemies of freedom to accomplish things that they never could have accomplished on their own.
How many patriots know that the 1968 Gun Control Act was initiated, drafted and supported by the American firearms industry (SAAMI) as a mis-guided protectionist scheme?
How many patriots know that the 1994 Assault Weapons and Extended Magazine bans were initiated and supported by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF & SAAMI)? How could anybody with a even a little knowledge of firearms believe that Senator Feinstein and her staff drafted the AWB? It was far too detailed and selective for anyone outside of the industry to daft.
The citizens seemed to miss the obvious that Ruger’s (long time SAAMI member) Mini-14 was not an “Assault Rifle” while Colt’s (not a SAAMI member at the time) AR-15 was, even though the two rifles functioned identically. It was a mis-guided protectionist scheme to protect the industry from the perceived economic danger imposed by the evil looking SKS’s and semi-auto clones of AK-47’s, plain and simply.
I saw, read and studied the draft of the AWB & EMB in 1989 (!!) when I worked at Winchester. It was being circulated within the ammunition and firearms industry by Bob Delfay of SAAMI to gain support for the measures prior to introduction in the Senate by Feinstein. It took another 5 years to complete, legislate and implement the bans.
Welcome aboard, albeit quite late.
I only ever read G&A because of Col. Cooper’s column on the back page. Since his death, I doubt I have bought more than two issues off the newsstand. I have subscribed to “Shooting Times,” though I don’t have a current subscription.
I was alarmed when “Shooting Times” and “Guns & Ammo” were teken under the same ownership, and it looks like I, and everyone else who was alarmed, was correct.
I won’t buy another copy of either magazine as long as Metcalf is on the staff of either one, that’s for sure.
Most excellent!!
Thank you for sharing!!
It's against the law to indiscriminately shoot people, too.
However, in the case of the theater, your mouth isn't duct-taped shut on entrance to the theater (prior restraint).
Looks like a S&W Sigma. Probably a 9mm.
P.S. If it is a Sigma, it’s a POS. And I’d be embarassed to carry it.
Metcalf needs to be Zumboed.
I used to like his handgun hunting articles many years ago. Typical outdoor writer getting a little too full of himself. He’s spent too much time on the payroll.
We have jerks like this at my local gun club. We call them “Golfer’s with Guns”.
Thanks for that link. This totally explains it now.
Metcalf is a quisling.
Yeah, I fired one some years a go. It was a poor imitation of a Glock.
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