Posted on 12/18/2015 7:06:56 AM PST by Kaslin
It wasn't until last week that I realized the ACLU opposed gun control. The co-chair of the Colorado ACLU announced his support for use of guns in self-defense on Facebook.
Unfortunately, in the resulting furor he was forced to resign. Indicating that he owned a firearm apparently was too much for his colleagues to bear.
Of course, Loring Wirbel's original endorsement was a bit unusual. He wrote: "we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, 'This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before Election Day.' They're not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there's always force."
Maybe his colleagues had a point in getting him to quit.
While Donald Trump isn't my style, threatening to execute his supporters is a bit much. Of course, he's not the first Republican to be the target of Hitleresque insults. They illustrate how intolerance has come to dominate much of modern liberalism.
Unfortunately, that philosophy also has taken over the agenda of the ACLU. Not only is it frustrating to have a powerful organization working on the wrong side of so many issues. It's also a great name. Liberties once were understood to be freedoms responsibly exercised by individuals held accountable within a system of ordered liberty.
That's why I wish Mr. Wirbel's rather lurid suggestion actually sprang from a principled belief in the liberty to own guns. Although I'd advise him to ease up on the Trump supporters, at least he would be actively upholding one of Americans' most basic civil liberties.
Alas, that's not to be.
Indeed, Mr. Wirbel apparently doesn't even believe in the ACLU's work on free speech. When challenged on Facebook, Loring explained that Trump was a "hate-speech felon who should be in prison." While later calling that "a little droll," he declared in a letter-to-the-editor that "hate speech" was not protected by the First Amendment. You don't want to be on his naughty list!
As for Christmas, I don't know what Mr. Wirbel believes about religious liberty, but I do know the ACLU is always ready to punish people for living their faith in the name of "civil liberties." For instance, on its website the ACLU lists "religious liberty" among its issues. Yet of four categories, only one, "free exercise of religion," actually has anything to do with religious liberty.
The other three are excuses to restrict free exercise. One is "government promotion of religion," which the ACLU interprets to mean as even the smallest mention of religion, such as erecting a cross at a veterans’ memorial, in a nation founded by people of faith.
Then there's "religion and public schools," which requires excommunicating religious people from a public institution which they are forced to fund. Worst of all is "using religion to discriminate," under which the ACLU seeks to ruin anyone with the wrong religious beliefs. Want to be a photographer? Then participate in gay marriages or face bankruptcy.
Where's the freedom in all that? In the ACLU's view, only the religious person gets no liberty.
This kind of anti-liberties philosophy wouldn't mean so much if government remained small. Even a true "wall of separation" wouldn't be that important. There'd be no creche at the courthouse at Christmas, but everywhere else would be open.
However, since government has taken over education, welfare, health care, and so much more, it means the ACLU is busy trying to limit people's liberties everywhere. There's also the ideologically-driven war on "discrimination," which increasingly turns business and other decisions over to government.
Most of this has no conceivable relation to "civil liberties." For instance, the ACLU indicates its outrage over "business owners refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception for their employees." Are free hair transplants also a "civil liberty"? Is there anything business has the liberty not to pay for?
Finally, there's "criminal law reform," which really means the freedom of criminals to get away with their crimes. The liberties that deserve the greatest protection are of the law-abiding, and especially the victims of crimes. That's why I thought it would be nice if an ACLU member actually endorsed using guns in self-defense.
However, the ACLU actually is determined to impede the police protecting the rest of our liberties. That includes fighting terrorists, who don't believe in freedom for anyone, except their right to kill us. Positions like that are why I'd like to get the name back from the ACLU.
Alas, despite my hope that the ACLU had reformed, it hasn't changed its position on gun control. Or on anything else.
I have an informational “Ten Myths of Gun Control” from the NRA and they actually quote a former ACLU president who opposed gun registration due to that sort of surveillance of people (and threat of governments using such lists for confiscation), even though he did not believe in guns himself.
The ACLU only has a problem with Christianity and Judaism in public and in schools. They have no problem with Islam being promoted in schools.
If this is not a BS article then I will give them props for their stance, sometime regardless of being on the left or right, common sense prevails.
You got that right.
The ACLU, as I have read, has two schools of thought that vie with one another. One is what we know as illiberal “liberal” today. Do-gooding out of narrow pride rather than out of broad wisdom. The other is libertarian. The second one might be just fine with RKBA. This is an internal squabble for them.
So....if you disagree with the ACLU then you should be killed.
Got it!
The problem with this Hate Speech idea is 'how do you define hate speech'?
Who gets to define hate speech and who gets to Redefine hate speech (because you know that it will be redefined)?
These people who wish to protect "vulnerable minorities" seem to think that they are the perfect arbiters of right and wrong and that they will always be the ones who decides what is Hate Speech. They seem to forget that all in politics is eternally in flux. The adage that "This too will pass" is an eternal truth.
Once there is legislated that government can decide what is legal speech, eventually someone else will take the reins of power that controls speech and your sacred cow will be slaughtered.
"Why should America adopt a policy of near-zero tolerance for private gun ownership?. .. (W)ho can still argue compellingly that Americans can be trusted to handle guns safely? We think the time has come for Americans to tell the truth about guns. They are not for us, we cannot handle them." --Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1993
These editorial opinions expressed by two of the nations most widely read newspapers represent the absolute extreme in the firearms controversy: that no citizen can be trusted to own a firearm. It is the product of a series of myths which--through incessant repetition--have been mistaken for truth. These myths are being exploited to generate fear and mistrust of the 60-65 million decent and responsible Americans who own firearms. Yet, as this document proves, none of these myths will stand up under the cold light of fact.
One clear example of a poll done which used biased questions and flawed procedures was conducted by Louis Harris Research Inc. (LHRI) in the summer of 1993. The poll reported unprecedented levels of gun abuse by high school students. However, after examining the poll, Professor Gary Kleck of Florida State University, the nation's leading scholar on crime and firearms, called the findings "...implausible, being inconsistent with more sophisticated prior research." Prof. Kleck found the Harris findings of students who had been shot at or who had actually shot at someone to be insupportable by crime and victimization statistics as reported by the Department of Justice: "Even if the percent of handgun crime victimization had doubled from the average for the 1979-1987 period, the LHRI results would still be overstated by a factor of 100." In the end, he labeled the LHRI poll "advocacy polling."1
A more direct measure of the public's attitude on "gun control" comes when the electorate has a chance to speak on the issue. Public opinion polls do not form public policy, but individual actions by hundreds of thousands of citizens do. For example, in 1993, the voters of Madison, Wisconsin, were presented with a referendum calling for a ban on handgun ownership in that city. Pollsters predicted an overwhelming win for the gun banners. When Second Amendment rights activists rallied opposition and educated the electorate on the facts about gun ownership, the referendum was defeated. In the 1993 gubernatorial elections, the incumbent governor in New Jersey and the front-runner in Virginia made "gun control" a central theme of their campaigns. Both candidates lost to opponents who stressed real criminal justice reforms, not "gun control." In November 1982, Californians rejected, by a 63-37% margin, a statewide handgun initiative that called for the registration of all handguns and a "freeze" on the number of handguns allowed in the state. Again, pre-elect ion pollsters reported support for the measure. That initiative was also opposed by the majority of California's law enforcement community. Fifty-one of the state's 58 working sheriffs opposed Proposition 15, as did 101 chiefs of police. Nine law enforcement organizations, speaking for rank-and-file police, went on record against the initiative.
Increasingly, the American people are voicing support for reform of the criminal justice system. The NRA also actively supports initiatives calling for mandatory jail time for violent criminals. In 1982, the residents of Washington, D.C., enacted an NRA-endorsed mandatory penalty bill, actively opposed by the anti-gun D.C. City Council, that severely punishes those who use firearms to commit a violent crime . In 1988, the residents of Oregon approved, by a 78-22% margin, an NRA-supported initiative mandating prison sentences for repeat offenders after the state legislature and governor failed to act on the issue. In 1993, the residents of Washington state overwhelmingly approved the "three strikes you're out" initiative calling for life sentences without parole for anyone convicted of a third serious crime. NRA's CrimeStrike program was instrumental in collecting the needed signatures to put that question on the ballot.
In 1993, the Southern States Police Benevolent Association conducted a scientific poll of its members. Sixty-five percent of the respondents identified "gun control" as the least effective method of combating violent crime. Only 1% ide ntified guns as a cause of violent crime, while 48% selected drug abuse, and 21% said the failure of the criminal justice system was the most pressing cause. The officers also revealed that 97% support the right of the people to own firearms, and 90% said they believed the Constitution guarantees that right.
The SSPBA findings affirmed a series of polls conducted by the National Association of Chiefs of Police of every chief and sheriff in the country, representing over 15,000 departments. In 1991 the poll discovered for the third year in a row that law enforcement officers overwhelmingly agree that "gun control" measures have no effect on crime. A clear majority of 93% of the respondents said that banning firearms would not reduce a criminal's ability to get firearms, while 89% said that the banning of semi-automatic firearms would not reduce criminal access to such firearms. Ninety-two percent felt that criminals obtain their firearms from illegal sources; 90% agreed that the banning of private ownership of firearms would not result in fewer crimes. Seventy-three percent felt that a national waiting period would have no effect on criminals getting firearms. An overwhelming 90% felt that such a scheme would instead make agencies less effective against crime by reducing their manpower and only serve to open them up to liability lawsuits.
These are the only national polls of law enforcement officers in the country, with the leadership of most other major groups adamantly refusing to poll their membership on firearms issues.
The source and the entire article is
here
American Commie liberal union.
I am not the least bit fooled by the ACLU on this issue. Every progressive says “I believe in the right of Americans to have a gun for hunting and self defense, as long as it is unloaded and locked, as long as it is a mzzle loading single shot, as long as it is registered and stored at the local police department, as long as they are licensed to own.............
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