(not you, it's regarding the article's author)
Posted on 05/04/2009 9:11:32 AM PDT by ASU_94
Few things in this life are more politically divisive than guns. Generally speaking, liberals hate them and conservatives love them. Yet both history and experience teach us that few things are as integral to freedom as guns. Therefore, when liberal politicians push for more gun control, freedom-loving Americans panic because they know that an assault on guns is an assault on freedom.
Our Founding Fathers were confident of the connection between guns and freedom, and they were convinced that the American people were freer than others because of the right to keep and bear arms. Said [1] James Madison: “[The Constitution preserves] the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation … (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
At our nation’s birth, the Founding Fathers tried to institute a political framework that would neither tend toward mob rule (democracy) nor an overbearing central government (tyranny). They knew freedom resided somewhere between the two extremes. To prevent democracy they designated our nation a republic via a written Constitution that established indirect elections for the presidency and gave the citizens no role in electing senators, so as to preserve the rule of law instead of the rule of the majority. (Today’s [2] direct election of senators was established by the 17th Amendment in 1913, under President Woodrow Wilson.) To prevent tyranny, the Founders established checks and balances between the various branches of government and recognized the people’s inalienable right to be armed. Alexander Hamilton surveyed the newly born nation and said: “[3] The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.”
The great orator Patrick Henry, who demanded to be given “liberty or … death,” concurred: “[4] The great principle is that every man be armed.”
As long as the government is not tyrannical, the government need not fear the people’s arms. Thus Madison’s observation that the federal government at our nation’s founding was not “afraid to trust the people with arms.” But if the government were to ignore its constitutional limitations and run roughshod over the people’s liberty, our Founders expected the people to rise up and preserve freedom. Said [5] Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.”
Did you catch that? No less a man than Thomas Jefferson described as “patriots” armed citizens who refuse to let go of their liberty, even at the cost of their lives.
During the 1990s, when the Clinton administration pushed for expanded gun control laws, various people warned: “Fear the government that fears your gun.” Law-abiding citizens understood that our Founders’ worldview had been completely flipped on its head, not by ubiquitous gun ownership but by a government that feared the idea of an armed citizenry.
With the election of Barack Obama, citizens are again confronted by an administration opposed to an armed citizenry, the tenets of our Founding Fathers, and thus to freedom itself. Although Obama has only been in office for three months, various gun registry schemes have already been promoted. And during an April 7 appearance on Good Morning America, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put in plainly: “[6] We want [guns] registered.” Of course she assured those watching Good Morning America that Democrats “[6] don’t want to take … guns away.”
We could ask ourselves, “What’s wrong with using registration to create a list of guns and gun owners to which our president has access?” But to ask that question is to answer it. Plus, here’s a better question: “Why weren’t our Founders intent on registering firearms and their owners?” The answer to this question is as profound as it is simple. They wanted “[4] every man” to be armed, not just certain men.
In describing the dangers of gun registration, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said: “[7] Ultimately registration will let the government know who owns guns and what guns they own. History [then] provides the outcome: confiscation. And a people disarmed is a people in danger.”
After Hitler and the Nazis registered all the guns in Germany, millions of Jews, Christians, and handicapped persons knew firsthand the “danger” of which LaPierre speaks. They were rounded up and starved to death, or used in inhumane medical experiments, or killed outright in the death camps.
But what could those Jews, Christians, and handicapped persons do? They couldn’t fight back, for they were without guns and thus without a means to ensure their own survival, much less their freedom.
...calling Captain Obvious
To the headline - duh!
Do Democrats Want to Take Our Guns?
Do bears poop in the woods?
Not the ones I know.
Duuuugh!...
In the end, guns may prove the only key to our freedom from the tyranny of this out of control whack left administration.
Do Democrats Want to Take Our Guns?
Long article to state a known fact.
Where ever the most restrictive guns laws are passed the controlling Government Party is the Democrats.
When ever a new law is proposed it is a Democrat.
Does a bear shit in the woods?
They’ll never register or take mine. This is where I will draw the line.
No, they just want reasonable commonsense gun safety regulations to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, children, or political opponents.
In describing the dangers of gun registration, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said: “[7] Ultimately registration will let the government know who owns guns and what guns they own. History [then] provides the outcome: confiscation. And a people disarmed is a people in danger.”
John Lott was on Coast to Coast AM last night (I guess between the "Killer Bees are from Neptune" and "The moon landing was faked by Oswald" segments.) He said that handguns have been registered in Canada since the 1930s. Only three cases have been solved because of those registrations, and two of those are questionable. Similarly Hawaii requires gun (I don't recall if it was pistol or all guns) registration and hasn't solved a single case because of it. Criminals like to hold onto their guns. Usually they are only left at the scene of the crime if the criminal is killed or seriously injured in the crime or it was an unregistered or stolen gun.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people can be so inwardly focused and afraid to accept the truth that they are incapable of detecting imminent threats to their lives and liberties.
(not you, it's regarding the article's author)
Second Amendment protections were put in place so that citizens could shoot operatives of an oppressive government, not deer
The writer of this article needed to another apt Jefferson quote:
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Do democrat POLITICIANS wan to take our guns?
I’d wager that the answer to that question wouldn’t be the same.
This is one of the reasons I won’t get another CC permit.
bump ... where’s Captain Obvious?
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