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A Threat We Can’t Ignore (gun owners)
New York Times ^ | June 20, 2009 | Bob Herbert

Posted on 06/20/2009 7:38:14 AM PDT by reaganaut1

...

There is no Obama gun ban on the way. Gun control advocates are, frankly, disappointed [so far].

What’s important to grasp here is that this madness has nothing to do with hunting, which the politicians always claim to be defending, and everything to do with the use of firearms to resist policies and lawful government actions that some gun owners don’t like.

In a speech in February to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the executive vice president of the N.R.A., Wayne LaPierre, said: “Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.”

A new book by Dennis Henigan, a vice president at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, goes into detail on this point. In “Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy,” Mr. Henigan refers to a Harvard Law Journal article written by an N.R.A. lawyer titled, “The Second Amendment Ain’t About Hunting.” In the article, the lawyer makes it clear that for the N.R.A., the right to bear arms is “directed at maintaining an armed citizenry. ... to protect against the tyranny of our own government.”

There was a wave of right-wing craziness along those lines during the Clinton administration. Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed. The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.

In the aftermath of Waco, the N.R.A. did its typically hysterical, fear-mongering thing. In a fund-raising letter in the spring of 1995, LaPierre wrote: “Jack-booted government thugs [have] more power to take away our Constitutional rights, break in our doors, "

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: banglist; bobherbert; guns
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To: harpseal; TexasCowboy; nunya bidness; AAABEST; Travis McGee; Squantos; Shooter 2.5; wku man; SLB; ..
The latest whine from the

...of which the race-baiting, freedom-hating Marxist, Bob Herbert, is a card-carrying member.

Doom on him and all like him.

21 posted on 06/20/2009 8:09:24 AM PDT by Joe Brower (Sheep have three speeds: "graze", "stampede" and "cower".)
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To: Nat Turner; dirtboy; Emmett McCarthy; PLD; flowerplough; reaganaut1; SWAMPSNIPER; joma89

Read the COMMENTS section after the article if you want to be scared out of your mind.

Most commenters resist further calls for gun control, but a majority call for control of Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch to silence conservatives who fill people with hate.

These are dangerous times, folks.


22 posted on 06/20/2009 8:11:38 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi (Too many conservatives urge retreat when the war of politics doesn't go their way.)
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To: Scrambler Bob

I know logic is hard for a liberal but I guess Herbert also misses irony as well. He writes about the “illegal” guns at the Branch Davidian compound and seems to not understand what the word illegal implies! Also, not sure they were a “right wing” group, living in a commune and having free sex with the woman folk is usually the domain of the left wing Utopians!


23 posted on 06/20/2009 8:11:39 AM PDT by marlon (Does anyone know the procedure for impeachment of a teleprompter?)
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To: PLD

Those idiots can cry about David Koresh all they want - every single thing the guy promised his followers came true courtesy of the Clinton administration and Janet Reno.


24 posted on 06/20/2009 8:14:20 AM PDT by ponygirl ("Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.")
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To: marlon

Precisely. Just like how they always leave out the part about Jim Jones being a rabid Communist.


25 posted on 06/20/2009 8:15:49 AM PDT by ponygirl ("Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.")
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To: reaganaut1
The NYT is still in business!?

5.56mm

26 posted on 06/20/2009 8:20:18 AM PDT by M Kehoe
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To: reaganaut1

“Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed. The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.”

That’s a lot of passive voice, even from the NYT. That last part is especially strained. The siege was subsequent (as night follows day, sorta natural); it ended disastrously (as if by natural disaster, fate, or a really badassed El Nino blew in); with a raging fire (let’s not even suggest it wasn’t spontaneous combustion) in which scores of people were killed (by whom? Old Man Fire?)

Let that be a lesson to us! Horrible, incomprehensible things happen like lightning bolts from the capricious gods, when people don’t submit to our wise and benevolent overlords.


27 posted on 06/20/2009 8:22:40 AM PDT by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (Rent this space.)
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To: reaganaut1
What Herbert calls "lawful government actions" I call usurpation of power by a ruling elite in contravention of their constitutional authority.

Yes, Mr. Herbert, I do own guns to hunt. I also own them to protect myself from people like you: those who desire unearned shares of others' wealth and property and who use elected officials to seize them.

The Second Amendment is a vital part of a Constitution that liberals freely abrogate except for the parts they like, which increasingly, are very few.

Μολὼν λάβε.

28 posted on 06/20/2009 8:23:36 AM PDT by andy58-in-nh (You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.)
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To: SWAMPSNIPER

Interstingly, NO.
The “test-firing” did not do wel, I heard.


29 posted on 06/20/2009 8:27:45 AM PDT by 2harddrive (then)
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To: SWAMPSNIPER
for the N.R.A., the right to bear arms is “directed at maintaining an armed citizenry. ... to protect against the tyranny of our own government.”

Funny how the NRA and I see it exactly the same way, and for that they get a fair amount of my earnings every year. Three hundred million people are documented to have been killed by governments, including one hundred million during the last century, after governments really learned how to be efficient at it. I'm sure that was just an anomaly, and won't be repeated. The Iranian protesters have nothing to fear from the Achmedinajad government.

There was a wave of right-wing craziness along those lines during the Clinton administration. Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., where a stockpile of illegal machine guns had been amassed.

What were David Koresh's political leanings? Can you, the intellectually superior NYT editorial writers, cite even ONE item that made Mr. Koresh a "right winger", other than being religious and owning guns? I'll just wait right here.

The subsequent siege ended disastrously with a raging fire in which scores of people were killed.

And WHO was RESPONSIBLE for that fire, liberal fascist M@THERF@CKERS??? You'll never hear that from the NYT. It's gotten to the point that slapping around the ignorant liberal peckerwoods from the NYT isn't even sport any more. You could program a computer to write their editorials, since they're pretty much all the same regurgitated crap with no actual critical thought put into them.

Did anyone ever see one of those illegal machine guns from Waco?

You, Mr. Swampsniper, make an excellent point, one of the ones that I was going to make. The NRA hired a failure analysis company to look at the guns to determine whether or not they had been illegally converted. "Senator" Schumer stopped it cold, and had the guns locked away. To my knowledge, it has never been established that even ONE of the guns was illegally converted. But, as you know, once it passes into the liberal mythosphere, it's fact forever after.

30 posted on 06/20/2009 8:27:57 AM PDT by Hardastarboard (I long for the days when advertisers didn't constantly ask about the health of my genital organs.)
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To: reaganaut1
Four federal agents were killed and 16 others wounded in 1993 during an attempt to serve a search warrant at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex.

A search warrant which they did not even have with them. Nor did they ever try to "serve" it. It's a very strange warrant service that involves driving up in unmarked Pickup trucks pulling covered cattle trailers, which then disgorge a horde of black suited masked men. One which requires shooting the dogs of those to be served, before contact with the named person(s) is even attempted.

They try to serve a warrent like that in my neighborhood, they'll be met with the same, but more effective, response. (My neighbors are trained by Uncle, and wear digital camo to work)

31 posted on 06/20/2009 8:28:09 AM PDT by El Gato ("The Second Amendment is the RESET button of the United States Constitution." -- Doug McKay)
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To: Kolb
I wouldn’t wipe my backside with that article.

I guess you could use it wrap up some fish guts. Or you could line your birdcage with it, but them your bird would get constipated from refusing to shit on it.

32 posted on 06/20/2009 8:29:59 AM PDT by El Gato ("The Second Amendment is the RESET button of the United States Constitution." -- Doug McKay)
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To: reaganaut1
Take a look at a lot of the comments posted in regards to this column... Two of the posters seem to feel a need to bring up Rush Limbaugh ("Rush Lamebrain, "Rush, the drug addict, Limpberger," but many talk about "hate speech" and "hate radio" and propose silencing those whos opinions they don't like. And the NYT happily prints those comments, with no commentary on their own.

In reading the comments, so far I haven't seen a single one in opposition to the column, though one poster DID agree that the 2nd Amendment was important to protect us against the "North Korean Hoards" so anyone wanting to own a gun should have to be in a "militia," and if they refused, would become a criminal. Sounds remarkably like the comment attributed to H. Himmler regarding gun ownership in the Third Reich... "If you want to own a gun, join the 'SA'"

I was going to post a comment of my own, starting with:

the use of firearms to resist policies and lawful government actions that some gun owners don’t like.

I'd like to remind Mr. Herbert that in the 1930s and 1940s, German law specified the confiscation of the property of Jews, and the liquidation (i.e. the death, for those who weren't used in slave labor) of Jews in German occupied territories. This was perfectly legal. It was the law. Throughout the middle of the last century, somewhere between 50 and 100 million people were killed through the legal, government policies instituted by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union (a fact denied and hidden, to this day, by Walter Durante and the very newspaper for which Mr. Herbert works.) The policies that caused death by starvation by the tens of millions were perfectly legal. They were the law set down by "the government."

The killing fields of Cambodia where upwards of 2 million were killed? Legal. The enslavement and murder of homosexuals in Cuba? Legal. The internment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese decent during WWII? Legal. The suspension of Habeus Corpus during the Civil War? Legal. The use of poison gas by Saddam Hussien against his own people? Perfectly legal! The liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto by the NAZI army during WWII? Perfectly legal, though it took a while, since there was armed resistance. There are some who say that that resistance actually aided the Allied war effort, due to the resources of the Wermacht and SS it tied up. They fought against one of the most successful war machines ever created. But they were doomed to eventual failure.

When the government turns against its own people, any acts they commit are perfectly legal.

As bad as the column is, the comments are even worse. Though it explains why the NYT runs the stories and editorials they do... They know their audience. A rather frightening collection of authoritarian left wing moonbats, some of whom feel they would be doing us and the world a favor if we were just shut up and put away somewhere.

Mark

33 posted on 06/20/2009 8:34:41 AM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: reaganaut1

So I guess Mr. Herbert figures the founders were also right-wing lunatics, for they were devout believers in the right to keep and bear arms as the means to overthrow a tyrannical state. Funny he forgot to mention that in his article.


34 posted on 06/20/2009 8:35:25 AM PDT by Oldpuppymax (AGENDA OF THE LEFT EXPOSED)
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To: Scrambler Bob
And from the NYT you expected...? If they printed that the sun came up, I would stop and think, "Gee, I wonder if that's true?"

This is not to disparage your point, which is that many people will believe this propaganda rather than the truth. There is no outrage in the NYT for dead conservative babies.

35 posted on 06/20/2009 8:37:08 AM PDT by TheOldLady
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To: reaganaut1
the guys with the guns make the rules.

That is a universal truth which we must never forget.

36 posted on 06/20/2009 8:37:52 AM PDT by expatpat
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To: dirtboy
The author, after decrying the rise of hate-driven websites taking issue with Obama's race, ignores the reality that the average black person in this country is at vastly more danger from someone of his own race than from some deranged Stormfronter.

The author, and those who posted comments, are also conveniently ignoring the level of hatred and anger what was leveled at the former POTUS. The vast majority of "outrage" I see is aimed at perfectly legitimate policy disagreements. I guess these people are just so invested in their personal messiah that any criticism of him or his policies is heresy. Compared to the level of hatred aimed at President Bush and his administration, what is going on today is nothing.

Mark

37 posted on 06/20/2009 8:40:46 AM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: Joe Brower
Doom you say? Nah brother......just have the local Henry Bowmans add this man hog food to "the list".
38 posted on 06/20/2009 8:41:47 AM PDT by DCBryan1 (Arm Pilots&Teachers. Build the Wall. Export Illegals. Profile Muslims. Execute child molesters RFN!)
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To: PLD
Always bringing up the murders at the Branch Davidian compound no one knows the truth there..If you ask me the Clinton's, Janet Reno was trying to show their power..They killed little kids and blamed it on the people living in the compound..I am not far from Elk Texas where this happened..If they had of wanted to serve a warrent on David Corresh they could have done that any time in Dallas where he humg out and they knew he went there often..All the had to do was walk in a store and handcuff him..

The NYT has a long history of never letting the facts get in the way of the story the editorial board is trying to tell.

There's no doubt that the entire BATF raid was designed to be a tool used by the administration to increase the power and funding of the agency. A successful raid against a chuch and small community could be made to look like a great victory, especially if they controlled the media. Well, they did control the media, but it turned out to be quite a disaster for everone involved, and it required the deaths of many people in order for the government to spin things the way they wanted it.

You are absolutely correct. From interviews of local law enforcement that I had read, had the BATF raid been about actual, legitimate law enforcement activities, Koresh could have been arrested while out in town. Why was the media invited to the raid? Why, when it became obvious that the raid was NOT going to be a surprise, did the BATF open fire on the church? Where were the front doors to the church, which could give evidence to who opened fire first.

There are a lot of questions that have never been answered.

Mark

39 posted on 06/20/2009 8:48:18 AM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: reaganaut1
Didn't news paper office used to catch fire for publishing anit-freedom/liberty propaganda?
40 posted on 06/20/2009 8:50:09 AM PDT by drypowder
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