Posted on 08/25/2004 2:09:41 PM PDT by yonif
Declaring "the front line of the war against terror once again involves the citizens," Republican Alan Keyes said Tuesday he believes the U.S. Constitution grants properly trained private individuals the right to own and carry machine guns.
"You're not talking about giving citizens access to atom bombs and other things," the former presidential candidate said. "That's ridiculous."
But the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate argued the founding fathers intended the Second Amendment to allow people to carry the types of weapons "customarily carried in those days by ordinary infantry soldiers."
"And, yes, does that mean that in this day and age people would have the right to have access to the kind of the weapons our ordinary infantry people have access to? With proper training and so forth to make sure that they could handle them successfully, that's exactly what was meant."
Keyes made the remarks at a news conference he called to attack the "ideological extremism" of his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Barack Obama.
The Republican lit into Obama for voting against a bill in Springfield earlier this year that would have allowed people who use handguns to fend off home invaders or attackers to argue self-defense as a possible legal defense against prosecution for violating any local anti-firearm possession ordinances.
The measure passed the Legislature with bi-partisan support, but Gov. Blagojevich vetoed it last week.
Keyes called Obama's vote against the measure an "appalling . . . lack of common sense."
"This seems to be a man who is absolutely determined to make the world safe for criminals, while making sure that law-abiding citizens have no opportunity to defend themselves against the criminals," Keyes said.
Keyes said he supports a system in which guns would be treated similarly to automobiles, with people being required to undergo different levels of training before they would be allowed to own and carry various sorts of weapons.
"I always remind -- even people who support the Second Amendment -- that it has two parts: the right to keep and bear" arms, Keyes said. " 'Bear' means to carry, to carry around. . . . I think it has been proven empirically that . . . allowing law-abiding citizens this access to conceal-carry actually reduces crime."
Keyes said he owns two firearms himself: a 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol and a .38-caliber "six-shooter." But he said he does not keep them at his new home in Calumet City.
Keyes only indirectly answered a reporter's question about whether he would "be comfortable if the entire society was walking around with Uzis, as long as they were properly trained."
"Have you ever been to Israel?" Keyes asked the reporter. "Because if you've ever been to Israel, you wouldn't ask that question. And in the midst of terrifying dangers, you walk around the streets of Israel and you see every other person carrying arms and Uzis and so forth and so on, and believe me, you do not feel less safe on that account."
Machine guns, or fully automatic weapons, are firearms that fire multiple shots with a single pull of the trigger.
Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the Chicago division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said private individuals can only own such weapons if they apply with the bureau and clear a series of hurdles, including a background check, fingerprinting and the OK of local law enforcement officials. Additional paperwork is required any time the weapon is to be transported.
"It is heavily regulated," Ahern said.
A spokesman for Obama defended the Democrat's record on guns.
"Certainly he believes in the Second Amendment, but he also believes in common-sense gun safety laws, such as the federal ban on military-style assault weapons." said spokesman Robert Gibbs. "If Alan Keyes truly was concerned about public safety, that would be his position, as well."
oops, I forgot to leave the link for post 164...
and note, Keyes did NOT say machine guns. THATS liberal sliming
http://www.pjstar.com/news/topnews/b3vjudqh050.html
Both want big government in the "permission business" with regards to the second amendment, so yeah, I'd say there is some small amount of parity...
ROFLOL!
What a silly claim to make.
"The State of Washington prohibits ownership of automatic weapons, or any part thereof, and obtaining a Federal license will not change the status of NFA weapons to lawful to possess. "
I agree. And he's an excellent orator.
As an aside, I've got to say that I really loved Pat Buchanon's take on gun control. When asked what sort of weapons should citizens be able to own, his response was something like, "as long as it doesn't have a traier hitch, and isn't crew served, it should be OK!" I loved that! And the gun control freaks had kittens! lol
Mark
I'm going to take the CENTER and not comment.
Thanks anyway.
Wait a minute! You guys are talking about "Alan" Keyes!
Man! I thought you all were talking about my crazy neighbor "Albert" Keyes!
My bad, wrong thread.
I think you ought to listen to and or read his actual words before falling for the liberal spin and or the anti-Keyes propaganda and before slamming him further.
There is a group of a dozen or so anti-Keyes posters on FR that have taken it upon themselves to trash Keyes and or his supporters on every Keyes related thread. That will be coming to an end.
SOunds to me like the state of Washington is not only violating their own constitution, but the federal one as well.
Big surprise there, eh? But Keyes would have us all believe that the answer is "more government"...
Where have we heard THAT before?
Give me a break.
Mark
It could be a simple extension of the "Neighborhood Watch" programs already implemented in communities nationwide.
Neighbors watching out for each other!
Read the article below, in which he addresses the 2nd amendment, and education, not licensing. This is no more than a strawman for the Keyes bashers.
Educating the Defenders of Liberty
By Alan Keyes
December 17, 1999
The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is in jeopardy these days -- dangerously so. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure that we will remain an armed people, able to defend our liberty. In our defense of firearm rights, we must emphasize this fundamental purpose of the amendment. If we leave the impression that we think that the right to keep and bear arms concerns hunting and sports shooting, and making sure Americans have the right to entertain themselves with guns, we will actually contribute to the false view that the Second Amendment is an historical curiosity, hardly deserving the effort it would take to officially remove it from the Constitution.
The right to keep and bear arms derives from our duty to retain the basic means necessary to defend our country and our liberty. Certainly it is true that the actual defense of our national borders is normally delegated to the professional military. But we must never think that this revocable delegation of responsibility for national defense is a transfer of ultimate responsibility. We, the people, are responsible for the defense of country and liberty, and the Second Amendment is crucial to our performance of that duty.
The presence of the Second Amendment in our Constitution reflects the history of the emergence of self-government in the modern world. One key impediment to the assertion of the political rights of the common man throughout much of history was that military conflict was usually left to a professional elite. Until common people were able to get on battlefields and defend themselves, they left that defense to professional classes of warriors. Inevitably, or at least naturally, such warriors became the rulers of the people whose country they defended.
Our Founders understood that leaving matters of defense entirely in the hands of a professional military class was inconsistent with self-government. The American Founding was a decisive break with the old European order in many ways, but the care our Founders took to ensure an armed citizenry is one of the most striking. Indeed, the formal Constitutional guarantee that the sovereignty of the people would be defended by that people themselves, and with their own weapons, is a kind of condensed summary of the entire doctrine of self-government on which the nation is founded.
For this reason, it is a matter of clear national interest that we make sure that our citizens understand the meaning of their Second Amendment rights -- indeed, their Second Amendment duties. It is difficult to see how any citizen could have a clear understanding of his general civic responsibilities if he does not understand the fundamental duty he bears to join with his fellow citizens at all times in remaining vigilant to any threats to liberty. And it is difficult to see how he could understand this if he is allowed to come of age with a hostile or trivial view of the Second Amendment.
Accordingly, I propose that we add a serious and mature formation in America's Second Amendment heritage to the basic civics education that all our young people receive. We must teach our children about the Constitution, its heritage and background, and its ultimate dependence on the principles of the Declaration of Independence. But we should also, as an ordinary part of their education, teach them about the relation of arms to liberty.
We must teach our children that the preservation of liberty, and of an order of society conducive to human dignity, requires that a free people retain the moral and material means to discipline its own government, should the temptation to tyranny take root. We must read the Founders' own explanations of the purpose of the Second Amendment, and see the great care with which they discussed the basis on which any use of the militia against government might be contemplated, much less determined upon. Indeed, any study of the Founders is a study of prudence in action, and this is particularly true in the matter of the decision to take up arms in defense of liberty.
But the perennial awareness that such citizen defense against domestic tyranny is the ultimate material defense of our liberty is a crucial component of civic formation. Conveying to our young citizens a mature understanding of the prudential judgments required of them as members of the American sovereign will be difficult, no doubt. But it was done in the past, and it can be done again, if only we cease shying away from a clear acknowledgment of the real anatomy of our political order.
Being an American citizen is a weighty responsibility. We must again convey a sense of that weight to a generation of young people that is tempted, watching the floating superficialities of our current crop of political leaders, to think that freedom is a breezy and simple affair, with no deep consequences beyond the constant pursuit of pleasure.
If we are serious about conveying a sense of the weight of civic responsibility, we will not shrink from giving our students the experience of feeling a gun in their hand as well. And so, in addition to the theoretical component of a Second Amendment civics class, we should require of every American student, in the senior year of high school, a practical civics course in the basics of firearms familiarity and safety, and of self-defense.
And really, the practical side of Second Amendment education is not optional. We cannot allow ourselves to become habitually afraid of the instruments that must be used to defend our liberties and our country. The Second Amendment civics course I am proposing must include the holding and firing of basic weapons. We need to demythologize guns before the liberal attempt to create a totemic fear of them succeeds. If the gun control mentality promoting fear of guns themselves becomes our national mentality, we would turn the clock back to the days when a warrior class ruled over the people because only they had the confidence and expertise to deploy the means of defense and coercion. The gun control agenda will turn us into a people too timid to defend themselves from our would-be masters. We must give our young people a reasonable and responsible confidence in their ability to defend themselves and their liberties. We need to make sure that these weapons are demystified, and that people understand their responsible use, and see in themselves the capacity to handle them responsibly.
Some will say that recent, highly-publicized incidents of violence show that high school is precisely the wrong time to offer "hands on" training in firearms. But the fact that such episodes occur simply emphasizes that we need to educate young citizens to distinguish between the right and the wrong uses of the means of self-defense. We do not conclude from the carnage on the highways that we shouldn't teach our kids how to drive, even though it is true that adolescents tend to look first on cars as toys or symbols or emotional outlets. But through education we are able to turn most of them into responsible drivers. The same would be true with respect to firearms, so that the country will in fact be safer, and less prone to violence, as a result of such education.
The course should include the sort of weapons that people would use for personal defense. But it should also include introducing them to the weapons they might be called upon to use to defend their country. The Founders intended that American citizens would be familiar with the basic weapon of the infantry of the day. Today it would be an M-16. Tomorrow it may be a laser weapon, or something else.
Such a course would be, in effect, a preparation for a basic education in the nature of military activity. And this was what the Founders intended to be the role of the militia. The universal preparation of our young people to receive such education would represent a partial return to the right concept of "militia." The Founders intended that the militia would include every able-bodied person who was capable of defending the community. One goal of civic education in our secondary schools should be to prepare future members of the militia so that they can be called upon as necessary to participate in that effort.
Through negligence and a failure to think clearly about the implications of citizenship we are in danger of allowing the liberal elite in America to turn the essential weapons of self-defense into mythologized totems. Firearms education is necessary to prevent a national return to the pre-republican mentality of docility to whichever experts in contemporary techniques of violence happen to be in a position to intimidate us. Let's pay serious attention to what it will take to educate our children in the material, as well as the moral, foundations of our liberty.
Just remember, your duty is to quietly support and endorse every Republican politican!
(Please, please, no vomiting in the aisles...)
Ok, so am I wrong that he's wanting to implement government permission for us to enjoy our rights? That's what I'm seeingf, but maybe it isn't clear. It appears that he wants us to get government permission in order to enjoy our second amendment rights. I think I have a legitimate reason, as a conservative, to be worried about that.
If I'm wrong, as I said, I will apologize.
Now, will anyone show me I am wrong, and that Keyes' words were twisted out of context and he isn't supporting government licensing ands permission for gun ownership?
I've read it. But, that was the 2000 anti-carpetbagging Keyes.
I wanna know his platform NOW.
Inform yourself better. That's not the case at all.
But you're not one to actually bother with facts.
You know, Keyes' supporters will never understand why he never wins.
I hope your assesment is the case. But from the posted article's quotations and structure, it doesn't read that way to me.
I am pretty sure we can rest assured that NRA members will get a clarification on it from Alan, and will determine if your assesment is in fact the case.
I have heard the "regulated militia" argument used by liberals to regulate guns before. I don't care to "take this issue" away from lbierals anymore than the one we ran into last week from Alan's campaign.
such statements if they are not refuted directly and immediately by the candidate, both WILL and DO impact available funds and votes in a region. I think it would be wise to treat this as a concern of the alan campaign, and the article if untrue should be corrected asap...
Bush is supposedly down by double digits amongst the illini, I don't want to see this kind of stuff worsen the current deficit of votes for the President, or for other republicans in the state. And I know most of the blame lies with Ryan, as does the national party.
Still I am not willing to lose even one vote for the Presidency, to gain a vote for a now rather tenuous seat that Ryan flushed for us, in the Senate.
Water, bridge, or bridge on fire... I don't know, but think this one needs a rebuttal from Alan or his campaign spokesman.
IMO
I presume you're talking about Israel, not Alan Keyes. Actually, the Israeli acorn has fallen far from the tree, though not far enough. Remember Israel emerged from the British system. Civilian gun ownership, legal, was non existant, though a high percentage of the population served in the military. I believe things began to loosen up in the early 60s in response to terrorist attacks on schools.
That's federal property, how the Feds circumvent the Second there I don't know.
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