Posted on 01/08/2013 10:45:12 AM PST by Red Steel
Editors note: The following was sent to Montanas congressional delegation on behalf of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.
Because there is much discussion among gun owners of Montana about proposals by Sen. Diane Feinstein and others for Congress to enact various types of gun control, I though you would appreciate knowing what I hear from Montanans about this.
I speak to you as a person intimately familiar with firearms, with public policy about firearms, as a person accepted in state and federal courts as an expert on firearms, firearms safety and use of force, and as the president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, Montanas primary organization asserting the right to keep and bear arms, also affiliated or associated with the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and the Second Amendment Foundation.
On behalf of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, I wish to express our unequivocal opposition to any ban on any class or type of firearms, any new registration requirements on any class or types of firearms, any restrictions on manufacture, sale or possession of ammunition feeding devices of any configuration or capacity, and any government intrusion into firearm transfers between private citizens. Any congressional actions in any of these areas would be an infringement upon the rights the citizens of Montana have reserved to themselves.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article II, Section 12 of the Montana Constitution these sections of these foundational documents are not government permission to keep firearms. They are statements whereby the people have reserved these rights to themselves specifically from government interference.
These statements do not create any rights, but simply recognize preexisting natural rights which are restricted from government interference. As you consider whatever gun control (actually people control) may be offered by Sen. Feinstein or others, I hope you will keep these facts clearly in mind.
Gun-free zones are a terrible failure of public policy. Virtually all mass shootings, including the one in Connecticut that has sparked the current wave of media hysteria, happen in places where public policy has incorrectly assured people that they are safe, but where the policy has actually created risk-free zones for madmen, and pools of defenseless victims conveniently offered up for slaughter by failed policy.
Former police officer Ron Avery says, The only way to check violence in progress, where the victim can neither hide nor flee, is by equal or greater force in a timely manner. If Congress feels compelled to do something in the wake of the Connecticut shooting, it should repeal the pretense of all federally-mandated or federally-inspired gun-free zones.
For any inside the Beltway who actually believe in the effectiveness of gun-free zones, I recommend that the White House, the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, the U.S. Supreme Court and all federal courthouses be declared gun-free zones, and that all armed guards and protective personnel in those places be removed. If gun-free zones are effective for our kids, theyre good enough for our servants.
Various gun bans, licensing or registration schemes, and/or bans or restrictions of ammunition feeding devices will fail. I wont bother you with discussion of the fact that any such restrictions will have no effect on criminals or madmen. I believe you already know that.
I do hope to inform you about how strongly the gun owners of Montana feel about their right to keep and bear arms. I have asked around among a considerable number of friends, acquaintances and contacts in Montana. I have not learned of anyone who would comply, for example, with a new federal law requiring them to register or surrender their semi-auto rifles to authorities.
Let me be very clear: Montanans will not comply with any new federal restrictions. The most any such restrictions would do would be to create a huge, new, armed, outlaw class of citizens. And I very much doubt that most Montana law enforcement personnel would cooperate in enforcing any such federal restrictions.
Clearly, the vast numbers of citizens who have bought new firearms in the past month, especially the hundreds of thousands of expensive semi-auto rifles, did not buy these new firearms simply so theyd have them available to surrender if Congress should pass a law demanding they do so.
Since Montana law enforcement personnel are unlikely to enforce any such restrictions, the effect of passage of such restrictions would ultimately be for federal officers to come to Montana to enforce them. Because most Montanans will simply not comply with any new federal restraints on a right they have reserved specifically from government interference, the obvious result would be armed conflict between Montanans and federal enforcers. (I offer this not as a threat or a challenge, but simply as an observation.)
I certainly hope you would not set Montana on the path to an armed conflict with federal enforcers by aiding or supporting passage of any new federal restrictions. That would not be in the best interest of your constituents.
Instead, if you feel compelled to pass some actually corrective legislation in response to the media hysteria over the Connecticut shooting, I highly recommend that you get rid of those dangerous and illusory gun free zones.
Gary Marbut, of Missoula, is the president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.
Hopefully, we can avoid that by not being home when they come knocking...
I do fear that they will comply, one way or another, even if it requires that every mother's son of them be buried without their guns.
And we have just the man eager to accept Edgar's terms (MIB) in the white house right now.
I suppose I could have said "The Montanans will try not to." but then "One way or another..." wouldn't fit.
“Beast out of the Earth or Beast out of the sea” I bet we are, but not in a way American Christians would hope that we would be...
The Beast system may have a power base, and broke though we are only invites a charismatic madman who takes control of our nukes, our military, and our air and space flight prowess....don’t think we couldn’t put things back together in the name of the “father land” under certain Nazi like conditions. Canada and Mexico could be easily annexed.
We could have a financial collapse, but that would just mean a military dictatorship arises that ignores our past national debt. We would be a wounded nation, but with nukes and what ever else they have never begun to tell us about. We still have vast supplies of oil, coal, and even rare earths that could be mined again once the “old order” including troublesome enviro’s and Religious fanatics(many of which had suddenly vanished from the scene) were kicked out of the way.
Now what sort of Charismatic Satanically empowered Beast System wouldn’t take advantage of all that to begin to assert its will upon the Earth....”Who is like unto the Beast and who is able to make war against it?” The US disappears or worse becomes the heart of a dark empire...perhaps even a few decades before the Beast and the final end of days scenario is played out!
We are in the Book of Revelations, imho. We are Israel.
I thought you meant the government, hence I was thinking "they will try".
even if it requires that every mother's son of them be buried without their guns.
I suspect the government will run out of ammo before the people do.
Tim McVeigh is a murderous a**h*le who gave us a national tragedy including the re-election of Bill Clinton. But he did plant this seed in the mind of every federal storm trooper who is inclined to these type of excesses.
got away? not exactly. Remember there was that whole disagreement thing that McVeigh had with the Fedz so he made a major “point” in Okie City. I’m pretty sure most Fedz realize they would be surrounded if another clusterflock like Waco develops
“...every county has a sheriff and sheriffs are sworn to defend the constitution and protect their citizens from the feds if it comes to that.”
I live in a fairly rural coastal area of Maine. Most people in Maine are armed to the teeth. The majority of them are pro-second amendment.
In late December, Donnie Smith, the sheriff of Washington County, Maine, called for an “assault weapons” ban. This “sheriff” said that people aren’t allowed to own SCUD missiles or nuclear weapons, so they shouldn’t be allowed to own “assault weapons.” What?! He’s equating semi-automatic rifles with nuclear weapons?
Fortunately, I don’t live in Washington County, Maine, a rural coastal county in “downeast” Maine, in the northeast corner of the state. It is a poor county, but like all of rural Maine, people are well-armed.
Meanwhile, these tiny police and sheriff departments around the nation have FULLY automatic weapons, armored personnel carriers, drones and aggressive SWAT teams who, in numerous cases, serve warrants for minor offenses. The feds are giving THEM all sorts of military equipment. Yet, they want to strip US of our constitutional rights.
A sheriff I greatly admire is Sheriff Paul Babeu of Pinal County, Arizona, halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. I’ve heard him on talk radio and he is very conservative and pro-second amendment. Great guy.
different species? genetic protection? Nope——just armed to the teeth and not really interested in being a marxist’s subject. For my own part I’ve never started a fight but have indeed finished a few. Not a good career move for a dumbass, public or private.
I can't make that interpretation work in my mind.
mdmathis6's interpretation better fits the current trajectory and human nature.
Couldn’t an enterprising Governor of a state just set up a procedure whereby any citizen of the state with no criminal record or mental health issues to be sworn in as a member of the state militia and order them to own an assault weapon as a condition of membership in good standing? Kind of a Switzerland approach.
That would seem to fall directly under the plain language of the 2nd Amendment.
I think the 2nd Amendment is broad enough as it is but the gun grabbers are going to try everything they can.
So lets combine the 2nd and 10th Amendment and make it a states right issue.
I like it.
Whatever they get on a state level is what they deserve - communism.
Isaiah 18
God's mercy... Every nation that fields an army to surround Jerusalem in the last days will be destroyed completely. With Obama wielding our military like it was "his boys in da hood" instead of following the Laws of the land, there is no doubt that if the UN declared war on Israel, Obama would comply.
Isaiah 18 states in the end, after being crushed and cut asunder, occupied and looted, America will bend its knee to Christ. Europe, Russia, China will no longer exist at that point. A remnant of the USA will.
Tim Mc Veigh never came into my thoughts on this.
The problem with rural areas is that many of them are “poor” below the poverty line. This meanse they get free government ebt handouts and the like.
The rugged individuals live next door to the rugged government handout form fillers.
Ping
North Carolina already has.
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2011/Bills/House/PDF/H250v3.pdf
“First in Flight, First to Fight”
Hmph.. You Montanans will have to hurry up there if you are gonna beat us Texans to disobeying any new gun laws....
Personally, I'm going for door #4...
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