We need an armed citizenry
By Jim Ludington
The recent massacre of innocent schoolchildren at Newtown, Conn., has once again raised the issue of gun control. And once again one of the primary objectives of Democrats today is exposed: not measures to keep us safe from rampaging psychopaths, but the elimination of privately owned firearms. This is the same goal that was accomplished by leftist governments in China, Russia and Cuba, among others. And people in those countries are no longer free.
The liberal response to any mass murder is simply to ramp up efforts to limit, register and eventually confiscate legally owned weapons from law-abiding citizens. Shootings have become prime opportunities to exploit the pain and raw emotions of the victims and move the liberals’ unconstitutional agenda forward.
Ludington lives in Troutville.
February 1, 2013 - 6:15 AM
Ludington writes, “A large part of this problem is spiritual…”
Huh? How’s that?
“feminization of America”?
Bexar County sheriff’s Sgt. Lisa Castellano shot the assailant in San Antonio.
San Antonio is the home of three different military training bases where men and women are prepared and schooled in the art of war.
The ban on women in combat has recently been overturned.
Is this what Mr. Ludington means by the “feminization of America”?
For a number of different reasons the San Antonio incident was not the best example to use to support the concepts behind his diatribe.
However, it is an excellent example of why people who cannot “cite” properly should not have access to guns.
(‘’ ‘’ it’s a play on words folks.)
Where does Mr. Ludington have the right to use guns against the federal government. It has been proven over and over again that there is no such right.
As for the cliche only the criminals will have guns, that is but a falsity. Most of the shootings making the news have been done by people with no criminal record. Up until the shooting, they were good law abiding citizens. That is the point of making it harder to get to guns so these law abiding citizens cannot get to them so easily. The hardened criminal acquires their guns from ordinary citizens, they don’t go to the retail stor e to get them. They either get a law abiding citizen to buy them in a straw man purchase or they steal them from a law abiding citizen that did not properly lock their guns. Making it harder for a law abiding citizen to get guns will mean there are less available to steal and will have the law abiding citizen more determined to protect their guns from theft since they had to work so hard to get them.
Having more guns on the street is just providing more for the criminals to get their hands on.
And finally, I would love for Mr. Ludington to tell me which teacher and administrators he would trust with a gun. We just had two teachers in Roanoke convicted of child molestation. Perhaps we should allow them to carry guns.
At least some of you knew this screed was coming…
Mr. Ludington betrays any point he might have by his all too typical partisan baiting and needless effrontery. It is so much easier to deal with any issue you don’t like if you can paint it as someone else’s fault or failure.
For those of us who make the effort to remain informed, the “recent massacre of innocent schoolchildren” like the mass shootings before them, merely gave new impetus to an issue that has been on our minds with virtually every newspaper and newscast we see. I am sorry that anyone sees this as a political issue at all. It isn’t. It shouldn’t be. I grant you it became one when the NRA made it one, it just should not be.
If “gun control” was truly “one of the primary objectives of Democrats today”, we would hardly need to wait for a tragedy of this magnitude to get our point across that there are dangerous guns in the hands of angry, evil, disturbed and unstable people because guns are so dangerous and widely available in this country. Unless of course you concede that it takes such a tragedy to get people’s attention in this nation.
I am at a sincere loss in trying to comprehend why gun control, the very point of which is to keep (as best we can) dangerous guns out of the hands of the angry, evil, disturbed and unstable people, is “not measures to keep us safe from rampaging psychopaths”. That just makes no sense. Of course it is a measure “to keep us safe from rampaging psychopaths” and criminals. There is no other reason to do it.
If Mr. Ludington could reference even one piece of legislation, one politician, one leader in this nation, who has or is sponsoring an effort toward “the elimination of privately owned firearms”, I would grant him at least that point. He does not, because he can not and like those who just like to stir up resentment and disinformation, he stirs something so that it will stink and nothing more. Throwing in the Big Red Scare for the fun of it IMO. It is a doggone shame that the people in those countries “are no longer free” but that is not because of gun control. Our democratic representative republic, based on our Constitution, allows for freedom to an extent, rights with responsibility and localities, states and even the whole country the prerogative to make our laws and a societal pact to enforce them.
Did it even give you pause to say “The liberal response to any mass murder” as if we have canned speeches just waiting for such common occurrences? Or to be so very and dangerously wrong about why we might keep repeating the same things? It is ludicrous for anyone to claim this is about any “ramp up efforts to limit, register and eventually confiscate legally owned weapons from law-abiding citizens”, positively delusional in fact. Even the wildest eyed liberal activist does not believe that is possible, much less probable enough to discuss. Shameful!
Shootings have become all too common, because guns are ubiquitous in this nation, any caliber, any size, and any kind. If you have a little or a lot of money, your “need” can be met because the rights of gun owners is paid for with the blood of the innocent victims who have no armed camp around them. The burst of sales for these mass killing guns in particular show precisely who did “exploit the pain and raw emotions” surrounding this issue.
No, laws “cannot eliminate guns”, so why are you claiming “we” want to? It is not true that “Our only defense against armed criminals is to be armed ourselves”. Millions of people do not own a gun, have never owned a gun and have lived a fear and attack free life. Millions more of us choose to face the life we live without guns. Even people who have been victims of crime or violence do not all choose to arm themselves as their “only” defense.
Do I even need to point out that how restrictive a place is becomes irrelevant unless it is a sealed bubble with no possibility of getting anything into it? Chicago, DC or any other place with “the toughest gun restrictions” cannot stop the gun culture and gun rights from giving the criminals and the unstable angry mass shooter wannabes their guns.
That Chicago has “one of the highest rates of gun crimes in the nation” is not despite gun control laws but because they are not being obeyed. “The trite-sounding statement” is trite because it can be applied to anything. When anything is outlawed, only outlaws will have it. Go figure.
Even the reviled Dianne Feinstein is not building any “case for the elimination of firearms”! It is simply not the truth.
The media reports the news they see fit. Sadly, and again it proves our conditioning to the carnage of gun rights, “an off-duty law enforcement officer working as a security guard” stopping a criminal is just not national news. Just a guess but such common stories are not sensational so no, they do not drive “media sensationalism”. I am not sure what rational person wants to “forward” the cause of us all being armed and prepared every minute, everywhere. Pray God the media never accepts that mantra!
The truth is neither government nor citizens are capable of “solving” the problem of the angry, evil, unstable and armed people with a crime or mass shooting mission on their minds. Until we build that bubble and monitor citizens like we do in prison, it is not possible (and prisons prove it is not possible at all).
I will not admit that the only answer is leaving ALL of the dangerous guns and gun paraphernalia easily available and tell people to “lock and load, it is all we can do”. Nor will I blame the mentally ill, schools, communities, parents or even Republicans (though it is tempting).
IMO, this nation would be better off with a good dose of “feminization”!
The key to freedom is the balance of liberty and responsibility and the gun culture has no idea what that even means if it is going to inconvenience them.
Gun advocates often “hope” I never “need a gun to protect myself” and I hope Mr. Ludington and those who agree with him never get a good dose of the “tyrannical government” they believe we have.
“Do I even need to point out that how restrictive a place is becomes irrelevant unless it is a sealed bubble with no possibility of getting anything into it? Chicago, DC or any other place with “the toughest gun restrictions” cannot stop the gun culture and gun rights from giving the criminals and the unstable angry mass shooter wannabes their guns.”
Careful, this is dangerously close to an acknowledgment that more gun control laws won’t work, at least not without an outright ban and seizure of guns currently in circulation.
#4 Mrs. Saunders…just a few.
“If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.”
– President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993
“And so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.”
– Bill Clinton on MTV’s “Enough is Enough”, 4/19/1994
“We must be able to arrest people before they commit crimes. By registering guns and knowing who has them we can do that. If they have guns they are pretty likely to commit a crime.”
– Vermont State Senator Mary Ann Carlson
“I am one who believes that as a first step, the United States should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols, and revolvers…No one should have the right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun.”
– Professor Dean Morris, Director of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, stated to the U.S. Congress
“We’re bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns.”
– Rahm Emmanuel, senior advisor to Bill Clinton
“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them. “Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in,” I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren’t here.”
– U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D/CA) speaking of her authorship of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban on “60 Minutes” 2/5/95
“We must get rid of all the guns.”
– Sarah Brady speaking on behalf of HCI with Sheriff Jay Printz & others on “The Phil Donahue Show” September 1994
Our main agenda is to have ALL guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn’t matter if you have to distort facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.”
– HCI President Sarah Brady to Senator Howard Metzenbaum, The National Educator, January 1994, p.3
“I don’t care about crime, I just want to get the guns.”
– Senator Howard Metzenbaum, 1994
“We’re going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We’re going to beat guns into submission!”
– U.S. Representative Charles Schumer (D/NY) on NBC 12/8/93
“Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.”
– U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, December 1993
@Richard J Beason #3
“… they steal them from a law abiding citizen that did not properly lock their guns.”
Thanks, you can’t say this enough!
Jim Lucas, we have been over this penchant to pull sentences out of context before. You only prove your lack of proof. Nothing more. And some of those were proven not to be accurate even. Which is probably why you left off the link.
http://saf.org/pub/rkba/general/BogusAntiGunQuotes.htm
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcbogus.html
It is silly to claim there is a serious effort or agenda to disarm America. Not the least of which is that we respect the Constitution, even if you ask us to ignore how the Second Amendment begins, how it was used and why it is truly irrelevant. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” matters.
Chuck, I do not think anyone has any illusions that gun control laws will work better than any of our other laws, but do you want to argue that is a reason not to make a law?
Jim, there are extreme left viewpoints just as there are extreme right. Just because the extreme left wants all guns gone, it is no more unrealistic than the extreme right wanting no restrictions on guns. The answer lies in-between.
9 – rich that’s a good point. The problem comes that when the moderate, reasonable solutions aren’t completely successful, the movement is always to more restrictions and not fewer. The slide is always to the extreme left, and not merely to hold serve.
#9 & #10 Excellent points thank you. Rich I’m sure that you realize I will err toward freedom….but I do appreciate your acknowledgement of extremism.
#8 No Mrs. Saunders, that is not the link I used to find the quotes…& I challenge you to put them in any context you think changes the clear meaning of the quotes.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=353509
#8 Having visited the cites you reference (the ones you infered I would not cite [?])….I find your “source” questions one of the 11 quotes I provided. The Brady quote to Metzenbaum. The extent of the denial is just that….the claim it was made up.
As to context, a few more Sarah brady quotes:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sarah_brady.html
http://www.quotesdaddy.com/author/Sarah+Brady
http://www.searchquotes.com/quotes/author/Sarah_Brady/
http://www.famousquotes.com/author/sarah-brady/
Are they all made up?
Then there’s Slick Willie (hmmm). Probably made up:
http://www.northcaucus.com/clint-const.html
Jim and Hoo – We went to the right for 8 years and that was after 12 years of Reagan and Bush I. Coming back to a reasonable middle is well past due.
We went to the right for 8 years……
Bush’s first budget in 2001 was $1.9T…
Bush’s last budget in 2008 was $2.9T…
Richard, that’s hardly a trek to the right.
Did effectiveness matter, rich?
We’ve always had massive amounts of guns available in America. As a kid in the Boy Scouts I loved going to the shooting range at Camp Powhatan. During those times and before. school shootings and mass murder were extremely rare if they happened at all. It is not guns that is the problem. Societal decay in recent years is the culprit. You will NEVER eliminate guns in this country. They are are here to stay. We need to get back to holding people accountable for their actions instead of continuously blaming an inanimate object.