Day: November 23, 2022
Biden Turns Over American Sovereignty to China
FBI Director complains China isn’t “coordinating” its occupation of our cities.
BY DANIEL GREENFIELD
SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-turns-over-american-sovereignty-to-china/;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
“It is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination,” FBI Director Chris Wray told a Senate Homeland Security committee hearing about a Chinese police station operating in New York City.
According to Wray, the FBI was “looking into the legal parameters” of a Communist security force running operations in one of America’s centers of finance and technology. As if the issue with an enemy nation putting boots on the ground in one of our cities is the lack of “proper coordination”.
Wray has already said that the FBI has over 2,000 China cases and that it opens a new one every 12 hours. The DOJ states that “About 80 percent of all economic espionage prosecutions brought by the Department of Justice allege conduct that would benefit the Chinese state, and there is at least some nexus to China in around 60 percent of all trade secret theft cases.”
What’s happening to all of these cases? They’re not a priority for an administration that, under Biden and Garland, is obsessed with arresting and prosecuting conservatives instead.
These are not just issues that affect big business.
“China’s fast hacking program is the world’s largest, and they have stolen more of Americans’ personal and business data than every other nation combined,” Wray admitted.
So why instead is the FBI running around raiding the homes of non-violent pro-life protesters at gunpoint and falsely claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was foreign disinformation?
Chinese Communist operatives are not just robbing America blind from abroad, they’ve got boots on the ground in the United States. They’ve attacked, terrorized, and spied on political dissidents. One of their organizations was linked to a mass shooting in a church.
And all Wray can do is have the FBI investigate the “legal parameters” of that sort of thing.
But the Biden administration sharply constrained the ability of government agencies to go after Communist China.
Earlier this year, Biden’s DOJ shut down the China Initiative, falsely implying that it was racist.
“Anything that creates the impression that the Department of Justice applies different standards based on race or ethnicity harms the department and our efforts, and it harms the public,”
Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen, a member of Biden’s transition team who had been tasked with Holder’s push to dismantle Gitmo under Obama, claimed.
The China Initiative busted plenty of Chinese nationals and American collaborators without regard to ethnicity. These included Harvard University professor Dr. Charles Lieber, Dr. James Patrick Lewis of West Virginia, ex-DIA officer Ron Rockwell Hansen, Candace Marie Clairborne of the State Department, ex-CIA officer Kevin Patrick Mallory and the Van Andel Institute.
Racism was a pretext for the Biden administration to enable China’s espionage operations.
That is the point that David Horowitz recently made in Save America I.
Save America I is the first part of a multi-part series delving into the urgent threats to its survival that the nation faces. These include not only Communist China, but the domestic collaborators who have enabled its rise, its growth, and its dominance even in our own cities.
“The president and his criminal family have been paid millions by the Chinese Communists. For what? What exactly is the quid pro quo for the millions that wound up in Biden’s pockets? No one with the power to investigate or prosecute is asking,” Horowitz wrote.
Director Wray discussed Chinese police stations in America as part of “uncoordinated law, quote-unquote, law enforcement action, right here in the United States, harassing, stalking, surveilling, blackmailing people who they just don’t like or who disagree with the XI regime.”
That’s a very polite way of describing an enemy nation openly conducting intelligence operations, including surveillance and recruiting agents, on our home soil.
When the Soviet Union did it, we did not describe it as “uncoordinated law enforcement actions”.
The problem is not that Communist China hasn’t bothered to inform the FBI of what it’s doing, but that our government has failed to treat it like a foreign threat and respond appropriately.
Director Wray describes Americans recruited to spy on United States citizens for Communist China as “essentially” agents, rather than just agents. After the Biden administration forced the DOJ to dismantle its China Initiative, law enforcement personnel are reduced to complaining that China didn’t tell us ahead of time that it was planting bugs and sending thugs to New York City.
We’ve lost sovereignty over one of our own major cities. And no one will even ask Biden about it. And Biden isn’t about to ask Xi to stop. During his meeting with the Communist dictator, Biden asked Xi about global warming but failed to discuss China’s hacking operations, drug smuggling, or operations on American soil. That’s not even appeasement, it’s treason.
Trump pushed to end China’s control over TikTok in the United States. Biden did the bidding of Hunter’s old bosses by allowing Beijing to retain control over TikTok despite clear evidence from whistleblowers that the company’s Chinese operations can track Americans and access their data.
Director Wray warned that TikTok apps could be used to compromise most of the phones and devices that run them.
“Let me just be clear,” Senator Tom Cotton, who sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence, warned. “If you have TikTok on your device, you should delete it from your device. And even better, you should go and buy a new device.”
Instead, Biden is promoting himself on TikTok.
Kemba Walden, Biden’s Deputy National Cyber Director, claimed that her administration doesn’t “want to take a reactionary posture in developing policy. We don’t want transgressors to set our agenda”, instead she urges to “let the transgressors chase us”.
So far letting China chase us has led to suicides and suffering for American teens, to the massive theft of intellectual property, and the undermining of our national security.
When Communist China openly operates on our soil, that’s not a case of letting them “chase us”. It means that they’ve caught us beginning with Biden and his corrupt family.
Like any third-world country, the Chinese came here, they bribed our political, financial, and cultural elites while setting clear expectations for compliance from Hollywood, which now runs its scripts past Communist censors, to the NBA, which takes a knee for Xi, to Big Tech which puts its dealings with China ahead of the welfare of our country and their customers.
Biden is the worst example of this corruption. His administration dismantled successful programs aimed at rolling back Chinese Communist influence and replaced them with appeasement.
“Influence peddling deals with Moscow and Beijing have made the whole Biden family — Joe, Jill, Jim, Hunter & more — wealthy. And have put information in the hands of their Russian and Chinese handlers that could destroy the lives, wealth, and reputations of the whole lot in one stroke,” Horowitz warns in Save America I.
Communist China is not the only threat, but David Horowitz’s call to arms in Save America I is a warning that we ignore the threat from Beijing and its D.C. collaborators at our own peril.
More Than 200 Million Doses of COVID Shots Dumped Due to Diminishing Demand
BY RISHMA PARPIA
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Nearly two years after the introduction of COVID-19 biologics around the world, the pharmaceutical industry is facing a waning demand for these products. Scott Rosenstein, a New York-based health care adviser to Eurasia Group said:
Supply is exceeding demand in much of the world, even with many countries rolling out booster shots. Once the perception set in that omicron is less likely to lead to severe illness, and the vaccines don’t do a great job at preventing infection while still providing strong protection against severe illness, demand for Covid vaccines has tailed off considerably.1
U.S. Discarded 81.1 Million Doses of COVID Shots
In June 2022, the U.S. Centers for Control and Disease Prevention (CDC) said that pharmacies and state health authorities and federal agencies in the United States discarded 82.1 million doses of COVID shots between December 2020 and May 2022.2
Many doses of COVID shots have been discarded because their shelf life expired or because they were compromised due to broken freezers and power outage issues.3 The CDC has stated that one of the reasons that many COVID shot doses have had to be discarded is because, unlike most other biologics in the U.S., the COVID shots are manufactured in multi-dose vials, which means all the doses must be used within hours once the vials are opened or must be discarded if unused.4
Canada Disposes of More Than 25 Million COVID Shot Doses
The government of Canada recently discarded 7.7 million doses of Moderna/NIAID’s Spikevax mRNA biologic because of low demand. As of June 2022, the government had thrown away 1.2 million doses of Spikevax that had expired, along with 13.6 million doses of AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s Vaxzevria vaccine, 7,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s Comirnaty mRNA biologic and 3.1 million doses of the Novavax’s Nuvaxovid vaccine.5
Canada’s vaccination rate has been high with 80 percent of Canadians having received two doses of COVID shots. However, there has been far less uptake of additional booster shots. Only 50 percent of Canadians have received a third booster shot and 14.3 percent have received a fourth dose, despite recommendations by public health officials.
Switzerland Will Throw Away 9 Million Doses of Spikevax
Swiss government officials have reported that they will destroy nine million doses of Spikevax that have expired, with an additional 5.1 million shots to expire by February 2023. With less than 70 of its population vaccinated, Switzerland has one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in Europe.6
India Threw Away 100 Million Doses of CoviShield
Indian vaccine maker Serum Institute of India said it had to throw away 100 million doses of its COVID vaccine, CoviShield, after they expired. The company halted its production of CoviShield in December 2021 due to low demand.7 Adar Poonawalla, CEO of Serum Institute, said, “The booster vaccines have no demand as people now seem fed up with Covid. Honestly, I’m also fed up. We all are.”
He added:
Going forward, when people take a flu shot every year, they may take a Covid vaccine along with it. But in India, there is no culture of taking a flu shot every year, like in the West.
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Click here to view References:
1 Kay C, Makol MK, Paton J. World Moves From Shortages to Possible Glut of Covid-19 Vaccine. Bloomberg Mar. 28, 2022.
2 Eaton J. The U.S. has wasted over 82 million Covid vaccine doses. NBC News June 6, 2022.
3 Landi B. Millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses go to waste. Inhabitat June 7, 2022.
4 Kay C, Makol MK, Paton J. World Moves From Shortages to Possible Glut of Covid-19 Vaccine. Bloomberg Mar. 28, 2022.
5 Tumilty R. Federal government throws away millions more COVID vaccines due to lack of demand. The National Post Nov. 11, 2022.
6 Reuters. Swiss to destroy 9 million expired Moderna COVID-19 jabs. Oct. 19, 2022.
7 BBC News. India vaccine maker destroys 100 million doses of expired Covid jab. Oct. 21, 2022.
NASSAU COUNTY, NY: Woman Calls 911 for Help, has Firearms Confiscated by Police
BY JOHN CRUMP
SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2022/11/woman-calls-911-for-help-has-firearms-confiscated-by-police;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
NASSAU COUNTY, New York -(Ammoland.com)- The area around New York City is known for being anti-gun, but Nassau County’s latest move takes gun control to a whole new level. Nassau County had suspended a pistol permit and confiscated a citizen’s firearms for calling 911 when her life was threatened and not reporting the call to the Nassau County Police Department (NCPD) Pistol License Section.
A woman living in the county, who doesn’t wish to be named, purchased a handgun right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her long-time boyfriend had passed away, and she felt she needed to protect herself. That is when the problem with her next-door neighbor started. The neighbor living near her allegedly threatened to kill her and burn down her house.
Fearing for her life, she called 911. The Nassau County Police Department responded to the call and took care of the incident. She still feared for her life, knowing she would have to leave her home without her firearm. Then the Supreme Court issued the landmark Bruen decision that knocked down New York State’s “proper clause” statute that prevented most New Yorkers from getting concealed carry permits.
Soon after, New York State passed the concealed carry improvement act (CCIA), which added roadblocks to getting a carry permit. Gone was the “proper cause” clause, but the state added a “good moral character” clause. The state also started requiring applicants to turn over three years of social media, take 18 hours of training, and give character references. Places like Nassau County also needed a drug test.
Several lawsuits are challenging the Constitutionality of the CCIA, including one by Gun Owners of America (GOA) that received a preliminary injunction from the District Court in Antonyuk v. Hochul. However, that decision was stayed by the Circuit Court. The Nassau woman decided she couldn’t wait for the case to be resolved, so she submitted her social media, took the drug test, and paid hundreds of dollars to complete the training.
During the background investigation, Nassau County investigators found the 911 call she made. They also found out she didn’t notify the NCPD Pistol License Section of the call she placed. There is a little-known regulation on the books in Nassau County that states that if you call 911, witness an incident that involves the police, or even just a third party to where a police action happens; you must notify the NCPD Pistol License Section within three days. Failure to do so could lead to the revocation or suspension of a person’s pistol permit. The statute reads:
“Any incident involving a licensee where there is police response, whether it involves the licensee or any other resident or guest in or at their home or place of business. This includes police response to any location that is non-domestic whereby a licensee is the subject, witness or third party involved.”
“The licensee is responsible for making proper notifications to the NCPD Pistol License Section. The licensee is not to assume that other law enforcement agencies or the Nassau County Police Department will make the necessary notification on the licensee’s behalf. Failure to make timely and proper notifications in the aforementioned circumstances may be cause for suspension and/or revocation of a pistol license.”
When the NCPD found out that the woman seeking a concealed carry permit because she feared for her life didn’t notify the NCPD Pistol License Section of her 911 call, they promptly stopped the background investigation and suspended her pistol permit. They proceeded to confiscate her firearms, including her long guns.
The victim is now disarmed and tells AmmoLand News she is considering moving from her childhood home because she fears for her life. Police say she can get her guns back in six to eight months.
Fresh from their Supreme Court victory in the New York State Pistol and Rifle Association (NYSPRA) vs. Bruen case, the gun rights group is aware of the situation but would not comment because of the potential for future litigation against the NCPD’s policy.
The NCPD Pistol License Section did not return AmmoLand’s call for a request for comment.
About John Crump
John is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
12 GOP Senators Voted to Eliminate Religious Freedom and Political Dissent
BY DANIEL GREENFIELD
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
“They will still be subject to years, and sometimes decades, of government discrimination, harassment, and litigation.”
Let’s get this out of the way. Whatever you think about gay rights, Obergefell v. Hodges was legally illegitimate in much the same way as Roe v. Wade. It was another case of a Supreme Court majority dictating its cultural preferences under the color of law. Unlike Roe v. Wade, there’s no significant pressure campaign to roll it back worth mentioning. Abortion opponents kept their fight going for generations. There’s zero evidence of gay marriage opponents having that kind of political stamina, organization, or movement. Simply put, there’s zero reasons for the push to abolish the Defense of Marriage Act which is what HR 8404, misleadingly named the Respect for Marriage Act, does.
The Left is claiming that after the Dobbs decision, there’s an urgent need to codify Obergefell into law lest the Supreme Court wakes up tomorrow and wipes it off the map. That’s nonsense.
So HR 8404 is not out to codify Obergefell and there’s no reason to think that everyone is going to all this trouble just to nail down something that already exists and isn’t going away.
So what is it doing?
Roger Severino warns that “Again, the practical effect if this becomes law, will have nothing to do with the benefits of same-sex couples. It’ll have everything to do with excluding people of faith from their tax-exempt statuses for houses of worship, from adoption agencies that believe that the best most conducive place for a child in placement would be with a married mother and father, and for those who contract or receive grants from the government who want to live according to the beliefs with respect to marriage. Those are the groups who are going to be targeted. And this law would actually create this bludgeon, which is a private right of action, which means individuals could sue on their own in federal court to hound these groups.”
Private cause of action is in there and there’s no reason for it to be there.
Furthermore, Severino notes, “We had a case from the ’80s with respect to tax-exempt status for a violator of a civil rights law. They were deemed not to be a charity, and they lost their tax-exempt status. And the Supreme Court said because there’s an established national policy against that type of discrimination that you lose your tax-exempt status and there’s no recourse. That same tool will be deployed against people who believe that marriage is a union of one man and one woman, which is very different than other types of beliefs that are protected by statutory anti-discrimination laws.”
Mitt Romney was a vocal supporter of this shameful bill. But quite a few Senate Republicans were jumping on board. A few were dissuaded after they heard from voters in their states. But not all.
“Make no mistake,” Alliance Defending Freedom President Kristen Waggoner warned, “this bill will be used by officials and activists to punish and ruin those who do not share the government’s view on marriage.”
On Wednesday, HR 8404 received 62 “aye” votes and 37 “no” votes.
Twelve Republicans voted for advancing the legislation: Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana.
A fact sheet from the Family Research Council deconstructs promises that religious freedom will be protected.
Section 6(b) only protects those people or entities “whose principal purpose is the study, practice, or advancement of religion” and only from being forced to “solemnize or celebrat[e] […] a marriage.”
FRC notes that religious organizations not officially recognized as such, like Yeshiva University, not to mention foster care and adoption agencies, would not be protected.
“Even those who do, or should, fall within the very narrow protections of Section 6(b) could still be sued and have to prove themselves. They will still be subject to years, and sometimes decades, of government discrimination, harassment, and litigation.”
As the Heritage Foundation writes:
…the only reason to add Congress’ explicit blessing… is to cement same-sex marriage as national policy that can be used as a club by government agencies, such as the IRS, to deny traditional religious institutions tax-exempt status, licenses to assist in adoptions, and government funding and contracts.
This is what a GOP Senate betrayal means for religious freedom.
RED ALERT: New WHO pandemic treaty in final stages, would overrule the US Constitution and unleash medical dictatorship, warns Dr. Francis Boyle
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CENSORED, BUT YOU CAN READ IT HERE:
For the “crime” of promoting vitamin D during covid, a Missouri doctor faces $500 billion in FTC fines
St. Louis County chiropractor first in US charged under new COVID-19 act
BY ETHAN HUFF
SEE: https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-11-22-missouri-doctor-500-billion-fines-vitamind-covid.html;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
(Natural News) The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants half a trillion dollars from Dr. Eric Nepute, a Missouri doctor and chiropractor who allegedly violated the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act by telling people they could take vitamin D and zinc in order to stay healthy throughout the plandemic.
Because Nepute also sold vitamin D and zinc – many chiropractors sell vitamins and dietary supplements to patients who want them – the FTC is accusing him of committing fraud.
“The federal government is suing me for half a trillion dollars … for telling people to take vitamins,” Nepute says about this latest political circus and abuse of taxpayer dollars by the feds.
Nepute’s case is scheduled to go to trial in Missouri federal court next March. A jury will decide if the FTC’s 27-page complaint against him, which was issued in April 2021, holds any merit.
The 41-year-old licensed chiropractor owns and operates the Nepute Wellness Center in St. Louis. He also owns Quickwork, a limited liability company that does business under the name of “Wellness Warrior.”
That Wellness Warrior entity advertised, promoted, and sold a product called “Wellness Warrior Vita D,” along with other products, that contain anti-covid ingredients such as vitamin D and zinc.
“Starting no later than June 2020, [Nepute] began advertising a protocol that customers should follow to protect against, prevent, or treat COVID-19,” the FTC complaint states. “This protocol, which has varied over time, advises consumers to take [daily] substantial quantities of emulsified Vitamin D3 and zinc.”
According to the FTC, there are “no published studies” that “prove Vitamin D protects against, treats, or prevents COVID-19.”
Like the FDA, the FTC doesn’t want Americans to stay healthy with natural vitamins and minerals
Truth be told, there are no published studies that suggest covid “vaccines” protect against, treat, or prevent the Fauci Flu either. In fact, a bulk of available evidence suggests that the jabs make things worse for a person’s immune system.
There is, however, plenty of evidence that points to vitamin D is effective against colds and the flu, which is basically all the Chinese Virus ever was (with a few bio-engineered modifications).
Even so, the FTC says Nepute’s “lack of factual or scientific bases for these claims [are] frequently accompanied by equally unsupported assertions regarding applicable science.”
“In short,” the FTC adds in its complaint, “defendants are selling their products by disseminating information, exploiting fears [amid] a pandemic, and posting a significant risk to public health and safety.”
Once again, these are all the very same things that Rochelle Walensky at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Tony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) did concerning face masks, stay-at-home orders, the jabs, and more.
None of those interventions bear anything scientific to support them, and all of them were propagated to the masses to stoke fear and panic. And yet the FTC is not going after any of them, nor is it going after the likes of Pfizer and Moderna for lying about the safety and efficacy of their covid injections.
The reason is that the federal deep state and its Big Pharma partners are a protected class that owns the “science” on all matters. Only they are allowed to produce “cures,” in other words.
“The only reason they’re coming after me – and they said this – is because I’m the first doctor they went after, and they want to set a precedent,” Nepute says. “They said they wouldn’t stop until they had ‘blood on their sword.’ That’s literally from the FTC’s mouth.”
The latest news about the federal government’s crusade against vitamins and dietary supplements can be found at Tyranny.news.
Sources for this article include:
Biden’s Call for Weapons Ban Unconstitutional and Irrational
BY
SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/bidens-call-for-weapons-ban-unconstitutional-and-irrational/;
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
In response to the murder of five people committed at a nightclub in Colorado Springs on Saturday, Joe Biden is renewing his frequent call for banning “weapons of war.”
On Saturday, November 19, Anderson Aldrich is believed to have walked into Club Q in Colorado Springs late Saturday night and opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least five and wounding, at last count, 17 others.
The New York Times reports that Aldrich was taken down by Richard Fierro, an Army veteran, who reportedly told the Times that he went into “combat mode” and pulled Aldrich to the floor and disarmed him.
There is no room to describe the murders committed by Aldrich (assuming he is found guilty of those charges) as anything other than unconscionable and heinous.
While there are many who have chosen to focus their analysis on the location of the shootings or on the assailant’s alleged political leanings, this article will focus solely on the constitutionality and rationality of Biden’s call for disarmament.
Mind you, neither Biden nor any other gun grabber truly seeks total disarmament. They merely seek to disarm civilians! In fact, they spend billions of tax dollars to purchase sophisticated weapons to be put in the hands of the people Biden and the rest will rely upon to seize the weapons and ammunition from civilians.
On to the analysis of Biden’s call for confiscation specifically, and disarmament as a means to decreasing armed atrocities generally:
Biden began by bundling the Colorado Springs tragedy with other senseless crimes and then used that bundle as kindling to build a fire of reactionary abuse of power that will become just another pretext for the annihilation of the representative government of the United States.
It’s hard to believe that anyone is ignorant of the lack of empirical evidence linking the regulation of gun ownership to the commission of violent crime.
No matter, though. Bureaucrats and globalist advocates of the silent and gradual gutting of the Second Amendment know that there is a significant number of Americans who will be convinced by rhetoric and emotion before they will ever be swayed by reason or research.
Surely Biden — and the other voices in the choir of confiscators — knows that there is no law, regulation, or executive order that could ever dissuade someone from committing murder in cold blood. The very premise is laughable. Such acts are the result of mental instability and are the product of a perversion of purpose inscrutable to most regular folk.
Moreover, even the most discerning minds in the fields of medicine and psychology are now and are likely to remain, woefully ignorant of the vortex of abnormalities that combine in someone’s mind to produce such anti-social behavior. Inside every cranium, there is a universe, and no explorer has successfully navigated the myriad spheres of influence that orbit therein.
While the attempt is arguably laudable, the president’s presumption that there are explanations to be found in this or that shooter’s hatred of gays and lesbians is naive at best and purposefully misleading at worst.
Finally, as the Declaration of Independence (and hundreds of years of English political theory before it) declares, the only legitimate basis of government is the consent of the governed. In the United States, the extent of that consent is set forth within the four corners of the Constitution.
Therefore, any attempt to curtail the right of civilians to own and use weapons — of any sort — is an act of tyranny, no matter how “reasonable” the supporters try to make it sound.
Besides, reasonable people understand that the ready availability of guns is no more responsible for any armed massacre than an all-you-can-eat buffet is responsible for obesity.
Why must every murder lead so many leftists (and the occasional “compassionate conservative”) to dishonor the memory of those killed by demanding that presidents, vice presidents, attorneys general, or any agent of government abolish the only right that protects the enjoyment of all the other rights?
For that very reason, our Founding Fathers very well intended that every American be armed, believing that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants. They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move was always to disarm the people, and generally to claim it was for their safety, and to establish a standing army so as to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, for the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them. Sound familiar?
In a constitutionally sound commentary on common law and the Constitution, founding-era legal scholar St. George Tucker wrote:
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
But in this age of “gun-free school zones” and “free-speech zones,” temperate appeals to history and to right reason won’t convince people that a propensity for acts of armed violence is not born of opportunity, but of instability.
Those of us who do understand these facts, though, must not dishonor the memory of those killed by the insane by allowing partisan fealty or the purposefully bellowed passions of faction to indict us on the Left or the Right as co-conspirators in the destruction of the Constitution.
I will give the last word to Cesare Beccaria, a young Italian whose essay “On Crimes and Punishments” was quoted extensively by our Founding Fathers. Beccaria clearly and convincingly explains the idiocy of using gun-control laws to decrease armed violence. In 1764, Beccaria wrote:
The laws of this nature, those which forbid to wear arms, disarm those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent.
Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance?
Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator; and does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty?
It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse, and the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.