Anti-Gun nuts take aim

I am not what most people would call political. I generally believe that political discussions and debates among common people are fruitless and unnecessary, and I do my best to avoid them. While I also believe that the Government serves the people better as it inserts itself into their lives less, I am no conspiracy theorist. I don't believe that vapor trails from airplanes are the result of the Government spraying drugs into the atmosphere to make us docile (if they are, they need stronger drugs because these ones aren't working), or that every person who runs for office does so with villainous intent (It's probably only about 75% of them)... but I do believe that something needs to be said about what certain politicians are doing to actively and intentionally strip American citizens of their freedoms. Specifically, the restrictions being placed of people's ability to carry guns in this state.

I am not a gun nut, I am not a member of the NRA (though that is mostly because I have other things to spend my money on). I am not some asshole who likes guns because he thinks it means he's bad-ass, nor am I paranoid or afraid that I might be attacked by criminals at any moment.
I didn't own a gun at all until I was 28, unless you count the b.b. gun I had as a kid, and still don't own a pistol (yet). I am just a man who likes the idea of self reliance and believes, as the authors of the Constitution did, that the Government should be ruled by the people, not the other way around.

The United States Constitution says, in no uncertain terms (or so I would think if not for the fact that so many people seem uncertain about them), "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Now, there seems to be some confusion about what this means, so I will attempt to break it down. The translation, if not into plain English then at least into more specifically defined terms, is this:
Because a thoroughly, and carefully, maintained and ordered group of citizen soldiers is essential for the protection and defense of an undominated and self directed political organization or group of people of a specific character or occupying a certain territory, the just claim of every person to be able and allowed to retain possession of and bring, carry, convey, transport, or have weapons on or with them will not and must not be violated or encroached upon.
So, to simplify... because freedom belongs, by right, to every human being, no person or group can (nor should) force another person to go unarmed, nor hinder them from doings so if they choose.

What is interesting to me about this is that they didn't say, "...being necessary, at this time,...", they said it is necessary... That self government can not exist if people are not equipped to protect themselves.

Yet, just the other day, Assembly members in California voted in favor of a bill to ban open carry of an unloaded fire arm in public (not their first infringement either, by the way). What that means, for those unfamiliar with the terms, is that they would make it illegal for otherwise law abiding citizens to have, carry, or transport a clearly visible gun, even without bullets in it, anywhere except in the privacy of their own homes. Now, if that doesn't count as infringement, I don't know what does.

Proponents of the bill say it's not a second amendment issue, but a public safety issue, or a peace of mind issue, or an economic issue. They say that people shouldn't carry guns in public because things will end badly if armed people lose their tempers (because this is the old west and we all believe the best way to win an argument is with gunfire), They say that people shouldn't carry guns in public because seeing them makes other people scared. They say that people shouldn't carry guns in public because those scared people call the police, and it is a waste of time and money for officers to investigate.
I agree. These are problems, the danger posed by people with guns, the fear in common people who just wanted to go out for coffee, the wasted time and tax payer money spent on investigating non-crimes... but the problem is not that people carry guns in public. The problem is that people are too easily frightened, and don't think logically.

*A criminal is going to carry their gun where you can't see it so you don't know they're a criminal, and you don't know they have a gun (a fair number of law abiding citizens would do this too, and save you the needless fear, if it was really possible to get a concealed weapons permit in California). So, the man with a pistol on one hip and a magazine with bullets on the other means you no harm. You are not in danger from him.
* If you ever have the courage and opportunity to speak with a convicted violent criminal, ask them when they would be more likely to commit a crime... when there are people around who have guns, or when there are not? Actually, don't bother. Just think about it. Would you get violent if you knew someone in the area had a gun and was willing to use it to subdue you? You are, theoretically, safer in the presence of openly armed citizens than you are anywhere else, short of a meeting of the Justice League.
* Police resources and tax payer dollars are wasted every time someone ignores the previous two points and calls 911... It's not because someone has a gun. It's because someone else doesn't think clearly.

To make it illegal for people to carry guns in public is a bit like saying people are allowed to say whatever they want, as long as no one else can hear them. It is stealing from them their fundamental rights, given to them not by the founding fathers but by the simple merit of having been born human.

And somehow, a room full of supposedly well educated State Assembly members failed or neglected to see this, and voted the bill through to the senate... which will hopefully see the tyranny, fear mongering, and flawed logic behind it and vote it down.
Though, if it passes in the senate, and and the governor signs it into law, they will have to issue concealed a weapons permit to any law abiding citizen who wants one, in order to pretend the law is constitutional. So, just try not to think about all the people who will be carrying guns you can't see.

This rare political rant (rare in that I don't often make them, and also in that it was founded on and filled with sound reasoning as political rants almost never are) really didn't even need to be made, I suppose. Even if nothing else I said were true... even if the second amendment didn't promise and defend the human right to protect ourselves, and to carry a gun if we choose to, one statement (the origin of which I am uncertain) is all that should be necessary to stop all of this "gun control" nonsense. Even if you take nothing else away from this blog post, consider the truth of this, "If you make it a crime to carry a gun, the only people carrying guns will be criminals."







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