by Russell D. Loncore

Today, I’m going to tread ground upon which many fear to tread by discussing the first two phrases of the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states thus: “A Well-Regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Seems to me that we have either ignored or simply missed a very vital component of liberty in our discussions and writings about secession…or about the Second Amendment. That very vital component is the existence and use of force.

No reasonable proponent of state sovereignty wants to propose secession and state nationhood through armed overthrow and insurrection. All of the thought leaders of secession that I have read concentrate on the orderly and lawful methods of secession, and eschew any ideas of military resistance. That’s fine.

But James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson had a different perspective.

The Framers knew that when tyranny advanced against any state, the state’s last option to resist that tyranny was to take up arms and fight. They had just proven its effectiveness by seceding from Great Britain through the use of state militias.

Most of the words I’ve ever seen written about the Second Amendment had to do with the last phrase of the Amendment. Even when I wrote about this subject HERE, my emphasis was about firearms.

My only paragraph about the militia said this:

“Any State with a well-regulated Militia would be capable of defending itself from Federal tyranny. Over the past two hundred years, the individual States have forgotten that their security as a free State relies upon a well-regulated Militia. The first two phrases in the Amendment shed light on today’s power structure in the United States. The Federal government now has standing armies, navies and an air force that far outnumbers any state militia. So, state sovereignty has been destroyed. Now states are more like counties…no sovereignty, only slave territories of a cancer-ridden Federal system.”

The very nature of government is force. It is not governed itself by anything but raw force. Bullies and tyrants never are. If you doubt this, go find a woman who has gotten a restraining order against an abusive ex-husband. See how safe she feels. A week hardly goes by in which there is not a news story about an ex-husband or boyfriend who murders a woman, even though she got a court-issued restraining order. But courts don’t enforce restraining orders because cops are not personal bodyguards. They only deal with violations after the fact.

In like fashion, courts and Congresses, resembling murderous ex-boyfriends and looters, are only stopped from wreaking their mayhem by force or the threat of force.

Do you notice that American armed forces are in Afghanistan and Iraq, not walking the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea? That’s because North Korea is very willing to defend itself. Washington bows up like a banty rooster about the lawful Iranian civilian nuclear program, but sends bribes to “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il.

Even if secessionist and nationalist leaders champion the cause of non-violence and secession through lawful means, they do themselves and their followers a disservice by refusing to broach the subject of armed resistance to Federal tyranny. That position is akin to posting a sign in your front lawn that reads “Gun Free Zone.” You’ve just announced that you have no means of defending yourself against attack and violence. Ask those at Fort Hood, Columbine High School and Virginia Tech.

There is a fine line between acknowledging that you’ll fight tyranny and picking a fight with a tyrant. The first trick is to know enough not to cross that line. The other trick is to be aware that the bad guys keep moving the line.

I think of a state like Texas and its very exciting nationalist movement. I encourage a free and open discussion of militia re-building as they move forward. With a Texas population of over 24 million, the militia could easily become a force of 1–2 million able-bodied adult men.

Secessionists in every state needs to talk about this subject.

Any state that seriously contemplates secession must reconstitute and rebuild its own Militia. This will be one of the most solemn indications of that State’s seriousness about its own liberty and the liberty of its citizens.

Tenth Amendment Center

Introduced in the Ohio  House on October 16, 2009, the “Firearms Freedom Act” (HB-315)  seeks “To enact section 2923.26 of the Revised Code to provide that ammunition, firearms, and firearm accessories that are manufactured and remain in Ohio are not subject to federal laws and regulations derived under Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce and to require the words “Made in Ohio” be stamped on a central metallic part of any firearm manufactured and sold in Ohio.”

The bill was authored by State Representatives Morgan and Martin, and currently has 15 other co-sponsors.  (h/t BuckeyeFirearms.org and OhioFreedom.com)

While the HB315’s title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment’s limit on the power of the federal government.  It specifically states:

The regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. The congress of the United States has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearm accessories, and ammunition.

Some supporters of the legislation say that a successful application of such a state-law would set a strong precedent and open the door for states to take their own positions on a wide range of activities that they see as not being authorized to the Federal Government by the Constitution.

Firearms Freedom Acts have already passed in both Montana and Tennessee, and have been introduced in a number of other states around the country. There’s been no lack of controversy surrounding them, either.  The Tenth Amendment Center recently reported on the ATF’s position that such laws don’t matter:

The Federal Government, by way of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms expressed its own view of the Tenth Amendment this week when it issued an open letter to ‘all Tennessee Federal Firearms Licensees’ in which it denounced the opinion of Beavers and the Tennessee legislature.  ATF assistant director Carson W. Carroll wrote that ‘Federal law supersedes the Act’, and thus the ATF considers it meaningless.

Constitutional historian Kevin R.C. Gutzman sees this as something far removed from the founders’ vision of constitutional government:

“Their view is that the states exist for the administrative convenience of the Federal Government, and so of course any conflict between state and federal policy must be resolved in favor of the latter.”

“This is another way of saying that the Tenth Amendment is not binding on the Federal Government. Of course, that amounts to saying that federal officials have decided to ignore the Constitution when it doesn’t suit them.”

Advocates of these efforts say it doesn’t matter if the federal government disagrees, or even threatens states over funding, as they did recently with Oklahoma.  Gary Marbut, author of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, and founder of http://www.firearmsfreedomact.com/ took this position in a recent interview with the Tenth Amendment Center:

“We’re not depending on permission from federal judges to be able to effectuate our state-made guns bills.  And, we’re working on other strategies to wrest essential and effective power from the federal government and put it where it belongs.“

The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010.  Fourteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws - in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances.  And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law nearly void.

While many advocates concede that a federal court battle has a slim chance of success, they point to the successful nullification of the Real ID Act as a blueprint to resist various federal laws that they see as outside the scope of the Constitution.

Some say that each successful state-level resistance to federal programs will only embolden others to try the same – resulting in an eventual shift of power from the federal government to the States and the People themselves.

by Michael Gaddy

I’m sure my environment while growing up had a great deal to do with my attitude towards the rights of a free people to own firearms. To me it has always been a no-brainer. From the simple act of providing for the defense of one’s life and property and the defense of those with whom we have a responsibility, to preventing criminals from enslaving us, it all seems to be so fundamental. Relinquishing of that right to those who seek domination and control over our very existence is absurdity squared. Yet, a great number of our population continues to believe the propaganda that we can and will be protected by the state. I totally understand the propensity of many to attempt, with intellectual facts, to change their minds. My life’s experience has taught me this is analogous to taking a knife to a gunfight.

If one is to enslave a people and get them to participate in the process, logical, cognitive discourse must be replaced with emotional claptrap. It must become all about how a person “feels” about a subject rather than how they view the subject intellectually. Everything in our society today, by design of course, is based on emotion. TV shows and movies are filled with heart rendering music and dialogue; 24-hour news networks ply the heartstrings with one emotional story after another. Public education is centered on emotions; that is why History has been replaced with Social Studies and Physics and Chemistry have been replaced with diversity studies and “green” everything. Facts must never get in the way of emotions if the state is to be properly served.

How else could the peoples of a country believe that one could atone for the mistreatment of a race over a century ago by punishing members of another race today, none of whom were alive when the persecution took place? How could the burning of a city and the killing of its inhabitants during the War for Southern Independence be looked upon as a crime while the burning of portions of an entire state and the rape and killing of its inhabitants be seen as morally acceptable? How, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, can a group of people believe the police can protect them from crime, when five minutes of the evening news in any metropolitan area proves the opposite? If one is to believe the propaganda of the state, one must never let facts get in the way; emotions must rule in all decisions.

Decades ago I labored under the belief that if I educated myself on facts, figures and statistics, I could debate those who believed in gun control and might even be able to convert some of them to the truth. I was puzzled and disappointed when my intellectual arguments made no impression at all with those who were even willing to discuss the subject. It was when I began to push the point with many of them that I saw the anger and emotions come bubbling to the surface. At the time I remember discussing this with my grandfather and can still hear his response in my mind: “Son, don’t try to make sense of people who don’t have any.” But, I still could not understand; many of the folks I had been debating were well educated. It was then I learned that being educated does not confer any degree of common sense.

Gun control advocates today generally fall into one of two groups. On the one hand are those who deal with the issue emotionally, while members of the other group have an agenda. Approaching members of either group with intellectual ammunition is a completely wasted effort. I saw the futility of discussing the issue with those who can only address the issue emotionally several years back. I was under contract to provide personal security for a group of software engineers and mathematicians from Europe as they were touring the American Southwest. Over dinner one night in Old Town Sacramento, the subject of discussion was the then recent events at Columbine High School. The consensus of the group was Americans must be mad to allow private citizens to own firearms. Although I did not bring up the subject, I relished the opportunity to provide these mathematicians, those who deal in absolutes and axioms, with facts and figures to support my case. One lady in particular was most vocal in her position and she and I eventually became the only two in the discussion, with the others seeming content to just listen. I felt that I was able to counter each point the lady made with facts and statistics proving her points to be incorrect or based on false assumptions. Finally, she said in frustration, “I don’t care how many facts and figures you present, you are never going to change my mind.” We have all encountered this mindset. Any attempts to reach these folks with the truth will always prove fruitless. Do not continue to waste your time.

This is the problem we face in not only gun control but in many other facets of the quest for liberty. The indoctrination embraced by the public schools, the media, and of course politicians, has taken many people into the abyss of situational ignorance. The other group, those with an agenda, is also easy to identify. Most of these are politicians or employees of government. If they advocate openly their belief that only the police and military should be armed, they are criminals, plain and simple, and should never be trusted on any issue. Those who seek to justify their criminality with some humanitarian approach are simply criminals who want their crimes to appear less invasive and therefore justified. They, too, are to never be trusted on any issue. Many times you will encounter employees of the government who will simply avoid any direct answer to questions concerning their oaths or their willingness to follow orders when those orders are criminal in nature. An answer such as “that will never happen” is simply an avoidance of admitting they will do whatever they are told to do because their paycheck depends on it. Put these folks on your enemies list as well.

Patriots and gun rights advocates, please stop sending your hard-earned money to gun rights groups who exist solely to lobby those in power to do that which they have sworn a sacred oath to perform. If someone, after taking such an oath, has to be wined and dined, taken on junkets, or in other ways influenced into doing that which they swore an oath to do, they too are your enemy. They are nothing but political whores selling themselves, your rights, and their country to the highest bidder. Eventually, someone will offer them more money than the gun rights folks can afford to match. Can you imagine paying your minister to stop pursuing your wife, molesting your children, or paying your neighbor to not break into your house? Anyone who must be paid to do that which is right will at some point be paid more to do that which is wrong. Support only those who will not compromise on basic rights. Others are living high on your money and have consistently supported compromises of your basic human rights. Also, look at their results; after collecting untold millions, are our rights more or less secure? Never fall for the old socialist argument of “look how much worse it could have been had we not been here.”

Those who advocate gun control as a means of enslaving the people will never be influenced by an intellectual argument, presentation of facts and figures, or a simple plea to do that which is right. Those who are influenced into making decisions based on their emotions are now being motivated by a stronger emotion: fear, the fear that what we have been telling them for years is true. Countless thousands of folks who previously did not own a gun, have been purchasing guns and ammo at a record pace. Actions by this criminal government have awakened some of the sheeple where our intellectual arguments have failed.

Don’t waste your time, money or efforts on “educating” those who believe in gun control. This criminal government is doing it much better than we ever could.

by Massad Ayoob

It has become increasingly politically incorrect to be a firearms owner. This is because trends tend to be set by the fashionable and the media-connected in metropolitan environments. Gun ownership per capita is well under 50% in urban areas of this country. Nationwide, it is estimated that one half of all homes contain at least one firearm. As the demographics move into rural areas, gun ownership well exceeds that 50% margin, and on the frontiers and in the true backwoods home, gun ownership will generally be found to reach the 90th percentile of the population.

When your beliefs and values are challenged, you want ready answers. The following have worked for me when debating the civil rights of gun owners in this country.

• Isn’t the Second Amendment about the National Guard? Frankly, no. Serious legal scholars have almost universally agreed that the Second Amendment speaks to the rights of the citizens, not the rights of the states or other communities. Doesn’t it seem incongruous that the Framers would have written one states’ rights amendment into a Bill of Rights that otherwise speaks entirely to the rights of individuals?Besides, consider that the document in question was written at a time when the gunfire of the American Revolution was still ringing in the ears of the Framers. A “national guard” of the period would have been Tories loyal to King George, hardly an entity the freedom fighters who wrote the Bill of Rights would have wanted to empower.

  Historically, you’ll also find that the constitutions written by the separate colonies prior to the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights spoke of firearms ownership specifically as an individual right encompassing personal protection, and not just a tool to facilitate state militias.

• Isn’t a gun just a phallic symbol? If it was, no man would ever have bought one with a two inch barrel.
• What about the argument that people die in domestic arguments because a gun is within reach of an angry person? Certainly, those with uncontrollably violent tendencies should not own guns. When asked this question, I always respond with a question: “Could you pick up a gun and kill someone you love because they angered you?”If the answer is No, I reply, “Then how dare you imply that I, and everyone else, would be that unstable?” If the answer is Yes, I suggest they stop attempting to counsel well-adjusted people and immediately seek psychiatric counseling for their own self-admitted tendency toward acting out impulses of uncontrollable violence.
• Won’t criminals just take your self defense gun and shoot you with it instead? That has happened, but rarely. It occurs more often with police, whose openly worn service handguns come quickly to the mind and the hand of the high number of criminals they face in the course of their work. If you’re worried about it, take a course in handgun retention, the art and science of defeating a physical disarming attempt. Most of this training is limited to cops, but private citizens can take such classes on the East coast from LFI (1-800-624-9049) or on the West coast from Firearms Academy of Seattle (1-800-FAS-AMMO).
• How can one morally keep a lethal weapon when the Fifth Commandment states, “Thou shalt not kill?” That’s not what it actually says. Biblical scholars seem unanimously agreed that in the original Hebrew, the commandment said, “Lo Tirtzah, Thou shalt not commit murder,” i.e., thou shalt not kill with evil intent.This is not an exclusively Judeo-Christian ethos. The Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon all make it clear that there are times when it is both justifiable and necessary for the good to use lethal force against the evil. Provisions for justifiable homicide have existed in every body of law in the history of civilized Man: the Code of Hammurabi, the Napoleonic Code, the English common law, the Dutch-Roman model. From communist nations to capitalist, from the First World to the Third, it has been universally understood that every human being has the right to use lethal force against any individual who unlawfully threatens their life or limb with killing or crippling intent.
• Don’t all the police favor gun control? No. A number of high profile police chiefs have espoused gun banning schemes, but they’re usually mouthing the platforms of the politicians who appointed them, and in whose good graces they must stay if they don’t want to be demoted back to Captain, usually the highest rank protected by civil service laws. In rural areas, polls show, most police chiefs and sheriffs support citizens’ rights to be armed against violent criminals. Polls of working street cops routinely show the overwhelming majority favor the rights of the citizens to keep and bear arms. Indeed, most cops make sure there’s a gun at home with their significant other for family protection while they’re at work.

There isn’t space here to go into all the specious arguments used by those who would take from you your right to own firearms if you choose. If you find yourself debating the issue, many publications of the Second Amendment Foundation will give you ample ammunition. You can call them for information on literature and membership at (206) 454 7012, or write SAF, 12500 N.E. Tenth Place, Bellevue, WA 98005.

by Kurt Nimmo

Second Amendment advocates and other defenders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are outraged by California Gov. Schwarzenegger’s scheme to force all law-abiding gun owners in the state to submit data to be inserted in a database when they purchase ammunition.

	Schwarzenegger’s SS Totenkopf death’s head belt buckle displayed on the cover of Time Magazine.

It makes sense California would enact such a law. The state is lorded over by an avowed Nazi.

”I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker,” Arnie said in the documentaryPumping Iron. The producer of the film, George Butler, considers Schwarzenegger a ”flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler.”

In a book proposal, according to the New York Times, Butler also said he had seen Mr. Schwarzenegger playing ”Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home” and said that the actor ”frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer.”

In response to Butler’s accusation, Schwarzenegger told the newspaper in 2003 that he despises Hitler.

He does? If so, why does Schwarzenegger wear a belt buckle bearing the SS Totenkopf, a Nazi SS insignia? Schwarzenegger appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on June 25, 2007, with Michael Bloomberg — who also has contempt for the Second Amendment — wearing the death’s head belt buckle. He wore it again nine months later in the March 2008 issue of Esquire Magazine.

Schwarzenegger proudly displayed the death’s head buckle a few months ago at the CeBIT 2009 IT conference in Hanover, Germany.

Schwarzenegger’s late father, Gustav, voluntarily applied to join the Nazi Party in 1938 when it was still illegal in Austria. He also voluntarily applied to become a member of theSturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary wing, on May 1, 1939. He was a Hitler-worshiping brownshirt.

Arnie invited Austrian president Kurt Waldheim to his wedding in 1986 after it emerged that the former UN secretary general had long concealed that he fought in a German army commando accused of atrocities.

All of this may be incidental to Arnie’s signing of AB962, the California ammo bill. But then, considering Arnie’s flagrant display of an SS insignia, it does not seem likely.

Nazis feared an armed public. Soon after grabbing power in 1933, the Nazis conducted massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents. “After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefited Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state,” writes Stephen P. Halbrook.

“History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing,” Hitler said.

“The Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 replaced a Law on Firearms and Ammunition of April 13, 1928,” writes Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership. “The 1928 law was enacted by a center-right, freely elected German government that wanted to curb ‘gang activity,’ violent street fights between Nazi party and Communist party thugs. All firearm owners and their firearms had to be registered. Sound familiar? ‘Gun control’ did not save democracy in Germany. It helped to make sure that the toughest criminals, the Nazis, prevailed.

In California it is much the same — the state, the toughest criminal on the block, will now have a monopoly on gun possession while the law-abiding citizens will be forced to jump through hoops in order to realize the constitutional right to own a firearm.

It is ironic that Schwarzenegger signed this bill. He is an avowed Nazi that takes pride in wearing the same insignia as the Schutzstaffel or the SS. It is a symbol representing not only the secret police and naked totalitarian power, but the Nazi death cult responsible for killing tens of millions of innocent humans.

Millions of them would have lived a lot longer if they had firearms and fought back against the people Arnold Schwarzenegger worships.