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Why You Should Own a Gun The murders on the Virginia Tech campus, the worst such rampage in our history, might have been mitigated if just one member of the faculty or a student had the means to return fire. I have owned guns for decades. On rare occasions, I have had to "show" one of my guns to people with bad intentions. Not surprisingly, they changed their plans to take my money and do me some harm. The Virginia Tech murders confirm the value of empowering ordinary citizens to carry a concealed weapon.
Judge Silberman wrote, "In sum, the phrase ‘the right of the people’, when read intratextually and in light of Supreme Court precedent, leads us to conclude that the right in question is individual." As Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, noted succinctly, "The right of self-preservation was understood as the right to defend oneself against attacks by lawless individuals, or, if absolutely necessary, to resist and throw off a tyrannical government." That is precisely why the Second Amendment says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Many States refused to ratify the proposed U.S. Constitution until this amendment and nine others were included. As Judge Silberman noted in his decision, the Second Amendment acknowledges "a right that pre-existed the Constitution" in the same way as freedom of speech. Barely a week later in the Greenwich Village area of New York, David Garvin, carrying two semi-automatic firearms and a bag with 100 rounds of ammunition killed Alfredo Romero, a pizzeria employee, firing 15 rounds into him. Confronted by unarmed auxiliary police officers, Nicholas Todd Pekearo and Eugene Marshalik, he killed them as well. They were volunteer civilians who wear uniforms nearly identical to regular police. Finally, Garvin—a man with no psychiatric history—was shot dead by full-time police officers. This is why police officers are always armed. I could not help wondering how that event would have been altered if any of his victims had been able to shoot back. The Second Amendment Foundation notes that firearms are used defensively an estimated 2.5 million times every year, four times more than criminal uses. This represents some 2,575 lives protected and saved for every life lost to a gun. According to the national Safety Council, the loss of life to accidental firearm death is at its lowest point since records were begun nearly a hundred years ago. In a nation where the rights conferred on individual Americans by the Second Amendment were just reaffirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, it’s worth considering that, as of November 1997, there were an estimated 129 million privately owned firearms in the nation. Guess what? After September 11, 2001, the one thing a lot of people did was to go out and buy a gun. If a bunch of fanatical Muslims could hijack four commercial airlines, destroy the World Trade Center towers, fly one into the Pentagon, and intended to fly the other possibly into the White House or the Capitol building, a lot of people decided that being able to shoot people with similar intentions was a very good idea. Since then we have seen numerous incidents of "instant Jihad syndrome" where some Islamist decided to kill infidels who were just out for an hour at the local mall or otherwise peacefully going about their lives. And, yes, there are still criminals who use firearms. Now, however, Americans are not bound by some gun-banning law to be nothing more than victims. Responsible gun ownership is a good idea. And if this is the first time you have heard about the recent decision of the Court of Appeals, that’s because this story got buried by most mainline newspapers and by virtually all of the broadcast news media. No doubt this case will go to the Supreme Court at some point. The writers of the U.S. Constitution understood the necessity for an armed citizenry. When only the government has guns, everyone else is just a slave. Gun-banners who would turn everyone’s life and liberty over to the care of an all-powerful, central government, don’t understand and don’t agree with that. As gun law expert, John M. Synder, put it, "Gun rights are human rights. Gun rights equate with the right to defend life and, therefore, with the very right to life itself." For more information, visit www.saf.org. Homeland Security in Tewksbury, NJ
Designed to help first responders such as law enforcement and emergency services by enabling them to purchase equipment, as my eye scanned three pages of cities and towns I noticed that the Neptune Township police will buy something called video detective. So did Glen Ridge where I was briefly editor of the local weekly. Neither my current hometown nor former one, both of which border Newark, received any grants. Newark received none, perhaps because the city bought a new garbage truck with a former grant. Suffice it to say, Avon by the Sea, Chatham, Surf City, Perth Amboy, or Tewksbury are not likely to find themselves fighting or responding to terrorist attacks and please do not ask me how New Jersey Fish & Wildlife Law Enforcement got a piece of the action, purchasing night vision goggles. I am happy to see my State’s first responders cash in on yet another federal government program. I am sure that people in other States feel pretty much the same. What’s a Homeland Security Department for if it can’t spread the money around? But is that security or politics? In March, Michael Chertoff, the director of DHS, addressed the Northern Virginia Technology Council and, after reading his speech, I am very happy I am not Michael Chertoff. If ever an impossible job was created, it is his. Consider that he administers twenty-two existing "legacy systems and functions", all cobbled together into one big bureaucracy whose purpose is to keep us alive. Anyone familiar with even just one bureaucracy knows the insanity, insularity, and lethargy that exists when its public servants realize they barely have to pay any attention to Congress except at budget review time and almost never to the public. Chertoff, a lean man who has earned the respect of everyone who has encountered him, including the many criminals and miscreants he sent to jail as a district attorney, defined five "overarching goals" for DHS. (1) Protecting the nation from dangerous people. (2) Protecting the nation from dangerous cargo "or things coming into the country." (3) Protecting and hardening our critical infrastructure. (4) Strengthening our emergency preparedness and response. And (5) "making sure that we have a fully-integrated and fully-unified department which is effectively managed…" As to the last objective, I suspect it may well be sometime into the middle of this century before that happens, if ever. The children of current DHS personnel will possibly be the best candidates to replace them, having been raised listening to dinner table discussions about the need for full integration and unification of XYZ agency with ABC agency. Chertoff does his best to keep fears of an Islamic cataclysm muted. When it became clear that England is a hotbed of Jihadist plans to kill the infidels of London’s Chelsea, Belgravia or Mayfair districts, he said that the problem in America is less severe. No pockets of radicals such as the poor Brits must ferret out. However, Investor’s Business Daily on February 26 begged to differ noting that, "right across the Potomac from his office is the second-highest concentration of Muslims in the country. Baileys Crossroads, Virginia, is teeming with Islamic radicals just as hostile to the U.S. government as their counterparts in London." The article described Baileys Crossroads as "the heart of the Wahhabi corridor, which includes the safe houses where the (9/11) hijackers stayed and the mosque where they and dozens of other terrorists have worshipped." It is home to the Virginia Jihad Network in an area locals now refer to as "northern Virginiastan." There are a number of comparable concentrations that include Dearborn, Michigan, Bridgeview, Illinois, and, in my home State, Jersey City. This long established hotbed of Islamism was not on the latest list of cities to receive a DHS grant to buy anything. I hope and pray that DHS knows what it’s doing. I take some comfort knowing there has not been another attack in the United States like 9/11, but I am cynical enough to think that the Arabs are smart enough to know not to awaken Americans from their slumber until another time of their choosing. Every week the Center asks for your donation for one reason only, because we must. It is through the support of visitors to this website that we are able to maintain it and our communications program that includes significant outreach via talk radio. If you can spare even a few dollars, please pause and take a moment to help the Center. If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 W. Third St., Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ. Thank you!
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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On March 9 I learned of a ruling in the case of Parker v. District of Columbia in which Senior Judge Lawrence H. Silberman wrote an opinion, with Judge Thomas B. Griffith concurring, that restored the Second Amendment to the citizens of the District and, by extension, to every citizen of these United States. Not since 1976, had residents of the District had the right to defend themselves with force of arms.
New Jersey is not likely a target of terrorist plans, though I suppose as vulnerable as anywhere else, reaped approximately $1,481,990 recently from just one program administered by the Department of Homeland Security. Overall, DHS will provide $34.6 million in direct assistance nationwide this year and, since 2005, has disbursed more than $69.7 million in equipment and training.