Originally posted from 09-28-03 to 10-05-03
Conceal & Carry Gun Laws:
Preserving or Eroding Freedom?
 by Mike Ferguson

"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." Amendment II, United States Constitution

Forty-four states now have some form of so-called "Conceal and Carry" gun laws. Proponents of these laws often brag that the laws allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons and protect Second Amendment freedoms. Opponents of these laws decry them as a threat to "public safety".

Missouri is now among the states with a conceal and carry law going into effect after the State Legislature overrode a veto from our Democratic governor. The bill (HB 349) was introduced after the plan was voted down on a statewide referendum.

Among the details of Missouri's new gun law are the requirement of a permit to be issued by the local sheriff after fingerprinting and registering the applicant, a background check to be completed, a $100 fee to be paid, a state-mandated training course, a minimum age of 23 to apply for the permit and a designation on the permit-holder's drivers license.

A Republican State Representative, who happens to be a long-time friend of mine, wrote about the new law in a recent email update he sends to his constituents. He accurately described the new law as "...a compromise between supporting Second Amendment rights and the apprehensions of opponents to conceal and carry." I appreciate his honesty and candor on this issue, for Missouri's new law is just that: a compromise of Second Amendment rights.

While many gun rights activists and conservatives hail the law as a step in the right direction for freedom, I must say that I see the law as a step in the opposite direction. I agree that some ability to exercise Second Amendment freedoms is better than the ban we had before, but it is a step towards Australian and Canadian style gun control and will likely only delay the inevitable effort of government to confiscate (disarm) all citizens.

First, conceal and carry laws recognize the government's ability to regulate Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms. The Second Amendment specifically states that "the people" have an absolute right to "keep (own) and bear (carry) arms". Those who claim the Second Amendment only applies to state military units, like the National Guard, are either mistaken about the language of the Constitution or are simply outright lying about the Constitution in order to proceed with citizen disarmament.

Every other time "the people" or "person" is used in the Constitution, it clearly refers to individuals and individual rights. The entire Bill of Rights is designed to protect individual freedom from government. To say that the Second Amendment is somehow an exception to both of these aspects of the Constitution or that the meaning of the language is somehow different on this one issue is either extreme ignorance or outright dishonesty.

Another good friend of mine, Michael Badnarik, has spent over 20 years studying the Constitution and it's history. He teaches a class called "Introduction to the Constitution" around the country professionally. Mr. Badnarik regularly points out what should be obvious: that a right is something you do not have to ask permission for, as opposed to a privilege which is granted by an authority and can be revoked by that same authority.

Tragically, conceal and carry laws show how many individuals are willing to give up personal rights and freedoms by accepting the government's conversion of them to revocable privileges.

Requiring those who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights to be tracked, fingerprinted like criminal suspects and approved before allowing them to carry a gun tramples the Constitution and sets up our society for the gun confiscations that people in other countries, including Canada, have endured.

The conceal and carry debate is also a prime example of the difference between Libertarians and both of the major political parties.

Democrats generally are hostile to the Second Amendment, often citing "public safety" concerns. The political left demands that you place your life in the hands of government and rely on police protection in times of emergency. In exchange for this government protection they want your Second Amendment rights.

Libertarians, by comparison, are concerned with personal safety. Libertarians understand that you have a basic human right to protect yourself and that the government is incapable of protecting individuals on a mass scale.

Here is a personal example. About six years ago I was robbed at gunpoint about ten feet in front of the door to my apartment building. The thug who robbed me got a leather jacket and about $15 in cash. The complete ban on concealed guns for citizens at that time certainly did nothing to prevent the criminal from holding a revolver to my forehead, but it did prevent me from legally having a means to protect myself. I had no option to defend myself; I was forced to rely on the hope that the robber would choose to not pull the trigger. By the grace of God, he didn't and I am still alive today.

The police arrived within minutes of the crime, after I called them. They caught the robber nearly five years later. He was convicted and is now serving a lengthy prison sentence. No one but the criminal knows how many people he robbed in the meantime. Despite the excellent detective and prosecution work after the crime occurred, the fact remains that the government was incapable of protecting my life when I needed it. The government did, however, prevent me from obtaining the means to protect myself by denying my Second Amendment rights to me.

This issue also demonstrates the difference between Libertarians and Republicans as well.

The Republicans who supported and gained enough votes to override the conceal and carry veto in Missouri most likely feel they were preserving freedom. However, they have no problem requiring citizens to pay $100 just for the their Second Amendment rights. These conservatives have no problem enrolling anyone who wishes to exercise their rights into a statewide government database to track them and they have no problem with denying adults between the ages of 18 and 22 their rights under any circumstances.

These are the compromises of the Second Amendment my friend in the Legislature referred to.

Libertarians, on the other hand, would never compromise personal freedom, especially an element of the Bill of Rights. Libertarians recognize that freedom and rights are absolute and should never be put up for a vote.

Conceal and carry laws do not complement the Second Amendment, they erode it. Regulations and tracking of individuals do not enhance freedom, they decimate it.

Freedom is indivisible. Either we have Second Amendment rights or we do not. There is no in between. We, the people, have a right guaranteed by the Constitution to keep and bear arms. The government has no authority to infringe on that right, no matter how trivial or appealing the restrictions may seem.

Originally posted from 08-10-03 to 08-17-03
Assault on the Truth
by The Hunter

The Exeter News-Letter (a newspaper in Exeter, New Hampshire) regularly prints a column entitled "Face Off". The column addresses current issues in the format of a pro and con back and forth between two reporters. On August 5, 2003, the topic of "Face Off" was "Should Congress Allow the Sunset Clause of the Assault Weapons Ban?" The following letter was written to the newspaper in response to that article.

Gentlemen:

I read with interest your debate on the re-enactment of the so-called "assault weapons ban". I am perhaps more knowledgeable on this particular issue than most of your readers, being both a collector of military style rifles and something of a pro-rights Second Amendment activist. So it will come as no surprise that I agree with Ken Goodall, so far as he went. I feel pretty strongly that he missed his best arguments by letting himself get bogged down in minutia and graciously letting slide some glaring factual errors asserted by James Buchanan.

Let us first speak of the broad philosophical point, which Mr. Goodall raised by citing the Declaration of Independence but did not fully develop. In the traditional American view of the relationship between citizens and government, all power ultimately derives from The People. The phrase "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," from the preamble to the Declaration states unequivocally the view of the Founders on the proper role of government in society. A view the same men later enshrined in the constitutional federalrepublic created by the ratification of the United States Constitution.

As quite carefully explained in that remarkable document, many basic "natural" rights were placed FOREVER beyond the purview of the federal government. Immutable rights such as freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, protection from arbitrary and capricious acts of government, AND the right to keep and bear arms were explicitly placed off limits in the Bill of Rights, which should more properly be called the Bill of Restrictions on Government. It is a sad commentary on the state of civic discourse in this nation that neither of your pundits thought to address this point.

The federal "assault weapons ban" violates this bedrock principle of respect for the immutable rights of a free people on numerous points. This law was capricious, arbitrary, unenforceable, ineffective, AND in direct conflict with the clearly stated prohibition of the Second Amendment:

"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."

I can assure you from personal experience, Mr Buchanan, this law "infringes" every owner of these firearms. Under its provisions many formerly available models have been forbidden from further import. Costs on the remaining models have sky-rocketed, in many cases tripling in price within a year or two. That is essentially a violation of the constitutional prohibition against seizure without just compensation.

A hideously confusing maze of regulations now exists where it is very easily possible to have two PRECISELY identical firearms - one legal, and the other carrying a felony conviction to own because it was manufactured one day later than the other. That, sir, is the height of idiocy, and the very definition of arbitrary and capricious. It is a mockery of justice to have such irrational laws on the books.

This is the "common sense" legislation that you claim protects people. It might interest you to know that noted economist John Lott's latest book "The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You've Heard About Gun Control is Wrong" reports on research showing quite clearly that the "assault weapons ban", if it had any impact at all, appears to have INCREASED murder and robbery rates (chapter 8). If that is your idea of protection, I believe I'd rather take my chances, thank you kindly.

Ignoring results entirely for the moment, I want to challenge directly a couple of factual errors Mr . Buchanan hopefully unknowingly introduced to his readers. First, he claims that "the ban was instituted because these weapons - legally obtained - had become the favorite of drug dealers and other violent criminals". While that claim was and is repeatedly made by the Constitution-hating politicians and media figures who pushed for its
enactment, it is in point of fact quite clearly FALSE. Both government crime statistics and the research of academic scholars show that such firearms are very rarely used in crime.

David B Kopel of the Independence Institute found in his 1994 paper "Rational Basis Analysis of "Assault Weapon" Prohibition" that:

"Less than four percent of all homicides in the United States involve any type of rifle. No more than .8% of homicides are perpetrated with rifles using military calibers. (And not all rifles using such calibers are usually considered "assault weapons.")"

Even a casual perusal of facts readily available on the web reveals dozens of other refutations of the claim that assault weapons are the "favorite of drug dealers and other violent criminals". One good summary of the facts with lots of supporting links can be found on Guncite's Assault Weapons page.

I also take serious issue with Mr Buchanan's bald statement "The point is that these are dangerous weapons with no legitimate target or sporting purpose." Again, that is patent and utter laughable nonsense unworthy of publication in any reputable newspaper. First, NOWHERE in the 27 crystal clear words of the Second Amendment does it say ANYTHING about "target or sporting purpose". As New Hampshire's own Jay Simkin ably documented in his book ""Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny", the "sporting purpose" test was imported into American jurisprudence in the Gun Control Act of 1968 almost word for word from the 1938 Nazi Weapons Law, an import that I believe added nothing of value to this country. Don't believe ME, get the book and read it for yourself if you dare; it is all there in black and white.

Besides the dubious unAmerican provenance of the test he is trying to apply, Mr Buchanan is just plain WRONG. The very rifle he spends so much time maligning - the AR15 semi-automatic civilian version of the military M16 - is used by practically all the winners at most of the thousands of one class of rifle matches sponsored by the National Rifle Association and the federal government's Civilian Marksmanship Program. The only rare exceptions are shooting the M1A. A gain, a semi-automatic civilian version a military rifle, the M14 from the late 1950s.

Neither is the .223 round fired by the AR15 particularly "dangerous" in comparison to other rifle cartridges. It is in fact illegal to use on deer in many states because it is not capable of clean, humane kills. Anyone who has seen or read "Blackhawk Down" knows that even the US Army has found the lethality lacking at times. Yes, rifles can kill - but so can knives, baseball bats, hammers, matches, and cars in the hands of criminals or madmen. Yet we would rightfully be incensed if the government tried to stop the tens of thousands of deaths each year from abusing these common tools by outlawing them, and we should be just as outraged at the attempts to outlaw guns.

Lastly, I wish to explain clearly to James Buchanan WHY I and so many other pro-rights advocates are so wary of the "slippery slope" he pooh-poohs. Put simply, we are adamant that we will give no MORE ground on this issue. The very words of the "reasonable" people betray their ultimate agenda. For instance, this passage from a September 15, 1994 Washington Post editorial rhapsodizing on what was accomplished by passage of this very law (emphasis mine):

"No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out be be, as hoped, A STEPPING STONE TO BROADER GUN CONTROL."

I could give you literally hundreds of other direct quotes from media and political figures who make no secret of the fact that they wish to totally disarm the American public. Why, pray tell, SHOULD we trust your good intentions when your fellow travellers have openly stated that our worst fears are their very intention? That, sir, is why we utterly reject your "reasonable" or "common-sense" legislation and will work tirelessly to overturn that already enacted. We have indulged your utopian fantasies long enough. The factual record simply does not support your position, as has been so thoroughly documented by researchers like those I mentioned. I and several million other activists are dedicated to making sure the American public realizes just how strong the case is to overturn each and every one of the 20,000 "reasonable, common-sense" unconstitutional victim disarmament laws. Allowing the "Assault Weapons Ban" to sunset is what WE consider a "reasonable" first step.

"Live Free or Die", indeed.

Sincerely,

The Hunter

Originally posted from 05-18-03 to 05-26-03
Bizzy Halder's Excellent Adventure
by Jeffrey Quick

At 4PM on May 9, I was on my way to Dayton for the Ohio Libertarian convention. Otherwise I would have been at work in Haydn Hall at Case Western Reserve University, across the street and two doors down from the Peter B Lewis Building where Biswanath Halder was playing Rambo with a couple of 9mm semiautos (a Ruger 95DC and a Cobray M11/9, sometimes called "the poor man's Uzi").

I came back to my room from the hospitality suite around 11 PM, where my sweetie Rusty told me the news, and before sleeping fitfully I got to see University President Hundert, Mayor Jane Campbell, and Congresscritter Stephanie Tubbs Jones in a press conference: three unindicted co-conspirators who maintained concentric victim-disarmament zones around the Lewis Building, none of which stopped Mr. Halder.

The next morning, I looked for more news. Fortunately Rusty had brought her laptop, so I could check my email and go to cleveland.com. There in my in-box was Lady Liberty, who wanted to know what the real scoop was. Alas, I knew no more than she did, and I felt sad all day that I'd not been there to honor her request for a sitrep. I wouldn't have been able to tell her much anyway.

Misinformation was the order of the morning. There was confusion about the number of casualties, the shooter was described as a black man (an understandable if un-PC mistake; Indians can be pretty dark, and not much of him was showing). And of course the guns used were matters of wild speculation. One eyewitness (female with an African-American name who probably never held a rifle in her life) said that Halder had "a machine gun"; others mentioned "a high power rifle". I got a wry smile out of Vin Suprynowicz that morning when I said, "That proves it was a semi-auto .223" (as it turned out, even that was optimistic). The Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer's front page had two contradictory descriptions of the weapons in 2 articles about 2 inches apart.

But we expect such things from the media. It was the later personal detail about Mr. Halder that was interesting, and worth commenting on here. Halder had graduated from one of the most prestigious business schools in the country (Weatherhead at CWRU), yet couldn't find a job. While this may have had something to do with his age (62), it probably had more to do with his habit of suing companies that didn't hire him. He was receiving a $600/month disability check for various musculoskeletal ailments plus glaucoma, out of which he paid for the occasional expensive CWRU course to keep his computer lab privileges up, yet he spent 8 hour days working on his save-the-world website. People get paid to do that, at least if they have the sense to back up their work. Halder didn't, got hacked and lost it all, blamed and sued the University, and lost. This was supposedly the last straw for the sociopathic loner who lived in an attic with tinfoil on the windows.

His website is now blocked. But two other writings by Halder are still up:

http://www.alligator.org/edit/opinion/issues/01-summer/current/c03letter.html, a letter against the sanctions against Iraq, and

http://csf.colorado.edu/soc/m-fem/2000/msg01675.html, which deals with various world problems and begins with a quote from Noam Chomsky.

Apparently our perp was a left-leaning peacenik. Typically of the breed, he loves humanity, but hates people. Iraqi children were worth the hand-wringing, but not Norman Wallace whom he gunned down for no apparent reason.

What lessons can be drawn here? You probably expect me to say that if there had been armed citizens in the building, the standoff could have been shortened. As a rule that's true, but not in this case. Halder's Indian Army training was useful: he was wearing body armor and a helmet, and was working in an open-floor-plan building with virtually no corners to take cover from. It took hours for the SWAT team to box him into a closet. It was definitely a job for professionals, which is why we have them.

The other lesson is that the devil makes work for idle hands. Halder's unemployability had roots in mental illness, yet the mental illness was exacerbated by unemployment. Because he wasn't expected to support himself, he had time to brood, which only made him sicker. In fact, his shoot-em-up could even be considered a sign of healing. For the past dozen years, he had refused to take responsibility for himself, and had used the guns of the State as a means of support and as a weapon against his enemies. Finally he found the courage to use his own guns. If he is convicted, we can expect further improvement, including steady employment as he waits on Death Row. By the time he dies, he might be ready to live...just like Norman Wallace was.

Originally posted from 02-14-03 to 02-20-03 as a Lady Liberty Special Report
Missing the Targeted Point
by Jim Lesczynski

As various media outlet reported last week, a group of Libertarians planned to protest the proposed banning of toy guns in New York City by actually passing out toy guns to school children after school. A media frenzy followed, as did a spate of parent complaints, school official pontificating, and even accusations of racism. What happened? After everything was said and done, and the frenzy actually intensified for a time, Jim Lesczynski wrote to his friends on an Internet message board the following:

Thanks very much, gang. I really appreciate your support, and frankly I need it. I am proud of what my colleagues in the Manhattan LP and I did. (Vin Suprynowicz delivered the keynote speech at the Manhattan LP annual convention one week before this scheme was hatched. Coincidence?)

On a heavier note that can only be fully understood once you've spent some time in the truly sick politics of NYC, and that didn't make it into much of national news coverage, is that things got very physically scary yesterday. The coverage was really light-hearted and
fun last week (even the two CNN pieces last Friday were as close to on our side as I've ever seen on that network). Then midweek, the race-baiters in City Hall and in the media started doing their evil thing. Tuesday the "conservative" New York Sun ran the first story
that focused on the "racial" aspects of the story, which despite my 15 years in this stupid city, I was naive enough to underestimate in the planning process.

Channel 7 and some of the city councilmen picked up on that, and on Wednesday, letters were sent home from the school in Harlem "warning" the parents that we were coming with our toy guns into "the community" but that "you should send your child to school anyway, and the local police precinct has been notified, and we will take extra precautions to ensure your child's security".

Needless to say, I was shitting a brick on Wednesday night. I was very close to calling the whole thing off or moving to a neutral site like Times Square. I called my colleague Gary Snyder, who is the county chair, and he tried to convince me to stick to my, um, guns.
When that wasn't working, he pulled out his trump card, the bastard. He told me to give old Ernie Hancock a call in Phoenix for advice. [play Darth Vader theme]

Welllllll... Ernie was just tickled by this whole thing. I expressed my now legitimate fears, and how I was thinking let's just give em out in Times Square and avoid the lynch mob.
Ernie: "No no no no no! Your first instinct was absolutely correct!! Harlem is the absolute exact perfect place for this! You're going to Harlem tomorrow, and you're saying you picked Harlem deliberately. Your going to explain why this bunch of white guys came uptown to stand with the black parents against the government. And you're not going to be reasonable. You're going to take the hardest hardcore libertarian position you possibly can."

Sounds great. Only problem is, there's only one Ernie Hancock, and I ain't him. He has balls of titanium, and mine are cheap nickel. But I also knew Ernie was right. He told me over and over, you're right, they're wrong, and that's all you need to remember. He also gave some very good voice-of-experience tips for managing the media, "have three prepared soundbites and stick to them no matter what they ask; they can't put it on the air if it doesn't come out of your mouth." Great advice, which I tried to remember in the 1-on-1 interviews, but completely forgot when things went nuts, and panicked and started improvising. Lots of other solid Ernie advice, much of which I somehow remembered.

On Thursday, the race activists had organized a massive counterdemonstration that was waiting for us. When we arrived, there were 7 of us and 400 of them, and they were whipped into a seriously dangerous frenzy.

Background on the bill we were protesting: The media and the politicians have started peddling this totally fabricated bull about city kids playing with toy guns and mistakenly, tragically being shot by cops who thought the toys were real. It is 100% pure lie, but they
repeat the mantra like gospel. Latest example: January 3, headline: THIRD COP SHOOTING IN 3 DAYS: NYPD KILLS BLACK BOY BRANDISHING TOY GUN" [paraphrased, but that's the soundbite]. That's what's on the front of the NY Post. If you're the sort who actually reads the accompanying article, however, you learn that the tragic little boy was a 17 year old who had been committing a string of armed robberies by phoning in a food delivery order, and holding up the delivery man with a gun to the delivery man's skull.

On the fateful night, the NYPD sends in an undercover agent dressed as a delivery guy. The punk pulls out the gun, the backup cops shoot him dead, and the punk's gun, upon examination, turns out to be a black pellet gun. This event, in NYC journalese, is "NYPD KILLS BLACK BOY BRANDISHING TOY GUN". Every minimally intelligent person knows the real deal.

Fast forward a few weeks. A bill that was introduced in October (3 months prior to the "tragedy") to ban toy guns is coming up for its first committee hearing. In NYC journalese, this is translated into "COUNCIL CONSIDERS TOY GUN BAN IN WAKE OF RECENT STRING OF MISTAKEN POLICE SHOOTINGS OF KIDS WITH TOY GUNS". Again, every thinking person, you would think, sees through this. This hoplophobic bill has been sitting around for months, and now the news gives it a timely angle.

Now here come the Libertarians with their Supersoakers. For the record, this band of 7 "interlopers" includes Willie Aponte, a Latino alumnus of the same East Harlem school we picked for our philanthropy. Another one of our hardcore black-Latino activists,
stayed behind at City Hall to testify against the bill in front of the committee, or he also would have been there interloping in Spanish Harlem.

Too late to make a long story short, but we seriously underestimated the evil we faced. Remember, a few days ago this story is being played on CNN and talk radio around the country strictly for laughs. A couple of days later, when we're already committed, we walk into a lynch mob.

I was scared for my life. The 400 or so counterprotesters were going out of their minds. Men, women and children were screaming vulgarities and physical threats at us, for "bringing death into our community" in the form of 5 large shopping bags of brightly
colored Super Soakers.

To the 400 protesters, add 50 or so police officers and about that many reporters. Picture 7 mostly white Libertarians being caught like deer in headlights while the cameras roll and 400 black people scream for blood. Did I mention that 1 of those 7 freedom fighters, bringing death into the community, was my 5-foot, 110 pound wife, the mother of my child? And one other female hardcore Libertarian activist, Bonnie Scott, who some of you may know from the LNC?

Needless to say, few guns were given away. Everything Ernie told me to say was pretty much useless at that moment, since we didn't cover how to win a shouting match against 400 violently angry people. Say what you want about cops, but the NYPD saved our lives yesterday. It is literally a miracle that nobody was hurt. They somehow kept the
counterprotesters off of us, we talked to the reporters for about twenty minutes while in a state of shock, gave away may 10 toys, and decided it was time to go.

"Um, how do you suggest we do this?" I asked one of the officers. They walked us over one block while the mob started pushing forward. An off-duty taxi drove by (in Harlem, all taxis are off-duty), and the cops pulled him over and told him he was now on-duty. Bonnie had her Jeep parked up there, so four of us piled in the taxi, and Bonnie and Willie got in the jeep. Squad cars escorted us 40 blocks out of the neighborhood. We pulled over by my daughter's midtown daycare center, and my trembling wife and I went in to retrieve our little girl before heading back to my place to meet the rest of the activists.

In NYC journalese, this is reported as "OUTRAGED HARLEM PARENTS SPOILSICK GUN PRANK". I have slept about 4 hours tops since Tuesday. I've been fighting a miserable headcold all week. I've talked to several dozen reporters and talk shows, the overwhelming majority of which want to crucify us. So while I certainly appreciate how y'all can see the humor in this story, as it certainly started out as funny and clever in our
minds, I'm not laughing quite as hard just yet.

We were on all 7 local stations evening, late-night, and morning newscasts, with my name and face plastered on the screen, while the reporters described me as some sick puppy who exploits Harlem schoolkids for political purposes (as opposed to much-loved-in-the
community Clintons and Charlie Rangel).

On the way home from work today, I rode the subway with my glasses off, my parka pulled way over my head, and facing the wall. Tomorrow morning the beard comes off. I'm lowering my visual profile for a few days. My wife unlisted our phone number this morning. The vicious hate mail and phonecalls are chilling. (And that's just the LINOs). Every intelligent black and latino I know in the past 24 hours has given me a hearty congratulations. They have no trouble at all seeing how I was set up, admittedly largely through my own naivety.

But that doesn't make my family safer. Did I mention that my wife and I are forbidden under NYS and NYC law from carrying the means to defend ourselves? So now you know what I meant when I said in my original posting... Any of you guys out west have some place I can lay low for a few weeks? :-)

Jim Lesczynski

Thanks to Jim Lesczynski for kindly allowing us to reprint his words here, and our gratitude to him, his wife, and his colleagues for fighting for freedom.