Thanks to Jason Megill.

Must reading at The Libertarian Enterprise is this article:  Scorched Earth, by L. Neil Smith:

Strategically, tactically, we must confront our enemies without any thought of kindness or quarter. Up until now, we've always been too polite. But they created a world where it's unsafe to walk the streets of your own neighborhood at night. They created a world where 3000 people could be murdered by a handful of idiots with boxcutters. They wish to strip us of our means of self-defense, so that we can all enjoy even more of these dubious social benefits. So we must ask, publically and frequently, who they are, and why do they do what they do.

Understand this clearly: in order to make people believe they need more and more government, they want your home invaded by gangs of brutal thugs. They want you beaten, tied up, so you can watch your wife and daughter gang-raped and gutted, so you can be tortured and murdered and all you worked for all your life smashed and scattered in the street. That's the goal of their policy. That's what they strive to make happen. They want you and everything you love dead, dead, dead.

I agree with this viewpoint entirely.  I don't believe, and can't remember ever believing, that the disarmers are only misled but well-intentioned in their efforts to reduce crime.  It is ultimately a matter of domination and control.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to Kent McManigal.

Gun Owners of America has compiled this very informative list of 2008 Presidential Candidates and the Second Amendment.

Thanks to A Keyboard and a .45.

In the last week or two when I signed that "poll" at the Brady Campaign, I gave them my real email address, since I thought it would be a good way to keep track of their propaganda.  Here's an excerpt of the latest:

Last week, a Federal Appeals Court overturned Washington D.C.’s long-standing restrictions on handguns — a decision that endangers all of America’s gun laws.

This case is most likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court and we have a tidal wave of work to do before it gets there.

This battle — to its very core — is the most important battle we have ever waged. We need your help today to build a strong Brady Gun Law Defense Fund to save America’s gun laws.

This fight is so critical to the safety and sanity of our nation that an anonymous donor has extended his challenge and will match dollar for dollar all gifts to this Brady Gun Law Defense Fund. Your gift will be fully tax deductible.

The threat to all our gun laws is truly unprecedented. The hypocrisy of the ruling is astounding.

What is at stake for you and your community? An emboldened gun lobby will use the ruling to challenge strong local, state and federal gun laws.

We must prepare for an onslaught of lawsuits in which gun laws will be challenged under this new reading of the Second Amendment — a strategy the gun lobby rarely used because of past legal decisions … until now. And, if the U.S. Supreme Court reverses itself and adopts the “individual right to bear arms” view approved by the Federal Appeals Court, all good gun laws everywhere could be at risk …

... from the long-standing machine gun ban … to the 1968 Gun Control Act … to the Brady Background Check Law.

… to your local and state laws … like the ones in California and New Jersey banning Assault Weapons … and many more.

Here's hoping!

I know in the past thomas.gov liked to move its stuff around, so this link may not last.  However, it looks like the most quickly-updated source of info on proposed bills is thomas, so we shall see.

Click on H.R. 1022 to access the full text of the bill, the list of cosponsors and congressional actions on this bill so far.

Plenty has already been said about this abomination.  If you haven't read the full text, do so.

Just a couple of things that leaped out at me: 

1.  The Hi-Point carbine would be banned.  I don't know how Kel-Tec's sub-gun managed to not be explicitly mentioned, but they were sure to include to the phrase "copies or duplicates thereof" so I'm sure it's covered as well.  (It is listed.  I must have read that thing 5 times and missed it every time).  The Hi-Point is an ideal home defense weapon for those with a limited income, in my opinion.  Easier to control and theoretically more accurate than a pistol, yet the pistol ammunition it uses would be far less likely to cause the extreme overpenetration at short ranges that is characteristic of any centerfire rifle cartridge.  And of course, we can't people of lesser means going around defending their own homes, now can we?

2.  "A conversion kit."  What does this mean?  It's so ambiguous that I'm sure it just means whatever they say it means.  So much for your M1911 Ciener conversion kit.

These are just a tiny sample of the atrocious infringements included in this bill.  It would essentially ban all semi-automatic firearms as well as any firearm with additional options that make it easier to control and therefore safer to operate.

So far this unconstitutional law has 30 cosponsors.

The American Spectator works over this hysterical editorial from the Washington Post.

It seems to me that those who genuinely believe that laws banning gun ownership will reduce crime have given very little thought to the nature of criminals. Why should we expect people who have no compunction about violating laws against murder, rape and theft would be inclined to obey a law against owning a handgun? Of course, posing that question to the political left will do little good. They'll just respond with hysteria.

The question we all ask, over and over, and they never give us a reasonable answer.  This question is the biggest reason for my belief that they are not well-intentioned by misled in their attempts to reduce crime.  They are interested only in domination, and care nothing for real crime control.

A commentary by Robert Levy and Gene Healy of the Cato Institute that's worth reading.  From The Washington Times:

Enter the National Rifle Association, a Hatch supporter (and vice versa), the organization most closely associated with vindicating gun-owners' rights. Now it gets really convoluted, because the facts suggest Mr. Hatch and the NRA are doing everything they can to prevent the Supreme Court from upholding the Second Amendment. Here's the untold story behind the Hatch bill: It was concocted by the NRA to head off a pending lawsuit, Parker vs. District of Columbia, which challenges the D.C. gun ban on Second Amendment grounds.

In February, joined by two other attorneys, we filed the Parker case, a civil lawsuit in federal court on behalf of six D.C. residents who want to be able to defend themselves with a handgun in their own homes. When we informed the NRA of our intent, we were advised to abandon the effort. Surprisingly, the expressed reason was that the case was too good. It could succeed in the lower courts then move up to the Supreme Court where, according to the NRA, it might receive a hostile reception.

Maybe so. But with a Republican president filling vacancies, one might expect the court's composition to improve by the time our case was reviewed. More important, if a good case doesn't reach the nine justices, a bad one will. Spurred by Attorney General John Ashcroft's endorsement of an individual right to bear arms, public defenders across the country are invoking the Second Amendment as a defense to prosecution. How long before the high court gets one of those cases, with a crack dealer as the Second Amendment's poster child?

Maybe the NRA is just afraid that if there's too much good news, the fires will flicker lower and contributions will begin to disappear.

Commit this to memory, folks:  "if a good case doesn't reach the nine justices, a bad one will."  And when the anti-freedom goons get their hands on a bad case, they aren't going to hesitate for one instant.

Read the whole thing, there's more in there that's worse than what I quoted.  See also Banning the Ban by Gene Healy.

Via The Agitator.

This has been all over the internet, at least on gunblogs, so you've probably already seen it.  But just in case you haven't, this from Bloomberg.com:

A U.S. appeals court struck down a three-decade-old District of Columbia law that bans residents from keeping a handgun in their homes, saying the Constitution's Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.

Hard to believe, but true!

ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE: GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA  is an essay by Joseph Olsen and David Kopel, and studies how the "slippery slope" led to gun control in (no longer Great) Britain.

Is it possible for a nation to go from wide-open freedom for a civil liberty, to near-total destruction of that liberty, in just a few decades? "Yes," warn many American civil libertarians, arguing that allegedly "reasonable" restrictions on civil liberty today will start the nation down "the slippery slope" to severe repression in the future. In response, proponents of today's reasonable restrictions argue that the jeremiads about slippery slopes are unrealistic or even paranoid.

This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope. When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.

Thanks to Ronocracy.

Technorati Tags: gun control, Great Britain, slippery slope

I sent a letter regarding H.R. 1022 to my representative several days ago, and today received this response:

Thank you for contacting my office about Second Amendment issues. I understand and appreciate your point of view on this topic, and I value this opportunity to respond to you.  

I have always supported the Second Amendment right of citizens to bear arms in a safe and responsible manner. Gun ownership is part of our nation's heritage. While I support reasonable gun laws designed to protect public safety, gun owners and dealers should never be singled out for politically motivated attacks. In order to preserve the rights of gun owners, I have worked closely with and been endorsed by organizations such as the National Rifle Association. As the legislative year continues, you can be sure that I will keep your views on this issue in mind, and that I will act to create laws that are consistent with our basic Constitutional rights.

I always get uneasy (to say the least) whenever I see that phrase "reasonable gun laws."  And I'm sure this is just a form letter.  But at least I was allowed to say something, unlike people who live in Illinois.

UPDATE:  I had to dig back into the archives--I'm glad Eponym's search tool works so well--but I posted something about Cuellar right at a year ago.  The old post is here.  He's a Democrat, of course, but last year during the primaries there were signs all over the southside of San Antonio proclaiming, "HENRY CUELLAR IS A REPUBLICAN."  I don't know what he did to be accused of such a heinous crime, but I found it greatly amusing.  This was about the same time that I found some handbills being distributed by the AFL-CIO of Texas that were against him.  So the union types didn't like him, either.  The two people who I saw posting these handbills looked like grungy, ill-kept teenagers to me, who really should have been in school at the time.  I don't know why they were passing out unionist propaganda.  None of which means he's a supporter of RKBA, of course.

Via War On Guns.

Illinois State Constitution here.

I think they pretty much trashed the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well.

Jim Zumbo's Letter to CCRKBA:

I’'m putting my money where my mouth should have been, and where my heart and soul have always been. I know the Second Amendment isn’t about hunting and never has been. My blunder was in thinking that by working to protect precious hunting rights I was doing enough. I promise it will never happen again.

I don’t know what lies over the horizon for me. I am not ready for the rocking chair.

I'’m going to devote every ounce of my energy to this battle. I will remind my fellow hunters that we are first, gun owners. Whether we like it or not, our former apathy and prejudices may place that which we love, hunting, in jeopardy. I will educate fellow outdoorsmen who mistakenly think like I talked, even if I have to visit every hunting camp and climb into every duck blind and deer stand in this country to get it done. I was wrong, and I’'m going to make it right.

Suddenly I feel like singing Amazing Grace.

tnx to South Park Pundit

I added some new stuff to the sidebar today, which will stay there until it no longer matters one way or the other.

Over on the right under "Write Your Representative" is a link to a site that will aid you in looking up and writing your representative to state your opinion on H.R. 1022--the new "assault weapons" ban.  Also there is a link to the full text of the bill itself.  Just below that is a link to some sample letters courtesy of Xavier.  Also there is a link to a petition you can sign against the bill.  Right now it's at about 18,400 signatures.  About 1,000 have been added since I signed it this morning.  (Where are all those 4,000,000 NRA members?)

Just below that is a helpful contact box for members of congress and the media which I found today while poking around the internet.

Just for the record, I agree with Sailorcurt.

Once again from Shooting Wire:

Dick Metcalf, the Group Technical Editor for Intermedia Outdoors, publisher of Petersen's Hunting and Guns & Ammo as well as several other shooting and hunting magazines, sent us a head's-up that the forthcoming May/June edition of Petersen's Hunting would coincidentally feature an article entitled "Hunting with AR Rifles" dealing factually with what had unexpectedly become an extremely controversial topic.

"It was on its way to press before all this happened," Metcalf said, "and was originally intended for those hunters - and writers - who it is now apparent share Jim Zumbo's basic opinion. They were the primary intended audience for the article; which is now, perhaps, a day late and a dollar short."

Indeed, if it had appeared just two issues earlier, it might have prevented one of the great career meltdowns in journalism.

From that correspondence with Metcalf, an unprecedented arrangement between Intermedia and our services has emerged. We believe Metcalf's dispassionate and knowledgeable examination of AR-style rifle hunting demands immediate distribution.

This feature appears in both Friday editions of both The Outdoor and Shooting Wires with the aim of cooling the inaccurate rhetoric still being exchanged between two groups that should be moving in lockstep: shooters and hunters.

Metcalf surveys the transition of military guns to hunting guns throughout history, and how there has always been resistance to change (humans being what they are).

As usual, read it today because it doesn't get archived.