It’s true that Barack Obama loves guns. But only for the privileged politician and bureaucrat classes. You see, without guns, the bureaucrats would get a lot less cooperation fighting all the wars they are engaged in. Gun control is not about protecting us from each other. Gun control is about protecting bureaucrats from their subjects.

You don’t have to go back that far to find Obama taking an extreme stance against gun rights. In 2004, while running for the U.S. Senate, he promised to bar citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. The Chicago Tribune reported then that Obama “backed federal legislation that would ban citizens from carrying weapons, except for law enforcement.” Obama explained his plan to pre-empt state concealed-carry laws with a federal bill: “National legislation,” Obama said at the time, “will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents.”

For a man who doesn’t know me to arrogantly make assumptions about my level of competence and tell me I am not allowed to defend myself is morally wrong. Government has lots of guns. Why can’t I have guns?

The assumption is that government is more responsible with guns than regular people. Prove it. How many individuals have declared war on a country and killed millions of its citizens? Take away every gun regulation. The equation would remain exactly the same. People would still go crazy from time to time without thousands of gun regulations. Some of them would still get access to guns. If all the guns were gone, they would use a car, or poison your food and water, or devise some other method. The mentality a society teaches its citizens is much more important than the rules it writes down in books.

Maybe you could care less about guns. Maybe your pet issue is social injustice. Fine. Let’s talk about that.

The basic problem with government is that it doesn’t actually solve problems. It manages them.

Name one of the social injustices that government has declared war and won. War on Poverty? Nope. We’re nowhere near winning that one. War on Drugs? Nope. Drug use is up. Doesn’t matter if you look at illegal substances or prescription abuse. Not winning. That particular boondoggle isn’t going away anytime soon. War on Terror? The term itself is asinine. The program isn’t designed to stop terror. It’s designed to make us all very afraid. Of real and imagined boogeymen, some of whom wear government issued uniforms and lord it over you at the airport, border crossings and increasingly, on your city streets. We’re not winning the War on Terror and we never will because you cannot wage war on something as broad as “terror” - the whole idea is idiotic.

Finally, the most important war the government is fighting. I see the bureaucrats making a great deal of progress in that particular campaign. The War on Intelligence is moving right along. No, they aren’t winning per se. But the federal government has certainly managed to dumb us down since it took over educating us in 1979. No Child Left Behind has to be one of the most intelligence damning pieces of legislation ever written. The Idiocracy is coming. We’re 23rd in math and 16th in science. Under the management of FedGov, those numbers are sure to get bigger.

Let’s get back to our next President Mr. Obama and his worldview for a moment.

He has promised to pick guardians of the Constitution who do not respect gun rights and believe that a comprehensive ban on gun ownership is consistent with the second amendment.

Senator Obama has a history of projecting a misleading moderation in his politics — and he does it very smoothly. According to his biographer, David Mendell, one of Senator Barack Obama’s greatest political virtues is “his ingenious lack of specificity. . . . While talking or writing about a deeply controversial subject, he considers all points of view before cautiously giving his own often risk-averse assessment, an opinion that often appears so universal that people of various viewpoints would consider it their own.”

It is my belief that Barack Obama has no interest in solving my problems. That’s good because I don’t want him to solve my problems either. The tricky part is that I don’t even want him to manage my problems. They are my problems, and I’ll deal with them.

Mr. Obama when you become President all I want you to do is leave me alone to live my life. I have the audacity to hope you’ll end the four unwinnable wars your predecessors have been managing so poorly in direct violation of the Constitution they swore to uphold. Let the states handle social issues. Let me handle my business. You worry about protecting our borders and getting us out of all those ill advised foreign police duties we’ve assigned ourselves over the last 60 years or so. I’ll worry about running my own life, saving for retirement, choosing which medicine and medical treatment is best for me, picking what kind of gun I want to keep for personal defense, educating my kids and living as long and as healthy as I can. I don’t need help managing any of that stuff, please and thanks. The more rules you try to make me follow in my day to day routine the less likely it is I’ll cooperate with you. Hint: the same rule of thumb applies to people in other countries. Most people who didn’t ask to be managed don’t appreciate it when you decide they need managing.

I appreciate your taking a moment to consider this American’s viewpoint.

David Olofson is sitting in jail. Like many non-violent citizens who represent no threat to anyone, Olofson is a victim of paper pushers and their endless rule books.

There are several ways for a person to unintentionally commit a felony, but most of them are looked at by prosecutors, judges, and juries as the accidents they are and dealt with accordingly. Such is not always the case however, especially when firearms are involved; for the past 2 years David Olofson has been learning that the hard way. Olofson is a regular guy who happens to be fond of AR15 style sport-utility rifles. He loaned a rifle to a friend. While the friend was shooting it he moved the safety switch to a point beyond the Fire position. The rifle fired a couple of short bursts and jammed. Someone at or near the club called the police to complain about machinegun fire. The police notified the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and David Olofson was subsequently charged and convicted of illegally transferring a machinegun.

You may not be a weapons collector, as Olofoson was, and as I am. You should still be worried. If the government can arbitrarily make up its intrepretation of its own unconstitutional rules as it goes to the point where the intrepretation doesn’t match the reality of the situation then it isn’t just people who collect guns that are in trouble - we’re all subject to the whims of dishonest bureaucrats who believe they are demigods.

As the years pass I find myself having a harder and harder time respecting the rule of law. That is because the rule of law is increasingly corrupt. Intent used to matter. That is no longer the case.

The cornerstone of this charge is the government’s contention that it doesn’t matter whether a gun fires multiple shots as a result of malfunction or modification because the law defines a machinegun as; “… any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” While on the witness stand, firearms expert Len Savage asked the Assistant US Attorney prosecuting the case if that would make his grandfather’s old double-gun a machinegun if it malfunctioned and fired both barrels with one pull of the trigger. The AUSA responded by paraphrasing the legal definition of a machinegun with emphasis placed on “any weapon which shoots… more than one shot… by a single function of the trigger.”

What I or any reasonable person would call a weapons malfunction is being used by our federal government to put a non-violent citizen who represented no threat to anyone in a cage and hold him there for a period of years. That is unconscionable.

These people intend to control us all one day, from the moment we are born until the moment we stop breathing. By these people I mean petty bureaucrats. I mean the enemies of freedom. I mean the faceless men and women who, by typing something on a keyboard thousands of miles away are able to turn you into a criminal in the eyes of the law without you even knowing anything just happened. These are the modern evil wizards of our time, and they are plotting to take over the kingdom.

If you care at all about freedom in America, I encourage you to donate whatever you can to David Olofoson.

Scientists sometimes introduce a predator into an ecosystem in order to take care of a pest that is threatening say, the potato crop. These experiments often go wrong - the predator turns out to be more dangerous than the pest. Social engineers do the same thing as scientists, except with human beings. One example is China’s one child policy to control overpopulation. The jury is still out on whether or not that policy will benefit the world or China in the long term. It certainly doesn’t benefit human freedom.

In the United States, our greatest social engineering experiment is something most people called The War on Drugs. The War on Drugs is actually a war on freedom, when thought about literally. It is also an experiment in introducing a predator to take care of a pest. What do you do when the predator you introduced to take care of the pest turns out to be much worse than the pest?

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The violent assault on Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home late last month was certainly not the first bungled raid by a government SWAT team, but the bad publicity it generated should make it the last time these trigger-happy squads target innocent civilians. Tracking a 32-pound package of marijuana that had been addressed to Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic, Prince George’s sheriff’s deputies forcibly entered the mayor’s home on July 29 and killed his two dogs before handcuffing him and his mother-in-law.

But like so many other SWAT team raids across the country, this one turned out to be a big mistake. After reviewing the case, State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey acknowledged that the Calvos were victims of a multistate drug ring that used innocent people’s names and addresses to hide shipments of contraband drugs. But the mayor and his family were also victims of a home invasion by the SWAT team, based entirely on what turned out to be a false premise.

Some of you who read these words may want to argue with me. The police are here to help us you’ll say. Yes, some of them help some people some of the time. Unfortunately the helping is on the decline and the abuse is on the uptick. Survey 100,000 random citizens of the United States before the so called drug war began on their level of trust in the police. That would probably be a pretty high number. Survey 100,000 random citizens now. Most likely the numbers will be pretty low. Chances are that a lot of these people know someone who has been locked up for a consensual non-violent crime. You only have to be beaten up once by uniformed authorities to develop a lifelong distrust of all authorities. You only have to be locked up for a few months to learn to lie to the cops when they come around. After all, they are not your friends. They protect and serve only themselves. That is the lesson many have learned.

Public servants do not shoot family dogs. Peace officers do not initiate violence, they are supposed to prevent it. SWAT teams should be used so sparingly that when they are used, people are amazed. Instead, they are used so frequently it is almost like a car alarm going off - no one pays any attention. We’ve learned to ignore the sights and sounds of our freedom going away.

When the men in masks come to your neighborhood with concrete barriers and rolls of concertina wire just remember that they are there to protect you from yourself. If your family dog gets shot or you get beaten while trying to stop them from raping your daughter or your wife it is your own fault for questioning the authorities. They are just here to deal with pesky drug addicts and you got in the way.

Hmm. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so willing to give away the Constitutional rights of others. Maybe it is time to stand up and let your government know that you aren’t going to tolerate this sort of behavior.

Georgia resident Andisheh Nouraee writes about what it is like to exercise his freedom to carry a weapon for self-defense in the great metropolitan melting pot of the South - Atlanta. The article is worth reading and the pictures are inspiring - in particular because Nouraee is of Middle Eastern extraction.

If you intend to rob me, stab me or punch me in the neck because you think I looked at you funny, I recommend you glance at my waist before lifting the pull tab on that can of whoop-ass.

I may be carrying a handgun.

Nearly everyone in our state can legally keep guns in their home. I am one of the few, the proud, the Georgia Firearms Licensed – one of a reported 300,000 Georgians permitted to carry a gun in public.

I am also one of Georgia’s 300,000 gun carry license holders. I don’t really worry too much when I don’t have my gun with me (which is rare). I do find it extremely useful when I bike, run or travel by automobile. It’s reassuring to be packing heat when I’m practicing for a triathlon on the rural roads around where I live and a pack of wild dogs decides they need to chase me and nip at my heels - I haven’t yet had to fire a shot but it certainly reassures me to know that if I feel teeth sinking into my calf I don’t have to try and hop off and beat the mutt into submission while his pack mates chomp down on other extremities or worse yet, my throat. If you’ve never experienced the pack mentality, I suggest you watch some video of a pack of dogs attacking a human being. Not pretty.

Humans in packs are even worse than dogs. Enough said about that.

People have many reasons for self-defensive weapons carry. Most people only need to be mugged once to realize that police provide an illusion of safety but not much else - they generally won’t be there to stop whatever bad thing happens to you while it’s happening.

I got my gun license a year and a half ago after I was relieved of my wallet at gunpoint at my front door by a man who threatened to come back for me if I cancelled my ATM and credit cards.

Since he was clearly comfortable dropping by the house unannounced, police told me to take the threat seriously by carrying a gun myself.

I’ve had handguns for target shooting since I was a kid, but never carried one for self-defense. After the robbery, I applied for a permit so I could carry a gun without breaking the law. And even before the license arrived, I started to carry my gun from my driveway to my front door, which is legal; I was scared the guy would keep his promise and come back for me.

Amazing! Police told Mr. Nouraee to get a gun! That’s wonderful. Let’s move on to the meat of the story.

Nearly everyone I spend time with regularly has a visceral and fearful reaction to guns. Having so many gun-dreading friends and acquaintances has taught me to keep guns where no one will ever see them. Carrying a gun in public seemed like peeing in the sink of a public restroom. Not illegal, but definitely a first-degree jerk move.

I was also afraid of the reaction of strangers. I would hate to be the subject of this 911 call: “Hello, police, I’m at the Publix on North Decatur Road and there’s a swarthy bald man here with a gun. He’s headed for the Lean Cuisine.”

So, although I had a permit, I was less than thrilled that the General Assembly passed H.B. 89 in April. The new law would give licensed firearms permit holders the right to legally carry guns into places that used to be off-limits: city and state parks, public transportation, and restaurants that serve alcohol.

We Americans are allowing ourselves to be conditioned to just this mindset. Guns are bad, MMMKAY? If a dude has a gun and he isn’t in uniform he must be planning something nefarious, MMMKAY?

The truth about guns is that they are merely an extension of the mindset of the person who has control of the trigger. I have never understood why we cannot focus on changing the mindset and instead insist that the gun itself is the problem. But our bureaucrat class feels threatened anytime control is taken away from their clerks and myrmidons. Which is how we arrive at these sort of stupid press conferences.

Mayor Shirley Franklin and airport General Manager Ben DeCosta held a press conference at Hartsfield-Jackson to publicize their intention to keep the airport a gun-free zone. They were joined by the media and a half-dozen members of the gun rights group GeorgiaCarry.org, there to protest the city’s position.

Bearden and his gun never showed up at the airport, though. But later that day, he did file a lawsuit against the city for banning guns from the airport. A hearing is scheduled next month.

The city argues the airport and its parking lots are municipal buildings, and therefore not subject to the law’s public transit provision. In their speeches, both Franklin and DeCosta emphasized the 9/11 attacks as reason to keep guns out of the airport. The city’s found a powerful ally in U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who’s demanding that the Transportation Security Administration ban guns from all parts of major airports.

“I keep hearing the phrase ‘in this post-9/11 society’ and I’m so sick of that,” said Mark McCullough, a GeorgiaCarry.org member who was at the press conference. “What 9/11 showed me was that the government has no ability to protect me. I don’t want to be walking around the parking lot here with [my cell phone] being the only device protecting me.”

While I was at the airport, GeorgiaCarry.org treasurer Michael Menkus invited me to a party. To celebrate their newly granted right to carry guns in restaurants that serve alcohol, members of the group planned to meet at Christos, a Greek-style pizzeria in Marietta, to eat dinner with handguns strapped to their waists.

I hope you’ll take the few minutes out of your life to read the rest of the story. I hope this because I hope to one day live in a place where guns are not the problem. I hope to live in a society that values rational discussion enough to realize that it is what lives in your mind that is important. A society that values individualism and self-determination will inevitably also value the life of the individual and allow individuals to defend themselves from aggressors. Societies that ban guns just end up with lots of stabbings. They also tend to end up with lots of people who cannot think for themselves in life threatening situations.

I read a fascinating article this morning that directly correlates gun control in an area with the crime rate. The two are statistically inverse. In other words, the more gun control a place has the more crime it has.

For many years, the Brady Campaign released an annual “report card,” grading each state on its level of “sensible” gun laws. States with higher grades (e.g. “A”) were obviously more “sensible,” according to Brady; states rated “F” were apparently considered “non-sensible.”[3]

The first interesting detail in the 2001 version of this report card is that Washington, D.C. is missing. This is also true for Brady’s 2002-2004 reports.[4] This is a curious omission because the Brady Campaign is on record as supporting the D.C. ban on functioning firearms––Helmke said “we [Brady Campaign] disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling”[5]––and it seems reasonable that their report card would be an excellent opportunity to highlight D.C.’s success, since surely a total firearms ban rates an “A.”

Also in 2001, the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, as part of their Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), asked respondents from all over the country the following question: “Are any firearms now kept in or around your home? Include those kept in a garage, outdoor storage area, car, truck, or other motor vehicle.”[6]

Results from this survey were collated with Brady’s 2001 grades. After sorting by gun ownership levels, states were divided roughly into quartiles: under 30% gun ownership rates (12 states); 30-40% (14 states); 40-50% (15 states); and over 50% ownership rates (10 states). There is a clear correlation between low levels of gun ownership and higher Brady grades: Only the first quartile of states, incidentally with the lowest levels of gun ownership (average 16.5%), were rated well by Brady, averaging a grade of B+. Quartiles 2-4 had average grades of D+, D+, and D-, respectively. This indicates that Brady’s definition of “sensible” gun laws equates with laws which restrict or prohibit gun ownership.

Unfortunately for Brady, there is another correlation which demands attention. Each year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation releases their annual Uniform Crime Report, reporting on major violent and property crimes committed around the country. Included in their crime tabulations is a Table 4, which compares the current year’s crime rates to the previous year’s. This enables the FBI to report on updated data for the previous year’s, reflecting corrections and late entries from participating law enforcement agencies from across the country. As a result, Table 4 in the 2002 Uniform Crime Report has more accurate crime data for the year 2001.[7]

Brady’s favored group––with the B+ average grade––had a average violent crime rate of 610.0 in 2001.
Violent crime levels dropped sharply in quartiles 2-4: 424.5, 410.7, and 319.6, respectively.[8]

I don’t need all these statistics to know that having access to guns is my right as an American, but it does help justify my continued fight for more responsible gun ownership and less panic inspired restrictions on law abiding members of society.

Frankly, when guns become illegal I’ll become an outlaw. In the meantime, I’ll continue trying to raise awareness about facts instead of fiction. Fact: responsible gun owners are a threat to no one but criminals. Fiction: the more you control access to guns, the less crime there is. The exact opposite is true.

Go read Nemerov.