As I sit here and hammer this out on my
keyboard, the Democratic Party of the United States is meeting
in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the purpose of officially
nominating President Obama to again represent their party in the
upcoming US Presidential election. In addition to that, they
have adopted their official platform, extolling their wants and
visions for this nation. The official platform deals with
subjects like abortion, same-sex marriage, and other social
issues. I will touch briefly upon those two matters, before
moving on to what concerns us as gun owners and freedom-loving
Americans. Abortion is murder, and in this nation, it is done
mostly for convenience, and it is wrong. Abortion ends an
innocent human life. It seems pretty simple to me. On the gay
marriage thing, I don’t care if they marry or not. It is a sin
for a man to bed down with another man. It is also a sin for a
man to bed down with a woman to whom he is not married.
Therefore, if a couple of men are living as husband and husband,
it is none of my business whether or not they have a wedding.
They can have a big cake, throw a bouquet, and register at Bed,
Bath, & Beyond. Have at it. They might as well be as
miserable as the rest of us. Now, onto the subject of gun
ownership, and the control of such.
The rights preserved for us in our
Constitution are God-given, and are not dealt out by a
benevolent government. Our nation’s founders enumerated those
rights in the first ten amendments to our Constitution. The
Second was placed there to protect our nation’s citizenry from
a tyrannical government. It had nothing to do with duck hunting.
Had the patriots not been armed with the best weapons available,
we would still be British subjects.
Today, we have a choice to make, and this
upcoming election is important in many ways, but especially to
our way of life. We have one party who wishes to control every
aspect of our lives, and another party that only wants to
control many aspects of our lives. There will be other parties
represented on our ballots, but we are going to either elect the
Democratic candidate, or the Republican candidate. Neither party
is ideal. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for one, then go
out and vote against one. I do believe that one of those two men
is a better man than the other, morally speaking, but it is the
philosophical differences between the two parties with which we
are concerned here, regarding gun control.
Last week, the Republican Party adopted the
following as part of their official platform, regarding firearms
ownership:
"We uphold the right of individuals
to keep and bear arms, a right which antedated the Constitution
and was solemnly confirmed by the Second Amendment. We
acknowledge, support, and defend the law-abiding citizen’s
God-given right of self-defense. We call for the protection of
such fundamental individual rights recognized in the Supreme
Court’s decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and
McDonald v. Chicago affirming that right, and we recognize the
individual responsibility to safely use and store firearms. This
also includes the right to obtain and store ammunition without
registration. We support the fundamental right to self-defense
wherever a law-abiding citizen has a legal right to be, and we
support federal legislation that would expand the exercise of
that right by allowing those with state-issued carry permits to
carry firearms in any state that issues such permits to its own
residents. Gun ownership is responsible citizenship, enabling
Americans to defend their homes and communities. We condemn
frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers and oppose federal
licensing or registration of law-abiding gun owners. We oppose
legislation that is intended to restrict our Second Amendment
rights by limiting the capacity of clips or magazines or
otherwise restoring the ill-considered Clinton gun ban. We
condemn the reckless actions associated with the operation known
as “Fast and Furious,” conducted by the Department of
Justice, which resulted in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol
Agent and others on both sides of the border. We applaud the
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives in holding the
current Administration’s Attorney General in contempt of
Congress for his refusal to cooperate with their investigation
into that debacle. We oppose the improper collection of firearms
sales information in the four southern border states, which was
imposed without congressional authority."
The above is the strongest pro-rights
statement to ever come out as the official platform of the
Republican Party. Mitt Romney does not have a stellar record on
gun rights, but within the framework of this platform, the party
will hold his feet to the fire, and hopefully, he will do
nothing to impede our civil rights.
In stark contrast, today, the Democratic
Party adopted as part of their official platform the following:
“We recognize that the individual
right to bear arms is an important part of the American
tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment
right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own
firearms is subject to reasonable regulation. We understand the
terrible consequences of gun violence; it serves as a reminder
that life is fragile, and our time here is limited and precious.
We believe in an honest, open national conversation about
firearms. We can focus on effective enforcement of existing
laws, especially strengthening our background check system, and
we can work together to enact commonsense improvements – like
reinstating the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show
loophole – so that guns do not fall into the hands of those
irresponsible, law-breaking few.”
It starts off rather well, but reading the
rest of that paragraph reveals that their first sentence is very
much akin to the matter into which I stepped while out in the
cow pasture today. They go on to state that our God-given civil
rights are subject to “reasonable” regulation. They do not
state who will do the reasoning and regulating. Maybe Harry
Reid? Nancy Pelosi? Charles Schumer? Barak Obama? Those are the
leaders of the party, and they want to “reasonably” regulate
that which God has given us.
Next, they use the term “gun violence”,
as if the gun is to blame. How about they regulate violence,
which is the crime, leaving the tool of choice to be of no
consequence? If I am killed by someone who uses a knife, or a
club, or an automobile, or fire, I am just as dead as if I was
killed by someone using a shiny new gun. However, in their
carefully-worded document - and you can be assured that many
people spent several hours working on the wording of this - they
assign the violence to the instrument, and not to the user of
such. The clincher, and the Holy Grail of their desires, is to
reinstate their beloved “Assault Weapons Ban”, while having
no definition of just what an “assault weapon” is. If I
assault you with a sharp stick, then that sharp stick is an
assault weapon. They wish to ban weapons. Like their
interpretation of our Constitution, their definition of an
assault weapon is ever-changing. If you ask a leader of the
party to define an assault weapon, you will get a word picture
of a semi-automatic weapon that can fire several shots without
reloading. The mechanical definition which they give can fit
more than half of the firearms ever manufactured in this
country, and probably eighty-five percent of those sold in the
past two decades.
Let’s move on to their “gun show loophole”.
The gun show loophole is a farce.
There is no gun show loophole. Every licensed gun dealer has the
same paperwork and background check requirements, whether he is
selling at a gun show, or at his store. It is legal in most
parts of our nation for an individual to sell a firearm to
another individual who resides in the same state, provided that
the purchaser is not otherwise barred from purchasing a firearm.
What their so-called gun show loophole fix would do is to make
it illegal for me to sell a gun to a friend, a brother, sister,
cousin, or other person to whom I can legally sell a gun to now.
They want total control over who does and does not own firearms,
within their definition of “reasonable” regulation. They
also want to keep a list of what and how many firearms that each
of us own.
The Democratic Party and the leaders thereof
want control over the capacity of the weapon’s magazine. Their
thinking is flawed. If it is necessary for a police officer,
whom we hire to protect us, and who has other officers ready to
come to his aid, to have a magazine which holds twelve shots,
why must someone who is on his own against an attacker be
limited to ten, or eight, or six, or eleven? If I have the right
to shoot an attacker once, why do I not have the right to shoot
him until the threat is stopped? Thinking on such matters, it is
easy to see how silly and arbitrary their proposed “reasonable”
regulations are. Why is it okay for me to hire someone to shoot
for me against an attacker, but not okay for me to do it myself,
and if it is okay, why does the employee (police officer) need
sixteen rounds, but I have to make do with ten?
The leader of the Democratic Party, Barak
Obama, has stated on record that he would support a
semi-automatic firearms ban. He has called for a prohibitive tax
on ammunition, making it practically unaffordable for most
people (citizens) to buy, and he has also stated that he does
not think that people should own guns. Is he to be trusted to
impose “reasonable” regulations?
Financially, the Democratic Party is ruining
this nation. Harry Reid should be charged with treason for not
doing his Constitutional duty of even attempting to pass a
budget. The party seeks to control every aspect of our lives.
They are all for the right to choose, as long as it is only the
right to choose to kill an unborn human baby. They do not want
us to choose our own destiny, our own doctor, our children’s
teacher, nor our own firearms. They seek, in this document that
they have adopted, to disarm the citizenry of this nation, so
that they can control without opposition every thing that we
buy, eat, drink, drive, and own. They are counting upon the
voters of this nation to selfishly vote for those who promise
the most “free” stuff. Nothing is free. Someone pays for it,
but they seek to divide us, to turn most of us against the
"evil rich people"; to take that for which someone has
worked and to give it to someone who won‘t. They are counting
upon us to trade freedom and liberty for their promise of “reasonable”
regulation, if we will only give them the control which they
crave. They count upon us to be so self-serving as to ask our
children and grandchildren to pay for that which we will not.
They seek to make us subjects, instead of citizens, depending
upon the government for all that we have, and all that we are.
They label us, to turn one group against another. If we speak
out against the President’s policies, we are labeled as
racists. If we speak out against Socialist programs, we are
labeled as haters. If we stand up for our gun rights, we are
labeled as right-wing extremists. We are all citizens, with
differing backgrounds, ethics, vocations, and dreams. We can
disagree on many of the things mentioned above, and that is
okay. Your voice and your opinion are just as important as mine.
However, if we do not stand together now against those who seek
to disarm us, then our American way of life is over. Never
before has the difference between the philosophies of the two
major political parties been so vast, nor the choice so clear.
Gun control is not about guns; it is about
control.
Vote wisely, as if your life depends upon it,
because it does.
