CmdrFenix.org

First some background.

Back on June 27th 2008, the US Supreme Court held:

…the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for private use in federal enclaves. The decision did not address the question of whether the Second Amendment extends beyond federal enclaves to the states. It was the first Supreme Court case in United States history to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self defense.

This ruling was important for several reasons:

1. It ended the miss-conception that the 2nd amendment right was tied to some kind of militia service
2. It affirmed it was an individual right that ever American shares
3. It completely threw out the D.C. handgun ban as being unconstitutional

There are only a very few instances I will consent to being disarmed by anyone. Here are a few of them.

• In a court house
• On an airplane (while no to firearms for what I think is obvious reasons, Tasers and other non-lethal alternatives should be allowed on)
• … and near the president

Let me be very clear about my feelings on “gun bans”. I am 100% against them. They have not been shown to be effective against crime, and if the situation did arise that it was needed, I would prefer to have that option available to me. Let me also emphasize this for anyone out there who took Professor Fong’s statistics and probability class back in college. I don’t care about statistics and that isn’t the purpose of this article. I don’t care what the percentage chance of violence against me is based on what city I’m in. This is about principles and fundamental rights. If you don’t agree with me, then fine. Does that mean I can carry a fully automatic AK-47 down the street on my shoulder? (even though it would be pretty bad ass…) No of course not, but before anyone says, “OMG you want to allow Bill Gates to buy an M1 Abrams tank and Warren Buffet to buy nuclear weapons…”. Putting the absurd nature of that statement aside, I think this sums it up:

Even the NRA concedes that you can’t have mad men running around with weapons of mass destruction. So there are some restrictions that are permissible and it will be the task of the legislature and the courts to ferret all of that out and draw the lines. I am sure, though, that outright bans on handguns like they have in D.C. won’t be permitted. That is not a reasonable restriction under anybody’s characterization. It is not a restriction, it’s a prohibition.

Now post Heller, the Democratic majority (… of the two independents, one was a former Democrat and the other a former Republican) in the D.C. Council quickly rushed to change their laws and regulations and in typical Washington fashion, constructed stupid, and lengthy regulations to “allowed” the lowly people of the city to keep firearms in their house. In an ironic twist, Dick Heller was denied his application for a permit to have a firearm in his home because his 8rnd 1911 didn’t meet their regulations. The whole situation is completely foolish.

… and what does Police Chief Cathy Lanier feel on the topic? I personally loved this one, because it re-enforces the “Only One” mentality that David Codrea coined so aptly.

I think the reasonableness standard of the handgun laws in the District, which are not completely banned, because there is licensed handguns in the District of Columbia for law enforcement, retired law enforcement, federal law enforcement, security agencies. So, there is not a complete ban on handguns.

~ Washington DC Police Chief Cathy Lanier

So what do I want out of all this? I want the gun bans in Chicago, San Francisco, and anywhere else they are outright banned, lifted. I want more uniform requirements and regulations from state to state. Driving a car isn’t in the bill of rights, but they sure did make it easy for my NH license to be valid in MA and other states. It also takes 2 weeks here in NH and about 8 months to get a MA permit. (if you can even get one) I want a nationwide CCW permit system setup that allows me not to worry if I accidentally parked my car in a certain area of the Sears parking lot at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua, at which point I could be arrested for carrying illegally in MA. Do I feel like the laws are setting honest people up to fail? Some yes, and this is wrong.

If you don’t agree with guns, or my feelings on this. That is your right, but also let me say this, you’re feelings on the matter do not trump my rights to carry firearms on my person or have them in my home for whatever reason I deem fit. I do not OC (open carry) very much. I am not one of those people who likes to try and make statements or intimidate people. For the most part, I understand some people are uncomfortable with firearms, and I try to respect that, but if I’m at the hair salon and take my jacket off and someone sees my 1911, then too bad. I don’t care one iota if they feel it’s unnecessary. I will not go out of my way to show off, but if they see it, I’m not going to loose any sleep over it.

Now that I’ve gotten all that background out of the way, let’s talk about Tom Palmer. He’s a D.C. Resident currently suing the city for the right to carry his firearm on his person outside his home. It’s a good article and I definitely think it’s worth reading. You know, it’s a sad state of affairs when something that should be a fairly straight forward right is something we must actually bring legal proceedings and fight to be able to do. Why does Tom want the right to do this? Because it already saved his life once.

“We were what they perceived as a couple of faggots, which was the term they used, walking through their neighborhood,” he said. “And it would have been one of those modestly ironic moments if my colleague might have been murdered in a gay bashing, when he was straight.”

The threats were vivid and believable: “We’re going to kill you. They’ll never find your body.”

Palmer told his colleague to run. The thugs chased Palmer, who stopped under a streetlight and pulled out his gun.

“I did not say anything witty or clever,” he recalls. “In the movies, they say something very clever. I just said, ‘If you come closer, I will kill you.’ Very blunt. And they stopped.”

Amazing how that worked. He leveled the playing field and the aggressors here stops. Would pepper spray has been as effective? Who really cares…? No shots were fired and nobody was harmed. As expected the group at Handgun Control Inc (a.k.a The Brady Campaign against Gun Violence – yes they really were called Handgun Control Inc) have offered up their thoughts on the matter.

“To force the general public to be exposed to the risk of loaded guns when they are out with their family in public areas is outrageous and has absolutely nothing to do with the right to defend the home…”

Please see above statement about, “I don’t care one iota how xyz person feels about something that is not harming them.” I personally enjoyed the response to this argument from HCI.

The idea that the right to bear arms is limited to “walking around your house is silly.”

Molon Labe!

That long golden road to China
In the past several decades, China’s economy has moved at an amazing pace. Unfortunately, their progress has caused us to leave the moral ground for basing our foreign policy on the economic ground.

Back on Feb 2nd, The US proceeded with a normally scheduled arms shipment to Taiwan. Per the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, we have supplied defensive arms to Taiwan. This of course has rubbed China the wrong way. Now back when this treaty was signed, China’s economy was strong, but still developing. It made sense for them to agree to this since it limited the arms to a major enemy. Now with the economic pressure they could leverage, you see all sorts of objections over the same arm sales we’ve done for 31 yrs, and for which we have never broken that treaty.

Trade relations between the U.S. and China appear to be hitting a rough patch, with China publicly threatening to impose sanctions on U.S. companies participating in the arms sales to Taiwan, leading some observers to express concern over the growing war of words between Washington and Beijing.

Back in Jan, Google refused to abide by the search engine filtering that the chinesse gov’t was mandating. It looked like for once, a corporate entity was standing up to them. That was until China launched a pre-emptive strike against Google. Let’s not mince words. I don’t think anyone has any doubt about who did the attacks. No they didn’t use missiles, bombs, or aircraft carriers…

Google is releasing some information about these attacks to the public. The company says that a minimal amount of user information was compromised, but has come to the alarming conclusion that the attacks were targeting the information of Chinese human rights activists. Google found that these attacks were not just going after Google’s data, but were also targeting at least twenty other major companies spanning sectors including Internet, finance, chemicals, and more. Google has also discovered that phishing attacks have been used to compromise the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.

“… There is always a way in!!!” (C&C Generals – Chinese hacker unit)

Now of course, the filtering on google’s engine was turned back on. They rolled over and the “attacks” have stopped. Amazing how that works, eh?

Most recently, this past week, Pr Obama met with the Dalai Lama in a very low key and quiet fashion, which was of course followed with another round of protests from China.

President Barack Obama personally welcomed the Dalai Lama to the White House Thursday and lauded his goals for the Tibetan people, but he kept their get-together off-camera and low-key in an attempt to avoid inflaming tensions with China.

At the risk of angering Beijing, Obama did tell the exiled spiritual leader that he backs the preservation of Tibet’s culture and supports human rights for its people. He also gave encouragement to the Dalai Lama’s request for talks with the Chinese government.

Good to see the president has a pair of balls and would keep to his campaign promise of doing “that which was right” even in the face of opposition. I guess he should have amended that to say, “… as long as it doesn’t piss off China”.

At some point, someone is going to have to draw a line in the sand and say no more. The human rights violations, the oppression, and the downright aggression against anything they disagree with at some point will need to be addressed. I just hope something gets done BEFORE China has the power to throw a switch and collapse our economy because we can’t get our $0.15 widgets from them since we have no cost effective domestic production. Why can’t we get effective domestic production? We have labor unions that help drive up the cost of production. We have higher cost of living over here and higher cost of doing business thanks to taxes and other contributing factors. In short, they have us by the short hairs at this point and without a sec of balls, I doubt we’ll do anything to stop it.

So here we have the case of Jason Baez of NYC. An honest working family with three kids. One night three people forced their way in, tied them up, and proceeded to robbed them. He reported it and police suggested he move until they find the perps. So without breaking his current lease, he takes on another appt and a mountain of debt until they find the people involved. They get a security camera, and Jason also gets a gun. Now NYC has some of the strictest firearm laws and “ordinary people” aren’t allowed to own them. It’s felt people should be the “only ones” armed.

But five months after the robbery, as Mr. Baez was visiting their Manhattan apartment to collect the mail, a police officer stopped him in the lobby and frisked him, he said. Finding nothing, the officer asked him if he had any drugs or weapons on him. Nervous, he decided to confess: “I just got home-invaded in September and I have a weapon for my protection,” Mr. Baez recalled telling the officer.
He was arrested, and despite having no criminal record, he faced up to three and a half years in prison. Prosecutors offered him a deal of one year if he pleaded guilty, and he accepted. He is to be sentenced Jan. 27.

This is why feel so many of the firearm laws in this country are bogus and the politicians don’t care about you or I. After all, why should they? They usually have protection that carries automatic weapons…

Hey I know who we can all call!!!

I just got an alert from gonh.org (Gun Owners of NH) that local Demorcrats (and yes, this was ALL Demorcrat) have now back door banned firearms in state building of NH.

The NH Legislative Facilities Committee voted today to ban firearms in the NH State House.

This is a Joint Committee, and members are:

Sylvia Larsen (D)
Terie Norelli (D)
Margaret Hassan (D)
Mary Jane Wallner (D)
Peter Bragdon (R)
Sherman Packard (R)
Lou D’Allesandro (D)
Marjorie Smith (D)
Daniel Eaton (D)
Gene Chandler (R)
Martha Fuller Clark (D)
Sheila Roberge (R)

The Joint Facilities committee just passed by an 8-3 vote (party lines)
the following regulation on the State House:

“No person, except for law enforcement personnel in active duty, shall
carry a firearm or other dangerous or deadly weapon or an explosive,
openly or concealed, while inside the State House, the Legislative
Office Building, the Upham Walker House, or any of the underground
tunnels connected to these buildings. Law enforcement personnel, when
requested by State House security staff, must produce sufficient
identification establishing their status as law enforcement personnel.”

Here is what bothers me about this. They tried in scheduled session to do this twice last there and there was an overwhelming protest against it, which promptly instructed them to vote the bill as ITL (In expedient to legislate – Basically kills the bill). Regardless of who the people protesting (yes some of the “free staters” were there, but for the most part it was simply ordinary people) were, there is a large (and yes large is a valid statement considering the number of people who showed up) part of the population that disagrees with this. Now in scheduled session, they can’t get this passed, so what do they do? Do it as an unexpected event and ram it in the back door.

This is the shit that REALLY pissess me off. Letters are going out to ALL parties involved. I am going to print and send them certified. I’ll scan / attach it here when I’m done. Now I’m off to enjoy some of the holidays.