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Quote of the Day: The Right to Bear Arms
The right to bear arms is there to protect free speech and stop a tyrannical government from taking your rights away. That’s the first thing that all tyrants do: disarm the people. – Elon Musk
Elon Musk is a First Amendment absolutist and a big fan of the Second Amendment. A lot of that has to do with his upbringing. He spent the first eighteen years of his life in South Africa, experiencing first-hand what tyrants do when not constrained by a First and Second Amendment.
Some worry access to firearms allows violent criminals to use them to rob and hurt others. Access to firearms also allows law-abiding citizens to stop violent criminals from hurting others. Trial by jury exists to adjudicate cases where there is ambiguity between who is law-abiding and who is criminal. Twelve peers sift through the evidence and judge the facts.
I believe self-defense and trial by jury to be the two cornerstones of a representative government. The right to select leaders is underpinned by the willingness to defend the choices made in a free and fair election – by force of arms, if necessary – even when elections go against you. Anyone unwilling to enforce that compact does not deserve the right to vote. Neither does anyone who is unwilling to use force of arms to protect this country from all enemies, foreign or domestic.
Similarly, a willingness to serve on juries underpins the rule of law. There is nothing more dangerous than leaving judgment in the hands of “experts.” They soon make judgments that favor the expert class and no one else. A functioning representative government is a participative activity requiring active involvement by everyone or it fails.
Elon Musk understands this. He grew up in a society where unscrupulous leaders used their power, unconstrained by a working Bill of Rights, to enhance their wealth and punish their enemies. It is unsurprising that when seeing unscrupulous leaders attempt this in his adopted country, he enters the lists to oppose them — and uses the shield and sword of the First and Second Amendments to fight them.
Published in Group Writing
I’ve just come across the America PAC on Twitter, via a link Musk pointed. Here’s its blurb:
PAC Founded by @ElonMusk to support candidates who champion Secure Borders, Sensible Spending, Safe Cities, Fair Justice System, Free Speech and Self-Protection
Hard to argue with that.
I agree with your statement.
What I find even harder to explain is that we have a Congress loaded with those who not only disagree with all those points but lie about it by taking an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.
Something in our setup is not working.
I take it back. I think I know what it is.
We’re all familiar with the line that “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
I recently heard someone say that “Wherever illegal drugs exist, weapons will also exist”. And we know how well the government prevents illegal drug traffic.
It’s good to know the world’s richest man supports the 2nd Amendment!
Mouse too fast, duplicate comment.
I bet they click “I agree” on software licenses without reading them, too.
Harris with Beyonce, Trump with Rogan. What else can I say.
I have several friends who are adamant that no civilian should own a gun (among a plethora of other left-wing ideas). I have long believed that as relatively smart people they do so because they are certain that the “smart people” (i.e., people who agree with them) will always win elections and stay in power, and the “smart people” who are in power will always implement only “smart policies” (i.e., policies that they support). However, I have been disturbed this election cycle to hear from these friends significant shifts in how they talk about issues, now using exactly the language used by the most radical information and political sources. In other words, I seem to be seeing my seemingly smart friends being manipulated into going along with what the politically powerful want them to believe.
Maybe our friends of that type need to be reminded that we are aware of the high rate of approval for the assassination of Donald Trump.
Most libs who have voted for progressive candidates or Dems are injected with the hive mind virus. (Not that a lot of RINO’s are virus-free.)
When told to insert their heads up into where the sun won’t shine, the only question they allow themselves to ask is “How high?”
The only gun laws that can be statistically shown to affect violence (one way or the other) are the laws that allow concealed carry. When ordinary, responsible citizens are allowed to carry concealed, it radically affects what Massad Ayoob calls the Victim Selection Process.
Elon Musk was born in 1971. From my tour of the Police Museum in 1995, I inferred that South Africa had a jillion guns. Many shown there were antiques; some had been collected at crime scenes; whether the others had been confiscated, legally or peremptorily or tyrannically, I kind of doubt. From such exhibits as displayed narratives, I gathered that quite a few farmers on isolated properties had gone bonkers. From the Internet, I sense that gun control is sort of a new idea thereabouts, haltingly adopted.
And freedom disappeared with gun control.
People tend to think of the Bill of Rights as stuff the government says we are allowed to do. Actually, it is more about conscience. The First Amendment is about the truth that there is nothing more monstrous than a government that tries to make someone act against conscience–silence in the face lies, suppressing religious faith, made to endorse a different faith.
The second Amendment is about retaining the right and means to discharge the moral obligation to defend family, property and community, even if (but not exclusively) against a tyrannical government. The potential abuse that people forget is that if the people are disarmed in exchange for a government promise to take over the duty to protect and the state then withdraws that protection (the “Ferguson Effect” if policing is deemed too costly in a neighborhood, the Hugo Chavez maneuver of restraining police protection while designated thug gangs beat political enemies, leftists DAs letting criminals run rampant, Joe Biden refusing to protect the border…).
Here in New York our left-wing government is constantly trying to figure out how to circumvent the Second Amendment (and most of the rest of them, for that matter). In response to Supreme Court rulings that have favored gun owners over our Democrat lawmakers, the frustrated gun grabbers in Albany have had to get creative.
Number five son wanted to go duck hunting early this morning but had to work late last night, so he asked me if I’d pick up a couple of boxes of extra shells for him. Happy to do it, of course.
It took an hour: In New York, you now have to undergo a background check to buy any kind of ammunition. The process means paperwork, lines at the gun counter, and standing around waiting for the federal system to conclude that I’m not a felon or otherwise prohibited from buying a gun (or, in NY, ammunition).
You have to go through the process every time you buy ammunition. So I bought way more shotgun shells, 6.5 Creedmoor, and .308 ammo than we’ll need any time soon. And I decided that from now on I’ll pick up ammunition every time work takes me to New Hampshire. Like the booze I buy by the case for myself, friends, and family on business trips to NH, ammunition in that state is tax free.
Probably time I stock up on booze and bullets anyway.
That’s one reason why I reload. I have lots of friends who bring me brass. (The main reason is that I love to do it. This is my Happy Place. That’s why there’s a smiley face on the face of the bullet.)
I stopped reloading about 30 years ago, when I stopped shooting handguns competitively, and long ago gave away my Dillon press. I taught my kids to shoot when we were on the farm, and all six of them own guns, but I haven’t actually done any shooting to speak of in years. I like guns, and I occasionally take young relatives to the range to show them gun-handling basics, but that’s about it. There’s a loaded tactical twelve gauge that I’ve never fired leaning against the wall in the corner of my bedroom. One of these days….
I go to the local Conservation Club every Thursday with two other old geezers from church and whoever else might be interested in coming along. Under the bizarre laws of NYS, you can handle and shoot a handgun without already having your permit (a yearlong process) only if you are under the direct control of a certified instructor, at a facility with the word Conservation in their name. Don’t ask me, I know it makes no sense. In any case, I have kept my certification although I haven’t taught NRA Basic Pistol since I blew out my back; I do Refuse to be a Victim seminars a couple of times a year.
As a fellow New Yorker, I’m familiar enough with the rules to know that I really don’t want to deal with the state in any capacity. Fortunately, as all of my guns (except, obviously, that shotgun) were lost in an unfortunate boating accident years ago, I don’t have any compliance issues.
I hope you have something keeping dust out of the barrel.
And I would want to be sure a gun works properly, before having it positioned ready to use for self-defense.
It’s been fired. I just haven’t fired it. It belonged to son number four, before he gave it to me as a gift.
Even before I developed any interest in firearms, when I moved to New York state I thought the gun laws there made no sense, even to me as a person with no significant interest in the subject. But then a number of things in New York make no sense.
When a coworker asked me to be a character witness on her application for a permit I discovered the particularly bizarre aspect that it was nearly impossible for a person to try out shooting (is the person suited to handling a gun? will the person enjoy target shooting?) before going through the arduous (and as I later discovered, arbitrary) permitting process.
Yup. You can’t even touch a handgun in a gun store. That’s stupid. You know when it’s the right gun for you by how it feels and points for you, not unlike Harry Potter’s wand.
But the laws have no logic or purpose other than to discourage honest people from owning guns.