Feb2001

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The Armed M is a publication of the 2nd Amendment SIG, a special interest group of American Mensa Ltd. Opinions expressed herein are the opinions of the writers, and not of American Mensa, Ltd., which has no opinions. This newsletter is linked to the Mensa web page WWW.Mensa.org as WWW.webcatt.com/2ndAmend_SIG

I have moved and am now in Wilmington North Carolina. My E-Mail address is Smith13@Worldnet.att.net. I can always use contributions to the newsletter. If you write something or find something e-mail it to me I'll put it in the newsletter as space and theme allows. Bob Smith

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt, November 18, 1783

"He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them are an abomination to the Lord." - Proverbs

By Robert A. Waters - Web Published: 12.27.00 www.sierratimes.com/archive/waters/edrw122700.htm

Give a kid a gun and he suddenly becomes a monster, shooting up schools and blowing away anyone whom he perceives has wronged him. Right? That’s what the mainstream media would have you think. While such incidences do occur on rare occasions, many other times kids use guns to save lives. But these stories don't fit the media stereotype and therefore get no national exposure.

On Sunday afternoon, March 19, 1985, Jacqueline Roland, a mother of two, heard a noise outside her home near Bethel, Oklahoma. As she went to investigate, she told her six-year-old son Jimmy to get the family gun. In addition to Jimmy, four other children were in the home at the time.

As Mrs. Roland stepped outside, a masked man grabbed her and placed a knife to her throat. Jimmy Roland, following his mother's instructions, walked outside with a .22-caliber rifle. Seeing the masked man holding his mother, the youngster aimed the gun at the assailant's head and cried, "Turn my mommy loose!"

According to Pottawotomie County Sheriff Paul Abel, "the man apparently thought the boy was going to shoot him. He loosened his grip on Mrs. Roland and she broke away." The assailant fled but was soon captured, along with two accomplices. All were lifelong criminals and predators.

Sheriff Abel had nothing but praise for six-year-old Jimmy Roland. "In all likelihood," the sheriff said, "he saved every one of those people’s lives...They're just average people who taught their child safety with guns from the time they were real little, because there are guns in that house as there are in most of the houses around here."

In a barrio near Compton, California, eighteen miles south of Los Angeles, Hispanics have to fight every day just to survive. According to an Associated Press article, on March 30, 1999, at around noon, two robbers entered the 99 Cents Plus Mini Market. The sixty-two-year-old owner, a grandmother whose name was not released, was working the counter along with a teenage employee. Her twelve-year-old grandson was also in the store.

One of the robbers pointed a "machine pistol" at the owner and demanded money from the cash drawer. The teenage employee knocked the gun away, and began struggling with the robber.

As they were fighting, Dennis Smith, the second robber, began beating the owner. He knocked the grandmother to the floor and continued to punch her while she was down.

Her twelve-year-old grandson grabbed a handgun and fired several shots, hitting Smith four times. He died a few hours later. The other robber escaped.

Juan Zamora, who owns a shop next door, summed up the desperation of those trying to earn an honest living in the barrio. "Always they have troubles because everybody try to steal," he said. "The police come very late. They come after one hour, after three hours, after four hours. Everybody is still afraid. Nobody protects us."

Adam Cummins, 38, of Wichita, Kansas, was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. He could function normally at times, and then he would snap and become violent. Because of his mental illness, Kathryn Adams, his mother, had raised Cummins' fifteen-year-old daughter.

On May 17, 2000, at 10:00 p.m., a visibly agitated Cummins appeared at Adams' home. Having first-hand knowledge of his violent tendencies, she locked the front door and refused to let him inside. Undeterred, he kicked in the door.

As the crazed man launched a vicious assault on the terrified woman, Adams yelled for her granddaughter to "get the gun." In the meantime, Cummins hit Adams several times with a claw hammer, fracturing her skull.

As the assault continued, the fifteen-year-old ran to a nightstand in her grandmothers' upstairs bedroom and pulled out a handgun. By this time, Cummins had bludgeoned his mother into unconsciousness.

His daughter met him at the top of the stairs. She fired one shot, striking Cummins in the abdomen, ending the assault. He died a few minutes later. According to a story in the Wichita Eagle, Kathryn Adams remained in critical condition with a fractured skull.

Jim McNiece, principal of Northeast Magnet High School, where the girl attended, stated that the school had provided counseling for the traumatized teen. "She has a lot of support from family and friends at school," he said.” She’s a nice kid, and is worried about her grandmother. That's where all the attention of the family is focused."

Police said that over a long period, Cummins had had many dealings with law enforcement officials and mental health agencies. He had threatened police officers, mental health workers, and his ex-wife (the mother of the fifteen-year-old). For years he had fought with his wife and mother for custody of the girl. The family had tried numerous times to have him institutionalized. On the day he died, he'd called his ex-wife and threatened to kill her.

Police credited the fifteen-year-old girl with using appropriate force to stop a vicious assault.

Professor Joseph E. Olson of the Hamline University School of Law in St.Paul, Minn. has produced a very telling statistical analysis of the murder rates in all the counties of the US. He compared the murder rates in the counties that went for Bush in the last election to the rate in the counties that went for Gore. Here is what he found:

Lesson: The counties that voted for Gore are crime ridden. They are typically also liberal, vote Democratic, and have the harshest gun control laws. Yet their attempts to control crime by "controlling" guns has failed miserably. As long as they continue to support such failed gun control laws--and the politicians that push them—it seems they get what they deserve.

There is no doubt that Al Gore’s loss in the Presidential election stopped lot of bad things from happening to gun owners, but there are so many bad trends ongoing already that all freedom loving Americans should not relax their vigilance. These trends slowed some due to Gore’s loss, but they continue to progress even now. As we speak, special federal "gun prosecutors" are being hired and installed all across the nation to do nothing but one thing: Prosecute violations of federal gun laws. This new program is Clinton’s reaction to the NRA’s successful media campaign to convince the public that more gun laws are not needed, but enforcement of the laws we already have is enough.

Since federal gun laws are vast and complicated, and often vague and generally unknown to the average person, there are going to be lots of people who are going to suffer in the coming months. It should scare every gun owner that there are now prosecutors with nothing to do but look for ways to prosecute them. And the more these prosecutors succeed at their task of suppressing real gun crime, the fewer real criminals will they have to occupy their time. They will then turn their attention to more and more minor and technical violations of the gun laws to fill out their caseloads. Don’t expect these prosecutors to believe any law they are asked to enforce is unconstitutional

Our tradition of armed citizens is being attacked at the UN too. The United Nations is drafting and attempting to implement new international treaties against your right to own "light arms." Gun Owners are being prosecuted for murder for merely selling a gun that (years) later ends up being used in a murder

The next generation is being taught gun phobia by your public schools. All across the nation government-run schools are reacting hysterically to students who draw pictures of guns, or merely write stories involving them,(one case saw a boy suspended for bringing a GI Joe doll’s toy gun to school). The Brady Law is effectively denying many citizens of their right to buy firearms, because of bureaucratic snafus. In Austin, Texas, citizens are having their guns unlawfully seized by local police and forced to jump through administrative hoops to get them back. Reports from California reveal that police agencies are checking firearms records on people they pull over in traffic stops.

We have seen the election of two of the most rabid gun haters to the US Senate: Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, (both from New York). Even high profile Republicans are jumping on the bandwagon for more, useless gun controls. For example, presidential contender John McCain appeared on TV ads in Colorado to help pass a ban on private transfers of guns at or near gun shows (it passed, as did one in Oregon). And in the new Congress, Republican Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island has announced he willed-introduce retiring Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NJ) federal anti-gunshowbill. Thanks Jack, for picking up where a Democrat left off.

Just this month the IRS issued regulations trying to squelch the voice of pro-gun websites by threatening to reject their tax-exempt status if they try to influence voters by showing the voting records of politicians, or send emails with political information to non-members. See it for yourself on pages 385-387 of the IRS bulletin, (http://ftp.fedworld.gov/pub/irs-irbs/irb00-42.pdf ).

We won’t even mention the sad case of poor Russ Howard, ex NRA board member, who was hit with an $808,000 for his personal foray into California politics to take out an anti-gun state Senator. He is just another example of the minefield the ordinary citizen faces if he actually tries to "get involved" in what is supposed to be a free and open political process.Ex-State Senator Jerry Patterson has himself recently paid a high price for his 2nd Amendment activism. The lobby organization for HMO’s in Texas, Texas Assoc. of Health Plans (TAHP), recently gave him the choice of stopping all such activities, or losing his job as their lobbyist, he chose to give up the job.

There is plenty more bad news that won’t fit on this page. So if you think you don’t need to be involved, we hope we have changed your mind. The fight for your gun rights needs you.

Guns continue to be a central issue in the presidential campaign. For a year now, Vice President Al Gore has painted Texas Gov. George W. Bush as an extremist, a pawn of the National Rifle Association who recklessly endangered people by signing a concealed handgun law. Mr. Gore has gone as far as linking Mr. Bush's signing of the Texas concealed handgun law to last year’s fatal shooting at a Fort Worth church. Handgun Control has just launched an advertising campaign featuring actor Martin Sheen making similar claims.

Mr. Gore's and Handgun Control's typecasting is made easier by the stereotypical view held of Texas. But what few realize is that with about 42,000 words' worth of state gun laws, Texas law is actually quite average. Those accusing Mr. Bush of flip-flops to position himself as a moderate are, to put it charitably, unfamiliar with his record.

Concealed handgun laws: Texas' concealed handgun laws have a lot of company. Thirty other states have similar so-called "shall issue" laws, which set up objective rules allowing people permits once they pass certain criteria: a criminal background check, a minimum age, payment of required fees, and any necessary training. Another 12 states have more restrictive "discretionary" rules, where local officials can use their discretion to determine whether an applicant has demonstrated sufficient need for protection. Only seven states totally forbid the carrying of concealed handguns.

Yet, even this does not give the complete picture because Texas has one of the most restrictive shall-issue laws, with the third longest training requirement at 10 hours. (Half the other states require no training whatsoever and another quarter requires three to five hours.) Texas also has the highest fees at $140, compared to the average of $60. Background checks in Texas are also relatively stringent.

Mr. Bush makes no apologies for signing the law that went into effect in January 1996, and says, "I believe the law we passed in Texas has made Texas a safer place." Indeed murder rates in Texas fell by 25 percent between 1995 and 1997, much faster than the 16 percent decline in states without shall issue laws. The rape rate in Texas fell twice as fast.

The most emotional attack against Mr. Bush is that he signed a 1997 law allowing people to carry concealed handguns in churches. But this charge is completely misleading. Churches are still listed as an area where permit holders are forbidden to carry their weapons. What the 1997 law did was create a uniform warning sign requirement for permit holders across all public buildings, including churches. The change was strongly supported by ministers in the state.

After the concealed handgun law took effect in 1996, owners of public buildings had the right to post a sign stating that concealed handguns were not allowed on their property. Churches were initially exempt from this warning requirement because concealed handguns were never permitted in churches. But since it is not always obvious which buildings is church property, in order to avoid confusion, the 1997 law explicitly made the rule the same across all public buildings. The law was also motivated by issues of fairness and ease of prosecution, since many thought that permit holder sought to be warned before entering a building where guns were prohibited.

Some media pundits expressed surprise when Mr. Bush said that, if passed, he would sign a law mandating that trigger locks be sold with guns. Leaving aside whether such legislation is wise, this is in line with what he did as governor. He signed legislation in 1995 that made it a crime to store firearms in a way that a reasonable person would know that someone under 18could gain access to a weapon. Indeed, while 17 states have similar laws, Texas is one of only four states that sets the age limit for access as high as 18. The other states set it between 12 and 16.

Mr. Bush made liability reform a cornerstone of his governorship, and has signed into law major tort reform early during his first term as governor. He has long been unwilling to "subcontract out public policy to the trial lawyers," and the legal assault on the gun is no different. His decision to support this legislation, which restricts city suits against gun makers, was courageous, because after the Columbine attack politicians in many other states, fearing public reaction, delayed or quietly buried reform legislation. But Mr. Bush held firm, and signed legislation only weeks after Columbine.

While Mr. Bush has supported legislation backed by the NRA such as concealed handguns and restraining suits against gun makers, he has opposed them on trigger locks and background checks at gun shows. His consistency stands in sharp contrast to the changes in Mr. Gore's positions on guns and abortion when he first tried to make the move from Tennessee to the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988. Mr. Bush is not the trigger-happy cowboy Mr. Gore and Handgun Control are portraying him to be.

John Lott is a senior research scholar at the Yale University Law School. The second edition of his book, "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws" (University of Chicago, 2000) was published in June.

Father Murphy and the Million-Mom March By David Diet man http://www.lewrockwell.com/dieteman/dieteman19.html

There is an Irish folk song named "Boulavogue," which tells the story of a Catholic priest, Father John Murphy.

Ultimately, the story of Boulavogue is the story of a priest who convinced His flock to surrender their arms to their government, but upon seeing the slaughter of his flock by that government, came to lead his sheep in rebellion, and was executed in the end.

At first, as the United Irish (founded by Wolfe Tone, a Protestant) struggled to start the Rebellion of 1798, Father Murphy convinced his parishioners to sign an oath of allegiance to the government. The county of Wexford, as Robert Kee writes in the first volume of The Green Flag, was "feebly organized" for rebellion.

The plan of the United Irish was for all of Ireland to rise against the English simultaneously. This was only four years after the revolution in Poland led by Tadeusz Kosciuscko (a veteran of the American Revolution), nine years after the French Revolution, and 22 years after the beginning of the American Revolution.

The spark which set Wexford on fire (quite literally) was the search for illegal weapons (sound familiar?). The English used the local yeomanry to scour the county for weapons and, predictably, the local volunteers were a bit too enthusiastic in their searches and seizures.

The North Cork militia, which searched Wexford for illegal arms, was mostly Catholic. Despite this fact, they were no easier on the mostly Catholic locals than the Protestant militias were in other parts of Catholic

Ireland. As Kee observes, the North Cork militia "were the very troops popularly credited with the invention of the pitch-cap method of torture. One of their sergeants named Heppenstal had acquired the nickname of 'the walking gallows ' for his peculiar skill in half-hanging men over his shoulder."

By May of 1798, men and women in Wexford slept in the fields so as not to die in their houses, should their houses be put to the torch in the middle of the night. News of massacres and uprisings from all over Ireland had tensions running high. In this atmosphere, Father John Murphy encouraged his parishioners to surrender their arms in exchange for the promise of protection by the English government.

His parishioners did so. Unsurprisingly, the English did not abide by the rules of their alleged protections. As Kee reports, "The Arms Proclamation in Wexford had allowed a period of fourteen days for the surrender of arms. But the local magistrates and troops had shown no inclination to wait that long but had begun floggings and other tortures immediately."

Troops who encountered peasants, after demanding the surrender of arms, simply opened fire without waiting for compliance. This disregard for the rule of law outraged the Irish, as it had outraged the American colonists twenty-two years earlier: "A portion of the men...had now become spiritless. They saw that a Proclamation issued with all the formality and apparent binding of an Act of Parliament was despised and made no account of...Their arms in a great measure surrendered, they became silent, sullen and resolved to meet their fate with such arms as they were in possession of."

In other words, after the Irish had dutifully turned over their weapons, they quickly realized that they were sheep for the slaughter. Having voluntarily deprived themselves of their most effective means of self-defense, they now stood at the mercy of their English oppressors.

The English set fire to one farm after shooting into a crowd of men working the fields. The lieutenant in charge of the torching, a man named Bookey, is remembered to this day in the song Boulavogue. Bookey died that day, stabbed in the throat by a pike.

The next day, Bookey's regiment rampaged across the countryside in a feat of vengeance that would have pleased Abe Lincoln and General Sherman. Over 170 homes were burned, as well as Father Murphy's chapel at Boulavogue.

As a result of this destruction, Father Murphy and roughly 1,000 men gathered on Oulart Hill, with perhaps fifty guns and no military leadership. The group was attacked by 110 members of the North Cork militia, but drove the militia from the hill.

After an encouraging string of early victories, the rebels were soundly defeated. Massacres of Protestants alienated the few Protestants, such as Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, who had provided a semblance of military leadership. At Vinegar Hill, cannon fire and determined assaults drove the rebels from their base while "mowing them down like grass."

The English, who would come to fight the Germans in two world wars in the twentieth century, relied not only upon local militias, but upon imported German mercenaries - Hessians, as in the American Revolution - to put down the rebellion. The Hessians were ruthless in their depredations.

As Kee reports, one English officer later wrote that the crown's forces never gave quarter in the rebellion...hundreds and thousands of wretches were butchered while unarmed on their knees begging mercy; and it is difficult to say whether [regular] soldiers, yeomen or militia men took most delight in their bloody work. In such actions as he saw, all the male inhabitants of any house in which the rebels took refuge were put to death and the German contingent in the king's army, Hessians commanded by a Count Hompech, won fame for their rape and slaughter of women. The same officer reckons that altogether 25,000 rebels and peaceable inhabitants were killed in this way, 'by the lowest calculation,' and the Protestant historian, Gordon, in trying to assess the total number of people killed on both sides in the whole rebellion and reaching the tentative figure of 50,000, says he 'has reason to think that more men than fell in battle were killed in cold blood.'

The Rising of 1798 at an inglorious end, the English hung Father John Murphy, burned his body in a barrel of tar, and placed his head on a spike on a main street.

Of course, there was tragedy in the deaths of those loyal to the English occupiers as well. Among those killed fighting for English domination of Ireland was Lord Mountjoy, "who, as Luke Gardiner twenty years before, had carried through the Irish House of Commons the first Catholic Relief Bill, permitting Catholics once again to own land."

After the rebellion of 1798, the Irish would wait 150 years to gain their independence. Many more would die during those 150 years, either in war, rebellion, or An Gorta Mor (the Famine). Only after the Easter Rebellion of 1916, a civil war in the 1920s, and the willingness of Eamon DeValera to declare Irish independence in 1948, did Ireland regain the independence it had lost nearly 700 years earlier.

The story of Father Murphy has rather obvious implications for America today. Rather than blindly surrender our freedoms and firearms in exchange for paper promises of "protection," Americans are better served to rely upon themselves.

There are an abundance of fools today - Rosie O'Donnell, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Don Wright of the Palm Beach Post, the Million Mom March, and most Democratic politicians - who would have Americans willingly surrender their firearms. The argument is that if only regular citizens would give up the means of self-defense, enjoyment, and hunting, then there would be no crime, no murder.

Crime is caused by criminals - persons with evil hearts and evil intentions. Although it is fashionable today to "understand" why a criminal turned to a life of crime, this should not excuse what the criminal does, nor should it cause one to leave one's doors unlocked at night, or to leave oneself unarmed within a home. The murdered man or woman, or the rape victim, is not made whole again because we realize that a felon did what he did after having been abused as a child, or because of a chemical imbalance in his brain. To leave oneself defenseless, at the mercy of criminals and dependent upon someone answering a call of 911, is sheer foolishness.

In the event that an NFL-linebacker sized man (or, the way the NFL is going these days, an NFL linebacker) breaks into your home with the intent of raping, killing, and robbing, do you really wish to rely on your luck to a) get to the phone, b) dial it, c) wait for them to pick up, d) describe to the person on the phone how you are about to die, and then e) wait for the police to arrive? Your loved ones may get the joy of hearing your screams played over and over on the nightly news while a transcription of "Oh my God! Please stop!" runs across the screen. (The media is so sensitive, especially where the feelings of victims are concerned).

Far better to have the means of your own protection quick at hand. As the old saying goes "God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal." For the very slow, Sam Colt invented the Colt revolver. It's a gun.

What does this have to do with Father Murphy, aside from the obvious connection to surrendering guns? Aside from Rosie and the gang of twits mentioned above, the churches have gotten into the gun-banning game. How many people have to die, how many girls must be raped, before the churches snap out of their latest fad?

The church teaches that one has a moral duty of self-defense. Just as suicide - actively causing harm to oneself - is immoral, so too is the failure to resist when resistance is possible (passively allowing harm to be done to yourself). If you are in mortal danger, respect for yourself requires you to fight back.

Exactly how are faithful Christians supposed to fulfill their duty of self-defense without the means to do so? How are they to protect their children without the means to do so? If there is a better means of defending one's self than a gun, please tell me and I will buy it in large quantities.

If you are a 100-pound woman facing a 250 pound, 6'2" man - roughly, an NFL linebacker - would you rather have a) a baseball bat, b) a kitchen knife, or c) a pistol or shotgun? Hopefully, the answer is c every time. If guns are no good for self-defense, one wonders why muscular male police officers feel the need to carry them. Surely, in hand-to-hand combat with knives, clubs, or fists, a tough cop might stand a chance where a housewife stands none.

Americans, learn a lesson from Father Murphy. Don't trust your government to protect you, and don't hand over your most effective means of self-defense.

For those of you still foolish enough to listen to anything said by Rosie O' Donnell, or any Democratic politician, such that you might be worried that your kids will find your guns and injure themselves, take a look at the cold, hard facts: guns save lives, and they save the lives of children.

John Lott's book More Guns, Less Crime and Robert Waters' The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims who Defended Themselves with a Firearm provide all the data to satisfy the most die-hard ammophobes (gun-o-phobes just doesn't have a ring to it). Your toddler is more likely to drown in a bathtub than be shot.

Those statistics you hear so often on the nightly news about kids being shot include 17, 18 and 19 year old murder victims, i.e. persons involved in gangs and drugs.

If you want to truly teach your children to understand the importance of gun safety, buy a gun, learn to use it safely, and teach your children as well. The NRA's Eddie the Eagle program is a model of gun safety - endorsed by the FBI, no less.