Who’da Thunk? Guns Best Crime Deterrent, after all (Second Amendment)

‘People who say bad guys will stop because of 1 more law are full of it’
 

by Bob Unruh

WorldNetDaily

When sexual assaults started rising in Orlando, Fla., in 1966, police officers noticed women were arming themselves, so they launched a firearms safety course for them. Over the next 12 months, sexual assaults plummeted by 88 percent, burglaries fell by 25 percent and not one of the 2,500 women who took the course fired a gun in a confrontation.

And that, says a new brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court by police officers and prosecutors in a controversial gun-ban dispute, is why gun ownership is important and should be available to individuals in the United States.

The arguments come in an amicus brief submitted by the Law Enforcement Alliance of America, whose spokesman, Ted Deeds, told WND there now are 92 different law enforcement voices speaking together to the Supreme Court in the Heller case.

That pending decision will decide whether an appeals court ruling striking down a District of Columbia ban on handguns because it violates the Second Amendment will stand or not. The gun ban promoters essentially argue that any gun restriction that is ruled “reasonable” is therefore constitutional, such as the D.C. handgun ban.

Deeds said this probably is the largest unified law enforcement statement in support of the Second Amendment ever, and includes nearly a dozen organizations that represent tens of thousands of police officers across the country, dozens of state attorneys general, dozens of prosecutors and a long list of federal law enforcement experts up to and including federal judges.

Oral arguments in the case are scheduled on March 18, and the LEAA brief is just one of 46 that have been filed on the side of seeking affirmation that the Second Amendment does, indeed, document a right for individuals to own guns in the United States.

The brief notes when the Georgia town of Kennesaw decided to require all residents, with exceptions for conscientious objectors, to keep a firearm at home, home burglaries fell from 66 to 26 to 11 in consecutive years.

In Orlando, the deterrence to criminals who simply knew that their victims may have a gun and may know how to use it and may be willing to do just that had a significant impact, because while Orlando’s rapes were plummeting, assaults were up 5 percent across the state and 7 percent nationally.

The brief cites a study that discovered, based on interviews with felony prisoners in 11 prisons in 10 states, one third of the felons had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim,” and nearly four in 10 had decided against committing a specific crime because they thought the victim might have a gun.

“Seventy-four percent agreed with the statement that ‘One reason burglars avoid houses where people are at home is that they fear being shot,’” the study said.

The brief suggested the nation’s crime rate could rocket should more restrictions be placed on guns.

“Numerous surveys show that firearms are used (usually without a shot needing to be fired) for self-defense at least 97,000 times a year, and probably several hundred thousands times a year. The anti-crime effects of citizen handgun ownership provide enormous benefits to law enforcement, because there are fewer home invasion emergencies requiring an immediate police response, and because the substantial reductions in rates of burglary, assault, and other crimes allow the police and district attorneys to concentrate more resources on other cases and on deterrence.”

“Guns save lives,” the brief said. “In the hands of law-abiding citizens, guns provide very substantial public safety benefits. In all 50 states – but not the District – it is lawful to use firearms for defense against home invaders. The legal ownership of firearms for home defense is an important reason why the American rate of home invasion burglaries is far lower than in countries which prohibit or discourage home handgun defense.”

The brief said handgun ownership reduces the number of confrontational home invasions, so “the total U.S. violent crime rate [is reduced] by about 9 percent.”

Deeds said it’s always hard to predict the U.S. Supreme Court, but ideally the ruling would clarify the Second Amendment means exactly what its words say: that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed.

He compared it to the discussion of freedom of religion, should the Bible be banned. “For Christians there’s no effective freedom of religion if they didn’t have a Bible,” he said.

“To have the Second Amendment right on paper, but to be denied the effective means of exercising that right at a moment of truth, when you’re trying to defend yourself or your loved one from an aggressor, [is wrong,]” he said. “The gun is the only answer.”

Where the rubber meets the road, he said, is when a good guy needs to survive an encounter with a bad guy, he said. There are two possible results: Police arrive on the scene later to have the innocent victim hurt or killed, or they arrive on the scene to “find the victim hearty and the offender on the floor.”

“Every cop in American is going to pick the second closing of the story,” Deeds said.

He said gun control originally was sold to Americans as a way to lower crime, but he disagreed. “People who sell this idea that bad guys are going to stop because of one more law are just full of it,” he said.

“That’s a lie. That’s a fraud,” he said. He also said it’s a terribly slippery slope to say that under the Second Amendment, some gun restrictions are good because they are “reasonable.”

“We are hoping that they [the Supreme Court] make a very clear, very unambiguous decision in favor of the Second Amendment,” Deeds told WND.

Montana officials already have argued the U.S. already resolved any dispute about the meaning of the Second Amendment when it defined in Montana’s compact under which it became a state that “any person” has the right to bear arms.

And U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., has led a congressional delegation in asking President Bush to order the U.S. Justice Department to submit a brief to the high court supporting the rights of individuals under the Second Amendment.

A similar request already has been submitted by officials for the Gun Owners of America, whose executive director, Larry Pratt, warned: “If the Supreme Court were to accept the Solicitor General’s line of argument, D.C.’s categorical gun ban of virtually all self-defense firearms could well be found to be constitutional. …”

The government’s position is available in a document submitted by by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement. He said since “unrestricted” private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the Second Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions.

“Given the unquestionable threat to public safety that unrestricted private firearm possession would entail, various categories of firearm-related regulation are permitted by the Second Amendment,” Clement wrote in the brief.

Because of the specifics of the D.C. case, the ultimate ruling is expected to address directly whether the Second Amendment includes a right for individuals nationwide to have a gun or whether local governments can approve whatever laws or ordinances they desire to restrict firearms.

The amendment reads, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Bob Unruh is a news editor for WorldNetDaily.com.

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Land of the Free and Home of the Victims

I wish I were a victim. Then people would give me things, and government would take care of me.

That’s a dominant message on the presidential campaign trail, where some candidates preach that we have become a nation of victims, and that government is the only shining knight who can ride to our rescue.

Sadly, we’ve fallen to the point where this argument often works.

Using the politics of fear rather than hope, these candidates want to expand a failed war: the “War on Poverty,” which has cost America trillions but produced no victory. They now are calling for a permanent surge of programs to cover the middle class – an expansion of the same failed strategy that has given us a permanent underclass that depends on government.

They hope to lure more Americans into this quagmire by convincing them that we are victims.

According to Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, America is a place where the middle class is repressed.

Here’s the heart of the Clinton argument, in her website’s words:

Hillary has a plan to restore America’s middle class. After six and a half years of Bush administration policies, the middle class is struggling to succeed in an economy that is leaving more and more Americans behind.Income inequality has risen to the highest levels since 1929, and wages have stagnated. In the meantime, health care premiums and college tuition have skyrocketed, squeezing middle-class families who have largely relied on their home equity to make ends meet. The burgeoning problems in the housing market further threaten many middle-class families.

Obama describes it this way on his website:

While wages remain flat, the costs of basic necessities are increasing. The cost of in-state college tuition has grown 35 percent over the past five years. Health care costs have risen four times faster than wages over the past six years. And the personal savings rate is now the lowest it’s been since the Great Depression.

For both candidates, the answer to all these problems is a rush of new government programs that makes Lyndon B. Johnson look like Ronald Reagan:

• Having trouble making your mortgage payment? No problem. The government will bail you out – even if you lied about your income or job status to get the loan in the first place.
   
• Although the Bush tax cuts relieved 44 million Americans from paying income taxes, now they’d be relieved of paying Social Security taxes. But they nevertheless get to collect payments (so long as they retire before Social Security goes bankrupt)!
   
• If you can’t afford college because government subsidies destroyed the incentives to control tuition costs, then the subsidies will be increased again.
   
• The minimum wage will go way up, increasing the cost advantage of our overseas competitors, even as food stamps, housing subsidies and government cash giveaways like the EITC are also expanded.
   
• Teachers who are failing their students will get larger paychecks.
   
• Clinton even suggests that if you’re not saving money, government will give you a check to open an account.

To pay for this, “oppressors” will be punished. Big Oil will pay more taxes (which will be passed on to consumers via still-higher prices). Moreover, “all Americans” will be “made to contribute their fair share” (meaning higher taxes for everyone the candidate defines as not being middle or lower class).

Convincing Americans that they need government to do all these things hinges on convincing them that they are victims in need of rescue. The strategy relies on clever misuse of statistics and an uncritical media to help the effort.

Several Heritage Foundation studies dispute those claims. One of them, by James Sherk, exposes how the deceit works. First, by ignoring non-cash employee benefits (such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid vacation days, etc.), wage growth is understated. Second, the wrong formulas are used when comparing wage growth to inflation. In fact, wage growth has matched America’s growth in productivity. Another paper by Heritage’s Paul Winfree notes that even “America’s poorest citizens are doing better than they were 14 years ago.”

And a celebrated study by Heritage’s Robert Rector unmasks the deceptions used when poverty rates are discussed. As Rector observes, we have defined poverty “up” to the point that “[m]ost of America’s ‘poor’ live in material conditions that would be judged as comfortable or well-off just a few generations ago.”

The same tricks that are used to perpetuate failed anti-poverty programs are being used to promote new and expanded federal programs for the middle class. And those promise to be just as expensive, bureaucratic and unsuccessful as LBJ’s “War on Poverty.”

It’s not enough for America’s left to show sympathy for victims of real tragedies like 9/11 or Katrina. Now they must elevate every challenge into a crisis, provoking a sense of desperation that more and bigger government is the answer.

Before it’s too late, Americans need to be reminded: A government big enough to give people everything they want is also big enough to take everything they’ve got. (emphasis WfI)

Source: WorldNetDaily

By: Ernest Istook

Ernest Istook is recovering from serving 14 years in Congress and is now a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Barack and Michelle–Keeping the Faith

By KyleAnneShiver 

AmericanThinker

I’m not buying the Obama campaign spin on Michelle Obama’s patriotic faux pas this week, any more than I’m inclined to believe that Barack Obama’s refusal to wear our flag pin in his lapel is a meaningless gesture.  Both Michelle’s stated lack of pride in America until this precise moment in history, and Barack’s unwillingness to don our national symbol are in perfect keeping with the doctrines of their church, Trinity United Church of Christ.

The simple truth is that if any of us exposed ourselves to the kind of teachings espoused by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, we might find it downright impossible to do any better than Barack and Michelle in the loving-America category of citizenship. 
We probably couldn’t summon a whole lot of American patriotism if our brains were  stuffed on a weekly basis with sermons like this:

“Racism is how this country (America) was founded and how this country is still run!”

or this:

“We (Americans) are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!”

If I listened to stuff like this every Sunday for 20 years, I probably wouldn’t be all that proud of my Country either, and certainly would feel it hypocritical to wear the symbol of this God-forsaken Nation in my lapel.
Wouldn’t you?

Trinity’s Black Liberation Theology

The Chicago Tribune’s religion reporter, Manya Brachear, interviewed Rev. Wright in January 2007, writing:

“Wright sought to build on the black theology of liberation introduced in 1968 by Rev. James Cone of New York, by emphasizing Africa’s contribution to Christianity rather than that of mainstream white theologians.”

If only it were this simple. 
But it isn’t.
According to Cone:

“Christian theology is language about God’s liberating activity in the world on behalf of freedom of the oppressed.  Any talk about God that fails to make God’s liberation of the oppressed its starting point is not Christian.” (Speaking the Truth; James H. Cone; p. 4)

The gospel according to Cone revolves around a single dimension of the Christian faith and necessarily interprets the very nature of “oppression” as solely material and of this world.  In effect, black liberation theology reduces the entire Gospel down to a Marxist people’s struggle and hijacks the Christ for political purpose.

“What else can the crucifixion mean except that God, the Holy One of Israel, became identified with the victims of oppression?  What else can the resurrection mean except that God’s victory in Christ is the poor person’s victory over poverty?”  (Speaking the Truth; p. 6)

This certainly puts an altogether different light on the crucifixion than any to which I’ve ever been exposed.
According to this theology, we are not individually saved by grace.  God hasn’t anything at all to do with salvation or sanctification.

“…sanctification is liberation.  To be sanctified is to be liberated – that is, politically engaged in the struggle of freedom.  When sanctification is defined as a commitment to the historical struggle for political liberation, then it is possible to connect it with socialism and Marxism the reconstruction of society on the basis of freedom and justice for all.”
(Speaking the Truth; p. 33; emphases mine)

According to the writings of Cone and the preaching of Rev. Wright, America can lay no claim whatsoever to any sort of goodness, and will perhaps never be able to do so until we are all residing in one, big, happy Marxist America with the presently “oppressed” on top and the evil “oppressors” on the bottom. 
When these theologians re-wrote the gospel around their political ideology, they evidently came up with a way to make two wrongs into right.
Not exactly changing water into wine, walking on water, healing the maimed, the deaf and the blind, but quite a feat nevertheless.
Obama’s Own Faith
Barack Obama expends an entire chapter in his book, The Audacity of Hope, writing about faith.  In a chapter of 31 pages, he gives only 2 pages to his own decision to finally “walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ” and “be baptized.” 
Having been raised by a “spiritual,” but non-religious mother, Obama says that he had quite a bit of antipathy for organized religion, but was able to overcome this at Trinity, where he recognized that faith was more than “just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death,” but that faith was rather an “active, palpable agent in the world.” 
Obama’s statements on his own faith in his book are as vague as his now all too familiar mantra, “Yes, we can.” 
But Trinity United Church of Christ isn’t afraid to be more specific and blunt.  Where mainline Christian denominations might focus on the Apostles’ Creed, stating the basic tenets of Christianity, Trinity has this:
Trinity United Church of Christ is committed to a 10-point Vision:

1. A congregation committed to ADORATION. [of what?]

2. A congregation preaching SALVATION. [by whom?]

3. A congregation actively seeking RECONCILIATION. [reconciled to...?]

4. A congregation with a non-negotiable COMMITMENT TO AFRICA.

5. A congregation committed to BIBLICAL EDUCATION. [revised]

6. A congregation committed to CULTURAL EDUCATION. [black culture as victims?]

7. A congregation committed to the HISTORICAL EDUCATION OF AFRICAN PEOPLE IN DIASPORA. [click for Diaspora info]

8. A congregation committed to LIBERATION. [from what, exactly?]

9. A congregation committed to RESTORATION. [from what, to what?]

10.  A congregation working towards ECONOMIC PARITY. [you know the 'disparities' Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are always claiming!]

[Bracketed rhetorical questions-WordforIt-We already know the answers.]

Interestingly enough, a change has been made quite recently (in the past 2 weeks) to number 3 on this list, obtained from Obama’s church website.  It did read, “a non-negotiable allegiance to Africa.”  Perhaps the church felt that it might reflect badly upon an American presidential candidate to be a prominent member of a church espousing “non-negotiable allegiance” to another continent.

Obama continues to see some of us as “oppressed,” and he spouts a very condescending attitude towards those of us who have found spiritual food in evangelical Christian churches.  Writing about why these churches have been growing by leaps and bounds, he says explanation for the success of these churches could be anything from “the skill of marketing religion” to the “charisma of their leaders,” but primarily points to “hunger for the product they are selling.”
So, how does Obama describe this “hunger”?

“They (religious seekers) want a sense of purpose, a narrative arc to their lives, something that will relieve a chronic loneliness or lift them above the exhausting, relentless toll of daily life.  They need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them – that they are not just destined to travel down a long highway toward nothingness.”  (Audacity of Hope; p. 202)

That’s a very bleak picture of our lives. 

Precisely the kind of picture Marxist revolutionaries have always painted for the masses, right before they offer up the “hope” of something new and different, and the perfect “blueprint for change” that will make it all better.

As for me, I have been at the very, very bottom of life’s rungs, even downright oppressed at times, but I have never been so far down that I would look to a mere man, or any government or movement, or even a church community, for salvation.  And I’m surprised that anyone with a grain of self-respect or reverence for God would swoon over the purely preposterous notion that any man or government has such power to offer.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to agree:

“Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much.  Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes, not divine, but demonic.”

Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.  She welcomes your comments at kyleanneshiver@yahoo.com.

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See Also: Obamination and Obama’s Politics of Collective Redemption

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