Local Second Amendment Sanctuary Acts

In recent weeks, we have seen a plethora of county governments, mostly in the rural south and southeast or the far west pass, no doubt at the behest of the NRA, what they are calling local Second Amendment Sanctuary Acts.  At the time of this post, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, and several states in the southwest have passed these asinine local ordinances which state most often that "local officials will not enforce federal laws which infringe on the second amendment".  The governor of Virginia actually was forced to utilize a short term ban on guns on state capital property recently in order to protect innocent potential victims of self-described gun rights activists who marched on the capital to oppose the possibility that the Democratically controlled state legislature would pass some form of rational gun control legislation in order to help control gun violence.  Yet, several thousands of these Right Wing Radical domestic terrorists marched on the capital which had been temporarily fenced off and was being protected by several hundred state police officers.  Call it what they will, acts like this by supporters of unrestricted gun ownership are acts of terrorism, their perpetrators are domestic terrorists,  and are in direct violation of the Preamble of The US Constitution when it says "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."  The acts of these people in pursuit of self-centered, irrational, and ignorant local ordinances are acts which endanger "the general welfare and domestic tranquility" by promoting the ignorant belief that the Second Amendment allows any one who wishes to, regardless of their mental impairment or arrest record to own, openly carry, and endanger their neighbors with any weapon they choose.  These people and these acts are also in direct conflict with the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution which states "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."  Eventually, the US Supreme Court will be forced to issue an opinion concerning one or more of these local ordinances which will make all of them unconstitutional.  But until a case somewhere, brought to the courts by people more intelligent, patriotic, and altruistic than these idiots who are supporting this local stupidity, these acts and their supporters will endanger the general public over a large portion of the country.  Any public official who refuses to enforce federal law is immediately in guilty of obstruction of justice and malfeasance of duty and should be fired, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. 

As a nation, we are facing the most horrible time in our history, at least since World War II.  Russia and Vladimir Putin have placed a TRAITOR in the White House and that TRAITOR, under the pressure of impeachment, is attempting to foment domestic terrorism by people like these who are supporting this gun rights terrorism.  His generally poorly educated supporters are falling for his lies by the thousands. They listen for every rant on Twitter from this career criminal and hope to be able to defend him and his crimes with whatever weapons they own.  This is an incredibly dangerous time in America.  We are the laughing stock of the civilized world.  We are literally facing an attempt by these Right Wing Radicals to destroy law and justice in this country and replace it with a society which has already begun to make Old Dodge City look a daycare center.  If the forces of reason and true constitutional democracy do not succeed in convicting TRAITOR Trump in his impeachment trial in the senate and removing him from the scene of his three year crime spree, we will literally lose this country. Russia will have won and will have fulfilled the words of Nikita Khrushchev when he said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within...."  Now is the time for all decent, rational citizens of this country to stand up for the US Constitution, representative democracy, and the last great hope for the entire world, American Democracy. 

One Appalachian Man's Opinion Of Gun Control

I received my first gun, a 20 gauge shotgun from my parents as a Christmas gift when I was about 10 or 12 years old.  I grew up in a family where we ate nearly all wild game common to the area in which we lived and nearly ever male in the family hunted.  We learned to shoot and handle guns in childhood and many of my relatives and neighbors received their first firearm at ages somewhat younger than I.  As a part of this common, every day usage of guns, we all learned gun safety; rules about handling, cleaning, and transporting guns; and, a set of common sayings which I still practice to this day.  Among those sayings were these:

1) assume that every gun is loaded until you have checked it yourself and know otherwise;

2) never point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill;

3) never kill anything you don't intend to eat;

4) always keep guns clean and well cared for.

I grew up in a family where my most distant known ancestor, the Reverend Aulse Hicks, travelled from Western Virginia to the area around Prestonsburg, Kentucky, sometime between the 1790 census and the 1810 census.  I am sure one of the things he felt was necessary for such a trip in that time period was a long rifle and he probably owned a pistol as well.  I could, if I stretched, justify owning a pistol, a 22 rifle, a shotgun, and a heavy rifle for deer hunting.  I do not bother to stretch that far since I have not hunted since a detached retina in my right eye more than twenty years ago.  I have perfect vision in my left eye and could, with some work, retrain myself to shoot effectively enough to hunt with a rifle using a left hand grip and my left eye.  I do not bother to do that.  I can see well enough to shoot an occasional varmint around my house or an intruder, if necessary.    That is all I need guns for and I do not need an arsenal.  Times are very different than they were when Aulse Hicks travelled from Western Virginia two hundred years ago.  Hungry mountain lions, angry native Americans, angry Frenchmen, and angry British holdouts do not roam the hills of Eastern Kentucky.  A plethora of drug addicted thieves do roam these hills; but, it is not necessary for me to be able to kill them all.  I do not need an arsenal.  I do not need fully automatic assault rifles, or high volume clips, or armor piercing ammunition.  I do not need a concealed carry permit.  I do not need the National Rifle Association to assume it has the right to speak on behalf of me and every other American.  What I need in today's world, is a national legislature with enough courage and wisdom to pass an effective, broad ranging, and constitutional ban on fully automatic weapons, assault rifles, armor piercing ammunition, clips which hold over five rounds, purchases of firearms at gun shows without background checks, and purchases of firearms across state lines.

We live in a world today in which the gun culture has become so rampant that most people are being led to believe that unlimited access to all firearms and ammunition is a constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment.  This is the text of the Second Amendment:

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.

The Founding Fathers were very wise in many ways and on many occasions as they began this country.  One of the wisest acts in which they took part was the creation and inclusion of the phrase "well regulated militia".  That phrase gives the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government all the power necessary to fully regulate firearms and all appurtenances connected to them.  Additionally, the common welfare has always been seen by the courts as being sacrosanct in comparison to the limited desires of the few whether it be the desire of a few to drive drunk or own an arsenal of automatic weapons.  As our society and culture have changed over the years, events such as Columbine, Newtown, and a dozen other mass murders along with many assassinations of public figures have clearly pointed out the need to protect the common welfare despite the desire of the National Rifle Association and its followers to own unnecessary and dangerous weapons in an unrestricted manner.  Today's NRA is just as out of step and out of date as the Ku Klux Klan of the 1960's.  Their beliefs and desires are contrary to the public welfare and immediate, decisive action needs to take place place in order to control access to weapons of mass destruction.  We can no longer allow events such as Newtown to take place without making a concerted national effort to stop future such events.