Using Gun Rights Haters Own Research Against Them

Easy to do with Robert Muggah, among many things the coauthor of “We Need Better Data for a Serious Gun Control Debate”, an article in which he advocates gun control despite the fact that he claims there isn't enough good data on the subject to even have a debate about it. A tad bias, wouldn't you agree? Could that be why gun rights advocates don't want such people doing research on crime and violence? But I digress, on October 8, 2014 he gave a talk at TEDGlobal 2014: South! in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil titled “How To Protect Fast-Growing Cities From Failing”:

In his talk he says a number of things that make clear that guns aren't the drivers of a high murder rate. Most importantly, he directly contradicts that major gun rights haters' argument when Dr. Muggah says that, “...when it comes to cities, the conversation is dominated by the North, that is, North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan, where violence is actually at historic lows.”. He then drives home the point with:

What's more, we're seeing a dramatic reduction in homicide. Manuel Eisner and others have shown that for centuries, we've seen this incredible drop in murder, especially in the West. Most Northern cities today are 100 times safer than they were just 100 years ago.

These two facts -- the decline in armed conflict and the decline in murder -- are amongst the most extraordinary, if unheralded, accomplishments of human history, and we should be really excited, right?

That drop in murder rates includes the United States with all its guns. The slide from his presentation below clearly shows the US to be in the same low murder rate category as western Europe. So much for the lie that the US is a very dangerous place!
 

Dr. Muggah goes on to talk about social and demographic factors that that drive violence, all the while making the gun rights advocates' case for us. Not once does he say that the availability of guns is the cause of the violence. He ends his talk with this:

There is nothing inevitable about lethal violence, and we can make our cities safer. Folks, we have the opportunity of a lifetime to drop homicidal violence in half within our lifetime. So I have just one question: What are we waiting for?

Yes, gun rights haters, what are you waiting for to stop worshiping the false god of gun control and start facing the real causes of the violence problem?

Know The Enemy of Liberty: the National Rifle Association

Oppressors Not Protectors

With the release of the first episode of the Defending Our America series titled “Know Your Enemies and Know Yourself” the National Rifle Association (NRA) puts itself at the forefront of the shills for tyranny and empire. Please watch the first episode and the season preview. They advocate police power to fight the war on drugs, police power to secure the borders, and military power to fight Islam overseas. In other words, they advocate for the very things that are destroying our liberties. Not once in either video do we hear the words liberty or freedom.

The war on drugs has lead to the destruction of the right to privacy and property. It is driving the militarization of the police enabling Commando style raids that now happen over one-hundred times a day in the United States. Sometimes they are based on nothing more than the word of an informant. Sometimes they are to serve a warrant on a non-violent person. Asset forfeiture has police forces becoming predators seeking out the maximum take with little or no due process. Law enforcement has become the standing army many Founders warned us not to have. The war on drugs keeps the money flowing to the law enforcement establishment.

“Securing” the massive southern border of the US is a pointless and impossible task. In the process of attempting it the government is building up a police state characterized by checkpoints, warrantless searches, and other intrusive controls. We need the governments permission just to work now that they've made it illegal to hire undocumented workers and implemented e-verify. This is another form of tyranny that keeps money flowing to the law enforcement establishment.

Fighting Islam is a farce designed to keep money following into the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned was taking over. It furnishes an excuse to keep taxes and government debt high. “...armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many under the domination of the few.” is how James Madison put it.

Follow the money. It comes as no surprise that the series is sponsored by Sig Sauer a supplier of weapons to law enforcement and the military. It is obviously important to Sig Sauer that the people support the gravy train they're riding. Hey, who cares about liberty when there's government money to be had?

If my words aren't enough to convince you perhaps you'll listen to Patrick Henry. He warned of the dangers lurking in the constitution, the very document the videos advocate defending. Below are selected, relevant excerpts from Henry's speech arguing against adoption of the constitution titled “Shall Liberty or Empire Be Sought?”:

A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: liberty, sir, was then the primary object...by that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty. But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire.

But, sir, we are not feared by foreigners; we do not make nations tremble. Would this constitute happiness, or secure liberty? I trust, sir, our political hemisphere will ever direct their operations to the security of those objects.

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest, that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs, should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world...blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Now that we clearly see that the NRA is wholly behind the powerful government that we have to just trust and hope will not oppress

us it is time to turn our backs on that vile organization. Don't let the Siren song of patriotism fool you. Stand for liberty, not the empire and its police state!

Cease And Desist Stop & Frisk (video)

In LOVE Park, Philadelphia, PA on Saturday August 24, 2013 activists demonstrated against the NSA's surveillance program that has not faced its end yet. Also protested were Philadelphia's unreasonable stop and frisk policies that go against the Fourth Amendment  and are warrant-less searches and violate our rights to privacy.

Help us Restore the Fourth!

Larry West of Restore the Fourth addresses the crowd

The Standing Armies of Yesterday and the Police State Today

I gave this presentation at the Citizens for Liberty meeting on August 20, 2013 near Norristown, Pennsylvania. Below are links to source material so readers can do their own research and come to their own conclusions.

Many of the quotes used in the presentation are parts of essays or speeches that are well worth reading start to finish. This first series of quotes is from John Trenchard's 1697 book “An Argument Shewing, that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a Free Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy” (http://www.reformation.org/john-trenchard.pdf):

And if we enquire how these unhappy nations have lost that precious jewel liberty...we shall find their miseries...proceed from this, that their necessities or indiscretion have permitted a standing army to be kept amongst them...

...no nation ever preserved its liberty, that maintained an army otherwise constituted within the seat of their government...

...the Israelites, Athenians, Corinthians, Archaians, Lacedemonians, Thebans, Samnites, and Romans; none of which nations whilst they kept their liberty were ever known to maintain any soldiers in constant pay within their cities...

 It's the misfortune of all countries, that they sometimes lie under an unhappy

necessity to defend themselves by arms against the ambition of their

governors, and to fight for what is their own; for if a prince will rule us with a

rod of iron, and invade our laws and liberties...we...must patiently submit to our bondage, or stand upon our own defense; which if we are enabled to do, we shall never be put upon it...

This subject is so self-evident, that I am almost ashamed to prove it: for if we look through the world, we shall find in no country, liberty and an army stand

together; so that to know whether a people are free or slaves, it is necessary

only to ask, whether there is an army kept amongst them?

The next quote is from John Trenchard's 1698 book “A SHORT HISTORY OF Standing Armies IN ENGLAND” (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Standing_Armies_in_England):

I will venture to say, that if this Army does not make us Slaves, we are the only People upon Earth in such Circumstances that ever escaped it… If this Army does not enslave us, it is barely because we have a virtuous Prince that will not attempt it; and it is a most miserable thing to have no other Security for our Liberty, than the Will of a Man, though the most just Man living: For that is not a free Government where there is a good Prince (for even the most arbitrary Governments have had sometimes a Relaxation of their Miseries) but where it is so constituted, that no one can be a Tyrant if he would. Cicero says, though a Master does not tyrannize, yet it is a lamentable consideration that it is in his Power to do so; and therefore such a Power is to be trusted to none, which if it does not find a Tyrant, commonly makes one; and if not him, to be sure a Successor.

The last quote from John Trenchard's works is from Cato's letters No. 95 Further Reasonings against Standing Armies (http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1239&chapter=64519&layout=html&Itemid=27):

It is certain, that all parts of Europe which are enslaved, have been enslaved by armies; and it is absolutely impossible, that any nation which keeps them amongst themselves can long preserve their liberties; nor can any nation perfectly lose their liberties who are without such guests: And yet, though all men see this, and at times confess it, yet all have joined in their turns, to bring this heavy evil upon themselves and their country. 

 

There are two quotes in the presentation from Patrick Henry's speech “Shall Liberty or Empire be Sought?” (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Henry%27s_speech_in_the_Virginia_Ratifying_Convention):

It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.

Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.
A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders?

No discussion of the police state these days is complete without mentioning Radley Balko's just published book “Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces”. A great article by the author offering a glimpse at what is in the book can be read here.  

During the question and answer portion of the night I brought up Edward Bernays' 1928 book “Propaganda”. I highly recommend reading at least CHAPTER VI PROPAGANDA AND POLITICAL LEADERSHIP (http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html#SECTION6)