Shooting the Government By Joel McNally
This alternative newspaper editor's weekly column is aptly titled "Taking Liberties" (as in our liberties).
Have fun with this one~!
---
Shooting the Government
By Joel McNally
After a recent column about terrified gun owners rushing to buy as many deadly weapons as they could carry, panicked that President-elect Barack Obama would institute common-sense restrictions on military-style assault weapons, I received e-mails from all over the country informing me of my ignorance.
After that outpouring of angry rhetoric, I have to admit at least one of my assumptions about gun owners was wrong: A substantial number of gun owners are far crazier and more dangerous than I ever imagined.
I’ve always thought the vast majority of gun owners were living in a fantasy world as a result of seeing too many bad movies. They imagined themselves as heroes casually shooting the guns out of the hands of the bad guys and saving the entire town.
It seemed like a harmless enough fantasy as long as gun owners never got into a situation where they were actually required to use a gun against another human being.
People who use guns for a living undergo constant training in how to respond to lifethreatening situations without losing lots of innocent lives in the process. Armed amateurs are a danger to everyone in the vicinity, including themselves and their families.
Since most gun owners go through their lives without ever using the guns they cling to against another human being, I naively believed a majority might one day understand the wisdom of restricting military-style street sweepers. That’s because I never really understood just how twisted some of the fantasies of gun owners truly are.
A surprising number of e-mails vehemently argued that automatic weapons of mass destruction were precisely the guns Americans needed most because the real purpose of the Second Amendment was to make it possible for citizens to shoot their own government.
“The purpose of the Second Amendment is to allow the citizens to protect themselves from tyranny, which will certainly be enforced with government ‘assault weapons,’” one writer patiently explained to me. “Logically, that is the type of weapon that we the people should have access to if we ever need to resist.”
The whole point to constitutional protection of gun ownership, another said, was “for the purpose of arming people so they could revolt in case of government gone wrong.”
Over and over, gun owners told me the reason they desperately needed assault weapons had nothing to do with hunting or even to protect their families from crime. They needed to be armed and ready, at a moment’s notice, to shoot it out with their own government.
When I accused gun owners of engaging in absurd movie fantasies, I was thinking of the wrong movies. They weren’t remembering Westerns. These guys are more into science fiction.
Their futuristic fantasy goes like this: Our government is taken over by evildoers who have no respect for the Constitution. The government uses the full might of the most powerful military on Earth to suppress citizens’ rights, especially the all-important right of gun ownership.
Fortunately, a few courageous Americans have had the foresight to stockpile military assault weapons and plenty of ammo. They lead the attack on Washington to restore democracy. They shoot their way into the Oval Office and throw off tyranny.
You can no longer call it a harmless fantasy when people actually start considering the possibility of shooting government officials.
Protecting Our Rights
Interestingly, these twisted fantasies got one thing right: We have always faced the danger in this country of a government coming to power that would attempt to take away our constitutional rights. In fact, we are ending eight years of a government that had no respect for our Constitution and made a concerted assault on the rule of law.
The government has rounded up hundreds of people and imprisoned them for as long as seven years without ever charging them with crimes, giving them access to legal counsel, presenting any evidence they had done anything wrong or providing them a single day in court.
The president of the United States authorized torturing these prisoners in clear violation of provisions of the Geneva Conventions, which our own country led the world in making part of international law.
At home, the government went to extraordinary lengths to try to deny the right to vote to anyone who wouldn’t vote for them. Yet, not once during the past eight years did our heavily armed, patriotic gun owners rise up to revolt against this government gone wrong and start shooting members of the Bush administration.
Fantasy gun battles aren’t the way we save democracy in the real world. We save democracy through the constitutional process.
After one of the worst governments in our history, the pendulum swings back and we elect a constitutional law professor as president to appoint Supreme Court justices who will protect all of our constitutional rights.
What’s your take? Write: editor@shepex.com or comment on this story online at http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-4710-shooting-the-go...





















Oh yeah, we save the Constitution with ...
a guy guilty of 50 plus counts of felony fraud for using a forged birth certificate, a guy who isn't even eligible to be president, a Congress complicit in war crimes with our present president and a Supreme Court likely to let them all get away with it.
There is a name for people like this...
Victim! What is funny is the small amount of accidents that happen each year by those people with concealed weapon permits, and far more deaths due to traffic accidents; perhaps he should focus on banning transportation.
The anti-gun lobby is loosing, and loosing big; but that does not slow them down. Much of their rhetoric is blatant falsehoods and sensationalizing any incident they can find related to a firearm. Remember firearms do not kill people; crooks that confront unarmed citizens kill people.
It is a fact, an undisputable fact, that when local towns and counties have an armed citizenry, there are far less crimes committed with guns. It is cut and dried, and these morons will not debate the facts, and use the internet to spread perhaps the greatest conspiracy of all, that guns are evil.
Most of those that would like to see the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens have been victimized in one way or another, perhaps a family member was killed accidentally, or someone in their church was accidentally shot dead on a hunting trip, and it is easy at that point to jump on the anti gun victim bandwagon, but again; why are these same people not against transportation? A car in the hands of a drunken mad man/woman is as dangerous as, and even more so than any single assault weapon.
They preach that Bush's decision to end the assault weapons ban would have blood running in the street, but it is they that did not understand the actual ban in it present form. Most Americans do not even know that with the ban in place it allowed for many "assault" style weapons but put a ban on the sales of guns that looked like assault weapons.
Many times the Brady campaign has been caught pants down in too many statements to list telling the public falsehoods, and when confronted to debate, they run and hide, because the truth is they are wrong and pro gun advocates are right, and like any leftist the only logical thing to do when defeated in a civil debate, is lie.
I urge all pro gun advocates (if you haven’t already) check in periodically to a pro second amendment site that’s host is a family man, an honorable man, and most importantly an honest man at www.saysuncle.com. We do not always agree politically, but when it comes to these anti gun nuts, he is on them like a duck on a June bug. Do not forget that the second amendment of the constitution went under scrutiny of our Supreme court that ruled in favor of the second amendment, but never forget that it only passed by one vote! If and when they ever do try to collect our guns, just remember that they will collect the legal registered guns, and all that will be left are the guns in the hands of criminals that will not hesitate to use them on your wife and children in the event that you confront one of these thugs, and ask your local anti gun Washington elitists why it is that you and your family do not deserve the same right of protection that they receive with their security detail, whom I might add will be armed to the hilt. No matter what rights they take away from me personally, the right to bear arms will certainly be the last right that they will take from me.
The author also states that gun owners talk of taking over the Oval Office, but this is absurd. No one has attempted this, so he wants a ban to prevent it from happening? Another thought crime advocate in all his ignorant glory. Not most, but all gun owners I know keep weapons to protect their family, hunt, and so on. I feel that if there is ever an overthrow of the government it will not be by a group of hunters, it will be carried out by the military and perhaps with the help of the militia, should the times call for it, this will entale arrests and not a friefight in the capital.
The Constitution does declare the right to keep and bear arms, but not only for protection against a government, but also to hunt and provide food, so his logic is incorrect. Yes, many people that are armed dream of the day when a corrupt group of small minded men and women are held accountable for their crimes, but through proper channels, not a group of rednecks unloading in front of the whitehouse out of the back of a 4X4 chevy out for blood, that is the fantasy anti gunners hold, and it is an illusion.
From my cold dead hand!
BT
In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
~Mark Twain
Always remember:
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." ~ Samuel Adams
Stay IRATE, remain TIRELESS, and set those BRUSH FIRES everywhere you go and in all you do!
50+ million dumbed down...
Americans elected a non-citizen of the United States who has no regard for the U.S. Constitution, (his voting record and the company he keeps proves this). They will get what they deserve.
Bush killed the Constitition, Obama will bury it!
Yeah...
among many things, but especially the comment about "saving democracy"--you know the guy's a schmoe. Complete, smug, ignorant schmoe who actually thinks he's really smart...oh, that's what schmoes do...they think they're really "schmart".
"We save democracy through the constitutional process. "
The second Amendment is the last option of our Constitutional process.
This is how we save republics!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Liberty without learning is always in peril... and learning without liberty is always in vain”
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
=====================================
"The greatest mystery of all is truth." - Me, 2009
exactly... this idiot is the
exactly... this idiot is the classic government controlled public school product of the statist view. First we are a constitutional republic... not a democracy! 2nd-- the second ammendment is for exactly for what the people sending him emails told him.. This idiot has no idea of our founding fathers and what they went through in other contries dominated by kings and evil tyrants! LMAO AT OBAMA THE SAVIOR OF THE CONSTITUTION! what a complete idiot this guy is.. talk about someone drinking the kool aid!
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
-Thomas Jefferson
I am more concerned about the return of my money than the return on my money. --Mark Twain
“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” (Prov. 22:3; 27:12 KJV)
Hey McCain-----┌П┐(◣_◢)┌П┐
lol you perfectly nailed this fruitcake
In China they go through the 'constitutional process' of being run over by tanks.
Talk about a person completely disconnected from reality.
============================
Glen Beck -- An Exposed Enemy:
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/90198
Glenn Beck Supports NAFTA and taking your job:
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/86643