Dear SaveTheGuns.com Members and Minuteman Monthly Subscribers, Happy New Year!!!! I hope you all had a great holiday season. Here is the 30th issue of the Minuteman Monthly Newsletter, which is the monthly periodical published by www.SaveTheGuns.com. Each issue contains quotations you can use for your pro-gun efforts, along with an important SaveTheGuns.com safety tip. In the main body of the newsletter, I try to focus upon a current issue in the news, publish an interesting article from someone in the firearm industry or gun rights arena, or I will publish an original article of my own making. You are free to copy, print, forward or otherwise use this newsletter, as long as you mention where it came from. ****************************************************************** ****************************************************************** SaveTheGuns.com Quotations of the Month [When considering the full meaning and intentions of the Founding Fathers, in regards to the Second Amendment, we must pay very close attention to what they wrote and said about it, and less attention to today's extreme, "politically correct" leftist jurists of the U.S. Ninth District.] "The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824 "An act against the Constitution is void. An act against natural equity is void." James Otis (1725-1783) "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops..." Noah Webster, An Examination of The Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia 1787 "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776 "Arms in the hands of individual citizens [may] be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense..." John Adams, A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, 1788 ****************************************************************** ****************************************************************** SaveTheGuns.com Safety Tip of the Month January's Safety Tip of the Month is an important message to members and subscribers with children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, cousins or friends who have children. Basically everyone. My best estimate is that in the United States, approximately one (1) child per week will have to be buried by their family, because he/she found a firearm in an unsupervised situation and it was subsequently mishandled. About fifty families in the year 2003, will have to bury a child simply because they haven't seen my gun safety page for kids and never saw the potentially life saving information contained within. More than 12,000 children have been to this page and I get feedback from kids nearly every day. Your task for the month is to send as many children as you can to the following page, and suggest any improvements that I can make to it. http://www.SaveTheGuns.com/for_kids_only.htm ****************************************************************** January's Minuteman Monthly Main Focus In order for an anti-gun person to believe that strict gun control and the Second Amendment can co-exist, they must believe certain preposterous, absurd and inane concepts. In order to believe that strict gun control laws will be dutifully observed and obeyed by those who are willing or inclined to commit murder, one would have to believe a different set of equally inane and senseless concepts. To begin the January issue of the Minuteman Monthly, allow me to start with the following quotation that many of you have probably not seen before: "False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if so dear to the enlightened legislator - and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree." Criminologist Cesare Beccaria On Crimes and Punishments (1764) ########################################### ########################################### What Must The Anti-Gunner Believe? The anti-gunner must: Believe that the historical occurrences, written documents and oral dissertations of the Founding Fathers had no influence on what they attempted to write into the Bill of Rights. Gun Control proponents must believe that modern-day liberal scholars, "politically correct" elitist politicians and modern day extreme-left judges, know more about the Second Amendment than the Founding Fathers themselves. The anti-gunner would have to believe the preposterous notion, that right after the freedom of speech, religion, press and assembly, that clearly were meant to limit the power of government, that the Founding Fathers would feel the need to place in the Bill of Rights, the power of government to raise militias, when in Article I Section 8, Congress is given the power to "raise and support" armies. Especially when it is crystal clear that nearly every one of them had a fear of long term standing armies and a powerful central government. The anti-gun person reading the Second Amendment would have to believe that the second clause is totally dependent on the first clause. Of course this notion is grammatically incorrect. The first and second clauses of the amendment are two separate, but related concepts. It would help the anti-gun person to understand the Second Amendment's true meaning if they were more proficient in the English language. The strict gun control proponent would have to believe the absurd idea that the sole reason for the authors of the Constitution to include the Second Amendment is for service in a militia. And that some of the brightest and most intelligent group of men to ever assemble, would ignore the fact that nearly every family of the time used firearms for self-defense and for gathering food. The Founding Fathers feared that at some future point, a powerful central government might act to deprive the people of firearms. That is precisely why the Second Amendment came right after the freedoms of speech, press, religion and assembly in the Bill of Rights. Allow me to quote, "I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the Federal government as they are already guarded against their State governments, in most instances." Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788 They would have to believe that the authors of the Constitution, who had just won a war against the most powerful country in the world, would not include the right of an individual to keep and carry his own arms. Remember that on April 19, 1775, the British tried to seize a large supply of arms that were being kept by the Massachusetts Militia. The seizing of these arms would have rendered the Massachusetts Militia nearly useless against highly trained British troops. That is how the American Revolution began. So how ridiculous does it sound that the new American government would not include this essential right, very early in the Bill of Rights??? Whoever thinks that strict gun control laws are constitutional, would have to believe that the Founding Fathers would not include the rights of women and the elderly to own and carry firearms. In the 1780's, the militia consisted of males only, who were generally between 16 and 60 years old. It is a patently absurd notion that the brilliant people who established the newborn United States, would not protect the freedom of women and the elderly to carry arms to protect themselves and their families from harm. By their letters and speeches, it is crystal clear that they intended to protect the right of every free citizen to own and carry the arms of their choice, including those outside of service in a state militia. The anti-gunner would have to think that the term "The People" used in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments meant the general population of the United States, but that in the second clause of the Second Amendment, "...the people..." was intended to reflect only a specific group. How ridiculous and laughable. Would the Founding Fathers have made the effort to support the right of a group, while ignoring the individual rights of those in that group? Anti-gun people really make me laugh. How inane an idea is that? Do individuals have the right to free speech only in groups too? The Bill of Rights itself is a protection of the preexisting rights of the people against government intrusion. The Bill of Rights is a list of rights inherent in the population that are out of bounds for the government. That is what the founders said in their writings, letters and speeches. The Bill of Rights was not intended to enumerate the powers of either the state or federal governments, but rather to protect preexisting rights of the people from government meddling in the years to come. In order to believe that gun control is just fine with the Bill of Rights, you would have to have confidence in the ridiculous thought that the State Constitutions that were forged about the same time and based on the U.S. Constitution, also were not intended to convey and individual's right to bear his/her own arms. Kentucky: The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned. (1792) Vermont: [T]he people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power. (1777) Pennsylvania: That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination, to, and governed by, the civil power. (1776) An anti-gunner would have to believe that a ban on firearms, a ban on concealed carry or a restriction on transportation of personally owned firearms is not an encroachment upon the Second Amendment or the very spirit of the Bill of Rights. To believe that restrictive gun control is constitutional, one would have to believe that the framers of the Constitution would deny an individual the right to own and carry their firearm of choice. Even though it was precisely the armed citizenry of colonial America, providing their own arms for the common defense, that defeated the most powerful military in the world at the time. You see, the people who defeated the British during the Revolutionary War, were farmers, doctors, businessmen, fishermen, blacksmiths, silversmiths and many others. Their arms were not provided by a central government-controlled entity, but the arms they used were their very own. A gun control proponent would have to have the inane belief that the framers of the Constitution would deny future generations of Americans the opportunity to provide their own arms to defeat another country in the same manner that they just defeated Great Britain. Someone who believes the silly and idiotic notion that the Second Amendment only protects active members of the National Guard, would also have to think that 213 years of private firearm sales to individuals were and are based on an erroneous reading of the Constitution. Someone who believes that gun control is just fine with the Bill of Rights would have to deny the fact that the Second Amendment was ratified over 116 years before the National Guard was even formed. Gun control proponents would have to believe that the framers ignored the fact that there were Indian raiding parties around that were attacking individual family homes, ignored the fact that there were no grocery stores on every corner and that individual arms were essential tools for the people to properly feed their families and they would have to believe that the framers did not seek to protect an individual's right to protect their homes from bandit gangs or wild animals. Absurd? Of course it is. The anti-gunner would have to believe that the modern technological advances covered by the First Amendment, such as the automatic printing press, radio, television, motion pictures, satellites and the Internet, are protected, but that armed citizens are relegated only to black powder muskets and other firearms made prior to 1899. What nonsense. The framers always intended for the general population of the United States to be able to overcome a powerful and possibly tyrannical central government. Let me quote for you: "The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms has justly been considered the palladium of the liberties of the republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers, and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." Joseph Story, United States Supreme Court Justice, 1833 "As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." Tench Coxe, June 18, 1789 "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops..." Noah Webster, An Examination of The Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia 1787 The gun control proponent must believe that possibly the most visionary group of men in human history would in concert, have the audacity to deny the people, the basic human right of self-defense with respect to their own individual ownership of firearms, if they did not participate in an active militia. The gun control advocate would have to believe that the men who founded the United States of America, despite hundreds of volumes of written documentation, would do a total reversal, go into the opposite direction of all written and oral records and deny the individual American, the right to own and carry his own arms. And that they would merely attempt to protect the power of a state to raise and arm its own militia. This would open the door to a government controlled entity having the ability to triumph over the general population of the United States. A notion that they were very strongly against, according to all written documents from the era. This notion is particularly absurd, because of the fact that there are no historical records, letters, transcripts, quotations or other known documents that show any of the Founding Fathers supported gun control of any type. The Founding Fathers never advanced a single notion in either written or spoken word, that they supported a government entity controlling private ownership of firearms. If you have not seen my "Quotes" page yet, you will be in for a real treat. http://www.SaveTheGuns.com/quotes.htm ############################################### ############################################### I would like to finish off the January issue of the Minuteman Monthly with the most stunningly and most shockingly stupid beliefs that must be held by someone who thinks that strict gun control laws are a good thing for us to have. 1.) They must believe that someone ready and willing to commit murder, will dutifully and responsibly obey laws that regulate the ownership, carry and transportation of firearms. 2.) They must believe that someone who has already committed dozens of felonies, will only seek to obtain firearms from lawfully operated retail sporting goods outlets, where the sale can be fully controlled. 3.) They must believe that illegal firearms are not readily available to violent felons, even though one can easily obtain cocaine, heroine, crack and marijuana in nearly every one of the 3,066 counties in the United States. 4.) They must believe that every violent felon in the United States is a moral, upstanding, righteous and law abiding citizen, that really just needs another firearm regulation stuck in his face to turn his life around. 5.) And lastly, they must believe that the Gun Control Act of 1968 which made it unlawful for convicted felons to possess a firearm, was simply not enough firearm legislation to affect the inner workings of the criminal mind. ********************************************************* ********************************************************* If you're an anti-gunner reading this issue of the www.SaveTheGuns.com Minuteman Monthly, don't you feel just a bit silly now, when the truth about firearms and the Second Amendment has been revealed? ********************************************************* ********************************************************* Please feel free to forward, print, copy, post or otherwise distribute the Minuteman Monthly anywhere you wish, as long as http://www.SaveTheGuns.com is mentioned somewhere in your material. ********************************************************* ********************************************************* Thank you for registering as a Minuteman Monthly Newsletter Recipient. 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