Antigun

The Hill is claiming that state law should protect the rights of homeowners by having ‘no carry’ gun defaults on private property. AWA over at GunFreeZone agrees. Here is one of the few times that I disagree with the lads over at GunFreeZone. In the interest of full disclosure, this is what he said:

I believe in both our right to self defense and our property rights. I personally have a rule that on our property if we are having a gathering of people that are not all gun people that concealed carry is allowed but open is not. We have some friends that are to scared of firearms to even look at them in person. That’s fine.

If a business wants to limit firearm possession in their place of business to criminals only, that is their choice.

Let me explain why I disagree.

When I was in high school (many, many years ago) my football coach used to explain to us the difference between involvement and commitment:

When you eat breakfast, the chicken that provided the eggs is involved, but the pig that provided the bacon is committed.

Coaches, especially in the south, have a way with words. Although it is a bit outlandish, my coach’s words reveal an important truth: it is easy to be involved with something, but it takes a lot more to be committed to it. So it is with liberty and rights.

When a company opens a location, the owners of that company risk very little. They have only risked a relatively small amount of money in the endeavor, and are insulated from any personal risk by the very nature of corporate law. If anything should go horribly wrong, the only thing that the nominal owner stands to lose is his investment cash. In other words, stockholders are chickens that are only involved with the business.

It is for that reason that companies make decisions that affect only the bottom line. After all, they are there to protect the owners’ interests, and the only interest the owner has is to get his investment money back with a little extra for his risk. It is this truth which allows government to use the law of unintended consequences to control a business without seeming to.

Let’s apply this to gun laws: As a government entity, I pass a law allowing people to carry concealed weapons, but I place a clause in the law allowing a business owner to opt out of the law. Many property rights people will applaud this law, and think that property rights are protected.

The problem is in the law of unintended consequences. Other laws hold a property owner liable for any act that they allow to take place on their property, but hold them harmless from those acts as long as the property owner has taken reasonable steps to prevent that act. You see the position that you have just placed a corporation in, don’t you? The business is now liable for the actions of any concealed carrier that they allow onto their property, and held harmless for the actions of armed killers, as long as they post a sign that says “no guns.”

The right of property owners has already been shredded. No property owner who wants to avoid a potential multi million dollar lawsuit would allow concealed carry.

Decision making process:

Will I be held liable if CCW shoots someone? Yes

If I prohibit carry, will I be held liable if a criminal kills my customers?
No

Post signs prohibiting carry

Back to our breakfast analogy: The corporate business owners, wanting to protect the only skin they have in the game are our chickens. The business posts the signs banning CCW. The public who frequents that business is now at the mercy of the armed criminals who know that they are now safe to practice their trade, and the business is safely insulated from all liability when it happens.

Congratulations, guns are now banned in public, and you have just cheered them on as they used your rights to make bacon.

I have been making that case for over a decade. That is why I have ignored these signs.

There are those who say that the person could always choose to shop elsewhere, but since the law is the law everywhere, there is no real choice. Very, very few business owners will choose to take the chance of facing a multimillion dollar award.

One of the big complaints of the left is that SCOTUS is not reinterpreting the Constitution to suit the modern desires of the American public. Politico writes an extensive article, complaining that originalism is a new invention of the court:

Should a 21st century society really interpret its Constitution by the standards of 1787 — an era before the introduction of semi-automatic weaponry, steam power, penicillin, automobiles, trains, electric lights and indoor plumbing?

Using Politico’s logic, we could easily ignore the First Amendment by claiming that it doesn’t apply to electronic communication. Nothing could be further from the truth. Allowing the courts to simply redefine the meaning of the Constitution to suit whatever their beliefs are at the time makes those nine robed justices into a ruling committee with a lifetime appointment, a sort of American Politburo. Such a setup is pure nonsense.

The founders of this nation recognized that situations would arise with the nation that would require that the Constitution be rewritten, then there is a process for that: write an Amendment.

The amendment process is difficult, and purposely so. The first step is to propose an amendment. That requires a two thirds vote of both houses of Congress. (Or the legislatures of two thirds of the states) That means 290 representatives and 67 senators must vote to propose the amendment. Once that amendment is proposed, it goes to the states for ratification. Three fourths of the states’ Legislatures must then approve the Amendment. That requires 38 states’ legislatures’ approval.

If you can’t get that level of approval, then obviously you don’t have a mandate. If you can’t get a mandate, what makes you think that you can start and win a civil war?

Nevertheless, Politico goes on to try and discern the founders’ intent in writing the Second Amendment and offers this as proof:

James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, twice introduced state legislation in Virginia that would impose penalties on any individual who “bear[s] a gun out of his inclosed ground, unless whilst performing military duty.”

What they fail to mention is that the proposed law that Politico claims Madison attempted to introduce was not a gun control law. It was a hunting regulation, and the prohibition on the carrying of arms was a penalty for hunting deer out of season and not a general prohibition for the bearing of arms. Let me quote it for you:

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that it shall not be lawful for any person to kill, hunt, or course any wild deer whatever, not being more than twelve months old, or in any year called bissextile or leap year; or to kill, hunt or course in any other year, a wild buck, after the first day of December, and before the first day of August, or a wild doe, between the first day of January, and the first day of October following, unless such deer, at the time, be found within the inclosed land of such person, or be wanted for food, on the westside of the Alleghany ridge of mountains. Whosoever shall offend against this act, shall forfeit and pay, for every deer by him unlawfully killed, twenty shillings, one half thereof to the use of the commonwealth, and the other half to the informer; and moreover, shall be bound to their good behaviour; and, if, within twelve months after the date of the recognizance he shall bear a gun out of his inclosed ground, unless whilst performing military duty, it shall be deemed a breach of the recognizance, and be good cause to bind him a new, and every such bearing of a gun shall be a breach of the new recognizance and cause to bind him again.

A Bill for Preservation of Deer, 18 June 1779, James Madison (emphasis added)

So what Madison was promoting was actually a form of what we today would call probation. Instead of Politico’s point, I would argue that this actually makes the opposite point. The person who was caught poaching deer would be penalized by not being permitted to carry weapons outside of his own property for a period of one year, unless for military duty. This indicates to me that the remainder of the time, a person is free to carry arms off of their own property when not in military service.

If one wanted to dive deeper into Madison’s feelings on democracy, you would only need to read his essay, “Vices of the Political System,” detailing the flaws of the Articles of Confederation. Madison’s wrote that one of the largest problems with the Articles was that tyrannical majorities in the states passed unjust laws violating the rights of numerical minorities. Especially vexing was the oppression of religious dissenters in Virginia, which caused Madison to become the leading advocate for the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

As a result, Madison drafted the Virginia Plan. The Virginia Plan was a framework that was a population weighted state representation plan that became the basis for our entire system of government. (Of course, we destroyed that when we passed the 17th Amendment.) The reason why this is important is to illustrate that Virginia would NEVER have joined the Union if the Bill of Rights hadn’t been passed. Madison felt that the Second Amendment was central to prevention of the tyranny of the majority.

The article by Politico is an out and out lie about, well, everything. There is no point arguing with someone who is lying about the facts. This is an indication that they are not arguing in good faith and are taking their position with the intent of ruling over you.

Now New Yorkers are resurrecting the old “blood in the street, gunfights over parking spots” argument- you know, the things that they always say, but never seem to happen. We in Florida have been hearing all of that since 1989, and it just doesn’t happen.

An armed society is a polite society. When you know that you may have to pay for your words and actions with your life, you tend to be more polite.

New York has come up with a genius plan for circumventing the recent SCOTUS decision: they want to declare all of NY a “gun free zone,” this proving that they haven’t actually read the decision. If they HAD read it, they would know that SCOTUS already rejected that argument:

That said, respondents’ attempt to characterize New York’s proper-cause requirement as a “sensitive-place” law lacks merit because there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a “sensitive place” simply because it is crowded

There is a lot of talk nowadays about the so-called “boyfriend loophole” as they relate to red flag orders. I was a victim of a woman who tried to hang me with a domestic violence accusation. This happened back in 2014. In her complaint, she alleged:

• that we lived together (we did not)
• that I was stalking her (I was not)
• I showed up at her workplace (I did, but not while she was there)
• which led to her getting fired (It did, but not because I had done anything wrong or illegal)

She got my first name and my address correct, but had used the wrong last name*. The court granted her a temporary Domestic Violence Restraining Order.

Her legal complaint never alleged any violent act or even threat on my part. I was going to ignore the whole thing, since it wasn’t my name on the order, but my lawyer advised that we fight it to avoid issues down the road. So it still wound up costing me over $2,000 in legal fees. You can read about the entire story here and the resolution here.

Even though we could prove in court that she lied (I never lived with her, even though she said I did) there were absolutely no ramifications to her lies. Had there been a law allowing her to get a DVRO from a person she was only dating, I am convinced that I would be a prohibited person to this day.

There is no limit to the lengths that a woman who feels slighted will go to in order to get revenge on her ex. If it means lawfare, so be it. They will do it without hesitation.

* The last name thing is pretty funny. When I was on Facebook, I used a false last name, because I didn’t want people from my work to be able to read the politically incorrect things I was saying. She filed for the DVTPO using my fake Facebook name. (Shows how well she really knew me.) Anyway, she got the address and my first name correct, so a Deputy pulls up to my house and says, “Are you Dive Medic?” I reply, “Yes.” He hands me the TRO and tells me that I am under a restraining order and drives away.