Thank You, California Legislature
By John Longenecker (09/04/06)
I'll bet you didn't expect a pat on the back, did you? As California goes, so goes the nation. Watching California is important.
I write California Governor Arnold Shwarzenegger from time to time thanking him for his family-friendly actions. AB 352 didn’t reach his desk and thanks are due to the legislators who stopped it.
AB 352, which was to ridiculously expect handguns to microstamp a number on the cartridge casing at the moment it is fired, was defeated this week. I thank the legislators who successfully battled it and won. Thank you very much for your service and for your family-friendly efforts. (And don’t think for a minute that an armed household isn’t a family-friendly concept.)
Guns in the hands of honest citizens should never be discouraged. Police have no mandate to protect individuals – not ever, since the inception of an organized police force in the United States – it was never part of their mission, both then and now. Reliance on Police to the exclusion of the citizen is anti-family.
It is not practical to restrain gun owners with restrictions which will never stop crime, nor stop the criminal. You will never get the guns out of the hands of the violent criminal any more than you will get the knives, the matches, the stolen vehicles or the brute force out of the hands of criminals. But the idea of getting the guns out of the hands of the voters is easy, and it sounds good at first. At first, but not when thought through.
I am so pleased with those who won this victory for the California household.
Here is how important this is, and why my appreciation runs deep.
The second amendment was made absolute for one reason: that people never be disarmed, and that the law protect the people against the will of ambitious leaders who could disarm the people through seeming due process. What is wrong with our country at this time is that too many of our values seem negotiable – open to due process debate – and we, as people of generosity and spirit of cooperation, approach nearly any discussion with an open mind. We’re not stupid as a people, but we sure are interested in cooperating if we think it will help any given crisis. Making guns even open to discussion is to tap into that cooperation to the detriment of the people – namely disarming the honest so that the dishonest can prevail, which builds the crisis and builds it entirely to the gain of officials who can then point to it as necessity for even more draconian rules. In the quest for Order, the method is false, misleading and not permitted by law.
For, the rules are aimed at the wrong people, the law-abiding. How do they ever stop those who don’t obey the law?
They don’t, and so this is how I could unabashedly criticize the very idea of imposing stupid rules on the honest. You’d think they would know how ineffectual any law is in dealing with the criminal. The only people who listen are the people who don’t commit the crimes.
For a peek at how it goes the other way, I’d direct you to the forty right-to-carry states who seem to have the problem greatly reduced. Forty states of the union have some form of concealed carry of weapons. We have a form here in California, but it’s very unevenly handled, with Sheriffs and Police Chiefs holding discretionary power to grant permits. Many throughout the state do; Orange County does, Los Angeles County doesn’t. This idea of having to show cause to the agency runs counter to the values of self defense, an intelligent deployment of resources, real crime control and civil rights of the sovereign citizen. Armed self-defense is generally understood to be a family-friendly kind of concept, where heads of household make their own decisions at the moment it is needed most, get to participate in disaster management, recovery of the community and general personal safety when facing grave danger alone. Emphasis on alone.
But officials don’t want to hear that kind of talk. It might make too much sense.
Or do they, since this defeat of AB 352?
What many beat officers know that the Command or Bureaucrats or left wing editors and others refuse to hear is that the armed individual is the first line of defense, and has the very same authority that the officer has. Or didn’t you know this?
Did you also know that for all the tragic shooting deaths of some 47,000 people nationwide every year, more than 2.5 million individuals use a gun to stop a crime in progress in the same sampling period? Do you believe the individual has the right to prevent their own rape, robbery or murder when first responders will never arrive in time? Did you know that you have that authority?
It’s time for California to study the answers of the other states and to seriously consider concealed carry of handguns for Californians.
More violence? Are you kidding? Do you mean to say that we do not want lawful resistance because it will make violence? Do you mean to say that the safety of the criminal takes precedent over the rights and personal safety of the citizen? Do you mean to say that people are incompetent and will shoot anything that moves?
Do you mean to say that Californians are dumber or somehow anything derogatory more than people from Utah, Nebraska, Ohio, Washington state, Vermont, Alaska, New Mexico, Nevada or Florida or the rest of the states issuing concealed carry permits?
That’s what I thought the California Legislature was thinking until this week.
Thanks, ladies and gentlemen, for your respect of the Californian. Thank you very much. AB 2714, now going to the Governor, addresses ammunition – another rule which will never stop crime, but will harass the law-abiding. Please drop that one, too, will you?
In fact, please refuse to consider all anti-gun laws, and regard all anti-gun laws as purely anti-family. Those kinds of anti-family laws take more than the gun from the household; they take authority and Californians did not grant you that power.
Where legislators elsewhere passed concealed carry laws enabling their constituents to carry weapons, they haven’t regretted placing their trust in their constituents. Why is California so anti-gun? Why so anti-family?
It’s time for California now to join the other states in handling violent crime where it is handled best: not by adhering to silly, go-nowhere policies which reach only the law-abiding, but by crime’s being met instance by instance with long-established legal personal authority and by lawful superior force. We've always had that authority. It’s time to remove discretionary power from law enforcement bureaucrats and make concealed carry of weapons a statewide shall issue California Law. Better yet, just drop all anti-gun, anti-family laws.
It’s proven to be good not only for any state, but also good for the country.
John is author of Transfer Of Wealth, in its Second Edition in bookstores late September. www.TransferOfWealth.net
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