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On this same day, more than 200 years ago, but with times then a lot like they are now, distant, abusive, central government got hit hard by American citizens armed with their personal firearms. The king sent his troops to seize Americans’ firearms, and the citizens did more than just blog. Lexington, Concord, Massachusetts, not far out of Boston. Oh, that’s right, couldn’t happen anymore, since the state of Massachusetts has largely disarmed its citizens. Massachusetts, what happened? Don’t you remember?
Echoing the shot heard ’round the world,
MJM
Dear Mr. Fischer:
First, welcome to Tennessee. I am delighted that you and Volkswagen are here. My own German ancestors arrived in America more than 200 years ago, headed west over the mountains, and cleared frontier land as pioneers. I have owned Volkswagens—both the earlier air-cooled version, and the later compact, powerful water-cooled VW. As a Tennessee attorney whose daily work is defending businesses, I value your choice to build and operate in Tennessee.
I say these things as prelude to this: Do not fret for one minute about Tennesseans’ determination to restore and hold onto the right of the ordinary citizen to be armed. Do not let the more government-centric voices in Nashville convince you that the “guns in parking lots” bill endangers you, or your workers in any way. You are probably a bit amused to see the left-leaning American Associated Press press taking your comment that it makes you a bit “nervous” and ratcheting that up into what sounds like you lead the charge against the bill. (“That’s a sort of thing that makes us a bit nervous,” the Associated Press reporter quotes you. That does not sound like you wake up every day thinking you should have located elsewhere.) After the Nashville Tennessean campaign against the constitutional right to keep and bear arms fades away, nothing will come of this.
You have arrived at a time when many Americans are disgusted with the failures and abuses of powerful central government. Many Americans are studying our history, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights. We are reclaiming the blessings of greater personal liberty, and demanding that our government be more controlled and accountable. Those who govern and their supporters dislike that. The guns-in-parking-lots bill is one skirmish between those two competing worldviews.
They play on fear; they exaggerate; they lie. A year from now, the entire state will have moved on to other matters and, when you do happen to think back on the parking lot gun bill, you will marvel at all of the furor they created over a simple law. But, your employee attacked in his dark driveway, arriving home in the wee hours of the morning after second shift, has the right to be prepared.
And if you would like to shoot, please send me an email. You would not be the first German guest at my range.
Yours truly,
Mike Mollenhour (Mollenhauer originally)
A comment-writer observes how little a “problem” Tennessee’s own “stand your ground” provision has been. The lawyer who commented is well-versed in firearms-related law. He writes:
Since 1989, Tennessee has had the equivalent of ‘stand your ground’ when the legislature added “there is no duty to retreat”. In the 13 years since, I am not aware of any rash of questionable shootings where self-defense was claimed.
I am sickened by lawyer-commentators who ignore the requirement for deadly force in self-defense: the reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm by another. How many times has someone claimed you can shoot ‘when you feel threatened’? Sorry, but unless a judge or jury finds the fear was objectively reasonable, you lose on self-defense.
Yes, it is a subtle lie to try to sell these laws as letting blustering bullies blast bullets all over the neighborhood at the slightest provocation. Without these statutes, the ordinary, law-abiding, but armed citizen might be picked to pieces over the tiniest details of the shooting scenario, and then prosecuted. Decisions made under terror, in seconds, in your own home, or under attack outside, might send the citizen to jail for life.
I thank my legislators for looking out for us and decriminalizing the act of lawful self-defense.
I will add: The armed citizen who defends himself against an attacker trying to kill or maim deserves thanks and a medal, not the prosecutor’s persecution. We all—even the unarmed helpless—benefit by that citizen’s lawful act of self-defense. It is no tragedy when someone trying to bash your skull in gets shot. The multiple tragedies behind a life gone bad occurred over time, under the not-so-watchful eyes of people responsible to love and train that life. Neglect and abuse and sin in general built that pathway to perdition ending in a bullet.
These laws should be called, “Honoring self-defense” laws.
You! Taxpayer! People who actually work! You private company union members! Tired of paying for other people’s frolics? Well, reach for your checkbook. The European Union and the power-brokers who run the International Monetary Fund want your paycheck. Big question: Will your administration, in this election year, go along like they would like to, or will they understand that coughing up (borrowing) billions more to pay European workers to retire would put the Republicans back into the White House? Mitt Romney: I want to hear your promise that America will not borrow a single penny to put any more money into the power-brokering game called the International Monetary Fund.
We had all better watch this one closely. The traitorous American left is whining that America “has to” lead this bailout. Leftoids from Brasilia to Barcelona will be chastising us for failing to keep our “commitment.
Just sent in checks that I wanted to use to hire a heat and air contractor. Instead, I sent those dollars to Vegas so a federal employee could lift up a glass to his fellows, and mock me. In the meantime, this administration’s tax hypocrites get off light.
Tax reform?
Yes, cutting taxes transfers personal power back to the citizen who earned the money. But, that income tax system remains in place, and it offers thousands of little dials, switches, buttons, and levers for the Wizards of Washington to play with to control the rest of us. There is no such thing as income tax reform. The flaws and abuses are inherent in a tax on income. Repeal the income tax. (A “flat tax” is nothing but an income tax temporarily toned down to trick you.)
In the meantime, people who are enraged that Google knows too much about them are happy to subject themselves to Congress’s bureaucrats who may demand to see their daily diary (their check register) any day.
Wanted Judge Andrew Napolitano to run.
Excited that Ron Paul could get so far.
Enjoyed some of the Cain, Perry, Gingrich verbiage.
Voted for Rick Santorum.
But, just like I knew it would be, all of a sudden that Mitt Romney seems OK after all. In fact, I guess after his rousing speech at NRA, I could put up a yard sign. By the time the election rolls around, no doubt, I’ll be sending in contributions and firmly on board. Until he sticks it to us with a wishy-washy Supreme Court appointment, Mitt Romney is THE MAN!
The Republicans have done it to us, yet again.
When is the next Tea Party rally?
This post at Campusreform.org exposes two Ohio State University Police officers who drew their weapons on a young man wearing an empty holster, and carrying no gun.
Let’s speculate that the two eager officers will claim that seeing an empty holster implied the man’s being armed. Logical. However, they searched him, found no weapon, confiscated his belongings including a camera case, and held him in handcuffs.
I do expect the president and Eric Holder comment publicly on the reckless, threatening, brandishing of weapons against an unarmed citizen in a crowd of people. I expect the Justice Department to investigate.
De-criminalize the benign behavior that is the exercise of American citizenship.
Hat tip to Say Uncle for finding this.
Aaron posts pictures of the Shield, fresh from the exhibition floor of the NRA convention in St. Louis.
The Firearm Blog lifts the Shield, too, citing the specs.
Basically: it’s a sub-compact M&P but with single-stack magazine and width less than 1″, reducing 9mm and .40 cal power into a more concealable package. Also, you aren’t going to need that rail, either, so it’s missing.
Maybe of even more interest, and in a “We are winning” sort of way, as SayUncle might say, the Sacremento Bee picked up the announcement and gave Smith & Wesson a nice article on the gun. I might think, as Californians will tell you, San Diego and Sacremento are not Hollywood, and definitely not LA. However, I see that the Bee’s PR Newswire online picks up unedited press releases. I wonder if this one slipped through.
SayUncle scoffs at all of the hype, and quotes Tom Givens, noting “It’s just a pistol,” and expresses Uncle’s preference for the S&W 9c with the greater magazine capacity.
MM is there in spirit, this year. At St. Louis, that is. After violent mobs hijacked the flash mob concept, I’m there with greater magazine capacity in real life. GMCIRL, in texting terminology for that moment if ever attacked by mass quantities of thugs actually met in real life. Oops: I guess I just created evidence to be used against me …. Only if confronted, and placed in reasonable apprehension of immediate risk of great bodily harm or death, of course.
Apparently, the neutered Left sees opportunity where the rest of us see a shooting to be investigated. Somebody at the Wall Street Journal takes Sam Favate’s piece and stretches the facts into the headline: “Florida Prosecutors Say ‘Stand Your Ground’ Should Be Repealed.”
Bloomberg claims eliminating an attacked person’s duty to retreat creates a “license to murder.” He is such a liar.
You have to look hard for the text of the law: few of these hand-wringing articles cite it. I copy it for you below, along with this word of warning to reasonable, ordinary people of all parties and political stripes. Left-leaners: If you think that you just might ever defend your family from an attacker, Read the rest of this entry »
Quietly, the stock market is drying up. ”Volume” measures the number of people showing up every day to trade. While prices may have recovered some, volume has not since 2007. If the stock exchange is the place businesses go to stand in stalls and sell shares, the streets are not crowded and the customers are going somewhere else. The article speculates on the reasons, and worries that average people have lost confidence in the market, maybe forever.
Yeah, and I can tell you one reason for sure. On one day, in 2010, stock prices plummeted almost instantaneously, and then bounced back up. Harmless? Hardly. Traders set “stop loss” orders that trigger automatic selling if their stocks drop below a price they set. It works like this, as an example: “I own 100 shares of Verizon at $35, but if it drops below $33, sell it!” The investor does not have to watch the market constantly, and can control his loss. He loses, but that loss is limited. Well, the Flash Crash drop down triggered thousands of those orders, and stock owners lost money on the sale, only to watch that same stock bounce instantly back up again.
So what happened? This article offers eight possibilities. Predictably, The NYT and others place the blame on computerized-trading systems. My point is that the Flash Crash remains unexplained, and the little investor got ripped off. Investing is one thing; spinning a roulette wheel is another. So, why would the average person invest if all of this stock market stuff is a charade and you are really just being called in by a hawker to play a rigged game? They can talk all they want about high-volume trading programs, but the little investor feels screwed. Wonder why he’s staying away?
I do not pretend to be a sophisticated stock investor. I do understand “Fool me once….”
http://www.theeagle.com/business/Market-drop-still-unexplained
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