STRAIGHT SHOOTERS

LIBERTY

“In its proper constitutional sense, the term [militia] means all the able-bodied people who can be trained and disciplined to act in the community’s defense when it’s attacked. Since it encompasses every able-bodied person, it does not refer to those—such as the police, the military, or even the National Guard—who formally compose the official defense forces of the nation. Every citizen able and willing to act in an emergency becomes a potential defender against attacks aimed at the general population. Unfortunately, because of the anti-gun folly of the leftist media and politicians, we have lost sight of this vital element of our defense... The anti-gun crowd seeks to establish a modern version of [the medieval era], a kind of bureaucratic feudalism, in place of the republican self-government established by our Constitution... The answer is not gun control, but self-government, self-defense, and self-control. We must act to live as free people, else like sheep for the slaughter, we will die, and freedom with us.” —Alan Keyes

FOR THE RECORD

“The trouble with gun control laws is they target the law abiding. ‘If you disarm good people but not the criminals, instead of making things safe for the potential victims you may unintentionally make them safe for the criminals,’ said Dr. John Lott, coauthor of a massive study on guns and crime... Both crime rates and shooting deaths have declined in most states which have adopted ‘concealed carry’ laws, says Dr. Lott. The decline in ‘multiple victim public shootings’ has been especially pronounced, he said. ‘Bill Landes of the University of Chicago law school and I examined multiple-victim public shootings in the U.S. from 1977 to 1999 and found that when states passed right-to-carry laws, the rate of multiple victim public shootings fell by 60 percent. Deaths and injuries from multiple victim public shootings fell even further, on average by 78 percent, as the remaining incidents tended to involve fewer victims per attack,’ Dr. Lott said... In applauding the defeat last year of a measure in the Virginia legislature to permit those with concealed carry permits to have a gun on campus, Associate Vice President Larry Hinckler said Virginia Tech’s strict gun control policy made students feel safer. But there is a difference between feeling safer and being safer, as Virginia Tech has learned to its sorrow.” —Jack Kelly

Source: The Patriot Post  23 April 2007 Vol 07, No. 17