Credit Cards

Recently we cancelled two of our credit cards.  One with First National of Omaha was tied to Best Western hotels and motels and offered points on stays at members of that chain.  It was not the card associated with the NRA.  However when First National decided to stop issuing the cards tied to the NRA, we decided to stop doing business with them.  The other was a card from Bank of America that we had had for thirty years.  We decided to cancel it when Bank of America announced it would deny credit to manufacturers of civilian firearms that leftist politicians and their allies in the media disapproved of.

I generally do not like boycotting or favoring a business because of its owners’ or executives’ political, philosophical, or religious opinions.  I prefer to make decisions on the basis of the quality and value of the goods or services offered.  However I believe these were cases where it was appropriate to make an exception.   

The behavior of the leftists in claiming all gun owners were complicit in the actions of a murderous madman and demanding that the rights of innocent people be abrogated because of the actions of that madman was not merely wrong but disgustingly and dangerously so. The attacks on the NRA and its members were despicable. The stampede by those in the traditional media was no less repellent for being completely predictable.

By their actions First National of Omaha and Bank of America joined in the attacks and ran with the stampede. I do not know if they did so cravenly under pressure (or what they thought was pressure) or cynically to try to gain favor somewhere.  It seems very unlikely the decisions were matters of principle, since the fact that criminals sometimes use guns to kill people was well known before the shooting in Florida and should not have been news to them.   

The leftists seem to want a (so far mainly metaphorical) knife fight. They are quite willing to put pressure on businesses to get things want, and they often succeed. We need to make it clear to the those  running businesses that there is a cost to caving in to the leftists and  insulting and attacking the rest of us.  It’s not a nice thing to have to do, but this is not a nice situation. 

Worse than Swinish

There are a couple of things to make clear at the beginning about David Hogg. First he is not a child. He is seventeen  - old enough to join the armed forces, old as many young men who fought at Normandy or on Guadalcanal.  Also he is not a victim. The victims are the people who were shot.  He is only a vulgar,  dramatizing opportunist seeking to exploit what happened to the actual victims for personal and political gain. As such he is a nearly  perfect manifestation of what has been going on on the left and in the traditional media since the shooting.  

On the one hand we are told he is a serious person whose ideas on politics should be taken seriously and considered thoroughly.  On the other we are told he is a poor, traumatized little kid who can't be expected to behave properly or argue rationally and whose profane and senseless rants, temper  tantrums, and hissy fits must be ignored or excused (and are often praised).  The leftists claim  that while he can call millions of innocent fellow Americans accessories to murder, slander anyone he likes, and display a vicious and almost mindless hatred, he must enjoy immunity from any criticism or ridicule. (This is an old trick of the leftists. It is similar to what some call the Hillary Clinton gambit in which a woman claims full equality of strength and competence with men and demands to be taken completely seriously but falls back on saying she’s just a girl and only meanies pick on girls whenever things get tough.)  All of this should be rejected.  His opinions are wrong. His thinking is nonsensical. His behavior and demeanor are reprehensible.  His ghoulish grandstanding is repulsive. He deserves all the criticism, ridicule, and lampooning he can  get.

Normally there would be no reason to write about such a  character.  However there is a reason in the present  situation.  I often disagree with Laura Ingraham, but  the way she was treated over  a mild jibe at this little jerk is inexcusable. There are people in this country who have no bosses or sponsors and are immune from livelihood-threatening reprisals.  I am one of them. We have a responsibility to speak up in situations where more vulnerable people may think they cannot.  Besides the little twit and those working with him are costing me money. I wasn’t planning to send the NRA’s political fund anything this spring, but now I will have to.

Guns This Week

Many have asked what the mass murders in Las Vegas should mean for  issues related to citizens’ rights to be armed.  The answer is nothing at all, and claims to the contrary reveal a depressing lack of understanding of the role of principles in the conduct of life.  People either have a right to self defense, or they have no such right. If they have a right to defend themselves, they have a right to possess   and use the means for doing so.  If they have no such right, they may be forcibly disarmed and left  to submit to whatever aggressors – official or otherwise – choose to inflict upon them. That is the fundamental question  to answer first, and it is one to be decided in terms of general ethical principles.  Only then can particular schemes, policies, and proposed rules be considered rationally.  Claims  by leftist politicians and their flacks in  the traditional media that  one terrible criminal act  “changes everything” are not only ghoulishly opportunistic, but deeply anti-intellectual.  Single events do not change general principles, and pretending otherwise is substituting emotion for serious  thought and/ or hoping to con the public into doing so.  One’s rights are independent of and not contingent upon the actions of anybody else, criminal or otherwise.

That if the right to be armed for self defense is recognized and arms are available to people, criminals and madmen sometimes will obtain arms and commit crimes should have been obvious to all before last weekend.  It is just one special case of the fact that free societies with respect for individual rights are in some ways easier marks for criminals and terrorists than tyrannical police states are.  Free people face  such risks, knowing they are saved from the greater danger and harm that a truly effective security state would bring. 

 In looking at policy and politics on guns, it is important to remember something a writer on the subject observed.  Advocates of gun control do not wish to eliminate the ownership of firearms. They wish to centralize the ownership in members of a ruling class and its agents. It is also important to consider the following question. If the advocates of gun control do not wish the peaceful citizens of this country harm, why do they yearn so intensely  to make them helpless?

Defending One's Rights

People who value freedom need to be working to defeat any attempts to impose more gun control on American citizens. The right to self defense is a fundamental one that we have to defend uncompromisingly. The leftists have made it plain that their real goal is total disarmament of the populace and that any victory they can get now will be used as a step toward that final objective.

The millions of honest gun owners need to ask the leftists a simple question. “We don’t commit aggression against other people. We are armed only for self defense. We are no threat to you. You know that we are no threat to you. So why and to what purpose do you yearn so intensely to disarm us and make  us helpless and defenseless?”

Since they cannot give a good answer, we are justified in at least considering the possibility that they want us made helpless because they intend to do us harm. (Of course even those among them who do not have harmful intentions themselves still want Americans  left helpless against the common criminals who surely do wish to do them harm. That is bad enough, and that is the generous interpretation.)

More moderate leftists sometime argue that, even if they grant (usually grudgingly) that people have a right to self defense, there is no need for weapons such as AR-15s, because they are not particularly useful for self defense against criminals.  There is some truth to this, particularly in cities and suburbs. Rifles can be fine self defense tools in rural areas. However, focusing only on the question of utility against criminals  misses a crucial point. While it is important to be able to defend oneself against  criminals, that is not the only reason to be armed for self defense. There is another very important one.  We do not have to believe we will see, for example,  an uber-Santorum  carrying his convictions to their logical result of a theocratic state or an uber-Obama carrying  his convictions to their logical result  of camps and slave labor gaining  power in this country to realize that most governments throughout most of history have been despotisms and that vigilance is the price of liberty. (People finding this hypothetical example too rude to Rick or Barack  might look at some of Santorum’s speeches or remember that for a while after Obama’s election in 2008, one of his web sites called for mandatory forced labor by young people.) The Founding Fathers knew the history and the danger, and saw an armed citizenry as a bulwark against tyranny. It still is, and the citizens need to be well armed, now and in the future.

Gun Control

A reelected Obama and his allies have begun new efforts for more gun control laws. We who believe in individual rights and limited government need to oppose those efforts.

We who believe in a right to arm ourselves do so as a consequence of a belief in a more fundamental right – the right of every person to self defense. We believe that a person has a right to protect himself, his family and associates, and his property against attack. Most of us also believe that a person can and should acquire the tools and skills to do so competently and effectively, which in the present context usually means getting firearms and learning to use them well and safely.  This belief in a right of self defense is the basis of our position on the political questions of  gun control, and, at bottom, a denial of  and contempt for that right are the basis of the position of the proponents of restrictive gun control.

It is no coincidence that most advocates of gun control are committed statists. There are a several  obvious reasons for this. If one believes that the government should decide and control most or all aspects of the citizens’ lives, it is natural for him also to think that the government is competent to provide all the protection anyone should ever need. If one believes that individuals are incompetent to deal with the vicissitudes and challenges of everyday life without the direct supervision of their betters in the government, it is natural to believe that  they are also unable to defend themselves and would be better off not resisting but rather submitting and hoping for the best when threatened or assaulted. Also, for those always seeking greater and more intrusive power, a disarmed populace is easier  to rule.

This last point is very important. The founding fathers of this country recognized the value of an armed citizenry as a deterrent to tyranny. It still is, and remains so as a general principle irrespective of how benignly the government or any government may be behaving at any particular time.  Governments and the notions of those in them change over time, and this deterrence is valuable as a permanent check on changes in really wrong directions. (In the light of all the conspiracy theories going around, I probably should mention explicitly that since this is a  general principle, it  has nothing to do with one’s opinion of the character or ambitions of either Obama or George W.  Bush.)

That leads to an  immediate political question for the millions of law abiding gun owners  to ask political advocates of gun control: since we pose absolutely no threat to them, why are they so eager to disarm us?  In the absence of any convincing answer, it is reasonable to consider the possibility that at least part of the reason is that they intend us harm and want us  to become more easily manageable.   

Of the Nitwits, by the Nitwits, for the Nitwits

Last week in Connecticut a young psychopath committed a horrific sequence of murders at a school. Opportunistic politicians are rushing in to demand new laws and regulations and calling the event a political game changer. Yet to those who think about political questions in terms of principles, this event or any other single event is irrelevant to the issues of gun control. The reasons for a thoughtful person to be for gun rights or for gun control have not changed since last Friday. The right of the citizens to arm themselves for self defense has not changed. The fact that guns are dangerous weapons has not changed. The danger of widespread availability of firearms making it easier for criminals or psychopaths to get weapons has not changed.  The desire of much of the political class to rule a disarmed populace has not changed. The function of an armed citizenry as a bulwark against tyranny has not changed.

In a world of principled and scrupulous politicians and thoughtful citizens, nothing in the debate would have changed, because great political controversies  would not be driven by the emotions of the moment or affected by emotional reactions to single events.  That of course is not the world of reality. In the real world we have large numbers of voters who decide who should be president on the basis of photo ops after a  hurricane  and posturing, yahoo politicians who cater  to such people -  acting as though they never before considered the possibility that nuts could get guns and commit crimes.  In the real world we have disgusting politicians and their cheerleaders in the traditional media capitalizing on people’s grief and shock over a crime and ghoulishly dancing on the graves of the victims  to push their agendas while nerves are raw. (An observer could fairly ask the Michael Bloombergs of the world “have you no shame?”, and could follow up by asking them  whether their opinion of the intelligence of the public is really as low as their behavior makes it seem.) In the real world, we have logrolling and  tub thumping – as with creating the TSA after September 11^th and now with a president who seems to promise he can prevent any psychopaths from committing crimes in the future. In the real world we have Governor Le Petomane and the boys deciding they had better pretend to do something about the problems in Rock Ridge because their phony baloney jobs are at stake.

It is easy to be contemptuous of the politicians for all the sick shows they put on, but we should not stop with that. After all, politicians wouldn’t be doing this sort of thing if they didn’t think it would sell.