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Eugene Volokh reported today that a district court judge has struck down a North Carolina law banning gun transportation during a state of emergency.  See his post here.   I suppose that it is wishful thinking to believe that this decision would have made any difference to the Colorado Senate Democrats who killed an attempt to repeal the law that allows state or local officials to disarm honest citizens during a declared emergency.  See my post on this site entitled, “Some Democrats Distrust the People of Colorado,” concerning House Bill 12 1064.

HB 1064 passed the GOP-controlled House, but died in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on a predictable party-line vote.  As one Democrat Senator stated, “Law abiding citizen is not necessarily a permanent state of affairs.”  The doomed bill’s sponsor aptly replied, “Neither is law-abiding governor.”

HR 1064 died in spite of support from the County Sheriffs and the Fraternal Order of Police.  All the saints and angels could have testified before the committee and the result would have been the same.  Maybe the courts will rule to uphold the Constitution and allow the people of Colorado the legal right to armed self-defense outside their homes during a declared emergency.  We can only hope.

Def Mech

“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: (1) Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. (2) Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist; and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.” (Thomas Jefferson- Letter to Henry Lee (August 10^th, 1824)

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” (Thomas Jefferson- First Inaugural Address (March 4^th, 1801)

Jefferson’s questions were dramatically answered in the Colorado House Judiciary Committee during the hearing of three pro-Second Amendment bills on February 9^th, 2012. The four Democrats present on the committee firmly established themselves in the camp of “Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.” The Democrats voted en bloc against the bills. All the Republicans, who were in the majority, voted for the bills.

The most stunning example of the Democrats’ opposition to the recognition of the individual rights of the People of the State of Colorado occurred during the hearing on House Speaker Stephen’s bill, HB12 1064, “Firearm Possession During State of Emergency.” This bill would definitively limit the power of state and local authorities to ban the sale, transfer, or transportation of firearms and ammunition during a declared state of emergency.

Current Colorado law already prohibits the confiscation of firearms possessed in the home. Speaker Stephen’s bill was designed to close  loopholes in state and federal laws that permit state and local governments to restrict the Second Amendment rights of citizens to their domiciles (which may in fact have been  destroyed as the result of a natural or man-caused disaster.)

At the federal level, Public Law 109-295 already prohibits the Federal Government, or any other government entity accepting federal funds, from infringing on the rights of citizens caught up in an emergency, regardless of their location.  However the federal statute does not prohibit infringement of Second Amendment rights by existing state or local laws.

Thirty-one other states, including strikingly liberal California and Oregon have passed laws recognizing the right of citizens to armed self-defense during disasters, regardless of whether or not they are hunkered down in their homes, living as refugees, or driving to the river to obtain water. These bills were obviously passed with bipartisan support.

Public Law 109-295 was passed in 2007 as a result of the illegal confiscation of thousands of firearms by New Orleans law enforcement agencies during Hurricane Katrina. HB12 1064 would basically conform Colorado Law to federal law and allow Colorado citizens unfettered ability to defend themselves against looters, gangs, and mob violence during a declared state of emergency.

At least eight pro-Second Amendment organizations and individuals offered fact-based and anecdotal testimony in favor of HB12 1064. The Colorado County Sheriff’s Association came out in favor of the bill. There was NO public testimony in opposition to the legislation, in spite of the fact that two anti-Second Amendment organizations had representatives present and a spokesperson for the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police was in the hearing room.

The most disturbing aspects of the hearing were questions asked by Democrat Committee Members. Having no apparent rationale for opposing HB12 1064, the Democrats tried to imagine situations where this law would not serve the best interests of the people of Colorado. One hypothetical scenario that was proposed involved the congregation of a group of “Mexican drug gangs who had somehow legally armed themselves and were poised to try to take over the city of Denver.” “Wouldn’t we want the government to be able to disarm this group, before they were able to carry out their plan?”

The answer from the Republicans on the committee, many with law enforcement, legal, and military backgrounds, was a resounding “NO!” They pointed out as calmly as was possible under the circumstances that a bedrock principle of US Constitutional Government is that government officials may not engage in prior restraint. Just because someone legally owns a car, government officials can not infer that the person intends to run over someone else. The officials may not confiscate the vehicle in the absence of evidence of wrongdoing, under American law.

(Not mentioned in the hearing was the fact that the Nanny State of Great Britain can arrest people because they might use knitting needles or carpentry tools to defend themselves if assaulted. Americans fought a bloody Revolutionary War to stop that sort of nonsense. Come to think of it, the American Revolution started when the British tried to seize guns and ammunition from their colonists.)

The Constitution specifically prohibits unlawful search and seizure. We do not sanction writs of attainder, or ex post facto prosecutions (with the horrible exception of the Lautenberg Amendment that prohibits gun ownership for anyone ever previously convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence infraction.) We require due process of law before anyone can be deprived of life, liberty, or property (with the horrible exception of the RICO Law that allows the government to seize your money and property before prosecution in certain drug and organized crime cases.)

In the hearing, Republicans pointed out that current conspiracy statutes make it illegal to plan a crime and take any action to further that plan. Once our hypothetical Mexican drug gang members sent someone out for sandwiches to eat during their planned takeover of Denver, they committed conspiracy to violate existing law!

One point that was not brought up in the proceeding was the obstacle that legally armed, honest citizens of Denver would have posed to this hypothetical takeover. This happy eventuality assumes that the citizens were not made impotent bystanders or criminals, themselves, by authorities who had prohibited them from taking their guns out of their homes.

Another point that was not made during the hearing was the danger that this gray area in current law creates for citizens, military members, and law enforcement personnel. If HB12 1064 passes, there will be no question that National Guard and law enforcement personnel can refuse to obey an illegal order to disarm American Citizens. This would be a very good thing. Would you want to be a police officer driving up to an ad hoc refugee encampment during a state of emergency, if you knew that the people living in tents and under tarps in constant fear of their lives from gangs and looters, even thought that you might be coming to take their guns?

Conversely, if you had been driven from your home by a disaster and were living under a tarp, threatened by lawless elements freed from government restraint, would you risk arrest or submit to confiscation of your firearm without a fight? (One anecdote recounted during the hearing indicated that displaced citizens hid their firearms from police during the Katrina Emergency.) Confiscation of the guns of otherwise honest displaced civilians poses the very real threat that those people will become anti-government guerrillas, for no other reason than misguided government officials tried to deny the citizens the means of self-defense.

“…these two parties will declare themselves.” These two parties have declared themselves. The Democrats came out on the side of autocracy and fear of the people. The Republicans came out as the champions of the Constitution and individual liberty.

Remember this hearing during the debates on HB10 1064 and during the next election cycle. The life you save may be your own.

Def Mech

House Bill (HB) 12 1048 (Waller) is up in the House Finance Committee on Wednesday, 02-29-2012 at 1:30 PM in Room A of the Legislative Services Building across the street south of the Capitol. This bill would eliminate the responsibility of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in the background check process for firearms’ purchases, saving the State of Colorado almost $2 million per year.

HB 12 1064 (S. King) is up in the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee on Monday, 03-05-2012 at 1:30 PM in Senate Committee Room (SCR) 353. This bill would protect your Second Amendment right to armed self-defense outside your home in the event of a declared state of emergency.

HB 12 1088 (Holbert, Becker, Sen. Grantham) is up in the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee following HB 12 1064. This bill provides additional protection to owners, managers, and employees of businesses in the event that they are compelled to use force to defend themselves against violent intruders. The bill also provides additional protection to residents of motels and other dwellings against intruders.

Please call your senator and representative in support of the above legislation. It is especially important to call Democrats.

If you come down to the Capitol to testify, dress in a suit or sport coat and tie. You will have to pass through a metal detector. No camouflage, hunter orange, or other inappropriate clothing. No clothing with organizational logos or political messages. No signs or banners. No firearms. No multi-tools. No knives with fixed blades. No pocketknives with blades longer than 3.5 inches. (Keep in mind that this is not legal advice.) Firearms Coalition of Colorado activists will be in the cafeteria around noon, if you want to communicate before the hearing.

We lost many of our Second Amendment rights a little bit at a time.  We are going to have to recover them the same way.

Def Mech

According to reports from Reuters, u-tube, and other sources, the mayors of New York City and Boston will run a 30-second talking heads spot during the Super Bowl touting the agenda of Bloomberg’s organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). Unfortunately for the Community of People Who Own Guns, MAIG seems to be more concerned with making all guns illegal than with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

In my humble opinion, the two mayors look awkwardly out of place wearing the jerseys of their respective football teams.  More troubling is the report that Bloomberg is making sizable donations to political races out of his vast fortune.  Of course he has every right to do so. We can be pretty sure that very little of this money will go to candidates who support the Second Amendment.

Most of  America  may be spared the ordeal of listening to billionaire Bloomberg’s spiel. Some reports indicate that the ad will only run in the northeastern part of the country. (In case anyone thought that the anti-gunners have taken the year off, they haven’t.)

If you don’t campaign for pro-Second Amendment candidates this election cycle, you will lose Second Amendment rights.  Obama needs one more appointment to the Supreme Court to gut the Bill of Rights.  He could do this through the reversal of previous decisions, such as Heller.  He could also do it by simply allowing the court, through his appointment(s), to lower the level of judicial scrutiny applied to gun rights’ cases.  This process would involve “balancing” your right to armed self-defense against, crime, corruption, tyranny, and genocide against the “community rights” of liberals to be free of the fear of your firearms. Guess who wins that one with five or more liberal judges on the US Supreme Court! 

Def Mech

The Colorado Legislature is in session.  On Monday, the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee killed SB 25, the senate version of concealed carry without a permit, on a party line vote.  Democrats voted to kill the bill. Republicans voted to enact it.

HB 1088, the bill to allow business owners, managers, employees, and occupants of dwellings to use deadly force against criminal, violent, or potentially violent intruders will be up for hearing the afternoon of February 2nd in the House Judiciary Committee.  (Check the House Calendar for the time and the room number.)  (Legislature Home Page here.)

HB 1064, the bill to limit the state’s authority to strip honest citizens of their Second Amendment rights during a declared emergency, will be up for hearing the afternoon of February 9th in the House Judiciary Committee.

Please contact your state senator and representative in support of these bills.  If you come down to testify, dress in a suit or sport coat and tie.  You will have to pass through a metal detector to get into the “People’s House.”  No cammo.  No firearms.  No multi-tools.  No pocket knives with blades longer than 3 inches.  (That’s a conservative take on Colorado law.)  (Keep in mind, I’m not a lawyer and this isn’t  legal advice.)  Firearms Coalition of Colorado activists will be in the lobby around noon, if you want to communicate before the hearing.

If you testify, be polite.  Double check your facts.  You will have three minutes.  The committee will likely be friendly.  The Republicans control the House.  If you voted Democrat in the last election, slap yourself a couple of times.  These bills will have a much tougher time in the State Senate, which is run by the other major political party.

Get out and campaign for the most electable, most pro-Second Amendment candidate that belongs to a major political party.  “Party trumps person,” as Mike Rosen so aptly put it.  Remember that a third party vote or a protest vote is a wasted vote.  Obama needs just one more appointment to the US Supreme Court to gut the Second Amendment.  If you don’t get out and work to keep your right to own a gun, you will lose it.  Think I’m kidding?  Check the status of handgun ownership in Great Britain.  That’s what the liberals want to do to us.

Def Mech

Just as they did in Vietnam, the Democrats have cut and run in Iraq, betraying a people that this country had pledged to help.  What foreign nationals will, in the future, trust to any promise of aid and support from the United States, knowing that the American Left will probably abandon them to their enemies at the first opportunity?

 The so-called “Arab Spring” threatens to deteriorate into a hard line “Jihadist Renaissance” that will threaten Israel and vital US interests in the Middle East.  With Iranian silkworm and other anti-ship missiles deployed  around the strait of Hormuz and a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood poised to have increased influence over, and perhaps control of, the Suez Canal, the situation looks grave.  Oh, we don’t want to forget the impending emergence of Iran as a nuclear power and a possible nuclear arms race in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

How about the fact that the Chinese and Japanese are going to dump the dollar in their international trade activities and use their own currencies?  Europe totters on the edge of economic collapse and the Democrats want to increase US spending to make this country into the image of the European Socialist Democracies!

From a foreign policy standpoint alone, the current administration is a disaster.   We have a president who stifles domestic oil exploration, but encourages the US to become a customer of Brazil’s offshore oil industry, which we are helping to subsidize.  I couldn’t make this stuff up, if I tried.

Operation Fast and Furious was “supposed” to track US guns smuggled across the Mexican Border, but there was no tracking component to the plan!  Over 2,000 weapons “walked” south into the hands of the drug cartels.

The Mainstream Media continues to shill for the Radical Left.  Many of your neighbors don’t know the Conservative side of any issue, because they have never been exposed to it.  American colleges and universities continue to be bastions of Marxism, turning out left-wing teachers, lawyers, and journalists.

Occupy Wall Street and its pernicious offshoots continue to fester like rotting corpses in cities across America.  They want to destroy Capitalism and replace it with “something else.”  That has worked so well in the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Cambodia.  Speaking of rotting corpses…

Obamacare has reached the Supreme Court.  If the US Government can force you to buy health care insurance, what can they not force you to do?

There may still be time to save this country.  Contribute to, campaign for, and vote for the most electable conservative Republican candidate that you can find at  any level of government.  Avoid third party candidates like the plague.

The economy, if left alone, will heal itself.  Adult supervision of American Foreign Policy may yet bring the planet back to a relatively sane course for the future.

Pay attention to politics this year, because the politicians are going to pay attention to you!  Remember, if Obama is re-elected, he can probably change the ideological orientation of the US Supreme Court for the next two decades.  If that happens, you can bid farewell to your right to armed self-defense.

Def Mech

I believe that the United States will look back with sadness, because President Barack Obama failed to renegotiate the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq and pulled out US troops.  In effect, we are throwing away what positive effects were purchased by years of blood and treasure, as we did in Vietnam, when the Democrats cut and ran in 1975.  I predict that Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Iraq will fall under theocratic Islamic rule and that we will be fighting jihadists in the streets of America, rather than in the Middle East.  I hope that I am wrong, but the current course of affairs looks like a huge train wreck in the making.

Def Mech

HR 822, the bill to create concealed carry reciprocity among all states that have a CCW permit system is coming up on Tuesday in the US House of Representatives after passing out of the House Judiciary Committee.  This bill is clean, despite what you may have heard from some “ideologically pure” pro rights organizations. 

The bill will have a hard fight in the Senate, because of anti-Second Amendment senators like Schumer and Feinstein, but we need to push for passage of this legislation.  The right to armed self-defense is always either advancing or retreating.  This bill is a step in the right direction.

HR 822 has anti-gun groups like the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center spinning like dervishes.  Please contact your US Representative to support this legislation.

Def Mech

Was Fast and Furious simply “felony stupid,” as one congressman put it?  Who plans to “track” contraband across a border into a foreign country without providing a means to track it?  The most charitable interpretation of what happened to more than 2,000 firearms is that they were allowed to pass into Mexico without a plan.  Maybe the “plan” was that the guns would be found at crime scenes and then traced back to the United States by their serial numbers.  There doesn’t seem to have been any organized attempt to use electronic tracking devices.

But, wasn’t the tracking supposed to go the other way?  Weren’t the trails supposed to lead somehow to the leaders of the Mexican Drug Cartels?  If that was the case, wouldn’t it have made sense for the agencies running Fast and Furious to notify the Mexican Government that the guns were coming?  Oops!  I knew that we forgot something!

The least charitable interpretation of the fiasco is that the Obama Justice Department intended Fast and Furious to be a stalking horse for more US gun control by providing firearms to Mexico that could be readily traced back to American gun stores.  In any case, Fast and Furious was not a good example of how US tax dollars should be spent.   

Fast and Furious denials are streaming out of the Justice Department, but questions remain.  How high does this scandal go in the administration?  Who knew or should have known?  When did high-level officials know about the debacle and what did they do about it?

The whistle-blowers seem to have been field agents, who were appalled at the instructions they were given to let the guns “walk” across the border with no way to track them.  Is the BATFE just a rogue agency, or does this operation reflect a larger plan on the part of the Obama Administration to disarm American citizens? 

So far, it seems that a few mid-level officials have been transferred, but no one has been fired.  It must be nice to have a solid, well-paying, secure job with the Federal Government in this economy.  I see the DOW is down again and unemployment is still over 9 percent..

Just Sayin’

Def Mech

• Recent Posts

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