Georgia treads on the 1st Amendment while attacking the 2nd

Gun grabbing zealots often let their disregard for the Second Amendment bleed into other enumerated rights.  Such an example can be found in Georgia where law abiding citizens are prohibited from carrying their firearms into places of worship. Now, this isn’t a church, synagogue or mosque saying they don’t want guns there…it is the government telling these places of worship they CAN’T ALLOW them. A child praying over a meal in school, cheerleaders writing a bible quote on a banner, or a cross on a high school football helmet and the civil rights activists come storming in decrying separation of church and state blah blah blah. But when the government forcibly dictates how a church must operate, those same people fall silent.  The First Amendment is written specifically to stop the government from dictating how a house of worship is to be operated. Seeing how the separation of church and state crowd only view it as...

Bear hugger says “Don’t shoot” Plus Derry NH redux

According to Alaska Department of Fish & Game bear safety specialist John Hechtel, bear spray and firearms can be “equally effective in trained hands, depending on the situation. I certainly don’t think we should try to pit one tool against the other .” Seems reasonable.  I mean, utilize the tools at hand to protect yourself the best you can.  Of course, not everyone agrees.  A pair of biologists call the claim that the argument to use a firearm to protect yourself instead of using bear spray is ridiculous and try pitting one form over the other.  In this case pushing for spray alone. Chris Servheen wrote a “fact sheet” for the US Fish and Wildlife Service stating: “since 1992, persons encountering grizzlies and defending themselves with firearms suffer injury about 50% of the time. During the same period, persons defending themselves with pepper spray escaped injury most of the time, and those...

Wal-Mart caves to gun control whims

The story is a pretty straight forward one.  In South Bend Indiana, Wal-Mart has come under fire by Citizen’s United for Better Government (not to be confused with Citizen’s United) for selling tactical shotguns and rifles that they say would not be used for hunting. The City Council agreed and came to Wal-Mart demanding that they pull these weapons from their store.  Wal-Mart capitulated.  The South Bend Wal-Mart has pulled all long guns with the term tactical attached and will block any future shipment of them to the store and limit the hours in which it sells ammunition. Now, not only do I fault Wal-Mart for folding under the auspices of “community safety” I also fault them for signing an agreement in 2011 with the City Council stating that no tactical shotguns would be sold with to begin with. Due to this agreement, perhaps Wal-Mart had no choice to respond as...

Happy Columbus Day and what we can learn from the American Indians left in his wake

Columbus: Lucky explorer or harbinger of genocide? I have heard it both ways.  He is lucky because there was a big chunk of land in between where he was going from and where he was headed to that probably saved his life since he would have run out of supplies long before he got to India.  He is a harbinger of genocide because through disease and conquest the inhabitants of the new world were decimated and lost their land. I’ll go with the first.  The second I’m not going to pin on Chris simply because it is human nature to press your advantage and take what you want.  Even later, when the Pilgrims came with the best of intentions, it didn’t take long before those who followed wanted more and more.  The American Indians, not realizing the slippery slope they were on didn’t see much of a problem at first.  Of...

Louisiana looks to get strict

And while the state isn’t going to metaphorically take a ruler and start busting knuckles they are going to try and strengthen the 2nd Amendment.  This November, the voters of the Big Easy will go to the polls, not only to elect their representatives, but also to change their constitution with regards to the Second Amendment. As it stands now, an activist judge in Louisiana can all but strip the residents of their rights if that judge views that keeping and bearing arms is unreasonable.  Due to a ruling in 1977, any measure of gun control would be held constitutional so long as it was “reasonable”. The opening for a liberal attack on the Second Amendment on those grounds is absurd.  One could point out that since you cannot carry a firearm in Illinois that it is REASONABLE to make the same prohibition in Louisiana   Since Mayor Bloomberg has all but outlawed firearms...

Open Carry in the News: Utah, Kansas & Oklahoma

As many of you know from reading some of my earlier posts that I am an open carrier and believe that it is one of the best ways to passively dispel the scare tactics and hysteria that the gun control zealots like to stir up in the imaginations of those who are neutral to the Second Amendment. In that, if a person who doesn’t know any better and never sees their neighbor, or some law abiding citizen out and about with a gun on their hip then they may fall for the racist and fear mongering tactics that only criminals and bad people have guns.  By open carrying in your daily lives you normalize not only the practice, but firearms in general so that when the gun control zealots want to start talking about how only criminals and maniacs have guns, that little old lady you held the door...