The joint rallies billed as a “Day of Resistance” are set for noon Saturday at the Capitol. Participants are encouraged to bring their weapons; both handguns and long guns are permitted at the Statehouse and on the Capitol Mall.
Organizers are Armed Women Are Safer, Guns Across Idaho and Idaho Carry, Open and Concealed.
For more information, email Tony@IdahoCarry.org.
If guns made people safe, the U.S. would be the safest nation on Earth. LOL!
And if no guns would make people safe, then DC & Chicago and all of the “gun free” zone cities that ban guns would be the safest, violence free cities in America.
And yet they are the most violent and the most dangerous cities in the US.
Exactly right.
Funny how gun zealots always miss the forest for all those pesky trees. You cannot isolate communities in the United States and pretend you are looking at the problem realistically. It is a national problem and requires a national solution. Hence the need for immediate, responsible congressional action.
The fact is, the United States is far more dangerous because of guns. Among advanced nations, only Mexico, which is torn by violence from drug cartels, is more dangerous than the U.S. We have more guns per capita (270 million guns – 9 guns for every 10 Americans) and more gun-related deaths than any nation that is not embroiled in war. It is ludicrous. The old NRA shibboleths will not work any more.
Japan has almost no guns and is far safer than the United States.
Israel is a small nation surrounded by hostile countries in the volatile middle east. Their safety is far more precarious than ours, yet the average American owns 12 times more guns than the average Israeli! And for what?
In 1996, Australia took effective action – under a conservative government – to eliminate automatic and semi-automatic weapons. In the previous 18 years, Australians had suffered 13 gun massacres. But they have not had one – NOT ONE – in the 17 years since. And their gun-related homicide and suicide rates are down by more than 50% since then. American must take action as Australia did. We cannot tolerate the bloodshed any longer.
Some Americans need to grow up and face the facts. Or do we all need our own personal predator drones, flame-throwers, B-52′s and nuclear arsenals too? Imagine how safe we would be then. LOL!
And yet the founders of our constitution specifically mistrusted the very government they created. A s a result, they included the Bill of Rights which was designed to hold the nearly unlimited power of a federal government in check by both the states, and by the population at large.
It is an inconvenient truth that free people are dangerous, but they are dangerous not to each other, but to those that would seek to fence in the population and control their every move. They are dangerous because their actions are not controllable. A free & independent people is what made this nation, and sadly only those citizens willing to continue that tradition are standing up to the last two administrations abuses of power.
In other news, 100 million legal gun owners managed to not kill anyone last night. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is baffled by the extremely ordinary and calm behaviors of these gun wielding maniacs.
“How they managed to carry a gun, either open or concealed, and yet not kill every child or defenseless person near them is a mystery to us.”
This may have something to do with a rumored trait that these 100 million gun owners posses called “responsibility” that has so far eluded the White House’s efforts to both comprehend, and to exhibit.
Founders? The Second Amendment is an anachromism. Taking original intent to its logical end, Americans would need to reconstitute militias like we have not had since before the Civil War in order to keep and bear flintlock muskets and pistols, sabers and knives – and then only as part of a “well-regulated militia.” It is nonsensical to suggest the founders contemplated that every homeowner could assert a personal right to own firepower that could wipe out a small army with personal automatic or semi-automatic weapons, huge magazines and thousands of rounds of ammunition. I have real trouble believing the founders would put gun ownership ahead of public safety, especially confronted with the fact that school kids were being murdered – and a conservative figure indicates that over 2200 more Americans have died from guns just in the weeks since Newtown. Americans with guns are more dangerous to other Americans than drunk drivers. We regulate the freedom to travel by keeping drunks off the road and we haven’t fallen into slavery. I suppose the NRA thinks cars kill people – drunks don’t. That’s their kind of logic.
And note that the NRA has discarded the principles its founders articulated decades ago – which won the blessings of Ronald Reagan for gun control. He and Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter advocated banning military-style assault weapons like the AK-47 (their terminology) in 1994. And President George H. W. Bush, a genuine war hero and combat vet, renounced his membership in the NRA a year later. Small wonder. The original NRA would not have opposed many of the reasonable gun restrictions that now make them apoplectic. Talk about betraying founding principles.
Sure there are responsible gun owners. I am one. And I reject out of hand the notion that any responsible hunters have any use for an AR-15. If you can’t kill game with two shots max, you should not be in the field with a gun. We do not have any freedom left worth protecting when we can’t even send our kids to school in safety. Australia and Canada are both free countries whose laws and traditions developed, like ours, from England. But in those countries, being free does not mean being free to be massacred or have your kids cut down. What happened to the freedom, life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of those kids at Newtown? What about their rights? I would rather see everyone undergo background checks, give up automatic weapons and large magazines so our children can live long enough to enjoy hunting birds with their grandpa. Like automobiles and alcohol, guns have to be regulated responsibly. Liberty is one thing – unbridled license is another.
Should we then also eliminate that silly right to free speech, right to free press, right to peaceably assemble? What about the right to a jury trial? What about the right to be secure in your person and affects unless a warrant is issued under probably cause particularly describing the things to be seized?
These amendments were adopted as a group and deemed essential to the establishment of our federal government. So much so, that large blocks of states refused to ratify the Constitution unless it was followed up by specifically codified & protected rights in order to limit the newly created federal government.
Tell me which if your other constitutionally guaranteed rights you would be willing to give up, and then justify that.
You make the mistake of appealing to emotion, rather than to facts. Consider this. The second amendment is not about hunting. It is about tyranny providing an ultimate check & balance against the violence & abuses of those in power at the federal level. Arguments against or for the utility to hunting with a specific type of weapon are irrelevant at best, and malicious red herrings at worst.
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Justice Story (appointed to the Supreme Court as an Associate Justice by James Madison in 1811), wrote a constitutional commentary in 1833 (“Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States”). Regarding the Second Amendment, he wrote (source):
The next amendment is: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
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