The Patriot Post® · Ron Paul's Citizens Protection Act of 2011, H.R. 2613

There are more than 20,000 gun laws in the United States. Scholars, attorneys, activists and historians know that gun laws have not prevented violence; murder is already illegal, with or without a gun. Often time, murder is the primary charge and gun crimes are forgotten. Also, many murders are not solved. Gun laws do not impact these.

Experts know that gun registration has not solved a single crime.

A silly concept called cartridge casing Miscrostamping can’t solve crimes because it has a loophole of its own. More like a defect in logic and science, Microstamping isn’t even shown to operate effectively on cartridge casings, it cannot identify the shooter even if it could identify the gun, and, oh, yeah, gun registration hasn’t yet solved a single crime.

Gun laws are oppressive, unreasonable, illegal and purely for social engineering against the public interest. These are wrong on one principal ground: This is not where crime is fought. One does not fight crime by chasing it, one fights crime by facing it. I am speaking about violence where it is fought best: at the scene of the crime, and this means refusing to be a victim. 80 million gun owners know that they are the only ones they can count on in the first moments of an emergency, and they rise to that responsibility.

One of the silliest and most treacherous social engineering gun laws is the concept of the Gun Free Zones. One example is the crime of having a gun within 1,000 feet of a school. You need to say to me how this saves lives. To millions of non-gun owners, this seems rational, but to 80 - 90 million other Americans who do own guns, it misses the entire point of keeping our children safe. It makes them utterly defenseless in preparedness, spirit, force and in authority.

Let’s take a look at how proper and effective Ron Paul’s Bill is.

Violence prevention programs neglect to inform citizens such as adult college students and the parents of high school and lower school children of their options in how to meet violence. Violence prevention programs neglect to mention that victims of violence do better in resisting than victims who elect to surrender and to give them what they want. [see Paxton Quigley’s book Stayin’ Alive and other authorities.]

It soon becomes clear that our schools are widely known to be disarmed and how they have earned the name of Victim Disarmament Zones. What if the thugs had something else to think about?

Violence prevention short-circuits options. The seriousness of this is that this erodes the government-governed relationship and loses confidence in public servants. Furthermore, such gun laws make constituents fear their servants more than they fear thugs. It soon becomes clear what officials really want.

Gun laws criminalize individual gun owners who have no mens rea, or criminal intent. Making it a crime to have your gun within 1,000 feet of a school is incompatible with your sovereign liberty in forty-nine states which affirm your second amendment rights (and your sovereignty). Just because a law is backed by force of the federal state doesn’t make it a good or just law; it makes it only a tactic of social engineering to the detriment of the community. Another law that doesn’t work as advertised, but it does work for social engineering to the benefit of the State.

These laws are among many which are incompatible with our sovereignty as supreme authority under our system. These laws are trying to change the system, and they are. To dismantle the system things have to be made worse; To reform the system, things have to be made better, and the repeal of gun laws helps to make things better.

The repeal of all gun laws is the first step in smaller government. Violence crimes are already illegal, and millions are completed acts of violence certainly without a gun. Disarming the people makes sense if you’re a Marxist, but not if you are a citizen, and the citizens and the Constitution say what is right, not the servants.

1. A citizen who finds himself or herself a target of violence has no duty to retreat in the majority of states. It’s also not very smart to turn your back on your attacker.

2. A target of violence may use all reasonable force to act in self-defense or defense of another.

How would this serve our schools? Isn’t fighting discouraged? Yes, and it’s another stupid law to make things worse.

The key to making things better is not in how lawmakers think, but in how thugs think. If parents visiting their children could come onto campus armed, and not merely with their weapon in their vehicle but a loaded sidearm, the thugs who might propose violence may never be sure who is likely armed and able to stop them with lethal force (and authority). Many gun store salespeople wear a loaded sidearm when handling customers. In many states, it is legal to have a weapon concealable upon the person in the workplace and residence. Thugs know that.

3. An armed person can come to the aid of another in de-escalating a violent act. Isn’t that a good thing?

4. An armed person can de-escalate a violent act and does so more than 2.5 million times every year in the absence of police.

5. Disarming adults because someone may come onto campus to shoot someone makes about as much sense as denying Citizen CPR because someone might do it wrong and hurt someone. There are more than 80 million gun owners in this country and only about 20 million people who know CPR. Anyone have the statistics on who went rogue? Violent criminals are not gun owners any more than bank robbers are motorists because they have a getaway car. [Internet search term The CPR Corollary.]

Citizens already embrace the concept of the Good Samaritan and law enforcement praises them. Police thank Good Sams publicly and acknowledge that they do not interfere with police activities, nor are they unsafe for police officers. After all, uniformed officers frequently respond on missions where an undercover or off-duty officer is already present and on-scene.

Armed citizens are the people who support law enforcement and due process. Armed citizens are the people pool from whom officer candidates are drawn for police training. Armed citizens in right-to-carry states are the people with whom police have a lot less quarrel than Washington believes, but legislators seem to have a quarrel with citizens. In right-to-carry states, police are more in touch with their constituents: Washington is not.

H.R. 2613 needs to be supported because the 1,000 foot rule doesn’t touch the violent and only ties the hands of the target of violence. This means that it cannot protect our kids. It is a case of one law which cuts off every reasonable and proven avenue for protecting our neighborhoods and our children.

This is not the first time Congress has repealed gun control silliness. Following gun confiscations during Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act of 2006, which made it illegal to confiscate citizen guns during an emergency. In effect, Congress affirmed the unorganized militia within the meaning of the second amendment.

More to come.

Thank you, Dr. Paul, for your service.

John Longenecker is author of Even Safer Streets 2011 – The Second Amendment as a Mainstream Value available now in Paperback.