Fred Thompson on VA Tech

Fred Thompson posted an opinion yesterday that is quite encouraging, though not completely in the right. The part that I have issues with, however, is minor compared to the issues I have with the opposition. Here's where Fred and I differ:

Virginia, like 39 other states, allows citizens with training and legal permits to carry concealed weapons. That means that Virginians regularly sit in movie theaters and eat in restaurants among armed citizens. They walk, joke and rub shoulders everyday with people who responsibly carry firearms -- and are far safer than they would be in San Francisco, Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, or Washington, D.C., where such permits are difficult or impossible to obtain. (my emphasis)

While Fred is absolutely on the mark about people being safer where they can pack and carry, he's missing the point with regard to who is legally allowed to carry and use guns. The Second Amendment makes no provision for "citizens with training and legal permits". It says only that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Nothing about permits or training. If you are a citizen of this country, you have the right to carry any means you wish to defend yourself against perpetrators such as that which fired upon Virginia Tech earlier this week. You don't need training, and you don't need a permit. Any law that requires either infringes directly upon that right and is therefore ILLEGAL.

Fred goes on to make many excellent points about why the Second Amendment needs to be respected more now than ever. I just wish any caveats would be consistent with those in the Constitution. Still, this is a LOT closer to reality than what you will get from those on the Left.

RWR

Ginsberg's Latest Idiocy

Can the liberals on the Supreme Court be any more out of touch with reality?

... at stake in cases challenging abortion restrictions is a woman's "control over her [own] destiny." - Ruth Bader-Ginsberg

The usual pro-abortion blather. It's as if these people believe that somehow these women get pregnant completely at random and have no say in the matter of conceiving a child in the first place. You don't get to be a Supreme Court Justice by being stupid enough to believe that kind of bullshit, but it's clearly what Ms. Ginsberg and her ilk want YOU to believe.

Women, it is now acknowledged, have the talent, capacity, and right "to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation."

I wonder how this is relevant to the discussion. I further challenge anyone to show me how being a mother conflicts with "[participating] equally in the economic and social life of the Nation." Motherhood is the very essence of the economic and social life of ANY nation. Without it, all humanity would cease to exist.

Their ability to realize their full potential ... is intimately connected to "their ability to control their reproductive lives." Thus, legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.

Frankly, I don't see how being a mother interferes with any of the above. Women do realize their full potential as mothers. They do the most important work in the world which, as a man, I absolutely cannot do. I don't see how banning partial-birth abortion or, for that matter, ANY abortion, interferes with a woman's ability to control her reproductive life. Women DO choose to have sex, after all, and KNOW the risks involved.

What she is suggesting as legitimate would be the equivalent of my running General Motors into a court battle over an accident that was my own fault. I knew the risks involved in operating a motor vehicle. I knew I could have an accident. The accident may have ruined my life, and quite a bit more so than simply giving birth and raising a child would ruin the life of a mother. Therefore, Ms. Ginsberg, your argument that a woman being able "to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature" is as much bullshit as my making the same claim against General Motors in the above example, not to mention an insult to mothers all across America.

I really don't need to go on here. If this is how Ms. Ginsberg introduces her position, the rest of it can't be any less idiotic.

Is the Left's entire position on abortion based on the faulty premises that women don't choose to have sex and that babies aren't human? Can't they come up with something substantive? They couldn't use the libertarian argument that the government should just stay out of it, now could they? After all, that argument would be an admission that their entire socialist agenda is as much bullshit as their position on abortion.

What else is new?

RWR

Hokey Madness

The massacre at VA Tech has my traffic running high for today, and I haven't even posted about it yet. John Hawkins has said it quite well in his post on the matter today:

The calls for gun control are already coming in hot and heavy after the massacre at Va. Tech yesterday, but isn't what happened there proof positive that gun control doesn't work? After all, we just had the biggest gun massacre at a school in American history at a university where it is illegal to carry guns.

Well, duh. Take away the citizen's final line of defense, and this is EXACTLY what you get. I will repeat the key question here: Isn't what happened there proof positive that gun control doesn't work?

My answer is this: While it is true enough that gun control laws do not bring any kind of violence under control, the question of whether these laws work is completely irrelevant. The Second Amendment says:

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. - (my emphasis, of course)

If the right of the people to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed, what the fuck difference does it make whether a law that does just that "works"? These laws are illegal and, as such, require the punishment of those creating and bringing them into law.

Of course, given the liberal nutjobs running the shows, don't expect it to happen any day soon.

RWR