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About once a month, Dave Kopel produces a free e-mail Newsletter containing short summaries and links to important new research and writing involving the Second Amendment and firearms policy. The newsletter also reports on Kopel's latest writing. The content of this newsletter is produced by the Second Amendment Project at the Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden, Colorado. The newsletter is electronically distributed by the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Washington. Thus, the Second Amendment Foundation will be given your e-mail address.
Archive
of past issues.
Second Amendment Project Newsletter. Aug. 30, 2001.
The Second Amendment Project is based at the Independence
Institute, a free-market think tank in Golden, Colorado.
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Table of contents for this issue:
1. New Kopel articles: Andrea Yates child murders. FBI
abuses a journalist. Do guns cost society $100 billion annually?
UN and European Union get ready to tax the Internet.
2. Janet Reno’s Trip Tik. Satire, by Jim Jorgensen,
National Association of Treasury Agents
3. The Fifth Auxiliary Right. By Lorne Gunter
4. Bad stat of the Month: “Million” Mom March
still can’t count.
5. Links
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1. New Kopel articles
a. Political Science. The National Academy of Sciences
gears up for a biased anti-gun “study.”
National Review Online. Aug. 29, 2001
b. Bigotry of Low Expectations
Double standards for parent murderers.
The Andrea Yates case.
National Review Online. Aug. 28, 2001 “Which organization is really pro-child: the National Organization for Women, which supports women who kill their children, or the National Rifle Association,
which
supports women who protect their children?
c. Redefining Justice. Free Vanessa Leggett. Abusive FBI throws a journalist in jail. National Review Online. Aug. 27, 2001. With Paul Blackman http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel082701.shtml
d. $100 Billion Mistake. Loose factoids sink books. Review of Gun Violence: The Real Costs By Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig NRO Weekend, Aug. 25-26, 2001. With Paul Blackman. http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend /books/books-kopel082501.shtml
e. Globaltaxation.Gov. U.N. and EU gearing up to regulate the Internet. National Review Online. Aug. 24, 2001. With Jennifer Holder http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel082401.shtml
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2. As I See It...
by Jim Jorgensen
NATA Dep. Exec. Dir.
JANET'S TRIP TIK
Originally published in “The Agent,” the quarterly magazine of the National Association of Treasury Agents, an independent organization for law enforcement employees of Treasury agencies.
http://members.aol.com/ustresagt/index.html brother-in-law, Jim Hurchalla, recently bought
her a used red Ford Ranger pickup truck to
make the upon leaving office. Rather than have Ms. Reno waste time and money at AAA, we’ve prepared the following Trip Tik for her:
by the Secret Service HQ. Thank various bureaucrats
for their assistance in helping your valiant,
but privilege for then-President Bill Clinton, who at the time was scurrying to obstruct justice in a civil rights suit in which he was the defendant (Jones v. Clinton).
Virginia, visit Fort Marcey National Park where
you authorized that crack investigative
organization, of Presidential counselor Vincent Foster.
Mississippi, corporate HQ for Worldcom, Inc., which, until your DOJ trustbusters got into the act, was a high tech company providing a real product and service. Before your involvement Worldcom traded at +$80. Today, it’s at $13.
here are just too numerous to mention. Don’t miss the village of Hope where draft-dodger Bill Clinton scammed both his Selective Service
Board and the Arkansas National Guard. known as “Whitewater.” The exact location may be
hard to find, but you can ask directions of
the 14
tried to protect. Stop 5 - Leaving the great state of Arkansas, It’s on to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Remember how
your minions hamstrung the FBI’s stolen
nuclear
to linger here too long! Stop 6 - Next, check out the site of the former Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Do you ever wonder whether the Waco decisions
you ones? Think about all the innocent children and Federal workers who died here.
of your trip. Visit Waco, Texas. Please pause at
least a few moments to reflect on what you
did (or
Los Angeles for a tour of the ATF offices. Ask
them to show you the spot where distraught
ATF special probably don’t even remember him. He was the fifth
ATF Waco fatality.
Stop 9 - Traveling up the beautiful coast, spend a couple days in San Francisco. Try to find the
Buddhist temple where defeated Presidential fund-raiser. See the exact spot where convicted
felon fund-raiser Maria Hsia greeted Al when
he arrived Stop 10 - Then, it’s on to Seattle for a peek at Microsoft, Inc. HQ. Remember when the NASDQ
was above 3000? Many attribute its current
low through the mud. . . and the courts. Nice going!
Notice what’s happening on appeal? Stop 11 - It’s time to start heading back. Go just a bit eastbound and visit Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
Visit the Randy Weaver family which got more
than government wrong-doing was a real nice touch. Don’t forget to stop by Vicki Weaver’s grave site. How old is that daughter she was holding
when the FBI sniper killed her? Stop 12 - Still heading eastbound, don’t miss the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota.
See the spot where Leonard Peltier executed
all of the living Federal agents you used to Stop 13 - Well, it’s back home to Florida. Two stops here are important. First, visit Little Havana to see the modest home where you authorized SWAT team tactics so a little kid could be returned to a life of slavery. You were afraid you were going to lose in court. Weren’t you? Then, re-visit the offices of the Dade County Prosecutor where you did some of your “finest” work.
Oh. . . .did we tell you? Those knee-jerk, from which you got so much good press. . . .well
. . . . they’ve been overturned. ------------------------
Asked how non-agents could support NATA's work,
Jim Jorgensen replied: a Federal agent. By that I mean seeking out
and really getting to know and
befriend an active duty our continuing democracy is the increasing parochialism and marginalization of law enforcement
officers.
They are under relentless attack and are prone to "circle the wagons" at the least provocation.
This insular posture can lead
to real mischief and us, but rarely have friends outside law enforcement
circles. "Adopting" an officer
can correct the "adopted" officer and the "adoptee" will come
away with a new found respect
and understanding for healthy for our continued freedoms!
The Fifth Auxiliary Right An introduction of Dr. Gary Mauser By Lorne Gunter Columnist, The Edmonton Journal
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/
On the occasion of Dr. Mauser’s speech to the Teaching Liberty series The Fairmont Hotel Macdonald, Edmonton Wednesday 15 August 2001
The right of law-abiding citizens to own firearms for recreation and even for self-protection is referred by some academics as “the fifth auxiliary right.” That doesn’t sound too impressive, until you consider what the first through forth auxiliary rights are.
The term refers to Sir William Blackstone’s 18th-Century Commentaries on the Laws of England, the closest thing the British have to a written constitution.
Blackstone identified three absolute rights:
The right to
personal liberty, including freedom the right to personal security, which included an undiluted right to self-defence, up to and including the right to kill anyone (including an agent of the King) discovered in your home or on your land after dark, with or without a warrant; and the right to own and enjoy property.
As Blackstone explained, to “protect and maintain” these absolute rights, English law recognized five auxiliary rights:
a parliament, limitations on the King's prerogative, due process of law, the right of petition to Parliament or the King, and the right to bear arms.
When you consider the significance of the other four auxiliary rights, it doesn’t seem quite so insignificant that the right to own firearms is the fifth auxiliary right. That’s actually pretty impressive company to keep.
In the defence of our liberty, our property and our personal security, the right to own a fire arm ranks right up there with the having a parliament, with constitutional limits on the monarch and with due process of law.
The right to bear arms is not some American creation. Blackstone was identifying rights that he called ancient because many of them had existed since long before reliable accounts of the common law. These were rights we as Canadians were meant to inherit because of our common-law tradition.
Imagine the reaction if it were suggested that Canada could still be free if we did away with freely elected houses of assembly. Or if we reinstated the divine right of kings to rule as absolute monarchs.
What would be the reaction if it were suggested that governments should have the right to round up and summarily execute anyone they wished -- no due process? There would be an outcry, an entirely justifiable outcry, that our democracy was at risk.
And what if the government tried to suspend Parliament or cancel elections? Newspapers and magazines would be full of articles about how we could no longer be guaranteed our freedoms. Television newscasts would be crammed from beginning to end with coverage of riots should our leaders move to restore the absolute monarchy. Some interviewee would surely call it a dictatorship – and he would surely be right.
So where is the outrage at the federal governments slow-burn to confiscation of law-abiding Canadians’ firearms? Whereas a proposal to eliminate any of the other auxiliary rights would be met with howls and derision, the threat to responsible firearms ownership is met with applause. Yet the fifth auxiliary right is the only auxiliary right facing a true, immediate threat. That is upon us. It’s not some airy-fairy hypothetical, future-scare scenario. And it is encouraged by our elites, rather than resisted, because in their ivory tower, champagne and brie world, they cannot see the danger to our freedom.
Just as the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to serfdom is paved with inattention.
If we do march blindly into the dark night of tyranny, don’t blame our first guest. Dr. Gary Mauser has done more than any other academic in the country, and near as much as any other Canadian, with the exception of our own Dave Tomlinson, to awaken Canadians to the futility and ultimate destructiveness of crusades to control the ownership of guns by law-abiding citizens.
He may not know this, but I credit him with helping make me as smart as I am on this subject. (Now he may not want to know this.) I will not claim to ever having been a big supporter of gun control. But it was a subject to which I had given little thought, so like most Canadians, and nearly all Liberal cabinet ministers, my opinions were ill-informed to the point of being ignorant. And in my ill-informed ignorance, I thought, “Okay, controlling the ownership and use of guns will probably reduce crime. At least it couldn’t hurt.”
At a time when it would have been so easy for him personally as well as professionally, to ignore the gun debate, Gary Mauser jumped into instead -- up to his neck. His work in the early 1990s helped convince me that civilian gun control, like most other big-state ideas, has the exact opposite of the desired effect. If the statists promised it would reduce crime, it surely would increase it.
Prof. Mauser did some of the earliest empirical research on the use of firearms in crimes in Canada. His work helped debunk the myth that most criminal firearms were originally sloppily stored legal firearms that were stolen for use in hold-ups and murders.
He has worked with the American scholar and gun rights advocate David Kopel on the influential essay “Sorry Wrong Number: Why media polls on gun control are often unreliable.” http://www.saf.org/pub/rkba/books/jfp6ch02.txt
He has written on armed self-defence from the Canadian perspective, authored a 1995 Fraser Institute paper that I still have on file, entitled “Gun Control is not Crime Control.” http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/ critical_issues/1995/gun/index.html
He has testified before the Commons Justice and Legal Affairs Committee on Bill C-68, done phenomenal work with his friend and sociologist Taylor Buckner, on the public’s real attitudes towards gun control, in the 1997 Mackenzie Institute paper “Canadians Attitudes Toward Gun Control: The real story.” http://falcon.usask.ca/pub/cdn-firearms/Buckner/GUNCOVER.htm
And most recently, again for Fraser, he wrote “Misfire: Firearm registration in Canada,” http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/publications/pps/48/index.html a thorough critique of the Canadian Firearms Centre and its mission.
Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming a fine man and one of the staunchest defenders of the fifth auxiliary right, Prof. Gary Mauser.
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4. Bad Stat of the Month
"The gun lobby has been talking for 40 minutes.
During that time, 40 people have died from the
use of small arms and light weapons in this country."
(Mary Leigh Blek, Million Mom March, speaking at
the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade
in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, Jul. 17).
Really? One death per minute would result in a
whopping 525,600 deaths per year. The actual number of
deaths from firearm injuries (homicide, suicide and
accident) in 1998 was 30,708. Ms. Blek's figure is
off by about 1700 percent.
--Statistical Assessment Service
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5. Links
a. Self-defense:
Concealed weapons law is praised
Associated Press, in The State
(South Carolina’s largest newspaper)
“When the state’s concealed weapons law was passed in 1996,
critics feared gunslingers would be strolling the streets of South
Carolina, but authorities say the program has worked effectively….”
Gun News You Never See
New York Post
Monday, August 6, 2001
Man in San Francisco wrests gun away from criminals planning
on murdering children.
Man is arrested for violating parole condition against
possessing firearms
"S.F. loft intruders killed by own gun.
SoMa resident, friend shoot robbers"
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. 16 August 2001.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/08/16/MN41736.DTL
"SoMa loft hero held on parole violation.
Taking intruder's gun broke rules"
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. 17 August 2001.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/
A grandma with a pistol in her purse . Christian Science Monitor Aug. 22, 2001 “Patrick Langan, a statistician for the Justice Department's
National Crime Victimization Study [sic, Survey], found that
defending against rape, robbery, or assault, guns help
65 percent of the time and make things worse about 9 percent of
the time.”
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/
b. Gun rights websites:
Direct Action
Website of Marylanders for the Preservation
of Firearms Ownership
Women Against Gun Control
www.wagc.com
“There are now over 20 Pink Pistols chapters nationwide, and more are starting up every day. We are dedicated to the legal, safe, and responsible use of firearms for self-defense of the sexual-minority community.”
Black Man With a Gun Kenneth V. Blanchard’s website blackmanwithagun.net
c. Terrorism:
Gun prohibitionist Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy applauds a gun-wielding Irish Republican Army terrorist who was convicted of murder. Are guns bad when used for home protection in America, but not when used for political killing in Ireland?
By Jaime
Sneider, NRO
Coming to Terms (or Not) with Waco
Alan Bock. WorldNet Daily. Aug. 24, 2001
New evidence that Danforth Commission tests were
a deliberate fraud.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24196
d. History:
Machine guns predate the Second Amendment. The story of the Puckle Gun. http://www.saf.org/pub/rkba/news/PuckleGun.htm
US News and World Report
issue/010820/heroes/pritchard.htm by John Taylor of Caroline Taylor is considered a leading proponent of the strict constructionist views of Jefferson and Madison. http://www.constitution.org/jt/jtnvc.htm
e. Law: Jurist: The Legal Education Network “Gun Laws, Gun Control & Gun Rights” web “resource for individuals on all sides in the ongoing controversy over the legal status of guns in the United States.” http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/gunlaw.htm
Shot Full of HolesDeconstructing John Ashcroft's Second AmendmentViolence Policy Center. Aug. 2001http://www.vpc.org/studies/ashcont.htm
Stephen Halbrook’s response to VPC’s anti-Ashcroft article. http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/halbrookresp.htm
Gun suits seek to end private ownership
Judge orders city to pay NRA for legal fees in gun show case
Arizona Daily Star. Tucson, Arizona
Tuesday, 7 August 2001
United States v. Laskie, 9th Circuit. Unanimous three-judge panel rules that a restoration of civil rights under federal law includes right to arms, unless “expressly” not restored. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/9th/0010437p.pdf
U.S. v. Osborne, 5th Circuit.
Same result as the Laskie case above.
The underlying “felony” was driving into Mexico with five
rounds of ammunition which the driver’s friends forgotten to
remove from the car.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy tells a group of
students that lower courts are "just
beginning" 2d Amendment jurisprudence and it will be
"some years" before the Supreme Court gets involved.
Responding to a question about whether the 2d Amendment
is “obsolete,” he warns against ignoring parts of the
Constitution.
The event was broadcast on C-Span on August 25.
You can listen in RealAudio.
Partial transcript: http://www.saf.org/pub/rkba/Legal/KennedyCSPAN.htm
Stillwell v. Stilwell, 2001 WL 862620 Tenn. App., July 30 http://www.tsc.state.tn.us/PDF/tca/013/stillwellk.pdf “The second issue on appeal is the propriety of the Trial Court's prohibiting Father from carrying a weapon in the presence of the child and ordering
that all
guns be locked up when Father is exercising visitation.
. . .
f. Politics. Check out Glenn Reynolds’ new weblog, InstaPundit.com The August 28 & 29 entries detail how the Atlanta Journal- Constitution ran an on-line reader poll to see if .50 caliber rifles should be banned. When the poll results were overwhelmingly pro-freedom, the AJC removed the poll, with no acknowledgement that it had ever existed.
============================== Some pages you may want to visit at the award-winning Independence Institute website:
Criminal Justice and the Second Amendment: Kopel short articles: http://i2i.org/kopel.htm The Columbine High School murders: http://i2i.org/suptdocs/crime/columbine.htm The Waco murders: http://i2i.org/Waco.htm The Independence Institute's on-line bookstore. Start your browsing at the Second Amendment section: http://i2i.org/book.htm#Second
That's all folks! |
