Gun Owners' Resource

Sometimes I miss being an optomist

by Dennis E. Florian
GunOwnersResource

I never used to be like this, you know.  Once upon a time, I was the most laid back guy you could ever have met.  I existed in tie-dye, played the guitar, wrote sappy poetry, grew my hair down to my beltline and even worked for Greenpeace for a while.  In other words, I was a close to a hippy as you can get without being stoned.  And I've still got the stack of old Grateful Dead tapes to prove it.

I'd be lying (to myself as much as you) if I weren't to say that there are a great many things that change someone from the man they were to the one they are.  I'm no different that way.  But I can honestly say that, more than any other single thing, it was the Firearms Act — and what it did to my country — that put the most work into making the cynical bugger who bangs out the stuff on these pages.  The fear and loathing that it introduced into the culture of my birth has been the greatest test to the strength of my faith in my fellow man.

But that's not what I'm here to write about today.  Go figure.

Disarming the Myths Promoted By the Gun Control Lobby

by Larry Bell
Forbes Magazine

As much as gun control advocates might wish otherwise, their attacks are running out of ammo. With private firearm ownership at an all-time high and violent crime rates plunging, none of the scary scenarios they advanced have materialized. Abuse of responsibility by armed citizens is rare, while successful defensive interventions against assaults on their lives and property are relatively commonplace.

National violent crime rates that soared for 30 years from the early 1960s began to decrease markedly since 1993. Last December the FBI reported that murder and other violent crime rates fell again by 6.4% during the first half of 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. A Gallup poll indicates that “Americans’ preference regarding gun laws is generally that the government enforce existing laws more strictly and not pass new laws.”

XI: Thou Shalt Not Refuse To Be A Victim

"Mr. Thomson ran afoul of a doctrine dominant in interventionist societies. It holds that anything for which the state has no solution, is insoluble. If the government can’t put a cop outside every farm house targeted by arsonists, burn, baby, burn."

by George Jonas
National Post

When defending their monopoly to defend us, the authorities often shoot themselves in the foot. In Saturday’s National Post, Rex Murphy recalled the case of a shopkeeper in Toronto’s Chinatown who was charged with kidnapping for nabbing a shoplifter and holding him for the police. The story had a happy ending: The lawmen looked as foolish in court as they deserved to look, and the shopkeeper was acquitted.

Undaunted, though, the authorities press on. Currently, prosecutors are making fools of themselves over a citizen named Ian Thomson, whose warning shots scared away three men trying to firebomb his farm house near Port Colborne, Ont. He fired in the air; the assailants fled, and no one was hurt except the feelings of the authorities.