Seattle’s Misguided Gun Ban
Mayor Greg Nickels plans to defy state law with a gun ban that is worse than an empty gesture: It puts law-abiding citizens at greater risk.
By Knute Berger
November 17, 2008.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is planning to issue an order to ban legal handguns from city parks and buildings next month, despite the fact that such a move is “unequivocally” against state law. That’s only one of the reasons I voted to re-elect Republican state Attorney General Rob McKenna earlier this month. McKenna has already weighed in against Nickels’ proposal, and I hope he’ll be a zealous guardian in court of citizen gun rights in Washington.
Nickels’ move will no doubt be popular with many Seattleites — it’s the kind of symbolism that underscores our city’s more-liberal-than-thou reputation. I wish I could say it would be an empty gesture in a country where the right to bear arms has both popular, constitutional, and Supreme Court support, but I think such a ban is ill-advised.
There are several problems with it, aside from its legality. One is that the safety of Seattle’s citizens is far from assured — and no amount of law enforcement (including a police state) can ensure the safety of particular individuals. The other night, I attended a party for Seattle magazine’s annual list of the most powerful people in the city — as editor-at-large there, I serve on the committee that reviews the picks. It was held in the Pampas Room at Belltown’s El Goucho. The buzz of the party wasn’t so much about insider power but the lack of power Belltown itself is feeling when it comes to safety. This week, concerned Belltowners met with the city over safety issues, as described by KING-TV:
Belltown used to be known as a very hip and happening place to live, but now residents say they are afraid to leave their home – even in broad daylight. Store owners say they are losing business because of drug dealing outside.
One Seattle magazine staffer described how she was recently mugged in Belltown — the kind of crime where the mugger immediate ran off to use her credit card to buy what she thinks was $13 bucks worth of booze at Safeway. Other partygoers talked about how they’re afraid to walk through Belltown anymore. “When you have high densities of living, alcohol establishments, and social services, we’re going to have some challenges,” Capt. Steven Brown of the Seattle Police Department’s West Precinct told KING 5.
That’s not just a Belltown concern but a citywide concern for a town that is densifying all over, where Manhattan-style urbanization (higher densities, high-rise development) isn’t just a growth phenomenon but official city policy, and in a town with budget troubles, too few cops, holes in the social service safety net and a troubled economy. It’s sad to say Belltown — once the prime example of how this “world-class city” stuff was supposed to work — is taking on the distinctly un-Seattle feel of a neighborhood of fortified towers and underground parking designed to protect affluent residents from the sans-culotte.
While the mayor’s ban won’t make Belltown safer, it could make city parks less safe for the urbanites who use them. I have previously written that I oppose handguns in national parks because I believe these are public sanctuaries to preserve nature. They are off the beaten path, and people have to travel long distances and pay relatively expensive entry, lodging, and camping fees to use them under the supervision and protection of park rangers. The biggest threat might be bears, but in wild country, it’s the bears that have the right to bear arms.
But I see city parks in an entirely different light. They are part of the urban fabric, part of everyday space, used by people of all types, all classes, all criminal backgrounds. They are the heart of our commons. Many have remote parts and places like playgrounds that are also potential stalking grounds. They are mostly open, uncontrolled, and unguarded. They are vital, lively and important public spaces that should be open to all. I do not see how they can be segregated in terms of gun laws. To ask citizens with the legal right to carry guns elsewhere to disarm themselves in circumstances where vigilance is often required and protection hard to come by is unfair, even dangerous.
I’ve been stalked. I know others who have been the victims of stalkers and involved in domestic violence situations that pose an ongoing threat. I have been through handgun training for gays and lesbians and have seen how the de-mystification of firearms has helped empower people whose very lifestyle puts them at risk. Simply knowing that they have the ability to protect themselves, holding the idea that gay bashers might have to think twice before assuming potential targets were defenseless, seemed to lighten a psychological load if nothing else.
I think the legal right to carry a weapon, whether you choose to or not, is part of putting a caution in the head of some predators that you — and the general citizenry — may not be as vulnerable as they would like. It’s important to know that guns aren’t just for the bad guys, and that protecting yourself with a firearm doesn’t automatically make you one.
It’s absolutely an individual choice whether to arm oneself. And the laws should be strict about criminal background checks and keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. But for many people, legal gun rights give them a chance to use the city more openly, safely, and with a sense of security that no law enforcement agency or piece of paper could ever provide.
Knute Berger is Mossback, Crosscut’s chief Northwest native. He also writes the monthly Gray Matters column for Seattle magazine and is a weekly Friday guest on Weekday on KUOW-FM (94.9). You can e-mail him at mossback@crosscut.com.
View this story online at:
XML:
© 2008 Crosscut LLC. All rights reserved.
See also Federal Way Weapons Law.
Leave a comment | Permalink
The American Bar Association has a good directory that includes links to leading blog pages dealing with Constitutional law.
Permalink
The following notes are the beginning of a series of observations penned by a man that attends autopsies- lots of autopsies. I cannot vouch for the author’s authenticity but the issues identified below seem worth considering. The prose may seem morbid but there are passages herein that constitute sheer poetry for serious gunners and the information may save your life:
One of the benefits of working in a morgue is that I get to see what works and what doesn’t. Ballistic gelatin is good as far as it goes, but there’s nothing like seeing what a bullet actually does once it strikes bone, flesh, and organs. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t always mimic ballistic gelatin.
The other is that I get to hear some great CCW stories. Here’s one of them: A recently-married couple living in one of the less desirable sections of Atlanta decided that for safety purposes they should get a handgun and learn how to shoot it. They bought a Glock 27 in .40, CCW permits, and made regular trips to an indoor range. One evening, having just come back from the range, they cleaned and loaded the Glock and had left it on the coffee table in the living room, intending to put it up later. Shortly thereafter they heard a knock at the door and, expecting company, opened it without looking through the peephole.
A crazed male entered the apartment brandishing a handgun yelling, “Give it up, give it up!” The husband said that it was obvious the individual was high on drugs and there was absolutely no question in his mind that both he and his wife were going to die. Knowing this, he decided that his only option was to go down fighting.
The BG forced them both down a narrow hallway into the living room, screaming all the while. The husband was in the lead, followed by his wife, and then the BG, whose view of the living room was being blocked by the husband and wife.
The husband reached down, grabbed the Glock, pushed his wife aside, and fired one shot at the BG, striking him dead center in the middle of the chest. Although knocked to the floor, the BG still made a feeble attempt to retrieve his own gun. At this point, the husband let him hold another one to the chest. That ended that little problem.
Upon talking to the still-shaken husband, the police said he could remember little of what all the BG had said. As he recalled it, “All I can remember is that his first words were ‘Give it up!” and his last words just as he saw the Glock were “Oh, (fill in the blank)!”
I see an average of 8.2 autopsies per day/365 days per year, and I can tell you that when the chips are down, there’s nothing that beats a 12-gauge. As for handguns, the name of the game is not only shot placement but how a properly-placed bullet acts once it gets there. I’ve seen folks killed by a bb to the eye and others survive after being hit by several well-placed rounds with a 9mm.
As for me, I’ll take a slow-moving .45 to a gun fight any day. I absolutely despise a 9mm for defensive situations (yes, they will eventually kill but often not quickly enough to prevent the BG from doing you in first)and a .380 as well. These are probably the two calibers I see most often on the autopsy table.
But then, I’ve seen most everything. I’ve seen a guy killed by a .416 Rigby, as well as a suicide to the head with a .44 Mag that didn’t penetrate the skull on the other side.
The long and short of it is that you just don’t know how ANY bullet will react to tissue and bone until you open them up and take a look. I’ve seen hardball fragment and hollowpoints act just like hardball. That said, shoot what you’re comfortable with and place your shots well whatever caliber you use.
The .357 is gloriously effective. It’s just that semi-autos are much more common than they used to be, so we see far more 9mm and .380 rounds on the autopsy table than we do the .38 and .357.
Particularly among the gangbangers, the 9mm and .380 are the weapons of choice. The .357 is a wonderfully effective round for self-defense from what I’ve seen, but it’s rare that we get them in anymore.
Again, this is from experience that I’ve made my calls on what works and what doesn’t. I have no use for mouse guns like the .32, although it’s a lot better to have a mouse gun than nothing at all. Personally, I’ll never carry anything smaller than a .40 and prefer the .45. Day in and day out, results from the autopsy table show me that the .45 is the gun to have in a gun fight, provided you can shoot it well. If not, it’s better to have something you can shoot well, even if it’s a mouse gun, than something you can’t.
I spent most of my life in Knoxville, TN and absolutely loved it. But then, my job is working in the Medical Examiner’s Office, and, as you said, this is a target-rich environment. Having a job in an Atlanta morgue is job security at its best.
KRL, I’ll take slow and heavy to light and fast any day. What I want is a round that plows through bone and tissue and expends ALL of its energy in the body. That said, the 125-grain .357 is marvelously effective.
S/W-Lifer, You’re correct in what you’re thinking. Yes, the 9mm and .380 are the rounds I most often see on the autopsy table, but they’re also the rounds that usually require multiple hits to make the kill. The standing joke in the morgue is to guess the caliber by looking at the x-rays. If multiple rounds show up on the x-rays more often than not it’s a 9mm or .380 (or .32 or .25 or some mouse gun caliber). If only one round shows up, it could be an inordinately good hit with a .380 or 9mm, but more likely it’s a .40 or .45.
Yes, the .380 and 9mm will do the job, but usually multiple hits are required as opposed to single hits with a .40 or .45.
Instead of individual replies to each of these questions, let me see if I can narrow some observations down into one long one. Forgive me if some of these have been in other posts, but they bear repeating.
First, ballistic gelatin, being all that’s available for most bullet testing, is good as far as it goes but it’s often far different from what we see in the morgue. A far more realistic scenario would be to dress up ballistic gelatin with a heavy coat of denim to mimic blue jeans, embed some bones obtained from a butcher shop, and throw in a few objects of varying densities to mimic organs. Try it again, and I think you’ll see that this impressive wound cavity that’s so often seen in ballistic gelatin goes down the tubes. The human body isn’t just composed of one density as ballistic gelatin is, and the bullet does various things to various parts of the body as it passes through.
And that’s why I think observations from a morgue are so important. Day in and day out, I get to see what works and what doesn’t. More than that, I get to see what the same caliber does with various bullets weights and designs and how it reacts to different parts of the body. The best of all are when the gangbangers use the mix and match technique and shoot a variety of bullets in the same magazine and these bullets wind up in the same victim shot from the same gun. Hardball and hollowpoints in the same body from the same gun give a great comparison on the effectiveness of each.
To be continued. Please e-mail your comments to
XML:
.See also Notes From the Morgue.
Leave a comment | Permalink
THE LIVING CONSTITUTION
This week I was amazed to read in the NEW YORK TIMES that some conservative legal scholars think that the recent Second Amendment case, DC V HELLER, IS a case in which the conservative Supreme Court justices made a decision based on judicial activism. For those initiated into the arcane intricacies of Constitutional jurisprudence, this is tantamount to accusing the majority in HELLER of un-American activities. The epitome of judicial activism is Roe v Wade in which the Court held that a woman’s right to privacy, although not identified as such in the text of the U.S. Constitution, nevertheless exists by virtue of a “penumbra” that emanates from the text.
Thus, in modern times the theory has arisen that the “living Constitution” changes and mutates in organic, almost Darwinian progression along with changes in American society and evolving international norms. Strict-constructionists (like the conservatives in the HELLER majority) maintain that we risk being dictated to by unelected judicial elites when we depart from the original meaning of the text as understood by the men that drafted the document.
The NEW YORK TIMES article quotes Judge Richard A. Posner’s August, 2008 article in THE NEW REPUBLIC in which he wrote that the HELLER court’s failure to allow the political process to work out varying approaches to gun control that were suited to local conditions “was the mistake that the Supreme Court made when it nationalized abortion rights in Roe v. Wade.” Such criticism cannot be dismissed- Posner is preeminent among modern legal thinkers!
Then we have another well-recognized judge, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, stating, “The ROE and HELLER courts are guilty of the same sin.” So was the HELLER majority running roughshod over the states and making new law by judicial fiat?
The article in the NEW YORK TIMES fails to note one very important aspect of the HELLER, decision; i.e., the decision pointedly does not guarantee a right to keep and bear arms in a situation where state government action poses the threat to gun owners. The Court took the HELLER appeal in order to decide whether the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right while exercising judicial restraint by deciding a case that only impacts Washington, DC, at this time.
The U.S. Constitution originally restricted the federal government’s powers; in relatively modern times, the Court has applied its decisions to the several states. The Fourteenth Amendment, enacted after the Civil War to protect newly freed black citizens, is the rationale by which some Constitutional protections are incorporated so as to protect citizens from our own state legislatures and other state officials.
At the time of the debate over passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Southern Democrats argued that if the new citizens’ rights were protected then blacks would own guns. The Northern Republicans answered them by telling they were damned right! It is worth noting also that none of the legal scholars quoted by the NEW YORK TIMES claimed that the Second Amendment is a “corporate” right that does not apply to individuals.
The NEW YORK TIMES article explains that some prominent liberal law professors, including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard, Akhil Reed Amar of Yale and Sanford Levinson of the University of Texas, have concluded, sometimes reluctantly, that the amendment in fact protects an individual right. The Supreme Court appointments made by the new president may decide if and how and when the Second Amendment protects many of the rights that you and I cherish. So now that you have voted, did you vote with a careful view as to how the Constitution should be read?
Leave a comment | Permalink
WHY THE SECOND AMENDMENT MATTERS
Last summer, the Supreme Court of the United States (hereinafter SCOTUS) ruled that Americans have an individual right to keep and bear arms. Why does the decision in DC V HELLER matter to city-dwellers like you and I that live or work in Federal Way and have almost no place in our lives for hunting, target shooting or toting a pistol as we go about our busy routines?
The fact that the Washington State Constitution already guarantees Washingtonians protection if we choose to possess firearms also raises the issue of what was, if any, the HELLER decision’s impact on residents of our local communities. Any law-abiding U.S. citizen of sound mind (twenty-one or older) can obtain a Concealed Pistol License in Washington State. You can even keep and wear a weapon in your own home or business without obtaining a CPL. So why does DC V HELLER matter in the Evergreen State?
To answer the question we need to a nutshell course on Second Amendment jurisprudence. When the federal government first got involved with regulating guns pursuant to the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). In the 1939 case of UNITED STATES V MILLER, SCOTUS took up the issue of whether the NFA’s prohibition against sawed-off shotguns violated the Second Amendment. The MILLER court decided the issue by analyzing whether sawed-off shotguns are militarily useful. Ever since that time gun control advocates, law professors and even a minority of Supreme Court justices in the HELLER dissent have been able to point to United States Circuit Court precedents in which the decisions cited the MILLER case and rejected claims that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. Thus, prior to recent times, a majority of legal scholars and even our own Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have taken the position that the “people” that have the right to keep and bear arms are the states; i.e., the U.S. Constitution only protects a state’s right to maintain a militia.
Pro-gun folks advocate that MILLER only dealt with the issues in a very oblique fashion for a number of reasons, including the fact that the only representatives that appeared to argue the issues in MILLER were the government lawyers! Because the defense did not appear, there was arguably no way for the judges to hear both sides of the issues. It is worth noting that, despite the assertion in the MILLER opinion declaring that sawed-off shotguns have no military usefulness, short barreled shot-guns were very much in use as trench guns in WW I.
It can be argued that the HELLER case is actually the first case in which SCOTUS has dealt directly with the issue of who has standing to assert the right to keep and bear arms. The HELLER decision almost guarantees that many more Supreme Court decisions will follow. Because Washington, DC is not a state there are bound to be cases that decide whether the states are obligated to abide by the Second Amendment and what restrictions are reasonable for the states and the federal government to enact. Keep in mind that many rules dealing with firearms are administrative and are buried deep within arcane intricacies of local, state and federal bureaucracies.
Those of you that resent rampant militarism, the Founding Fathers are on your side! The legislative history of the Bill of Rights reveals that the Founders were conflicted about the wisdom of permitting standing armies that could be used against the people to usurp American’s civil rights. The Federalists compromised with the anti-Federalists by leaving the size of the military up to the President and Congress. By keeping the people armed, Americans would be prepared if the government neglected the national defense and, at the same time, the people would have recourse in the event that the new federal government ran roughshod over our liberties. You have to say one thing for those old boys- they were radical!
Dick Heller, an armed security guard for a government agency, was prohibited under Washington, DC’s draconian gun laws from possessing a gun in his home, even though the United States Government entrusted him to guard life and the U.S. Government’s property. Because he challenged and overturned the DC gun ban, cities like Morton Grove, Illinois are already revising their gun laws to permit at least some private possession of guns within their city limits.
History has demonstrated that the federal government, states and local governments can and will enact laws that deprive individuals and states of the ability to take control of our own destinies. The Interstate Commerce Clause has been invoked to justify economic regulation and federal incursions into almost every area of our lives. Presidents can enter into all kinds of treaties and there are many legal scholars prepared to argue that treaties may be valid even without going through the cumbersome process entailed by the plain meaning of the U.S. Constitution. My Constitutional law professor taught me that treaties supersede the Constitution!
Consider also that in the very near future, you will be hearing a great deal about a proposed UN Treaty that is being touted as a “common sense” agenda to limit trafficking in small arms- a solution to international terrorism and other criminal activities. The only problem is that everywhere we look in the world, the thugs in high places are busy building up arsenals, while the honest folks are mostly disarmed- except in the United States of America. The fact that treaties may preempt state laws may raise some real Constitutional issues, especially since the UN wants to preempt guns in the hands of you and yours. If you think I am being reactionary look at all the countries that already have become signatories to the UN Treaty on Small Arms. There is, however, a state preemption law that prohibits local and county governments from enacting any restrictions on our gun rights:
The state of Washington hereby fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation within the boundaries of the state, including the registration, licensing, possession, purchase, sale, acquisition, transfer, discharge, and transportation of firearms, or any other element relating to firearms or parts thereof, including ammunition and reloader components. Cities, towns, and counties or other municipalities may enact only those laws and ordinances relating to firearms that are specifically authorized by state law, as in RCW 9.41.300, and are consistent with this chapter. Such local ordinances shall have the same penalty as provided for by state law. Local laws and ordinances that are inconsistent with, more restrictive than, or exceed the requirements of state law shall not be enacted and are preempted and repealed, regardless of the nature of the code, charter, or home rule status of such city, town, county, or municipality.
RCW 9.41.290
But there is considerable pressure from Mayors, city councils and others for the legislature to do away with RCW 9.41.290. Many cities in Washington (like Federal Way) are already banning weapons in parks and other public places in full knowledge that such bans violate state law. If our Washington State legislators cave-in to pressure from cities like Seattle, you could have a situation where every time you cross a municipal boundary, or enter into a public place, you will be forced to stop and look up that jurisdiction’s municipal code or administrative regulations in order to avoid the possibility of being arrested and charged as a criminal. Thus, your CPL would become almost useless.
The U.S. Constitution does not mandate state preemption laws but the DC v Heller case makes it far more difficult for the executive branch of the federal government, Congress or a federal judge interpreting an international treaty to undermine the protection that Washingtonians enjoy under various state laws.
For example, if state preemption of local firearms laws is overturned, then it may be a matter of time before all semi-automatic rifles are defined as “illegal assault rifles”, the fact that they are “militarily useful” under the MILLER case notwithstanding. The next thing you know, certain calibers are banned and then “high capacity” magazine clips. Such a process is already gradually happening in California and other states. It remains to be seen how the U.S. Supreme court will deal with firearms related issues in the future. Future Supreme Court appointments will impact the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence in ways that are difficult to predict at this time.
Hopefully, by now you are seeing all the layers of legal protection that we enjoy as potentially well-armed U.S. citizens. In a very real sense, the Second Amendment helps to protect our First Amendment rights. But guns have no inherent ability to guarantee that we will remain a free people.
In conclusion, you should take a final look at a not-so-apparent but self-evident truth. The right to protect our loved ones does not come from a constitution or other legal document. Protecting our families and communities from violence is not really even a right! It is a duty that is placed on us by God. Even if you, like most people, do not choose to obtain a CPL and go about armed, the predators in our midst are still very aware of the fact that many of us are going about our business with enough training and firepower to stop a criminal assault. Thus, that soccer-mom or senior citizen that might be carrying a concealed pistol often represents as much of a deterrent to violent crime as a six foot, two-hundred pound police officer. Why? Because predators never know where and when the armed citizen may respond with deadly force!
Leave a comment | Permalink
I just completed three days in a Surveillance Detection Training class. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provides some very valuable training in many areas related to protecting your home, community and critical infrastructure such as utilities and industrial facilities.
The class was primarily attended by folks that supervise security personnel. You may wonder why a firearms lawyer participated in surveillance exercises with professional operators responsible for guarding some of the most critical resources all over our state.
One of the more enjoyable features of practicing employment law and the law of armed self-defense is that I occasionally have the opportunity to advise security professionals and law enforcement in my law practice. Many Federal Way residents are small business owners and probably cannot afford the time off to attend a Surveillance Detection (SD) class or to employ any security, let alone armed security. I have been politely told that if I publish my class notes, I could be aiding and abetting the enemy. Nevertheless, by identifying a few issues you may be able to recognize the need to be aware of how important it is to be aware!
Every facility has a potential red zone. The red zone is the area that hostiles watch in order to size up security procedures and determine vulnerabilities that may be exploited. If initial surveillance activity informs the hostiles that your facility is well guarded then it is very likely that no attack will be attempted.
Thus, the time to interrupt the cycle is prior to the point at which a terrorist attack occurs. At this point, you may be wondering why a terrorist would target your small business, church or other facility. We know that the high value targets lie in dams, bridges, national icons (like the WTC), etc. Keep in mind that in Iraq, Israel and many Asian, South American and other countries, schools, daycares, apartment buildings and churches are routinely targeted. We have not seen this in the U.S. but did we ever see jet liners fly into buildings before Sept. 11?
By getting into the mindset of a professional “operator” now you can be prepared in the event that we are headed for change in the future. Incidentally, many of the security professionals to which I talk indicate that they would like to employ at least some armed personnel but risk-management and the legal department think there is too much liability. It is not the lawyer who advises management that may confront the Manchurian candidate as he puts riacin in the water you and I use for our coffee tomorrow morning. The loss of a human asset or two is cost-effective compared to all the money that it costs to employ armed guards.
The SD class was a joint production between Federal Way Emergency Management, Department of Homeland Security and Washington Military Department, Emergency Management Division. Students spent much of all three days in the field and if employees at Crossings wonder why so many people in “cover” spent so much time taking notes and talking on cell phones it is because we were busy developing plans for detecting surveillance. If you detected us we need to improve.
Interestingly enough, the DHS trainers work for International Training, Inc. (ITI). If you look at their website, you will discover that they train operators and “civilians” in all kinds of skills up to and including advanced sniper training, explosives, and protecting virtually any kind of asset. Here is the ITI webpage pertaining to firearms training:
ITI is a subsidiary of Wackenhut so if you want them to come and guard your facility they are among the largest security companies in the world.
For training closer to home see Training.
Leave a comment | Permalink
Cape Girardeau woman kills man who returned to rape her second time
By Heather Ratcliffe
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Friday, Oct. 31 2008
An intended rape victim shot and killed her attacker this morning in Cape Girardeau when he broke into her home to rape her a second time, police said.
The 57-year-old woman shot Ronnie W. Preyer, 47, a registered sex offender, in the chest with a shotgun when he broke through her locked basement door. The woman told police he was the same man who raped her several days earlier.
Officials do not intend to seek charges against her.
In the first incident, the woman heard glass reaking in her basement about midnight on Saturday. She went to leave the house, and the man attacked when she opened the front door. He punched her in the face and then forced her into a bedroom, where he raped her, said H. Morley Swingle, prosecuting attorney in Cape Girardeau County.
The victim reported the crime to police, and her landlord repaired the broken window.
She was home alone again Friday about 2:15 a.m. when Preyer broke the same basement window. The victim was awake watching television, when Preyer switched off the electricity to her house.
She tried to call 911, but couldn’t because the power was off. She got a shotgun and waited as the man began banging on the basement door. She fired when Preyer came crashing through the door. When Breyer collapsed, the woman escaped and went to a neighbor’s home, where she called police. Officers, who arrived within a minute, found a bleeding Preyer stumbling away from the house.
He was taken to St. Francis Medical Center, where he died several hours later.
Swingle said the victim identified Preyer as the attacker in both incidents. Preyer, of Jackson, Mo., had wet caulking from the recently repaired basement window on his clothing when he was shot.
“I will not be filing any sort of charge against this 57-year-old woman, who was clearly justified under the law in shooting this intruder in her home,” Swingle said.
Leave a comment | Permalink
Josiah was king of Judah when he was eight years old. 2 Kings 22. The kingdom was governed via guardians in a trustee capacity and Josiah was educated by men who had lost the Books of the Law so many generations back that they had no recollection of the Holy Decrees, Memorials and Feasts of the Lord (kind of like those that hold the reins of power in many of our modern academic institutions and government-media complex- and churches!
His elders worshipped Baal and condoned or actually practiced false religion wherein parents sacrificed their children to Baal and other idols. Hearing the screams of their children while they burned in furnaces fashioned into statues of evil deities, apostate Israelite parents had sex with temple prostitutes that were kept in the high places. These practices went back to Solomon’s time when his wives brought in their false worship from other countries.
How did Josiah know what was right in the sight of the Lord in order to destroy the high places and depose the priests that presided at the high places?
What inspired him to do this at approximately the age of twenty-six? He was administering repairs on the Temple of Solomon when the Books of the Law were found in the Temple and brought to him. After he read the Pentateuch (five Books of Moses) he went into grief, tore his clothes and then did not stop until he made all the people take an oath to serve God. Josiah instituted the Feast of Passover that had been commanded by God in the Books of the Law as a memorial to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. 2 Kings 23: 21-25.
Today young men and women are looking for values to which they can commit. How many of we older citizens have declared the glory of God and his eternal values “from one generation to another"? We grew up differently than kids today (but not that differently, in many cases). Nevertheless, our culture was steeped in cultural messages that were accretions from past generations that had fought and died to serve the God of the Bible. Much of that traditional culture has now been erased and we wonder why our children go into the schools and start shooting each other. We need to start pulling down some idols and send the prophets of Baal packing. We need judges and professors and journalists that will wake up and smell the coffee before it is too late.
Stop smoking the heroin pipe that secular-humanism offers us and start seeking after righteousness. If you think culture and righteousness are not important because one culture is as good as another then look at the mass shootings of defenseless people occurring around the United States The professional bureaucrats intone the usual mantras involving “response times” and predictive factors. They promise to get to the bottom of the problem.
The Biblical answer is in the Book of Esther. Surprisingly, Esther is a Second Amendment treatise. The enemies of the Jews had obtained a decree permitting genocidal annihilation of the Jews within the Persia-Median Empire. The Emperor, by Persian tradition unable to reverse his own decree, issued a new decree permitting the Jews to defend themselves and permitting their neighbors to come to their aid. This is exactly the concept of the Second Amendment. The difference is that for the Jews it was on an ad hoc basis. In other words, only for a few specifically designated days until the Jews had overcome their persecutors. The Second Amendment permanently institutionalizes the means of self-defense on a de jure basis; i.e., by permanent enactment of law.
The reason humanists want so badly to erase the Knowledge of the Holy from our society is because such knowledge is more powerful than guns, bombs, political action committees, money and sex, political deception or all the other books in the world. Think about it.
“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3:21).
Leave a comment | Permalink
Join WAC to stay informed and support gun shows in Washington. The WAC is fighting for gun owners in our state.
Permalink:: Next Page >>
