[Vision2020] And just something to think about......

[Sunil Ramalingam]

I now rescind my response to Wayne from earlier today. It may have been incorrect at that time anyway.

Sunil

From: thansen at moscow.com
Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2012 18:11:20 -0800
To: jampot at roadrunner.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] And just something to think about......

For the umpteenth-plus time . . .
CRIMINALIZE THE SALE AND/OR POSSESSION OF . . . DO AWAY WITH . . . MAKE ILLEGAL . . . COLLECT AND DESTROY ALL . . . SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLES AND HIGH-CAPACITY AMMUNITION MAGAZINES (more than ten rounds).
Understand?  Comprende?  Verstehen sie?

Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .
"Moscow Cares"http://www.MoscowCares.com  Tom HansenMoscow, Idaho 
On Dec 22, 2012, at 5:58 PM, "Gary Crabtree" <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:








Since I have to suppose that I am numbered 
amongst the "ilk," before I walk away I would just love to hear the imagined 
remedy for the "concerns." Please tell me in no uncertain terms just exactly 
what measures you imagine would solve the problem of "semi-automatic 
weapons and/or high-capacity ammunition magazines."
 
g




From: Scott Dredge 
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2012 5:24 PM
To: thansen at moscow.com ; bear at moscow.com 
Cc: viz 
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] And just something to think 
about......


Tom,

I'm guessing at some point, Wayne and others you clump 
in with his ilk will simply just walk away and leave you hanging with your 
'concerns with semi-automatic weapons and/or high-capacity ammunition 
magazines'.  You can all agree (or not agree) to disagree with each other 
which is tantamount to status quo.  Area Man already summed it up in one 
word: 'Impasse'.

-Scott





From: thansen at moscow.com
Date: Sat, 
22 Dec 2012 16:58:32 -0800
To: bear at moscow.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: 
[Vision2020] And just something to think about......


Mr. Price - 


Fascinating article, but . . .


What has it got to do with semi-automatic weapons and/or high-capacity 
ammunition magazines?


I have absolutely no argument against hunting rifles and/or shotguns. 
 Heck!  I own a 12-gauge shotgun (great home security) and a 
single-shot .410/.22 over-under, for which I am still trying to locate a 
retainer spring for the hand guard, that my grandfather used to hunt with 100+ 
years ago.


This article simply doesn't address my concerns 
with semi-automatic weapons and/or high-capacity ammunition 
magazines.


Good read, though.


Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .


"Moscow Cares"
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 

On Dec 22, 2012, at 4:38 PM, Wayne Price <bear at moscow.com> wrote:



  This was sent to me by someone that I hold in high regards and often 
  disagree with, but listen to and respect their opinions. 
  

  
  <iilogo.jpg>
  The 
  American Revolution against British Gun ControlBy David B. Kopel*
Administrative and 
  Regulatory Law News (American Bar Association). Vol. 37, no. 4, 
  Summer 2012. More by Kopel on the right to arms in the Founding Era.
This Article reviews 
  the British gun control program that precipitated the American Revolution: the 
  1774 import ban on firearms and gunpowder; the 1774-75 confiscations of 
  firearms and gunpowder; and the use of violence to effectuate the 
  confiscations. It was these events that changed a situation of political 
  tension into a shooting war. Each of these British abuses provides insights 
  into the scope of the modern Second Amendment.
Furious at the December 1773 
  Boston Tea Party, Parliament in 1774 passed the Coercive Acts. The particular 
  provisions of the Coercive Acts were offensive to Americans, but it was the 
  possibility that the British might deploy the army to enforce them that primed 
  many colonists for armed resistance. The Patriots of Lancaster County, 
  Pennsylvania, resolved: “That in the event of Great Britain attempting to 
  force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to 
  heaven and our rifles.” A South Carolina newspaper essay, reprinted in 
  Virginia, urged that any law that had to be enforced by the military was 
  necessarily illegitimate.
The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, General 
  Thomas Gage, had forbidden town meetings from taking place more than once a 
  year. When he dispatched the Redcoats to break up an illegal town meeting in 
  Salem, 3000 armed Americans appeared in response, and the British retreated. 
  Gage’s aide John Andrews explained that everyone in the area aged 16 years or 
  older owned a gun and plenty of gunpowder.
Military rule would be difficult 
  to impose on an armed populace. Gage had only 2,000 troops in Boston. There 
  were thousands of armed men in Boston alone, and more in the surrounding area. 
  One response to the problem was to deprive the Americans of 
  gunpowder.
Modern “smokeless” gunpowder is stable under most conditions. 
  The “black powder” of the 18th Century was far more volatile. Accordingly, 
  large quantities of black powder were often stored in a town’s “powder house,” 
  typically a reinforced brick building. The powder house would hold merchants’ 
  reserves, large quantities stored by individuals, as well as powder for use by 
  the local militia. Although colonial laws generally required militiamen (and 
  sometimes all householders, too) to have their own firearm and a minimum 
  quantity of powder, not everyone could afford it. Consequently, the government 
  sometimes supplied “public arms” and powder to individual militiamen. Policies 
  varied on whether militiamen who had been given public arms would keep them at 
  home. Public arms would often be stored in a special armory, which might also 
  be the powder house.
Before dawn on September 1, 1774, 260 of Gage’s 
  Redcoats sailed up the Mystic River and seized hundreds of barrels of powder 
  from the Charlestown powder house.
The “Powder Alarm,” as it became known, 
  was a serious provocation. By the end of the day, 20,000 militiamen had 
  mobilized and started marching towards Boston. In Connecticut and Western 
  Massachusetts, rumors quickly spread that the Powder Alarm had actually 
  involved fighting in the streets of Boston. More accurate reports reached the 
  militia companies before that militia reached Boston, and so the war did not 
  begin in September. The message, though, was unmistakable: If the British used 
  violence to seize arms or powder, the Americans would treat that violent 
  seizure as an act of war, and would fight. And that is exactly what happened 
  several months later, on April 19, 1775.
Five days after the Powder Alarm, 
  on September 6, the militia of the towns of Worcester County assembled on the 
  Worcester Common. Backed by the formidable array, the Worcester Convention 
  took over the reins of government, and ordered the resignations of all militia 
  officers, who had received their commissions from the Royal Governor. The 
  officers promptly resigned and then received new commissions from the 
  Worcester Convention.
That same day, the people of Suffolk County (which 
  includes Boston) assembled and adopted the Suffolk Resolves. The 19-point 
  Resolves complained about the Powder Alarm, and then took control of the local 
  militia away from the Royal Governor (by replacing the Governor’s appointed 
  officers with officers elected by the militia) and resolved to engage in group 
  practice with arms at least weekly.
The First Continental Congress, which 
  had just assembled in Philadelphia, unanimously endorsed the Suffolk Resolves 
  and urged all the other colonies to send supplies to help the 
  Bostonians.
Governor Gage directed the Redcoats to begin general, 
  warrantless searches for arms and ammunition. According to the Boston 
  Gazette, of all General Gage’s offenses, “what most irritated the People” 
  was “seizing their Arms and Ammunition.”
When the Massachusetts Assembly 
  convened, General Gage declared it illegal, so the representatives reassembled 
  as the “Provincial Congress.” On October 26, 1774, the Massachusetts 
  Provincial Congress adopted a resolution condemning military rule, and 
  criticizing Gage for “unlawfully seizing and retaining large quantities of 
  ammunition in the arsenal at Boston.” The Provincial Congress urged all 
  militia companies to organize and elect their own officers. At least a quarter 
  of the militia (the famous Minute Men) were directed to “equip and hold 
  themselves in readiness to march at the shortest notice.” The Provincial 
  Congress further declared that everyone who did not already have a gun should 
  get one, and start practicing with it diligently.
In flagrant defiance of 
  royal authority, the Provincial Congress appointed a Committee of Safety and 
  vested it with the power to call forth the militia. The militia of 
  Massachusetts was now the instrument of what was becoming an independent 
  government of Massachusetts.
Lord Dartmouth, the Royal Secretary of State 
  for America, sent Gage a letter on October 17, 1774, urging him to disarm New 
  England. Gage replied that he would like to do so, but it was impossible 
  without the use of force. After Gage’s letter was made public by a reading in 
  the British House of Commons, it was publicized in America as proof of 
  Britain’s malign intentions.
Two days after Lord Dartmouth dispatched his 
  disarmament recommendation, King George III and his ministers blocked 
  importation of arms and ammunition to America. Read literally, the order 
  merely required a permit to export arms or ammunition from Great Britain to 
  America. In practice, no permits were granted.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Franklin 
  was masterminding the surreptitious import of arms and ammunition from the 
  Netherlands, France, and Spain.
The patriotic Boston Committee of 
  Correspondence learned of the arms embargo and promptly dispatched Paul Revere 
  to New Hampshire, with the warning that two British ships were headed to Fort 
  William and Mary, near Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to seize firearms, cannons, 
  and gunpowder. On December 14, 1774, 400 New Hampshire patriots preemptively 
  captured all the material at the fort. A New Hampshire newspaper argued that 
  the capture was prudent and proper, reminding readers that the ancient 
  Carthaginians had consented to “deliver up all their Arms to the Romans” and 
  were decimated by the Romans soon after.
In Parliament, a moderate minority 
  favored conciliation with America. Among the moderates was the Duke of 
  Manchester, who warned that America now had three million people, and most of 
  them were trained to use arms. He was certain they could produce a stronger 
  army than Great Britain.
The Massachusetts Provincial Congress offered to 
  purchase as many arms and bayonets as could be delivered to the next session 
  of the Congress. Massachusetts also urged American gunsmiths “diligently to 
  apply themselves” to making guns for everyone who did not already have a gun. 
  A few weeks earlier, the Congress had resolved: “That it be strongly 
  recommended, to all the inhabitants of this colony, to be diligently attentive 
  to learning the use of arms . . . .”
Derived from political and legal 
  philosophers such as John Locke, Hugo Grotius, and Edward Coke, the ideology 
  underlying all forms of American resistance was explicitly premised on the 
  right of self-defense of all inalienable rights; from the self-defense 
  foundation was constructed a political theory in which the people were the 
  masters and government the servant, so that the people have the right to 
  remove a disobedient servant.
The British government was not, in a purely 
  formal sense, attempting to abolish the Americans’ common law right of 
  self-defense. Yet in practice, that was precisely what the British were 
  attempting. First, by disarming the Americans, the British were attempting to 
  make the practical exercise of the right of personal self-defense much more 
  difficult. Second, and more fundamentally, the Americans made no distinction 
  between self-defense against a lone criminal or against a criminal government. 
  To the Americans, and to their British Whig ancestors, the right of 
  self-defense necessarily implied the right of armed self-defense against 
  tyranny.
The troubles in New England inflamed the other colonies. Patrick 
  Henry’s great speech to the Virginia legislature on March 23, 1775, argued 
  that the British plainly meant to subjugate America by force. Because every 
  attempt by the Americans at peaceful reconciliation had been rebuffed, the 
  only remaining alternatives for the Americans were to accept slavery or to 
  take up arms. If the Americans did not act soon, the British would soon disarm 
  them, and all hope would be lost. “The millions of people, armed in the holy 
  cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are 
  invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us,” he 
  promised.
The Convention formed a committee—including Patrick Henry, 
  Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson—“to prepare a plan 
  for the embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as may be 
  sufficient” to defend the commonwealth. The Convention urged “that every Man 
  be provided with a good Rifle” and “that every Horseman be provided . . . with 
  Pistols and Holsters, a Carbine, or other Firelock.” When the Virginia 
  militiamen assembled a few weeks later, many wore canvas hunting shirts 
  adorned with the motto “Liberty or Death.”
In South Carolina, patriots 
  established a government, headed by the “General Committee.” The Committee 
  described the British arms embargo as a plot to disarm the Americans in order 
  to enslave them. Thus, the Committee recommended that “all persons” should 
  “immediately” provide themselves with a large quantity of 
  ammunition.
Without formal legal authorization, Americans began to form 
  independent militia, outside the traditional chain of command of the royal 
  governors. In Virginia, George Washington and George Mason organized the 
  Fairfax Independent Militia Company. The Fairfax militiamen pledged that “we 
  will, each of us, constantly keep by us” a firelock, six pounds of gunpowder, 
  and twenty pounds of lead. Other independent militia embodied in Virginia 
  along the same model. Independent militia also formed in Connecticut, Rhode 
  Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, and South Carolina, choosing their own 
  officers.
John Adams praised the newly constituted Massachusetts militia, 
  “commanded through the province, not by men who procured their commissions 
  from a governor as a reward for making themselves pimps to his tools.”
The 
  American War of Independence began on April 19, 1775, when 700 Redcoats under 
  the command of Major John Pitcairn left Boston to seize American arms at 
  Lexington and Concord.
The militia that assembled at the Lexington Green 
  and the Concord Bridge consisted of able-bodied men aged 16 to 60. They 
  supplied their own firearms, although a few poor men had to borrow a gun. 
  Warned by Paul Revere and Samuel Dawes of the British advance, the young women 
  of Lexington assembled cartridges late into the evening of April 18.
At 
  dawn, the British confronted about 200 militiamen at Lexington. “Disperse you 
  Rebels—Damn you, throw down your Arms and disperse!” ordered Major Pitcairn. 
  The Americans were quickly routed.
With a “huzzah” of victory, the Redcoats 
  marched on to Concord, where one of Gage’s spies had told him that the largest 
  Patriot reserve of gunpowder was stored. At Concord’s North Bridge, the town 
  militia met with some of the British force, and after a battle of two or three 
  minutes, drove off the British.
Notwithstanding the setback at the bridge, 
  the Redcoats had sufficient force to search the town for arms and ammunition. 
  But the main powder stores at Concord had been hauled to safety before the 
  Redcoats arrived.
When the British began to withdraw back to Boston, things 
  got much worse for them. Armed Americans were swarming in from nearby towns. 
  They would soon outnumber the British 2:1. Although some of the Americans 
  cohered in militia units, a great many fought on their own, taking sniper 
  positions wherever opportunity presented itself. Only British reinforcements 
  dispatched from Boston saved the British expedition from annihilation—and the 
  fact that the Americans started running out of ammunition and gun 
  powder.
One British officer reported: “These fellows were generally good 
  marksmen, and many of them used long guns made for Duck-Shooting.” On a 
  per-shot basis, the Americans inflicted higher casualties than had the British 
  regulars.
That night, the American militiamen began laying siege to Boston, 
  where General Gage’s standing army was located. At dawn, Boston had been the 
  base from which the King’s army could project force into New England. Now, it 
  was trapped in the city, surrounded by people in arms.
Two days later in 
  Virginia, royal authorities confiscated 20 barrels of gunpowder from the 
  public magazine in Williamsburg and destroyed the public firearms there by 
  removing their firing mechanisms. In response to complaints, manifested most 
  visibly by the mustering of a large independent militia led by Patrick Henry, 
  Governor Dunmore delivered a legal note promising to pay restitution.
At 
  Lexington and Concord, forcible disarmament had not worked out for the 
  British. So back in Boston, Gage set out to disarm the Bostonians a different 
  way.
On April 23, 1775, Gage offered the Bostonians the opportunity to 
  leave town if they surrendered their arms. The Boston Selectmen voted to 
  accept the offer, and within days, 2,674 guns were deposited, one gun for 
  every two adult male Bostonians.
Gage thought that many Bostonians still 
  had guns, and he refused to allow the Bostonians to leave. Indeed, a large 
  proportion of the surrendered guns were “training arms”—large muskets with 
  bayonets, that would be difficult to hide. After several months, food 
  shortages in Boston convinced Gage to allow easier emigration from the 
  city.
Gage’s disarmament program incited other Americans to take up arms. 
  Benjamin Franklin, returning to Philadelphia after an unsuccessful diplomatic 
  trip to London, “was highly pleased to find the Americans arming and preparing 
  for the worst events.”
The government in London dispatched more troops and 
  three more generals to America: William Howe, Henry Clinton, and John 
  Burgoyne. The generals arrived on May 25, 1775, with orders from Lord 
  Dartmouth to seize all arms in public armories, or which had been “secretly 
  collected together for the purpose of aiding Rebellions.”
The war underway, 
  the Americans captured Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. At the June 17 
  Battle of Bunker Hill, the militia held its ground against the British 
  regulars and inflicted heavy casualties, until they ran out of gunpowder and 
  were finally driven back. (Had Gage not confiscated the gunpowder from the 
  Charleston Powder House the previous September, the Battle of Bunker Hill 
  probably would have resulted in an outright defeat of the British.)
On June 
  19, Gage renewed his demand that the Bostonians surrender their arms, and he 
  declared that anyone found in possession of arms would be deemed guilty of 
  treason.
Meanwhile, the Continental Congress had voted to send ten 
  companies of riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia to aid the 
  Massachusetts militia.
On July 6, 1775, the Continental Congress adopted 
  the Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, written by Thomas 
  Jefferson and the great Pennsylvania lawyer John Dickinson. Among the 
  grievances were General Gage’s efforts to disarm the people of Lexington, 
  Concord, and Boston.
Two days later, the Continental Congress sent an open 
  letter to the people of Great Britain warning that “men trained to arms from 
  their Infancy, and animated by the Love of Liberty, will afford neither a 
  cheap or easy conquest.”
The Swiss immigrant John Zubly, who was serving as 
  a Georgia delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote a pamphlet 
  entitled Great Britain’s Right to Tax . . . By a Swiss, which 
  was published in London and Philadelphia. He warned that “in a strong sense of 
  liberty, and the use of fire-arms almost from the cradle, the Americans have 
  vastly the advantage over men of their rank almost every where else.” Indeed, 
  children were “shouldering the resemblance of a gun before they are well able 
  to walk.” “The Americans will fight like men, who have everything at stake,” 
  and their motto was “DEATH OR FREEDOM.” The town of Gorham, Massachusetts (now 
  part of the State of Maine), sent the British government a warning that even 
  “many of our Women have been used to handle the Cartridge and load the 
  Musquet.”
It was feared that the Massachusetts gun confiscation was the 
  prototype for the rest of America. For example, a newspaper article published 
  in three colonies reported that when the new British generals arrived, they 
  would order everyone in America “to deliver up their arms by a certain 
  stipulated day.”
The events of April 19 convinced many more Americans to 
  arm themselves and to embody independent militia. A report from New York City 
  observed that “the inhabitants there are arming themselves . . . forming 
  companies, and taking every method to defend our rights. The like spirit 
  prevails in the province of New Jersey, where a large and well disciplined 
  militia are now fit for action.”
In Virginia, Lord Dunmore observed: “Every 
  County is now Arming a Company of men whom they call an independent Company 
  for the avowed purpose of protecting their Committee, and to be employed 
  against Government if occasion require.” North Carolina’s Royal Governor 
  Josiah Martin issued a proclamation outlawing independent militia, but it had 
  little effect.
A Virginia gentleman wrote a letter to a Scottish friend 
  explaining in America:
We are all in arms, exercising and training old and 
  young to the use of the gun. No person goes abroad without his sword, or gun, 
  or pistols. . . . Every plain is full of armed men, who all wear a hunting 
  shirt, on the left breast of which are sewed, in very legible letters, 
  “Liberty or Death.”
The British escalated the war. Royal Admiral 
  Samuel Graves ordered that all seaports north of Boston be burned.
When the 
  British navy showed up at what was then known as Falmouth, Massachusetts 
  (today’s Portland, Maine), the town attempted to negotiate. The townspeople 
  gave up eight muskets, which was hardly sufficient, and so Falmouth was 
  destroyed by naval bombardment.
The next year, the 13 Colonies would adopt 
  the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration listed the tyrannical acts of 
  King George III, including his methods for carrying out gun control: “He has 
  plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the 
  Lives of our people.”
As the war went on, the British always remembered 
  that without gun control, they could never control America. In 1777, with 
  British victory seeming likely, Colonial Undersecretary William Knox drafted a 
  plan entitled “What Is Fit to Be Done with America?” To ensure that there 
  would be no future rebellions, “[t]he Militia Laws should be repealed and none 
  suffered to be re-enacted, & the Arms of all the People should be taken 
  away, . . . nor should any Foundery or manufactuary of Arms, Gunpowder, or 
  Warlike Stores, be ever suffered in America, nor should any Gunpowder, Lead, 
  Arms or Ordnance be imported into it without Licence . . . .”
To the 
  Americans of the Revolution and the Founding Era, the theory of some late-20th 
  Century courts that the Second Amendment is a “collective right” and not an 
  “individual right” might have seemed incomprehensible. The Americans owned 
  guns individually, in their homes. They owned guns collectively, in their town 
  armories and powder houses. They would not allow the British to confiscate 
  their individual arms, nor their collective arms; and when the British tried 
  to do both, the Revolution began. The Americans used their individual arms and 
  their collective arms to fight against the confiscation of any arms. Americans 
  fought to provide themselves a government that would never perpetrate the 
  abuses that had provoked the Revolution.
What are modern versions of such 
  abuses? The reaction against the 1774 import ban for firearms and gunpowder 
  (via a discretionary licensing law) indicates that import restrictions are 
  unconstitutional if their purpose is to make it more difficult for Americans 
  to possess guns. The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits the import of 
  any firearm that is not deemed “sporting” by federal regulators. That import 
  ban seems difficult to justify based on the historical record of 
  1774-76.
Laws disarming people who have proven themselves to be a 
  particular threat to public safety are not implicated by the 1774-76 
  experience. In contrast, laws that aim to disarm the public at large are 
  precisely what turned a political argument into the American 
  Revolution.
The most important lesson for today from the Revolution is 
  about militaristic or violent search and seizure in the name of disarmament. 
  As Hurricane Katrina bore down on Louisiana, police officers in St. Charles 
  Parish confiscated firearms from people who were attempting to flee. After the 
  hurricane passed, officers went house to house in New Orleans, breaking into 
  homes and confiscating firearms at gunpoint. The firearms seizures were 
  flagrantly illegal under existing state law. A federal district judge soon 
  issued an order against the confiscation, ordering the return of the seized 
  guns.
When there is genuine evidence of potential danger—such as evidence 
  that guns are in the possession of a violent gang—then the Fourth Amendment 
  properly allows no-knock raids, flash-bang grenades, and similar violent 
  tactics to carry out a search. Conversely, if there is no real evidence of 
  danger—for example, if it is believed that a person who has no record of 
  violence owns guns but has not registered them properly—then militaristically 
  violent enforcement of a search warrant should never be allowed. Gun 
  ownership simpliciter ought never to be a pretext for 
  government violence. The Americans in 1775 fought a war because the king did 
  not agree.

  
  

  
  * Research Director, Independence Institute, 
  and Adjunct Professor of Advanced Constitutional Law, Denver University, Sturm 
  College of Law. This is article is adapted from How 
  theBritish Gun Control Program Precipitated the American 
  Revolution, 6 Charleston L. Rev. 283 (2012), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1967702.

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