Liberty Notes - November 2003
Kevin L. Jamison

It is a good day for Liberty.

A columnist is St. Louis claims that the NRA is so “unreasonable” because Neal Knox controls it.  He further claims that Charlton Heston had to get permission from Mr. Knox to be the NRA president.  Mr. Knox has been at odds with the NRA leadership over management issues for a number of years.  It is an understatement that that he has no influence with the leadership, only with the rank and file.  However this commentator is considered a font of information.

I picked up an old American Rifleman from the days when Neal Knox did have influence on the NRA leadership.  There may have been an NRA before Neal Knox, but geologists are not sure.  In those days there was a regular column called “A Court Case of Consequence” which provided a valuable legal resource.  A 1968 New Jersey case dealt with the revocation of a citizen’s License to Carry.  The license holder was sitting at a bar, and his coat fell back exposing the gun.  The court ruled “It would be difficult to conceive of a more irresponsible act, or one more inimical to public health, safety, and welfare, than the wearing of a fully loaded firearm, completely exposed and available to the reach of any person in the immediate vicinity of the wearer . . . “  The man lost a license to carry concealed, because the gun was visible.  There are many who claim that we do not need a License to Carry because we can carry openly.  However, if we loose in the Supreme Court I will bet that the argument will change.

Coffee, the most important meal of the day.

There was a Friends of the NRA dinner in Warrensburg.  I was given directions by two individuals.  One said that it was behind an automobile customizing business, the other said it was behind a topless bar.  These directions indicated the orientation of the informant rather than geographic location.

Someone on one of the computer lists claims that because he has a licensed machine gun, he can carry it concealed without a license to carry.  I do not know what state he is in, but Missouri does not, and will not, recognize a machine gun license as an exception to the CCW law, and I doubt his state does either.

The staff at the NRA legal office tells me that they were called by a hunting guide who asked if it was illegal to have guns if he was under an order of protection for adult abuse.  They told him it is a federal crime.  He replied that they did not know what they were talking about, that the law only applied to pistols.  They tried to convince him otherwise, but he got angry and hung up.  The guy wanted a legal opinion, but only if it agreed with his. 

I only had two kids come to my door for trick or treat.  I think the neighborhood kids were afraid that my mother was visiting.

I shot a target to qualify for a License to Carry.  There was a problem.  After shooting my 20 rounds, there was a large ragged hole in the center of the target.  There was no way to prove that the hole represented 20 rounds.  Fortunately, the instructor had a quick eye and he saw each bullet go through the target, or so he said.

Our local Channel 5 went “undercover” in 8 hour LTC training courses.  They compared them with a 16 hour course given at the police academy.  They were shocked to discover that the 8 hour course did not spend as much time on subjects as the 16 hour course.  This surprised them.  They also complain that there is no “state syllabus” for the required training.  This ignores the specific subjects the statutes require of the course, and the fact that local sheriffs approve specific trainers and courses.  These are the people who presume to tell us what is going on in the world.

The Missouri Supreme Court has given an accelerated schedule for the LTC case.  It is not as accelerated as what we wanted, but not as slow as the opposition wanted.  The Court rarely gives accelerated schedules.  Arguments will be heard on 22 January, 2004 at 2PM in the Supreme Court Building in Jefferson City.  Anyone who attends must be in a suit and tie.  We want to show these people that we are responsible persons.  The judges identify suits and ties with responsible persons.  The opposition will be there, they will try to provoke an incident, do not let them.

Proceedings on this case have been posted, at great effort, by our webmeister, Cap’n Jacq'.  The briefs at the trial level are posted, when we have the Supreme Court briefs we will post them. [They're up today.]

Prohibitionists in New Mexico have aped the current lawsuit in Missouri.  It has just happened and there is no word if their court will entertain imported nonsense.

Many people worry about being on a “list”.  I worry about being on the right kind of a list.

I was listening to a copy of THE PERSIAN WAR by Herodotus.  He recounts a Greek soldier at the Battle of Marathon who was confronted by a giant Persian who swung an enormous sword at him.  The Persian missed and killed the man next to the Greek in question.  The Greek was struck blind by the experience, and remained so for the rest of his life.  Temporary blindness is known to be brought on by extreme stress; it is rare that it would be permanent.  Even the ancient warriors suffered from stress.

An intelligence specialist working in Afghanistan with (but not part of) Special Forces saw his first dead body, and had an extreme stress reaction.  He told his commander that he could not do his job.  The commander removed him from the theater, and charged him with cowardice in the face of the enemy.  According to the US ARMY COMBAT STRESS CONTROL HANDBOOK, soldiers having stress reactions must be treated as close to the unit as possible.  Since at least WW I it has been known that soldiers treated close to the front had a massively higher recovery rate than equally affected soldiers evacuated to the rear. 

I discuss combat stress in my book MISSOURI WEAPONS AND SELF-DEFENSE LAW, which I mention every five minutes or so.

A new book is out on Thuggee.  CHILDREN OF KALI discusses the strangler cult from which we get our word “thug”.  Using only a yellow silk scarf, some of these guys bragged about strangling 900 people in the course of their careers.  Yet, no one thought to ban yellow silk scarves, which really were the weapon of choice for thuggees.

I am amazed at the number of people who insist on communicating with the enemy.  One person even gave an NRA membership to a prohibitionist columnist.  This accomplished nothing, the columnist didn’t read the magazine, didn’t wear the hat.  It did allow the columnist to write a snide column to the effect that as an NRA member he favored gun control.   I understand the urge to give a piece of one’s mind to people who abuse us.  However, there are more productive uses of the time.  The opposition does not read communications from us.  If anything, they use them to support claims that we are abusive, threatening, and racist.  I do not care what they think.  I care what the undecided think.  It is productive to write to newspapers and magazines, and politicians.  It is productive to call into radio shows.  It is productive to communicate with other gun owners.  Too many of our people would be happy if all guns were banned save theirs.  Too many think the prohibitionists would be satisfied with banning all but one model of gun.

Many complain that they are not kept informed about the lawsuit and other matters in the movement.  Their answers are on our website.  For those without a computer, we have The Bullet.  It is the best we can do. 

NRA Field Representative Gregg Pearre’s wife Pam has died of what is called “natural causes”, however unnatural it seems. 

The newspaper cites Dick Steward as an authority on violence in late 19^th century Missouri.  Mr. Steward claims that he has never seen any evidence for the “Jim Crow” theory of gun control.  Mr. Steward has written two books relating to Missouri; one concerns dueling, a subset of violence, and another concerns an early 19^th century land speculator.  This does not make him an authority on late 19^th century violence, of course the newspaper does not mention the subject of his books.  Even so, I cannot understand his claim that he has never seen any evidence of Jim Crow being a factor in gun control.  The hearing on the Ku Klux Klan Act and the 14^th Amendment both extensively recounted freed slaves being deprived of weapons.  General histories mention the pre-Civil War Black Codes being enforced against freedmen.  Are we to expect that after the 14^th Amendment the racists suddenly saw that they were wrong and gave up?  All the evidence shows that they did not.  Laws restricting firearms were passed in the South, and only the South, at about the same time.  The newspaper mentions gun bans further West.  The Oxford History of the American West traces these to political disputes, and attempts to disarm one side or the other.  All of these restrictions were based on attempts to disarm a political faction.

I keep hearing that the Lott study “More Guns Less Crime” has been “refuted”.  Research shows that this usually means that people who have never read the study what invented problems which they are sure MUST exist, otherwise the study would not disagree with them.  Such fanciful arguments are easily disposed of to all but the devout prohibitionist.  There was a statistical study which disagreed with Prof Lott’s study.  This “study” however was found to have serious flaws and if the authors had not been so blinded by their prejudices, they would have seen the defects.  The April 2003 issue of the Stanford Law Review details their failures.  There are many studies which support the Lott research. 

The Kansas City Star (a daily tabloid) of 23 November, 2003 Page A-16 column 6 quotes Thomas Jefferson describing Americans to visiting Indians in January 1806; “We are all gunmen.”

The “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter” program continues without the father figure.  I do not require 8 rules for dating my niece, only an IQ test.  I ask, “Do you know how a shotgun works?”  This has been sufficient.

A Kansas City man has been arrested for kidnapping women off the street in broad daylight and raping them.  Fortunately none of the women had a gun, or something terrible might have happened.

The Jackson County Sheriff is asking for a 29% increase in his staff and 20% budget increase.  This sheriff had testified in the St. Louis restraining order case that the LTC law would require more people on his staff.

The July-August issue of Military Review is unusually good, it has three of my book reviews.  The SLEDGE PATROL recounts a group of Greenland hunters who shot it out with a nazi weather station during the war; a skirmish which had strategic affects on the war.  The WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, a British historian blames Patriot militias for the loss of the American war.  FORT UNION AND THE UPPER MISSOURI FUR TRADE recounts a forty year period in which walking arsenals occupied a trading post, but suffered almost no crime or violence.  I like to think that these reviews do some good.

The FBI is collecting replacement 9 x 18 Makarov barrels.  Bullets from such a barrel killed a federal prosecutor in Washington state.  Because he was a leading prohibitionist, there was innuendo that one of us killed him.  However, the killer used .380 cartridges, which will more or less function in the Makarov.  An indication it was not one of us.

We shall Overcome.