Liberty Notes

15 August, 2005

K. L. Jamison

It is a Good day for Liberty

We have two years and three months before Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President begins.

My niece, Miss Holly, went on a University trip to Japan. The trip began at the Springfield airport. Although a straight A student at the university in Springfield, Miss Holly had no idea where the airport was. Fortunately, our friend Robert Berkshire is based in Springfield and very little escapes his notice. He gave clear, concise, and gratefully received directions to the airport, and I gave Miss Holly clear, concise, and not gratefully received directions regarding Japanese men who are no different from other men, thus the warning. Miss Holly was on tour as part of a Japanese language program. Her grandfather spent a significant part of his youth fighting in the South Pacific so that she would not have to learn Japanese, but times change and it is valuable to be familiar with other languages and cultures.

Miss Holly tells me that she has no male suitors in Springfield. It may be that the men in Springfield are more than usually gay, or insane. I think that it is more likely they are zombies, lurching about in a travesty of life without appreciation of beauty or culture.

I have sources in Dalton, Missouri which explain how our Gary grew so big. They report that in his youth Gary failed to perform some chores, was given a sound thrashing, and the swelling never went down.

We have learned that Bob Brannock, our new Board member and newsletter coordinator, is a retired Army Sergeant-Major. It seems that some of our members did not have their boots properly shined, and he dropped them for pushups “Until I get tired”; and we know that Sergeant-Majors never get tired. Bob Hanson, our newsletter editor is a Law Enforcement Officer. We discovered this when we noticed that he never asked anyone a question, he just beat a confession out of them.

There are many rumors about developments in the License To Carry law. The simple answer is that there have been no significant changes. The governor signed that financing fix, which forced St. Louis city and county to begin issuing licenses. However, there were no other changes. A deputy at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department, a fount of much misinformation, told a member that out of state licenses are now illegal. The deputy was as wrong as he could possibly be. ALL out of state licenses are good in Missouri, all of it. Not all states recognize Missouri licenses at this point. We hope to find a remedy for this problem; however it requires forcing an anti-gun Missouri Attorney General to do something for us.

The major advantage of having a Missouri License To Carry is that it provides an exemption from the federal “Gun Free Schools Act” under 18 US Code Section 922(q)(2)(B)(ii). A license to carry exempts an individual from traversing school property under federal law BUT, only if issued by the state or political subdivision in which the school is located. So, a Missourian with a Missouri license can traverse a Missouri school property, but a Missourian with a Florida license cannot. It appears that a Missourian with a Florida license can traverse a Florida school zone under federal law (there are state laws to take into account).

A delivery driver for the Kansas City Star (a daily tabloid) was attacked by a group of thugs a third of his age. He drew a pistol and drove them off. The Star reported the incident but assured the thugs and public in general that the driver would not be allowed to carry his gun on the newspaper premises.

I watched the new “Triple X” movie “State of the Union”. In it the rapper “Ice Cube”, as the new “Triple X” secret agent disguises himself as a minister and breaks in on a dinner the evil assistant to an evil senator is having with an NRA representative. The “NRA representative” asks Ice Cube how the organization could appeal to more African Americans and is told that NRA members must “stop listening to country music, stop burning crosses, and stop shooting Black folk”. This is the sort of hatred we face.

The July MVACA show was a roaring success. There were unprecedented numbers of exhibitors and displays. Again I showed a talent for finding an unmarked treasure on a table, asking the neatest dealer how much he wanted for it, only to find he was “just watching” and had no idea. I returned to the table, three hours before the show was to end, and he was gone. I think some people just don’t want to do business with me. I found some NRA “Rifleman” magazines from 1932, I fear that I paid far more than the cover price.

At the NRA dinner NRA director Wayne Anthony Ross commented on dealers at the show, “Apparently if they think $500 is a fair price, then $1,000 is twice as fair”. He may have a point. Wayne LaPiere spoke about the success of rank and file NRA members in getting the Industry Protection Act passed, as well as other measures. I asked him what the score was on the new Supreme Court appointee. He is advertised as a conservative, but not all self-professed conservatives are our friends. He has written only one decision involving guns, and it was a search and seizure case not involving the right to own guns.

Mr. LaPiere spoke about an Oklahoma law to protect employees who leave guns in their cars. Conoco and Phillips 66 petroleum are plaintiffs in an effort to overturn the law. If you do business with these companies, stop. Turn in their credit cards and make sure they know why. If they don’t want gun owners as employees, they shall not have them as customers.

A reporter for the Kansas City Star (a daily tabloid) investigated the computer-dating world. One young man was revealed to be a life member of the NRA, which apparently soured the relationship for her. It was not me.

Board member Larry Swickard took a trip to Columbia, South America, which was 50% family visit, 50% educational, and 50% life experience. I know this amounts to more than 100%, but giving more than 100% is what Larry does. A couple of Americans had recently been arrested for attempts to smuggle weapons into Columbia, and Larry had to endure being frisked several times. Larry left San Francisco to avoid such things but it is not wise to argue with people waving automatic weapons.

A client was denied a Permit to Acquire in Jackson County on the grounds that he had a City Court misdemeanor conviction for a concealed firearm. I appealed it to Small Claims Court and argued that the statute only prohibits Permits for people with State Court misdemeanor convictions for firearms violations. Three other people on the docket had the same denial for City Court violations. The judge ruled in my client’s favor, and then in favor of the three other people. So, I won four cases and only got paid for one of them, which is about par for the course.

Mom tells me about her experience working as a secretary in the Irrigation Department of the University of California at Davis after WW II. She did some typing for a physicist who had worked on the atom bomb project at Los Alamos. After the War he joined the Irrigation Department and wrote a paper on irrigation that, it was said, only three other people in the country could understand. I can accept that when a physicist puts his hand to the concept of water running downhill, the result might be complicated. However, I cannot understand writing a paper for three other people. This is a problem we must avoid when discussing our sport with others. We may understand the technical terms for guns, shooting, and ammunition; others do not. It does no good to explain our sport if we do not talk down to others’ levels, in fact, it may annoy them.

Sheriff departments continue to call with questions about the License To Carry law. It’s nice to see that we have credibility with the departments implementing the program.

The new Stay Out of Jail cards contain information about the LTC law. The card contains a list of the areas one cannot take a weapon.

Mayor of London made a stirring response to terrorists. He said that they may not be afraid to die, but they are afraid to fail. He pointed out that the day after the bombings people from all over the world, including Moslems, were coming to London to be a part of its society, and that is why they will lose. Not Winston Churchill, but shows the good old-fashioned British spine.

Some demand that the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay be closed. They do not, however, say what is to be done with the terrorists. They cannot just be set free; catch and release works well with fish but applied to terrorists is an invitation to murder. The accusations leveled at guards at Guantanamo are not new. During the Korean War, the North Koreans discovered that the better part of their army was in the UN POW compound on Koje Island. They infiltrated intelligence agents into the camp, organized the prisoners and began a drumbeat of claimed atrocities. In reality, the commander of the camp was forbidden to punish a prisoner for any reason. Prisoners would drag another prisoner under a guard tower and murder him, knowing that the guards would do nothing about it. A rehabilitation program had been set up teaching prisoners, among other things, how to be blacksmiths. Prisoners made shovels, hoes, axes, knives, spears, and more. No one saw a problem with this. In June of 1952 the prisoners took the general commanding the prison hostage. The navy surrounded the island to prevent escapes, the air force was on hand, and 10,000 troops reinforced with tanks and quad .50 anti-aircraft guns were used to re-take the compounds; with very few casualties, I might add. The prisoners never intended to escape, only to provoke a massacre to be used for propaganda purposes. During the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the 50’s the insurgents had a policy of accusing effective police officials of misconduct. This kept them in the office and courtrooms writing reports and answering questions rather than in the woods hunting Mau Mau.

Two Prestonsburg, Kentucky men were arguing about the Iraq war. The war protestor pulled a gun and the pro-war advocate killed him in self-defense. A threat can come from any source, even a non-violent one.

We are raffling off an excellent M-1 Carbine together with bayonet, case, manual, magazines, and 75 rounds of ammunition. Some have asked what they could do with an M-1 Carbine. The answer is simple, owning one annoys the anti-gunners. This is reason enough. Second prize is a 1942 dated M-1 Garand cartridge belt with 80 rounds in clips. Only 3,000 tickets have been printed and they go for $5 each or 5 tickets for $20.

A picnic for the Legal Defense Fund will be held on 24 September, 2005 between 11 and 4 at the Twin Lakes Sporting Club in Mexico, Missouri. Mexico Missouri is north of Columbia. It is sponsored by www.missouricarry.com.

A splinter gun group has savaged the Legal Defense Fund, claiming that after “due diligence” it finds the Fund is unreasonable, unnecessary and for the benefit of a private company. I do not know what “due diligence” this groups thinks it has done, I know what it has not done. It does not appear to have reviewed the Fund’s material on www.Learntocarry.com, did not speak to the person who started the Fund, or to anyone else in the movement; nor did it review the legal file for the case. When the prohibitionists filed suit against the License To Carry law we knew the Attorney General would have to defend the law. However, we had faced a similar situation during the Proposition B fight over the ballot language, left the fight to the same AG’s office, and the result was a revised ballot language giving the impression that the law would cost every county hundreds of thousands of dollars. This time we decided that we needed to have a part of the case to keep the AG honest. Without the personal guarantees of Tim Oliver the firm would not have represented Bulls Eye Range which would not have been able to intervene in the case. Without Bulls Eye in the case the prohibitionists could have gotten away with a five or ten thousand dollar bond, instead of the $250,000 they had to post. The Fund’s lawyers filed briefs as participants, the NRA could only file as a Friend of the Court. The Fund’s lawyers had a right to be heard, which kept the AG’s office honest. The Fund’s lawyers helped the AG’s lawyers prepare for oral argument. Today they are actively involved in making claims against the $250,000 bond. Getting quality constitutional lawyers is expensive. Every penny donated to the fund has gone to legal work, all administrative time and support is donated. Should we be awarded any part of the bond money and if any money is in excess of legal fees the distribution of the award will be decided as we have always done, in the open, after consultation with all interested parties. None of it will go to administrative costs. Tim Oliver began the Fund as his own financial risk, but has taken no action without consulting other people in the Movement. He has been in this Movement from the beginning and has sacrificed a great deal. I will not see him abused by anyone, much less persons without his level of sacrifice.

We shall overcome.