Liberty Notes

K. L. Jamison

17 November 2006

It is still a good day for Liberty.



We have one year and one month before Hillary Clinton begins her presidential campaign.



The election is over and I cannot watch the news. I cannot bear to see the face of another gloating liberal. They promise to be moderate , but their version of moderate is more extreme than mine. They will come after our rights; they cannot help themselves. The Firearms Coalition finds that we still have a majority of pro-gun congressmen and senators. However, with extreme anti-gun Democrats running the majority party in both houses things will be bad. We have to keep the survivors in line.



One wishes for the common sense fairy to visit our elected representatives, and the people who vote for them. This is a vain hope and it is up to us. In the next two years we shall all hear someone complain about government threats to our rights. Tell them there is something they can do; join us; together we can protect ourselves, but only together.



Before the election I worked a number of gun shows to rally our voters. I was appalled at the number of people at gun shows who were willing to vote for a candidate who would outlaw gun shows. They all had excuses. One said that he would not vote for a Republican until all of these Mexicans were thrown out of the country. A problem a century in the making must be cured overnight or he would not support a candidate who was trying to solve the problem, because he had not yet succeeded. Adults do not think this way, but that is what we faced. Another angrily declared that he would not vote for Senator Talent because all politicians are crooks . This is a convenient excuse to do nothing. Several had been told by their unions that Republicans were out to destroy unions; we had heard this claim since Reagan first ran, and unions still prosper. The economy is good, which provides union jobs. One would think that after finding this prediction wrong for a quarter century it would be viewed with suspicion. One would be wrong. We were told that it was an important principle that a single party could not control the executive and legislative branch. It was a good argument, but not one I heard when the Democrats held both branches; and not one I expect to hear in 2008 when we elect a president to deal with a Democrat-controlled congress. We were told that it was important to send a message , but the message sent may not be the message received. Already the Brady Campaign boasts of the successful candidates they supported. One Democratic voter brought his children to a gun show, a right he was not concerned about passing on to the brood. He said that both candidates had good and bad aspects. This could be said about any race, the last perfect person got crucified. We have to worry about which candidate will pass on our rights to our children. And we were told that Claire McCaskill is a great friend of gun owners. She has actively opposed us on every issue, gone out of her way to hurt us, lied about us, lied to us, never done anything for us, did everything she could to hurt us, and yet a retired politician we have respected for years broadcast that she was our friend. His political party was more important to him than the respect we had for him.



We asked people to vote freedom first. Not enough did. We held most of our support at the state level, but at the federal level it will be the Alamo every day. Prospective federal judges who are even open to Second Amendment arguments will have trouble getting confirmed in the Senate.



I was with Congressman Graves when he heard that the Democrats controlled the house and Nancy Pelosi would be the next Speaker of the House and third in line for the Presidency. His first thought was that they would come after gun rights. Of course they will, no matter how many times they claim to have seen the light, or intend to be moderate, they cannot help themselves. The only hope was that after two years of Pelosi s craziness, the voters might be willing to put the adults back in charge in 2008.



We lost; we need to understand why. We need to understand what tactics and techniques will be effective in 2008. In the last two elections I worked phone banks; I fear that I might have annoyed more people than I convinced. Many people have complained about the number of calls they got during the election. Calling may have been effective in the past, people are overwhelmed by it now, and it has become an irritant. Walking neighborhoods is harder, but probably more effective. Negative campaigning seems to work, but we must be prepared to sell our own candidate. We have to have candidate literature on our gushow tables. It is not enough to say that a candidate is pro or anti-gun, we have to sell the whole package.



There have been the usual complaints about negative campaigning. Much of it seems focused on Mr. Talent s commercials. I remember seeing commercials which indicated that Mr. Talent wanted people to die from inadequate health care. This does not seem to count as negative campaigning the in the liberal world. I don t think that Mr. Talent was overly negative; like Harry Truman said, I don t give them hell, I tell the truth and they think it s hell . Still the truth must be effectively presented or it will not be believed. I met one guy who refused to believe that McCaskill has 175 tax shelters in the Bahamas. He said that he would believe 25, but not the real figure.



I am perplexed by the case of Jones vs Director of Revenue, handed down by the Western District Court of Appeals on 7 November, 2006. It ruled that when police handcuffed Mr. Jones, he was not under arrest. The officer claimed that he handcuffed Mr. Jones for officer safety . This reason, unknown to Mr. Jones, prevented this from being an arrest. The court cited another case which ruled that no reasonable person who had been handcuffed by police would believe that he was free to go. However, they seem to draw a line between being detained and being arrested ; this line is determined by the intent of the officer, which is deduced by what the officer writes in his report after developing the results of the handcuffing. The difference is important because a citizen does not have certain rights until he is arrested.



A Kansas man has been arrested for mailing a bomb, and for possession of a firearm in furtherance of the crime . I thought that I was well read on the subject of guns and bombs and crime, but I do not see how possessing a gun aids in mailing a bomb, unless he had to force the post office to take the package.



I have a regular column in Concealed Carry Magazine. This column is not in the actual magazine but at www.USConcealedCarry.com. The idea is that one joins the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, and then one has access to the full articles on the web site. My son in journalism school tells me that this is how newspapers and magazines will be available in the future. This will make it difficult to swat flies, but doubtless we can have real magazines smuggled in from Mexico. My column covers legal concerns of gun owners, or things that should be of legal concern to gun owners. If there were not legal matters of which the average citizen was unaware, law school would not last three years, and we would not be required to have 15 hours of continuing legal education each year. Still, if this election has taught me nothing, it is that things which are perfectly clear to me, are not perfectly clear to other persons. If someone has a concern, a question, or an idea for a column, let me know.



Liberty High School has a trap shooting team. It is a school-sponsored activity, but no guns or ammunition are allowed on school property. In order to practice, the members must go home, get their guns, and reassemble at the KCTA range near Smithville. This is logistically complex, but the team seems to be doing well.



I m told that nine Viagra pills are sold every second; proving that there is no shortage of optimistic old men.



The local Fox news did an extended interview with a local man who was forced to kill a carjacker. The citizen did everything the carjacker demanded as he punctuated his demanded with or I ll shoot you . Then the carjacker started saying I will kill you , this subtle difference coupled with the carjacker s gun swinging down on him convinced the citizen that there was no choice. We learned later that this was the carjacker s fourth and final carjacking, that the police knew about. The carjacker s own father said that it was always just a matter of time before someone had to kill his son. A video of the interview is on www.Missouricarry.com. It was a very sympathetic treatment of the citizen. No charges were filed.



Washington D.C. is planning to spend a young fortune to buy up guns, in a city where there are not supposed to be any. WMSA has always opposed these schemes; it is a waste of public money if nothing else. It assumes that guns are a problem. I can remember such a stunt in Kansas City; we stood out front passing out Eddie Eagle gun safety literature to people who turned in junk to finance a quality gun purchase. A reporter asked me what I thought about the $50 buy up, I told her that People are getting really good deals, I haven t seen a gun yet that was worth $50. The reporter was visibly shocked and the bit was not broadcast. These stunts are popular; we will not be able to stop them. We should consider what they will accomplish. Last year 13,000 guns entered the civilian market every day. If the anti-gun communities buy up that many relics, they will just match one days influx of new guns that will remain in the shooting community for fifty years. Still, such stunts make the prohibitionists happy. They think they have accomplished something. If this keeps them from doing something worse, then it is not all bad.



A newspaper article has one scientist claiming that it is possible to create a Neanderthal embryo, implant it in a woman, who will give birth to the first Neanderthal in 30,000 years. Doubtless some Jerry Springer audience member would be willing to carry the child. Another scientist indicates that the Neanderthal genome is not sufficiently mapped for such a stunt. I sincerely hope so. It is one thing to grow a cluster of human cells, it is quite another to create a child as a science experiment. I cannot imagine a Neanderthal child growing up to function in our society; although this would account for the parents in child custody disputes in which neither party should be raising hamsters much less children.



A Minnesota man openly carried his handgun into a Costco warehouse store. His intention was to get people used to the idea of citizens carrying guns peaceably. It didn't work. Costco announced a policy of no guns in the store. There is a time and place to be confrontational. I m not sure that this was one of them.



Instructors in carry classes are often asked how often a student should carry, under what circumstances, or how far afield from home. I was reading the account of a rancher in one of the lowest zip codes for crime in the country who walked in back of his home to encounter a skunk behaving erratically. The situation simply screamed rabies and the rancher desperately wished for one of the many guns he had lovingly stored in the house. The nearest firearm was a varmint rifle with a telescopic sight, which would have been more useful if the skunk was far enough away to focus the scope. What was desperately needed was a handgun of any caliber loaded with any standard cartridge. The story had a happy ending, but the beginning and middle were filled with more adrenaline than made the rancher comfortable. A Texas man writes to Concealed Carry Magazine to say that he got a License To Carry when they became available but stopped carrying and did not renew it; that s when he was attacked and badly injured. The only way to have a gun available when needed is to carry one at all times.



The March 2006 issue of The Gun Report contains an article about Suicide Specials , cheap handguns of the late 19th century. The author obtained shootable specimens of what would be called Saturday Night Specials today and found that they were reasonably accurate and reliable. Makers of more expensive pistols who objected to the competition tarred them with the pejorative nickname.



This election has put us in a bad place, we have come back from worse, but it is so hard.



We shall overcome.