Bob Owens:
Jerrold Nadler is an “average” elected member of Congress. He represents New York’s 8th congressional district, and has been in office for 20 years. He’s seen little of the world outside of New York City and Washington, D.C.. He did little of note with his life before becoming a politician, and has done little while in office, other than picking up a few titular roles by the nature of his long incumbency. He is reliably leftist in his views, using the Constitution as a cudgel when it serves him, and rejecting it when it doesn’t.
He’s utterly an utterly average, representative politician, which is why this statement is so concerning:
Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said only the federal government should have “high-capacity” gun magazines and that the “state ought to have a monopoly on legitimate violence.”
At a Capitol Hill press conference on Wednesday, Nadler gathered with other House Democrats to push for stricter gun control in the wake of last week’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which left 26 dead, including 20 children.
The lawmaker told CNSNews.com that he not only supports prohibiting the future sale of 10-round gun magazines, but he would like to confiscate high-capacity clips already legally possessed by American citizens.
Historically speaking, most nation-states have had monopolies of violence over their subjects. Nadler’s qualifier “legitimate” simply means that politicians view the violence they distribute as being beyond reproach, while viewing the option of resisting government force as not just illegitimate and wrong, but evil.
We could easily spend the rest of the day (and much of the next) merely listing the governments in recorded history that have used that “monopoly of legitimate violence” to oppress their subjects and commit the occasional genocide against their people. We could point out that this precise mindset is one shared among the educated men of Parliament and the British Monarchy in the 1770s towards upstart Colonials in the New World.
Such an opinion was held in the head of General Thomas Gage when he ordered Royal Marines and Regulars rowed across the Charles River in the dead of night on April 19,1775 to conduct gun control raids from Lexington to Concord. A perversely rewritten history taught by liberal academics in schools these days suggests that the cause of the American Revolution was “taxation without representation.” A reading of original sources puts that lie to rest.
The proximate, immediate cause of the first American Revolutionary War was an attempt to capture powder and shot, cannon, and community food stores that supplied not just the organized militia of their day immortalized as the “Minutemen,” but the unorganized militia of those too young, too old, and too female to be part of the organized militia of their day. These were the “alarm listers.”
The youngest of the estimated 14,000 that turned out against the Regulars that April morning and fired shots was just 13 years old. The oldest man to fight that fateful day was an alarm-lister named Samuel Whittemore, a 78-year-old veteran of three American wars in the King’s service.
While Lord Percy’s relief column attempted to link up with Regular forces under attack by colonial militias, Whittemore set up behind a low stone wall near his home and attacked the 47th Regiment of Foot by himself.
Whitemore’s aimed fire did enough damage to the column that an assault was ordered upon his position.
Whittemore is documented to have killed one man from this assaulting force with his musket, then killed one and severely wounded another with horse pistols he’d removed from the body of French officer he’d dispatched decades before. Whittemore was in the act of drawing his ornate French Calvary sabre—again, taken from another French officer who “died suddenly” according to Whittemore, more than 20 years before—when half his face was shot away at point-blank range. Whittemore’s horrified relatives watched from a distance as the nearly 80-year old patriarch of their clan was bayoneted thirteen times by the Redcoats, and left for dead in a pool of his own blood.
Do you really think you can stop tyranny with assorted riflery, and maybe a grenade launcher or two? The Second Amendment was written by men of their era who’s memories were still colored by an 18th Century Revolution, and really couldn’t imagine the 21st Century armament of a potential tyrant—and those who dream of stopping tyranny by the use of such common weapons fit right in with their anachronistic mind-set.
We changed from a monarchy to a republican form of democracy, in attempt to render such calls to armed revolution again unnecessary—but, the Founders left the possibility open, just in case, because their new form of governing was untested on so large a scale, and may fail. We have been dealing with this sort of governing process for over two centuries, and can consider it relatively successful—not only because of our success, but because of its expanding success in other cultures (namely the European societies).
Most mature democracies have learned to trust their governments somewhat, and put their faith in recourse to the electoral process—instead of the barrel of a gun. Those right-wingers who seem to advocate politics administered by Second Amendment Rights seem to be the true tyrants to me—they want everything their way and are incapable of compromise (and if they don’t get what they want, they wail like banshees, threatening faux-revolution at every turn).
@liberal1(objectivity):
So, you are essentially saying that since the rifles and firearms we are currently allowed to possess could not possibly overcome government forces, that we should just give in and give away further claims of Second Amendment protection? For someone who decries logic, claiming to apply it while we “neanderthal” conservatives subject people to emotional arguments, you sure did miss the logic boat on that one.
Really!?! Oh, that’s right. Of course you would never suggest or acknowledge the tyranny of the left towards everyone else. Instead, you simply combine two separate ideas and viewpoints to suggest that we “right-wingers” want our guns to tyrannize a woman’s reproductive system, or tyrannize the homosexuals into living how we wish them to, or tyrannize the illegals from coming here “peacefully”, or tyrannize the lazy and incompetent from realizing pay equal to those who work hard.
Come on, Lib1, you can do better than that.
And to think that Cary had a hissy-fit about conservatives “misrepresenting” the liberal position on firearms. I’ll wait patiently for him to address Lib1’s gross mischaracterization of the conservative Second Amendment viewpoint.
@Lib1O#1 Says
“Those right-wingers who seem to advocate politics administered by Second Amendment Rights seem to be the true tyrants to me—they want everything their way and are incapable of compromise (and if they don’t get what they want, they wail like banshees, threatening faux-revolution at every turn).”
Right Wingers […] “they want everything their way” […] You’ve made a mighty ‘vague’ statement here Lib1 – Care to elaborate on this statement? Specifically I mean.
Right wingers are true tyrants?? Huh?….??
“a republican form of democracy” Huh?????????? surely you jest
Lib1o – You are truly hysterical and I don’t mean in a ‘ha ha way either….
I am taking it that “Curt” posted this writing by Bob Owens… Great History Lesson!
The following is certainly an Accurate Account from the Page Books of our “Republics” History – The History of our United States…
“The proximate, immediate cause of the first American Revolutionary War was an attempt to capture powder and shot, cannon, and community food stores that supplied not just the organized militia of their day immortalized as the “Minutemen,” but the unorganized militia of those too young, too old, and too female to be part of the organized militia of their day. These were the “alarm listers.”
I might add; General Thomas Gage also sent out spies to the surrounding country [around Boston, MA) to find out what the colonists there were doing, […] “he [Gage] discovered that military stores had been collected at Concord, a village about twenty miles from Boston, he [Gage] ordered out 800 men to destroy them, this was the spark which brought on the Revolutionary War.” […] – Alexander Johnston LL.D.
This Early United States History is a fascinating account of the ‘fight’ the colonists had to fight to get out from under the “King’s” Rule – Britain’s Rule…, yet another “Over Reaching Government” (Monarchy)….literally.
Thanks!!