United Liberty

The NRA is seeking incorporation of the Second Amendment to the states:

One day after losing a major test case in an appeals court on the scope of the Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association — the nation’s leading advocate of personal gun rights — asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to apply the Amendment to state, county and city government laws that seek to regulate firearms. The petition was announced by the NRA in this news release.; The petition will be posted as soon as it becomes available.

 

I have been incredibly lazy lately in terms of my writing and researching…honestly I think because my discovery of hulu has virtually eliminated my viewing of streaming videos from C-SPAN. However, today I sort of “ran out” of things to watch on hulu and wandered back over to C-SPAN, where I decided to watch a 1-hour video from Wednesday of House debate on the so-called “Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights.” Admittedly, I haven’t really been following this issue very closely so I don’t know much of what is in the bill.

The Democratic Party takes black voters and gay voters for granted, just as the Republican Party takes pro-lifers, religious voters and gun owners for granted. We’ve already seen this with Democratic silencing of the D.C. voucher program, which benefitted low income black students (many of whom were big supporters of Obama during the election). Now, with D.C. voting to accept gay marriages, it’s time to see if the Democrats are willing to crap on another loyal voting bloc:

The ACLU is defending us “rightwing extremists” (emphasis mine):

I’ve gotten a bit of hostility for being a libertarian. While I can only think of one person in my experience who really gave me serious crap for it, more than a few have created stereotypes in their head due to my political leanings. I must be a gun owner, a pot smoker or a well-to-do man who doesn’t want to share loot with anyone. I am not even close to being any of those.

I lean with the libertarians because of my philosophy of life, which is strongly rooted in my life experience. Throughout my public school days, I could not understand why I had to take part in activities I didn’t enjoy or succeed at, why nothing was done when kids bullied or harassed me or why some bureaucrat who had never met me decided where I would spend the majority of the day. I tend to get angriest and lash out when people box me in, keep me from choosing my own path or tell me what I cannot do. If allowed a large degree of freedom (within reason, of course) I’m fairly happy.

There’s been alot of hubbub over the murder of a pinned, unarmed man by BART police in Oakland. Bloggers over at Reason magazine have been relentless, posting the citizen-shot video of the murder, which firmly illustrates the police were totally out of line.

The offending police officer has now resigned. Brian Doherty noted a San Francisco Chronicle article in which Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said, ”These things normally take weeks rather than days, but I am trying to expedite this and get it resolved as quickly as we can.” Doherty correctly asks whether it would really “take weeks” if this were an average citizen pinning an unarmed man down and shooting him in the back and not a police officer. Working for the government gets you special privileges, like the ability to destroy lives with no repercussions.

When it comes to the 2nd Amendment who is the political gunslinger? Let’s go beyond the rhetoric.

It’s a question we need to look at closely, especially as the election draws near. Shutting off the media circus for a bit, lets look at these candidates strictly on issues. Then see what we come up with.

Sure enough, today we got a great article to back us up.

Kevin Tracy over at ktracy.com wrote a great post laying out, quite simply, why the NRA looks positioned to endorse Bob Barr. As many of you know, the NRA endorsement is something that most Republican’s sweep each year and is considered to be one of the bigger endorsements Presidential candidates seek. Bob Dole missed out on it in 1996 with his assault gun ban flip-flop, but other than that, the NRA is usually a GOP lock. This year however, the Libertarians have fielded Bob Barr, and he isn’t just a supporter of the 2nd Amendment, he’s quite a bit more…