James Malarkey is the CEO of X-Products, a company which manufactures drum magazines for AR-style firearms. His company is exactly the type of business that the anti-gun crowd goes after when they want to ban the sale of high capacity magazines.
Obviously, his ownership of a successful company in the firearms industry gives him a soapbox. When he talks, people are going to listen. Especially, someone like CNN. In a 2016 interview he made an interesting comment:
(CNN) – X-Products of Nashville, Tenn., makes 50-round drums that sell for up to $360 and fit onto AR-15s and other military-style rifles like the FN FAL. Some of the drums are “skeletonized” with a cage-style casing instead of solid metal, so the shooter can see how many bullets remain.
X-Products co-owner James Malarkey said he sells 10,000 magazines per year. But why would anybody want to own one?
“For the shooter, it’s fun,” he said. “You can go out, you can shoot multiple rounds, you don’t have to do a magazine change, and it’s bragging rights to your friends.”
Malarkey realizes that not everyone associates the gun drums with good times. He admits that the general public might rest easier if government agencies develop a licensing system to make sure the owners are law abiding people.
“Instead of outright banning it, allow people to have some kind of licensing,” he said. “I think it would weed out a lot of crime.”
In response, X-Products issued this statement:
First and Foremost our company does not believe in licensing or restricting the sale of High Cap.
Mr Malarkey was interviewed about several items in a long discussion during Shot Show and CNN has taken two very out of context answers to multiple questions. Then they broke them up and spliced it into something that cleverly seems to favor some kind of support for their premise.
Mr Malarkey regrets having ever discussed/interviewed with CNN at all, and will not do so in the future. This is clearly not a position X Products believes is rational or viable.
We support the 2nd amendment rights of all citizens and are already saddled with bans of our products in multiple states now, we would not support any further limitations.
Dewey Akers
VP of Sales & Operations
Sounds like something that could happen, right?
The problem is that just this week, James Malarkey doubled and tripled down on his “licensing system” scheme by laying out his proposal for a complex system of controls on the ownership of firearms on Facebook. Ironically, it would include the very magazines his company manufactures.
As you’ll see, it’s so in-depth that he had to have given this a great deal of thought. The CNN article hardly misquotes him. If anything, they brushed over his true feelings.
Malarkey refers to firearms ownership as a privilege. It’s not. Firearms ownership is a right, endowed by the Creator and secured in the Bill of Rights.
He sets out a set of hoops for citizens to jump through in order to own firearms. They are akin to the poll taxes and tests instituted by local and state governments to prevent certain segments of the population from exercising their constitutional right to vote.
I’m an ardent supporter of civil rights, including the right to bear arms. I’m not sharing Mr Malarkey’s commentary, or his wife’s to organize any form of boycott or outrage against him. My intent is solely to inform the public of his stance on your rights. Form your own opinion.
Update: The plot thickens. This is his wife’s post to Facebook in December of 2017.
Tags: X Products
His wife is anti-gun as well, she was fund-raising for everytown for her birthday…
https://www.ar15.com/forums/General/X-Products-owner-s-Licensing-Scheme-and-Wife-apparently-has-fundraiser-for-Everytown/5-2082761/
One of the warning “flags” I noticed about Mr. Malarcky, besides he was educated and is from the Left Coast, is that his wife hyphenates her name. Meaning she’s a liberal who stands against the Patriarchy, i.e. self-sufficiency, defense of hearth and Home, and Liberty and Freedom embodied in “toxic masculinity” as embodied in the Founding Father’s and their legacy of racist, sexist, biggoted, White-privilege Capitalism. Mr. Malarkey obviously has to split two hairs between maintaining domestic tranquillity and being CEO of a maker of instruments of death, like X Products.
It’s like officers in the military from California or the Northeast, whose college educated wives, look at the military outside of dinner functions at the O club or
or in Alexandria VA, as retrograde barbarians, who must be kept down and reeducated. Thus affecting how their husbands run their commands and units. Thus we get two moral reprobates marrying one another at a military chapel
at West Point, a avowed Communist graduates from West Point and is given a commission as a 2nd Lt. in the 10th Mountain, and females who couldn’t hump 120 lbs of gear 25 miles in under eight hour’s to save their life in the regular Infantry, graduating IOC and first round MARSOC S&A.
you needent go outside or look out your window. Rest assured the commies, lefties, homos, and hyphenated names are ripping this country apart just like your Facebook feed tells you.
I don’t Facebook, I just read the Wall Street Journal and “books”. The WSJ tells me that FBI agents and a lawyer, named Peter Strzok and his lover Lisa Page, along with Jim Comey and the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, conspired to exhonerate Hillary Clinton for violating the Espionage Act, corruption, and obstruction of justice, while framing a duly elected President of the United States based on lies paid for by his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Whose husband is an accused rapist by the way. The same FBI being used by the Democrat Party as a secret police force being used to spy on their political opponents, failed to investigate Nikolas Cruz after being informed TWICE about his suspicious activities and threats he made online.
I’ve read too many books describing what’s happening to America to name, but for you to educate yourself, besides a broad base in the study of history, you can start with Mark Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny”, “Men in Black”, or “Plunder and Deceit”. Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is a classic. John S. Stormer’s “None Dare Call it Treason: 25 Anniversary Edition”; Alexander De Tocqueville’s “Democracy In America”; Frederik Bastiat’s “the Law”, and books about Barack Obama like “Dreams from My Real Father” and “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis” will get you started in beginning to understand what’s happening to the United States of America in it being turned from a free country based on natural law into a Socialist dictatorship by the Democrat-Left, the way a democratic Czechoslovakia was after World War II.
“To fully implement the Revolution, you must destroy the foundations of bourgeoisie capitalism upon which it based. You must destroy the Family, the Church, History, the Truth. You must debauch the currency, eradicate public property, even the idea of Self must be subsumed into the Party for the sake of the Revolution.” Paraphrased from Vladimir Lenin in Vasily Grossman’s “Everything Flows”.
“The ultimate in skill of a military Commander is defeat ones enemy without ever going to battle” – Sun Tzu
Bill,
If you haven’t made the connection between hyphenated names and the “progressive” politics with which those women almost always associate, you haven’t been paying attention or perhaps you don’t have the occasion to deal with them often.
Fuck these people.
I’ll own what I want.
Because FUCK YOU, that’s why.
I agree.
Please run for president. Nailed it.
I’m boycotting his companies and letting all of my friends know about this.
I would say I am boycotting them as well, but that would imply that I had any urge to buy their garbage products.
I wasn’t consciously aware of X-products until I read this article…in any regard, this guy is finished – Capitalism always spits out the bad seeds. Maybe his roofing business is doing so well that he doesn’t need a failed drum magazine company anymore?
“Firearms ownership is a right, endowed by the Creator and secured in the Bill of Rights.”
Oh boy.
There’s no creator. How can we fight islamic religious fanaticism by subscribing to religious fantasies ourselves?
“I’m not sharing Mr Malarkey’s commentary to organize any form of boycott or outrage against him.”
Yeah right. Suuuure.
How do you know if someone is a atheist, a vegan, or does crossfit? Don’
t worry. They’ll let you know…
The exact same thing can be said about religious people…
With all due respect, the right of self-preservation goes beyond any religion. It’s an inherent human right to defend oneself or your kin from harm. Some people take that as it is and some people just so happen to attribute it to a religious dogma, as is their right.
And by the way, you don’t have to be an atheist to know that jihadists are assholes.
It’s fine that you don’t believe there’s a God (there is, but that’s beside the point).
The framers of our founding documents assumed there was (they were right, but again, beside the point) and wrote the documents to assume that worldview.
Your worldview is different. To adjust accordingly would mean you just read “endowed by their creator…” as “by virtue of human existence intrinsically endowed…” and your problem is solved.
I kind of expected readers to have no idea what I was referencing. Their lack of knowledge of our form of government is a symptom of our modern educational system.
Well said Sir, couldn’t agree more.
+1. Agree completely SSD. But they rarely teach the whole founding documents in schools anymore.
As an educator, who sees the problems within the system, it would be far more productive if people DID something instead of merely about the “modern educational system”. While I have the founding documents of the nation posted prominently in the front of my classroom, took extra time to teach extra classes on civil liberties, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights (using the 2nd amendment as an example multiple times). Yes, there are problems, but the biggest problem is that those of us who do teach those things students should know as Americans, is the near utter and complete lack of support we receive. Federal funds must be spent on math, science, and language arts, same for extra state funds (at least in my state and many others), and when we ask individuals for support, nobody can be bothered to offer time or funds to help insure the proper education of students in History and Civics.
Mr. S, Sir, I applaud you as a teacher taking your own time to teach these important documents. I was fortunate to have similar teachers, even in California growing up. Unfortunately, which I’m sure you’re aware of, the common core curriculum or “sanitizing” of history, in particular, has given a skewed view to our youth, from the curriculum standpoint in many states. I agree that help is needed to ensure proper education, but believe reform of our current spending on education would be more appropriate (return to teaching civics, economics and history instead of the focus on STEM classes alone), as well as parent/volunteer involvement. You make very good points that our focus on education at this time is basic test taking and STEM from actual life skills and history/government. There has to be a balance if our children will be at least prepared for real life.
real John P the exact problem with going down the “there is a god” path is it becomes a my God vs your God contest, and does give too much credit to Islamic extremists… if our American Creator was right, as endowed in our Bill of Rights, and we will fight to the death for those rights, then you can see how someone else would fight to the death in the name of their Creator.
Maybe that’s how some people want it, but our Bill of Rights can stand on its own without the need to invoke a Creator (even if some of the founding fathers did… I still think it does more harm than good in modern context).
John, you’re missing the forest for the trees. The underlying doctrine is that there are rights that free humans naturally possess. These natural rights exist because of inherent properties of being a human. Whether someone attributes those properties to natural selection or intelligent design doesn’t change the underlying principle at all.
When someone says that a basketball player has a God-given ability, and it turns out that you’re right and that God isn’t real, nothing about the meaning conveyed in the statement changes. The point of such sentiment is merely to express a regcognition of a natural phenomenon. The driving force behind that readily identifiable natural phenomenon is inconsequential.
“if our American Creator was right, as endowed in our Bill of Rights, and we will fight to the death for those rights, then you can see how someone else would fight to the death in the name of their Creator. ”
The above statement hits it but the difference is in how one views life. The American is seeking to give up his or her life in defense of another life. Therefore the preservation of life while the extremist seeks to destroy life. All in the name of said “religion”.
Now when one states, “There is no God” they are making an absolute statement. Meaning they know, absolutely, there is no such thing as God/Creator and they have been everywhere at once, thru out the entire physical universe and possibly outside of physical space and time to determine there is no God/Creator, absolutely.
It’s always best stated then, “In my opinion there is no God, nothing spiritual.”
As for this compnay and their stance. I never heard of them so I have no plans to buy from them. This debate, any debate, when emotions are high remain fruitless. When debate is emotion driven then all rational thought is tossed.
Dellis, on that note I’d add that someone saying “there is no God” is often just summing up the more complicated “I do not believe in God in my heart” (which is different than “in my opinion there is no God”)… the thing that convinced me this “not in my heart” belief is not only logical but correct is that I don’t even think most hardcore “believers” actually believe it…
IF they did believe it, why would they not use every waking moment to convince everyone around them to believe? Few people do.
Regg, not to turn Soldier Systems into a religous forum, but I want to briefly reply, if Eric would be so kind to allow…. You asked a great question and then you also answered it when you stated, “Few people do”
“IF” the Scriptures be true then the God described in them “calls” whom He desires. No one choses or seeks God but rather they are called and those called are few.
Thank you Dellis. Spot on.
My only issue with the “calling on whom He desires” is that would appear to make billions of people eternally damned because they weren’t called on.
Which you would have a hard time understanding if you come from the “life must be fair” crowd.
Hmm… so our Creator cared enough to create all men equally and endow them with certain rights… yet the same Creator picks and chooses who is eternally damned? I don’t get it.
Can’t we just say that “creator” in the context of the Bill of Rights does not have to be linked to any particular religious belief system?
Regg, again I do not wish to seem as if I am preaching but you asked a great question and I will attempt to answer in as short but in-depth reply as possible.
Scripture defines God as our Creator and is called “Potter” in the sense that He takes clay and shapes it and molds it as He pleases. So then, Scripture says, “Who are we, the clay, to say to the Potter, ‘What will you make of me, why have you made me as such?'”
I am paraphrasing here but I can give Scripture reference if you so desire. Now “IF” the God we find in Scripture is real and true then He must be All Powerful, He must be All Knowing and one of His Attributes would be Foreknowledge for any limit of His Foreknowledge would place limits on Him.
Therefore God will call some and not others, in His Foreknowledge, before the foundations of the earth were laid, He knew who would be His. Many will call this unfair, that God is cruel and evil and I understand that, but I do not agree with that claim.
While I understand what you’re trying to get across, I think you’ve missed the mark by a little bit.
God does call everyone; many will respond and many will not. That is our free will that God gave to us. And yes; not all will be saved.
Well, I have never brought any of their products before, and I most certainly will not ever buy their products in the future.
With a name like Malarkey you’d think the guy would know when to keep quiet
Okay that was hilarious
Ok, I was working on the delivery, but I yield to Mr. TarTar.
Damn it, you beat me to it. Well played, Mr. Tar Tar. Well played…
What John P said. Don’t talk out the side of your mouth SSD :/
As far as gun owners (yeah, I’m one owning somewhere north of 10 and less than 30), hoping that the status quo (and zero action) will stay the norm has shot us in the foot. Mass murder sells. Mass murder continues to occur. While mass murder (using that long gun variant that we all know is a common theme) continues to occur in lower percentages than other means, it grabs the headlines. Big splashes grab the psyche–if it didn’t, IEDs would not be what they are in third world s—holes. We (the royal type) have done nothing to combat it. Bumpstocks are STILL a thing after Route 91?? Thoughts and prayers is not a valid COA. Now we are reaping it.
Yes, yes….drink that liberal kool aid…mmmm…let that sweet taste of giving up rights to appease others quench your thirst…
No one party stays in control forever, the political pendulum will swing to the democrats eventually and result in an assault weapons ban 2.0.
It’s in the best interest of gun enthusiasts to compromise and give up something now, to meet the gun control advocates half , than to wait and face outright bans latter. As a last resort, treating assault weapons and standard capacity magazines the exact same way as short barreled rifles, tax stamp, background check, ect. would head them off at the pass on the way to signing a ban legislation, so to speak. You can still get them, but there are hoops to jump though.
Heck, making a magazine ban now where the limit is 30 may prevent a ban where the limit is 10.
Don’t like it, but that’s the way things are headed, and damage mitigation ahead of time is prudent.
This post is not groupthink. Prepare for triggered snowflakes.
Ever hear of a guy named Neville Chamberlain?
Hahaha.
Yah, it’s a risk, but it’s less risk than doing nothing and not letting the other side vent political pressure for extremist gun control.
2020 is set to be ugly for the GOP.
Or, it’s not.
Joe,
That already been tried before, and not only did it not work, the problem only grew larger.
So is your solution is to do the same thing over and expect a different result?
If so, there is a word that I will happily share with you.
It’s called, insanity.
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time… Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” – Neville Chamberlain September 30, 1938
Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1938. “Our time” was short.
Nah, that wont be enough. Nothing ever is.
Gun control advocates (the important ones) want outright disarmament.
Go to a comment section time on a anti-gun rag. Many do not have any compunction whatsoever about gun owners getting burnt out of their homes or killed by paramilitaries.
Im not playing games with these stupid assholes.
No. Absolutely not. The point has been proven time and time again that those against basic civil rights continually push onward once a foothold is found. By giving in law abiding gun owners overtly signal their weakness of resolve and waiving of personal responsibility when they allow so called gun rights organizations to speak (read: compromise) for them.
https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2013/11/08/cake-and-compromise-illustrated-guide-to-gun-control/
That comic pretty expertly illustrates the danger of trusting the altruism of the anti-rights movement.
If you give a mouse a cookie….
joe that is absolutely ridiculous. Give up this now, to prevent a different ban later? Nothing is ever enough for anti-gunners. Do you know in the UK some want to regulate kitchen cutlery? There are knife surrender bins all over the UK. Google it. People still kill people, not using guns.
Again, nothing is ever good enough for anti-gunners who refuse to acknowledge the need for personal responsibility in a civilized society, so it’s blame the tool, not the evil person. Reduce evil people don’t keep supporting bans on inanimate objects.
We need a better education system, not social justice indoctrination camps, more pride in our armed services, teachers, and to get the F away from rap/hollywood/porn culture and social media, it is F’ing up our youth. Those are SOME of the problems, not the inanimate objects. Tools.
If more gun restrictions worked, Chicago and New York would be safe. They are not!
Right. The Liberal Left will cook the Conservative Right like a frog…take a little at a time and suddenly we say, “Woah! What the hell happened to our freedom of (insert Freedom here)?”
When has the anti-freedom crowd ever met gun-owners in the middle? When have gun owners every given a little ground and the anti-freedom losers say “Ok, that’s enough, we’ll leave you alone now”?
every should read “ever”
I don’t agree with him, but he’s got every right to state his opinions and ideas. We ought to try listening to differing opinions for a change. I’m a hard core supporter of the second amendment, but am routinely attacked by other gun folks for pointing out that arguments saying that firearm ownership can’t be regulated bacause of the constitution ignore the part where it says keeping and bearing arms must be “well regulated”. I believe our job as protectors of the second amendment should be ensuring those constitutionally mandated regulations are reasonable and meaningful. Malarkey’s ideas go way too far in my opinion, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t be part of an informed discussion.
With respect, at the time of writing “well regulated” was taken to mean that something was in good order or working properly. It did not mean and should not be allowed to mean through the lens of historical modernism that to be armed a person or body must be subject to arbitrary rules or oversight by un-involved parties.
“A well regulated militia…” in the context of the 2nd is stating an “organized militia”. Farmer Joe can’t hold off the Red Coats by himself, an organized and regulated militia is needed. I see this a lot and while it does not preclude other laws as stated in Heller, people stop at “regulated” and assume it means solely to regulate through regulations. When you keep reading it also says, “the right of the people” and not the “the right of the State, county or territory” to maintain arms. The language I believe is very specific for a reason, and, was so important to the writers it came second only to the ability to speak your mind, worship or not, conduct discourse in your agreement or disagreement with the gov’t.
I do agree however everyone should listen to each other instead of an outright refusal to exchange ideas. Learning happens this way as well as understanding. In these situations I think the knee-jerk “we have to do something!” even if that something has no effect or impact takes hold. But, we feel better because we “did something.”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html
Not directed at you, but I think amidst everyone’s interpretations of the amendment Justice Scalia’s interpretation was relevant.
The amendment doesn’t say keeping and bearing arms should be well regulated. It specifically states the keeping and bearing of arms by the people “shall not be infringed”. “Well regulated” means well armed and disciplined in the use of arms. There are no constitutionally mandated regulations. In fact, many of the regulations that currently exist should’ve been ruled unconstitutional many years ago. The militia composed of the body of the people needs to be well armed and disciplined in the use of arms in order to keep the state free from tyranny. Don’t fall for the Marxist propaganda.
I hear you Justin but I can also see a little bit of an argument that too many people are not disciplined in the use of arms, that some mandatory training for certain weapon classes could ensure that discipline. The hard part is having it NOT create unnecessary hoops for the majority of people who don’t have that problem.
If we can teach Jimmy and Jenny to roll a jimmy onto a banana on school time, we can teach basic safety.
I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but sex ed analogy is like telling someone not to shoot themselves in the foot and an hour later the entire class has a hole in at least one of their feet.
If you are going to say “well regulated” meant regulations, how do you justify the “shall not be infringed” part? They are opposites.
And, the founders just got out from under government “regulation”, so in starting a new country they want more government “regulation”? Really? They did not like government. I’m surprised you didn’t know this.
This fellow is more Quisling than Chamberlain. If you spend your money with him, rest assured it will be used against you. His company & products are now a hard pass from me.
Sounds like the gun store owners who sold the rifle to Cruz, and shut down their business afterwards. Very suspicious. Has the left cleverly placed operatives in the business of selling guns and accessories, later to use these people’s platform as “pro 2nd Amendment types” to speak out against their own business?
I think the answer is YES. I hate the conspiracy game but I do believe there is no limit to the scheming of those who lust for power and control.
And you’d likely be correct. Once is an incident. Twice is a coincidence. Thrice is enemy action.
Or the owners came to the realization that they’d never be able to do business in that town ever again? Or even look at a customer the same way again? It’s the stuff nightmares are made of, not to mention they probably get harassing phone calls and messages at all hours. Would you put up with it?
Neville is judged by history. Most, sadly, don’t subscribe. Those same non-subscribers also fall right in step with Russia, their media fingering, and our own low-info emoticon spewers in ignoring the relative magnitude of gun violence. (which is lower than it was in the 1990s, if you haven’t dissected the Bureau of Justice statistics, you should, and temper that with the understanding that in the ~30k/year of firearm related deaths, there are no statistics that capture crimes stopped or lives saved by civilian firearm owners)
Rifles (including AKs, ARs, and every other knock off of any military rifle) are responsible for about 1% of gun deaths. Cheap handguns aren’t as savory a target.
Divided we fail. Russia’s figured that out. People on both sides of the aisle have too. Swim up stream, and vote them out.
Never heard of his company. But will not order from him now. 100 round drum mags are cheaper elsewhere. $100 or less.
The hypocrisy in his epistle is mind boggling.
It’s a right…but it’s a privilege that’s reaching a tipping point.
If you have nothing to hide why do you care? Thanks Stalin, let’s burn the 4th Amendment with the 2nd.
A militia to keep the government in check…that’s licensed by the government.
And no mention of the FBI not doing their jobs…
Sounds like European style gun control. It’s all fun and games until the different licenses become increasingly difficult and expensive to obtain, leaving all but the politically connected and wealthy from being able to own firearms. See concealed carry in places like Hawaii or New Jersey.
What would he propose to do with the millions of semi-automatic pistols and rifles currently in circulation? Would we all need to turn them in for safe keeping until we went through a DMV style gun safety class and then waited 3-5 years to get our government issued Orange Merit badge?
And a credit check is not proof of being a “member of productive society”… what a joke. There are very productive people out there with bad credit… and very bad people with a 800+ credit score.
bro, my TL rocks a bumpstock on door crashing ops. If they is a ban on bumpstocks it effects everybody. We all need to pull toegther and make sure nobody takes are guns! We double tap as a SOP and my TL can only do doubletaps if he uses the bumpstock on his long gun. I do agree, nobody needs a 60 round clip.
This is the dumbest post I have read on this website, even dumber than the Malarkey that spawned its creation.
May God help you and have mercy on your soul.
How does anyone visit SSD more than 3-4 times in a month and NOT recognize Horshack and his TL?? They have been around here for a long long time.
Some of you need fresh air and a re-calibration of your satire meter.
Right!? I was hoping Horshack would let us know about how he felt on this post because it’s people like him and his TL that keep us safe at night! God bless you.
bros, we crash the doors hard! If we couldn’t rock a bump stock and some drum clips i’m not sure we could hit the doors like that! My TL had a banana clip back in Saudi. Bad ass! We rotate the long gun on are second stack up and before the second countdown starts. My ATL s job is to reload the drum clip before we crash again!
Your English grammar and spelling is atrocious.
bro, i don’t pretend to be a professer! But i am a doctor in door crashing ops and tactics!
I am NOT your “bro”.
Did you even graduate High School?
grade 13 bro.. i am driving so its hard to spell. We could be bros if we crashed some doors on an op toegehter! My TL used to call me Gilligan but that was before we did yearly training ops in every April. He liked when i made a SOP to do doubletaps. We use a countdown too!
Airsoft ops?
Simmer down Gecko45.
The original and the greatest.
This post is awesome. Horshack, keep it up and don’t change a thing!
Horshack = Jack Mandaville?
C u at the parade?
If the politicians will destroy or ignore the Second Admendmant, they will soon destroy the First and Fourth and so on. Regulating a “Creator”, however you define that, given right is the end of the American Experiment.
Sadly, from antiquity, men have sought to enslave and control others. We have our Rights because our Founding Fathers lived under tyranny without them for many many years. They tried to ensure we would not live through what they did. Nature of politicians is power and money.
Final thought, mass murders will continue until the government and activists have removed firearms from the population. Then the only mass murder will be by the “State” for our own “safety”. As the wheel just turns.
The 2nd Amendmant can’t be destroyed for it is needed to protect the First!
If the 2nd is done away with then how long after will the 1st and the 4th fall?
100% agree!
Here is what FREEDOM means….A person has the freedom to kill another. Sure it may be deemed illegal and against law BUT it still happens and within a FREE society bad things happen, many of them intentionally.
So while one has the freedom to do another harm that person has the freedom to defend themselves.
It’s said, “You can’t yell FIRE in a crowded theatre!” Yet in reality you can. You can do and say whatever you want BUT you must also know there will be consequences for said actions.
And this is what is called using our freedoms to work against us
The Left IS going after the 1st, 2nd and 4th Amendments as we speak! It is a full-on attack against our inalienable rights.
The Left wants to enslave us in their nice, warm, cuddly, safe idea of Marxism because we are not smart enough to protect or think for ourselves.
I feel bad for Mr. Malarkey, he’ll be unemployed soon, and won’t be able to provide the helicopter rides, fur coats, and Chardonnay a merchant of death must supply to his hyphenated named wife.
ma·lar·key
m??lärk?/
noun informal
noun: malarkey
meaningless talk; nonsense.
“don’t give me that malarkey”
The fact that there are so many SSD readers that are adamantly behind gun control, mag limits, and registration is scary. Our empire is definitely on borrowed time…
Agreed. I wonder if they realize the Constitution, or the Founding Father’s intent behind it.
People fail to educate on rights, going for the “easy thing” instead of the “right thing”.
Reverend I have a feeling that in my childrens lifetime the guys making those comments will be going door to door “just following orders”. The level of indoctrination and straight up brainwashing in modern society will be the death of what little freedom we still have.
Hopefully most of them are out of the military (or were never in), and it will be a non-starter.
There are a few mindless leftists “in” who would try…but not nearly enough to succeed. The vast majority of Combat Arms guys still know what the Constitution is as well as local Law Enforcement. Some “certain Federal agencies” might be a different story but the Realtree wearing, beer drinking, truck driving guys I work with babysitting Federal inmates definetly aren’t the gun grabbing type.
See my above comments on books to read, besides the ever useful MCDP #1 and the Bible, John A. Stormer’s “None Dare Call it Treason: 25th Anniversary Edition” .
Thanks for sharing those El Terryble. Always looking for the next thing to read.
Several of these folks have never posted here before.
They could very well be Malarky recruits.
Russian troll-bots? Sewing the seeds of discontent once again?
Maybe. Probably not. We should be wary of dismissing everyone we disagree with as Kremlin-backed bots. That cuts both ways, does nothing for us Americans and ultimately plays right into the hands any that would divide us.
*directly into the hands of any.. dang typo oops
I don’t believe there are any Russian bots here, but they are definitely influencing what is happening in social media. The left is just as susceptible to Russian IO as the right. They are fanning the flames of dischord in our nation. My wife asked me what was different this time than in the past? My answer, foreign influence in our social media. They are helping us destroy ourselves.
Oh no. Someone in the industry doesn’t have the same dogmatic adherence to the text of the Constitution as SSD. Quick, let’s pretend this is news so we can go digging around their, and their families’ social media in what is clearly and opinionated attempt to drive sales away from the company they work for, but otherwise not product or industry news by any means.
As much as we love our guns, enjoy shooting them, and believe in our right to defend ourselves, families and property, the gun industry has done nothing to help end and reduce the insanely large number of innocent people killed by guns in the country every year. Unless they can be seen as trying to help, many Americans will continue to see the industry as part of the problem.
The Neville Chamberlain quip is off base. This is one country, not Germany and Great Britain facing against war. We disagree with each other, and since we are a democratic republic we come to a compromise. Or at least we should. Instead SSD is advocating an all or nothing strategy. If people keep on getting shot, especially kids in schools, we might just watch our second amendment get amended out of the Constitution. It would be legal, and then the police would come, and would legally take our guns, with or without our dead body and no one would care. Or the gun industry and firearms community could try and work towards making this country safer as opposed to just sticking our fingers in our ears and pretending there isn’t a problem. We need to be involved in the debate. We need to come with more than 2A arguments. We need to have solutions to the violence and a willingness to implement them. If we keep clinging to the second amendment until the rest of the country gets fed up and takes it away, because they legally can, and legally will, and your creator isn’t gonna come down and say not so fast.
We all want continued access to our firearms, suppressors, inexpensive ammo and magazines of whatever size we want. At least Mr Malarkey is making himself part of the conversation. I don’t agree with him, but there are 330 million Americans and I don’t expect to agree with most of them on everything either. We should still have a conversation, and respectively listen to all sides without attacking them or their families. SSD, and many of the readers appear to be intent on not having any discussion, and simply attacking anyone who doesn’t join the tribal and strict adherence to the holy 2A. It’s not a good long term strategy, and its not very American.
I actually advocate for changes in gun laws, to reinstate rights already surrendered by those who compromised.
By saying that the “gun industry has done nothing to help the insanely large number of innocent people killed by guns in the country every year” that would be like holding car manufacturers responsible for deaths caused by bad and reckless drivers when they have wrecks. Gun manufacturers can not send someone with each gun sold to make certain that the user is not irresponsible or evil and stay with the gun to make sure it is never misused any more than automobile manufacturers could send someone to monitor the use of each car over the lifetime of the car. Cars kill just as many people as guns do each year in the USA, therefore this is a valid comparison on this point.
Imagine you’re a scared American worried about gun harm. Not car harms, not knife harms. GUNS. You want to mitigate GUN harm. How does this insigh (which is true) mitigate gun harms?
I get you’re trying to put things in perspective which is fair but it aint a winner in the face of bullet riddled fellow Americans. It’s just not.
To someone trying to mitigate gun harm this looks like misdirection and they may just stop talking with you altogether and rally more people against 2A. Seriously, this kind of talking point used against Gun-grabbers is not working.
The weakness of comparing the gun and car industries is that car companies seem to be willing to go to great lengths to improve safety.
If they were run by the guys that own/market guns, they’d be making them faster rather than safer.
I don’t have a lot of solutions to gun violence issues, but I do recognize a spade every once in a while.
Drawing on everything I know about persuading people and discussing consequential, contentious topics I’ve come to the conclusion that repeatedly screaming “GOD GIVEN RIGHT” and “2A!” are the most effective. That’s it. Nothing else.
Maybe..MAYBE the award winning “nomenclature lessons for grieving victims/scared people” is a good long term strategy that will win fellow Americans over.
My sarcasm aside. You’re right. We should constructively be a part of the conversation that goes beyond the usual talking points. We should be offering specific policy proposals to our reps that are unrelated to 2A (i.e. education, health) that would mitigate the chances of gun-related harms.
Supporting 2A is the right thing to do, that obviously goes without saying. But lets be real. Being correct, being right, or having the best idea doesn’t always win in the so-called market place of ideas that is characteristic of our form of Democracy or really anywhere else.
Bill, you stated:
“As much as we love our guns, enjoy shooting them, and believe in our right to defend ourselves, families and property, the gun industry has done nothing to help end and reduce the insanely large number of innocent people killed by guns in the country every year. Unless they can be seen as trying to help, many Americans will continue to see the industry as part of the problem.”
Could we not replace “guns” with “cars” or “knives” and ask the same question?
We can place a 16 year old behind a 2000 lb missile and have them merge onto a 6 lane freeway because they took a course and got a license. Yet every single time they get behind that wheel they place their and others lives at risk. Far more people die in car accidents, over 3000 in my state of Texas alone last year.
Knives and sharp objects kill more than long guns.
So what about banning them? An airplane going down can kill 200+ in an instant yet we all freely take that risk to board a plane, ships and trains.
How many kids were killed in school shooting, 2016 to 2017? I think the number is 7 if I remember correctly. Now it may seem like more but that’s because the media wants more kids dead, why? Cause that stuff sells. If that Florida shooter had been stopped dead cold before he fired a shot we would NOT be having a discussion about how an armed teacher can safe guard kids but rather how a mentally disturbed person got those guns or about some other nonsense but because there was no innocent death or tragedy the media would be off the story looking for the next tragedy.
Solutions to violence? How about moms and dads sitting down for family time? Just eating dinner together at the table, every night, no TV or phones and other crap? That will go miles in restoring values.
Teach kids the value of life
No. The discussion Gun-grabbers are having is about GUNS. Not Knives, Cars, or roundhouse kicks. They’re not going to talk about those things with you. They will talk about Guns and only Guns as long as they think that is the problem.
Meet them there with a persuasive argument or tangible policy proposals that alleviates their angst about GUNS.
Your family dinner table idea is at least a good start in the right direction (for those that have a the old nuclear family life dynamic)
Lowspeed, I very much thank you for the feedback and insight. Your points are valid cept I can’t agree 100% with you in that gun-grabbers want guns alone, as in guns alone are the problem. They attach guns with acts of violence, and yes they can do great violence but so can ALL objects in the hands of those who act out that violence.
Guns, cars, bats, knives, bombs, poison, rocks and to a degree words, can all be used in a violent manner. So in my eyes it’s not so much the “tool” but the “tool operator”. We have violence of action because we have people who, for some reason, are set off to act out. That’s the problem. It’s not what “they think the problem is” but better what is the “cause”.
The “problem” is gun violence to them but really gun violence or any violence is not the problem. Violence is the result of an action, controlled or uncontrolled, therefore the “problem” precedes the violence. There is no “gun policy” that will stop or eradicate violence because if someone or some group wants to kill or cause terror they can do so with out guns, as we have witnessed in parts of the world where guns are banned.
This, at least for now, boils down to highly emotional topic. Wounds are still fresh. Should we discuss this? Yes of course, as we are now, but emotions need to be in check from both sides.
I generally agree with you BUT for the car analogy. Automotive industry has made very obvious improvements to dramatically lower injury and fatality rates in the last 50 years.
Could even say the gun industry backlash against “smart” guns/biometrics is akin to a backlash against implementing airbags in cars.
I don’t think these types of analogies ever really work for firearms though, just entirely different animals (cars not in the Bill of Rights for one).
Regg you are correct in one area, that the car industry has made great strides to make the cars safer, I agree 100% AND this actually supports the car/gun analogy. Let me explain please.
Car accidents thru the years have made car makers say they need to improve safety, which they have in great strides. Yet people still die by the thousands each year in cars. They have not said we need to stop making cars because in the end it’s the driver more so than the car itself who causes accidents.
Likewise gun makers have made guns safer but it’s not the guns who cause tragedy, rather those who use the gun.
Can we make cars just about 100% crash proof? Yes we can but we must then eliminate the human factor thus restricting/outlawing the freedom to drive. This will be a possible reality in years to come, sadly.
Can we make guns 100% safe? No, as long as there is a human factor involved nothing can be 100% safe.
Where are we guaranteed 100% saftey anyway? Everything is a chance, in life there is always a probability things go south.
OK, let’s continue the analogy then. Drivers are required by law to carry liability insurance in case they kill someone with their car. Sounds like you’d be on board with having gun owners do the same. Driving a car also requires a driver’s license, for which you must pass a written and driving test, and renew your license periodically. I’d be happy to have licensing for gun owners. And if they accidentally shoot or kill someone, they’d lose their license for a while, or possibly forever.
Maybe we should have a license to use Facebook and require insurance to use it as well. Then, if we do something wrong, we can lose our right to free speech.
Buckethead, in many states one cannot carry without completing a class, going thru a federal background check and then showing a certain degree of competence with a firearm. They then need to renew every so often.
As with any analogy, when pressed they fail. With that stated, driving is NOT a right. It is a privileged.
Car ownership does NOT require any of those things. Only driving a car on public roads does. So with the car argument I can have a 60 MM mortar as long as I keep it on private property.
Your name is apt, keep that bucket strapped down tight, wouldn’t want any logic or reason to impede your day to day life.
I don’t know why people are so ignorant as to keep clamoring for more laws when over, and over, revelations of failed enforcement keep popping up.
The failure to fully 1. implement and fund and 2. enforce the NICS should piss all of us who have ever bought a gun. I PAID to have the government scrutinize my past, with the hope that they’d catch some of the assholes whose choices preclude them from legally owning a gun.
For you fans of partisan nonsense, cling to your blinders, suckers; this failed enforcement has spanned multiple presidential administrations.
Googling “how to thaw ground to dig holes” and “DIY PVC cache”…
https://pjmedia.com/trending/liberals-dont-understand-serious-attempt-gun-confiscation-lead-civil-war/
More like ex X products owner. Is he just mad about the Magpul D60?
Someone needs to inform James that the Constitution doesn’t GIVE us any rights, those are God given rights that the Constitution keeps from being taken away.
Twenty thousand million dollars in sales and thinks the SCUBA police will come get you if you aren’t certified (more likely to be the grim reaper, but that’s not the point). What a load of Malarkey. By the way, my 8 year old drives carts at our farm as well from time to time, comepletely license free…sometimes while shooting machine guns, but only once underwater in full SCUBA gear. Not certified, he still DGAF.
The ironic part about the commenters who support Mr Malarkey is that they aren’t even his customers. They don’t believe he should be in business anymore than those who oppose his views.
Magpul drums work just fine by the way.
Also, a fitting quote from the fine series “Band of Brothers”
Malarkey: Malarkey, Donald G!
Sobel: Malarkey is slang for “bullshit,” isn’t it? [takes his rifle]
Malarkey: Yes, sir!
Sobel: Rust on the butt-plate hinge spring, Private Bullshit – revoked. [tosses his rifle at Malarkey and moves on]
Well, I wasn’t going to buy one of his over-priced mags, most likely. Hello, Magpul, take my money!
What I find ironic is that the fudds among us (X-products, Optics Planet) have supported the biggest outlets of gun media on YouTube or blogs with promo codes or products for their videos. They definitely pulled the wool over our eyes and I’m sure there are more out there.
Well, he least he is named appropriately, he’s full of it.
This guy just hosed himself and he deserves it. Maybe someone else can by and resurrect the company as it goes through a bankruptcy?
Can you imagine Boeing lobbying to make it harder for their customers to obtain their aircraft? Malarkey and Company are Dimwitted Ding Bats. All the Atheists can shove off and find a country founded on the belief in nothing at all except unexplainable happenstance.
Trump just directed DOJ to ban bump stocks.
I think the “ban all the things we don’t like” mentality is an inherently cowardly belief held by losers who avoid personal responsibility. Useless folks who run from personal responsibility don’t expect those around them to stand up either.
That is why the left is irrationally afraid of inanimate objects. It’s the scary magazines that did it, the existence of bump stocks is why we have murder.
This mindset is ridiculous and contains no thought into the untold thousands of years in which people have been murdering each other, with rocks, with sticks, with oil and fire, bows and arrows, spears and more recently airplanes and guns. That is why after something like this we see all the cowards gathering and cheering on more big government regulation of the scary things.
You need to realize that some people just want to F**K**G kill you, with any tool available. Do we ban every dangerous item ever invented in response? No. We need to man up, deal with it and go on about our life. Stop being soft and wishing for big government regulate all the items in life that scare you. That tactic is proven to be a failure every single day in places like Chicago.
More gun laws WONT STOP MURDER.
I don’t think we should ban all the things we don’t like. Just the things that make it really, really, really easy for one person to kill lots of other people very quickly. Seems reasonable.
No it won’t stop murder. It’ll just stop one person from committing lots of murders very quickly.
Wrong.
Truck massacres in the UK, the Boston bombing, 9/11…
The examples of mass murder with out AR-15’s exist, you are just unwilling to look. That is because you are lazy and what little effort you are willing to input is agenda driven by your cowardice toward inanimate objects.
Credit check to own NFA items seriously? I didn’t have any credit for years, it was only when I started traveling internationally and needed a real credit card that I even started to build some.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/liberals-dont-understand-serious-attempt-gun-confiscation-lead-civil-war/
https://pjmedia.com/trending/nunes-demands-answers-11-current-former-government-officials-steele-dossier/
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/will-guts-link-fatherlessness-school-shootings/
https://www.frontpagemag.com
What do the above links have to do with Mr. Malarkey, his Facebook post, and the Parkland school shooting? Because no law would have stopped the shooting. What would have is an FBI that did it’s job, or at least alerted local law enforcment. That and if we are going to ban tools instead of the men who use them to kill people, while under the threat of tyrannical government I might add, why didn’t we ban airplanes after 9/11 or trucks after the Nice, Frace Jihad Truck attack?
How many of you all shop on Amazon ? If you want to get deeper into the (anti 2A) private sector working with government to disarm citizens discussion, keep shopping there. Amazon just does it softly, kind of like Mr. Malarkey. They will probably even send you a box with pre-paid return label for your guns to be sent back. No need to knock on doors and confiscate. Prime has soooo many uses these days.
I shop locally whenever possible as I would rather give my money to my community. That said Amazon makes it so damn easy to shop it’s addicting!
You are right, Amazon, Facebook, Google, social media in general all have big liberal agendas.
Dellis, I am sorry to hear that. We have to break contact now – as the Amazon to Google search history + predictive analytic algorithm knows your next purchase, has given you a 10% off with free shipping and it must ship to your home address. Burn notice from the Bee…. good luck sir.
Umm Amazon doesn’t sell guns * Recedes quietly into shrubbery* D’OH!!
Odd that no one really talks about taking nutjobs out of circulation and enhancing the ability of law enforcement to crack down on illegally possessed handguns in urban areas. Evidently the popular and elected leadership opinion in the more problematic areas, e.g. Chicago, LA, Detroit, etc., is that those lives (despite the hype and impassioned marches) really don’t matter. Maybe it’s high time folks started looking at statistics and approaching the gun homicide/suicide problem from a solution-oriented angle, and coming up with something that works instead of post-inaction anguished hand-wringing. It would be hard work but pretty straightforward and far simpler than the malarkey list: eliminate illegal handgun possession in urban areas and aggressively attack the mental health issue. The systemic problem of gun crime will largely disappear (for the foolish out there, the key word is CRIME, not gun). Anything else is jerking off, so to speak. The fact that gun crimes somehow initiate and invigorate a nationwide anti-2A movement isn’t logical.
Sorry for the less than informed question, but being from Europe and a liberal (scary, a liberal reading SSD), I have a question.
In the 2A it states:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
(Source: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-ii)
When reading the 2A, the right to bear arms is it not only a right established to secure freedom from the State (Government) and to be able to protect the country (USA) from it’s enemies?
I know there are thousands of reports, websites and more regarding this, but I believe that the Average Joe answer is more honest and eaiser to understand.
Thanks!
Nutshell answer Thomas…Free Speech is precious and is to be guarded and protected, preserved. For the People by the People…the 2nd Amendment is part of the checks and balances our forefathers wanted in place. Enemies of the people can be both foreign and domestic.
Yes, yes it is.
Why did he feel the need to post three comments, each from a different screen name, but with the same icon, email and IP addresses?
Damn, he’s brought in $20,000 million in the last 13 years (that’s $20 billion if my math is correct)? Pretty sure that would make him one of the wealthiest men in the world, his well thought out and communicated essay establishes him as one of the smartest as well.
“I believe gun ownership is a privilege.”
Well it isn’t, not in the US anyhow you stupid F#@K!!! ARGGGGHHHH
“there should be a regimented well-regulated structured way to how you should achieve those rights”
HOLY SHIT HE IS LITERALLY UNABLE TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN A RIGHT AND A PRIVILEGE
My kids over 7 understand the difference.
My RIGHT is not your privilege to grant. You can keep your overpriced drum mags. sir.
A funny thing happened to Ruger and Smith & Wesson when they went full retard anti gunner, they also nearly folded. If we don’t buy their garbage, they don’t make money. Screw em.
How to ruin your Business in 3….2….1…
Neville Chamberlin can forever be known in History for appeasement and failure.
When the left call for “gun control” or control over anything, shall not be infringed, NO, and I’m not budging or debating should be our motto. I wish more would be libertarian/constitutionalist.
I thought SSD wasn’t a forum for political arguments.
If you can politicize civil rights…
Of course you can. I’ll bet one could argue that the very concept of civil liberty is political.
From an euro standpoint, it’s pretty interesting to see this discussed on various sites. I have some thoughts and questions, fee free to ignore them as you please.
I have an issue with the common card that 2A pros play. The main one is “people die in car crashes”. Well you need a license to drive? Basically by playing the car card you’re saying you’re pro licenses. Because that’s what you legally need to drive a car, on your way to work or on your way to plow through a crowd of innocent people. A license doesn’t prevent you from doing anything wrong, but a license can be revoked if you have poor eyesight and things that inhibit you from functioning. Sounds pretty pro license to me.. Anyone care to put out anything constructive?
My main question to any 2A crowd would be: How do you solve the gun violence in the US?
Because you do have a problem. In terms of gun related deaths you are high up with other shitholes in the world, while other western countries with a similar percentage of gun ownership chills in the civilized west.
As someone posted above, I think the smart thing to do would to work with the anti 2A people to get some laws in place. What’s an extended background check and an X amount of wait period to be able to retain your firearms? If you’re a part of a well regulated militia you speak of then you should be able to pass that background check and wait a couple of weeks. If the pro 2A worked with the anti 2A on some of their key wishes, you won’t end up in the all or nothing situation, and from looking at it from the outside, it seems more likely that nothing will be the outcome rather than all.
The answer is that the right to drive a car is NOT a right as established in our constitution.
Also, as you have probably read in the comments here, there are those who believe the right to be armed os ordained by God.
They also believe that armed citizens are the best guarantor of individual liberty.
Yes a reasonable approach would be to work towards more sensible laws that, probably, would involve a ban on assault weapons (or whatever you. choose to call them). The challenge there is that the pro gun crowd firmly believes that to do so would open the door to further restrictions and, eventually, the total ban on gun ownership with a few small exceptions similar to the UK. In this, I think they have a point, but I also think an assault weapons ban is worth the risk.
From an American standpoint, I think you Euro guys certainly have gone the opposite way of where we want our country going. You guys got rid of the guns then let in millions upon millions of undocumented migrants and now you have a rape crisis in multiple countries over there. So…Euro certainly doesn’t have it right.
America doesn’t need any advice from a Europe in the process of being erased. Clean your own house bro, or I guess, convert to Islam because you certainly can’t fight it effectively with out the 2A that you disparage.
As for America, we need some education reform. Schools need to teach an approved curriculum and not social justice warrior bull shit. Our cities need to follow deportation laws, and as for the gun crimes in the inner cities, I lay that blame at rap and hollywood culture. These kids look up to gangster rappers as their heroes. The public obsesses over movie stars and sports players who all play make believe for a living. Rap music teaches young blacks to impregnate as many women as possible before they go to prison, so we have generations of welfare recipients and fatherless children. They look up to gangster rappers for leadership and the cycle continues. That is where the majority of our gun crime and murder statistics come from. Rifles are used in a tiny minority of the gun crimes in this country, yet get all the publicity. Inner city blacks commit a vastly higher percentage of the murders, but it’s overlooked, expected and never brought to light. Look up the FBI statistics if you don’t believe me, it’s on their website. Dozens of black youth die ever weekend in these major cities, but let a half white/half hispanic guy shoot one under unclear circumstances and it’s a national crisis complete with looting and burning.
So before we try any additional firearm legislation, why don’t we get this rap culture in check? How about a rap licensing board, a high capacity vulgarity ban or limiting how many times a rapper says he wants to kill a cop or some other nonsense like that? Rap is poisoning the minds of generations of these fatherless inner city youth, and then their schools are failing them on top of that. They don’t look up to real heroes, just people like J-Z and Snoop doggy dog.
Murder starts in the mind, the tool is an afterthought.
Easier, much easier, to control tools than minds.
BTW, if I wasn’t such and understanding guy, I’d be tempted to view this is a pretty racist post.
TominVA, I would expect nothing less. Democrats ALWAYS chose the easy way to attempt to “fix” problems. That is why Chicago is still such a hellhole. It never has been fixed, and never will be fixed by simply trying to control the tools. Easy does not equal good or righteous.
Their other fall black plan is to say everything is “racist”.
Facts can not be racist. Perhaps you should look inward as to why race clouds your eyesight on such issues.
Reducing inner city murder rates is not easy. There is no easy fix. Controlling the tools has failed to work. Increasing tool control still will not work. So you D’s need to get “easy” out of your head when it comes to things like this.
Stop whining for people to ban the things that you don’t like and stop crying that everything is racist. That is a very lazy way to be, and you’ll never get anything worth while accomplished by doing it. Get better, don’t try to bring others down.
Sam,
So…what should we do? Presumably you’re against an assault weapons ban. So what do you propose?
Tackle mental health issues and care as a nation? You’re flirting with adopting a national healthcare system if you do that, Neville Chamberlain. And we don’t want healthcare right? Can’t wait to get rid of mine. Oh wait, it’s keeping me alive…
Tackle poverty in the inner city? Prepare to be one lonely Republican.
An assault weapons ban of existing weapons and future sales is relatively easy and would almost certainly make a difference. So what if you have to give up your ARs? Really, so what?
Once again TominVA, of course I am against banning more inanimate objects that you are afraid of. That is not the answer.
I did not mention national health care either. You are so excited by the hopes of Trump banning some weapon accessory that your reading comprehension has suffered. I mentioned education. If you are specifically looking for a counter to AR-15 school shooters that requires increased school security, in various forms. Some armed, trained men in every school with radios. These cowardly school shooters don’t even go out shooting, they surrender as soon as the guns show up in most cases. I mentioned that inner city violence is related to culture, specifically rap and hollywood, and having no fathers around.
Your “prepare to be the only lonely Republican” comment on tackling inner city poverty is sad. The Dems control most of those cities for one, the second reason is that none of those corrupt politicians want to fix it either, so I agree with you there. Thats one of the reasons for the 2A, to keep corrupt government folks, that we all agree already exists, in check.
I also advocated for more personal responsibility. Take you for example. Your fear about guns shows in your posts. So you almost beg for the government to ban more things so you don’t have to deal with it, you hope. Instead of taking personal responsibility, seeking self defense training, arming yourself, whatever it takes for you to get over your personal fear of some guns and their accessories, you clamor for more big government protection. Then, instead of dealing with your fear yourself, you jump on social media and try to infect as many others as possible with your own fear. You do more spreading of your own fear than conquering. That is a bad ratio.
Take the school schooter. He had a lot of hatred in his life. Instead of dealing with his hatred, working it out, in any other way, he brings a gun to school and infects everyone else that he can with his hatred. He lacked personal responsibility and good role models. This is where the left is failing. Lack of personal responsibility, increased reliance on a bigger and bigger government. A culture of whiners who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions and look to big government to fix their problems from banning big sodas to AR-15s.
Lasse,
Let me try. The first 10 Amendments of the Constitution are usually – and erroneously – referred to as the “Bill of Rights.” They were demanded by the nascent individual states and the will of the people as a prerequisite to ratification of the Constitution. In other words, without those modifications to the base document, the Constitution would not have been approved.
The most important point is that those 10 Amendments do not describe “rights” at all, but rather RESTRICTIONS on the power of government. Not just the Federal Government but state and local governments as well since the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. As others have already mentioned, driving does not enjoy Constitutional protection – armed citizens do.
The Founding Fathers wanted to give as much power as possible to the individual so as to act as one of the “checks and [counter]balances” against the inherent power government wields. We do not have to ask government “permission” in order to exercise free speech – precisely because the government is restrained from denying free speech.
Likewise, the 4th and 5th Amendments that constrain government power to search, seize, arrest or coerce a confession from an individual. The 2nd Amendment is purposely designed like those other 9 Amendments specifically to give power to individual citizens and deny the government exclusive authority to the force of arms.
The 2nd Amendment is not about hunting, target shooting or even about self defense. It is an individual responsibility that is explicitly linked to the idea of “common defense” through the use of the term “militia.” In turn, that “common defense” was expected to be mobilized in a crisis against any threat.
That might include a posse in support of a local sheriff or in response to a foreign invasion. In the most extreme case, it might be called for in response to a perceived threat from the government itself. Since the 2nd Amendment is a check on government power, it is appropriate for us to be wary of any plan by the government – even one that has some popular support – to reduce the power of the individual based on fear not facts.
Bottom line, asking the government’s “permission” to own a firearm is fundamentally contrary to the Constitution’s intent. Just as clearly as it would be to ask permission to exercise free speech.
TLB
Terry,
“In the most extreme case, it might be called for in response to a perceived threat from the government itself”
From the comments I’ve seen on this site, it would seem this is foremost in the minds of SSD readers as justification for the 2A. I don’t think anyone’s thinking about posse’s or forming a militia for state or national defense. Are you?
So what would it look like? What line does the government cross that causes you to say, that’s enough, I’m going to start shooting? Who do you shoot first?
TominVA,
The Founding Fathers intended to craft a participatory form of government in the Constitutional framework that would allow for political differences to be resolved within the system. It is not a perfect construct, but it has survived – largely intact – on this contentious road to a “more perfect union” for two plus centuries.
As far as what it would take, I would refer you to the Declaration of Independence. The document enumerates more than a decades worth of issues that had not been resolved to the satisfaction of the colonists. Issues they eventually deemed worthy of Civil War.
Likewise, by 1860 a significant portion of the country – North and South – thought there was enough justification to fight another Civil War. I am not going to re-litigate either of those conflicts.
But it is interesting to note that after each of those hard fought wars the winning side did NOT disarm individuals on the losing side. That reflects a core belief that an armed citizenry was and is an integral and vital foundation to all civil liberties in a Republic.
I will admit that some folks here and elsewhere online seem all to eager to start shooting their fellow Americans for my taste – simply because we disagree. Extremists on the right and the left obviously share a believe that there is only one way for a “real” American to think.
Damned if I know where they got that idea. Certainly not from the Founding Fathers. Still, the fact is that the Founders thought that it might again be necessary and entirely appropriate for the people to resist a government’s edicts by force. However, they expected that to be only an in extremist option of last resort – and they incorporated the 2nd Amendment into the Constitution accordingly.
TLB
I think that when you have law enforcment organizations carrying water for political parties, doing their dirty work, exhonerating Hillary Clinton for prima facie crimes, creating false narratives to undermine presidential elections; a past Presidential Administration that nationalized 20% of the US economy; eviserated the military; doubled the national debt to $20 trillion; illegally spied on the American People and lied about it under oath; targeted Christians, Conservatives, and military veterans as domestic terrorists with the FBI, DHS, and IRS; intentionally let guns to Mexican drug cartels; violated the US Constitution’s Treaty Clause to let Iran keep a nuclear weapons program, giving them $150 billion, letting Hezbollah traffic narcotics into the US, releasing muderers of American troops, like Ali Daqduq from custody; committed a form of ethnic cleansing and genocide by colonizing America with tens of millions of refugees and immigrants from the Third World, while saying that Ameriac is “not a Christian country any more”; all while abandoning strategic gains in the Middle East, letting China and ISIS run roughshod throughout their respective regions, and associate with Louis Farakhan, Rashid Khalidi, Frank Marshall Davis, etc., etc.,,,,,,
Well, we are closer to having to rectify the Republic by 2nd Amendment means then ever before in the history of the Country. That’s why the Left want’s American’s disarmed, because they know that with access to rifles to the degree they have them, they could never fully implement the totalitarian state they are working for.
Look at Europe at what happens when a nation’s people are disarmed; you get the Holocaust, Holodomar, and today, with Muslim rape gangs and colonization and EU politicians and media that cover’s for the Islamic takeover, and prosecutes citizens for “hate speech” for criticising Islam.
I’m not saying this to accusatory, I’m just saying this because we as American’s need to be on watch and ready for what’s coming.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/liberals-dont-understand-serious-attempt-gun-confiscation-lead-civil-war/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123992665198727459
Lasse – You stated:
“My main question to any 2A crowd would be: How do you solve the gun violence in the US?
Because you do have a problem. In terms of gun related deaths you are high up with other shitholes in the world, while other western countries with a similar percentage of gun ownership chills in the civilized west.”
I suggest you maybe not watch the late night talk show hosts as a news source. There are an estimated 300 million guns in America, may I ask what other country has that many privately owned firearms?
So for having a huge population and an estimated 300 million guns the USA ranks I believe 11th in the world for “mass shootings”. Remember back in 2010 or 2011 when over 70 people were killed in Norway?
So yes, we have a violence problem but so does every place on this big ball we call earth.
Your “Euro” has a host of problems and a huge amount of violence. There are places there where the police don’t go. Women are raped, high percentage of beatings and deaths by bats, clubs, knives and hell, even cars and trucks. So let’s take away the guns and STOP all the violence, right?
So how about going to your neck of the woods and standing on your soap box and speaking out against all the Muslim refugees who want to raise the Islamic flag in your towns and make Sharia law the rule of land there. If you are already doing this, please forgive my ignorance.
Michael Z. Williamson pretty much destroyed the cars/weapons comparison a few years back (from a pro-gun perspective).
It boiled down to, if we want to compare guns to cars, cars will lose. Especially if cars were regulated like guns already are.
And secondly, a license, registration and insurance to drive is only required if operating a vehicle on public roads.
Still want to keep with that line of thought Lasse?
Wow, James potato’d hard. To his wife: I’m sure you enjoy driving around in that Tesla that was paid for by customers over the year.
Malarkey is the right name for this fool; BS Malarkey
I once bought a pistol, legally in the parking lot of a Target in winter garden Florida. all I needed was my drivers license. To most of America right now that would look insane. The idea that gun owners don’t have to do anything to alter the perception that they are largely part of the problem is categorically false. You can keep quoting the constitution and doing nothing or do something to alter the public perception like push for all concealed carry guys/gals to be first aid qualified or something like that. its an information war gents and the same chubby kids you scoff at for drinking soy lattes and wearing skinny jeans will be the ones that you have to convince that the gun community is a positive force for society. otherwise they are going to legislate away all your shit. all of it.
Mullarkey
Etymology
American English, of unknown origin; perhaps from Greek ??????? (malakía, “stupidity, idiocy, nonsense, bullshit”).
Noun
malarkey (uncountable)
(informal) Nonsense; rubbish. [from 1920s]
I decided it was a bunch of malarkey and stopped reading about halfway through.
What kind of malarkey is this? He parrots talking points about the right to bear arms, and then advocates a complex system based on government granted firearms privileges? Malarkey doesn’t know what rights are. He’s very confused. This sort of mush headed nonsense is typically found when attempting to discuss an issue with leftists. They’re afflicted with an inability to think logically, but they make up for it with an excess of feelings. It’s as if their cerebral cortex never developed but they have hypertrophied amygdala.
I hate Illinois Nazis, but I might hate anti-gun gun company owners more.