New Covenant

The citizen, the 2nd Amendment, and the government

2013-02-19T06:16:30-08:00

Over at the LA Times, George Skelton has written an op-ed titled, Dorner case shows folly of arming oneself to combat government, in which he argues how the Dorner outcome demonstrates the futility of armed resistance to the government. Unfortunately, he does nothing more than demonstrate a lack of coherent reasoning and understanding of the issue at hand.

To begin with, what exactly is his understanding of what the "government" is? He states,

The nutty notion that a citizen can be heavily enough armed to fight off the government went up in smoke near Big Bear Lake.

Huh? And all this time I thought, to reference Abe Lincoln, that our government was of the people, by the people, and for the people. Silly me. They, are us. Regardless, what's up with the claim that 2nd Amendment advocates believe that it means that "a citizen" is pitted against "the government"? Weren't the Bill of Rights expressely written to delineate how the citizens (note: plural) are protected from the government? Oh, and in the case of the Bill of Rights, I do believe "the government" refers to those duly elected representatives of the people. Seems that at least some of the founding fathers were aware of the intoxicating aspects of power (even when representatives are duly elected), and the need to restrain abuse of said power, via the Constitution.

Yet the notion that an armed citizenry would engage in self-defense against a tyrannical government is, evidently, patently absurd to Skelton. He states,

And there are many [e-mails he's received] like Bryan, who asked: "What if the German Jews had been well armed" against Hitler?

My answer: They would have been slaughtered by the Nazi Panzer divisions.

Maybe Skelton isn't aware of this, but the Nazis slaughtered 6,000,000 Jews anyway. Maybe he also is unaware that in the late 1930s the Nazis prevented Jews from owning firearms. Is it really that difficult to figure this out? If you were a Jew in Europe in the 1930s, and given the choice, would you have rather been unarmed or well armed? Would you have rather silently watched as you and your family were hauled off to a ghetto, and then exterminated in a concentration camp, or would you have wanted the chance and dignity to at least fight for what you could? Is Skelton so immune to the notion of self and family defense that he can't see this?

Again, he states,

The French and Poles were well armed. How'd that work out?

Sigh. Is he not aware of the French and Polish Resistance movements? Does he honestly think that their resistance was not, at the very least, a thorn in the side of the Nazi presence in France and Poland? Would he rather their movements have had no firearms whatsoever?

What is scary, though, is how Skelton seems to imply that we, as citizens of the United States, are nothing more than subjects of the government (and whatever police force said government employs). In his world we must bow down and acquiesce to whatever the government says or does simply for the fact that we would surely lose were we to get into a real shoot-em-up battle with said government. This, of course, is because we are outgunned due to the fact that, as he states, the 2nd Amendment has been violated with our rights currently being infringed.

And, again,

Dorner could have read up on Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge. Or the Branch Davidians near Waco.

Yes, look it up. Randy Weaver's wife Sara was shot and killed by a government sniper as she was doing the dastardly deed of holding her 10 month-old son. And we are all aware (or should be aware) of the deadly and bungled fiasco in Waco, as perpetrated by Bill Clinton's AG Janet Reno. Is this the type of government that Skelton wishes us to simply acquiesce to?

And while Skelton may argue that an armed citizenry is useless against the full force of the government, because of what happened to one armed crazy by the name of Christopher Dorner, he continues to miss the point. Yes, Dorner lost - that was inevitable. Yet look at what he - one person - was able to do or cause before his death: four murders, two of which were on civilians, other individuals wounded by either him or local law enforcement (including one 71 year-old lady), two innocent person's vehicles wrongly shot up by local law enforcement, one innocent person's house burned to the ground by local law enforcement(intentionally, it is claimed), as well as the allocation of extensive resources in and around southern California dedicated solely to his apprehension.

All this because of one crazed individual. And yet, this travesty is a prime example of the right and need for law abiding citizens to own firearms in the United States. Why? Because firearms are already owned by some 100,000,000 people in the U.S. That number, when correlated with the impact just one armed law breaking individual can have, sheds light on the true nature of law abiding firearm owning citizens - their concern for safety, self defense, and committment to following the rule of law.

A government truly of, by, and for the people has nothing to fear from its armed citizens. Nothing to fear at all.

How CS Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" helps demonstrate the deity of Jesus

2013-02-04T06:00:00-08:00

In arguing for the deity of Jesus Christ (i.e., that he is, in fact, God), many Christians will point to places in the Gospel accounts where Jesus is referred to as the Son of God. For example,

And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

- Matthew 14:28-33 ESV

or, more specific to the point,

Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.”

- John 19:4-7 ESV

Yet, when presenting these apologetic arguments, many times Christians will face the response that Jesus never claimed to be God but merely 'the son of God'.

This, I think, is an unfortunate consequence of our current culture's thinking (and, perhaps, most of Western culture). The mindset we are facing, and most times have ourselves, tends to see individuals rather than groups. When we meet someone who is introduced as so-and-so's son we think along the lines of, "Oh, your name is Frank, and you're John's son." Is it any surprise, then, that we have instances of surnames such as "Johnson"?

We do this all the time. "Hello Mary. Yes, I know your mother Kate, and don't you have a daughter named Rebecca?" In such a dialogue, despite understanding the familial relationship between the mother - daughter - granddaughter, we assign (inadvertently, perhaps) more importance to the individuality of each person. Hence, the argument that if Jesus is the Son of God, then he is God, carries little weight with us.

However, this does not seem to be the case with the culture with which Jesus interacted. Consider this excerpt from the book of John,

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

- John 10:31-39 ESV

Here we see that the Jews were ready to stone Jesus because, as they stated, "you, being a man, make yourself God." In his response Jesus actually takes their charge and clarifies it so as to make it clear that, yes, he is in fact making himself out to be God. Note his reference back to his saying, "I am the Son of God".

So, how does this all tie in with CS Lewis, Narnia, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

At the beginning of chapter 2, just after the Faun (Mr. Tumnus) spots Lucy, we have the following,

"Good evening," said Lucy. But the Faun was so busy picking up its parcels that at first it did not reply. When it had finished it made her a little bow.

"Good evening, good evening," said the Faun. "Excuse me - I don't want to be inquisitive - should I be right in thinking that you are a Daughter of Eve?"

"My name's Lucy," said she, not quite understanding him.

"But you are - forgive me - you are what they call a girl?" asked the Faun.

"Of course I'm a girl," said Lucy.

"You are in fact Human?"

In these few short lines of text Lewis wonderfully parlays the aspects of cross-cultural issues in how we understand textual meaning. Notice how when the Faun asked "Are you a daughter of Eve?" he was asking if Lucy was "in fact Human". Lucy, "not quite understanding him" (in true Western form), immediately looked to the individuality aspect of her status as the daughter of her mother - that they were two distinct, and therefore separate, persons. Luckily, the Faun understood this confusion on Lucy's part and stepped her through the process, first by asking if she was "a girl", and then asking his initial question in a point blank fashion: "You are in fact Human?"

The point here is that the title Daughter of Eve had nothing to do with the individuality of Lucy but everything to do with her being of the same species as Eve: Human. In like manner, when Jesus was referred to or claimed to be the Son of God it had everything to do with him being of the same "species" as his Father: God.

Links for Monday, 28 January 2013

2013-01-28T07:19:00-08:00

Gun Safety (TRUE gun safety) Edition

A PS!DF* Story
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke issues a PSA for the citizens he's pledged to protect. However, unlike the "let's dump all guns in the ocean" utopian dreams some keep dreaming, he has a slightly different, and extremely more rational, approach. From the PSA,

With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. But are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course and having firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family.

* Pound Sand! Dianne Feinstein

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86 firearms for every 100 Americans
And yet the U.K. has a higher violent crime per capita rate.

The Huffington Post offers the infographic under the presumption that this is a bad thing. Yet they don't offer an overall look at violent crime rates, much less defensive gun uses, on a per capita worldwide basis.

From Townhall's Katie Pavlich,

Pretty good national defense strategy, eh? As long as we have the Second Amendment, the United States will never be invaded.

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Tiananmen Square Activist has something to say about the 2nd Amendment
From his speech,

To me, a rifle is not for sporting or hunting. It is an instrument of freedom. It guarantees that I cannot be coerced, that I have free will, that I am a free man.

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Back in 2010 India armed girls to fight militants

A true example of the word 'empowering'.

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And yet another PS!DF* story
With law enforcement officers out there who actually get it - who actually believe in the right of the citizenry to defend themselves - who actually believe the 2nd Amendment means what it says, it will make Federal gun control and/or gun ban legislation difficult to enforce.

This story is of Georgia Sheriff Scott Berry. From Gun Rights Examiner,

Dana Safety Supply [DSS], a well known police supplier of clothing, guns, and gear, with an outlet in Sugar Hill, Georgia, sells firearms to non-police officers. Recently, however, it announced that it would stop selling self loading rifles to anybody but "Law Enforcement individuals." ...What this means is that Dana Safety Supply will no longer sell an AR15 rifle unless the purchaser is a police officer. This new policy has ruffled the feathers of Georgia citizens who buy guns, many of whom declared that they will no longer hand their money over to Dana Safety Supply. One of those citizens is Oconee County Sheriff Scott Berry...

Sheriff Berry sent DSS the following letter,

Sirs,

It is my understanding that you have stopped selling self loading rifles to members of the general public in favor of selling them to law enforcement officers only. I deeply regret that decision. As such, this agency will no longer seek bids from or purchase from DSS.

Here's a video of an interview with Sheriff Berry, done by FoxBusiness. Note, especially, the following comments by the good Sheriff,

Fox: Explain to me why you made this decision. [to no longer purchase from DSS]

Berry: Well it's real simple. If law abiding citizens in my county can't go there and buy - a legal to obtain - rifle, that they're entitled to buy and they have the money to pay for, then I'm not going to spend their tax money there, and I'm not going to spend my personal money there.