Right Truth

Bank customer shoots gunman after robbery

What would you have done in this case? (hat tip hubby)

 A bank customer shot a robber after an armed confrontation in a Kansas City parking lot Saturday.

The robber was wounded in the head and was in stable condition at a hospital, police said.

The shooting happened about 9 a.m. when a man and a woman were in a car using the automated teller machine at the Bank of America at North Oak Trafficway and Barry Road.

They were robbed at gunpoint, but as the gunman walked away, the man in the car got out armed with his own gun, said Sgt. Chris Lantz of the department’s robbery unit.

The man yelled for the robber to stop. When the robber turned around and pointed his gun, the man fired at him, hitting him in the head, Lantz said.

At the scene Saturday, investigators were collecting evidence from a dark sedan parked next to the ATM. An object that looked like a handgun was lying on the pavement. Nearby were apparent bloodstains.

Police interviewed the couple and witnesses.

An investigator worked at the scene of a robbery Saturday in which a bank customer shot a man who had taken money from him at gunpoint. The robber was in stable condition.

The robbery victim had a permit to carry a concealed gun, Lantz said. Under the circumstances, Lantz said, that would not matter because he could legally carry the weapon in his car.

No criminal case has been presented, and authorities are waiting to see whether the patient recovers, said Jim Roberts, spokesman for the Clay County prosecutor’s office.  (By RUSS PULLEY, The Kansas City Star)

Many people may say that they would be so happy the robber was walking away and leaving them safe, they would just let him go.  What would you have done in the same situation?

  You can go to The Kansas City Star and read the comments there.

What happened to our Constitutional right?

"I am pretty confident that the people of the District of Columbia want me to err in the direction of trying to restrict guns," D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty told Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher.-- How about erring, just this once, in the direction of respecting civil liberties? (Reason OnLine, hat tip Michael)

It's a sad state of affairs in the United States when a Mayor boldly goes against a Supreme Court decision.  Yet, here we are. 

Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the District of Columbia had violated the Second Amendment by making armed self-defense in the home impractical and banning the most popular weapons used for that purpose. Last week the D.C. Council responded by unanimously approving a law that makes armed self-defense in the home impractical and bans the most popular weapons used for that purpose.

D.C.'s political leaders know they are inviting another Second Amendment lawsuit, but they are determined to defy the Supreme Court and the Constitution for as long as possible.

The new law "clarifies that no carry license is required inside the home" to move a gun from one room to another. It also "clarifies" the District's firearm storage requirements, saying a gun may be unlocked and loaded "while it is being used to protect against a reasonably perceived threat of immediate harm to a person" in the home.

Much hinges on what counts as a "reasonably perceived threat." If you're awakened in the middle of the night by a crash, may you carry a loaded gun with you as you investigate? Evidently not. The Washington Post reports that D.C.'s acting attorney general, Peter Nickles, "said residents could neither keep their guns loaded in anticipation of a problem nor search for an intruder on their property." According to Nickles, if you see an armed criminal charging your home, or in the event of "an actual threat by somebody you believe is out to hurt you," you're allowed to get your gun, unlock it, and load it.  (continue reading)

Any idiot should know that if someone is going to attack you or your family, you don't have TIME to unlock the gun case, unlock the trigger lock, load the gun, and then shoot.  You would be dead first.

Idiots.  Does the Constitution mean nothing any more?

Independent Counterterrorist Training Module 5a, Right Truth Exclusive

Independent Counterterrorist Training Program,  Module 5a, Modules 1 - 4 here., by R. J. Godlewski

5a. INTELLIGENCE.

by R.J. Godlewski

“You think this is nineteenth-century Europe, that I can bring you the blueprints of a battleship, the mobilization plans, maybe, of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff?

“Bullshit,” said the general elegantly. “What they want is to give their bosses important-looking papers they can wave around at executive sessions and leak to the media. We don’t work for politicians or burea[u]crats. Nor for the media.”[1]

Engaging the Information War…

 

            Information is the key to success whether in business, in school, or just throughout your daily life. It has fundamental applications for placing food upon your table, excelling in academia, and keeping your children safe from harm. Intelligence is the practiced use of this information to gain advantage over the competition. Therefore, the study of intelligence has immense implications for your survival within this crazy, mixed-up world of ours; the understanding of this discipline will enable you to outwit competitors in business,  strategically  plan your academic studies, or in its most traditional function secure your nation’s future. Therefore, intelligence is what’s required to ‘win.’

            However, when I read an Associated Press piece (Pamela Hess, 5/16/08) about U.S. Intelligence agencies attempting to recruit immigrants by being more “sensitive”, I wanted to puke. In the article, which showed up on my Yahoo!^® window, Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence chief Charles Allen is quoted as saying:

"I never use the term 'global war on terrorism,'" Allen said. "I have never used it publicly, and I don't write it that way either."

Boy, am I going to sleep well at night.

            Somehow, I just couldn’t introduce another module for this program without diving into intelligence operations. Even the descriptive – ‘intelligence’ – seems to be sorely lacking from our leaders who are charged with providing actionable information to those who are supposed to be protecting us. Have we gone so far towards appeasing those who wish to harm us that we must watch every word that we utter?

            Personally, I’d rather offend a thousand Muslims than permit one to arrive here within the United States with murder on his (or her) mind. If this statement is somehow offensive to more moderate and ‘peaceful’ Muslims, then tough tookies – I wouldn’t expect you to kowtow to any Catholics who might wish to overthrow our government or murder its citizens either. It is not my intention to offend anyone, only to defend my beloved United States of America and if some people are “offended” by that then so be it. You mess with my nation and I will certainly mess with you.

          During a period of war – defined, that is, as any period in which an organized hostile force is actively seeking to unleash harm upon the United States (or its allies) – the gloves must come off. Diplomacy – defined as “Tact; skill in managing negotiations or affairs without friction” by my pre-Politically Correct 1966 Grosset Webster Dictionary – can only succeed during periods when there are no such forces trying to vaporize my cities, blow up my neighbors, or engage our military.

            Our troops are fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Philippines, and a host of other locations far too numerous to mention here. I’d call that a ‘global’ war and I just about bet that most others would too. The reason that Mr. Allen has refused to admit as much is more likely a function of his role as a diplomat instead of as a warrior. In other words, he seems to suggest that the only way in which to deal with thugs is through “affairs without friction.” Is this the type of leader that we need defending our great nation?

            The whole purpose of this Independent Counterterrorist Training Program is to get you, the individual citizen, to assume some level of responsibility for your own safety and that of your family and friends. We’ve discussed your enemies and how they think, act, and fight. I’ve provided you with unedited access to their works so that you would be able to read what they say about us and what they have planned for our future.

            I’ve used narratives, novels, and have even released free versions of my two counterterrorism books – Integrated Technical Warfare: An Organizational Guide to Creating a Corporate Counterterrorism Force and Mini-Manual of the Independent Counterterrorist to stimulate your interests.

            Now, as we continue to wade through the ‘Phase Two’ portion of this program, I am assuming that you’re no longer a naïve specimen – that you’ve grown quite used to conditioning yourself both physically and mentally for the challenges ahead. You no longer blindly follow the global media, your colleges and universities, even your elected officials when they tell you that “there’s no global war on terror” – for you, Joe Independent Counterterrorist, are engaged within this global struggle against radical Islamists.

            You understand that nobody – repeat nobody (yours truly included!) – is going to provide you with information specifically tailored to your needs. You have to engage in continual education on your own, challenge that which does not seem adequate or truthful, and plan accordingly. This is the fundamental basis for intelligence studies.

            Because our own colleges and universities have deemphasized reading over the course of the past couple of decades,[ii] it is of paramount importance that you learn to study on your own and build up a significant personal library. The reason that our academic institutions have degraded the ability to think on our own is so that they can ‘indoctrinate’ us through mandating that we learn what they want us to learn and not what we need to learn. Henceforth, the distractions from considering that the terrorists hell-bent on destroying us are Muslims or that the GWOT is not a term to be used. To decide whether these thoughts are correct or not requires one to be knowledgeable within a range of subjects.

            To make an informative decision on either of these statements, you must analyze the information pertinent to each. For example, are you aware of the nationalities and religious beliefs of those supporting Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri? This may seem a little sophomoric, but I know of many people who seem to think that the concept of Islamic terrorism is all a fabrication of our government. And what of the Global War on Terror? Are you aware of the battles raging against these radical Islamists all over the world or are you naïve enough to believe that Iraq represents the “whole war”?

            Perhaps understanding that the “use of atrocities to break an enemy’s will” and the “power of fanaticism and charismatic leaders” were a Muslim staple well before the Crusades began would allow you to understand that modern Muslim grievances are a bit contrived.[iii] That the world finds fault with America’s treatment of prisoners or our desire to protect ourselves is a prime example of faulty intelligence at work.

            So, for the next couple of months, we will deal specifically with the subject of intelligence, beginning with the examination of the U.S. Army’s FM-2-0 INTELLIGENCE manual. You will, by reading, discover the intricate nature of intelligence gathering within the field of war and conflict. Hopefully, you will discover that it is not the ‘cloak and dagger’ subject often reported within Hollywood movies and television serials. Intelligence, quite simply, understands the world surrounding us. It means coming to an informed decision before we address our concerns.

            Faulty intelligence is just as evil as faulty opinion and the two go hand in hand. Proper interpretation depends largely upon the ‘intelligence’ of the analyst. Viewing a student walking into a crowded high school carrying an AK-47 and a bag full of thirty-round magazine clips does not require much imagination as to understanding this particular student’s intent. However, could you decipher such intent adequately if you only overhead his conversation with a friend or his fascination with guns and mayhem at an early age? Could you differentiate between the legal ownership of machine guns by law-abiding citizens with those seeking to impose harm and destruction upon society?

            Gathering intelligence and making sense out of it is akin to assembling two gigantic jigsaw puzzles out of a combined heap with little to go on but a brief description of what the final products are supposed to look like. You must ‘envision’ what the end result is through the mind of its creator and this requires both intelligence in the form of data and information and intelligence in the form of personal knowledge and experience. And you thought that fighting terrorists was as simple as shooting them between the eyes…

---

[1] Balor, Paul. 1988. Manual of the Mercenary Soldier: A Guide to Mercenary War, Money, and Adventure, Paladin Press. Pg. 228.

[ii] Wyly, Michael Duncan. 1993. Teaching Maneuver Warfare. Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology, edited by Richard D. Hooker, Jr. Presidio Press. Pg. 263.

[iii] Peters, Ralph. When Muslim armies won: lessons from yesteryear’s jihadi victories, THE ARMED FORCES JOURNAL, September, 2007. Pg. 38.

Take Your Gun to Dinner

The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) organized the dinner at Champps to prove a point: that the presence of armed customers in Northern Virginia restaurants would elicit little more than shrugs. (AP)

The patrons at Champps in Reston, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.

Matt Gottshalk (left) and Dave Vann, members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, carry their holstered handguns into a restaurant in Reston to demonstrate that other diners don't mind.

The dinner — and several other restaurant visits throughout Northern Virginia last month — were a response to comments from the majority leader in the state Senate, Democrat Richard L. Saslaw, who said during a legislative debate that armed patrons would be unwelcome in Northern Virginia restaurants.

"In most urban areas, you walk into a restaurant with a gun on your hip, they're going to tell you to get out," Mr. Saslaw said.

In fact, with a few exceptions, the gun owners got their meals. The group went to eight different restaurants last month — at two of them, they were asked to leave. More often than not, though, their presence failed to generate a stir. (continue reading at Associated Press)

Guns and Planes, double standard?

Peoria Illinois -- "Man Attempts to Board Plane With Ammo Clip and 9 Bullets" and Los Angeles, California -- "Actor Dennis Farina Arrested After Loaded Gun Found In Luggage At LAX".

I want you to compare the reaction and punishment for the Peoria man and for Dennis Farina, an actor. Do you think this is fair?

A Peoria man was allowed to board a plane Friday morning at Greater Peoria Regional Airport after police found an ammo clip and nine .22 caliber bullets in his carry-on bag.

Davis told police he was an employee of Security Services Inc., an independent security firm based in Peoria, and showed them an SSI employee ID card.

Davis said he must have forgotten to take the ammo clip and bullets out of his bag before coming to the airport.

A deputy contacted SSI to confirm Davis’ employment, and an SSI representative said Davis was not an employee but had worked there before.

Davis was allowed to board the plane, although the ammunition and ammo clip were detained and logged as evidence.

Police later spoke with SSI owner Larry McWherter, who said Davis was an SSI employee for about 30 days but had not worked there since July 2007. McWherter said Davis was not firearm-trained, nor was he supposed to have an SSI ID card, which he said he had lost after leaving SSI.

Compare the punishment:

Actor Dennis Farina was charged with a felony Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport after a loaded gun was found in his carry-on luggage.

When the weapon was discovered at a security checkpoint, the 64-year-old actor said he had forgotten the .22-caliber handgun was in his luggage, police said.

Farina was booked for investigation of carrying a concealed weapon, said Sgt. Dennis Beacham. Bail was set at $25,000 before police discovered the weapon was not registered. Charges were upgraded to a felony, and he is now being held in lieu of $35,000 bail.

Maybe some States are fair and others are not? I'm just asking:

In Honolulu a man tries to fly out of Hawaii with two guns, a .45 handgun and a .9 mm semi-automatic weapon, both loaded and hidden in his suitcase. Christopher Hollie "was booked into the Honolulu Police Cellblock Saturday night, unable to post $25,000 bail. Police said Hollie faces four felony gun charges, including carrying unregistered weapons."

A Wyoming woman says she boarded a plane for Las Vegas with a knife with a three and half inch blade and made it past security screeners at the Salt Lake International airport. Dunford says her husband bought her the knife for protection and she forgot it was in her purse.

How to Empower Northern Illinois University

How to Empower Northern Illinois University

by Don B. Kates

The Independent Institute
(posted at their request)

A crazed gunman slaughtered 32 people at Virginia Tech despite it being a “gun free zone.” The shooting last week at Northern Illinois University is the latest in a series of at least five other massacres in such “gun free zones.”

Some criminologists wonder if such zones actually attract mass killers who know that their victims will be disarmed. Some states are now considering allowing college students and professors who have gun carry permits (CCWs) to have their guns on campus. Proponents cite the success of the 40 states who issue CCWs to all reputable, trained applicants. Analyzing 25 years’ national data, economist John Lott found that states with such laws experienced less violent crime. (But as criminals turned to nonviolent crimes, rates of those increased.)

Most of Lott’s critics are ideologically opposed, vehemently feeling that guns are the problem, not the answer. But when non-ideological critics examined Lott’s work using econometric methods they preferred to Lott’s, this just confirmed the finding that widespread gun-carrying by responsible, law-abiding adults greatly reduces violent crime. Some reexaminations concluded that Lott actually had underestimated this effect. Lott’s book [BEG ITAL]The Bias Against Guns[END ITAL] (Regnery, 2003) was endorsed by two Nobel Prize winners.

But even if arming victims stops ordinary criminals, will it deter mass killers--people who often end up killing themselves rather than shooting it out with police? For the answer, look to the history of Israel. Early terrorists targeted schools, feeling that killing children would terrorize the Jews into fleeing Israel. Moreover, it seemed a low-risk strategy: Small children can’t shoot back.

Israel responded by arming teachers in schools and on field trips. In many cases, armed teachers killed terrorists or held them off until security forces arrived. Even today’s suicide terrorists, though willing to die, have learned to avoid schools lest they be shot down before they can kill the children. They have learned to kill in markets instead, and in other public places where strangers are freely allowed entrance.

Typical is a May 31, 2002 report from the Israeli news service Arutz Sheva: “At about 8:30 AM, [the terrorist] fire[d,] and threw a grenade, at the kindergarten before [shooting up]...the town. He opened fire at several residents and homes before David Elbaz, owner of the local mini-market, gave chase and killed him with gunshots.... Security sweeps revealed several explosive devices that he had intended to detonate during the thwarted attack.”

But he did not try to enter the kindergarten, which would have meant shooting it out with teachers before he could kill the children. (A few days earlier, a suicide terrorist was killed by a teacher before he could harm anyone.)

Liberal American CCW-issuance policies have stopped mass killers here as well. Some weeks ago, a crazed gunman, having killed two people at a mission school, broke into a crowded church. But before his shots struck anyone, he was shot down by a CCW-licensed woman who had volunteered to protect the church. Similarly, over the last decade:

- A gunman who killed two at a Mississippi high school was prevented from killing more, by a principal who retrieved a handgun from his car;

- An ex-student who killed three at Appalachian Law School was disarmed by two students who retrieved guns from their cars; and

- A teacher was killed and three children wounded at an Edinboro, Penn. junior high school dance, before the owner of the auditorium arrived with a shotgun and arrested the shooter.

Guns in the hands of law-abiding, responsible adults have never been a problem. Studies as far back as the nineteenth century consistently demonstrate that murderers are extreme aberrants, with life histories of violence, crime, psychopathology, and/or substance abuse. Only 15% of Americans have ever been arrested, but almost 100% of murderers come from that group.

Our laws already forbid such people guns--but such people don’t obey laws. Unfortunately, the only people affected by “gun free zone” policies are the law-abiding and responsible. They are thereby left to be helpless targets for those who disobey those policies.

Don B. Kates is a criminologist and constitutional lawyer who is a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

Good Citizens and Guns

Good Citizens and Guns by Don B. Kates The Independent Institute (posted at their request)

Wednesday marked one year since the massacre at Virginia Tech by mentally-disturbed student Seung-Hui Cho. Last week the university offered anguished parents a settlement of $100,000 per murdered child.

There are three things wrong with this: First, even in financial terms, it is hopelessly inadequate to redress the deaths of these talented young people.

Second, it does nothing to correct the useless, symbolic policy which facilitated their deaths.

Third, if you don’t think that the policy is wrong,Virginia Tech has no liability for the deaths it facilitated.

That policy is the “gun-free zone.” Even if the victims had possessed permits to carry a gun, Virginia Tech forbade them to have that means of self-defense while on campus. This ensured that only the killer (who, of course, violated the “gun-free zone” policy just as he violated the laws against murder) and uniformed police would have guns. Obviously the university could not afford to station officers in every lecture hall.

Yet nothing less would substitute for the victims themselves having had the power to stop the massacre.

Israel has a better alternative. Decades ago, Palestinian terrorism was being directed at schools. Yasser Arafat calculated that small children can’t shoot back, and that killing them was the best way to terrify parents into fleeing Israel.

Israel’s response?

They armed schoolteachers and school bus drivers. Now, even suicide terrorists don’t attack schools -- lest they be shot down before they can reach their helpless victims.

Thousands of civilians are armed all across Israel, as the following incidents illustrate:

* Shavei Shomron -- A Palestinian shot into a kindergarten, but did not dare to enter. Next he attacked neighboring buildings, where he was killed by a civilian gun owner.

* Bethlehem -- A terrorist threw one bomb into a supermarket, but was prevented from throwing another when a shopper shot him in the head with a gun from her purse.

* Tel Aviv -- William Hazan, his wife, and some friends were eating in a restaurant when a terrorist began machine-gunning the establishment. Ducking under a table, Hazan killed him with a pistol he had carried for years.

Such incidents are numerous not only in Israel but in the U.S. as well. Last December, a woman parishioner shot and killed a gunman who had just slaughtered four unarmed people in a crowded Colorado church complex.

Three separate school massacres have been ended when good citizens violated the schools’ “gun-free zone” policies by rushing to their cars for guns with which they were then able to arrest the perpetrators.

But for those policies, they might have been carrying their guns, and the massacres could have been ended earlier -- and with fewer deaths.

Since 1980, the majority of states have adopted laws under which five million law-abiding responsible adults have gun-carry permits.

Contrary to dire predictions, permit-holders have not abused the privilege -- and murders and other violent crimes have been sharply reduced.

Everyone opposes violent crime (except the perpetrators). “Gun-free zone” policies which disarm everyone (except the perpetrators) facilitate murder rather than precluding it.

Universities and businesses who facilitate murder by imposing such empty symbolism should be held strictly liable for the killings those policies facilitate.

Don B. Kates is a criminologist and constitutional lawyer who is a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.

ON FIGHTING TERRORISM III: R.J.’s Handguns of Choice

ON FIGHTING TERRORISM III: R.J.’s Handguns of Choice By R.J. Godlewski

Let’s cut the bullshit. The Global War On Terror (GWOT) is real; the radical Islamists want to attack the United States and its Western allies and will continue to do so at every opportunity and through every method at their disposal. The only people “profiting” from the GWOT are those liberal types who wish to harm our nation by appeasing the Islamists and their ilk at the expense of those who’ve fought and died for our right to remain American and free. Because those same people bound to defend our lives are hamstrung by politics, we can no longer trust our federal government to come to our aid even when the resources are near.

Our love for the U.S. Constitution dictates that we swear allegiance to our government and that’s what makes us civilized. However, our founding fathers’ love for their fellow man as evidenced by this very same U.S. Constitution mandates that ‘We the People’ be accorded the right to defend ourselves when that government fails to uphold our liberties and freedoms. This is what makes us reign supreme in the annals of global civilization – that any particular individual within our great nation may arise to achieve whatever goal they have set for themselves and for which they are prepared to unleash every sacrifice in the effort.

My goal – of the many befitting a proud American – is to do whatever I can to defeat terrorism and this most especially includes getting John Q. Public involved in the process. With three hundred million people residing within the United States; if we could get only one-percent to condition themselves for the fight to survive then we could have three million individuals supporting our stretched (and somewhat archaic) federal agencies. That’s 60,000 people per state! As for the diehard liberals out there, I’d rather have 60,000 Americans running around my state armed than one Islamist wearing a bomb vest. But that’s just me; you might not want to see America remain free, productive, and compassionate towards our fellow man whoever they may be.

At this point, some may conclude that I simply desire a return to the days of the Wild West. Not true. In the late nineteenth century only those living within the West carried guns and generally those were simple six-shooters. I, in contrast, expect every law-abiding and intelligent American to carry a weapon and I recommend firearms that possess both accuracy and firepower. Every terrorist within our country should be shot dead within seconds of our learning of their existence. This requires for us citizens to be trained (and I mean TRAINED!!!) as well as armed.

Now that you know where I stand on the issue, I will not take up your valuable time by implying that I need to explain my stance any further. I will simply outline some recommendations on which firearms I prefer and allow you to base your own considerations on your particular situation and respective local laws. If you do not wish to arm yourselves – please do not come running to me when the next Virginia Tech or D.C. sniper attack goes down. Kill or be killed should be first amongst your governing instincts. The second should be a deep love for your fellow man. Any reversal of these conditions is simple suicide.

With the possible exception of ‘assault weapons’ handguns are the most maligned type of firearm available to the average citizen and come in two distinct types: revolvers (like in the Old West) and semi-automatic pistols. The advantage of revolvers is their simplicity and accuracy. The advantage of semi-automatics is their rate of fire and ammunition capacity. We shall concentrate on the latter.

For brevity, I will focus on three primary calibers – the 9mm, the .40 Smith & Wesson (S&W), and the .45 ACP (all calibers representing the diameter of the bullet). Others, such as my favorite .475 Wildey Magnum (basically an African Big Game cartridge chopped down a tad), are mentioned only for those of us who wish to place BIG holes in bad guys. ;o) I will also restrict my suggestions primarily to those manufactured by my good friends over at Smith & Wesson.

For ladies, I propose selecting either a S&W M&P (Military & Police) Compact semi-automatic or a Model 9xx series semi-automatic in 9mm. While I have never been an overt fan of the 9mm, possessing a small firearm with an 8+1 (eight rounds in the magazine and one chambered) capacity is sufficient for stopping all but the most drug-crazed individual. At least, it’ll give you a fighting chance until assistance shows up. Each of these firearms retails for less than $700. With appropriate training, the additional three rounds over a comparable revolver are more than adequate for the ‘triple tap’ shooting (“twice to the chest and once to the head make any criminal nice and dead”) that I emphasize (actually, I recommend quadruple tapping with a second shot to the head, but I mean my business…).

For the gents out there, my selection of S&W firearms expands…a bit. Two suggestions come immediately to mind – the full-sized M&P semi-automatic in either .45 ACP or .40 S&W and the Allied ForcesTM Sigma Series offered either in 9mm or .40 S&W. The M&P series offers a Picatinny-style equipment rail for mounting lights and lasers while the Allied ForcesTM models offer the budget-conscious a chance to protect themselves for less than $500.

If you’re like me and you’d prefer to “go tactical” as soon as you wake up in the morning, then I suggest investing in a Heckler & Koch Mark 23 or H&K USP series semi-automatic in .45 ACP. These guns are not cheap – about $2,400 for the MK 23 – but were basically designed for U.S. Special Operations Forces and this is good enough for me. I’m quite an adventurous individual and I’d like to know that my firearm has been tested through the same environments that I have been.

As for ammunition; while any quality manufacturer (i.e., Remington, Hornady, Winchester) is suitable, I recommend using either Corbon’s (www.corbon.com) Pow’R Ball or Glaser Safety Slugs in the appropriate caliber of your particular handgun. These are designed primarily for anti-personnel functions in highly built-up areas. That is, they’ll transfer their effective energy upon your target without fear of over penetration into innocent persons (or through walls, etc.). Your function should be to kill bad guys – not innocent children playing, elderly ladies crossing the street, or the pooch pissing up against the fire hydrant.

Space considerations prevent me from writing about assault rifles, sub machineguns, and shotguns within this article and Lord knows that you don’t want me to get started on my personal favorite – sniper rifles – so I’m going to conclude with some thoughts on training. The May Module of the Independent Counterterrorist Training program will begin Phase Two with excerpts from Integrated Technical Warfare (released as a courtesy following the Virginia Tech massacre) and my Mini-Manual of the Independent Counterterrorist (which goes more deeply into personal combat situations). This ‘package’ should cement your transition towards more ‘Rambo’ than Gomer Pyle.

For the record, let me emphasize one key point: a gun does not belong in your hands if you can’t use it. Period. If you can’t afford the time and patience to practice until you can hit everything that you shoot at in every climate and condition that you might find yourself in, then forget about making an effort to protect yourself. There are many options available to you (as per the ICT series) that are far less complicated. Under no circumstances should anyone pick up a firearm that doesn’t have a clue as to what the right to own entails.

For example, should you find yourself awoken to a burglar in your bedroom, are you prepared to locate your firearm and subdue the intruder within seconds of waking up and using nothing but the muzzle flash of the firearm in aiming? Did you believe for a moment that criminals only attack in broad daylight and when you’re well-rested? Furthermore, did you think that your local police department will automatic assume that you’re not the criminal should you find yourself engaged in a “shot in self-defense” predicament? And what of your illustrious District Attorney? Are you prepared to defend your freedom in court after you have defended your life on the street?

Defending your life has to become your “Mother’s Milk” otherwise you place yourself and those surrounding you in severe jeopardy. You must literally shoot hundreds of rounds per week to become proficient. You must know your weapon better than your spouse or your children. Your actions must become so autonomous that your ability to defeat those set about to kill you will sour the stomach of your closest friends. This is not an easy thing to achieve.

Even in the wake of Virginia Tech and hundreds of other shootings each year within the United States we are surrounded by people who lay blame upon gun ownership as the sole reason for these horrendous tragedies. Even more people will lay responsibility for your protection solely upon local, state, and federal agencies. You have to maintain a correct balance of arrogance, intelligence, and piety within your persona. Most of all, however, you have to swell your spirit with good ol’ common sense. You have to understand that there are terrorists out there salivating over any opportunity to harm you and those closest to you. Simply believing that the GWOT is a farce or that people subscribing to the Muslim faith hold no ill will towards you places all of us in jeopardy. If we don’t stop the radical Islamists, who will?

National Security leaders: catch R.J. Godlewski’s article Cultivating Creativity within Intelligence Analysis in the upcoming issue of American Intelligence Journal. Terrorists live to innovate; what about your team?

TSA Endangers Their Pilots

Video of the Dangerous Firearm policy of The TSA, from Crime, Guns and Videotape (hat tip hubby)

This video will show you the obvious cause of the accidental discharge of a Federal Flight Deck Officer's Service weapon. The cause was a flawed and dangerous policy requiring redundant and unnecessary firearm handling by the pilots and an equipment design disaster. You don’t place foreign objects next to a trigger of a loaded gun!

Go read more articles at Crime File News.

AN ARMED POPULATION IS A FREE POPULATION -- THE BASIS FOR A STRONG NATION

THE BASIS FOR A STRONG NATION By R.J. Godlewski © April 4, 2008, All Rights Reserved 6. AN ARMED POPULATION IS A FREE POPULATION

The individual human person is by far the greatest treasure known to us in the universe. Gold, in comparison, is soft, malleable, and free from corrosion but it takes the human spirit to forge it into a work of art. Diamonds, for their part, are the hardest substance known on the planet but when human craftsmen shear away their outer rough, the gems that remain can redirect nature€™s light into a thousand different brilliances that would have theretofore simply bounced off of its surface haphazardly. Within the deepest recesses of outer space, super massive stars explode unleashing more light than entire galaxies and spewing heavy elements such as carbon and silicon into the cosmos, but it is those carbon-based creatures known as humans that can turn these elements into an infinite number of creations such as electronic chips, refined gasoline, and household paint, just to name a very few. What makes the human person so invaluable within the greater universe is that we are unique here on earth. One gold nugget is no different than one gold grain. The Hope Diamond is no different than one that could be found in Hope, Arkansas. The silicone within my computer is no different than the silicon produced by supernovae billions of years ago. Indeed, that is undoubtedly where my computer ultimately inherited its brain from.

I, on the other hand, am as unique as any conceived of within the observable universe. So too are the six and a half billion other people sharing my tiny speck of rock within the unimaginably large universe. True, those that share my two arms and legs, two eyes and ears, and singular mouth and nose are much too numerous to count but they only represent what we are; not who we are and herein lies our infinite value. We don'€™t serve any higher terrestrial function as do herds of American Bison or Cape Buffalo. In crowded New York, for example, it may seem that the teeming masses of people could be considered as no different as lemmings leaping off the cliffs of daily existence, but such observations would indeed be false. Each one of the millions of people occupying New York City is as unique as the tens of millions occupying the greater Tokyo area. Each serves a specific purpose if only known to them.

When our founding fathers therefore set about to create a new nation upon the earth, they began with the most fundamental element of society the individuals they believed were created by a common Creator. They broke away from the monarchy represented by the United Kingdom because they knew that any human system governed by a supreme overlord was doomed to failure and they proceeded to turn world civilization upon its head literally. They fought figuratively and literally€“ to establish a new country based upon the foundations of €œlife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizenry and not solely for the privileged few of blood. Their chants of “give me liberty or give me death soundly defeated those who prayed for God to save their King. God, they never forgot to understand, died to make men holy so that we could die to make men free€. And make men free we did – in droves.

The €œShot heard around the world was not unleashed by a large and organized army. It was delivered by a ragtag group of ordinary people who simply had had enough of servitude without representation. They realized that no mere mortal – even one as audacious as King George III could deny people of their inalienable rights. Foremost amongst these liberties, was the God-given right to effect a change in government should the power of the citizenry ever be revoked by a privileged few. Simply put, the people of the United States placed their leaders into office and they held the power to remove them by force, if necessary if those €œleaders€ failed to keep the Republic intact.

Equally as important, but nowhere near as acknowledged today, the founding fathers of this great nation chose to include the word €œStates€ in her name. This single word, in our official language, means several things including: 1. Condition. 2. Grandeur; pomp; eminence. 3. A nation. 4. One of the governmental units of a nation. 5. Rank; position; office. 6. To declare. € Could you therefore envision a better word to include within our national name? Hardly! The United States of America therefore means much more than just the fifty states whose capitals befuddle grade school students. Our nation represents a union of diverse races, ethnicities, religions, economic backgrounds, and perhaps most extraordinary of all thought processes. Resting on a planet where no two humans are identical, we represent the most indescribable of all.

Because of the sheer simplicity of our acknowledgment of this complexity, ours is not a nation devoted to the protection of the masses but of the individual. We need no visas or permits to move from bankrupt Michigan to the more economically energetic South. We suffer through no decades long waiting lists to be able to buy a house (indeed, as the current mortgage fiasco shows, we don'€™t even have to be able to €œafford€ our homes before we are allowed to purchase them). Whenever we do find grievances within our nation, we are not sacrificed to the firing squad should we chose to voice our complaints. On the contrary, our legal system was designed to empower us even to the point of €œmillion man marches€ through those same capitals tormenting our grade schoolers. We can immerse ourselves within these liberties and rights because our founding fathers had the foresight to protect our interests by granting us the right€“ in official writing€“ to protect our own selves through the use of arms.

You will note here a decided lack of nomenclature within our U.S. Constitution. They spoke not of flintlocks or rifles or pistols or knives or billy clubs or anything as specific as that. They simply gave citizens the right to bear arms. Why? Because they knew that the most fundamental element of our national existence rested on the laurels of the individual citizen and they just could no€™t allow themselves to fall under the temptations of hypocrisy by restricting our personal selection of personal protection. In a nutshell, they told the world€“ at least that part of it that can read plain English that they believed that every citizen of the United States had a fundamental right to protect themselves and to do so by any means that said citizen would deem necessary. Hypocrisy was never, ever the intent of our Constitution.

When they wrote "€œWe the People" they did not mean only the rich as in Colonial England, or the poor as in later Soviet Russia, or the privileged or the whomever. When they granted us freedom of religion, they did not intend for only that religion endorsed by government or city council; they intended for citizens to €œfreely express€ their religion without preferential treatment. When they set up our Congress, they did not cater merely to the large and wealthy states; they gave every one a pair of senators to balance the privilege of being so blessed. If our founding fathers were so careful as to not single out any group of people save for the very citizens of this nation then they did not desire to dissect our rights to protect ourselves through the possession and ownership of firearms.

Thus they did not intend to single out only those who wished to hunt from those who wished to target practice; those who liked to collect over those who liked to survive. They said that €œthe People have a right to do damn well whatever they pleased with guns and we have no legitimate basis for preventing them from doing so. They weren't hypocrites, but today'€™s generation often is.

Many alive today try to do everything humanly possible to chip away at our unity through fraudulent laws designed to serve no purpose but to safeguard those who wish to break laws and criminalize those who wish to protect themselves. They work through deceit and hyperbole. They try to segregate us citizens into smaller and more vulnerable groups. By laying claims that Assault Weapons have no value as hunting rifles they chip away at our right to protect ourselves on par with those who wish to destroy us. By saying that trigger locks must be attached to our weapons they merely desire for our assailants to have an edge in killing us instead of our killing them. They simply want the millions of us more responsible citizens to pay for the 752 or so people (based upon 2003 census statistics) who get accidentally shot each year. Apparently, we never seem concerned enough about the 1,685 people who die each year from hemorrhoid infections to pass legislation keeping our legislators on their toes every day.

Those who wish to see us unarmed desire so because they simply do not value the individual human being as highly as we do. They attack us from every conceivable quarter from denying us our natural birth right to our ability to die a peaceful and dignified death upon reaching old age. Beyond our mere bodies, they seek to deny us our right to worship our Creator out in the open and even dilute our very citizenship by inviting those who invade us illegally to share in the fruits of our toils. Our founding fathers never intended for us to be so diluted and this is why they gave us the right – not the privilege€“ to defend ourselves with the arms of our choosing.

Some may argue that there are some people out there who might be a danger if they were allowed to arm themselves with, say, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. I might argue that there are those out there who might be a danger if they merely attended a fraternity party. What I personally believe does not matter one iota; our nation was built on the principal of personal evolution and competition. What works, lasts; what doesn't, won'€™t. We simply can'€™t deny the vast majority of honest, hardworking people an ability to protect themselves just because some oafs blow their foot off with a 12 gauge. Consider how many police officers are shown nearly every week engaging within some horrendous crime of their own. We do not even consider banning all police officers because of these villains, do we? Do we deny the rights of whites because of the Ku Klux Klan; of blacks because of the Muslim Brotherhood; of clergy because of pedophiles; of teachers because of rapists; of sports athletes because of steroids?

The United States of America grew to prominence because its founding fathers believed that freedom rests upon the laurels and liberties of concerned citizens. They understood that the greatest threat to these rights came not from the few who challenge themselves mentally, but of the few that sought leadership by way of tyranny. They understood that the power elite of the entire planet would never number more than perhaps two or three hundred and that the only way the rest of the billions could endure was to ensure that they were able to arm and defend themselves against anyone who sought to deny them of their God-given right to live as they so choose. They might not have been able to do much for the rest of the world, but they sure as hell knew how to keep Americans at the forefront of the battle against tyranny. Any law restricting the ownership of any type of firearm is simply another nail in the coffin of freedom. Let'€™s not willingly disarm ourselves through capitulation.


NEXT: SECURE BORDERS, SECURE AMERICA.

(The above article is the 6th in a series by R. J. Godlewski, exclusively for Right Truth. A new installment will be published each Monday. Please leave your comments or questions for Mr. Godlewski here in the comments section and he will respond.)

This is the 6th article in the series, THE BASIS FOR A STRONG NATION. Read the previous articles: Chapter One in the series, "A Return to American basics" ... Chapter Two, "What is an American?" ... Chapter Three, "One Nation Without God?" ... Chapter 4 "Duty and the Responsibility of Citizenship", Chapter 5 "Political Warfare and the Proliferation of the Vote"

Be sure to check out Mr. R.J. Godlewski's website here and the Independent Counterterrorist Training Program written by Mr. Godlewski for Right Truth.

(NOTE: I posted this early, I'll be out of pocket for a bit.)
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