Narrow Margin

Supreme Court Votes to Uphold the Constitution

(Sort Of)

Deborah Venable

06/29/10

I wish to begin this by publishing photographs from my family album that some could consider alarming – maybe even child abuse! They are pictures of my children and grandchildren holding and using (GASP) guns!

Shannon Heather Lacey Lori Brett

Granddaddy with Michael Granddaddy with Brian Brett Lori

Most of these pictures bring back happy memories, except for the one of Lacey – she took part in a 21-gun salute to her father at his funeral. It is the only picture I had access to of her with a gun at this time.

Following is an excerpt from my book, “Professional Parenting – Raising the Hope For America’s Future” published in 2007.

Chapter 12 - Education and More Socialism/Safety

Unrealistic goals

This has become a society that demands protection. All too often children are used to convince us that this protection is necessary. How often have you heard the phrase, “I want to make sure that this will never happen again . . .?” I hear it all the time from victims. The news media is masterful at seeking out grief stricken parents and family members of crime victims. They speak out, sometimes quite eloquently, on what must be done to stop particular types of crimes and accidents from happening, (especially to children.) Anyone willing to make a passionate appeal to the government for legislative action can facilitate a microphone and T.V. camera as easily as a super star can.

I am sure that these people are sincere in their beliefs for the most part. They are using their actions as a way to deal with their grief and aid in their healing. I do not fault them for channeling their devastating grief into unselfish ways of serving their communities. Their motives are not suspect, but their goals are unrealistic to say the least.

No one can determine that, “ . . . this will never happen again.” No law will insure protection against any act of violence. A free society cannot continue to demand laws that strip individual freedoms from law-abiding citizens, and expect to remain a free society. Criminals do not obey laws! This is simple common sense. A government that makes it impossible for law-abiding individuals to protect themselves is not only putting individuals in peril from criminals, but also making them especially vulnerable to the government itself!

With that said, let’s look at what parents have to look forward to during their children’s public education process - just from the standpoint of watching out for their safety. Make no mistake; the goals of today’s public education system in this country do not fall in line with parents’ goals that are trying to teach their children individual responsibility. These lessons in individual responsibility will not be forthcoming from modern educators.

Gun control – education

Following the Columbine School Massacre in the spring of 1999, the government and its school officials clamored for a public forum to spew a message to parents: Children are not safe in schools while the law-abiding public has access to guns. Of course too many well-meaning parents bought this message hook, line and sinker! How absurd! This is a dishonor to those poor children and their teacher who were killed and wounded. The school was defenseless against a couple of armed kids who had never been taught how to deal with life. The school had already failed, not only because it didn’t disarm the bad guys, but also because it did so effectively disarm the good guys!

Let me illustrate my point. Nothing any school can do will prevent someone from coming onto school grounds with weapons. It has been stated often that those kids broke a multitude of laws before they ever got to the school. No matter how many more laws are created, tragedies like that one will not be prevented. This was a high school. These kids and their teachers were old enough and could have been prepared enough to stop the massacre themselves before so much damage was done. I will remind you of other school shooting incidents where students and teachers have done just that. Those incidents didn’t command as much sustained media coverage in the aftermath of course, but they happened none-the-less. This Columbine Siege went on for hours while people were dying and the government services, (our “protection”), flitted around outside wringing their hands! The outcome might have been quite different if the population of that school, students and adults, had been taught individual responsibility. Instead, they had learned well the lessons of how to be victims!

In the other incidents I mentioned, a few individuals had the knowledge and the courage to put a stop to the onslaught. In one, an already wounded student seized the chance afforded by the gunman having to reload his gun. With the aid of other students, he rushed the gunman and disarmed him. In another, a teacher retrieved his own gun from his car and stopped the assailant. Of course the teacher had to break the law to do it. The law must be flawed, don’t you think? Guns in the hands of responsible individuals are our last line of defense against criminals, the mentally deranged, and last but certainly not least, our own government. Children need to be taught this lesson. They need to be taught how to defend themselves against intimidation of any kind and danger to their minds and their lives.

Real safety education

The schools are teaching the exact opposite. That leaves it up to you, parents. That leaves it up to you! If you care about your children and if you care about other people’s children, you should carefully consider the danger of teaching them that they shouldn’t wish to protect themselves. They shouldn’t learn to expect the government to protect them. You should consider seeing that they receive training on firearm safety so that they might have a chance if they are ever staring down the barrel of a gun. Any law that restricts law-abiding citizens from having guns will not stop the criminal wielding the gun. A hurried call to 9-1-1 may not stop the criminal wielding the gun in time. It may be up to your child to save his own life and that of his classmates. If his fear of guns paralyzes him before a gunman, no well-meaning anti-gun activist is going to step in and help him. No teacher who has taught him that citizens shouldn’t have guns is going to take the bullet with your child’s name on it. There very well may be a bullet marked for the teacher as well.

If you as a parent so fear guns that you would give up your own child’s safety to that fear, I have pity for you. I also loathe what your attitude is doing to my country and the risk that attitude is forcing my children and me to bear. You are wrong by all the laws of nature and all the intentions of our Founding Fathers.

At the beginning of the school year following the Columbine Massacre, my daughter’s high school decided to have a drill to practice what to do if such an incident ever occurred there. The plan the school faculty and administrators came up with was ridiculous. It consisted of locking the students in their classrooms with the shades drawn and the students “hiding” under furniture etc. Sound familiar? Wasn’t this the exact position many dead and wounded students at Columbine found themselves in? Unbelievable! My daughter had already decided how she would react in such a situation because we discussed it. Number one, get out of the building. Number two, if enough distance exists between her and the assailant(s), she is to run as fast and as far as she can in an erratic pattern, away from the gunman. Hitting a moving target is harder. If she is too close, then she quickly picks her moment and moves to disarm him before she becomes a victim. Is this plan a guarantee that she will be safe if such an incident occurs? No, but it is a lot better than teaching her to hide and wait for some whacked out individual to blow her brains out.

Respect vs. fear

As you might have guessed, I am not an advocate of gun control. I believe in teaching children at an early age to respect guns. You don’t teach respect by instilling paralyzing fear. You teach respect by showing the child exactly what the gun can do. Allowing them to handle guns and shoot them satisfies the mystery and natural curiosity that all children have about guns.

Guns are not evil and they need not be any more dangerous to children than a set of golf clubs. Either can be used for sport, and likewise, either can be used as weapons. A gun would be my weapon of choice for self-defense, but sport shooting and hunting is also my sport of choice over golf. I wouldn’t presume to tell a golfer that he shouldn’t allow his children to handle his golf clubs, nor teach them how to play golf. Why, then, do I have to tolerate school officials and teachers telling me that I should not even have a gun in my home if I have children?

My children’s curiosity about guns was satisfied when they were young. They have even attended a gun safety program so that they could obtain hunting licenses. They know the difference between fantasy as portrayed in movies and video games, and reality because they have seen first-hand what happens when they pull the trigger. They also know that whenever they have guests in our home, the place where we store our guns is totally off limits to other children. That has been a rule since day one. My grown children will come to me even now and ask permission to enter that room, even if no other children are there. That is established trust. That is a trust that they have never breached, and it is a trust that I defy anyone to deny me.

Reality, trust and history

You can perhaps understand why I resent modern educators who send home notes telling me that I shouldn’t have guns in my home. If I do, then I must never let my children touch them, and I must keep them locked up, etc., etc. In order for a weapon to be useful in warding off danger, it must be easily accessible. A criminal is not going to wait for me to unlock a gun safe and remove a trigger lock before I can stop him from harming my family or me. Individuals who have their own guns and use them against criminals prevent over two million crimes a year. In most cases, simply brandishing the gun is enough.

Politicians who are pushing for gun control have a more sinister motive in mind than protecting your children. You can count on that. It is a fact. These are the same people who will not rest until the citizenry is disarmed. They love and embrace socialism. They want the Constitution re-written and the Second Amendment tossed out. If you buy the idea that the Founding Fathers did not foresee this, and that they meant for the Second Amendment to apply to a militia only, then you are wrong. The text of the Second Amendment 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.”

A militia by definition is made up of an organized armed citizenry. It is not a professional army! In the debate that preceded the ratification of the Constitution, many references were made to “rights of the people” and used interchangeably with “person” and “individual.” The Constitution could not have been ratified without the inclusion of this “Bill of Rights.” The Founding Fathers agonized over writing the documents that formed our government. They did this during the very time our country was struggling in war to obtain independence. All the possibilities of an oppressive government, all the very reasons for which these peace-loving men were now engaged in war were fresh in their minds and their experiences. They were fighting oppression and they were defining necessary guards against creating another oppressive government. These guards they defined as “unalienable rights” - rights that are not given by government, but which may not be taken away from innocent citizens by government either.

These are rights that everyone is born with. Individual rights and responsibilities are the grantors and the price for liberty. This is the great stumbling block of socialism and communism. One individual cannot assume responsibility nor strip the rights of another without endangering freedom for all. Government cannot assume responsibilities or strip rights from individuals without eliminating liberty. A large number of our society have forgotten or never learned these basics in Natural Law. As our borders have opened to immigrants of other cultures than those of our European Founders, we have embraced these cultures to the detriment of that which gave us and is now giving them such a great bounty of liberty. If we want to preserve what every immigrant came here for, perhaps it is time to stop trying to redefine our Founding Fathers’ intentions.

In Summary

Parents must protect their children. If you are not ready to put your life on the line for your children, then don’t have children! The education you give your children is their first and last line of defense against danger.

It is up to you to foresee all potential hazards and give your children the knowledge they need to avoid them. It is up to you to teach them individual responsibility. The public school system will not get the job done for you. In fact, it will make your job harder. No matter what your personal and political beliefs, you have managed to survive in this world to reach adulthood. In doing so, you now have life experiences that you can draw upon to help you decide the safest choices for your child. If your life experiences have been negative, and you feel as if your survival has been due to good luck, then the choices you make for your children might not be as easy for you. Nevertheless, you still must make choices for your children and teach them to make wise choices for themselves. Their own knowledge is the very basis for their safety.

I include this chapter here for background on how we raised our children to respect – not fear – guns. After the 5-4 Supreme Court decision yesterday, June 28, 2010, that literally squeaked by in support of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, (yet still left open the door for gun control) we must realize just how fragile our future freedoms are. If the most basic of all human rights, the right for self-protection, cannot pass the simple smell test for 4 out of 5 of our current Supreme Court Justices, we are in big trouble! That narrow margin may spell the difference in the very survival of America.

I had to stop watching a discussion last night on the Sean Hannity Show because Bob Beckel, (some would call him “the token liberal”) was vehemently spewing the liberal line of standing up for all the innocent children who are victims and potential victims of an armed citizenry. He and all the liberals like him do not trust or have faith in the wisdom of the Founders or in his fellow citizens – but somehow they have limitless faith that government will always “protect” children as long as guns are not part of our culture. Absurdity breeds absurdity, folks!

I would like to leave you with this thought from one of our Founders:

Thomas Jefferson: “When the Legislative or Executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them [the people] not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

From - The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew A. Lipscomb, editor (Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XV, p. 278, to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820.

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