“I don’t believe gun owners have rights.”
– Sarah Brady, 1997

“…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
– excerpt from The Second Amendment, 1787

I know you’ve all been waiting for the second installment of this series, in which I promised to give you my personal firearms recommendations — plus share with you some revelations about how you may be able to make money from the modern boom in guns and ammunition…

But before I get to that, I’ve just got to take this opportunity to respond to the extensive feedback that part one of this series garnered from the Taipan Daily readership.

Nothing gets me revved up like passionate responses to something I’ve written — be they good, bad or ugly. Remember, I read and carefully consider every piece of feedback I get, whether it’s a subject-line-only e-mail or the most detailed multi-page dispatch (some of your responses rivaled my article in length). And it would feel wrong to me if I simply launched right into a bunch of analysis and recommendations without acknowledging, thanking or admonishing the large number of readers who took the time out of their busy days to write to me…

So I’m going to shoehorn an extra piece into this series to address this feedback, and use it to put even more flesh on the bones of the pro-gun, pro-Constitution position.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that beyond simple gun-talk, the volume and tenor of your feedback proved that my “evergreen” point — that the care and feeding of liberty is at least as important to your bottom line as the investments in your portfolio — rang true with a huge number of Taipan Daily readers…

Of course, I figured it would. But a commentator never knows how a new audience will react to his core tenets (or hers — yeah, I know) until a few weather balloons have been launched overhead. So, many thanks to the reader in the Carolinas, who summed up the sentiments of a large number of others when he wrote:

“Yes, it is good to get financial advice but other things matter just as much!”

Also thanks to the Oklahoma woman who told me:

“Put my vote down on the side of the readers who DO want political commentary with our investment info.”

And to the westerner who so eloquently summarized:

“Finally someone understands the simple truth that making money is meaningless without the freedom to protect yourself… Investment advice is pointless in a society that isn’t free.”

Of course, thanks also to:

• Those who wrote in with recommendations of your own on what kind of firepower should be in every self-respecting American’s arsenal
• Those who relayed true tales of how a gun saved yourself or your family from harm (the lady who wrote in with the hilarious story about how she sent some would-be robbers fleeing in a panic with her AR-15 was priceless)
• Those who were reprinting or forwarding this series to their friends, family, elected officials — and most importantly, people they knew it would anger
• Those who replied with certain mostly unprintable (but no less valid) criticisms about folks that don’t see the need for guns — and about the sorry state of the “America” we’re trying to defend ourselves in, and from
• Those who wrote in to take me to task, call me names, and even wish death upon me — you give me grist for my mill, fuel for my fire, and a reason to write.

How’s that for irony? For exposing a bit of the little-told truth about guns in America, I get death wishes from those who claim to abhor the violence and bloodshed they believe guns are responsible for. Here’s exactly what one of these kooks wrote in response to my opening essay of this series:

“For Amrhein: If there are enough of you macho gun-loving paranoiacs, maybe you will kill each other off, an outcome that sounds good to me.”

Nice, huh? To that particular reader and all like him, I say this:

When you’re cowering in a pistol-whipped heap, pondering your ignominious death behind a dumpster in a dark alley, peering into the unblinking black .38 caliber eye of the Grim Reaper himself, realizing that the street value of your life is the $12 in your wallet, you’ll be praying for one of us “macho gun-loving paranoiacs” to come along and save your helpless, whimpering self…

And based on my 22 years’ worth of experience with gun owners, most of them would do it, even at their own peril — and even knowing how much you despise them.

Gun nuts are nice like that.

The Four Self-Evident Truths Upholding Gun Rights in America

I could’ve made a career out of writing solely about guns and gun politics. Want to know why I didn’t?

Because I always figured that any minute, the anti-gun argument would for once and all be crushed under the weight of the accumulated data. The longer time goes on, and the more liberal the gun laws become in some areas, the more undeniable becomes the truth that guns in the hands of civilians are of overwhelming net benefit to American society…

I also figured that at any minute, all the journalists, educators, lawyers, judges and politicians would wake up and realize that it makes no sense to hold that Americans don’t have every right to own and carry whatever “arms” they can get their hands on…

Why? Because four things are inarguably true with regard to the Second Amendment, which reads:

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.

Here they are…

1) The Second Amendment does not contradict the Bill of Rights — The overarching purpose of the Bill of Rights is to strictly limit the federal government’s power over citizens. In order for the phrase “well-regulated militia” in the Second Amendment to mean what the anti-gun lobby claims — that the Framers were calling for federal regulation of private gun ownership — it would mean that Amendment 2 would stand in stark defiance of The Bill’s whole raison d’etre. That’s just not tenable.

2) “Well regulated” does not mean “overseen by The Feds” — Since it can’t mean “governmentally controlled” and be consistent with the Bill of Rights’ intent, the phrase “well regulated” in the Second Amendment can only have one meaning: “to make regular.” To be a unit of citizen soldiers suitable for defending a free state, all those who stand united must be similarly armed. A militia makes a poor fighting force when one man has a musket, the next a pitchfork, another an axe, the next one a slingshot, and so forth. Therefore, the Second’s “well regulated” means that it’s every American’s duty to possess and be proficient with the very latest in weaponry, so that an adequate defense of liberty can be mounted. This is the only interpretation that makes contextual sense.

3) “Militia” does not modify “the people” — Before it was twisted by the media into a synonym for “domestic terrorist,” the definition of militia was: “The whole of the able-bodied citizenry eligible by law for military service.” The anti-gun crowd uses this definition to claim that the Second limits the right to keep and bear arms only to those who are fit for soldiery. They then use this flawed premise to buttress their claim that the Framers envisioned regulation of private firearm ownership. However, the Amendment only uses the “militia” angle as a justification for what, at that time in history, was a revolutionary (no pun intended) concept: The total democratization of gun ownership among all classes of citizens. And the language of the Second makes it clear that the right to keep and bear arms applies not simply to that militia, but to “the people.” That means old, young, poor, rich, black, white, gay, straight, God-fearing or Allah-loving, so that ALL may be ever vigilant. The phrase “shall not be infringed” proves this.

4) “Arms” does not mean “slingshots” — A lot of gun-haters use the fact that the Second Amendment does not explicitly define “arms” as a justification for regulating our right to guns, or as a reason to deem certain types of firearms as off-limits to citizens. These folks are clearly in need of a history lesson. It wasn’t until relatively recently that the citizenry didn’t have far more advanced weapons than did the regulars in the standing army. In the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, whole companies of soldiers used their personal guns, ultra-accurate Pennsylvania and Kentucky long rifles, to devastating effect at more than double the effective range of the regulars’ muskets. In the Civil War, lots of Union soldiers used their own money to privately purchase 16-shot Henry repeating rifles for use in battle, since they far outperformed their regular issue muzzle-loading rifle-muskets. In the settling of the west, U.S. civilian scouts carried their own Winchester lever-action repeaters, while the Army was equipped with single-shot, breech-loading “trapdoor” Springfields, which were nothing more than modified Civil War-era guns. Even the legendary Thompson submachine gun was available to civilians first (in 1921), 17 years earlier than they were adopted by the military. So the idea that the American citizenry shouldn’t be AT LEAST as well armed as the government is a revisionist concept, and without much precedent in our country’s history.

Now here’s the gauntlet, all you gun-haters that have written to me before: I DARE you to dispute the logic and correctness of these four assertions, in print…

It’s one thing to call names and issue threats — but quite another to duel it out, fair and square, man-to-man and barrel-to-barrel. I promise, if any of you provides anything like a cogent and valid refutation of any one of these four points, you’ll see your words in print in the next installment of this series, along with my concession.

If you can’t, then open your mind and shut your mouth. I’ve got better things to do than read your empty threats…

The Second Amendment, Translated From Marxist PC Spin to Plain English

Taking all of the factors I’ve just outlined into account, it’s clear that there’s a huge gulf between what the mainstream powers-that-be would have us believe the Second Amendment means, and what it actually means.

Here’s what they want us to think it means…

A domestic army and human-aid force directed by a benevolent centralized authority being necessary to the nurturing of an open-borders welfare state in which all are dependent on the government, the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms shall be pared down, phased out or restricted until ineffectual against the central planners.

But what it actually means is this…

Because it’s the duty of all Americans to be ever vigilant against enemies of liberty, whether foreign invaders, common criminals, or despots of our own election, every citizen of sound mind should have the latest arms at their constant disposal.

Now, here’s what I don’t get: If a sparsely educated, marginally literate half-redneck rube like me understands all of this, why don’t the journalists, judges, lawyers, professors and politicians we’re all listening to? It seems like the longer these people go to school or hold office, the more wrongly they interpret the most important part of the U.S. Constitution…

Which makes me wonder: Is the problem that the Second Amendment is ambiguously drafted and flexible in its meaning, as the gun-haters would claim? Or is the problem that the major institutions of influence in this country (courts, schools and government) have an anti-Second Amendment agenda that we common folk aren’t privy to?

What do YOU think?

Coming Soon: Gun-Play for Protection and Profit

Folks, these Taipan Daily essays are typically around 1,200 words or so, and I’m pushing 2,000 here. What can I say? This issue, and your thoughts on it, warranted additional commentary.

However, I have not forgotten my promise to make some specific recommendations to you of not only the right firearms for every purpose, but some ideas about how to perhaps turn a legal buck from the current gun and ammo craze…

Plus how to avoid losing your money by doing what some in the alternative investment advice community are suggesting you do to play this boom for a profit.

And I will do exactly that in the third and final installment of this series. But a word of warning: My suggestion may be the opposite of what you think. Also, be forewarned that my analysis of the state of “all things gun” in the U.S. may surprise a lot of you — and seem in stark contrast to what you might expect to come from me.

I’d ask only that you keep an open mind, resist the urge to be knee-jerk offended, and above all things, to be objective…

Unlike the people and institutions that run our country, make and interpret our laws, and teach our children.

Always firing for effect,

Jim Amrhein
Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

P.S. Folks, keep your comments coming — it only improves the quality of your Taipan Daily. Also, keep forwarding these essays to those you know will read, discuss and disseminate them. Or just for fun, to those who will get their panties in a bunch. Who knows? Maybe they’ll embrace truth and reason instead of the mainstream dogma…

Editorial Director’s Note: Well, you broke the record. “A Kind Word and a Gun (Part One)” received the largest outpouring of feedback of any Taipan Daily piece thus far… and that’s clearing a pretty high hurdle, as there has been no shortage of passionate response to any number of issues touched on this past year.

Now Jim is back with the promised part two – and he wants to know how you feel about the Second Amendment (among other things). As always, speak your piece and I’ll faithfully deliver: justice@taipandaily.com

Source:  A Kind Word and a Gun (Part Two)

And both for what you thought I was saying: That nuclear power is The Answer to America’s (or the world’s) energy woes.

But I’d like to remind everyone reading this — pro, con, neutral, apoplectic or apathetic about nuke power — that I freely admitted in the first two parts of this series that I don’t know enough about nuclear energy generation to make an informed decision about its prospects. I never said atomic power was a panacea, or even that I believe it is. I only pointed out some realities about nuclear power generation so far in the United States…

First, that as far as I could discover from a good deal of research time, it has killed or sickened few, if any. Secondly, I reminded readers that the overwhelming majority of Americans favor nuclear energy, a fact that seems not to warrant much mention in the mainstream media’s portrayal of the debate. Also, I put a few numbers to some of the hazardous realities — both to humanity and the environment — of conventional American energy production. A side note on this:

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One less-than-adoring reader observed that if I were to mention the tens of thousands of deaths related to coal mining, then injuries and deaths related to uranium mining should also be pointed out. Of course, I considered this when I wrote Part Two, in which I touched on the dangers of coal mining in my discussion of the human costs of American energy production…

According to my research, uranium mining was only recently resumed in the U.S. after being halted in the early ‘90s. Since its resumption in 2001, domestic uranium mining has been predominantly “open-pit” — which is far less hazardous and manual-labor intensive that conventional underground mining (like for much of our coal). Long story short: I couldn’t find much on the dangers of modern uranium mining in America.

However, this reader’s letter spurred me to some further digging — which led me to some old newspaper stories and other sources indicating that uranium mining in Utah, Colorado and other places in the American Southwest (mostly in the 1940s and ‘50s) may indeed have sickened or killed a number of miners and residents of mining communities. In fact, many of these people and their families have received payments under a 1990 law called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

Again, specific numbers were hard to come by — but since I’m nothing if not objective, I felt this was worth mentioning. Also, since the U.S. currently imports more than 80 percent of the uranium used by domestic reactors, the dangers of mining the metallic fuel in Russia, Australia, and other major supplier nations must be considered (finding hard info on this is another matter, however).

Lastly, I must once again thank Whiskey & Gunpowder readers for their voluminous feedback — pro, con and otherwise. Special thanks to the numerous bona-fide experts who wrote in to express support for this series, among them a former U.S. Navy nuclear submariner and numerous active and retired nuclear engineers…

Now, back to the business of neither defending nor exalting American nuclear power generation — but considering it as objectively as I can.

From Ukraine, With Bile…

Always on the tongue-tips of those who’d thwart the spread of nuclear power in America is the 1986 reactor meltdown and explosion at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Of course, this disaster embodied all of our worst fears about nuclear energy — and I, for one, would never try to minimize or understate the horrors those in surrounding territories (especially Belarus) have experienced for the last 22 years because of the accident. I also agree with nuke-power’s harshest critics on one point at least: We’ll likely never know the true extent of the incident’s impact…

However, even the most jaded of nuke-haters would have to grudgingly admit that in the history of nuclear power around the world, Chernobyl has been an anomaly, albeit one of the most terrifying sort. To make an informed assessment of the risks of nuclear power, one must look at the whole picture. That picture includes 31 nations that are generating nuclear power in 439 plants — apparently without significant loss of life or destruction of the environment so far, Chernobyl excepted.