“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)

“Farewell, fair cruelty.”
–
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Like the unceremonious dumping of a codependent spouse once a new lover has come of age, America’s mainstream media seems to have stuffed the entire George W. Bush presidency into a shoebox and crammed it into the back of history’s closet…

I guess this should come as no surprise. For better or worse, a new era of American leadership dawns. And it does not serve the architects of an emergent ethos and by “architects,” I mean the mainstream media — to glorify, or even acknowledge, the achievements of past leaders…

Especially when they’re Republican.

The fundamental truth that new power is best served by erasing old power’s legacy transcends politics — and even humanity. It is written in the DNA of life itself. That’s why a young alpha male lion kills the cubs sired by the pride’s former patriarch. It’s simply the brutal nature of things…

However, among supposedly “higher primates” like humans — which (if only barely) includes newspaper and magazine editors, Big 3 network news producers and anchors, and the Sean Penns, Michael Moores, and Al Gores in whose expert opinions we all seem to put so much stock — I’d expect at least a discernible measure of gratitude to an outgoing president, no matter how anathema in their circles.

And I think this is especially appropriate when the new power owes its very existence to the former regime. You’ll see exactly what I mean as you read on here…

Along those lines, I feel an obligation to do something on behalf of my mainstream media cousins. It’s a favor that, owing to my position on publishing’s fringes and status as an unabashed editorialist, I have the freedom to do — but that they cannot, owing to their, uh… objectivity.

So, without further ado, I hereby express what every member of the major American media establishment surely feels — but can’t say…

“Thank You, President Bush.”

Let us remember that before he dethroned Democrat Harry S. Truman (nope, not Richard Nixon) as the least popular president since the Gallup people started keeping track of such things, George W. Bush held the title of most popular president in modern history, with a 92% approval rating in late 2001.

And it was precisely W’s highest-ever approval rating that gave the mainstream media a juicy target — there was nowhere for him to go but down. Kind of like his father, the second highest-rated president in modern history (89% positive approval numbers)…

But I digress: This is about the big, sloppy kiss the mainstream media owes Bush 43 for the last 7+ years of target practice. I think it’s the least they can do, given the fact that The Decider himself gave them all the ammunition they needed to shoot him into oblivion. And I’m not just talking about his butchery of the lingo and vapid, tone-deaf rhetoric. It was his crappy strategery, too.

That’s why I’m offering the following fond farewell to President George Walker Bush on behalf of a grateful mainstream media…

Thank you, Mr. President, for embroiling us in an Iraq war with no clearly articulated purpose except the asinine notion of findable WMDs, no concrete exit strategy, a price tag that has arguably spurred us into national economic free fall — and with no possibility for rewards (we won’t seize the oil, we’ll buy it like everyone else) beyond our collective pride at having spread democracy by force. Oh, and a war that carries the perpetual taint of appearing to be nothing more than therapy. No matter what history reveals to be the real forces driving this action, we in the media will always be able to at least plausibly posit that the whole damned opera was nothing more than an insecure, underachieving son dealing with his Oedipal issues by killing thousands of his own countrymen.

Thank you, Mr. President, for bloating the size, scope and expense of government on a scale that exceeds a liberal journalist’s wildest fantasies. Your unprecedented expansion of the federal footprint in the interest of a bipartisan legacy has forever rendered laughable any Republican claim of a “small government” party philosophy. Kudos for effectively taking the conservative movement’s one unsullied trump card off the table for all future elections, and awakening the American public to the reality that anyone they vote for will be a “big government” candidate — so they might as well have the Democrats’ programs and pork here at home, rather than the Republicans’ missiles, wars and spy-cameras abroad. Thanks to your re-invention of the Republican platform from “small government is better than big government” into “our big government is better than their big government,” the only truly conservative threat to Democrat victory in the 2008 Presidential race, Ron Paul, was all but laughed off the stage by his own party.

Thank you, Mr. President, for all but ignoring the one core issue your own party could still get major ideological traction with, an issue that more than 80% of Americans are concerned about even to this day: Illegal immigration. Your party’s strong rhetoric, yet nonexistent action, on this issue has given the Democrats a license to ignore it as well. We salute your lack of initiative in grappling with illegal immigration decisively in the wake of 9/11, when it would have been easy to muster Congressional support for the building of barriers and the institution of stronger anti-hiring and deportation measures in the interest of national security. But because of your poor foresight and utter inaction then, we can now spin any Obama-led immigration policy change whatsoever as a Democrat triumph on a conservative core issue the GOP couldn’t make any progress on. You’ve made us — er, I mean the Democrats — into the party that can reach across the aisle and get things done.

Thank you, Mr. President, for what policies you did enact in the interest of national security after 9/11, some of which are the least popular measures among the American populace since Prohibition. You deserve a hearty “attaboy” for spearheading the Patriot Act, which stands forevermore as a shining beacon of questionably constitutional legislation that has the potential to do more inward harm than outward good. Also, great move on the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, a confused, inefficient, yet huge and deeply funded agency that seems aimed more toward publicly showcasing the U.S. government’s inanity and inefficiency than keeping anyone safe. We left-leaning journalists admire your decision to spend billions and create tens of thousands of low-level government jobs cavity-searching random airline passengers rather than arming pilots with $500 Glocks and frangible, air-safe ammunition. Guns are evil and never save any lives — and pilots are known to be people of erratic judgment. That “Sully” guy who saved 150 people by landing his powerless plane on an icy Hudson River is a fluke. Most pilots would’ve grabbed the gun and started plugging all the passengers instead…

Thank you, Mr. President, for enough sound bites of unscripted idiocy to poison the American public toward any kind of plain-speaking presidential candidate for the rest of time. Your blathering has single-handedly assassinated the historically strong appeal of Presidents of either party with down-home, folksy, straight-talking charm — and programmed Americans to be more receptive to the slickest-tongued and most teleprompter-dependent candidates in any election. Like Barack Obama, our savior.

Thank you, Mr. President, for the thousand small things that transformed our unspoken national motto from the conservative-at-heart Kennedy’s long-enduring “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country,” to “What has my country done for me lately?” Whether it’s the huge explosion in government make-work jobs, the gross expansion of Medicare and Medicaid benefits, the transparent bribing of Americans with asinine tax refund checks instead of simply cutting taxes and simplifying the tax code, or any number of other things that make this administration more emblematic than any other of the “me state,” we thank you on behalf of the Democrats for doing all their dirty work for them. And finally…

Thank you, Mr. President, for the million other things you did that helped ensure that our new lover, the Big O himself, ascended to his rightful throne. We can’t possibly list them all, but among them are: Your shady Big Oil running-mate, your sketchy Cold-War era appointments, your nonsensical economic policies, your systematic alienation of other leaders of the Free World, and your proud “God first” mentality that soured a nation on qualified Republican candidates like Mitt Romney and positioned the big-tax, soft-on-immigration, long-in-the-tooth John McCain as the only electable 2008 GOP option.

You handed us — damn, I mean the Democrats — the easy win. We’re euphoric, of course. But now we don’t have anyone to crucify anymore, since Democrat-Christian-American-of-multicultural-mixed-race-descent Barack Obama is president, and nothing will ever be wrong under the Stars and Stripes, ever again…

But God, what a ride we had with you, W. We’ll never forget you, Bushie.

Love,
The MSM

A Tragedy of Shakespearean Proportions

Shakespeare’s beloved Twelfth Night is a play about a person born of aristocracy who is freakishly thrust into extraordinary circumstances that dictate the assumption of an unnatural identity. Comedy ensues…

Sound familiar?

To me, it sounds exactly like George W. Bush’s presidency. Except that, aside from the levity of his “Bush-isms” and shoe-bomb attacks at press conferences, the cosmic author of W’s presidential play was clearly writing a tragedy…

And that’s a tough pill to swallow for someone who voted for him.

Now, with 20/20 hindsight, I’m sorry I did. Though I have no regrets about choosing dimwit W over Ketchup King Kerry in 2004, I’m now firmly convinced that my vote would have been much better spent in 2000 on the Tennessee totem pole, Al Gore.

That no doubt surprises those of you who know me well. I’ve made a good chunk of my editorial career out of skewering religions — and none more so than Gore’s militant environmentalism…

In part two of this series, coming in the next 10 days, I’ll explain exactly why this nation of ours would be miles better off right now if Al Gore had been elected president instead of George W. Bush.

I’ll also explain why it would have been the best thing to ever happen to the GOP in America, the mainstream media’s best efforts notwithstanding…

Stay tuned, Taipaners.

Jim Amrhein
Contributing Editor, Taipan Daily

P.S. Before I leave you — and all tongue-in-cheek facetiousness aside — I want to extend a very sincere, personal and public thanks to George W. Bush, the president I helped to elect twice:

Thank you, Mr. President, for putting the “good” in “goodbye.

Source: To George W. Bush, With Love (part one)

Editorial Director’s Note:

In our zeal for speaking truth to power, we are equal opportunity offenders here at the Taipan Publishing Group. You may have noticed that lately we’ve been, shall we say, a tad harsh on the new administration… so it’s only fair that Jim Amrhein, truth-speaker par excellence, now properly roasts the outgoing Prez.

Agree? Disagree? Let your feelings flow, and I’ll pass ‘em along to Jim: justice@taipandaily.com