Brain Dead?

Should we allow euthanasia for the allegedly "brain dead"?   

Not if their family's object.

Syria's Assad

Bashar Hafez al-Assad

Here's something most of us have missed entirely.

Syria's Christians Back Assad

From Christianity Today
 Syrian Christians rejected protestors' demands for embattled president Bashar al-Assad to resign. But Christians did broadly endorse democratic reforms that would bring an end to dictatorship.

"We do not support those who are calling for the fall of the regime, simply because we are [for] the process of reform and changes," said Yohanna Ibrahim, Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo, at a religious summit in France.

In late May, International Christian Concern, an evangelical ministry to the persecuted church, released to Christianity Today an anonymous open letter from a "trusted Syrian source" that explains why many Syrian Christians support Assad's regime. The two-page letter calls for help from the larger Christian community. It says in part:

• "Christian service has flourished remarkably in Syria. We regard Syria as a model Arab country when it comes to freedom of worship."

• Radical Muslim groups are "responsible for the disturbance" in the country. "Christians are the first to be persecuted when we talk about governmental change."

• "We are seeking [Christians'] help to prevent what happened in Iraq and Egypt from happening in Syria. Christian service in Syria is in danger now."

An influential Syrian seminary educator who asked not to be named told CT that Syrian Christians are very aware of what happened to Christians in Iraq, including the estimated 500,000 Christian refugees who fled to Syria during the Iraq war.

"[Syrian Christians] are unwilling to see themselves becoming refugees in Lebanon," said the educator, who is currently in the United States to teach. He told CT that a majority of Syria's 1.4 million Christians want the Assad government to speed up reforms. "In a nutshell, Syrian Christians desire to have both—the regime and the reforms."

Syrian Christians see their nation as a Middle East oasis of religious freedom compared with Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Open Doors ranks Syria as 38th on its 2011 list of the world's worst persecutors of Christians. The secular government allows churches to preach, teach, evangelize, publish religious materials, and build sanctuaries. Christians have access to education and employment.

The Red Lion's Acknowledgement to Women's Rights

We had occasion to stop into the Red Lion for lunch this Saturday (the eve of my 62nd birthday) as my wife asked where I would most like to go. 

My family's been stopping by the place off and on for ages, my mother visited the Red Lion  in the 20's and 30's with her parents, and I recall my first introduction in 1958. 
With a family that's been in New England since 1620, it's a safe assumption that previous generations were familiar with the Stockbridge operation as well.

This afternoon we dined in the tavern; and from my vantage point I saw something that surely didn't exist until fairly recently.

A hook at the bar upon which women can safely hang their purses. (Circled above)


Oh........of course.
Lunch was great. 
Good service, delicious coffee, etc.
It's the The Red Lion for crying out-loud, what did you expect?

Hoodies and Robbery

Save for during inclement weather, no one wears a hoodie without some nefarious intention.

Such as armed robbery.

Google "Armed Robbery" images and you'll see the following:

Notice that race hasn't anything to do with it, but punks in hoodies regardless of their ethnic origins seem to be the problem.

Let's look at the record...

There is no question the Connecticut Republican Party is in dire need of reconstruction.

What the party faithful don't know, is that task

 has been going on for two years.

______________________________________________

Please don't underestimate the straits we found ourselves in.

People tend to forget or ignore the impact of the post Rowland era; which took a serious toll on our fund-raising abilities.

Further, it was difficult to do *ANYTHING* while we were embroiled in costly lawsuits, carried around a 6 digit debt, and were hard pressed to raise funds.
Were it not for former CTGOP Chair George Gallo, we might well remain in debt to this very day.
                  ______________________________________________

The state party has worked non-stop 
rebuilding our infrastructure. 
We have however done a poor (lousy) job of  communicating those efforts to our local town committees and the grassroots base.

In 2012, despite a Democratic presidential candidate carrying Connecticut, for the 1st time in decades the GOP lost no legislative seats in either chamber.

CT Republicans have already tried it.

Recently former Secretary of State Pauline Kezer suggested we allow unaffiliated voters to vote in primaries.

We tried that and it created a disaster.

This was originally posted on August 17th 2006 at another site:
http://connecticutlocalpolitics.blogspot.com/2006/08/lieberman-rell-with-large-leads.html

Dick Bozzuto

English as a 2nd language, self made man (people confuse him with his now late half-brother, Adam the IGA mogul who was also a wonderful man) drop dead straight, ethics and behavior beyond reproach.

Moderate Republican, before the word got ruined it was "Progressive" Republican he was/is a populist.

Former CT state senator. 

Ran for senate in 1980; got beat by a carpetbagging ultra-conservative named Buckley who in turn lost miserably.

Had the 82 Gov nomination sewn up when convention chair Larry DeNardis allowed the convention rules to be broken by Labriola & Rome; they had a love-fest and there was as a result no 2nd roll call.

Bozzuto had 49.7 % of that convention. 

At the same convention Prescott Bush Jr had challanged Weicker had received around 24% (??) of the vote more than enough to primary.

Lowell didn't like that and called Dick to get his delegates to back his hair-brained idea to allow ind. to vote in state wide GOP primaries in case it ever happened again. 
For this Lowell is 100% behind Dick in 86.
They shake on it.

We all held our noses, took a stiff drink and did so at a special rules convention.
(I was at all these things)

1986 - Lowell rolls out Julie Belaga who barely gets enough votes to primary. 
Weickers people start up the "in the Mafia" nonsense against Dick (as if every Italian with 3 bucks is a hood).

There's Richard C. Bozzuto, the literal personification as to what is right and good about our nation and state and these disgusting people had the nerve to smear his good family name?
IT WAS TRULY HORRIBLE.

Sept. 9th 1986 - with an astonishing number of poll workers (same way Weicker won Gov in 1990) Belaga beats Bozzuto the GOP convention nominee.

Nov. 1986 - worst defeat in the history of the Republican Party in CT.

Dick had used his popularity and whatever celebrity he might have enjoyed to the benefit of others including myself, tirelessly and liberally. He would show up for a function anywhere in CT if one of his supporters thought it might help him or her win a few votes for Planning & Zoning, Alderman, Town Council, or Dog Catcher. He went door to door with me and spoke Italian to voters who clearly adored him and he certainly didn't do me any damage in doing so either. (I'm a WASP)
Dick was the most loyal ranking Republican I ever had the honor to associate with in my life.

Many single words could be used to describe him, including; Good, fair, honest, but the one overwhelming characteristic he still enjoys is kind. The man is kind to fault even eclipsing the one thing upon which he most prides himself - loyal.

Were we to drag him (kicking and screaming I'm quite sure) back into the game he would light a fire; the man can really speak and has some other quality that maybe someone with a high degree in English might be able to quantify in words but I can't. But I would to this day go though a wall for him, or for that matter follow him into the gates of hell and I'd assume we were going to come back victorious.

Is the Connecticut Republican Party Guilty of Groupthink?

Is our desire for comradery so over-whelming 

that we've become Lemmings?

“Groupthink” is said to occur within a group when the organization’s desire for cohesion and unanimity overrides its ability to objectively engage in thorough, rational discourse on a subject.  It is a disease of thought that has infected various organizations, ranging from think-tanks, policymakers, corporate boardrooms, and has even made its way presidential “situation rooms.”  Groupthink is most certainly as grave a threat to national security as proposed by Irving Janis, and every precautionary measure possible must be made in order to prevent it from taking root.

It can be asserted that Groupthink is an unfortunate side effect of humanity’s innate, evolutionary predisposition towards favoring organization.  It has been linked to various disasters throughout history, such as the Challenger space shuttle catastrophe and the Bay of Pigs.  While it is true that Janis established a connection between these events and groupthink retrospectively, it is worth noting that in the decades following his initial report on groupthink, his theories and findings have been validated by a fairly substantial body of literature and independent research, (Aldag, 1993).

There are several reasons that Groupthink must be viewed as a potential threat to national security.  First and foremost, by definition, it entails the clouding of judgment of the “experts” who compose a group.  Anything but the most rational and sound discussion on a topic as sensitive as military strategy or counterterror can obviously have profoundly grave consequences.  Furthermore, and more abstractly, Groupthink contradicts the very reasons for the establishing of many of the organizations it affects.  It can be reasonably assumed that many panels or boards were created in order to provide a diverse set of minds and backgrounds to analyze a situation, thus limiting the role that human error tied to the fallibility of one lone mind can play during the decision-making process.  If the flow of free thought becomes contaminated in such a manner, the group’s usefulness is essentially nullified and any decision they reach may be only marginally better than a unilateral decision made by one sole actor.

There are eight calling cards, or symptoms that an organization may be operating under the influence of groupthink, and they are:

Invulnerability, the idea that the group is beyond or immune to making errors.

Morality, the notion that the group’s cause is the upright or “morally justified” one.

Rationale, which entails the rebuttal of warnings possibly through the use of past experiences in order to delude the group members into believing that such warnings are unfounded, (the example given during the Challenger disaster was citing the fact that take-offs hadn’t been a problem in the past, despite the newfound problems).

Stereotyping, which involves the creation of a largely imaginary “them and us” dichotomy, tied to the idea that those outside of the group are ignorant or possibly misinformed.

Self-censorship, which is the suppression of ideas viewed as being contradictory to the consensus of the group as a whole.

Illusions of unanimity, which is when silence is viewed as a passive form of agreement.

Direct pressure, labeling dissenters within the group as being disloyal; and finally;

mind-guards, the self-appointed individuals who actively attempt to “shield” the group from outside thoughts or ideas which may undermine the current thoughts within the group, (Janis, 1971).

Interestingly, it seems as though the risk of Groupthink infiltrating an organization is directly proportionate to the level of camaraderie felt within said group.  As individuals become more comfortable with one another, there is a general tendency to lower one’s guard when in their presence.  Concurrent with this is the desire for work to be accomplished and for conclusions to be reached.  This provides an ideal breeding ground for the insidious nature of Groupthink to flourish.

Very recently, there has been some level of debate in the media surrounding Groupthink.  The recent discourse began shortly after the death of Steve Jobs, and there seem to be two schools of thought pertaining to it.  One camp asserts that “the lone genius” is more productive and efficient when they are permitted to work in isolation of others and by definition will never succumb to Groupthink, (Cain, 2012).  The other insists that the greatest strategies have emerged from the result of group-based discussion, but still openly admits that precautionary measures must be taken to inhibit the development of Groupthink, (Govindarajan and Terwilliger, 2012).

Earlier this month, the topic of Groupthink arose in relation to the appointment of John Kerry as the new Secretary of State.  Kerry, a long-time supporter of close relations between the United States and Armenia, has been accused of succumbing to the Washington DC’s Groupthink surrounding the fostering of a stronger Turkish-American alliance.  The author, of obviously pro-Armenian bias, contends that Turkey should not so readily be considered an ally of the United States, as there is a trend under their current president of Islamism slowly creeping back into the culture of the nation, and that Armenia and its surrounding region are of strategic value to the USA as China has expressed interest in expanding their influence in the region, (Seto, 2013).  For this reason, the writer claims that Kerry is guilty of abandoning his own beliefs in order to conform to the prevailing beliefs of his peers, and thus, is jeopardizing foreign relations due to Groupthink.


Aldag, R. J., & Fuller, S. R. (1993). Beyond fiasco: A reappraisal of the groupthink phenomenon and a new model of group decision processes. Psychological Bulletin, 113(3).

Boyadijian, Seto (February 8, 2013).  Kerry’s Dilemma: The Groupthink on Turkey.  Asbarez.com. Retrieved from:  http://asbarez.com/108218/kerry%E2%80%99s-dilemma-the-groupthink-on-turkey/

Cain, Susan (January 13, 2012). The Rise of the New Groupthink. The New York Times. Retrieved from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/the-rise-of-the-new-groupthink.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Govindarajan, Vijay and Terwilliger, Jay (July 25, 2012). Yes, You Can Brainstorm Without Groupthink. Harvard Business Review Blog Network.  Retrieved from:http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/yes_you_can_brainstorm_without.html

Janis, I. (November 1971). Groupthink. Psychology Today.


Thank you to UNH Masters candidate Coulson Hageman for his work which appears above.

More Guns = Less Murder

The Truth About "Assault Weapons"

This is an AR-15 rifle. It is the most popular rifle sold in the United States today. 

Millions have been purchased by American citizens since 1963.

The AR-15 is the most common example of what are sometimes called assault weapons.  But what does this term actually mean?

First, it is important to understand what an assault weapon isn't.

The terms "assault weapon" and "assault rifle" are often confused. According to Bruce H. Kobayashi and Joseph E. Olson, writing in the Stanford Law and Policy Review:

Prior to 1989, the term "assault weapon" did not exist in the lexicon of firearms.It is a political term, developed by anti-gun publicists to expand the category of "assault rifles"...

If an assault weapon isn't an assault rifle, what is an assault rifle?

This is a M-16 rifle. It is the standard service rifle of the U.S. military. It is also an assault rifle.



The M-16 is fully automatic. This means it fires multiple rounds each time the trigger is pulled. The M-16 can fire about 800 rounds per minute.

The M-16 and other fully automatic firearms are also called machine guns. In 1986, the Federal government banned civilians from purchasing newly manufactured machine guns.

Like the majority of firearms sold in the United States, the AR-15 is semi-automatic. This means it fires one round each time the trigger is pulled.



The AR-15 can fire between 45 and 60 rounds per minute depending on the skill of the operator. This rate of fire is comparable to other semi-automatic firearms, but pales in comparison to fully automatic weapons, some of which can fire in excess of 1,000 rounds per minute.

So-called assault weapons are not machine guns or assault rifles.

According to David Kopel, writing in The Wall Street Journal:

What some people call "assault weapons" function like every other normal firearm—they fire only one bullet each time the trigger is pressed. Unlike automatics (machine guns), they do not fire continuously as long as the trigger is held. They are "semi-automatic" because they eject the empty shell case and load the next round into the firing chamber. Today in America, most handguns are semi-automatics, as are many long guns, including the best-selling rifle today, the AR-15... Some of these guns look like machine guns, but they do not function like machine guns.


The truth about assault weapons is that they function just like this ranch rifle...





...and this shotgun...





...and this pistol...





...and this double-action revolver.





All of these guns fire one round each time the trigger is pulled.





But if that's true, what makes this semi-automatic rifle a ranch gun...





...and this semi-automatic rifle an assault weapon?





The answer is deception. In the year the term "assault weapon" was invented, Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center, an anti-gun lobby, explained its purpose:

[H]andgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. Assault weapons...are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.

Beginning in 1988, 25 years after the AR-15 was first sold to the American public, the anti-gun lobby began a systematic campaign of categorizing it and other "military-style" firearms as assault weapons.

The media followed suit, and soon the American public could not help but think that an assault weapon was, like the assault rifles it resembled, a machine gun.

This strategy came to fruition in 1993, when the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was introduced in Congress. The AWB would ban the manufacture and sale of new assault weapons to American citizens.

But in order to ban assault weapons, politicians first had to define them.

Because assault rifles were already banned, and because a blanket ban on semi-automatic weapons wasn't considered politically feasible, the AWB would define assault weapons as semi-automatic firearms that shared too many cosmetic features with their fully automatic counterparts.

These banned features included certain combinations of collapsible stocks...



...flash hiders...



...and pistol grips...


...despite the fact that none of these "military-style" features enhanced the weapon's lethality.

According to the Department of Justice, the firearms that the AWB would ban were used in only 2% of all gun crimes.

Nevertheless, the AWB's passage was aided by the fact that many Americans thought they were banning machine guns and "weapons of war", something that had, in fact, already been banned.

The AWB also arbitrarily banned magazines having a capacity higher than ten rounds. This limitation on magazine capacity applied to all firearms, not just so-called assault weapons.

In order to secure enough votes to pass the bill, a "sunset" provision was added. After ten years, the ban would expire.

On September 13, 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban went into effect. A Washington Post editorial was unusually candid about its real purpose:

No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished [by the ban]. Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.

As soon as the AWB became law, manufacturers began retooling in order to produce firearms and magazines that were compliant with the new gun regulations. One of those new, ban-compliant firearms was the Hi-Point 995 carbine, which was sold with ten-round magazines.

In 1998, five years into the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, the Columbine High School massacre occurred. One of the perpetrators, Eric Harris, was armed with a Hi-Point 995.

Undeterred by the ten-round capacity of his magazines, Harris simply brought more of them: thirteen magazines were found in the aftermath. Harris fired at least 98 rounds before killing himself.

In 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired.
It was not renewed.

The AWB had failed to have an impact on gun crime in the United States. A 2004 Department of Justice study concluded:

Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. [Assault weapons] were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.

Regarding so-called large capacity magazines, the study said:

[I]t is not clear how often the outcomes of gun attacks depend on the ability of offenders to fire more than ten shots (the current magazine capacity limit) without reloading.

Furthermore, legislators had seriously misjudged the popularity of so-called assault weapons.

The political cost was enormous.

In his memoir, Bill Clinton wrote that Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections because of the AWB. Other Democrats have stated that the AWB may have cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election.

At Virginia Tech in 2007, Seung-Hui Cho once again showed the futility of regulating magazine capacity when he carried nineteen ten- and fifteen-round magazines in his backpack as part of a carefully planned massacre.

Cho used seventeen of the magazines and fired approximately 170 rounds—or ten rounds per magazine—from two handguns before killing himself.

Like Eric Harris before him, Cho demonstrated that a magazine's capacity was incidental to the amount of death and destruction an unopposed murderer could cause in a "gun-free zone".

Although the Virginia Tech massacre was and remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, calls for new gun control were relatively scarce in its aftermath, possibly because so-called assault weapons were not used, undermining the favored narrative of gun prohibitionists.

But after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the anti-gun lobby and their allies in the media once again vilified the AR-15 and other so-called assault weapons as "weapons of war" and "machine guns" whose only purpose was to murder and maim.

In reality, so-called assault weapons are a popular choice 

among hunters and competitors alike.

At the 2012 National Trophy Rifle Matches, all of the 1,300+ competitors used a semi-automatic rifle that the anti-gun lobby calls an assault weapon.

Based on an estimate by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, at least 3.3 million AR-15 rifles were sold in the United States between 1986 and 2009.

While gun prohibitionists portray the AR-15 as a paramilitary weapon owned only by a lunatic fringe, this so-called assault weapon is a modern musket — the default rifle with which law-abiding Americans exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

The AR-15 is particularly favored for its modularity, accuracy, light weight, and low recoil—attributes that make it ideal not only for shooting sports but also armed self-defense.

As such, it is the epitome of what America's founders sought to protect when they wrote the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

But despite (and perhaps because of) its status as America's most popular rifle, some legislators are calling for another ban on the AR-15 and other so-called assault weapons.

On December 17, 2012, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the author of the original failed AWB, announced her intention to introduce an updated Federal Assault Weapons Ban in Congress.

However, Senator Feinstein's own facts do not support her agenda.
The truth about assault weapons is that they are statistically underrepresented in gun crimes.

According to Senator Feinstein, so-called assault weapons have been used in 385 murders since the AWB expired in 2004, or about 48 murders per year.

But there were 12,626 total murders with guns in the United States in 2011, meaning so-called assault weapons were used 0.4% of the time.

This represents a decrease in murders from so-called assault weapons compared to the decade when the AWB was in effect, even though such weapons are more common today.

Further illustrating the small role so-called assault weapons play in crime, 

FBI data shows that 323 murders were committed with rifles of any kind in 2011. 

In comparison, 496 murders were committed with hammers and clubs, and 1,694 murders were perpetrated with knives.

To the extent that so-called assault weapons like the AR-15 are used in gun crimes, the rifle's popularity must be considered.

In addition to the AR-15, James Holmes used America's best-selling shotgun at the Aurora movie theater shooting.

At the Virginia Tech and Tuscon shootings, Seung-Hui Cho and Jared Loughner used America's best-selling handgun.

All else being equal, a gun that is commonly owned is more likely to be used for legal or illegal purposes than a gun that is rarely owned.

Outlawing guns that are popular today will only make different guns popular tomorrow.

Nevertheless, gun prohibitionists continue to target AR-15 rifles and their owners—not because these firearms have any inordinate capability, but because the anti-gun lobby has invested more than two decades convincing the American people that "weapons of war" must be banned, regardless of whether such a ban would have a measurable impact on public safety, and despite the fact that real weapons of war have already been banned for nearly three decades.

The truth about assault weapons is that there is no such thing.

There are semi-automatic weapons, which are the firearms of choice for millions of law-abiding Americans.

To ban all semi-automatic firearms is to deprive Americans of the most commonly used arms in violation of the Second Amendment.

To ban specific semi-automatic firearms because of their cosmetic features is ignorant.

Like prohibition, the United States has gone down this road before.
It didn't work then, and it won't work now.

A ban on so-called assault weapons is the first step toward a ban on all semi-automatic firearms.

Contact your legislators, and tell them the truth about assault weapons.


Credit to: http://www.assaultweapon.info/

Pravda - America Keep Your Guns

                                

Americans never give up your guns
	These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bare arms and use deadly force to defend ones self and possessions. Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth - does it sound shocking to Western readers?
/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington's clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lieing guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.

To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere....but criminals are still armed and still murdering and to often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.

While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

Stanislav Mishin
The article reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina