Right to Keep and Bear Arms is a DKos group of second amendment supporters who also have progressive and liberal values. We don't think that being a liberal means one has to be anti-gun. Some of us are extreme in our second amendment views (no licensing, no restrictions on small arms) and some of us are more moderate (licensing, restrictions on small arms.) Moderate or extreme, we hold one common belief: more gun control equals lost elections. We don't want a repeat of 1994. We are an inclusive group: if you see the Second Amendment as safeguarding our right to keep and bear arms individually, then come join us in our conversation. If you are against the right to keep and bear arms, come join our conversation. We look forward to seeing you, as long as you engage in a civil discussion.
Shadan has an article over at guns.com.
Feeling bored? Want to get a good argument going? Then go into just about any gun forum on the internet and say that your Every Day Carry (EDC) is the best.
Extra points if you imply that anyone who chooses something else is lacking in intelligence, education, or, um, “manliness.”
OK, why the hell do people do this, if it isn’t just to start a fight?
Doc Oc Sinister:
Armed Jewish Uprisings Under Nazi Occupation
For me, the most valuable part of the book is the first section about Bruno Bettelheim and Jewish armed uprisings, in the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos and in numerous concentration camps during the second world war. This is an aspect of World War II history I was totally unaware if, as the work of Bettelheim and other scholars documenting armed Jewish resistance are carefully sanitized from the history textbooks served up to US high school and college students.
Bettelheim, who contrasts the Jews who resisted violently with the majority of Jews, who followed the Nazis passively to the camps and even to the gas chambers, makes a strong case for his belief that the persecution of the Jews was aggravated by the pervasive lack of fight back. He blames their failure to resist on strong psychological denial – a pathological need to cling to an illusion of “business as normal” – that ultimately overwhelmed their basic survival needs. The logical position would have been to accept the cold reality that their own lives were doomed and to use their deaths to save the life of other Jews by making the extermination more difficult. He points out that Jews had easy access to guns in 1930s and 1940s Germany, and there was no reason why every Jew that was arrested couldn’t take one or two SS officers with them.
Churchill describes how all the revolts inflicted significant damage on the Nazi machine. The revolt at Auschwitz killed 70 SS officers and destroyed the crematorium. Armed rebellions at Sorbibor and Reblinka were even more effective, and Sorbibor had to be closed following the uprising. There were also lesser insurrections at Kruszyna, Krychaw and Kopernik.
Over at JT's blog:
Philadelphia is dealing with a shooting of a man in a dispute with an off-duty police officer. Josh Taylor, 23, was shot in the chest by an eighteen-year veteran of the police force who has not been identified. The officer reportedly claimed that Taylor had a gun, though neighbors insisted that Taylor was on his way to a gun range and did not pull out the weapon.
...
“Next thing you know my boyfriend is running in the house, shuts the door behind him,” Britton said. “The cop opened the door fully on his own, no warrant…got in a stance and just shot him right in the chest and ran… right over to his house and shut the door.”
Minnesota is looking at firearm legislation. Check it out here. The basics, stolen from a diary:
From the NRA’s website:
HF 1467 would remove a person’s “duty to retreat” from an attacker, allowing law-abiding citizens to stand their ground and protect themselves or their family anywhere they are lawfully present. It would create a presumption that an individual who forcefully or stealthily enters or attempts to enter your home or vehicle is there to cause substantial or great bodily injury or death, so the occupant may use force, including deadly force, against that individual. It would also expressly allow an individual to use force, including deadly force, to prevent a forcible felony, and it provides protections against criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits when justifiable force is used.
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The second provision in the new legislation would allow out-of-state permitted gun carriers to carry in Minnesota without any form of over site. So what, you might ask—consider that Minnesota requires back-ground checks and gun safety courses to even get a permit to carry—a number of states do not. I am also wondering what implications this would concern inter-state crime, if it is lawful across state lines. Maybe someone can comment on whether this would muddy the prosecutorial situation—state level or federal level?
The third proposed change pertains to government emergency powers. As the NRA puts it:
The proposed language would prohibit any government agency from confiscating or regulating the lawful possession, carrying, transfer, transportation and defensive use of firearms or ammunition during a state of emergency, such as occurred in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana.
ME! (KV):
Liberal Gun Club
The mission of The Liberal Gun Club is to provide a voice for gun-owning liberals and moderates in the national conversation on gun rights, gun legislation, firearms safety, and shooting sports.
We serve as a national forum for all people, irrespective of their personal political beliefs, to discuss firearms ownership, firearms use, and the enjoyment of firearms-related activities free from the destructive elements of political extremism that dominate this subject on the national scale.
We also actively develop and foster a variety of programs for the purpose of firearms training and firearms safety education, for both gun owners and non-gun owners.