The Knox Update

From the Firearms Coalition

The “No Guns” Insult

By Jeff Knox

(Manassas, VA, October 29, 2009) How does it make you feel when you start to walk into a business and see a “No Guns” sign prominently posted? Are you angry? Offended? Indifferent? How do you react? Do you just turn around and take your business elsewhere? Complain to the management? Just ignore it and go on with your business? The members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League take “No Guns” signs as personally offensive and they let their offense be known – to the business, to fellow VCDL members, and anyone else who’ll listen – or read a web page. VCDL maintains a list of anti-rights Virginia businesses on their web site, www.VCDL.org, and encourages gun owners and rights supporters to avoid these businesses except to let them know that their policy is offensive. VCDL has actively pursued this position for several years while they have simultaneously grown to become the most politically active and effective rights organization in the state.

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The Knox Update

From the Firearms Coalition

Prosecution as Punishment

The Troubling Case of Albert Kwan

By Jeff Knox

(October 8, 2009) People who “have nothing to hide” are often quite happy to answer any questions and consent to any intrusion a police officer might ask of them. They may even invite officers to “look around” if they want to. If you ask a good defense attorney how much you should cooperate with police, particularly when they are conducting an investigation in which you could possibly be a suspect, he will tell you “Not at all.” Don’t give them one word more than you must and never give them permission to search your car, look through your home, or examine any of your guns.

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The Knox Update

From the Firearms Coalition

Training, Yes – Mandatory, No 

By Jeff Knox 

(October 9, 2009) At the recent Gun Rights Policy Conference in Saint Louis, Missouri I had the privilege of introducing a couple of resolutions that were adopted by the assembly.  The first dealt with the recent attempt by Customs and Border Protection to classify certain "easy open" pocket knives as "switchblades," and subsequent efforts to amend the Federal Switchblade Act.  My resolution suggested that since the problem of switchblades and switchblade crime was primarily a figment of Hollywood and Broadway, and since regulating tools is never a reasonable response to bad behavior, that the rights community should support the outright repeal of the Federal Switchblade Act and any other such laws which are intended to modify behavior by restricting tools.  This resolution passed resoundingly with no real discussion.

My second resolution was a bit more controversial.  In it I suggested that, while training in the safe, legal, and appropriate use of firearms is strongly supported and should continue to be encouraged, government mandated training is anathema to liberty.  I pointed out that there is no statistical evidence that firearms accidents, mistakes, or abuses are any more likely in states requiring little or no training than they are in states with extensive training requirements.  The resolution put on the record the GRPC delegates’ opposition to government-mandated firearms training and their support for rolling back existing requirements where feasible.

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Supremes Take a Second Look

By Jeff Knox

(October 2, 2009) On September 30, the Supreme Court announced that they were going to review the Second Amendment case McDonald v. City of Chicago and decide whether the Second Amendment applies at the state and local level.  Application of the Bill of Rights to the states has been a long and convoluted battle with the Second Amendment being the last major article left out in the cold.

As originally proposed and applied, the Bill of Rights was an expression of universal, natural rights, but was considered directly enforceable only on the federal government – except that it was a statement of principles to which all of the states in the union agreed.  Over the years there has been wrangling between states and the federal government regarding recognition of these rights, particularly in the years surrounding the Civil War as debates raged over the definition of a citizen and the rights such citizens enjoyed.  Chief Justice Taney presents these rights of citizenship – privileges and immunities – in a clear and unequivocal fashion in his infamous decision in Dredd Scott v. Sanford.  Part of the debate was over whether a person recognized as a citizen by one state was automatically a citizen of the United States and fully possessed of the privileges and immunities of such citizenship.  Justice Taney described these privileges and immunities to include, “the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

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The Knox Update

From The Firearms Coalition

Reading – and Rating – Congressional Votes

By Chris Knox

(September 16, 2009) As we reported in our bi-monthly newsletter, The Knox Hard Corps Report, voting records, especially those for final passage, don’t tell the full story of where our elected servants stand on a particular issue.  And the fact is that those servants occasionally take pains to conceal their true position from the people who sent them to office.  This year’s poster boy for obfuscated voting is Senator Mark Pryor a second-term Democrat from Arkansas. 

In the July Senate vote for nationwide concealed-carry reciprocity, Pryor first voted against the measure but then, when Republicans Lugar of Indiana and Voinovich of Ohio cast their votes against their party line, he changed his vote to a nominally pro-gun vote.

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Not Just the Second Amendment

By Jeff Knox

(September 9, 2009) The Firearms Coalition is a single-issue organization and GunVoters are a single-issue group, but, while that single issue is generally accepted as being the Second Amendment, the issue is actually the Constitution as a whole.  The Second Amendment stands as a bulwark around the Constitution and "gun groups" in defending the Second Amendment are in fact defenders of the Constitution.

Every government official, from the people who take away your water bottle at the airport, to the members of Congress, to the President of the United States, swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and to bear true faith and allegiance to it.  This being the case, how is it possible that a proposal to require a statement of constitutional authority in all proposed legislation languish for more than 14 years in Congress – through Democrat control and through Republican control – without ever getting out of committee?

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Conflation to Coalitions

There is power in cooperation

By Jeff Knox

(August 19, 2009) The growing dissatisfaction of more and more citizens with the direction of our government and our nation presents a recruiting opportunity for rights activists.  We are already being grouped together with these folks as objects of ridicule for the talking heads on the television so why not put their conflation to good use?

Here’s how negative conflation works: Some neo-Nazis and KKK’ers oppose taxes, government control of healthcare, and gun control.  Some “fringe groups” like “Sovereign Citizens,” the Constitutional Militia movement, the Minuteman project, and “Birthers” (those who question Obama’s U.S. birth and his eligibility to serve as President,) have some members who have ties with groups like neo-Nazis and KKK’ers.  Some of these avowed racist people and groups agree with and participate in such things as the “Tea Party” protests and the protests which have been taking place at Town Hall meetings around the country.  Therefore, all of the people at the Town Hall protests and all of the people at the Tea Party protests, and all of the people who support, encourage, or agree with the people at these protests, along with all opponents of high taxes, supporters of the Second Amendment, advocates for constitutional government, and opponents of government-controlled healthcare are painted with the broad brush of racism, anti-Semitism, and wild conspiracy theorists, and are declared to be radicals with “ties” to neo-Nazis and the KKK.

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