At the Northgate bus terminal they had displays up that showed where the bus was currently and how long it was going to take to get to the terminal. You could also look up this same information online. They had this back in the late 1990's. If these patents were not in force before about 1997, then the Seattle public bus systems are a great source of prior art to invalidate the patents.
It was trivial to scrape the web page and send yourself a page.
The trademark for the Hobbit that the people that own the rights to the book does not transfer over to an entirely different industry. You are free to create a Ford vibrator or an Apple iPlug that are sex toys without violating trademark law, because Ford and Apple are not in the industry of making sex toys. The same way a pub can freely name themselves after literary creations without being in violation of trademark because pubs are not publishing houses and publishing houses don't serve patrons beer and greasy good foods.
But there are all kinds of books about people murdering other people. If it is only in writing, then it didn't actually happen and it 100% legal, according to the Constitution of the United States.
You can argue otherwise, but then you are going against everyone who ever died protecting the inalienable rights enumerated by the Constitution. While you are at it you can go take a piss on the graves of the founding fathers.
Or is it libel? I never can figure out which is which.
Regardless, it is bad to accuse people of something so heinous which they did not do and block access to their business until they can prove that they are innocent.
The fact that a single police officer could accidentally block sites as legitimate as Google or Facebook without any due process tells me that the little guy could be screwed without any recourse at the whim of any number of police officers.
Imagine being an individual or small business trying to get your web site back on line after being accused of being a child pornographer by the national police. This could lead to people committing suicide with the politically correct climate in full force now.
No government agent can search anything without evidence of probable cause of a crime having already been committed and a warrant from a judge specifying exactly what evidence is being searched for and the location where it can be found.
Disrespecting the constitution is insulting every soldier that ever died for America.
Step 1. Find a schizophrenic of the "right" ethnic group that insanely mutters the "correct" anti American sentiments.
Step 2. Feed those sentiments and train the individual to be a terrorist.
Step 3. Arrest this terrorist of their own manufacturing.
Step 4. Profit!
Copyright should only protect the following, "Did I take the actual physical work that you did and duplicate it exactly, passing off your work as my own?"
What is not protected is idea of your work. The founding fathers never intended that any particular idea be protected by copyright.
Thomas Jefferson said, "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Now, patents are a very limited monopoly on the notion of an idea, but only the physical embodiment of a particular implementation of an idea. Nothing in any of those photographs is patentable. There are a billion photos of people jumping, or kissing, or doing whatever. I can find thousands of stock photos that look almost identical to any photo you can describe.
"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity."
Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1952)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry (1736-1799)
"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone... Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation... inflicted by those who had no power at all?"
Patrick Henry, Elliot p. 3:50-53, in Virginia Ratifying Convention
"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787; �The Works of Thomas Jefferson,� Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam�s Sons, 1904-5) Vol. 5
Quotes
These men knew what they meant and meant what they said.
This Page Last Updated 09/19/2011
Not an NRA Member? Shame on you!
We would not even be having this conversation on the topic of gun rights in America if it wasn't for the hard work and dedication of the National Rifle Association. You say that you don't have the money??? An Associate Membership (no magazine) is just $10.00 per year, that's less than three cents (-$0.03) each day. Before you do anything else, do your duty and support the NRA through your membership. JOIN THE NRA TODAY. You can save $10.00 on a regular annual membership by using the link I've just provided, making it just $25.00. JOIN TODAY.
"Quemadmoeum gladis nemeinum occidit,
occidentis telum _est" ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands")
Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)
"And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery."
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus Roman poet (A.D. 39-65)
Source: De Bello Civili (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1988), IV, 579, p. 216
"There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice; not by instruction but by natural intuition: I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) Roman Orator and Statesman at the trial of T. Annius Milo in 52 BC
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator
Source: Attributed. 58 BC, Speech in the Roman Senate
"It is a just person who disobeys an unjust law."
Plato (427-347 BC)
"Tyranny derives from the oligarchy's mistrust of the people; hence they deprive them of arms, ill-treat the lower class, and keep them from residing in the capital. These are common to oligarchy and tyranny."
Aristotle in Politics (J. Sinclair translation, pg. 218, 1962)
"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."
Aristotle in Politics (J. Sinclair translation, pg. 226, 1962)
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Stuart, Philadelphia, December 23, 1791; �The Works of Thomas Jefferson,� Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam�s Sons, 1904-5) Vol. 6
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us."
Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775)
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
Samuel Adams "The Father of the American Revolution"
"The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals."
President James Monroe (November 16, 1818)
"Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other."
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist.
"We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land nor, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution."
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American Statesman, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State under three (3) U.S. Presidents
If we are to ever get to the bottom of the argument surrounding the Right To Keep And Bear Arms (RKBA), then we must go back in time and see what the founders said.
Some people, including the ACLU, have asserted that the Second Amendment only protects a state's power to raise and support an armed militia. I have the feeling that if the Founding Father's were alive today, they would have something to say about that...
When you are finished reading this page, I guarantee you will say to yourself, hey Marc really knows what he is talking about.
I have done entirely enough talking now and I will let the rest of this page speak for the Founding Father's. Let's go back in time and see what they had to say...
"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invent against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
Thomas Jefferson letter to Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823
Many millions of United States Citizens believe that the Second Amendment ONLY refers to each State's power to form militias. This is simply not the case. The Second Amendment does indeed refer to the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right.
When the Second Amendment was written, there wasn't any National Guard. The People were the National Guard. In fact, the National Guard did not exist for another 116 years.
Private Firearm ownership is a guarantee against the breaching or transgression of all the other rights reserved to the People. Private and free gun ownership is a guard against any possible tyranny or dictatorships. The Founding Fathers knew what they meant and meant what they wrote.
The Founding Fathers clearly did not believe that limiting lawful access to firearms by law-abiding, honest and upright citizens of good moral character would either diminish crime, nor be constitutional.
When considering ANY legislation that has the slightest hint of curtailing our freedom and liberty, we should closely examine it as if it was taken to the most extreme limit, then treat it accordingly.
"You [should] not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered."
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) 37th US President (1963-1969)
Portrait, Thomas Jefferson
"I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the Federal government as they are already guarded against their State governments, in most instances."
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788
"I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm house."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Jacob J. Brown (1808)
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Thomas Jefferson
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."
Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775)
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Thomas Jefferson
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
"The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright in 1824
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."
Thomas Jefferson Letter to George Washington, 1796
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776
"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President. Source: Eighth Annual Message, November 8, 1808
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."
Thomas Jefferson 1803
"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson (attributed without source)
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
Thomas Jefferson's advice to his 15 year-old nephew Peter Carr 1785
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787; �The Works of Thomas Jefferson,� Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam�s Sons, 1904-5) Vol. 5
"Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event."
Samuel Adams speech, 1771
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
Samuel Adams
"[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."
Samuel Adams
"...It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control...The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them."
Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.
"The said Constitution [shall] be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms."
Samuel Adams of Massachusetts -- U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison, Federalist Papers, #46 at 243-244.
"The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops."
James Madison, The Federalist Number 46 January 29, 1788
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
James Madison, The Federalist No. 48, February 1, 1788
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
James Madison, Proposed Amendments to the Constitution June 8, 1789
"Suppose that we let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal: still it would not be going to far to say that the State governments with the people at their side would be able to repel the danger...half a million citizens with arms in their hands"
James Madison, The Federalist Papers
"A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
"A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for
the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression."
James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense."
John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, 1788
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."
Alexander Hamilton Federalist #28
"Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit and security of the people, nation or community; whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public Weal."
George Mason (1725-1792), drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, ally of James Madison and George Washington
"A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill."
John Locke
"Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power."
Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author commenting on the lack of protest with which Japanese tolerated governmental corruption, Los Angeles Times, 10/15/92
"If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government --and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."
Edward Abbey (1927-1989) American Author in Abbey's Road, p.39 (Plume, 1979)
Educators need to get together and write their own material. 10,000 English teachers could write a lot of open source English books. 10,000 Science teachers could write a lot of science books.
Want your works to be even mentioned in college? You better be specifically licensing your works as free for education. Or you will disappear from history until your works enter the public domain.
I have the absolute right to swing my arms around. I can swing my arms back and forth, or round and round all day long. It is even a constitutional right. That right ends, however, if swing my arms into your nose.
The same way, that person could have tweeted on his own feed a million times about the weather, or what he ate, or how he feels about the double rainbow.
But his right to free speech ends as soon as he threatened to harm another human being.
Public is in the name of Public School. This means that the sporting events were paid for by the public. You and I paid for all these sporting events with our money. If public school sporting events are not in the public domain, then what is? How can they claim the right to sell something that they don't own?
Then you should absolutely not be denied service. Being thrown off facebook for something done on twitter is asinine.
The terms of service are a contract and the advertising dollars you provide facebook is the payment for that contract.
This "private companies can violate their contracts at their own whim" is ridiculous when all your social contact and purchasing is being done through massively huge monopolies.
Could bell telephone have denied service to anyone they didn't like back when they were a monopoly? No, of course not. To even consider that idea is ludicrous.
Kirk von Ackermann was the deputy chief of JFIC's Asymmetric Threats Division. The watchdog organization that was tracking Al Queda before the 9/11 attack. They specifically and repeatedly warned about attacks on the Twin towers in the months leading up to 9/11.
Von Ackermann "disappeared" leaving a briefcase full of cash in his car. He was trying to inform congress that his agencies reports were not being given to the House Intelligence Committee that was investigating the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11.
A lot of the crime rackets in cities actually have police protection. This cop is probably trying to get people to not carry so the criminals feel safer.
Seattle had this all years ago.
It was trivial to scrape the web page and send yourself a page.
Trademark does not transfer across industries.
Muder is illegal
You can argue otherwise, but then you are going against everyone who ever died protecting the inalienable rights enumerated by the Constitution. While you are at it you can go take a piss on the graves of the founding fathers.
Isn't accusing someone of child porn slander?
Regardless, it is bad to accuse people of something so heinous which they did not do and block access to their business until they can prove that they are innocent.
The fact that a single police officer could accidentally block sites as legitimate as Google or Facebook without any due process tells me that the little guy could be screwed without any recourse at the whim of any number of police officers.
Imagine being an individual or small business trying to get your web site back on line after being accused of being a child pornographer by the national police. This could lead to people committing suicide with the politically correct climate in full force now.
Unconstitutional.
Disrespecting the constitution is insulting every soldier that ever died for America.
Simple solution to this "problem"
Problem solved!
Crisis averted!
So sad that the government is abusing the mentally ill (as Jimmy the Geek)
Step 2. Feed those sentiments and train the individual to be a terrorist.
Step 3. Arrest this terrorist of their own manufacturing.
Step 4. Profit!
This is not what copyright protects. (as Jimmy The Geek)
What is not protected is idea of your work. The founding fathers never intended that any particular idea be protected by copyright.
Thomas Jefferson said, "If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Now, patents are a very limited monopoly on the notion of an idea, but only the physical embodiment of a particular implementation of an idea. Nothing in any of those photographs is patentable. There are a billion photos of people jumping, or kissing, or doing whatever. I can find thousands of stock photos that look almost identical to any photo you can describe.
That's just what I hear. (as Jimmy the Geek)
Please put up some founding father quotes. (as Jimmy the Geek)
Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1952)
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry (1736-1799)
"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone... Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation... inflicted by those who had no power at all?"
Patrick Henry, Elliot p. 3:50-53, in Virginia Ratifying Convention
"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787; �The Works of Thomas Jefferson,� Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam�s Sons, 1904-5) Vol. 5
Quotes
These men knew what they meant and meant what they said.
This Page Last Updated 09/19/2011
Not an NRA Member? Shame on you!
We would not even be having this conversation on the topic of gun rights in America if it wasn't for the hard work and dedication of the National Rifle Association. You say that you don't have the money??? An Associate Membership (no magazine) is just $10.00 per year, that's less than three cents (-$0.03) each day. Before you do anything else, do your duty and support the NRA through your membership. JOIN THE NRA TODAY. You can save $10.00 on a regular annual membership by using the link I've just provided, making it just $25.00. JOIN TODAY.
"Quemadmoeum gladis nemeinum occidit,
occidentis telum _est" ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands")
Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)
"And they are ignorant that the purpose of the sword is to save every man from slavery."
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus Roman poet (A.D. 39-65)
Source: De Bello Civili (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1988), IV, 579, p. 216
"There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice; not by instruction but by natural intuition: I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC) Roman Orator and Statesman at the trial of T. Annius Milo in 52 BC
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) Roman Statesman, Philosopher and Orator
Source: Attributed. 58 BC, Speech in the Roman Senate
"It is a just person who disobeys an unjust law."
Plato (427-347 BC)
"Tyranny derives from the oligarchy's mistrust of the people; hence they deprive them of arms, ill-treat the lower class, and keep them from residing in the capital. These are common to oligarchy and tyranny."
Aristotle in Politics (J. Sinclair translation, pg. 218, 1962)
"It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion."
Aristotle in Politics (J. Sinclair translation, pg. 226, 1962)
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Stuart, Philadelphia, December 23, 1791; �The Works of Thomas Jefferson,� Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam�s Sons, 1904-5) Vol. 6
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us."
Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775)
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
Samuel Adams "The Father of the American Revolution"
"The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals."
President James Monroe (November 16, 1818)
"Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other."
John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist.
"We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land nor, perhaps, the sun and stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. The chart is the Constitution."
Daniel Webster (1782-1852) American Statesman, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State under three (3) U.S. Presidents
If we are to ever get to the bottom of the argument surrounding the Right To Keep And Bear Arms (RKBA), then we must go back in time and see what the founders said.
Some people, including the ACLU, have asserted that the Second Amendment only protects a state's power to raise and support an armed militia. I have the feeling that if the Founding Father's were alive today, they would have something to say about that...
When you are finished reading this page, I guarantee you will say to yourself, hey Marc really knows what he is talking about.
I have done entirely enough talking now and I will let the rest of this page speak for the Founding Father's. Let's go back in time and see what they had to say...
"On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invent against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
Thomas Jefferson letter to Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823
Many millions of United States Citizens believe that the Second Amendment ONLY refers to each State's power to form militias. This is simply not the case. The Second Amendment does indeed refer to the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right.
When the Second Amendment was written, there wasn't any National Guard. The People were the National Guard. In fact, the National Guard did not exist for another 116 years.
Private Firearm ownership is a guarantee against the breaching or transgression of all the other rights reserved to the People. Private and free gun ownership is a guard against any possible tyranny or dictatorships. The Founding Fathers knew what they meant and meant what they wrote.
The Founding Fathers clearly did not believe that limiting lawful access to firearms by law-abiding, honest and upright citizens of good moral character would either diminish crime, nor be constitutional.
When considering ANY legislation that has the slightest hint of curtailing our freedom and liberty, we should closely examine it as if it was taken to the most extreme limit, then treat it accordingly.
"You [should] not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harm it would cause if improperly administered."
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) 37th US President (1963-1969)
Portrait, Thomas Jefferson
"I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the Federal government as they are already guarded against their State governments, in most instances."
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788
"I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm house."
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Jacob J. Brown (1808)
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
Thomas Jefferson
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."
Thomas Jefferson (Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775)
"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
Thomas Jefferson
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
"The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright in 1824
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."
Thomas Jefferson Letter to George Washington, 1796
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."
Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776
"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President. Source: Eighth Annual Message, November 8, 1808
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."
Thomas Jefferson 1803
"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Thomas Jefferson (attributed without source)
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks."
Thomas Jefferson's advice to his 15 year-old nephew Peter Carr 1785
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787; �The Works of Thomas Jefferson,� Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam�s Sons, 1904-5) Vol. 5
"Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event."
Samuel Adams speech, 1771
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
Samuel Adams
"[T]he people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."
Samuel Adams
"...It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control...The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them."
Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.
"The said Constitution [shall] be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms."
Samuel Adams of Massachusetts -- U.S. Constitution ratification convention, 1788
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation... Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."
James Madison, Federalist Papers, #46 at 243-244.
"The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops."
James Madison, The Federalist Number 46 January 29, 1788
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
James Madison, The Federalist No. 48, February 1, 1788
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."
James Madison, Proposed Amendments to the Constitution June 8, 1789
"Suppose that we let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal: still it would not be going to far to say that the State governments with the people at their side would be able to repel the danger...half a million citizens with arms in their hands"
James Madison, The Federalist Papers
"A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country."
James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
"A people armed and free forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for
the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression."
James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President
"Arms in the hands of the citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defense of the country, the overthrow of tyranny or private self-defense."
John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President A Defense of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America, 1788
"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."
Alexander Hamilton Federalist #28
"Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit and security of the people, nation or community; whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, indefeasible right, to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public Weal."
George Mason (1725-1792), drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, ally of James Madison and George Washington
"A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way, when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may lawfully kill."
John Locke
"Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power."
Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author commenting on the lack of protest with which Japanese tolerated governmental corruption, Los Angeles Times, 10/15/92
"If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government --and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."
Edward Abbey (1927-1989) American Author in Abbey's Road, p.39 (Plume, 1979)
Re: Re: He made those loaves available.... (as Jimmy the Geek)
Open source education. (as Jimmy the Geek)
Want your works to be even mentioned in college? You better be specifically licensing your works as free for education. Or you will disappear from history until your works enter the public domain.
Selling on ebay. (as Jimmy the Geek)
You can never threeaten violence. (as Jimmy the Geek)
The same way, that person could have tweeted on his own feed a million times about the weather, or what he ate, or how he feels about the double rainbow.
But his right to free speech ends as soon as he threatened to harm another human being.
And that is a fact.
Public schools are tax funded. (as Jimmy the Geek)
If you haven't violated the terms of service (as Jimmy The Geek)
The terms of service are a contract and the advertising dollars you provide facebook is the payment for that contract.
This "private companies can violate their contracts at their own whim" is ridiculous when all your social contact and purchasing is being done through massively huge monopolies.
Could bell telephone have denied service to anyone they didn't like back when they were a monopoly? No, of course not. To even consider that idea is ludicrous.
You can be killed for whistle blowing in the USA too. (as Jimmy The Geek)
Kirk von Ackermann was the deputy chief of JFIC's Asymmetric Threats Division. The watchdog organization that was tracking Al Queda before the 9/11 attack. They specifically and repeatedly warned about attacks on the Twin towers in the months leading up to 9/11.
Von Ackermann "disappeared" leaving a briefcase full of cash in his car. He was trying to inform congress that his agencies reports were not being given to the House Intelligence Committee that was investigating the intelligence failures leading up to 9/11.
Starting to think we would be safer without the police. (as Jimmy The Geek)
Obviously the baggie is bomb proof. (as Jimmy The Geek)
If Wronghaven can't publish the work themselves (as Jimmy The Geek)
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