The Federalist Papers

How many Americans know what the Federalist Papers are? 
How many people have even heard of them?

Well if you are an American you should at least know more about the them than you do the locations of your local Starbucks.

The Federalist Papers have been the underlying reasonings and arguments that give YOU your American Freedoms. These papers were essays written by our Constitutions Framers. They were written and printed in the newspaper for the average American to look over and make decisions about ratifying the new proposed Constitution. These were arguments for our freedoms. Back then, nearly every American read the newspaper every day and what was there was discussed throughout the day with those around you. A kind of local area network of the day. 
You can look and even download them   >> HERE <<    From Congress.gov
But today, the only people that crack the book on the Federalist Papers are those looking to further their own agendas of greed and power.
I recommend all Americans at least peruse the listings of all 85 essays. When you do this, you may find that they are easier to understand than we have been led to believe. These essays that we have put together and now call "The Federalist Papers" were meant for people like you and me.
Written under the pseudonym of Publius, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay are the Authors of these documents and these three were united in their efforts.

This is something to think about.

How modern Americans leave the Federalist Papers to the lawyers to interpret. The documents that were offered up to the everday normal people of the United Colonies. Essays that are nothing more than reasonings for the parts of the Constitution they felt most important. Ideas written in common language of 1788 are now picked apart by lawyers to serve the interests of those with enough money, time and greed to take up the task.

We are now told that the common man has no idea of the depths and meanings of the Federalist Papers. If we look back in our own modern past we will find that all modern interpretations of the Federalist Papers and the parts of the Constitution that they address, have been claimed by Corporate America. All are interpreted for corporate advancement. And let us be perfectly clear, a business / corporation only exists to make money. Nothing else, no other reason, the rest is marketing. 

Money is not Freedom, it is the antithesis of freedom. Our Constitution should not be construed to champion money.

Freedom allows us to make money for our life's comforts and advancement as our personal intellect allows. Freedom and money do not go hand in hand.
Considering that the Federalist Papers were written for common man, lets take a light look at one paragraph in Federalist number 29.
Here is how it starts:

Federalist #29 - Concerning the Militia 
From the Daily Advertiser, Thursday, January 10, 1788 
Author: Alexander Hamilton as publius, To the people of New York.
(this was originally in the newspaper)

"If a well-regulated Milita be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security." - Alexander Hamilton

If we take this at face value, which we really know was the way it was intended, our Second Amendment arguments for private Militias are quashed and validation of our current National Guard fills the spot as the natural progression of service our Militias were intended to fill.
But, this Federalist #29 was merely an argument before the fact of actual ratification of our Constitution. It holds no legal or Constitutional weight. Yet it tells us something about the intent of our framers in relation to the Second Amendment doesn't it?
Our National Guard is a volunteer American homeland force, a Militia.
I started my own Naval service in the National Guard.

Then a lawyer will point out a different Federalist Paper where James Madison lays out an argument for private dissemination of firearms as a means to keep our Government at bay (you look that one up).
Lawyers will pit Hamilton against Madison when needed to serve the corporate interests of their clients, a practice that should not be allowed 240 years after the fact. This practice is about greed and power and taking control of the Government from the people and giving it to the highest bidder.

We die in the streets, at school, at a concert, in church...

The Second Amendment was about need for our country in the 1700's and their foreseeable future. Never about pitting Americans against Americans.

The Second Amendment says we can have guns... Great !! Really, I'm all for it !!

But it doesn't say we should digress as humans till the end of time. It doesn't take into account our burgeoning population, degradations of society, rampant mental issues from many unforeseen angles, our state of weaponry or unbridled corporate capitalism.

We know that our founders were moral, god fearing men. Their thoughts stood on a foundation of moral integrity based in their God and religion. So considering our modern 2020's American gun violence situation, where do you and your religion stand? Do you strictly follow your religion's tenets or do you skew them to fit your own agenda?

When one one of our loved ones are needlessly killed here in our own country by one of our own people, how will we justify ourselves to our mourning families and friends? 
Prayer?  Confession?  Allege it never happened at all until our own death?

We need to create a Federal Public Safety Policy that leans on personal responsibility and a staircase of vetting.

LL/ Mac/

New on SSRN, "Public Safety & the Right to Bear Arms"

SSRN is a research paper publishing site. A person can go there and find research on nearly every subject imaginable. No Bozos here, all professional industry stuff.
I got a ding yesterday from The Duke Law Blog I subscribe to called "Second Thoughts," telling me to check out this new research paper posted on SSRN, it's on my favorite subject. I checked it out, and in fact, the title of the paper is like a synopsis of my book "American Druthers."

The Duke Law blog link is in the gutter on the right, I recommend looking it over if you are interested in the legal and Constitutional aspects of guns in America. They will keep you up to date and explore the ramifications no matter the politics of the situation.

The paper posted is by Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond through George Washington Law School. It is titled, "Public Safety and the Right to Bear Arms."

It's   >> HERE <<

Live Love
Mac/

Scary Knife / Scary Gun

I have a pocket knife, it's a scary knife.

It is a folding style with one blade, and when open, the knife looks like a dagger with its pointed blade, thin profile and thumb grips. The blade itself is a little more than 3 inches long and the whole knife is around 8" long total when open. The blade also has a serrated section at the lower part which looks like teeth. The knife is black, blade and all, and after sliding the lock forward, a light push with your thumb and it will open by itself yielding a metallic shwoosh fit for a theatrical sword fight soundtrack.

Point being... this is a very scary looking knife. It was designed to be a scary knife. It was designed to look and perform like a switch blade without breaking the existing knife laws that ban knifes that open in a fully automatic fashion. Switch Blades are banned. Gerber Coverts are not.

It was designed to perform like a fighting knife, having an ambidextrous grip, thin profile and dual cutting edge blade. It's a scary knife to person that knows knives also. Being a pocket knife, it is not easily seen, either that you have it, or that it is in your hand.

I use it for daily, general purpose knife stuff. It lives inserted and clipped onto my back pant pocket. I do enough each day that throughout a week I'll use my pocket knife 3 or 4 times. I also play with it for a minute or two each time I take it out of my pocket at night and before I put it in my pocket in the morning. It's semi-automatic opening, and produces a cool sound as it does, it's fun to play around with. 

I also have this knife for protection. This one is designed to fit the bill nicely while still having daily utility. 

So, how does the average American view my knife? If I were in a group of folks and someone playing with rope asked to borrow a knife to cut the rope, would my knife evoke fear? Interest? Nothing?

My knife is just as capable as a gun in killing, with two exceptions. It must be used at close distance and you have to feel the results as you physically deliver them. In my mind, a much more intimate and scary proposition than shooting someone with a gun.

Also like a gun, my knife has another ancillary use, threat. It is scary to look at, and when opened, the sound is similar to that of racking a shotguns action in that it lets the threatened hear what is coming.

So why is it that this knife of mine stirs up no national controversy?

It's probably because in America, 40 thousand people a year aren't killed with a knife. 

Thats just a guess...

Let's look that up.... nope, the internet website Statista.com displays the FBI's 2018 numbers and these numbers say that in 2018:

1515 people were murdered with a knife or cutting instrument

10,265 people were murdered with a handgun.

Let's clarify that I was only looking at the numbers for handgun and knife murder. 

The reason is actually because a knife of any kind, even a sword, it not good enough. A knife's power only extends a few inches past your arm length, or maybe 10 feet if you can affectively throw one. A gun's power extends along your line of sight. A person holding a gun can put holes in anything they can see. No need to be close up, no need to feel the blade slice, no need to get blood on yourself.

A gun gives the holder the power to be in control of all of the lives within sight. 

"They can all be killed, or I can let them all live. MY choice. I hold the power in this crowd. I may not have two pennies to rub together, I may have a sniveling family and I may hate my job but I have this gun that gives me power over even the richest person, I can kill them too. It depends on the state of my mania that day. That and the depth of my personal drama and mental state. 

I'll know soon after I come down off this high."

Let's think about guns from different angles.

Live Love

Mac/

Bad Edit Copies... Ugh

When in the course of human events...

...a person may make a few mistakes here and there.

At least, in the course of writing a book, dumb things happen. Dumb things like sending out mistake copies by accident.

In the course of writing my new book "American Druthers," ideas evolved.
Of-course they do, how else to write a book?

Along the way an Author will order edit copies to hold and read. I usually ordered 4 at a time and I'll do that four or five times. The ones not used were stacked on the shelf and during a whirlwind clean-up somehow found their way in to a box of finished books.

So.... It looks like a few of these bad edit copies were mailed out for review. Ugh.

Hopefully after I send out replacement copies of the finished book this can all be swept under the rug. My embarrassment is as loud as the mistake itself. I hope we can all live happier lives and move on.
Anyone else that may have ended up with one of those copies can email me with a mailing address and I will send out a proper copy at no charge.

I recommend self publishing a book... not so much.

LL / Mac/

Mid-Jan Update

For future readers to this blog; as the books I have mailed are read and as the first few handouts are looked over, I'll go over this years schedule and where I am at in the scheme of things.

Soon, this blog will be looked over by people wondering, looking for more or just plain pissed-off.
So here is the schtick;

Right now, my new book, "American Druthers" is out. I have mailed out over 50 copies for content review and literary consideration. I am ordering and stockpiling new copies at my cost. After the painfully slow initial steps are over, I will be traveling to communities all over the country that have been affected by gun violence and will be passing out free copies of my book as well as searching out victims and their families to help create a solidarity of compassion for our situation. I will be covering all of this right here on this blog with writing, pictures and perhaps even video.
This will be a seemingly never-ending quest, but along the way I will be trying to gather sponsorship to put a copy of American Druthers on the desk of every Senator and Congressional Representative in the country. Currently, that is 535 books.
To this end I will need to scrape up $2150 for the books and another amount for either postage, or travel to personally deliver them.
I will do as much of this with my own means as I can but could use some help if people feel so inclined.

I did not write this book for me. I wrote this book for ALL Americans. I am not intending to become rich or famous, I am intending to keep the issue alive until an amicable end is seen, and to spurn thought along the way. 
I could easily just sit back and complain for the rest of my life, then die a penniless, angry old man. But that's not me. I would like to be thought of as that guy that smiled, helped, and faded away.

If you would like to help, my PayPal email is  macztuff@gmail.com  Please annotate your donation as a gift or donation so I can keep track. I will keep an accounting of any and all donations, here on this blog without naming names. That email address is for my PP account only, correspondence there is not received and will get no response. If you want to be heard or join in the conversation somehow, email me here at:  sanegunsforamerica@gmail.com  or just comment here on this blog. 

There will be spurious installments to this blog till I take off for El Paso. Currently that is looking like late February or early March.

LL/ Mac/

White Settlement, Texas

There have been quite a few shootings in the news lately.
Standard issue though, nothing special it seems.

It is this point in time when we need to shake ourselves. This monthly, weekly and daily shooting stuff is becoming ho-hum, so-what.
Its the first of the year and I just happened to look at the coverage of the incident at White Settlement, Texas. The one where the guy started shooting in the church and killed two people before being killed himself.
I looked at this incident in particular because of the positive stop situation that happened, it's a rare thing. I feel real bad for the people in the church needing to have guns at the ready to praise ideals of peace and love.
How can we keep from having to break our own religious tenet of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" to simply gather in the name of, and offer praise to God?

Have you read my book?   Check it out Here.

But the real story is the two people that were killed. The real story is of the families of these men and the unimaginable feelings of loss they must be experiencing. Are they feeling a need to place blame? If they do, and most people do, will they place blame in the same places that you would?

Two, American, church going men. Anton Wallace who was 64 years old and Richard White who was 67. Innocent humans praising God.
How long will we mourn them?

DO NOT FORGET THEM in the fervor to pat ourselves on the back in adding a single verified positive stop situation. The shooter was stopped, good, he was a piece of human neglect to be dealt with. But let's hear about the two people that we traded his life for.

Realize that we didn't REALLY stop this guy. Two innocents died, he succeeded and we failed again.

On to the next senseless murder(s)....

I will be starting my journeys in El Paso, Texas at the Wal-Mart that was unwitting host to the horrific killing there a few months ago. I'll be there close, handing out my book for free and talking issues with the locals... as soon as I can.

Live Love
M/

Small Town Gun Violence

Here's an angle of thought from a place most people in America will think of as outrageous. Even in America, it's a bit much to base an areas entire existence on one thing. Be it a product or service, if everyone is beholden to it, there is an aire of complacency about that product or service. After-all, if it is everywhere, it becomes part of our lives. Fishing, Coal Mining, Logging, Firearms... In some cases, these become part of our character.

In nearly every small town in the United States, gun violence is not a worry at all. You can be assured that there are more guns on a Farm, Ranch and Country Estate than you can shake a stick at, yet the accident and murder by gun rates are very low in rural towns under 2000 residents. Even suicide rates by gun are much lower in small rural towns. Life is slower, people interact with each other more and after awhile, you've seen or heard of nearly everyone in town. Maybe it's because there is no-one anonymous to kill. The neighbor lady down the street would certainly drag you home by the ear and tell your parents if you shot up the school.

Some of the folks reading this may know that I spent a little time in Tombstone, Arizona. Tombstone is the wild-card in this peaceful small-town statistic. Tombstone is why we can only say... "almost" about small town gun violence in the United States. Tombstone actually has several notable incidents each year that help to hold these national statistics down. There were several of these types of incidents put in the books while I lived there, but one was most notable.
I wrote about it then, here is what I wrote:

"Yesterday a real nice guy, Tombstone fixture at the Birdcage Theater and I’d like to call him friend, was murdered at the hands of a fool with a gun under the pretense of unrequited love. Two lonely old men liked the same woman and the answer to the problem came with a wisp of cordite.

Not unlike my own experience of gun violence, this incident is but a blip on the American conscious but it is actually a bit more for those that can recognize true irony when they see it.

Let me tell you a little about it…

It all started in April of 1881 here in Tombstone Arizona and is entirely true.

1881 was the third year in the life of Tombstone, a silver mining town, and because of the wealth of silver, a very rowdy place. There were not only miners and their families here but also area Cowboys, thieves, drifters, gamblers, no-accounts and killers. Just three years in, the town was rife with violence and mayhem in such deadly detail that the Marshal of this town took it upon himself to champion a law requiring that there be no weapons carried within the city limits. This Marshal was one Virgil Earp, older brother of Wyatt Earp and the law became known as “Earps Law.”

As a matter of fact, the “Shootout at the O.K, Corral” happened because a group of local cowboys being enemies of the Earps, refused to obey this law.

Something many don’t know is that this law was in force and in effect until 1992. For one hundred and eleven years there were no guns allowed to be carried in the open within the 4.3 square miles that is Tombstone Arizona. Although not always strictly enforced everybody was happy with that.

Fast forward to 1992. The tourist inspired carnival atmosphere that is now Tombstone holds several licensed “Shootout Gun Shows” using real guns shooting blanks. There are horses pulling Stage Coaches through town for the tourists but of course automobiles are the norm in 1992 and seldom is seen an actual horse bearing a rider. Of course horses and their riders are welcome and encouraged to help with the old West atmosphere of the town and occasionally a group would ride through. Here’s where the twist comes.

A group of these riders from outside the city limits including a loudmouth local Bounty Hunter liked to come through in full blown Old West gear. This full gear included side arms and saddle guns. This seems reasonable but being unlicensed they were breaking the one law that is itself historical and steeped in the true history of the town. Certain folks and the local law pointed this situation out and the group although welcomed was asked to not bring their guns. Thinking that their right to carry a gun anywhere they wanted overshadowed Tombstones history, these people created a stink and soon the NRA was involved.

Long story short, part of Tombstones heritage and the very law that made Tombstone famous was overturned and free gun glorification began. The law that gave Tombstone its livelihood and gave people here a small sense of security was thrown under the stage.

Since then no-one here cares to remember “Earps Law” and it seems that nearly everyone in town with small shoes or anger issues has a gun on their hip. I’m not talking about licensed guns with blanks either. I’m talking Glock, S&W, and even old style single action .45’s loaded and “ready” for anything the imagination can dream up. Unfortunately as a whole, the people that carry these guns have been trained via the riddled can method.

There are mock gunfights in town 3 or 4 times a day and even the street hawkers are packing iron giving the impression to tourists that Tombstone has always been a gun toting shoot em’ up town. Apparently the town now depicts through its theater the three years of insolence before Earps Law even though the mock O.K. Corral shootout happens 2-3 times a day at the gun toting hawkers call. 
A true contradiction in history if you know better.

So now just yesterday a bad man packing a gun killed a good man with no gun at all, and it isn't the first time since 1992 that gun violence has occurred within the city limits. Gun violence from both locals and western fervor incited tourists happens quite often here in Tombstone. I hate to say it but it is truly a jagged little pill to swallow, and unlike the song I'm referencing here, truly ironic when consumed with the actual history of Tombstone.

What’s more disturbing to me about this atmosphere and the people that perpetuate it, is that as I was passing one of these gun toting hawkers on the street just two hours after the killing, she was talking to a UPS driver about the incident. I happened to overhear her infer that it was the victims fault for not having a gun at the ready.

What? Did I hear you right? I asked her. 
When she answered the same short-sighted drone, I tore into her and gave her a loud and embarrassing tongue lashing in public.

Folks, It is not an Americans fault for being killed by a gun because they don’t wear a gun. If you feel that you need a gun at every turn you have a sad life. No life at all is better than spending your days on earth clutching a gun in fear. By this failed logic everyone in America should wear a gun because they are paranoid of what another American will do to them. That’s not the America of our forefathers and certainly has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. 

Does anyone else see the comparisons to be made? The lack of respect for humanity and the Americans around them? The lack of Patriotism? YES, lack of Patriotism.

We are all Americans here and supposedly on the same team.

It was a famous American black man that once said “Can’t we all just get along?”

Not while half of us are packing heat we can’t. Don't get me wrong, guns are fine and have a time and place. A guns place is not out in the open on your hip as a daily affront to the Americans around you.

Get training, glean knowledge and respect for others if you want to use guns.

Now back to what was mentioned in the first paragraph...
We as humans inundate ourselves with our favorite things, an embarrassment of riches in many ways. Things attach to the human psyche by repetition of thought, sight, sound, etc. When one of these things are firearms and they are everywhere within our sight and thought, the results are not good. Tombstone, Arizona and the statistics it holds down is proof of this theory. No other small town in the country has as much gun violence as Tombstone. It lives up to its name in many ways.

By-the-way, actual certified gun training teaches you to think of others and to keep your gun invisible in public. 

Open carry is for fools.

LL/ Mac/