When Public Officials Fail Of Their Duties

     ...sometimes, other public officials will acknowledge theirs:

     Randy Kennedy, who made the clip, is the Chief of Police of Hughes Springs, Texas. Please watch it. It’s the sort of thing I would hope to see from every one of the police chiefs and sheriffs of these United States.

     In the video above he makes only a single misstep: when he tells Barack Hussein Obama that “we [the American people] are not your enemy.” I think, given his record since ascending to the presidency, it’s beyond dispute that Obama sees us, correctly, as his enemy. He cannot bring about the “fundamental transformation” of America without first disarming us.

     Unfortunately, Obama has a number of allies in that effort.

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     Hearken to this bit of news from Connecticut:

     Governor Dannel Malloy announced today that he will issue an executive order stripping the gun rights of some state citizens without them having been accused of or charged with a crime.

     Malloy, a Democrat, said his state would become the first in the United States to implement a rule linking gun ownership to the no-fly list. President Obama has called for Congress to institute such a measure in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting last week.

     “Here in America, it’s way too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun,” the president said in his most recent weekly address. “Right now, people on the no-fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun. That’s insane.”

     Mind you, the names of Congressmen, Senators, and prominent journalists have appeared on that list. It’s populated by a mysterious process and is shielded from public scrutiny. The only way to learn whether one’s name is on it is to undertake to travel by air. The Heritage Foundation’s Steve Hayes found himself on it quite by surprise – because he’d booked a one-way flight to Turkey. Once on it, getting off it is fraught with difficulty and can take months. The problem is compounded by the non-uniqueness of most Americans’ names.

     Governor Malloy, who really ought to know better, has chosen to collaborate with Barack Hussein Obama. He’s prepared to strip an unknown number of Connecticut residents of their Second Amendment-protected rights, by executive order from the governor’s mansion, on the strength of the mysterious no-fly list. Will Connecticut’s sheriffs and police chiefs stand up to him? Until Malloy actually makes good on his threat, we’ll have no way to know.

     When the odious Andrew Cuomo rammed his “SAFE Act” through the New York State legislature in the middle of the night, it evoked an immediate negative reaction from the great majority of New York’s sheriffs and police chiefs. Many have said openly that they would not be a party to the enforcement of that law. Their colleagues in Connecticut might soon face a similar challenge to their sense of public duty.

     It’s a bedrock of American justice that an individual's’ rights cannot be taken from him except by “due process of law:” a jury trial. No political executive has the authority to override the due-process protections of the Constitution. Yet at least one northeastern governor seems poised to attempt it. We shall see.

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     Do not doubt that the Left is serious about stripping us of our firearms, Constitutional guarantees be damned. Major Leftist publications have gotten on that wagon and are driving it as hard as they dare. Hearken to Phoebe Bovy at The New Republic:

     Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those. Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.

     And here’s Amitai Etzioni at The Huffington Post:

     Given that even micro gun control measures will be effectively blocked by the NRA and its allies, and that promoting mini measures as potentially effective is misleading, progressives may as well go for the big enchilada: Call for domestic disarmament.

     And of course, The New York Times is already on board:

     It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

     They’re serious. Trust me on that.

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     I wrote long ago – months before the September 11, 2001 atrocities – that Americans must marshal our willingness to defy the State:

     It's been awhile since I really reflected on the nature of a free people -- a people determined to remain free, and possessed of the means to do so.

     Armament is critical, of course. If your adversary is armed and you aren't, you're in the position of a grasshopper trying to face down a lawn mower. We might make admiring note of your courage in our elegies, but we surely won't be attending your victory parade.

     Also, one must be careful not to hand any levers to a potential tyrant. There are a number of things Man requires to survive and flourish: air, food, water, the ability to move about, the ability to communicate with others, heat, fuel, many kinds of knowledge, the cooperation of others with different kinds of knowledge, and so on. Whenever any entity moves to monopolize access to any of these or the other necessities of survival, it's nominated itself Tyrant-In-Embryo. Abort!

     But both the above are resultants of a far more critical, indeed, a fundamental requirement of the free man. No one can remain free, no one can ensure the freedom of his descendants, unless he nurtures and transmits to those around him the essential defiance that animates all the other freedom-conserving behaviors.

     Without weapons, our defiance will mean little. The State will become irresistible, able to coerce and chivvy us as it pleases. If the Left is truly resolved, in this final year of the Obamunist Regime, to attempt to disarm us, the moment will be upon us to decide on our priorities.

     Sheriff Randy Kennedy knows his priorities. Do you know yours?