Defense Of Property Rights Now Deemed Criminal

     You may have already seen this report:

     ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) -- A grand jury indicted Mark and Patricia McCloskey Tuesday on charges of exhibiting guns at protesters in a June incident in their neighborhood and added a charge of tampering with evidence for both members of the couple.

     Their attorney, Joel Schwartz, said he wasn’t surprised by the indictment, saying the grand jury didn’t have all the facts.

     “Once all the facts are out, it will be clear the McCloskeys committed no crime whatsoever,” Schwartz said. “Frankly because the grand jury is not an adversarial process and defense counsel are not allowed in there and I have no idea what was stated to the grand jury and what law was given to the grand jury.”

     Just in case you don’t remember how this originally went down:

1. A bunch of protesters broke down a locked gate that closed off a private road into the private residential compound where the McCloskeys live;
2. The protesters marched down that road shouting slogans;
3. The McCloskeys confronted them: him with an AR-15; her with a disabled handgun.
4. The protesters shouted threats at them, but eventually departed without violence.

     So the affair starts with criminal vandalism and trespassing, continues with an attempt to intimidate peaceable residents, is thwarted by two residents, and nothing more occurs. You’d think it a textbook case of the armed citizen defending his rights.

     But citizens don’t have any such rights when there’s a leftist district attorney to deal with.

     I expect that, should these scrofulous charges actually come before a jury, the McCloskeys will be acquitted. But as we’ve heard all too frequently, “the process is the punishment.” What the legal system is doing to the McCloskeys is intended to deter other citizens from exercising their God-given right to defend what’s honestly theirs with legally owned weapons.

     Firearms, it seems, are for poking holes in paper targets. Oh, and for occasionally shooting a deer...but only when the Omnipotent State says that’s okay. But never, ever to be used to defend your rights.

     I think the Founding Fathers had a different opinion:

     “That the said Constitution shall never be 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

     “Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.” – Elbridge Gerry

     “There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy.” – George Washington

     “For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.” – Thomas Jefferson

     “Always remember that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics – that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe.” – James Madison

     “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves...and include all men capable of bearing arms.” – Richard Henry Lee

     “The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone...The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation...forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition.” – James Madison

     “The great object is, that every man be armed...Every one who is able may have a gun.” – James Madison

     “The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.” – James Monroe

     Then there’s this, from many diverse, temporally distributed sources, and also from your humble Curmudgeon:

Rights are those things you can morally acquire or defend by the use of force.

     Apropos of which, were you aware that the first state laws restricting gun ownership were passed to keep guns out of the hands of Negroes? To enable vicious mobs to wreak violence upon Negroes’ lives and properties on a “Niggertown Saturday Night?”

     In his book Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out, civil rights attorney and gun scholar Don Kates found racial overtones in the focus on the Saturday night special ("niggertown Saturday night special"). Gun control advocate Robert Sherrill claimed: "The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns but to control blacks."

     Chew that over, racist liberal anti-gunners!