Rational Nation USA

The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish! -- Frederic Bastiat, The Law   New Jersey Man Serving Seven Years for Guns He Legally Owned When Mount Laurel police arrived at the Aitkens' home on Jan. 2, 2009, they called Brian - who was driving to Hoboken - and asked him to return to his parents' home because they were worried. When he arrived, the cops checked his Honda Civic and, inside the trunk, in a box stuffed into a duffel bag with clothes, they found two handguns, both locked and unloaded as New Jersey law requires. Aitken had passed an FBI background check to buy them in Colorado when he lived there, his father said, and had contacted New Jersey State Police and discussed...

I got into an argument with an old friend and fellow lifetime NRA member over that organization’s support for campaign finance legislation that restricts free speech in exchange for an exemption for itself. Good on the NRA for defending our Second Amendment rights. Bad on them for squashing the First Amendment in the process. Things really got heated when I excoriated our NRA for toying with the idea of endorsing Harry Reid . Reid Voted for the Brady Bill, Erik Erikson reminds us .  Politico explains how politics in America makes such bedfellows possible: First, Reid has a fairly favorable lifetime rating from the NRA. And then there’s the $61 million for the Clark County Shooting Park, earmarked by Reid, which led Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, to call Reid “a true champion” of the Second Amendment at an event commemorating the opening of the 2,900-acre park in April. ( Politico ) So Reid bribed the NRA with $61 million of ...

I got into an argument with an old friend and fellow lifetime NRA member over that organization’s support for campaign finance legislation that restricts free speech in exchange for an exemption for itself. Good on the NRA for defending our Second Amendment rights. Bad on them for squashing the First Amendment in the process. Things really got heated when I excoriated our NRA for toying with the idea of endorsing Harry Reid . Reid Voted for the Brady Bill, Erik Erikson reminds us .  Politico explains how politics in America makes such bedfellows possible: First, Reid has a fairly favorable lifetime rating from the NRA. And then there’s the $61 million for the Clark County Shooting Park, earmarked by Reid, which led Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, to call Reid “a true champion” of the Second Amendment at an event commemorating the opening of the 2,900-acre park in April. ( Politico ) So Reid bribed the NRA with $61 million ...

Self-Defense: An Inalienable Right Statesmen from ancient Rome to the American Revolution laid the foundation in law for the right of self-defense. America's founders were influenced by these classic philosophic teachings and the European tradition derived from them. "Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself," wrote the great Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. "They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power." ( Claremont Institute ) Do you have a right to life? The right to self-defense is the first and most fundamental right contained in Natural Law.  Without life, nothing else matters. Think we should surrender that right to government so the state can protect us?   OK, then riddle me this:  Does the family of a murder v...