And It Still Burns On & On & On & On......

The brushfire of democracy, started by the Bush administration, has grown into a raging fire of change in the Middle East...and muslim extremism stands no chance of dousing this giant!


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050428/D89O4U401.html

Pro-Reform Activists Rally Across Egypt

Apr 27, 10:48 PM (ET)By SARAH EL-DEEB

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Hundreds of pro-democracy activists protested in 15 Egyptian cities and towns Wednesday, drawing out large numbers of riot police who briefly detained 75 protesters, organizers said.

Witnesses in some cities, including Suez in the east and Benha in the Nile Delta, reported that police beat protesters with batons to disperse them.

The organizers said they were pleased that the protest had spread from Cairo, where they've held numerous protests during the past five months. "We are expanding to cover all of Egypt," said Amin Iskandar, a leader of the group, Egyptian Movement for Change.

The group has been unappeased by government proposals to open the presidential election process to more than one candidate and held a series of protests since December, calling for an end to President Hosni Mubarak's 24-year rule, the repeal of emergency laws that give security forces broad powers, and pro-democratic reforms.

Under internal and U.S. pressure, Mubarak earlier this year asked parliament to adopt a constitutional change that would open up this fall's presidential election. Previously Egyptians voted 'yes' or 'no' for one candidate, nominated by parliament.

Mubarak has not yet said if he would seek another term. He has held office since Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981.

In Cairo, hundreds of riot police barred 300 protesters from the Supreme Court, so they assembled on the steps of the nearby journalists syndicate.

"Down with Mubarak! Down with Suleiman!" the demonstrators chanted, referring to President Hosni Mubarak and his chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman.

About 1,200 people rallied in the southern city of Luxor, including lawyers and Islamists. Hundreds also gathered in the southern cities of Minya and Qena, and at venues in northern Egypt including Alexandria, Suez and Benha.

Judicial Legislation & Dangers of "Lochnerizing"

(There may not be a more important article to read in our lifetimes, than what you are about to read...)

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS05D01&f=PG03I03

Judicial Activism and the Constitution: Solving a Growing Crisis

by: Dr. Robert P. George

Judicial power can be used, and has been used, for both good and ill. In a basically just democratic republic, however, judicial power should never be exercised--even for desirable ends--lawlessly. Judges are not legislators. The legitimacy of their decisions, particularly those decisions that overturn legislative judgments, depends entirely on the truth of the judicial claim that the court was authorized by law to settle the matter. Where this claim is false, a judicial edict is not redeemed by its good intentions or consequences. Decisions in which the courts usurp the authority of the people are not merely incorrect, they are themselves unconstitutional. And they are unjust.

Unfortunately, such decisions are growing in number and in the range of topics they cover. A crisis is at hand, and solutions must be found.

Should courts be granted the power to invalidate legislation in the name of the Constitution? In reaction to Chief Justice John Marshall's opinion in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison,[1] Thomas Jefferson warned that judicial review would lead to a form of despotism.[2] Notably, the power of judicial review is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. The courts themselves have claimed the power based on inferences drawn from the Constitution's identification of itself as supreme law and from the nature of the judicial office.[3] But even if we give credit to these inferences, as I am inclined to do, it must be said that early supporters of judicial review, including Marshall himself, did not imagine that the federal and state courts would claim the sweeping powers they exercise today. Jefferson and other critics were, it must be conceded, more far-seeing.

After Marbury, the power of the judiciary expanded massively. This expansion, however, began slowly. Even if Marbury could be described as telling the Congress what it could and could not do, it would be another

54 years before the Supreme Court would do it again. And it could not have chosen a worse occasion. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney handed down an opinion for the Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford.[4] That opinion declared even free blacks to be non-citizens and held that Congress was powerless to restrict slavery in the federal territories. It intensified the debate over slavery and dramatically increased the prospects for civil war.

Dred Scott was a classic case of judicial activism. With no constitutional warrant, the justices manufactured a right to hold property in slaves that the Constitution nowhere mentioned or could reasonably be read as implying. Of course, the Taney majority depicted their decision as a blow for constitutional rights and individual freedoms. They were protecting the minority (slaveholders) against the tyranny of a moralistic majority who would deprive them of their property rights. Of course, the reality was that the judges were exercising what in a later case would be called "raw judicial power"[5] to settle a debate over a divisive moral and social issue in the way they personally favored.

It took a civil war and several constitutional amendments (especially the Fourteenth Amendment) made possible by the Union victory to reverse Dred Scott.

The Dred Scott decision is a horrible blight on the judicial record. We should remember, though, that while it stands as an example of judicial activism in defiance of the Constitution, it is also possible for judges to dishonor the Constitution by refusing to act on its requirements. In the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson,[6] for example, legally sanctioned racial segregation was upheld by the Supreme Court, despite the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equality. In Plessy, the justices announced their infamous "separate but equal" doctrine, a doctrine that was a sham from the start. Separate facilities for blacks in the South were then, and had always been, inferior in quality. Indeed, the whole point of segregation was to embody and reinforce an ideology of white supremacy that was utterly incompatible with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Fourteenth Amendment. Maintaining a regime of systematic inequality was the object of segregation. As Justice John Harlan wrote in dissent, segregation should have been declared unlawful because the Constitution of the United States is colorblind and recognizes no castes.[7]

A half-century and more passed before the Supreme Court got around to correcting its error in Plessy in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education.[8] In the meantime, the Court repeated the errors that had brought it to shame in the Dred Scott case. The 1905 case of Lochner v. New York[9] concerned a New York law limiting to 60 the number of hours per week that the owner of a bakery could require or permit his employees to work. Industrial bakeries are tough places to work, even now. They were tougher--a lot tougher--then. Workers risked lung disease from breathing in the flour dust and severe burns from the hot ovens, especially when they were tired and less than fully alert. The New York state legislature sought to protect workers against abuse by limiting their working hours. But the Supreme Court said no.

The justices struck down the law as an unconstitutional interference by the state in private contractual relations between employers and employees. The Court justified its action with a story similar to the one it told in Dred Scott. Again, it claimed to be protecting the minority (owners) against the tyranny of the democratic majority. It was restricting government to the sphere of public business and getting it out of private relations between competent adults, namely, owners and workers.

The truth, of course, is that the Court was substituting its own laissez-faire economics philosophy for the contrary judgment of the people of New York, who were acting through their elected representatives in the state legislature. On the controversial moral question of what constituted real freedom and what amounted to exploitation, unelected and democratically unaccountable judges, purporting to act in the name of the Constitution, simply seized decision-making power.[10] Under the pretext of preventing the majority from imposing its morality on the minority, the Court imposed its own morality on the people of New York and the nation.

Like Dred Scott, Lochner eventually fell, brought down not by civil war, but by an enormously popular president fighting a great depression. Under the pressure of Franklin Roosevelt's plan to pack the Supreme Court, the justices, in 1937, repudiated the Lochner decision and got out of the business of blocking worker protection and state and federal social welfare legislation. Indeed, the term "Lochnerizing" was invented as a label for judicial rulings that overrode democratic lawmaking authority and imposed upon society the will of unelected judges.

For many years the Court took great care to avoid the least appearance of Lochnerizing. In 1965, for example, in a case called Griswold v. Connecticut[11], the justices struck down a state law against contraceptives in the name of an unwritten "right to marital privacy." Justice William O. Douglas, who wrote the opinion, explicitly denied that he was appealing to the principle of Lochner.[12] Indeed, to avoid invoking Lochner's claim to a so-called "substantive due process" right in the Fourteenth Amendment, Douglas went so far as to say that he had discovered the right to privacy in "penumbras formed by emanations" of a panoply of Bill of Rights guarantees, including the Third Amend-ment's prohibition against the government quartering of soldiers in private homes in peacetime, and the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

Griswold, though plainly an incidence of judicial activism, was not an unpopular decision. The Connecticut statute it invalidated was rarely enforced and the public cared little about it. Its significance was mainly symbolic, and the debate about it was symbolic. The powerful forces favoring liberalization of sexual mores in the 1960s viewed the repeal of such laws--by whatever means necessary--as essential to discrediting traditional Judeo-Christian norms about the meaning of human sexuality. But the Court was careful to avoid justifying the invalidation of the law by appealing to sexual liberation or individual rights of any kind. In Douglas's account of the matter, it was not for the sake of "sexual freedom" that the justices were striking down the law, but rather to protect the honored and valued institution of marriage from damaging intrusions by the state. Otherwise uninformed readers of the opinion might be forgiven for inferring mistakenly that the ultraliberal William O. Douglas was in fact an archconservative on issues of marriage and the family. They would certainly have been justified in predicting--wrongly, as it would turn out--that Douglas and those justices joining his opinion would never want to see the Griswold decision used to break down traditional sexual mores or to encourage non-marital sexual conduct.

A mere seven years later, however, in Eisenstadt v. Baird,[13] the Court forgot everything it had said about marriage in the Griswold decision and abruptly extended the "constitutional right" to use contraceptives to non-married persons. A year later, the justices, citing Griswold and Eisenstadt, handed down their decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade. And the culture war began.

The Roe decision was pure Lochnerizing. Roe did for the cause of abortion what Lochner had done for laissez-faire economics and what Dred Scott had done for slavery. The justices intervened in a large-scale moral debate over a divisive social issue, short-circuiting the democratic process and imposing on the nation a resolution lacking any justification in the text or structure of the Constitution. Indeed, Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for the majority, abandoned Griswold's ideas of "penumbras formed by emanations" and grounded the new constitutional right to feticide in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, just where the Lochner court had claimed to discover a right to freedom of contract. Dissenting Justice Byron R. White accurately described the Court's abortion ruling as an "act of raw judicial power."

Having succeeded in establishing a national regime of abortion-on-demand by judicial fiat in Roe, the cultural left continued working through the courts to get its way on matters of social policy where there was significant popular resistance. Chief among these was the domain of sexual morality. Where state laws embodied norms associated with traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs about sex, marriage, and the family, left-wing activists groups brought litigation claiming that the laws violated Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of due process and equal protection, and First Amendment prohibitions on laws respecting an establishment of religion. The key battleground became the issue of homosexual conduct. Initially, the question was whether it could be legally prohibited as long as that prohibition came from the states. Eventually, the question became whether homosexual relationships and the sexual conduct on which such relationships are based must be accorded marital or quasi-marital status under state and federal law.

In 1986, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to Georgia's law forbidding sodomy in Bowers v. Hardwick.[14] Michael Hardwick had been observed engaging in an act of homosexual sodomy by a police officer who had lawfully entered Hardwick's home to serve a summons in an unrelated matter. Left-wing activist groups treated Hardwick's case as a chance to invalidate sodomy laws by extending the logic of the Court's "right to privacy" decisions. This time, however, they failed. In a 5-4 decision written by Justice White, the Court upheld Georgia's sodomy statute as applied to homosexual sodomy. The justices declined to rule either way on the question of heterosexual sodomy, which the majority said was not before the Court.

The Bowers decision stood until 2003, when it was reversed in Lawrence v. Texas,[15] the case that set the stage for the current cultural and political showdown over the nature and definition of marriage. In Lawrence, the Court held that state laws forbidding homosexual sodomy lacked a rational basis and were invasions of the rights of consenting adults to engage in the type of sexual relations they preferred. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed that such laws insult the dignity of homosexual persons. As such, he insisted, they are constitutionally invalid under the doctrine of privacy, whose centerpiece was the Roe decision.

Kennedy went out of his way to say that the Court's ruling in Lawrence did not address the issue of same-sex marriage or whether the states and federal government were obliged to give official recognition to same-sex relationships or grant benefits to same-sex couples.[16] Writing in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia said bluntly: "Do not believe it."[17] The Lawrence decision, Scalia warned, eliminated the structure of constitutional law under which it could be legitimate for lawmakers to recognize any meaningful distinctions between homosexual and heterosexual relationships.

On this point, many enthusiastic supporters of the Lawrence decision and of the cause of same-sex "marriage" agreed with Scalia. They saw the decision as having implications far beyond the invalidation of anti-sodomy laws. Noting the sweep of Kennedy's opinion, despite his insistence that the justices were not addressing the marriage issue, they viewed the decision as a virtual invitation to press for the judicial invalidation of state laws that treat marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Indeed, litigation on this subject was already going forward in the states--it had begun in Hawaii in the early 1990s when a State Supreme Court ruling invalidating the Hawaii marriage laws was overturned by a state constitutional amendment. Lawrence turned out to be a new and powerful weapon to propel the movement forward and embolden state court judges to strike down laws treating marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

The boldest of the bold were four liberal Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices who ruled in Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health[18] that the commonwealth's restriction of marriage to male-female unions violated the state constitution. The state legislature requested an advisory opinion from the justices about whether a scheme of civil unions, similar to one adopted by the Vermont state legislature after a like ruling there, would suffice. The four Massachusetts justices, however, over the dissents of three other justices, said, No, civil unions will not do.[19] And so same-sex marriage was imposed on the people of Massachusetts by unelected and electorally unaccountable judges.

Clearly, the United States has endured episodes of judicial activism throughout its history. Just as clearly, incidents of judicial overreaching, much of it spurred by issues of sexual morality, are accelerating.

Here, there is a double wrong and a double loss, a crime with two victims. The first and obvious victim is the injured party in the case: the endangered worker, the unborn child or the institution of marriage itself. The second is our system of deliberative democracy. In case after case, the judiciary is chipping away at the pillars of self-rule, undermining laws and practices, from statutes outlawing abortion to public displays of the Ten Commandments, that are deeply rooted in the American tradition.

Checking the "raw power" of today's judicial activists will require both changes in judicial personnel and targeted measures designed to remedy their specific abuses. For example, there is no alternative, in my judgment, to amending the Constitution of the United States to protect marriage. The Massachusetts state legislature has made an initial move towards amending the state constitution to overturn Goodridge, but the outcome is uncertain. The process of amending the constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is lengthy and arduous (except, apparently, for the judges themselves). Even if the pro-marriage forces in Massachusetts ultimately succeed, liberal judges in other states are not far behind their colleagues on the Massachusetts bench. Hovering over the entire scene, like the sword of Damocles, is the Supreme Court of the United States, which could at any time invalidate state marriage laws across the board. You may think, They would never do that. Well, I would echo Justice Scalia: Do not believe it. They would. And if they are not preempted by a federal constitutional amendment on marriage, they will. They will, that is, unless the state courts get there first, leaving to the U.S. Supreme Court only the mopping-up job of invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act and requiring states to give "full faith and credit" to out-of-state same-sex "marriages."

My own view, however, is that we need auniform national definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Here is why: Marriage is fundamental. Marriage is the basisof the family, and it is inhealthy familiesthat children are reared to be honorable people andgood citizens. Marriage and the family are thebasic units of society; no society can flourishwhen they are undermined. Until now, a social consensus regarding thebasicdefinition of marriagemeant that we didn't needto resolve the question at the federal level.Every state recognized marriage as the exclusive union ofone man and one woman. (The federalgovernmentdid its part at one point in our history to ensure that this would remain the case by making Utah's admissionto the Union as a state conditional upon its banning polygamy.)

The breakdown of the consensus certainly does not eliminate the need for a uniform national definition. If we don't have one, then marriage will erode eitherquickly--by judicial imposition, unlessjudges are stopped--or gradually, by the integration into the formal and informal institutions of society of same-sex couples who, after all,possess legallyvalid marriage licenses from some state.[20] In the long run, it is untenable for large numbers of people to be considered married in one or some states of the United States yet unmarried in others. As Lincoln warned it would be with the evil of slavery in his time, it is inevitable that the country will go "all one way or all the other." Slavery would either be abolished everywhere or it would spread everywhere. The same is true of same-sex "marriage," in the long run--and perhaps even in the not-so-long run.

Besides addressing specific examples of judicial activism, as the Federal Marriage Amendment would do, Americans can and should work to ensure the nomination and confirmation of constitutionalist judges to our courts, especially the Supreme Court.

If personnel on the Supreme Court do change, the question follows: Is it legitimate for the Court to change its view of the law, and here, specifically, the Constitution? The legal doctrine of stare decisis--literally, to stand on what has been decided - is important and worthy of respect. That doctrine does not strictly bind, however, in cases in which a judicial decision is a gross misinterpretation of the Constitution, and especially where a decision constitutes a usurpation of the constitutional authority of the people to govern themselves through the institutions of deliberative democracy. The Supreme Court, over time, gradually backed away from its "freedom of contract" decisions and completely reversed itself in its decisions on racial segregation and the Jim Crow laws--and it was right to do so.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the basic holding of Roe was reaffirmed by the Court on stare decisis grounds. Three of the justices who joined the majority--all Republican appointees--called on the "contending parties" in the debate over legal abortion to end their differences and accept the Court's ruling as a "common mandate rooted in the Constitution."

This was little more than a call for one side of the argument--the pro-life side--to surrender. Having written a series of abortion rulings lacking any basis in the Constitution, the justices took it upon themselves to ask the millions of Americans who oppose their unjustified ruling simply to submit to their ukase. Of course, the American people are under no obligation to "end their differences" by capitulating to judicial usurpation. On the contrary, they have every right under the Constitution to continue to oppose Roe v. Wade and work for its reversal. When judges exercising the power of judicial review permit themselves to be guided by the text, logic, structure, and original understanding of the Constitution, they deserve our respect and, indeed, our gratitude for playing their part to make constitutional republican government a reality. But where judges usurp democratic legislative authority by imposing on the people their moral and political preferences under the guise of vindicating constitutional guarantees, they should be severely criticized and resolutely opposed.

Robert George is This paper is based substantially upon Professor George's article, "High Courts and Misdemeanors," which appeared in Touchstone magazine (www.touchstonemag.com) and upon his lecture, "Judicial Usurpation and the Constitution," which was given at the Heritage Foundation in Spring 2005. It is reprinted here with permission of both Touchstone and the Heritage Foundation.

Notes

END NOTES
1. 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803).

2. See Thomas Jefferson's criticism of claims by the judiciary of authority to bind the other branches of government in matters of constitutional interpretation ("making the judiciary a despotic branch") in his Letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804, in 11 Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Albert E. Bergh ed. 1905), 311-13.

3. See Marbury v. Madison.

4. 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1856).

5. Roe v. Wade 410 U.S. 113, 222 (1973) (Justice Byron White, dissenting).

6. 163 U.S. 537 (1896).

7. Plessy v. Ferguson, 559 (Justice Harlan, dissenting).

8. 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

9. 198 U.S. 45 (1905).

10. See Lochner v. New York, 54-55 (Justice Holmes, dissenting). This is the standard reading of Lochner, shared by contemporary conservatives and liberals alike. For a powerful challenge to the standard reading, and a thoughtful defense of the majority opinion, see Hadley Arkes, "Lochner v. New York and the Cast of Our Laws," in Robert P. George (ed.), Great Cases in Constitutional Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), ch. 5.

11. 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

12. See Griswold v. Connecticut, 482.

13. 405 U.S. 438 (1972).

14. 478 U.S. 186 (1986).

15. 123 S. Ct. 2472 (2003).

16. Lawrence v. Texas, 2484.

17. Lawrence v. Texas, 2498 (Justice Scalia, dissenting).

18. 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003).

19. Opinion of the Justices to the Senate, 802 N.E.2d 565 (2003).

20. See Christopher Wolfe, "Why the Federal Marriage Amendment is Necessary," University of San Diego Law Review (forthcoming, 2005).

Where Was God?

This is a question posed by many of us after tragedies. I've wondered it at times? Even my wife asked me this question after reading about Saddam's genocide in Iraq. It is not an easy question to answer.

It is a question that is perhaps best answered by those who have been there. Those who have faced situations seemingly so evil, that many of us can't comprehend just how God could have been there and permitted them to happen.

The following articles were written by and about my cousin, Nick Baumgart, of Littleton Colorado. Nick was not only friends with the killers (Eric and Dylan) but also the boyfriend and prom date of Rachel Scott, one of the first massacred in the Columbine school shooting. Nick was there that day and speaks about his first hand account while attempting to answer the question…"Where was God?"

You will also find below, statements made by Rachel's father Darrell Scott in his address to the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee and other speeches given while touring together with Nick. Their statements don't call for a ban on guns, nor do they blame music, movies, or entertainment for the violence that occurred that day. Rather…they speak about God and bullying and parenting and what could have forced these two peers to turn on fellow students, including Nick himself. (http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/shooting/0811list1.shtml "... Classmate Nick Baumgart's name also appeared on a Harris list.")


http://www.cnn.com/US/9904/24/scott.funeral/
"A truer friend you couldn't find," said Nick Baumgart, who escorted Scott to the prom a week ago. "You could be having the worst day of your entire life. All she had to do was smile."


http://www.vop.com/previous_broadcasts/1999/may/99184.html
May 5, 1999
There was a heart-wrenching bit of irony in some of the newspaper stories that came out the Saturday after the Columbine shootings. A young man named Nick Baumgart shared from his heart about a girl named Rachel. Just three days before this Colorado tragedy, Nick and his date, Rachel Scott, had gone to the senior prom together. There was a picture of the two of them: he had on his tuxedo; she was wearing a formal black dress. They talked and laughed about the play she was writing, the poems. I mentioned Monday that she was an active, happy member in the Celebration Christian Fellowship Church; I'm sure her love for Jesus tinged their last conversation. And now she was dead; murdered out in the yard of the school.

But then the ironic flashback. This Nick, who sat in his tuxedo with the pretty high school senior, also remembers a recent summer. He spent most of his Colorado days that summer up in a tree house with a kid named Eric David Harris. In elementary school he played with Dylan Bennet Klebold. And now these two former friends were responsible for killing his prom date, Rachel.

And you know, we look at these side-by-side images — and it tears us up. How did friendships go so wrong? How did two boys, often described as decent and caring, end up planning and writing in diaries for almost a year about killing their former friends and classmates? They plotted for a maximum kill, a high body count.

And this takes us back to the unanswerable question: WHY? In the L.A. Times' weekend religion section, that's all there was. "Age-Old Query: Where Was God?" There weren't many coherent answers. Back when the Oklahoma City bombing happened, Ann Landers threw up her hands at the thousands of "Why's" that flooded in. "I have no answer," she confessed. Billy Graham went to that Sunday memorial service and said much the same thing: "This human race has no answers. The mystery of evil is something we don't understand."

You would think that most of the world — as it looks at the simple joy of a Saturday night prom date, and then the horrors of April 20 — would at last look up at heaven and say to God: "All right! We GET IT! We see that sin is evil and righteousness is good. We understand now that Lucifer's plan is deadly and Yours is Life eternal, Life abundant. At last we comprehend that the wages of sin are death, that violence breeds violence, that for mankind to go its own way is a slow suicide. God, at long last, why don't You COME! And rescue us all! Because after these past 6000 years, at last WE GET IT!"

Friend, I know that many times I've prayed in earnestness and almost frustration because it all seemed so clear. This is the unspoken anguish behind the Christian's "Maranatha" prayer. God, we GET it!! We're slow and spiritually stupid, but not THAT stupid. After the Holocaust and then Rwanda and then Kosovo and the Lewinsky mess and babies born with AIDS and now Columbine High School, it's painfully clear, agonizingly clear, that Satan's agenda for this world is nothing but mass suicide.

And as the world has watched this unfolding drama over the past 15 days now, there are signs that we might be slowly learning. After this shooting, the churches were filled. People stood together in their grief. People were reaching out for some shred of faith, some assurance that death was not the end, that these funerals were not the final chapter. High school seniors gathered almost spontaneously in nearby parks, by the cars of their fallen friends, to hold hands and pray.

I mentioned Monday that we wouldn't look for silver linings where perhaps there are none. But this Nick, whose treasured friend Rachel is now dead, has found some. Students at Columbine High have bonded, he says. The cliques seem to be gone now. And he adds that maybe they're gone for good. The athletes, the preps, the nerds, the invisible clubs where some kids owned BMWs, Vipers, and Humvees . . . all those lines of division have been erased in Littleton, Colorado. What some called the giant "jock-ocracy" is now gone. The meanest kid he knew in the school, who teased and bullied, spent April 20 helping other students escape from the carnage. He helped girls cross the chain-link fence; he made lists of survivors. "He was nice. He cared." And this Nick Baumgart thinks that the change is permanent. The whole city is different now, he senses. All the merchants donating money. People embracing on the street. The unity is for real.

And yet, friend, here's the reality we have to try to understand. Tragedy hit . . . and so everyone went to church. With bullets whizzing around, and dead bodies in that library, and the horror of mass funerals, the town of Littleton reached out to God on April 20, 1999. But what about on April 19 and 18 and 17 and 16? Was it clear to everyone a day BEFORE that to live in relationship with God is the best way, the only way?

Four days before the shootings, a 16-year-old girl named Sarah DeBoer was going about her Friday business at Columbine High. She exchanged pleasantries that day with both Eric and Dylan. "They both were nice," she said later. "I've known them since my freshman year. They were probably the nicest people you could ever meet." Now, after the slaughter, how were things? "I turned and saw Dylan," she says, "and he shot at me."

And the point, again, is this: do we only understand the goodness of God when the evilness of the world is thrust into our living rooms on CNN? Does the devil have to shoot right at us before we turn our eyes to heaven? And really, perhaps this is what God is waiting for. Even after Auschwitz and Bosnia and Littleton, Colorado, so few people still seek an abiding relationship with God ALL THE TIME, not just during a crisis.

For years preachers have kind of joked about, and also lamented, what they call "C & E Christians." People who show up at church just for Christmas and Easter. They don't want a daily relationship with God; they just want to say hello — and goodbye — during the two major "(quote) church holidays." And now maybe we have "C & S Christianity," which gets people to church only following crises and shootings. We only enter the house of our invisible heavenly Father when our hearts are aching from a teenager's funeral. But when the hurts fade, we return to our own lives.

In his book with the challenging title, Disappointment With God, Philip Yancey writes about how the children of Israel had what we so often seem to demand. God showed Himself to them! He was real! He was right there! He gave them all the signs and wonders. They heard His voice booming from the mountaintops. They saw His manna every morning; they drank from the rock where He provided miracle water. And yet, they seemed to really look His direction only when they were hungry. Or when the water ran out. Or when the locusts or the Philistines swooped down on them. So few of them seemed to want God ALL THE TIME. Unless there was a shooting or a tragedy, they went their own way. The relationship was unendingly shallow, marked just by the little moments of crisis connection.

And so maybe this is the silver lining from Littleton, Colorado. As people seek God NOW, during a crisis, will they STAY with Him as the crisis passes? Healing will be slow in this battle-scarred community, but it WILL come. And what then? Will the prayers in the parking lots slowly disperse as the memories fade? Will church attendance revert to normal? Or will 1,870 students — minus the 14 we have lost, plus one teacher — and their parents, and their friends, and those of us who wept by our own TV sets, learn that to seek God ALL the time is the only way to lasting wholeness?

I have a good friend, a faithful, conservative Christian, magazine editor of a prophecy journal, who reads his Bible, never smokes or drinks, and — I would think — hardly ever even darkens the door of a movie theater. Except that last summer he quietly bought a ticket to see both the Hollywood films, Deep Impact and Armageddon. Why did he break his own rule? Because he's convinced as he studies the prophecies of these end times, that God might well permit the devastation suggested in those two films — a meteor crashing into earth and killing millions — before people will truly turn to God and permanently hang onto Him.

Is he right? I don't know. But friend, I do know that God is seeking a people who will seek HIM. Not just when they hurt or when bad news comes from the sheriff's office. There were tragic moments at Columbine High School where police officers came up to parents and soberly asked them to retrieve their child's dental records. A mother's worst fears were abruptly realized. And at that moment they would seek God.

But how about the other times? How about ALL the time? And how about all of US?

In the book of Revelation we find page after page of blood-soaked sorrow. Earthquakes and famines and death. Sometimes we call these things the seven last plagues, a great tribulation — and the murders in Colorado are just a foreshadowing of what might be yet to come. People living then will have a mass crisis of faith: seeking God and not finding Him. But through it all, we read in chapter 14, there is a group. Things are bad, but they don't seek God just when things are bad. Plagues are raining down, but that's not the motivation of their love. No, it says in verse 4: "They follow the Lamb wherever He goes."

Rachel Scott had that. Nick Baumgart still does. How about each of the rest of us?


http://www.geocities.com/crisjam1/rjscott_promdate1.html

Prom date reminisce the good times spent with his friend, Rachel.
By Stepanie Simon; Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1999

He's thinking about Rachel.

Nick Baumgart has a show - me face. He's just 17, a high school senior, with adolescent acne and eyes full of promise. He likes acting and cooking and his is an eager face, a what-will-the-world-unfurl-for-me-today face.

This week, though, pains haunts it. He tugs at his lower lip a lot and he does a lot of hard swallowing. His eyes are dry but red. He hurts. He, too, is thinking of Rachel.

Rachel Scott- an actress, a musician, a poet, a kid -was 17 when she was shot dead Tuesday. Nick had taken her to the prom the Saturday before.

Nick sees her as she was last Saturday night, the only girl at the prom in a sleek, black dress. (Everyone wore pooky pastels)

He tugs at that lower lip. He sees her in the limo, talking the crazy talk that made her so fun. She had a good time pondering, he remembers now, if elephants have toes. He sees Rachel in the restaurant, the only one in his group who dared sample the pate. He looks at the photo of her, so pretty, so bright, sees her laughing as she struggled to pin on his boutonniere.

Nick sees Rachel alive, and he's hopeful. "She's' certainly not gone. She's going to be a part of us."
Nick and his friends have spent hours remembering Rachel. Joking about how she used to imitate the spitting dinosaur from "Jurassic Park". Laughing at how she would take any dare you could throw at her.

They've decided to finish the play she was writing and produce it next year at Columbine. They hope, too, to publish her notebook of poems. As a tribute to Rachel, Nick's even considering a career in acting. He's always wanted to be a chef, but he met Rachel through the drama club, and somehow sticking with acting just feels like a good way to honor her.

"In a lot of ways, she's going to keep living." Nick promises, sure in this case it's not a cliché.
Surrounded by friends from his church youth group, Nick broke down and sobbed Tuesday night when a classmate told him she had seen Rachel dead in the schoolyard. Since then though, he has tried so hard to convert his hurt into hope. Unlike many of his friends, he evens wants to go back to school- not back to Columbine, but back somewhere- to finish out the last 19 days of his senior year. He thinks that will give him closure.

His mom, Bonnie, worries he's being too much of a trooper. "There's a lot buried in there," she says.

Holding on always to that image of Rachel in her black prom dress, Nick has decided it's not constructive to be mad. Or to feel scared or even ask why. Rachel, he says, "would absolutely kick our butts if she saw us making such a big deal over her."

So he's trying to heal through positive thinking. He's concentrating now on all the good that has com from the Columbine killings.

His Exhibit A: Students have bonded.

The meanest boy Nick has ever known- a guy who trips people and laughs, who teases kids till they cry- spent the hours of the shooting helping others. He boosted girls over a chain-link fence to safety and compiled lists of everyone who had made it out. He was nice and cared. Nick is sure the transformation will last.

"When you're running through the halls fearing for your lives, it doesn't matter who's a cheerleader and who's Johnny football star." he explains. "That's all so petty. I don't think anyone in the school could go back to it now."

Nick's Exhibit B: The community has bonded.

Littleton looks like so many affluent, anonymous suburbs. Strip mall after strip mall. Tidy lawn after tidy lawn. But business owners came forward by the dozens to donate food, money, flowers, even building supplies to fix up the school.

"It's ironic, that something like this could do that."

So far, there is no Exhibit C. But Nick's working on it.

Today is Rachel's funeral.

She will be remembered by her parents, her younger brother, and her many, many friends as a girl who found much joy in life and who spread much joy around her.

Rachel wanted to be a Broadway actress. And a poet too. She was beautiful, fun, and sparkled.
The other afternoon, Nick and his friends got together again to reminisce about good times with Rachel. "We spent 2 1/2 hours without a pause and we weren't even close to done." Nick recalled, smiling.

"I'm doing OK", he said, and rubbed his lip, "I'm OK."


http://www.rachelschallenge.com/aboutrachel.php

"Rachel was the only one at prom in a black dress. Everyone else was wearing bright colors and pastels, but there she was in black. No one could have pulled it off more gracefully, and no other color would have looked better on her. She looked like a movie star arriving for the Oscars. She was like that though, never doing what everyone else was doing just because everyone else was doing it, and never being different just for the sake of being different." - Nick Baumgart Rachel's friend and prom date

http://www.imakenews.com/bermudacom/e_article000098898.cfm

Spreading Rachel's message

http://www.rachelschallenge.com/

Bermudian schoolchildren have been hearing an unusual message of kindness and compassion this week - from survivors of the horrific Columbine High School massacre. Rachel's Challenge is a national movement founded by Darrell Scott, father of Rachel Scott, one of the 12 students killed by gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold on April 20, 1999. Scott, his son Craig and survivors Nicole Mowlem and Nick Baumgart were in Bermuda this week to spread Rachel's belief that one act of kindness can spread a chain reaction. Craig even believes that had people shown more kindness to the killers, the events of that day might never have happened. A copy of Darrell Scott's book, "Chain Reaction" has been donated to Bermuda school libraries and all student have been given a Rachel's Challenge bag tag to show their support.


Darrell Scott's Message:

Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee.

What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfully truthful. They were not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert!

These courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying in the wilderness. The following is a portion of the transcript:

"Since the dawn of creation there has been both good & evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers."

"The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart."

"In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how
quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel's murder I would be their strongest opponent."

"I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy-it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves.

"I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.
This was written way before I knew I would be speaking here today":

Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You've stripped away our heritage,
You've outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question "Why?"
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!

Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, soul, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc.

Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.

What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs - politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws.

"Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre.

The real villain lies within our own hearts. Political posturing and restrictive legislation are not the answers. The young people of our nation hold the key. There is a spiritual awakening taking place that will not be squelched! We do not need more religion. We do not need more gaudy television evangelists spewing out verbal religious garbage. We do not need more million dollar church buildings built while people with basic needs are being ignored. We DO need a change of heart and a humble acknowledgment that this nation was founded on the principle of simple trust in God!"

"As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes-He did not hesitate to pray in school.

I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America, and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain.

Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him. To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA - I give to you a sincere challenge. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone! My daughter's death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!"

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/schools/they.hid.it.well/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/april99/suspects042299.htm

http://cgi.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/schools/they.hid.it.well/

http://www.rachelscott.ca/whosrachel.html

Guns Don't Kill People...Abortions Kill People!!!

It's no coincidence that the Right to Bear Arms comes directly after the 1st amendment. The 2nd Amendment guarantees our right to protect the 1st amendment. Many liberals falsely believe that we were granted the right to bear arms mostly for hunting purposes or to protect ourselves from other citizens. Our founding fathers stated that this right is so important not for hunting or private protection, but rather to protect our right of revolution and to protect us from abuses of government. The following quotes I have collected will illustrate this.

In regard to private protection, it is obvious that the right to bear arms results in lower crime and violent crime rates. ALL statistics show this clearly. The following link provides some proof: Just having the Right to Bear Arms offers everyone (whether you own a gun or not) protection as criminals think twice about breaking into your home because they don't know whether you will have a gun or not. It's called…"the fear of the unknown".

http://www.diac.com/~ekwall2/gun_control/moreguns_lesscrime.shtml Statistics on Gun Control

Did you know that Hitler and Communist dictator Mao tse-Tung both support gun control?

"The most foolish mistake we could possible make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms ..." -- Adolph Hitler, German Dictator

“Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” -- Mao Tse-tung, 1938, inadvertently endorsing the Second Amendment

Which side do you feel Ghandi or Jesus would take?

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest." - Mahtma Gandhi, Indian Political Leader

“Jesus said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one." - Luke, Chapter 22, Verse

"If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, and the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 - establishes the repeated, complete, and inevitable failure of gun laws to control crime." -- Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) quoted from "The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Report of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1982, p. vii."

"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity." -- Sigmond Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

"Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms." --Aristotle

"Outlawing guns leaves only outlaws with guns." --Anonymous

"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." [...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.] -- (Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD)

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so." -- Adolph Hitler, April 11 1942

"To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form." -- Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality, 1988

"You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one." -- Rush Limbaugh

"It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it." -- Jeff Snyder

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

"The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise they will win and the decent people will lose." -- James Earl Jones

"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

"... a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen..." -- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)

"Am I the only one who finds it unconscionable that an Air Force fighter can now shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner full of passengers, but the pilots of that airliner are not allowed to defend the aircraft from the hijacker, thus preventing the hijacking in the first place?" -- American Airlines Capt. Tom Snelling, Honolulu Advertiser, 2001

"Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant." -- James Madison

"Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws...It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem." -- Mike Royko

"Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound." -- L. Neil Smith

"Without either the first or second amendment, we would have no liberty; the first allows us to find out what's happening, the second allows us to do something about it! The second will be taken away first, followed by the first and then the rest of our freedoms." -- Andrew Ford

"A man with a gun is a citizen. A man without a gun is a subject." -- John R. Lott

"Gun control" is a job-safety program for criminals." -- John R. Lott

"The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale developments with armed security guards -- and who want to keep other people from having guns to defend themselves. But what about lower-income people living in high-crime, inner city neighborhoods? Should such people be kept unarmed and helpless, so that limousine liberals can 'make a statement' by adding to the thousands of gun laws already on the books?" --Thomas Sowell

"Banning gun shows to reduce violent crime will work about as well as banning auto shows to reduce drunken driving." -- Bill McIntire, Spokesman for the National Rifle Association

"If the price I must pay for my freedom is to acknowledge that the government was granted the power to infringe on them, then I am not free." -- Pol Anderson

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us with a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined with a Bonaparte at their head and disposing of all the treasure of the earth, our own excepted, could not by force make a track on the Blue Ridge or take a drink from the Ohio in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up from amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all times, or die by suicide." -- Abraham Lincoln, 1838

"Gun Control: The assumption that everyone is a potential criminal." –Anonymous

"A man with a gun is a citizen, a man without a gun is a subject. Our forefathers knew this to be true..... Why do so many of us question their wisdom?" --D. Michael Wiechman

"Gun bans don't disarm criminals, gun bans attract them." -- Walter Mondale, U.S. Ambassador to Japan

"The usual road to slavery is that first they take away your guns, then they take away your property, then last of all they tell you to shut up and say you are enjoying it." -- James A. Donald

"The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart. In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel's murder I would be their strongest opponent. Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts. Political posturing and
restrictive legislation are not the answers.
What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine's tragedy occurs - politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws.
To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA - I give to you a sincere challenge. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone! My daughter's death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!" -- Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado (address the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee)

"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, 4 out of 5 US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who is crazy?" -- Andrew Ford

"Liberalizing concealed carry laws won't lead to a return to the Wild West. ... in 19th Century cattle towns, homicide was confined to transient males who shot each other in saloon disturbances. The per capital robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City's. The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown." --David Kopel - quoted in the WSJ 28 Feb 1994

"Firearms have been around for over 400 years, yet it is only in the last 20 years that people have begun shouting "gun control". Why then, only recently, has this become such an issue? Moreover, why are there more mass-murderers than at any other time in our known history? It is not because weapons are more powerful -- 200-year-old muzzleloaders have a much greater force-per-round than today's "assault rifles". It is not because weapons are semi- or fully-automatic -- rapid-fire weapons have been available for most of the last century. It is not due to a lack of laws -- we have more "gun control" laws than ever. It IS, however, because we have chosen to focus on "gun control" instead of crime control or "thug control." It IS because only recently has the public become complacent enough to accept, by inaction, the violence present in our society." - Kevin Langston, Tuesday, 29 October, 1991

"A government that intended to protect the liberty of the people would not disarm them. A government planning the opposite most certainly and logically would disarm them. And so it has been in this century. Check out the history of Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and Cambodia." --Charlie Reese, syndicated columnist

"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military." -- William Burroughs

"Prohibiting law-abiding people from owning guns because they might be stolen by criminals is like prohibiting women from going out at night because they might be raped." – Unknown

"Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates. It's quicker to pull your Smith & Wesson than to dial 911 if you're being robbed." -- Lt. Lowell Duckett, Special Assistant to DC Police Chief; President, Black Police Caucus.

"I sympathize with people who want to ban guns, but I can't agree with them. We have to be careful in our zeal to abolish guns that we don't wind up with counter-productive legislation that will leave armed only the people most likely to do harm with them." -- Hugh Downs, veteran ABC newsman

"If the Government doesn't trust us with our guns, why should we trust them with theirs?" – Unknown

"Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense." --John Adams

"Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would." --John Adams Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1763

"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

"The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people." --Fisher Ames, in a letter to F.R. Minoe, June 12, 1789

"The whole of the Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of." --Albert Gallatin, letter to Alexander Addison, Oct. 7, 1789

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

"The very fame of our strength and readiness would be a means of discouraging our enemies; for 'tis a wise and true saying, that `One sword often keeps another in the scabbard.' The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war. They that are on their guard, and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked than the supine, secure and negligent." --Benjamin Franklin, 1747

"This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidible to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Article 29 January 10, 1788

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." --Patrick Henry, During Virginia's ratification convention, (1788)

"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" --Patrick Henry, During Virginia's ratification convention, (1788)

"They tell us we are weak - unable to cope with so formidable an advesary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed? Shall we aquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound us hand and foot? We are not weak if we make a proper use of the means which the Gods of nature has placed in our power. Millions of people armed in the holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible. Besides, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Many cry 'Peace, peace' - but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! Why stand we here idle? 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, March 23, 1775, Addressing the Virginia House of Burgesses

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery." -- Thomas Jefferson

"It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson, in the Diffusion of Knowledge Bill (1779)

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Proposed Virginia Constitution (1776)

"The Constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people;that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, .....or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled of property, and freedom of the press." -- Thomas Jefferson

"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty -- so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator -- and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the quality alone ought to suffer? 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. They ought to be designated as laws not preventive but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree." -- Thomas Jefferson, Quoting 18th Century criminologist Cesare Beccaria in On Crimes and Punishment (1764)

"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 S. Smith, January 30, 1787

"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 invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p 322

"...;whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them;..." --Richard Henry Lee

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate [State] 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 to. 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, Article 46 January 29, 1788

"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 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 citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by [State] governments possessing their affections and confidence." --James Madison, Federalist Papers, Article 46 January 29, 1788

"I ask, Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." --George Mason, During Virginia's ratification convention, (1788)

"A well regulated militia, composed of Gentlemen, Freeholders, and other freemen was necessary to protect our ancient laws and liberty from a standing army." --George Mason

"The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while, on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. ...Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them; ...the weak will become a prey to the strong." --Thomas Paine

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence. The church, the plow, the prairie wagon and citizen's firearms are indelibly related. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. Every corner of this land knows firearms, and more than 99 99/100 percent of them by their silence indicate they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good. When firearms go, all goes - we need them every hour." --George Washington, Address to the Second Session of the First United States Congress, January 7, 1790

"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." --George Washington

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States." --Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution Proposed by the Late Convention (1787)

"A Covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For ... no man can transfer or lay down his Right to save himself from Death." - Thomas Hobbes, 17th Century English Political Philosopher

"If you want to feel the warm breath of freedom on your neck ... if you want to touch the pulse of liberty that beat in our founding fathers, you may do so through the majesty of the Second Amendment." - Charlton Heston, Actor and Political Activist

"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which ... historically has proven to be always possible." – Hubert Humphrey, United States Senator

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." - Cesare Beccaria, 18th Century Italian Criminologist

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes." - Cesare Beccaria, 18th Century Italian Criminologist

"If our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right." - Cicero, Roman Orator, 1st Century B. C.

"Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years." - Niccolo Machiavelli, 16th Century Italian Political Theorist

"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason, American Statesman and Author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

"In countries under arbitrary government, the people oppressed and dispirited neither possess arms nor know how to use them. Tyrants never feel secure until they have disarmed the people." - Unknown Author, from the Connecticut Courant, 1788

"Those who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right are courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like." - Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School

"The Constitution should never be construed 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, Organizer of the 'Boston Tea Party' and signer of the Declaration of Independence

"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purpose without resistance is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms ..." - Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

"Arms like laws discourage and keep the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world." - Thomas Paine, American Revolutionary Political Theorist

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms..." - Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Member of the First U.S. Senate.

"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

"What the subcommittee on the Constitution uncovered was clear -- and long-lost proof that the Second Amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for the protection of himself, his family, and his freedom." - Senator Orrin Hatch, Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution

"Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American ...the unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." - Tench Coxe, 20 Feb 1788

"The whole of the Bill of Rights is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has the right to deprive them of." - Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." -William Pitt

"Don't think of it as `gun control', think of it as `victim disarmament'. If we make enough laws, we can all be criminals. The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed." -- Jeff Snyder

"As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people." -- Jeff Snyder

"Probably fewer than 2% of handguns and well under 1% of all guns will ever be involved in a violent crime. Thus, the problem of criminal gun violence is concentrated within a very small subset of gun owners, indicating that gun control aimed at the general population faces a serious needle-in-the-haystack problem." -- Gary Kleck, "Point Blank: Handgun Violence In America"

When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state". -- Claire Wolfe, "101 Things To Do Until The Revolution"

"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms." -- Joseph Story, Constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice, 1840

"Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest." -- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775

"Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents." -- Don B. Kates

"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave." -- "Political Disquisitions", a British republican tract of 1774-1775

"The disarming of citizens has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral force; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression." -- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." -- Robert A. Heinlein, "Beyond This Horizon", 1942

"No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before." -- Colin Greenwood, in the study "Firearms Control", 1972

"Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. 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, "Abbey's Road", 1979

"Whether the authorities be invaders or merely local tyrants, the effect of such gun control laws is to place the individual at the mercy of the state, unable to resist." -- Robert Anson Heinlein, 1949

"According to the National Crime Survey administered by the Bureau of the Census and the National Institute of Justice, it was found that only 12 percent of those who use a gun to resist assault are injured, as are 17 percent of those who use a gun to resist robbery. These percentages are 27 and 25 percent, respectively, if they passively comply with the felon's demands. Three times as many were injured if they used other means of resistance." -- G. Kleck, "Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research," Law and Contemporary Problems 49, no. 1. (Winter 1986.): 35-62

"Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them." -- Miranda vs. Arizona, 384 US 436 p. 491

"President Clinton boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake." -- Charlton Heston, May 18, 1997

"The right of self-defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." -- Henry St. George Tucker (in Blackstone's Commentaries)

"Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use and are even slightly less delinquent than nonowners of guns." -- U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse," August 1995.

"During waves of terror attacks, Israel's national police chief will call on all concealed-handgun permit holders to make sure they carry firearms at all times, and Israelis have many examples where concealed permit holders have saved lives." -- John R. Lott

"Let therefore every man, that, appealing to his own heart, feels the least spark of virtue or freedom there, think that it is an honor which he owes himself, and a duty which he owes his country, to bear arms." -- Thomas Pownall

"On every question 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 intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823

"The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions." -- North Carolina Supreme Court, State v. Kerner (1921)

". . . if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?" -- Delegate Sedgwick, during the Massachusetts Convention rhetorically asking if an oppressive standing army could prevail

". . . but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." -- Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist Paper 29

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discression... in private self-defense..." -- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the Governments of the UAS, 471 (1788)

"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." -- Trench Coxe, "Remarks on the first part of the amendments to the Federal Constitution", Federal Gazette, 18 June 1789

"The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not merely such as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in on, in the slightest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying of a well regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free state." -- Georgia Supreme Court, Nunn v. State, (1846).


More Guns, Less Crime : Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws
(Studies in Law and Economics)

Challenging conventional wisdom, legal scholar John Lott presents a timely and provocative work in which he comes to a startling conclusion: more guns mean less crime. Relying on the FBI's massive yearly crime figures over 18 years, "More Guns, Less Crime" should be required reading for anyone interested and open minded in the critical debate over gun control.

The author, John R. Lott, Jr. , , 03/10/98:

Comments from the book's reviewers:

"This sophisticated analysis yields a well established conclusion that supports the wisdom of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution rather than of those who would limit the right of law-abiding citizens to own and carry guns. The general reader may find of most interest chapter 7 which documents how far 'politically correct' vested interests are willing to go denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them. John Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue." —Milton Friedman

"Armed with reams of statistics, John Lott has documented many surprising linkages between guns and crime. More Guns, Less Crime demonstrates that what is at stake is not just the right to carry arms but rather our performance in controlling a diverse array of criminal behaviors. Perhaps most disturbing is Lott's documentation of the role of the media and academic commentators in distorting research findings that they regard as politically incorrect." —W. Kip Viscusi, Cogan Professor of Law and director of the Program on Empirical Legal Studies, Harvard Law School

"John Lott has done the most extensive, thorough, and sophisticated study we have on the effects of loosening gun control laws. Regardless of whether one agrees with his conclusions, his work is mandatory reading for anyone who is open-minded and serious about the gun control issue. Especially fascinating is his account of the often unscrupulous reactions to his research by gun control advocates, academic critics, and the news media."—Gary Kleck, professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University

"Until John Lott came along, the standard research paper on firearms and violence consisted of a longitudinal or cross-sectional study on a small and artfully selected data set with few meaningful statistical controls. Lott's work, embracing all of the data that are relevant to his analysis, has created a new standard, which future scholarship in this area, in order to be credible, will have to live up to." —Dan Polsby, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Northwestern University.

"John Lott destroys the politically correct argument that arming law abiding citizens will have a harmful effect on their safety. There is no doubt that criminals prefer to prey upon the unprepared. This book will arm those who read it with the important facts they need in order to decide where they stand on the gun control issue." —Dale Gulbrantson, executive director, Illinois Police Association, Inc.

"This book will — or should — cause those who almost reflexively support the limitation of guns in the name of reducing crime to rethink their positions." —Steve Shavell, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School


Ted Nugent to Fellow NRAers: Get Hardcore

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050418/D89HG71G0.html

Apr 17, 8:46 PM (ET)

HOUSTON (AP) - With an assault weapon in each hand, rocker and gun rights advocate Ted Nugent urged National Rifle Association members to be "hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense."

Speaking at the NRA's annual convention Saturday, Nugent said each NRA member should try to enroll 10 new members over the next year and associate only with other members.

"Let's next year sit here and say, 'Holy smokes, the NRA has 40 million members now,'" he said. "No one is allowed at our barbecues unless they are an NRA member. Do that in your life."
Nugent sang and played a guitar painted with red and white stripes for the crowd at Houston's downtown convention center.

He drew the most cheers when he told gun owners they should never give up their right to bear arms and should use their guns to protect themselves if needed.

"Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em!" he screamed to applause. "To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."