4 Responses

1. We are all unsafe mostly because of Republican’s support of gun rights. The Republican position is that anyone should be able to have a gun, including teen and child hunters. Any adult should be able to carry a gun. People should be allowed to enter any public or private space carrying guns. And who has purchased elected officials who regularly run and hide when any gun legislation is tabled? Smith and Wesson, who earned 1.08 billion dollars in 2021. Remington 865 million. Baretta 830 million. Ruger 720 million. FNS 399 million. Taurus 342 million. SIG Sauer 314 million. Colt 270 million…Democrat President Bill Clinton signed a 10 year assault weapons ban in 1994. Republican President George Bush allowed the law to sunset in 2004.

2. Markjw, that is not the Republican position, it is the position of the US constitution. The RIGHT to keep and bear arms is one of the fundamental human rights with which the Declaration of Independence says every person is endowed by our Creator, and the Bill of Rights protects it with the same force as it does the equal rights to speak and publish freely, to worship as one chooses, not to be searched or arrested without probable cause, and not to be punished for a crime without due process, etc.

   Anyone who would deprive people of the right to bear arms because it would supposedly save lives must also be willing to deprive people of their other rights on the same grounds. Many thousands of lives would be saved if we could only lock people up on mere suspicion of a crime, or because they’re likely to commit crimes in the future. We could simply lock up every black man between the ages of 15 and 45, and the USA would be a much safer place! But we don’t do that, because it would be wrong, and no amount of lives saved could possibly justify it. The right to be free unless convicted of a crime, by a jury, after a fair trial with all due process, is more important than the lives that ignoring that right would save, so all those people must be sacrificed to this right. How much more so the right to be armed, which doesn’t cost any lives, because it prevents far more crimes than it enables. More crimes are prevented every year by armed would-be-victims than are committed with arms.

   And your claim that there are “purchased elected officials” is simply an outright LIE. Elected officials support the RKBA because the people do, and because they have sworn an oath to uphold the constitution. It is the ANTI-gun lobby that spends billions to purchase politicians for its cause.

   The 1994 ban on so-called “assault weapons” (a made-up term for normal weapons that are no more dangerous than any others) was unconstitutional, and it did not save even one life. The banned weapons are very rarely used for crime. In fact more murders are committed every year by completely unarmed people, using only their hands and feet, than by people armed with rifles of any kind, let alone by the subset of rifles that were arbitrarily labeled “assault weapons” and illegally banned for ten years.

   Also, Bush did not “allow” the ban to sunset; he could not have prevented it from expiring, since there was no support for renewing it. The 1994 ban was a major cause for the Democrats’ devastating defeat in the 1994 elections, and by 2004 it was clear that no politicians were going to dare renew it. And that was at a time when the courts were deliberately ignoring the 2nd amendment and refusing to enforce it. Now we finally have courts that are doing their duty and enforcing the entire Bill of Rights, so such a ban would not last five minutes before being struck down.

3. Perry’s attorneys argued that the shooting was self-defense as Foster approached Perry’s car with an AK-47 rifle. Prosecutors said Perry could have driven away before firing his revolver and witnesses testified that Foster never raised his rifle at Perry.

   The first claim, that he could have driven away, is irrelevant. There is no duty to retreat from a threat to one’s life. A person threatened has the right to defend himself. That wasn’t even a factor in the trial. The entire trial revolved around one point: Did Foster point his rifle at Perry or not? If he did, then Perry was clearly right to shoot him. If he didn’t, then Perry was wrong.

   And there is no objective evidence on that point. The only evidence that Foster did raise his rifle is Perry’s word; the evidence that he did not is the word of several witnesses who were participating in the same BLM protest/riot, and whose word is therefore suspect.

   But Perry did not testify, so the jury didn’t even get to hear him claim that Foster pointed the rifle at him. He probably had good reasons not to testify, and the jury was specifically instructed not to hold his decision not to testify against him, but the fact remains that the jury did not hear from the only person who claims to have seen Foster raise his rifle, and they did hear from several people who claim to have seen him not raise it, so what other conclusion were they supposed to reach?

   Foster had the right to bear arms, and the right to protest what he (incorrectly) perceived as an injustice. He did not have the right to point his rifle at someone, but we don’t know whether he did so. The jury concluded that he didn’t, and therefore that he was murdered. None of us were at the trial, and it was not televised, so we can’t really form a judgment of our own.

4. Too bad he killed only one terrorist!