CHILDREN, RULES AND GUNS
My father kept his in the bedroom closet.
My grandfather said he didn?t need one, but when I had to crack his safe because he forgot the combination, I found
two old ones in there. My uncle kept his on top of the chest of drawers in the bedroom. As a child, all of my friends had essentially the same experiences.
In my 14th summer, Elvis made the charts with
?Heartbreak Hotel.? I had a little jingle in my pocket
from my paper route, mowing grass and caddying for the
rich folks down at the fancy golf course. Because, you
see, I wanted one, too. So I worked and saved for it.
Well, there came a day back that summer when
I had the $25 I needed, so I peddled my bicycle the seven
miles over to the closest Wards store. And therein, I
purchased my first one: A brand new bolt-action, single
shot 22 caliber rifle.
?Don?t load that thing around here,? the salesman
admonished as he rapped a sales receipt around the barrel
and bagged my 300 rounds of ?High Power? ammunition.
That was sold in the basement of the large
department store. Picture a lanky 14 year old boy walking
through a department store today carrying a rifle and a bag
of ammunition. That would cause a bit of attention today.
Back then, no one cared. Nor did anyone say anything as I
held the rifle across the handlebars of my bike while I
peddled home.
It wasn?t that everyone knew me (few did)
and had no fear of me shooting them, it was that kids did
not shoot at people. Period. No exceptions. There were
no problems like that back then.
We lived within the city limits of a major
city, but on the very last street of that city. Within a
five minute walk was a large woods. Therefore, most of
the guys in the neighborhood had guns and it was rather
common to see them carried around.
There were two rules for us kids that were
not often violated: No loaded guns within the city limits.
And, point it at someone and you loose it. The last rule
was important because, back then, any adult could smack
any kid upside the head and take their gun away for
inappropriate use. It happened sometimes, too.
Lots of guns were around that neighborhood,
but no person ever shot at anyone. Not even once.
Yet, in high school, many of us were chided
relentlessly by our ?peers.? That?s part of growing up.
I certainly got my share, because there was much about me
to kid about. Four eyes and fumble fingers come to mind.
Lanky and dumb Pollock were part of it, too.
But even with that, there were unstated rules
among us kids. Say something nasty about someone?s,
family or religion and there will be a fight. Ditto for
not fighting ?fair? by ganging up on someone or picking on
someone smaller.
That?s how it was back when Elvis was starting
to become ?king? and Fats Domino was selling records by
the many millions. We knew that people were all different
and that we did not have to like everyone. But we also
were taught that we were not to bother people, that we were
to respect their freedom and leave them alone — as long as
they did the same for us.
There also came a time that summer when a
group of us were stopped by a police officer while walking
down my street at 11:30 p.m. We had shotguns, 22s and
there were even a couple revolvers in the group.
The officer asked normal police officer questions:
Where do you live? Where are you going? Why are you out
this late? Do your parents know you are out this late?
However, there was not one question about the guns. We
were sent home. We were going home anyway, so simply
replied ?yes sir,? and continued on our way.
No identification was necessary. We didn?t
have any, anyway. No one did, back then, unless they drove
a car. Nor did the officer bother to write down our names.
We lived in the neighborhood, he didn?t. Still, we were
required to do as we were told, with no back-talk. Else,
the nice officer would have delivered us to our parents and
we would have been punished.
The rule was, if a ?bad? adult tells you to do
something you knew was wrong, you were to get out of his
presence immediately. But still, no back-talk was allowed.
And that is the key, the missing attribute today:
We had rules. Lots of rules. And we obeyed them correctly.
Usually, anyway. ?Society has rules,? our old social studies
teacher liked to say in his booming voice. ?Your
responsibility is to obey those rules.? All of our parents
said pretty much the same thing. Continuously.
There were consequences, too. Parents would
whip your butt for sassing them or any other adult. Other
kids would kick your butt if you went too far with them.
Steal, rob or assault and you got the police. Justice was
swift from all sectors of society back then. As kids, we
couldn?t get away with much of anything.
All of my old crowd still have guns. Many of
us are also legally armed citizens in public. Yet, no one
out of the whole crowd has ever been accused of using a
gun inappropriately. And, as I add that up, we are talking
about over 500 years (combined) of well armed citizens.
But, as kids, we had supervision, we learned
rules, and we were taught to respect the rights of others.
Also, we were not desensitized by a constant diet of
murder, mayhem and people bleeding as entertainment and
nightly news on television.
In short, the problem is not the guns — since
before Billy the Kid, guns were always easily available to
youngsters. The problem is the parents, and the liberal
?feel good? atmosphere in the public schools. Children are
not adults; they are in training to become adults. Children
need strong direction. Rules, in other words. Lots of
very clear rules. Providing a permissive atmosphere for
children does nothing but allow anarchy in society.
Now, capitalizing on the tragedy at Littleton,
Colorado, comes the babbling of vulgar liberal minds.
Liberals refuse to admit that the actions of those young
demented killers are but outward symptoms of the moral
decline brought about by their liberal social policy.
Instead, they wish to punish all of society by depriving
honest Americans of their Constitutional right to keep and
bear arms.
Nothing will be said of the millions of armed
American citizens who use their guns correctly. That will
never be factored into the equation of freedom. The
socialists of the world want tighter controls over the
American people and they fear attempting to exert too much
control while so many of us are armed and skilled with our
arms. For that, they have the Clinton administration.
I, for one, will practice my birthright and
remain as always, an armed American citizen. So should you.

AMERICA?S NATIONAL DEFENSE EMERGENCY
By: House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX),
April 19, 1999 http://freedom.house.gov
As we consider funding for the Kosovar War,
we cannot make the mistake of merely replacing bomb-for-
bomb and missile-for-missile. We must take urgent steps to
improve our military capabilities across-the-board. The
president will ask for around $6 billion (including foreign
aid). Even $10 billion would be insufficient to begin
fixing six years of Clinton-Gore neglect of our armed
forces.
Our conflicts in the Balkans and Iraq have
revealed a true national defense emergency. Taking only
the facts that have come to widespread public attention,
our armed forces are clearly under considerable strain.
** We are critically low of air launched cruise missiles,
our weapon of choice since the 1980s. We’re cannibalizing
part of our strategic deterrent, converting nuclear tipped
cruise missiles to conventional ones. A severe shortage of
air crews is requiring us to mobilize thirty thousand
reservists.
** We are pulling aircraft carriers out of the
Pacific in order to cover the Mediterranean, despite the
dangerous tensions in the Taiwan straits and Korean
peninsula.
** We are transferring aircraft from Turkey
to the Balkan theater, weakening our effort to contain
Saddam Hussein — a transfer typical of the shell games
our military is now forced to play.
** After deciding to dispatch Apache
helicopters to Albania (like the cavalry coming to rescue
the beleaguered Kosovars) it has taken weeks for them to
arrive. There are now few Kosovars in Kosovo left for the
Apaches to save.
This alarming picture of our post Cold War
build-down military suggests immediate dangers.
Did knowledge of our overstretched forces
contribute to the disastrous decision to begin the Kosovo
operation with only a fraction of the aircraft we used in
Desert Storm? Is this why we waited three weeks into the
fighting to add an additional 300 planes to the campaign?
Is it the reason that we are having trouble bringing little
Serbia to heel by acceptable means?
More critically, if our military is overstretched
by fighting two wars (with only air assets engaged), what
will happen if other hostile states decide to take
advantage of our preoccupation? As our Balkan imbroglio
grows, how will we respond to challenges elsewhere in the
world?
Ever since America became globally dominant
with the end of the Cold War, we have faced the possibility
of an ?Anti Axis? — that is, that a diverse collection of
states and terror groups, united only by their
antiAmericanism, might begin to move against us
simultaneously. They would not need to coordinate, any
more than the Vandals and Visigoths coordinated against
Rome. Rather, they would simply grasp that when an
overburdened America is occupied in one area, they all have
more freedom to move against American interests in others.
The Balkan War and our apparent military
overstretch could call such an Anti Axis into being. North
Korea may already be on the move. There are signs that
the Pyongyang regime is working with Russian diplomats on
a ?peace offensive? by which, along with its continuing
nuclear and missile programs, it hopes to neutralize the
peninsula. China is continuing its buildup across the
water from democratic Taiwan. And needless to say,
archterrorist Osama Bin Laden knows he won’t be subject
to any more cruise missile attacks while America is
struggling in the Balkans.
The Clinton Administration’s six-year-long
neglect of the defense budget brought us to this position.
Since the end of the Gulf War, our military has shrunk by
forty-percent. Army divisions have dropped from 18 to 10.
Fighter wings 24 to 13. The Navy used to have 546 ships.
Now it has only 333. At the same time, our deployments
have increased. As Curt Weldon often points out, we have
had 33 Army deployments in the 1990s alone, compared with
ten for the entire period from 1950-1989. Funding has been
inadequate to meet demands. The result has been low troop
retention, slower recruitment, a shortage of spare parts,
and deficient training.
Clearly this Congress must pass, on an urgent
basis, legislation to reverse the decline of our military.
Only by doing so will we prevent trouble from breaking out
in many parts of the world. Only by doing so do we have a
chance to prevail in the Balkans without damaging America’s
interests elsewhere. We should look at all areas — from
munitions to weapons procurement to technological
modernization to training and personnel.
President Clinton has created a national
security emergency by neglecting the defense budget for
six years while spreading our troops thinly across the
globe. Congress now has a duty to correct this situation.
We have no greater responsibility than to ensure that our
men and women who put their lives on the line have the
equipment they need to do the job.

OUR NATIONAL SECURITY DEBACLE
House Majority Leader Dick Armey made some
extremely good points above. And it?s good to know that
someone in the leadership of Congress recognizes many of
the problems with our so called ?national security.?
Because, our national security went to hell in
a handbasket under the Clinton administration. Clinton?s
foreign relations are every bit as screwed up as his
domestic and personal relations. Nations that should be
our friends are actually scheming against us. People of
other countries who benefit from our military and trade are
demonstrating in the streets against us. Worldwide, we are
again becoming the ?Ugly Americans.?
But, it?s not us, as in the American people.
It?s them, as in the United States government. It?s the
misadministration, maladministration and amazingly stupid
blunders by the nincompoops in the Clinton administration
that is causing the problems.
On the domestic front, we are inundated with
illegal aliens — to the tune of many thousands each week.
They just walk right on over, like they belong here. And,
why not? We allow them money and benefits for breaking
our law.
So, too, with the illegal drug trade. Illegal
drugs come into this country by the tons every week. Yet,
who among us will believe for a minute that anyone could
repeatedly sneak anything into this country by the ton
without detection by government agents? Something is
wrong with this picture.
Now comes this insane war in Serbia.
First, we do not belong there. I mean, what
hubris this administration displays saying that we can
stop a feud that has been in progress off and on for over
600 years! They?re still fighting for retribution over
something that happened about 1360, for Pete?s sake. We
want in on that? How stupid.
And now there are prisoners of war already.
Unconscionable!
It is both the duty and the responsibility of
every NCO, officer and politician to protect every fighting
man with every means possible. That?s called leadership.
There is absolutely no excuse for allowing those men to be
captured, or to stay captured. Our military should be
relentless in its quest to get them back. Quite obviously,
this is not being done. Again, there is no leadership.
As with the Vietnam war, the rot starts from the
top — from Washington. Those three men, and any men
subsequently captured, will be released, or not, at the
pleasure of the Serbian government. Our government wrote
those boys off as an expenditure of war. That?s sickening.
Second, this ?war? is being run by a teacher,
a trade lawyer-lobbyist and a magazine writer. Worse yet,
as with their president(s), not one has a day?s military
experience to fall back on. Because, in truth, they hate the
military. Consequently, we have already lost this conflict.
So, while it is true that the government of
Serbia should be abolished, new leaders elected, and
Milosevic and most of his crew tried for war crimes, it is
also true that if we had an administration that knew its
posterior orifice from a hole in the ground, that would
have happened after the Bosnia action. Instead, Clinton
and Gore sent men to fight, then went fundraising. That,
too, is sickening.
National security means the protection of this
nation?s people, not the government?s public reputation.
So, when thousands of elected officials and bureaucrats in
the federal government totally neglected their
responsibility by not recognizing that we have a major
calendar change coming up and did not repair and/or replace
their computers accordingly, they deserve to be punished.
That part of the Y2K crisis affecting government?s
computers is their wholly caused crisis; their responsibility.
It was caused by their stupidity, their negligence, their
total disregard for their jobs and the American people.
However, they plan to punish us rather than the
perpetrators. They are planning to deprive us of our
individual personal rights by declaring martial law.
Did we do something wrong to have all (or any)
of our rights usurped? No, of course not. They, those in
government, did the wrong. But they have the military,
so we?ll probably get the consequences. National security?
Well folks, it just so happens that the
declaration of martial law is an illegal action. Thanks to
?The Federalist Brief? at: http://www.Federalist.com we
acquired a very interesting U.S. Supreme Court quote that
fits right in here:
?The Constitution of the United States is a
law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and
covers with the shield of its protection all classes of
men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No
doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever
invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions
can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of
government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or
despotism.? (Caldwell v. Parker (1866), 252 U. S. 376)
There is no provision in the Constitution that
allows any member of government to suspend any of our
individual rights (except habeas corpus during invasion).
To do so is called ?despotism,? says the U.S. Supreme Court.
Yet, the federal government feels free to do it, not because
they have the right, but simply because they have the might.
Those military personnel practicing to attack
American cities took an oath to defend our Constitution.
Perhaps someone should remind them and their officers.
And we might also ask, at the same time, if they are to be
Stepford soldiers or American soldiers.
National security means the protection of the
American people, which includes all of their Constitutional
rights. Martial law, except possibly during time of actual
attack, is something that is completely and totally foreign
to our Constitution.
If these wayward military groups wish to
practice attacking an urban environment, perhaps they might
scoot on over to Serbia and free those three POWs. Let?s
see if they can function in a real shooting situation.
And, for our own ?national security,? we had all
better start paying very close attention as to whom we plan
to help in the coming primary election. Some major changes
are needed throughout the whole of the federal government.
That part is our responsibility.

THE CO-PRESIDENCY DEBACLE
?Buy one, get one free,? Bill Clinton
said during his first Presidential campaign. And,
unfortunately, he was serious about sharing power with
Hillary. Hillary was serious about it too, and attempted
to take over domestic policy — even to the point of
appointing cabinet members. ?We are the President,? she
is quoted as telling people.
So, a fair question is, who is really in charge
of what? And, under what authority can Hillary Clinton
set any type of public policy for the United States? The
answer is, there is no such authority. She should not be
involved in government.
In the Federalist Papers #70, Alexander
Hamilton discusses why the executive branch of the federal
government is vested in one President. Let?s see how these
words written 211 years ago still ring true today:
?But one of the weightiest objections to a
plurality in the Executive . . . is, that it tends to
conceal faults and destroy responsibility. . . . It often
becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine
on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious
measure, or series of pernicious measures, ought really to
fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much
dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the
public opinion is left in suspense about the real author.
The circumstances which may have led to any national
miscarriage or misfortune are sometimes so complicated
that, where there are a number of actors who may have had
different degrees and kinds of agency, though we may
clearly see upon the whole that there has been
mismanagement, yet it may be impracticable to pronounce
to whose account the evil which may have been incurred is
truly chargeable.?
Having more than one person acting as president
?tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.? Like,
for instance, who hired Craig Livingstone, who ordered the
White House computer system, who is responsible for
ordering those 900+ secret FBI files, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Everyone knows who, but the Lords and Ladies of Capitol
Hill do not have the courage to say it publicly.
Hamilton Continues: ?Wherever two or more
persons are engaged in any common enterprise or pursuit,
there is always danger of difference of opinion. If it be
a public trust or office, in which they are clothed with
equal dignity and authority, there is peculiar danger of
personal emulation and even animosity. From either, and
especially from all these causes, the most bitter
dissensions are apt to spring. Whenever these happen,
they lessen the respectability, weaken the authority, and
distract the plans and operation of those whom they divide.
If they should unfortunately assail the supreme executive
magistracy of a country, consisting of a plurality of
persons, they might impede or frustrate the most important
measures of the government, in the most critical
emergencies of the state.?
The Clintons hate the military, she more than
him. Yet, reports say, they micromanaged their numerous
attacks from the White House. And even though neither
Clinton has any military experience, we now have this
two headed, disgrace for a presidency on the brink of
starting World War III.
Back in the Feb. 12, 1998 issue of ?The Hill,?
Clinton?s confidant, campaign co-conspirator and fellow
pervert, Dick Morris, writes that Hillary is taking over
most presidential duties: ?The coup was bloodless and,
most likely, wordless. The minute President Clinton was
thrown irredeemably on the defensive on Jan. 21 — the very
day he began his sixth year in office — Hillary took over.
Not just the scandal defense but the building itself. The
bargain is clear to both the president and the first lady.
She need never articulate it. He intuits it. Here’s the
deal: She’ll bail him out of this mess, but, now, she
calls the shots.
?The president, hanging by his wife?s largesse,
knows enough to step aside. From now on it will be her
appointments, her policies, her positions that get green
lights. The formal staff of the White House will have to
take a back seat reminiscent of the health care reform
days.?
More recently, reports said that White House
staffers were even trying to call Hillary back from
vacation in hopes she would make Bill stop the war with
Serbia.
Folks, that whirling sound you hear coming
from Virginia is not some sort of secret military device.
That?s George Washington, James Madison and Thomas
Jefferson spinning in their graves. We?ve got a Marxist,
feminist, with an obnoxious attitude as the illegal Chief
Executive Officer of this country.
Need I mention the Constitution one more time?

~ End ~