[Date of last update: Jan 29, 1995]

Most of the firearms links here reflect my political interests, rather than the technical issues of the shooting sports I am interested in.

Please always remember the basic firearms safety rules.

Political interests

The philisophical basis for access to, or control over, the basic means of self defense has been debated for thousands of years. Plato felt among other things, that people should work the job they were best suited to - traders would be traders, farmers would be farmers, and the strongest men should be the soldiers. One of his students, Aristotle, wrote that creating a group of men, training them, arming them, and preventing others from doing the same would create an elite class, a ruling class of those who were strongly armed. This necessarily leads to the unarmed classes being at a disadvantage, politically, economically, socially, and so on.

Aristotle believed that all citizens, who have both rights protected by the state as well as obligations to the state, must, in order to be free, be free to work, vote, pray, and defend themselves as they see fit without interference from the state.

This freedom to defend yourself comes from a natural right to self defense. The individual is the only possible person ultimately responsible for thier self protection. In any society, and social structure, this is true. Alone in nature, a person must defend themselves against hunger, disease, carniverous animals, and so on. Together with others in society, ultimately, the only person responsible for their safety is they themselves. We have police, true, but nowhere in the U.S. can you hold police accountable if you are hurt by a criminal. The police are there to clean up the mess afterwards, and to act as a deterrent to the criminal.

But cleaning up a mess afterwards is too late. Acting as a deterrent is only that - not a guarantee. Holding your neighbors responsbile for your safety is similarly not possible.

The responsibility for self defense, then, ultimately can only rest in the hands of the self. A question offers itself: what tools are appropriate for self defense?

This is a difficult question to answer quickly, but the common philosophy present at the creation of this country was that normal militia weapons - at that time musket, rifle, pistol, and so forth, represented what was reasonable and prudent for the citizens of this country to posess, carry, and defend themselves with.

Granted, times have changed. Weapons today are more powerful in some ways than they were in 1789. Some things, however, haven't changed: a criminal, bent on causing you harm, will much more likely succeed if you are not armed. A properly functioning government will ensure that law abiding citizens have access to the necessary means to defend themselves in a law abiding fashion. Moreover, a properly functioning government will abide by the limitations dicated to it by the people in the Bill of Rights.

To me, a government's overall respect for the freedom and liberties of its citizens can be judged by any one of a number of litmus tests. For some people, it consists of looking at how the police behave towards certain groups of people. For others, it may be access to voting. I judge a government by its ability to respect the rights of citizens to freely defend themselves.

By this test, the federal government clearly fails. The federal government, with its alphabet soup of agencies: BATF, DEA, NSA, CIA, FBI, INS, and others, is bent on not preserving our rights to defend ourselves, but rather completely bent on destroying them. Rules and regulations are being created by non-elected bureaucrats in many agencies that make arbitrary and capricious enforcement the order of the day. The federal government is out of control. It is not serving the people who are putting it to work.

State governments, on the other hand, are at least working on premption laws, which prevent local city governments from enacting restrictions more severe than anything the state does. This, plus other states movement towards non discretionary concealed carry legislation make it clear that states are somewhat more mindful of respecting the wishes of the U.S. Bill of Rights in the constitution.

By and large, I'm a Jeffersonian Liberal. I feel that the government is a barely necessary evil. I'm probably most interested in the Libertarian party, except that they feel businesses, being composed of individuals, should necessarily have the same rights as individuals (e.g. with respect to property rights, treatment under the law, and so forth). I disagree, however, principally because human nature being what it is, companies may form, abuse the law, then disband, having commited crimes, but the individuals behind the company protected by the corporate structure.

In some type of idealistic Libertarian state, where all governments were essentially Libertarian, and all government respected similar principles, it may work to preserve corporate rights as strongly as individual rights. However, reality dicates that imbalances will exist. There will always be some tinpot wannabee dictator (foreign or domestic) willing to ignore conventional law. Monopolies, for example, though perhaps owned by individuals, can find themselves with inordinate amounts of power over their customers. Jefferson felt strongly that monopolies had to be tightly controlled, or broken up by the government.

Other firearms pages with useful information...

The following links are to other sites and papers that don't necessarily reflect my opinions, but are good or amusing places to browse for more information about firearms issues.