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The Washington Times
By Stephen Dinan May 8, 2012, 04:37PM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/ins ... amendment/

"'Shoot-first' laws have already cost too many lives. In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn't be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people," said Reps. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the two Democrats who are offering the legislation. "This is no different than withholding transportation funds from states that don't enforce seat-belt laws."

All they need is to gain a majority in the House again and keep control of the Senate.

Question: How many lives have been lost to people who didn't or couldn't defend themselves?

I agree that Federal money should be withheld from the States - all the States and permanently. The Federal government should not be in the game of controlling funding that they never should have issued in the first place

Personally I do hope that actually vote on this, it will tell us exactly who supports the right to self defense and who just provides lip service.... There is no way it would ever pass so let the vote be taken............

I will thank the Us house tomorrow by giving a contribution to the NRA
Other forum members please do the same

chasfm11 wrote:The Washington Times
By Stephen Dinan May 8, 2012, 04:37PM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/ins ... amendment/

"'Shoot-first' laws have already cost too many lives. In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn't be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people," said Reps. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the two Democrats who are offering the legislation. "This is no different than withholding transportation funds from states that don't enforce seat-belt laws."

With the Trayvon case, I sort of saw this coming. The right to defend yourself from random violence is not specifically in the bill of rights. Maybe this would make a good new amendment. You apparently cannot defend yourself even inside your home in England, lest you injure some criminal who could be rehabilitated.

philip964 wrote: The right to defend yourself from random violence is not specifically in the bill of rights.

Really? I mean, I understand the argument that the 2nd amendment was specifically written to guard against govt tyranny... but you don't imagine that the founders expected people to use those arms to defend themselves from crooks of all kinds, govt or private?

Salty1 wrote:Personally I do hope that actually vote on this, it will tell us exactly who supports the right to self defense and who just provides lip service.... There is no way it would ever pass so let the vote be taken............

I think you mean it will tell us who are self-proclaimed Domestic Enemies of the United States Constitution.

philip964 wrote: With the Trayvon case, I sort of saw this coming. The right to defend yourself from random violence is not specifically in the bill of rights. Maybe this would make a good new amendment. You apparently cannot defend yourself even inside your home in England, lest you injure some criminal who could be rehabilitated.

In England, it is specifically because they prosecute those who try to defend themselves. They don't have the Bill of Rights. We do. The second amendment says that we have the right to bear arms. I don't think it means that we just get to carry them around all the time and are never allowed to shoot them. Denying me any opportunity to use my gun is the same as taking it away from me. I'm pretty sure that the framers of the Constitution didn't have that in mind.

I really don't look for this amendment to go anywhere, the 2 Congresscritters pushing it are known Socialists.

http://professorquicksand.wordpress.com ... amendment/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Update: Looks like they've backed off on this... for now. http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/ins ... amendment/

This was just politics. The sponsors knew the legislation had no chance, they were just pandering to their constituency.

RoyGBiv wrote:This was just politics. The sponsors knew the legislation had no chance, they were just pandering to their constituency.

I agree in the respect that it is election year grandstanding and an attempt to "shore up the base". However, I do feel it indeed places on display the deeply ingrained attitudes of those anti-2A and anti-self defense types. I am simply fed up with it always being okay for people to START trouble (almost always for personal gain or pleasure), but not okay for someone to END that same trouble. But, that is because they value the COLLECTIVE and not the INDIVIDUAL...Marxist group-think is what it boils down to, even if they don't admit it.

chasfm11 wrote:The Washington Times
By Stephen Dinan May 8, 2012, 04:37PM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/ins ... amendment/

"'Shoot-first' laws have already cost too many lives. In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn't be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people," said Reps. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the two Democrats who are offering the legislation. "This is no different than withholding transportation funds from states that don't enforce seat-belt laws."

All they need is to gain a majority in the House again and keep control of the Senate.

Question: How many lives have been lost to people who didn't or couldn't defend themselves?

I think that's the wrong question. First off, we start with the assumption that liberals and politicians are liars, and don't assume that any statistic one of them quotes is accurate or truthful --in fact, we should assume it is intentionally deceitful. Consider the wording....he doesn't say deaths of "innocent" people due to "self-defense" have tripled....he says "deaths due to self-defense" have tripled, and I believe this is a deliberate mischaracterization. 1. He doesn't define "self-defense," and I'd guess the definition he's applying isn't really describing incidents that all are self-defense; 2) even if all the deaths cited are due to legitimate self-defense, it doesn't mean any of them have anything to do with SYG laws; 3) he conflates deaths of people killed in self-defense, at least some of whom, presumably, (assuming the worst from the gun rights standpoint) are criminals, with the deaths of people who aren't criminals....in other words, he suggests that killing criminals endangers the larger population of people who aren't criminals, or more bluntly, he's actually saying that SYG laws endanger criminals (and this is no doubt his true heartfelt concern, as it is with many liberals); 4) the "tripled since the law was enacted" assertion is probably a rhetorical trick. Since much more time has passed before SYG was enacted than after, the comparison can't possibly be between equivalent time periods, which means the claim is inherently selective. To take an extreme example for purposes of illustration, one day before SGY was enacted there could have been one self-defense killing, and the day after there could have been three, so one could say self-defense deaths have "tripled" since enactment, and that kind of comparison is exactly the kind I suspect is being made; and 5) "deaths due to self-defense" are not defined, so, a homeowner killed defending his family in a home invasion could be counted as a "death due to self-defense," and given the history of the anti self-defense crowd, there is every reason to suspect that is also part of the numbers game here.

Finally, it's sort of a so-what claim....if the killings aren't legitimate and lawful, then presumably, those doing the killing are being prosecuted, and may well have occurred anyway. A murderer invoking the law as a defense doesn't invalidate the law, any more that invoking a claim of ordinary self-defense invalidates the concept of self-defense. And if not, then he'd be claiming something else entirely: that questionable claims of self-defense are not being prosecuted because of SYG laws. Since he's offering no statistics to support such a claim, real or faked, it's a pretty sure bet that such a claim can't be substantiated even using all the statistical tricks normally deployed by the anti-gun crowd.

Heck - I'd like to see the Feds pass this - they can keep all their dollars. We will keep ours, we own all of our natural resources, we have our refineries, got ports, power infrastucture - we're good to go! We can secede and go it alone. Maybe then we could get a decent Cuban cigar again...

Yea, yea - I know - wishful thinkin...

Secede?.....no. But I wonder what would happen if the states just "withheld" all the Federal taxes they collect to "replace" the funding lost?......

seeker_two wrote:Secede?.....no. But I wonder what would happen if the states just "withheld" all the Federal taxes they collect to "replace" the funding lost?......

Hmmmm..... The Austin IRS Center is one of the biggest tax collection locations.