Very few public policy controversies have been characterized by emotional arguments, anecdotal evidence and outright ignorance quite like the debate over gun control. Those advocating for tight restrictions on gun ownership must play on the emotions of their audience because the facts and the Constitution are simply not on their side. At the heart of this debate are fundamental questions about the role of government in our “free” society.

The basic question is this: Who should be trusted, the people or the government? If the people are to be trusted, the right of the people to arm themselves should not be abridged. If the government is to be trusted, the power of the government to restrict the arming of the people should not be denied. The framers of our Constitution understood this question. They had experience with tyrannical government. The iron fist of King George III had driven them to seek independence from the crown and, at the risk of their lives, to form a new republic. Their goal was to create a country governed by laws that would never allow heavy-handed government rule. They understood that a citizenry with access to guns is necessary. Guns in the hands of private citizens are the last line of defense against both foreign invasion and tyrannical government. If the citizens in the days of the Revolution did not have guns, America might still be a British colony. I believe the founding fathers would be aghast at the tactics which gun control advocates employ to do away with individual liberty in this area, attempting instead to put control in the hands of government. The number of myths put forth by gun control advocates is truly astonishing. Here are a few of those.

The first myth, and the one used most often, is that should more government restriction be imposed on gun ownership, fewer crimes would occur. To best understand the situation, the citizens of this country can be divided into three basic groups: those who make the laws, those who keep the laws and those who break the laws. The argument of gun control advocates is that those who break the law, namely those who commit violent acts with the assistance of a gun, would not break the law if the lawmakers, namely the government, further restricted guns. They believe that simply because guns are restricted, law breaking individuals would cease their violence. Any logical person should be able to see the critical flaw in their thinking. This argument, in essence, supposes that the violent nature of criminals is dependent on the availability of the instruments used to carry out their violence. Frankly, I find this assumption absurd. To believe this is to believe that lawbreakers derive their criminal tendencies from a set of government regulations, or the lack thereof. To believe this is to ignore the fact that lawbreakers will find ways to get weapons to act out their criminal desires whether or not the government restricts them. Abusable drugs are illegal, and yet large quantities of these substances can be found on nearly every street corner. To put it simply, lawbreakers break laws. The very fact that they want to commit crimes demonstrates that they have no respect for the law. It is ludicrous to expect that a criminal who wants to break the law and murder will be deterred because there are laws to restrict guns. If a criminal is deranged enough to break the laws against murder, why on earth would anyone assume he would have respect for laws against guns?

Making guns illegal would not take guns out of the hands of those who break the laws, it would take them out of the hands of those who keep the laws. Law abiding citizens would have no means of defense against law breaking citizens. As Thomas Jefferson wisely put it, “[Gun control laws] disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...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.” The statistics support his assertion. A recent study showed that if a robbery victim does not defend himself with a gun, the robbery will succeed 88 percent of the time, and the victim will be injured 25 percent of the time. However, if the victim defends himself with a gun, the success rate of the robbery falls to 30 percent, and the injury rate to 17 percent.

The other popular myth advanced by gun control advocates is that the Constitution does not imply that every citizen has a right to bear arms, but only law enforcement and the military. The text of the Second Amendment reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” The argument of gun control advocates is that the “militia” mentioned in the text does not consist of ordinary citizens, but of government-sanctioned organizations like the military. But this is simply not the case. The term “militia” would have been understood to mean any citizen capable of defending himself or herself. The Supreme Court affirmed this in its most recent case on the subject, United States v. Morton, which stipulated that the only requirement for being considered part of the “militia” was to be able to act “in concert for the common defense.”

The Constitution is a document that legitimizes an entire form of government in a few pages. As such, it uses generally broad language, and does not often go into the minute details about the rights of citizens. The fact that the gun is the only piece of personal property guaranteed not to be regulated in our Constitution speaks volumes about the founders desire to place the responsibility of gun ownership in the hands of the citizens. Gun laws will not deter criminals, and the restriction of guns by the government is fundamentally unconstitutional. If we ignore these simple facts, we not only endanger our citizens, but we trample upon the founding documents and the legacy our founding fathers fought and died to pass on to posterity.

Josh

Our world is in the midst of a global propaganda effort. The climate change issue is in reality, large-scale effort on the part of government and government-lovers to deliberately create a sense of panic over something as natural as the change of the seasons, or the sunrise. We as citizens are being told by those in the media and in public office, “You have no reason, and no right to question us on this issue.” We are being told that the final verdict is in, that there is universal consensus, that every scientist on the planet is in agreement that the earth is burning up as a result of human activity. As Americans, we sometimes take our freedoms for granted, and thus we fail to exercise them. We must, on this issue and every issue, question the vocal majority. No one should consider himself free-willed if he accepts as fact those ideas fed to him through the news media, Washington, and Hollywood. Was the majority correct when they said the earth was not spherical? Was Galileo wrong to question the authorities, even at the expense of his freedom? Everyone who accepts the propaganda being handed to them on this issue must question whether he or she is truly a freethinking individual. We each have a chance to emulate Galileo and other uncompromising thinkers. We have no desire to tell you what to think, but to merely encourage you to think. We will urge you, unlike those on the opposing side, to research everything we say, to verify its accuracy. That is the difference between us and those who preach the global warming orthodoxy. The following is an exploration of facts, which will hopefully lead you to question what you hear, and truly think about this issue.

In order to determine the validity of the argument that global climate change is caused by man, we first must examine the argument itself. For our purposes here, we will refer to those on this side of the issue as the “global warming alarmists.” Perhaps the most defining treatment of this argument was made by former Vice President Al Gore in his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. This film, with its foreboding soundtrack and frightening image sequences, was clearly meant to stir emotion in the audience, and it certainly does just that. This type of emotional argument is the core of the alarmist strategy. When the facts do not necessarily coincide with their point of view, they resort to playing upon the public’s emotions. In the midst of all this fear mongering, Mr. Gore puts forward some interesting statistics and claims. One of the most intriguing and superficially convincing graphs he uses shows the change in global temperature and its correlation with global CO2 levels.



The assumption that Gore makes is that CO2, which is a byproduct of some human activity, causes the temperature to rise. However, the ice core record does not support his assumption. As this must-read article from New Scientist explains,

“Ice cores from Antarctica show that at the end of recent ice ages, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere usually started to rise only after temperatures had begun to climb.”

So as much as Gore wants to portray man as the instigator of climate change, the ice records tell a different story. As geologist and paleoclimate expert Dr. Bob Carter states, to say that CO2 is the primary cause of temperature change is like saying that lung cancer causes smoking. Climatologist Tim Ball, who earned a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of London says, “We now know for certain that the temperature changes before the CO2. One of the fundamental assumptions that Gore doesn’t understand is that in the theory of global warming due to humans, when the CO2 goes up the temperature goes up. The ice core record shows it’s exactly the opposite.” How can Dr. Ball be so certain? He can be certain because he has geologically verifiable evidence to support him. The ice core record does not lie, whereas former politicians eager to acquire fame and fortune by making a documentary just might.

Another claim Gore and many other global warming alarmists make is that there is generally universal scientific consensus in this area. Here is an actual quote made by Gore in the film,

“There’s not a single fact or date or number that’s been used to make this up that’s in any controversy. Isn’t there a disagreement among scientists about whether the problem is real or not? Actually, not really.”

These statements are unprecedented in their fallacy and intellectual irresponsibility. Gore is actually trying to get people to believe that this question is beyond debate, the argument beyond reproach and the issue above controversy. He is attempting to shut off the thought process in his audience by claiming there are no real scientists who disagree. However, there is a petition, signed by over 31,000 scientists rejecting the theory of man-made global warming. Read the petition and the research here. A less exhaustive list of dissenting scientists exists here. Gore’s claim of scientific consensus is not only untrue but highly inappropriate. The difference between Mr. Gore and our side is that we hope you will examine our claims for validity and he hopes you do not examine his. He hopes that by saying he uses no disputable facts, you will simply not dispute his facts. We encourage you to dispute ours, if you can.

There are many more claims Gore makes in his film that do not stand up to reason or truth. He claims that climate change will cause the polar ice caps to melt, drastically increasing sea levels. He claims that this rise of ocean levels will cause much of Florida to go underwater. The following image from the film is one of the more memorable ones.



Mr. Gore claims that polar ice melting will increase sea levels by 20 feet. This statement is truly baffling because this figure is nowhere near any other estimates. The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report which states that the upper limit of sea level rise by the year 2300 would be 23 inches. There are many scientists that even dispute this fact, but even if it were true, Al Gore’s estimate over that same period of time is unbelievably different. Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the book Red Hot Lies says, “Al Gore makes up 20 feet. The truth isn’t scary.”

The tactics used by Gore and the other alarmists are based upon emotions. When the truth isn’t scary, make up hypotheticals. When you want to shut down debate, claim there is no reason to debate. When the facts don’t support your argument, ignore them. But what are the facts? Is the globe getting warmer? If so, then why?

It seems impossible to argue with the statement that the globe has gotten warmer. There are proven ways to measure temperature change. However, the reasons for this change can be shown to be natural, and not a result of human activity. For all of earth’s recorded history, there have been changes in the mean temperature, some much more dramatic than the current cycle of warming. The following graph illustrates some of these changes.



If we take a closer look at some of the earth’s warm periods, we find that our earth has endured much hotter temperatures, and for much longer than we are experiencing presently. In the hundred years leading up to 2005, earth’s mean surface temperature rose approximately 0.74 °C. During the time period known as the Holocene Thermal Maximum the temperature rose as much as 4 °C near the north pole, a rise far greater than the 0.74 °C seen recently. Did polar bears go extinct? No. Was half the world under water? No. According to the ice core records, the Holocene Maximum lasted for nearly three millennia, as shown in this figure, and still, the earth recovered.



Having established the fact that the earth’s temperature does change, we should establish a reason for the change. Global warming alarmists would like you to believe that one greenhouse gas of many, CO2, a product of some human activity, is the cause for a global change in temperature. Did human CO2 cause the Holocene Maximum? Of course not. The CO2 producing technology on which climate change has been blamed has only existed for several decades. Clearly, there must be another natural driving factor affecting climate change. As commentator Glenn Beck writes in his book, An Inconvenient Book,

“Have you ever noticed that from the time you wake up in the morning to the middle of the day, the globe seems to warm? Have you also noticed how that warming seems to correspond with that giant ball of light in the sky? It’s so weird!”

Indeed, there is much evidence suggesting a much closer correlation between solar activity and climate change than between CO2 and climate change. Two respected climate scientists released a report documenting this correlation. Read the report here. The graph below represents their findings.



The red line illustrates solar activity, and the blue line represents the earth’s average temperature. The data was collected by Dr. E. Friis-Christensen, Director of the Danish National Space Center, and Professor of geophysics and space physics at the Niels Bohr Institute of University of Copenhagen, and Dr. Knud Lassen, Head of the Solar-Terrestrial Physics Division, Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark.The graph shows that within the last 100 years, the earth’s average temperature has risen approximately 0.74 °C, and solar ultra-violet, visible and heat radiation has increased similarly. It is a much more logical assumption that the main source of heat in our solar system prompts changes in temperature in our solar system. As you can see in the chart, the change in solar activity precedes change in temperature. This is a much more logical cause-and-effect relationship than that between CO2 and temperature change.

Reasonable people should ask why. Why would so many people agressively promote a concept that is so intellectually flawed? The truth is that government-lovers everywhere see this as an unprecedented opportunity. It is an opportunity to push further regulation, restriction, and government interference upon the public. If human activity is causing climate change, the government’s logical solution would be to restrict human activity. If government can convince the public that people are at fault, the public would then be much more willing to surrender their freedoms than if they were simply taken away with no explanation. The fact of the matter is global warming has become a battle cry for government-loving leftists because through it they can control and manipulate the citizenry. That is why you are being bombarded with “what if” scenarios, portrayed incessantly in the media. They tell you to accept what they say as fact though their evidence is shaky at best, and outright false at worst. A great documentary on this is available here. We urge you, do not accept what Al Gore says just because you saw his film, and at the same time, do not accept what we say just because you read this article. Be a free-thinking individual. Freedom is the essence of America. That being said, we urge you to join the brave and growing minority in opposition to the global warming alarmism, and take your place among the great dissenters, from Galileo to Luther, from Thoreau to Dr. King.

Josh

The debate over guns has raged in this country for decades. A gun is unlike any other piece of personal property because it is a machine designed specifically to inflict harm on someone or something. This has made many skeptical about the need for civilians to have access to guns. Here are some arguments for and against gun control:

Arguments for gun control:

1) The number of murders in this country has grown to over 16,000 annually. Many of these could have been avoided with stricter gun laws.

2) A gun is a killing machine, and having them in the hands of private citizens is dangerous

3) There is simply no need for private citizens to own guns. Only the military and law enforcement agencies have a legitimate need to use them.

Arguments against gun control:

1) The firearm is THE ONLY piece of personal property specifically guaranteed NOT to be regulated by the government in the U.S.Constitution.

2) Many of the 16,000 murders might have been prevented if the victim had been able to defend himself or herself with a gun.

3) The number of murders would be higher with gun control because law-abiding citizens would have no way to defend themselves.

4) Criminals will get guns whether we have gun control laws or not. Regulating guns will not keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but it will keep guns out of the hands of those trying to defend themselves from criminals.

We believe, as did the framers of the Constitution, that a citizen body with access to guns is necessary. Guns in the hands of private citizens are the last line of defense against foreign invasion and tyrannical government. If the citizens in the days of the Revolution did not have access to guns, America would still be a British colony. So we believe that the founders wrote wisely when they penned these words:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

(Second Amendment to the Constitution)

Josh