Pistol packing pastor nabs theft suspect

Pastor helps track, recover stolen car

TAFT, Calif. -- A former Bakersfield police officer turned pastor helped nab a man who allegedly stole a car from his church's parking lot.

James Kilgore, pastor at Taft Free Will Baptist Church, said he always keeps a gun and handcuffs in his fanny pack. They came in handy on Tuesday, when one of his elderly parishioners left Bible study to find his car had vanished.

Kilgore and Walter Brenton, 72, drove around looking for Brenton's 1986 Ford Crown Victoria, and spotted the alleged thief driving it a few blocks away.

The pastor followed the driver until he crashed, tackled him as he crawled out of the car and then handcuffed him until police arrived on the scene.

Ronald Lee Allen, 46, of Taft, was arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto and being in possession of stolen property, said Kern County sheriff's Sgt. Martin Downs.

"We don't recommend that people try to apprehend suspects, although in this case it worked out really well," Downs said.

Kilgore said he was glad to put his law enforcement training to use, but said it was likely God had a role in helping him restrain the suspect.

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(recap from The Seattle PI. Read the complete, original article at The Bakersfield Californian.)

Yes, our God is a God of justice - with a definite sense of humor!

Overheard...

...at the local Rod & Gun club range during a qualifier not too long ago:

"He couldn't hit sand if he fell off of a camel in the desert."

(and no, while I know the both the speaker and the spoken-of, I'm not going to name names and get myself into trouble. Heh.)

Parker v. D.C.: If I Could Speak To The Supreme Court.

by John Longenecker
July 18, 2007 at 11:40 am

The District Of Columbia, moved so by an appellate court decision against its thirty-year-long gun ban, has elected to file with the Supreme Court. I wish I could address the Supreme Court.

In arguing that weapons applies only to militias, the District fails to understand that Militia as defined by United States Code applies to civilians as much as it does military. Civilians were the first Militia. See U.S. Code Title 10 here where we still are Militia.

It is also important to note they did not mean National Guard in those days: National Guard was not conceived and organized for another 130 years.

But that’s only the beginning.

If it please the Court, I would cite five authorities emanating from writings of the Founders in Original Intent and decisions since the nation’s inception. I have other authorities, but time before the Court is limited.

1. The Founders had revolted against, above all else, abuses of the law, and in writings, in debate and ratifications, they wrote words of art that abuse of due process be forbidden. This is especially evident in the second amendment: first, the modern question of whether the right is collective or individual is without meaning, because the second amendment was not written for citizens, but written for government – that is, written directly to government, like most of the Constitution is.

Second, the second amendment was not written about guns, per se, but about abuse of the law. The Founders did not need to imagine weapons of the future – they did not view weapons as a threat to the new nation, but an asset. They had just defeated the Crown and its cruelty in abuse of its own law; the second amendment was written to forbid future self-dealing abuses of due process as an ever-present threat in any age, any era, any government. (Any government does not mean sovereign states outside the U.S., but all levels of government within the U.S., including federal government, states, counties and cities.)

Declaring the citizen as supreme authority, the Founders knew that citizen authority must be backed by lethal force, and forever. To perfect the concept that any regulation, interference or infringement of this force is unreasonable, the amendment which protects that force is made absolute in the words of art, ‘shall not be infringed’.

2. But rather than any Government Troops versus Citizens shoot-outs, violent crime as an instrument of demagoguery is used to sway the public to disarm, and in so doing, to surrender the force which backs its authority. The net effect of this is, of course, higher numbers of injured victims of crime where constituents fear a fate of prosecution more than thuggery, and this becomes self-fulfilling for the demagogue who claims that crime is intractable. It is not. For those communities, gun control is the exquisite abuse of state or local government power, the kind foreseen and forbidden by the Founders.

3. The second amendment can also lift burdens of government, always a worthwhile endeavor, as opposed to the ever-increasing official desire for the taking up of burdens in demagoguery. Unanswered with citizen authority, crime makes more work, more unreasonable law, more hirings, more purchases, restricting reasonable resistance in order to grow crime in order to grow government. More government burden.

4. Since the inception of an organized police force in the United States, it has never been a duty of law enforcement to protect individuals. From the earliest rulings to the most recent – Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 2005, U.S. Supreme Court – the rulings have been the same: no constitutional right to police protection.

This leaves a tremendous void in the logic of disarming citizens who face grave danger alone by the hundreds of thousands each year in crimes which never even used a gun.

What about 300 million guns in the hands of 80 million citizens? In America, about 29,000 persons are shot to death each year according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (mostly crime-on-crime shootings), and that same report demonstrates that armed citizens in fact de-escalate violent crime on the order of more than 2.5 million times each year.

Why such a disparity? It is 86 to 1.

Because guns are not the major commonality among all violence. By the numbers of all violent crime, violence in grave danger or great bodlly harm is easily perpetrated without a gun – in beatings, multiple assailants, knifings, strongarm assaults, rapes, robberies gone bad, and abductions. Regulation of guns does not foil crime, it enhances it. 2.5 million gun defenses each year to de-escalate violence is not guns against guns, but armed citizens on the record 2.5 million times a year of de-escalating all manner of violent acts from completion.

5. Public policy and interest. EMS teaches CPR, First-aid and the Heimlich Maneuver to citizens because Advanced Life Support cannot always arrive with a life-saving response time. This is also true of law enforcement. Citizen intervention has been held to be in established public policy and interest. Our system recognizes the average reasonable person doctrine, the presumption of intent in reasonable apprehension of grave danger, the doctrine of standing in the shoes of the victim, citizen authority, citizen arrest, assisting law enforcement, volunteerism and other doctrines, reflecting a spirit of helpfulness and self-rule which must not be discouraged or punished. In time of violence, no one – no police or policy – can take the place of the citizen as the first line of defense. Armed citizens are the most reasonable and responsible of all.

It is this marriage of liberty and personal responsibility which together outshine the hysterical forecasts and hyperbole of gun control and intentional interference by even the slightest gun regulation. The genius of Original Intent Independence and its responsibility are together illegally obscured and frustrated purely because of Liberty’s ability to shine as the ultimate authority as it was intended in a nation of self-rule. Crime cannot any longer be used as a tool for the ambitious who cite violence as a cause to disarm that ultimate authority.

No body of Government at any level has any legal authority to interfere with the force which backs citizen supreme authority, but it can affirm it in respecting Original Intent of the Founders who knew abuse of due process in any time, any era, any government.
___________

John Longenecker is author of The Case For Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns, available worldwide. See www.TransferOfWealth.net

I don't usually "do" YouTube, but this is priceless

Make your very own Gun Free Zone!


Courtesy of FoxNews.com via YouTube.

(maybe someday I'll learn how to embed the actual videos in this blog.....)

"Metal and Wood" by Dennis Bateman

I thought this would be appropriate for today. Happy Birthday, USA!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Metal and Wood"
by Dennis Bateman

The following essay was originally published at www.TheFiringLine.com

It is a rare person who does not attach some sort of value or emotion to some physical object or to an event. A home becomes more than a building. A statue of the Virgin Mary, a crucifix, a flag or a song, or even a photograph can stir emotions greater than the value of the material item.

I have a piece of paper showing I served in the military until I was discharged honorably. But, oh, the memories that piece of paper conjures up. The friends, the fun times. The bad times. The times when we were bound closer to strangers than to our own families and, in frightening chaos, our lives hung by a thread.

Many of our friends died far from home. Ask us about the feeling of "American soil" upon returning to the land we loved. Ask those returning soldiers about America.

Remember the old, faintly humorous band of American Legionnaires, wearing out-dated military uniforms straining at the buttons. But, God how proudly they marched. Grinning, waving to friends and families, and always, always "The Flag!" Ask them if the flag is mere cloth, I dare you.

See the elderly lady sitting in a lawn chair watching the fourth of July parade. Three flags carefully folded some forty years ago into triangles now rest in her lap - one for each lost son. Ask her if those flags are mere cloth, I dare you.

Look at the old man quietly crying, leaning against the Iwo Jiima Memorial at Arlington Cemetery. As he turns to you, smiles with some embarrassment, and says in a choked whisper, "I was there." Ask him, "Is it just metal and clay?" Ask him. I dare you.

The Wall. My God, the Wall. See the young man lightly tracing the name of his father there inscribed. Ask him if its just rock. Ask him. I dare you.

My guns? They’re of little real value compared to my family and my home. They are toys, or tools, or both. But what those guns represent to me is greater than all of us, greater than myself, my family, indeed greater than our entire generation. What could be of such value?

The freedom of man to live within civil, self-imposed limitations rather than under restrictions placed upon him by a ruler or a ruling class.

Imagine the daring, the bravery of a few men to declare they intended to create a new country, independent of the burden of their established Rulers!

Those men we call our forefathers were brilliant men. They could have maneuvered themselves into positions of influence within the structure of the times, but they did not. They struggled to free themselves from tyranny. They wrote the Declaration of Independence. And they backed up their words and ideals with metal and wood.

They knew the dangers of such dreams and actions. They knew it was a frightening and dangerous venture into the unknown when they dared reach beyond their grasp for a vision - for an ideal. But they dared to dedicate themselves to achieve Liberty and Freedom for their children, and their children’s children, through the generations.

Imagine the dreams and yearnings of centuries finally being reduced to the written word. The Rights of "We the People!" instead of the "Powers of the Monarchy."

Our forefathers dared to create a new government - a new form of government. And they knew that any organization has, as its first and foremost goal, its continued existence. Second only to that it strives to increase its power. It plots, it devises, it maneuvers to achieve control over its environment - over its subjects.

Our Forefathers decided to make America different from any country, anywhere, at any time in the entire history of the entire world. This country, this new nation of immigrants, would be based upon the concept that people could rule themselves better than any single person or small group of persons could rule them.

Other countries have had outstanding documents with guarantees for its citizens - but the citizens have become enslaved. How, these great men pondered, can we ensure this new government will remain subject to the will of the People?

They wanted limits upon this new government. Therefore, our forefathers wrote limitations into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And one of those Rights was that metal and wood, as the final power of the people, would secure this country for the future generations.

Metal and wood were the means by which we won our freedom.

Metal and wood were the means by which we kept our freedom.

Metal and wood may be the means by which we regain our freedom.

Metal and wood are the final power of the people. Take away the metal and wood and the people become powerless - they can only beg, they supplicate for favors.

We are unique in our ability to rule ourselves but we are letting it slip away. Today we compromise. We try to appease man’s insatiable appetite for power by throwing him bits of our freedoms. But the insatiable appetite for power can not be appeased. The freedoms we feed him only make us weaker and him stronger. We must conquer him and again ensure the "Blessings of Liberty" won for us by our forefathers.

We must be ready to use metal and wood again, for if we are ready, truly ready, we may be able to conquer the monster with words - for in its heart it is a coward. But if we continue to feed the monster our freedoms, we will become too weak to win, to weak even to fight, and we will become a conquered people. We will have sold ourselves and our future generations into servitude.

If words fail us, we will use metal and wood, we will regain what we have lost, we will achieve what we seek, we will guarantee the America of our forefathers for the future generations.

So you see, our guns are more than metal and wood. They are our heritage of freedom. They are the universally understood symbol that the government, no matter how big and strong it may be, answers to us! They are the tools we will use to prevent tyranny in the land of our forefathers and our children. So, ask me what my guns mean to me. Ask my children what our guns mean to them. Ask us. I dare you.