From the Washington Examiner:
Joe Biden on the Second Amendment: No amendment is ‘absolute’
Joe Biden is calling for a cultural shift around how the country thinks about gun ownership.
“The Second Amendment — no amendment is in fact absolute,” Biden told the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund’s Presidential Gun Sense Forum Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa.
“You cannot stand up in this hall and yell fire. That’s not freedom of speech because they know the consequence of yelling fire: There’ll be a stampede, and someone will get hurt,” the former vice president said.
No, you can’t yell “fire” if there is no fire. If there is a fire, you can. There is more to it than that, but I hate that people get this wrong all the time by oversimplifying it. Biden said “fire” from the podium, but he’s not getting arrested because the context of his statement makes it unlikely that people will panic.
“Folks, don’t apologize at all about the Second Amendment,” Biden advised, explaining how the amendment allows for limitations on who can own a weapon and what type. “These guys will tell you, the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots. Give me a break.”
“Can you go out and buy a flamethrower? Can you go out and buy an F-15?” he added. “If you want to protect yourself against the federal government, you’re going to need at least an F-15.”
Actually, yes, you can buy a flame thrower. Some states, like California, restrict how far a device can throw flame, such as a limit of 10 feet.
But they have to be specific, because what is a flame thrower? If you want to do down the line of banning an object that propels burning fuel, you just banned the butane lighter. Not to mention a lot of tools like torches for soldering and brazing, burners for melting asphalt, cutting torches, and industrial lighters. So this is a ridiculously stupid argument.
If you tie the two statements he made together, you get the idea that he thinks that the Second Amendment is a bulwark against tyranny (“These guys will tell you, the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of patriots”) is wrong because you can’t buy an F-15.
Again, Biden is wrong. Yes, he’s right about the not being able to buy an F-15 part, but that’s irrelevant to the Second Amendment being a bulwark against tyranny.
The F-35 requires 50 man-hours of maintenance per flight hour. I don’t have official figures but I’ve seen anecdotes saying that other fighters are a low as 6 man-hours per flight hour. Plus pilots can only stay awake for so long.
Given the limited armament of fighter aircraft, that means that these planes are going to spend a lot more time on the ground than in the sky.
The M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank also requires a ridiculous amount of maintenance to keep in fighting condition.
I used to not believe this, but I’m getting more and more sure that half the military is made up of people like Spenser Rapone, Mike Prysner, and Bradley “Chelsea” Manning. Only because there are so many far-Left Democrat politicians, like Ted Lieu, Pam Keith, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy McGrath who are decorated veterans and then in politics are viciously anti-gun, advocate for open borders, extreme economic redistributionism, and show abject contempt for Conservatives and Trump supporters.
It honestly surprises me that someone could swear an oath to defend this country, accept a commission from the Congress of the United States, go overseas on deployment, then think it’s perfectly acceptable for middle and working-class men and women to go broke paying taxes into a system that gives away goodies such as healthcare to every person who sneaks into our country while saying they want mandatory buy-back of guns from law-abiding citizens.
Like, this legitimately boggles my mind.
Would Amy McGrath really fly a sortie in an F-18 against a bunch of gun owners hiding out in a cabin in the woods with their hoard of AR-15’s they refused to sell to the government? Can somebody in Kentucky ask her this?
So let’s say for a moment that half our military is still willing to fight in a war against the American people.
Does the military still have enough maintenance technicians to repair, refuel, and rearm our aircraft and vehicles, while providing security for said vehicles while they are on runways and in maintenance hangars being worked on?
He’s right that I may not be able to shoot down an F-15 with my AR-15.
I just don’t think he, or any of the people that think like him, have an idea of what a guy with an AR-15 can do to an F-15 while it is parked on the ground.
He’s right about buying an F-15 but not for the reason he thinks.
They’re simply not for sale to us unwashed civilians.
True, but various MiGs are. I remember a -19 at an air show years ago, and there are also a number of other fighter jets around.
There are sooooo many holes in his theory, it’s funny.
You touched on just one part. You can put holes in the plane. But you don’t even have to bother with the plane itself.
The maintenance of any vehicle is done by people. Not just any people, but specific people, trained to do that maintenance. If Joe the diesel mechanic is unavailable to work on that diesel engine, you need to get John or Jerry or Jacob the diesel mechanic to do it instead. Throwing Molly the radar operator or Larry the logistics officer in there with a set of tools isn’t going to get it fixed. What happens when Joe and John and Jerry and Jacob are all dead, or call in sick, or simply desert rather than show up, because they are very very concerned for their lives and the lives of their families? That’s how this works.
What happens when all those guys who work at the base in any capacity can’t or won’t make it in to work because they fear for the lives of their families while they are at work?
Aesop mentions this on occasion at his blog. Interesting reading, to be sure.
I think we’re about to live in interesting times…
With those maintenance hours also goes parts, fuel, tools, ammo and the techs to work all of that.
A pilot can do some preflight checks, but doesn’t have the training to maintain all the parts of the plane that make it all work.
The techs aren’t the ones that deliver the parts, ammo, tools and fuel.
Then you have the life support equipment for the pilots that has it’s own parts and tech requirements
Yeah just to cut it short – logistics. Which rule the day.
And if you do anything that disrupts that supply chain, I don’t care how many pilots or ground techs you have ready to go. Ain’t nothing flying.
Same same with the current generation of armor.
Forget about the end item (the plane or tank), or where they’re based.
Just cut off enough of the stuff needed to make it go-go and its dead-dead.
Everything reverts to Imperial Roman foot soldiering and Marius’ Mules
And Infantry is just a little less dependent on supply as those jets and tanks.
Amateurs study Tactics. Professionals study Logistics.
But here’s the fun part. Why even mess with the military?
All these politician and other idiots say things like you can’t fight the government because you can’t defeat the military.
They’re feeding you a line of propaganda in the hope that it diverts you from the proper subject and thus the proper answer.
The government and the military are not the same organism.
Since it’s an executive department, it only answers to the President.
The only power the rest of the government has is that congress can decide to not appropriate more money for military operations. That is only effective – maybe – for when it’s payday, or fresh supplies outside what the military has in stores have to be purchased.
No congresstard can order a service member to do squat, if the President, down through the chain of command, doesn’t order it done.
The military has its own justice system, so they can, if they want, tell a civilian judge to pound sand if one of obammy’s appointees makes some nationwide ruling from a district court bench.
Getting to the main point that might be dawning in your minds.
Who is in final command of the military? The President as commander in chief through the Secretary of Defense, to the Combatant Commanders.
Short of a mutiny, if the President – whoever he/she is – (hint) tells the military to stand down and remain on the ground and in garrison, that’s where they’ll damn well stay.
If the Combatant Commanders do go off, it’s game on and it’s going to be worse than anyone can imagine because the instant the Russians and Chinese learn that the U.S. military is no longer under civilian control, they’re going to figure the jig – and 99 red balloons – are up.
“Can you go out and buy a flamethrower? Can you go out and buy an F-15?” he added. “If you want to protect yourself against the federal government, you’re going to need at least an F-15.”
I was just at my local gun store and did see a flame thrower for sale. Gun control folk love to make comments like that about going up against the “might” of the US military. And then I just ask, how long have we been in Afghanistan now? As for the F-15,
https://www.barnstormers.com/ad_detail.php?id=1450174&catid=23451
“Would Amy McGrath really fly a sortie in an F-18 against a bunch of gun owners hiding out in a cabin in the woods with their hoard of AR-15’s they refused to sell to the government?”
Yes. See: Ruby Ridge, Waco, Cliven Bundy.
The agents of the state who will pull the trigger against us will most likely be told lies along the lines of: These people are terrorists who killed little babies in their cradles. They will pick us off in small groups using this tactic, unless and until the small-government-leave-us-alone types can organize into big enough groups to provide self-protection and better PR.
Two points) Yesterday I took my 13yo daughter to the range. We ran 200 rounds of .45ACP through an M3A1 grease gun. My 13yo daughter knows how to run a PDW and has decided she “really likes it.” (to bad I don’t own that gun. Somebody else did and legally allowed us to use it).
I don’t think Joe Biden would recommend that anybody have access to such horrible military style weapons. (Cost to us gov circa 1945, $15. Gunbroker has one listed today with a starting bid of $27,000.)
The second point. It was NEVER illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater. This is a left wing nut talking point. There was a bit of discussion, NOT part of the actual supreme court ruling using yelling fire in a crowded theater as an example.
The supreme court justice that made created the phrase was Jutice Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was used to justify restricting speaking out against the draft (in 1919). But Justice Holmes spent the rest of his career on the bench walking back that statement.
Here is a good link about it. Both audio and a written transcript: https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/make-no-law/2018/06/fire-in-a-crowded-theater/
How to buy a Harrier: https://youtu.be/guSDuK-ebSU
🙂
Pretty hard to maintain those F-15’s when the ground crews / pilots are getting shot at and every other supply convo getting fuel, parts, tools etc. to where the F-15’s are parked is getting blown up, raided etc.
I remember the story about a Polish resistance fighter who had survived WWII. He was asked, did not his compatriots feel hopeless when, armed wtih only a few rifles and pistols, they had to face German tanks? He replied, no, tanks must have people in them to work. “We wait until man gets out of tank to take piss, shoot him in head. Then the rest easier.”
“You cannot yell fire in a crowded theater.”
Sure you can. Do you think a human being loses the ability to utter a simple four letter word because they are in a crowded building?
What you do lose is the ability to use the 1st Amendment as protection against prosecution in the event you choose to deliberately yell an inflammatory word. (Pun intended)
“You cannot buy a flamethrower or a F-15…” No? Since when? Flamethowers are legal in 49 of 50 States. Elon Musk was selling them away as part of his Boring Company launch. As to the other “weapons of war” why can you not buy one? Granted, a US fighter jet is a bit too tightly controlled to purchase on the open market, but there are plenty of sources for weapons of war if you want to put in the effort and $$$$ to get one. What do you want? I am sure some warlord looking for a bit of a cash infusion will be glad to sell you whatever you want. Of course, keeping the fighting vehicle in operational condition may be prohibitively expensive, so maybe not a good purchase.
Arguments to the absurd only serve to make you sound absurd. And, creepy uncle Joe is no stranger to sounding absurd.
Final thought. Responding to people like Biden with facts like how flamethrowers are perfectly legal, or that you do not need a fighter plane to fight another fighter plane, instead just as a simple question. Consider this:
“You cannot own a fighter jet.”
“Not that I want to, but what is the problem if I were to own a fighter jet, and use it in a responsible and law abiding manner? How would that adversely affect you?”
For details on what can happen to jets on the ground, see Taliban attack on Camp Bastion in 2012.
6 destroyed Harriers and 2 damaged.
https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/09/6_harrier_jets_destr.php
When the Framers wrote the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the United States Navy didn’t have a single floating warship. The Continental Congress has built thirteen frigates during the Revolutionary War (and another twelve were built without express Congressional authority by Benedict Arnold on Lake Champlain). Almost all of the Atlantic “fleet” had been sunk by 1781, all of Arnold’s Canadian “fleet” was destroyed in 1776…. At war’s end, in 1785, every remaining ship in the Navy was decommissioned and sold.
On the other hand, over 1,700 letters of marque and reprisal were issued by the Continental Congress during the war. Privateers took as prizes more than 2,200 British ships… Including a couple of ships of the line.
The Framers didn’t expect the people to own F-15s… They counted on us to be able to own Iowa-class battleships.
Jump off a cliff joe.