THE DIRE STATE OF CIVILIAN CITIZEN ARMED SELF-DEFENSE IN THE “DIRE STATE” OF NEW YORK AND ELSEWHERE IN THE NATION
The Arbalest Quarrel commends Ammoland Shooting Sports News for posting three recent back-to-back articles that highlight the nature of the problem plaguing exercise of the fundamental, unalienable, non-transitory, absolute right to civilian citizen armed self-defense.
The problem rests on a peculiar mindset of Anti-Second Amendment jurisdictions that perceive the armed citizen as a scourge rather than as an effective solution to intractable violent crime in those jurisdictions.
Two of the articles are authored by F Riehl, Editor in Chief of Ammoland. One, posted on March 5, 2025, is titled “Report: Notorious NYPD License Division Drags its Feet on Gun Permits.” The second, posted one day later, on March 6, 2025, is titled “More Gun Owners Take NYPD to Court Over Concealed Carry License Delays.”
Both articles draw attention to the notorious New York State handgun licensing scheme.
The March 6, 2025, article cites an AQ paper, posted almost three years earlier, on May 27, 2022, indicative of a continuous and stubborn matter affecting the NYPD and, by extension, a matter negatively impacting Americans residing or working in New York City who desire to exercise their fundamental, unalienable, natural law right to keep and bear arms.
Only through the carrying of a handgun can these Americans ensure their life and safety, navigating an unpredictable and often hostile environment that New York City poses.
The AQ article, as posted in abridged format in Ammoland, is titled “Corruption & Unfairness Plague The NYPD Firearms License Division.”
The AQ paper published in unabridged format as an essay is available for viewing on the AQ website, under essentially the same title, “Corruption And Unfairness Plague The NYPD Firearms License Division.”
The paper was published in AQ on April 13, 2022. That paper is one of a series of essays serving as an exposé of problems attendant to New York City’s “Concealed Handgun Carry” schema.
Even after the U.S. Supreme Court in the third landmark Second Amendment case NYSRPA vs. Bruen struck down the “Proper Cause” standard—which had been in force for decades and which had led to summary and illegal denial of thousands of applications for concealed handgun carry licenses—the NYPD hasn’t let up.
Since the NYPD License Division can no longer easily and casually deny issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses outright, it now resorts to a tactic long in use and designed to frustrate Americans’ exercise of their right to armed self-defense: NYPD License Officers deliberately or negligently delaying, the final resolution of applications for handgun licenses.
The State Handgun law requires processing of firearms applications within 6 months of filing. A six month wait is too lengthy; yet, the License Division often delays its decision, to grant or deny issuance of a license far beyond that six month period, without providing a written explanation to the applicant, explaining the reason for the delay. And, importantly, such delay, regarding the applicant, can only be for “good cause.” Yet that written explanation often goes wanting.
This dismissive attitude demonstrated by the NYPD License Division, involving a serious matter—one’s exercise of his fundamental, unalienable right to armed self-defense—is unconscionable and unconstitutional. Yet this occurs with regularity.
NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (4-b), sets forth,
Processing of license applications. Applications for licenses shall be accepted for processing by the licensing officer at the time of presentment. Except upon written notice to the applicant specifically stating the reasons for any delay, in each case the licensing officer shall act upon any application for a license pursuant to this section within six months of the date of presentment of such an application to the appropriate authority. Such delay may only be for good cause and with respect to the applicant. In acting upon an application, the licensing officer shall either deny the application for reasons specifically and concisely stated in writing or grant the application and issue the license applied for.
The NYPD License Division routinely delays final action on an application well beyond the six month deadline. This might be due to administrative inefficiencies, or there might exist a more sinister reason for non-compliance with deadlines——
The State Government’s long-standing antipathy to civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms (going back to the dawn of the Republic), and its ability—since the advent of handgun licensing—to effectively engage in delaying issuance of licenses helps explain the City Government’s disheartening, lackadaisical and callous attitude toward handgun license application processing and extends to the processing of rifle and shotgun permits as well, which New York City code also requires, even though the State doesn’t require a permit to own and possess a rifle and shotgun that isn’t “semiautomatic” in operation.
How can the Governor’s Office and the NYC Mayor’s Office so easily, mindlessly shirk their obligation under the law of New York?
The Government is able to evade its obligation for lack of any penalty attaching for bad cause or no cause delay in processing applications. And how can that be? Could the State Legislature in Albany have forgotten to include a penalty for non-action on an application against a police department when the Legislature drafted NY CLS Penal § 400.00. That defies belief. This lack of a penalty provision in the Handgun Statute must be deliberate.
For renewal applications, State law establishes rigid deadlines for the filing of all such “renewal” applications yet leaves to the licensing authorities the power to craft their own deadlines when submitting new applications for handgun licenses, along with supporting documents for those applications.
Applicants must adhere firmly to policy directives when applying for a handgun license for the first time. These policy directives have the force of law. And a New York licensing official will not accept an excuse for failure of an applicant to comply fully with every policy directive, and to respond truthfully in response to every question and to be honest in every declaration made.
Failure to provide all necessary documentation as requested (i.e., demanded) by the licensing officer results in summary rejection of the application. And false statements can subject the applicant to criminal liability and prosecution.
Renewal applications, unlike first-time applications, fall under NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-b). Failure of timely recertification operates as an automatic revocation of one’s license.”
All licensees shall be recertified to the division of state police every five years thereafter, except as otherwise provided in paragraph (d) of this subdivision. Any license issued before the effective date of the chapter of the laws of two thousand thirteen which added this paragraph shall be recertified by the licensee on or before January thirty-first, two thousand eighteen, and not less than one year prior to such date, the state police shall send a notice to all license holders who have not recertified by such time. Such recertification shall be in a form as approved by the superintendent of state police, which shall request the license holder’s name, date of birth, gender, race, residential address, social security number, firearms possessed by such license holder, email address at the option of the license holder and an affirmation that such license holder is not prohibited from possessing firearms. The form may be in an electronic form if so designated by the superintendent of state police. Failure to recertify shall act as a revocation of such license. If the New York state police discover as a result of the recertification process that a licensee failed to provide a change of address, the New York state police shall not require the licensing officer to revoke such license.
See also NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-d). The date for recertification of a license issued under NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (2) (f) is three years from the last date of issuance.
NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-d) provides,
Licenses issued under paragraph (f) of subdivision two of this section shall be recertified or renewed in the same form and manner as otherwise required by this subdivision, provided however, that such licenses shall be recertified or renewed every three years following the issuance of such license. For licenses issued prior to the effective date of this paragraph that were issued more than three years prior to such date, or will expire in less than one year from such date shall be recertified or renewed within one year of such date.
And, for failure to recertify a license for a “semiautomatic rifle,” a person faces punitive penalties as well as revocation of his license and faces summary denial of any future license for any kind of firearm.
NY CLS Penal § 400.00 (10-c) sets forth,
A license to purchase or take possession of a semiautomatic rifle as defined in subdivision two of this section shall be recertified to the applicable licensing officer every five years following the issuance of such license. Failure to renew such a license shall be a violation punishable by a fine not to exceed two hundred fifty dollars, and such failure to renew shall be considered by the licensing officer when reviewing future license applications by the license holder pursuant to this chapter.
AQ must emphasize here that the problems attendant to handgun licensing are not to be ascribed to rank and file police officers. They don’t craft police policy. They don’t enact laws. They carry out official edicts that come from their superiors. The problems with handgun licensing in New York therefore stem from the laws that legislators pass and the policies that high Government officials craft to turn those laws, rules, codes, and regulations into operational policy directives.
In New York City, the Police Commissioner sets the policies of the Department. The Commissioner is appointed by the Mayor of the City, and is beholden to him and, will, as is invariably the case, accommodate the Mayor, by instituting policies that adhere to the Mayor’s personal beliefs toward firearms and to the Mayor’s personal predilections concerning civilian citizen ownership and possession of firearms.
The New York City Police Commissioner’s sentiments will also cohere with those of the Governor. This means that the Police Commissioner’s policies will reflect Governor Hochul’s and Mayor Adam’s antipathy toward those citizens who seek to carry a handgun in public, for self-defense.
Keep in mind that, that the New York City Police Commissioner is not elected by the people and is not, therefore, answerable to the people.
Traditionally, the mayors of New York City and the State’s Governors vehemently oppose the arming of civilians. This is reflected in State firearms laws and local rules, codes, and regulations, which are themselves reflected in the policies of the NYPD Department.
County Sheriffs unlike municipal Police commissioners are elected by the people of the respective counties. Many of the Counties in New York are predominately conservative-oriented and have a strong belief in the sanctity of the right of the people to keep and bear arms as codified in the U.S. Constitution.
Those sheriffs—consistent with the will of and attitudes of their constituency—do not share the sentiments views of municipalities that are controlled by Democrats, who vehemently oppose the arming of civilian citizens.
Corruption, endemic in the upper echelons of the NYPD, which can trickle down to the lower echelon leadership, is not the same thing as bad law and bad policies that lend themselves to corruption, although the two often go hand-in-hand. Bad law entices corruption.
Corruption in the NYPD is at the moment de minimis to the extent we can infer—likely due to prominent and negative Press coverage.
But the possibility of corruption is always close where Government officials and rank and file officers, too, wield inordinate power, where opportunity for great ill-gotten financial gain (bribery) exists, and where one’s feelings of grandiosity can incubate. In the NYPD license Division, there once was a time, and not that long ago, when officers working in the Division wielded essentially absolute discretion in the awarding of coveted concealed handgun carry licenses.
The old proverb, “absolute power corrupts, absolutely” remains is no less true today than it did back in the Nineteenth Century when the British Politician Lord Acton first coined the proverb.
The discretion of Government officials must be constrained. The human appetite for power, especially rampant in Government is insatiable. If not constrained, then the courts must step in. But, the courts, too, wield inordinate power. Judges and magistrates are no less immune from feelings of superiority, and that superiority is often reflected in biased orders and legal opinions.
The U.S. Supreme Court realizes all of this, and has acknowledged the problem in Bruen. Bad laws and policies lend themselves to an atmosphere where corruption may flourish.
Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito know this well. Through a perusal of their many rulings, their strong love toward our fundamental rights, especially the right of the people to keep and bear arms, has consistently shone forth. Their judicial opinion on Second Amendment issues is clearly established. They have never wavered on their adoration of the Bill of Rights and, especially, the Second Amendment.
So, too, had the late eminent Justice Antonin Scalia long strove to strengthen the eternal right codified in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. It is left now primarily to Justices Thomas and Alito to rein in the rambunctiousness of callous States and municipalities that go astray.
For the worst sacrilege to our Nation founded as the only truly Free Constitutional Republic, involves devolving into Tyranny. This is not only possible or probable, but a certainty if a citizen’s right to armed self-defense is weakened to the point of becoming de facto void.
This would occur if those elements operating in every institution of this Country would have their way, and their say, in this. And they have worked methodically and tirelessly for decades to destroy the natural law right to armed self-defense.
If that right goes, the rest of the Bill of Rights and the entirety of the Constitution goes with it.
Many journalists and academicians have, in the last few years, feel emboldened in their call for abolition of the Second Amendment, and strict reining in of the First.
They openly express their disdain for our Constitution, and they deny the idea that “natural law” rights preexist government. They believe that natural law rights like any other right or law is a manmade construct to be ignored, rejected and annulled when whim or circumstance, as they see it, dictates.
They believe the time is now at hand to dismantle the Bill of Rights and to rewrite the rest of the Constitution, the Articles, both of which they detest.
Where the natural law right to armed self-defense, and freedom of expression, and association are attacked, the Republic teeters on disaster. One sees this occurring in States and localities run by Marxists. They have always existed in the Nation—albeit often resting dormant, lurking in the shadows. Lawlessness and corruption follows them wherever they.
Corruption in New York (and particularly, in New York City), became problematic with the inception of handgun licensing, over 111 years ago with enactment of the “Sullivan Act,” in 1911.
The sponsor of the Sullivan Act, a Democrat Party Politician and New York State Senator, Timothy Daniel Sullivan—referred to by various mobster-like identifiers, including “Big Tim,” “Big Feller,” “Dry Dollar,” and the “King of the Bowery”— was, himself, a corrupt politician—a powerful political leader of New York City’s influential “Tammany Hall” machine. See, e.g., story in historynet.com and article in NY Irish History.
Thus, New York’s handgun licensing regime came into being. Through the passing years and decades, this licensing regime would become more and more extensive, convoluted, and bloated.
The application of the “Proper Cause” standard to the Sullivan Act in 1913—which gave essentially absolute discretion to handgun licensing officers—allowed for the inception of corruption in the issuance of coveted handgun carry licenses.
This “Proper Cause” standard was the signature achievement of those who loathe the natural law right to armed self-defense. The addition of “Proper Cause” to the Sullivan Act in 1913, became the impetus for the development of an increasingly oppressive, handgun licensing scheme, crafted to undermine the exercise of the fundamental right to civilian citizen armed self-defense.
The New York Courts were keenly aware of this legal blemish, but lamely allowed it to continue, instead of striking it down as they should have done. In fact, these New York Courts strengthened “Proper Cause,” ruling it lawful and constitutional, and stamping that finding in stone, with their official judicial imprimatur.
They opined, rationalized really, that, if an applicant for a concealed handgun carry license was aware of abuse of discretion on the part of a licensing official, he had recourse available to him. He could simply appeal, to the courts, the refusal of the licensing official to issue a handgun carry license to him, thus securing “due process.”
All this is well and good, but the standard the State Courts have adopted to reverse a decision of a licensing official—a finding of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct on the part of the licensing official—rests on the applicant to demonstrate.
The applicant must prove, to the Court’s satisfaction, that the licensing official has abused his discretion. The burden of proof to substantiate “abuse of discretion” on the ground of “arbitrary and capricious” conduct falls on the party asserting it.
Proof of “abuse of discretion” is a difficult burden to bear—and, therefore, one very rarely sustained. Moreover, filing a Court action is an expensive, tedious, time-consuming process, and a psychologically debilitating ordeal.
Understandably, it is one that few applicants for a handgun license, including the coveted concealed carry license is able or willing to bear. Most applicants simply give up.
They surrender to the sad reality that they will never be able to effectively defend themselves against a life-threatening assault, whether that assault is random or planned. Either one is a distinct possibility in New York City.
But this result—forsaking one’s quest for a handgun license—is precisely what the New York Government wants and what it expects to happen.
With enactment of New York’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” (CCIA) on July 1, 2022, the Hochul Government crafted an adequate if not, to its liking, an ideal replacement for “Proper Cause” after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that standard.
The State now uses a bolstered “Good Moral Character” standard to defeat substantial numbers of applications. And State licensing authorities, like the NYPD, simply continue the unlawful, and certainly unethical, practice of delaying issuance of concealed handgun carry licenses—for a lengthy stretch of time, as if waiting six months weren’t long enough. See New York Statute provisions, supra.
Such deliberate defiance of U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the State’s constant insufferable actions undertaken to frustrate the issuance of handgun carry licenses has led to a plethora of lawsuits being filed in Federal Court.
Now, well over two and a half years since the Bruen decision came down the pike, a satisfactory resolution to the Hochul Government’s illegal actions continues to remain elusive, awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court whether to grant or deny Petitioners’ Writ of Certiorari in the New York case, Antonyuk vs. James.
A THIRD RECENT AMMOLAND SHOOTING SPORTS NEWS ARTICLE
On March 7, 2025, a third article dealing with the problem plaguing exercise of the right to civilian citizen armed self-defense in New York City appeared in the Ammoland Shooting Sports News website.
Authored by NRAHQ, titled “CPRC: The Many Ways Concealed Carry Permitees Enhance Public Safety,” the article makes a solid case for national concealed carry reciprocity.
The NRA mentions notable Second Amendment scholars such as Gary Kleck and John Lott whose work supports the inference that persons who lawfully carry have “defended themselves or others from a criminal attack.” This assertion contradicts the erroneous claim perpetuated by “gun control proponents that continue to insist that concealed carrying has no public safety benefits and that lawfully armed civilians simply escalate the risk to first responders and others nearby.”
We, at the Arbalest Quarrel, find it serendipitous that the March 5 through March 7 articles have come out on Ammoland Shooting Sports News at a time when AQ has been strenuously engaged, in the last few months, researching matters most acute to the sanctity and, indeed, the survival of the fundamental, unalienable right of the people to keep and bear arms, in the years and decades to come.
Back in early 2013 when AQ commenced operation, writing first on the New York Safe Act, we knew the issue of the constitutionality of “firearms licensing” would need to be dealt with by the U.S. Supreme Court. For no other “device” has served Anti-Second Amendment proponents better than utilization of licensing schemes to undermine a citizen’s natural law right to armed self-defense.
We knew that, after the seminal Heller case, the legality of state licensing of firearms would have to be addressed head-on. And the Bruen case only made this realization plainer.
Another crucial issue to be addressed pertains to the concept of “Public Safety” in relation to the concept of “(Armed) Personal Safety.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul and other Anti-Second Amendment Governors constantly harp on the need to provide for “Public Safety.”
Yet, these same Governors fail miserably at providing this thing, “Public Safety,” if we grant that ensuring “Public Safety” is truly a concern of these Governors at all.
We have our doubts, given rampant violent crime that continues unabated, due to a lax criminal justice system and the lack of a necessary complement of police and the handcuffing of police who do serve but are unable to maximize their ability to protect both themselves and their communities due to a plethora of Governmental Progressive/Marxist idealogues infesting so many States and localities.
More to the point, these Anti-Second Amendment political leaders never mention “Personal Safety”—whether armed or otherwise—in their discourse. We find that both odd and disturbing.
Might it be that these politicians don’t recognize the import of “Personal Safety,” or the reality of “Personal Safety” concerns? Or, perhaps, they simply and tacitly subsume the concept of “Personal Safety” into the concept of “Public Safety,” and presume, albeit erroneously, that, one, these concepts are co-extensive when they aren’t, and, two, that, because the State takes upon itself the obligation to provide, through its Tenth Amendment Police Powers the role of both protector of society as a whole and protector of the individual members of it, there is no need for the citizen to take that responsibility upon himself by keeping and bearing arms for self-defense.
Apropos of the latter false belief, the State argues that the armed citizen—far from serving a worthy purpose by being armed—compounds the problem that the State refers to as “Gun Violence.”
This idea is ludicrous in the assertion, and dangerous to the security and well-being of a Free Constitutional Republic, grounded on the sovereignty of the American citizenry over Government.
Why ought not the two, “Public Safety” and “Personal (Armed) Safety,” be seen as complementary, working in tandem and in harmony with each other and not in marked opposition to each other? There is no logical antithesis between the existence of the armed citizenry as the protector of a “Free State,” and a State’s obligation to provide for public safety, but for the State believing the two are in opposition.
ON the other hand, the State may be well aware of the falsity of the proposition, but, nonetheless, feels the need to cajole or seduce the target population to accept as self-evident true that the armed citizen poses an inherent threat to the State.
State Governments led by Progressive/Marxist leaders perpetrate and perpetuate the lie through continuous, incessant campaign of noxious psychological conditioning and mind control directed to the public. Through repetitious spouting of the nonsense they hope to hypnotize the public into accepting the lie as truth.
The public, so conditioned to accept the lie, becomes a zombie force, a useful tool, operating on behalf of the State to disavow and dissolve the armed citizenry.
One then comes to the realization that the State isn’t fearful of an armed citizenry as a criminal element in its own right, compounding “Gun Violence” the State seeks to contain, but, rather, is fearful of an armed citizenry that recognizes encroaching—incipient—tyranny the State has come to embrace and therefore intends to destroy lest the citizenry rebel against and topple that tyranny.
The import of and success of the American Revolution at the hands of the armed citizenry would likely invade the thought processes of the Tyrant who feels a need to prevent a brewing rebellion against that Tyranny. Is the NRAHQ for one, aware of this?
See “CPRC: The Many Ways Concealed Carry Permitees Enhance Public Safety.” Id. Supra. The NRAHQ writes,
Since 2007, the percentage of adults with carry permits has increased by about threefold. This exponential growth in permits and permitless carry coincides with “a general linear decline in rates of violent crime offenses. Violent crime fell from 4.77 per 10 million people in 2007 to 3.64 per 10 million people in 2023, a 24% drop.” The rise in lawful concealed carrying alone isn’t likely to be responsible, given the complexity of what drives changes in crime rates, but at the very least this shows there’s no “obvious positive relationship between permits and crime.” Additional details and studies are available in the CPRC’s amicus brief filed with the United States Supreme Court in the NYSRPA v. Bruen case.
The brief points out that the “debate surrounding the Second Amendment sometimes includes a simplistic, false dichotomy which can be summarized as: Guns versus safety.” The opposition to national public carry laws frames this as expanded public carry has no public safety benefits and will only intensify violent crime. Citizens, so the rhetoric goes, may have either guns or safety, but not both. If the gun control doomsayers were right about law-abiding citizens carrying in public allegedly fueling “the gun violence epidemic,” Baltimore, where lawful carry was until recently all but impossible, should have been the safest place in America. [emphasis our own]
A Tyrannical State doesn’t give a damn whether the armed citizenry correlates with reduction in violent crime or not. Given the laxness of Progressive/Marxist State officials attitude toward “Gun Violence” or Criminal Violence committed by any other means, due to the prevalence of psychotic and psychopathic members of criminal gangs and international cartels, infesting our Country.
And given that the Tyrannical State devotes much of its time, money, and energy constraining the average, responsible, rational, law-abiding citizen from keeping and bearing arms—rather than directing its attention to the hardened violent criminal and the psychotic maniac—we know wherefrom the Tyrant’s anxiety springs, and that anxiety does not arise from the psychopathic killer or rabid maniac.
Note: The phrase, “Guns versus safety,” that the NRAHQ utilizes, we refer to as “Personal (armed) Safety” versus “Public Safety.” (We will deal with this matter in detail in a future article).
Why should some States treat the two safety considerations as legal polarities?
We have explained, above, our explanation for this. Such appears to be the case when a government views the citizenry with suspicion. Suspicion directed to the populace is a feature of authoritarian and totalitarian governments.
It is also a feature of those free republics that turn one hundred and eighty degrees toward tyranny.
Despotic regimes view the armed citizenry as an inherent danger to that regime’s supreme power and authority.
Governmental leaders that espouse Political Progressivism, a.k.a. Marxism, are Despots. They exude despotism. They feign concern for the well-being of the populace.
The concern is always for “groups,” when viewed conveniently in the abstract, but Progressives demonstrate a noticeable lack of concern for individuals in the concrete. This is a point made by Victor Davis Hanson, “Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.” He is spot on.
Recall the failure of Joe Biden and his Director of DHS, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Progressives in Congress who would never bother to mention or recite the names of innocent female Americans, brutally raped and murdered by psychopathic illegal aliens.
Yet these same Progressives/Marxists incessantly exclaim their concern over the welfare of millions of illegal aliens—failing to mention that these people—having broken our immigration laws, by entering our Country illegally, have no lawful right to be in our Country at all.
The ill-will of Despots toward the safety and well-being of individual citizens is expressed in the policies they craft and implement. And Progressives/Marxists are all onboard with this. But why is that?
It has everything to do with exerting control over the thoughts and actions of the citizenry, and little if anything to do with their safety, security, and well-being.
These Despots demand conformity, compliance, and blind obedience—a citizenry reduced to lassitude and impotence. The millions of illegals—who are looking for handouts, free housing, free medical care, free meals, and free education for their young—realize the boon they receive from a Government and become willing servants to that Government, that they may continue to receive handouts. They are freeloaders.
They become an underclass that, in sheer number—and yes—can serve to replace the American citizenry, who, steeped in adoration of our Constitution and natural law rights, are a difficult, obstinate force to control. Most Americans realize that, under the previous Administration, millions of illegals were encouraged to enter our Country and the Biden Administration spent, in the four years of their awful rein, to expend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on illegal aliens, to buy their allegiance. The entry of millions of illegals into our Country wasn’t the result of simple incompetence. No! It was by design. A majority of the Electorate, aware of the Biden Administration’s treachery, elected Donald Trump to clean up the mess.
But our Country doesn’t belong to a treacherous Government. The Government is the servant of the American people, not its master. The Government, be it State or Federal, as run by Despots, see this, and are frightened by what they see.
An armed citizenry is an omnipresent threat to the power of Despots.
There is, then, no tenable concept of personal safety, not really. For that requires a Despot to acknowledge the sanctity and inviolability of the individual.
IF THE “INDIVIDUAL” HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE, THEN “PERSONAL SAFETY” HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE EITHER.
THE CONCEPT OF “PERSONAL SAFETY”—ARMED OR NOT—IS THEN DEVOID OF VALUE. A ready-made subservient caste, composed of millions of illegal aliens, has no need for, or understanding of, Personal Safety as a concept that comes within. They look instead to the Government Despot to provide all the “Safety” they need. And the Despot obliges them. The Despot methodically, inexorably moves American society toward a new societal construct—one grounded on “Collectivism,” and not “Individualism.”
IN A SOCIETY GROUNDED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM, THE CONCEPT OF “PERSONAL SAFETY” NOT ONLY HAS MEANING, BUT IS AN ESSENTIAL FEATURE OF, AND A SALIENT FIXTURE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF INDIVIDUALISM. IN A SOCIETY GROUNDED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF COLLECTIVISM, ON THE OTHER HAND, “PERSONAL SAFETY” IS VIEWED AS AN ABERRATION.
“Personal Safety” is a broad-based concept. It is one that embraces “Personal ARMED Safety” but gun control zealots abhor this latter concept and even harbor doubts about the former, GENERAL “Personal (UNARMED) Safety” if that is to mean the individual is ultimately responsible for his own survival.
Under COLLECTIVISM, the INDIVIDUAL has no purpose and no reality other than his service to and as a member of the GREATER WHOLE—THE GREATER COLLECTIVE.
Collectivists prefer to “SAFETY” in the context of “Public (COMMUNAL, i.e., COLLECTIVE) Safety”—as provided solely by and as both a RIGHT and DUTY of the State Government.
Governor Hochul and others believe that the State alone, through operation of its “Police Powers,” possesses the right to promote and provide for the Safety of the community, and this extends to the individuals of the community as well—hence, personal safety, as such, becomes, at best, merely a function of public safety, but otherwise has no independent reality—AS APPLIED TO THE PROLES—THE MASSES.
When the State does a satisfactory or, at least, adequate job providing for the well-being of a community, as a whole, i.e., promotes and provides some modicum of “Public Safety,” that will suffice to appease some members of a community—those who don’t reflect on the need to provide for their own personal and effective safety, which only the keeping and bearing arms can provide. They happily let the police provide for their safety, not realizing the police don’t have a duty to ensure the safety and security of anyone, except in very narrow, defined circumstances.
POLITICAL “PROGRESSIVISM A.K.A. “MARXISM” ADHERES TO THE PRECEPTS AND TENETS OF COLLECTIVISM, NOT TO THE PRECEPTS AND TENETS OF INDIVIDUALISM.
The Progressive/Marxist “elites” have a narrow, compartmentalized view of PERSONAL SAFETY, as a thing a thing intrinsic in themselves, GOVERNING RULERS. They are aware of the need for “Personal Safety” for themselves, but, since they can afford to hire armed security for themselves and their families, or derive security from the Government itself, as GOVERNING RULERS, they bear a dismissive attitude toward those Americans who, unlike themselves, are not so well-off and who are not RULERS. Most of us must provide for our own effective Personal Security, and that entails keeping and bearing arms ourselves. We are our own private security, then.
See the two AQ articles posted on Ammoland Shooting Sports News dealing with the fact that the Government has no duty or obligation to protect any individual American.
Plainly, the duty to provide for the well-being of the community does not extend to or imply a duty or obligation to provide and ensure the well-being of any particular member in that community.
Most Americans don’t realize this, and the Press, for its part, that detests the armed citizenry, no less so than the Progressive/Marxist politicians, avoids any mention of the limited role of the police in our society.
And the politicians don’t bother to enlighten the public about this incontrovertible truth either. For, if they did acknowledge the truth, the public would either demand that the police ensure the life, safety, and well-being of the individual—which is impossible—or accede to the individual’s demand that he keep and bear arms for his own defense—a right that is his intrinsically and eternally.
But many Americans don’t believe that they, as individuals and citizens of the United States, do have a fundamental, unalienable right to keep and bear arms that is not subject to lawful constraint by the State. And many Americans believe that Government has a right and duty to constrain exercise of the right, which they perceive as manmade, not natural law.
One of our articles on the concept of ‘sovereign immunity’ as applied to the State, is titled, “The Government Cannot Protect You! You Must Protect Yourself!”, posted on August 6, 2020. Another article on the subject of sovereign immunity is titled, “Can We, As Individuals, Rely On The Police To Protect Us?”, posted on November 26, 2019.
Public Safety, crafted into policy, is really a manifestation of a State’s exercise of its Tenth Amendment “Police Powers.” But what happens (as is the case in many a State now) when that State shirks its right and obligation to protect the community to such a degree that the State’s failure to provide for the safety of the community, generally, becomes noticeable to the life, well-being, and safety of the individual members of it?
What happens when the members of a given community come to the nightmarish realization that their individual (personal) safety and security are at enormous risk and the police are nowhere to be seen because there aren’t enough of them to effectively provide for the welfare of the community, or they find their hands tied, preventing them from doing their job.
Ineffectual Governor Tyrants like New York’s Kathy Hochul, and Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, and New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Illinois’ JB Pritzker, and California’s Gavin Newsome, and Maine’s Janet Mills, and so many others like them, perfunctorily refuse to uphold the sacred, inviolate right of the people to keep and bear arms, to secure their Personal Safety, from predatory beast, and from predatory man, and from the predatory man-beast of Government, even as these Governors fail miserably to promote “Public Safety” which they point to incessantly.
These Governors are, of course, MOST CONCERNED over what they perceive as the threat posed by the armed citizen, who may well need to protect himself from them—these Governors—AS THE INCARNATION OF THE MAN-BEAST OF GOVERNMENT.
The exercise of a State’s “Police Powers” in a feigned (plainly dishonest) desire to promote “Public Safety” under the auspices of the Tenth Amendment ought not be at odds with a citizen’s exercise of his fundamental right to keep and bear arms to ensure his “Personal Safety” under the fundamental, unalienable right as codified in the Second Amendment.
Yet, the two are perceived by gun control politicians as competing antithetical notions or, otherwise, these gun control politicians use their image makers and the Press and media to create the illusion that the concepts of PUBLIC SAFETY and PERSONAL SAFETY are antithetical and incompatible; or, that the LATTER IS SUBSUMED IN THE FORMER, and THE TWO ARE TO BE PERCEIVED THEN AS EQUIVALENT, OR AN AMALGAM, under the auspices and control of the Government alone.
Or perhaps it is the case that the Government chooses to treat the LATTER AS UNREAL, AN INSUBSTANTIAL SPECTER, THAT SIMPLY DISSOLVES AWAY INTO THE AETHER. And there would be a reason for Government to presume this and to induce the public to presume this as well.
FOR, PERSONAL SAFETY including PERSONAL (ARMED) SAFETY is embodied in the concept of PERSONAL ARMED SELF-DEFENSE, in the absence of which a FREE REPUBLIC and a SOVEREIGN CITIZENRY cannot continue to exist. We, Americans, must see that the RIGHT TO ARMED SELF-DEFENSE DOES CONTINUE TO EXIST AND THAT THE REALITY OF IT AND THE NEED FOR IT BE FIRMLY IMPRESSED IN THE PSYCHE OF EVERY AMERICAN.
This is the ground upon which our fight exists. This is the ground upon which we, as the only truly Free People on Earth, must draw a clear and firm line in the sand.
FORTHCOMING IN THE ARBALEST QUARREL
In future articles that we are presently working on, the Arbalest Quarrel will deal in depth with the concepts of “State Police Powers,” “Personal (Armed) Safety,” “Public Safety,” the relationship between “Public Safety” and “Personal Safety,” State “Firearms Licensing,” Permit-less Concealed Handgun Carry, and the import of the concept of ‘Citizen,’ and the ever-present danger of Tyranny of government.
All these concepts and issues play an enormous part on the continued viability of the fundamental, unalienable right to civilian citizen armed self-defense and have a decisive impact on whether and to what extent we, Americans, can retain a truly free Constitutional Republic in form and substance as the Founders of our Nation intended.
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