We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns, see supra, at 54–55, and n. 26. But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

The above quotation is the last two paragraphs of the Court’s decision as written by Justice Antonin Scalia. If you read the entire decision, you’ll find that it is likewise brilliantly written with logic and reason which is unassailable. In contrast, read this portion of Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent:

The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy.

Hey, Stevens: The entire Constitution places limits on the tools elected officials possess to regulate and otherwise control the lives of the people. I find it hard to believe that this guy can say this and still be taken seriously as a judge on the Supreme Court. If he doesn’t understand what the Constitution is, how in the hell can he be charged with interpreting it?

As for the gun ban itself, it never accomplished what it was supposed to:

Although studies through the decades have reached conflicting conclusions, this much is clear: The ban, passed with strong public support in 1976, has not accomplished everything the mayor and council of that era wanted it to.

Over the years, gun violence has continued to plague the city, reaching staggering levels at times.

…

In 1977, the first full year of the ban, the city recorded 192 homicides. The total rose to 223 in 1981, then fell to 147 in 1985 – the lowest annual homicide toll in the District since 1966. At the time, the rate for the country also was trending down.

Which turned out to be the calm before the slaughter.

The advent of the crack market and the unprecedented street violence it unleashed nationwide sent homicide rates soaring in the latter half of the 1980s. Not only did the number of killings surge in the District, the homicide rates here also far exceeded the rates in crack-ridden cities where handguns had not been banned.

In the peak year, 1991, the District reported 482 homicides.

Almost as sharply as violence in the District increased, it declined through the 1990s, a drop researchers attributed to the burning out and aging of a generation of crack dealers and users. Again, the shift reflected national trends.

Yet the gun culture on the city’s mean streets during the crack epidemic has not abated, police statistics show. Even as the homicide toll declined in D.C. after 1991, the percentage of killings committed with firearms remained far higher than it was when the ban was passed.

Guns were used in 63 percent of the city’s 188 slayings in 1976. Last year, out of 169 homicides, 81 percent were shootings.

Reading the above article you’ll find that the amount of gun-related crime was influenced by factors other than how many guns were available. In fact, it seems that the factor most responsible for the amount of violence was the number of crack dealers and users. Further proof that it is people who kill people, not inanimate objects.

As logic suggests, gun bans do not stop criminals from using guns, nor does it stop gun violence. All gun bans do is leave the law-abiding defenseless against a group of criminals who know that their prey will have no way to defend themselves. Until the gun-grabbers realize that people are responsible for violence and crime, not inanimate objects, they’ll probably never understand. I’ll bet a lot of these “brain surgeons” blame their pencil every time they misspell a word.

So, fellow citizens, it is time to rejoice. In a time of uncertainty and apprehension, one of your most basic freedoms and rights has been affirmed and protected, the right to protect yourself and your family from those who would do you harm.

TASER electronic stun guns are a form of torture that can kill, a UN committee has declared after several recent deaths in North America.

“The use of these weapons causes acute pain, constituting a form of torture,” the UN’s Committee against Torture said.

“In certain cases, they can even cause death, as has been shown by reliable studies and recent real-life events,” the committee of 10 experts said.

However, the company that makes the TASER has a different take:

Four days after a United Nations committee declared that the use of Taser’s X26 stun gun by police amounted to torture, Taser has issued a strong response. In a release posted on its Web site today, the Arizona-based company claimed that the U.N. Committee Against Torture is “out of touch with the reality that confronts law enforcement officers every day worldwide.”

Taser’s statement criticizes the committee’s reference to “several reliable studies and certain cases,” none of which are specifically cited. And in a moment of brutal honesty, the company points out that every tool used by police officers, such as pepper spray and batons, would fit the U.N.’s criteria for torture—they cause “extreme pain.”

….

That’s because Taser’s devices aren’t really electrocuting their targets. The company refused to discuss the U.N. report with me, but as a company representative explained to me earlier this year—shortly before hitting me with the civilian-marketed C2—the raw voltage isn’t what incapacitates the target. After all, the battery on an X26 or C2 isn’t much bigger than what’s found in a standard digital camera. It’s the current-generated pulse that locks up your muscles, causing them to contract and release hundreds of times per second—the rapid-fire equivalent of one of those questionable muscle-stimulating, ab-zapping belts.

Unlike the effects of being electrocuted, the effects of the Taser wear off almost instantly once the device is turned off. I felt winded when the voltage was cut, but there was no lingering pain, no obvious residual contractions or convulsions. The only proof that I’d been hit, aside from the embarrassing video, were two tiny holes in my back, where the thumbtack-like barbs had penetrated.

So, let’s apply the facts above to a hypothetical situation:

You are a thief, and you are leaving the store you just robbed when a police officer suddenly appears and tells you to freeze. You look at the officer, and see that he has both a service revolver and a TASER available to him to take you into custody. Would you rather the officer fire his service revolver at you or fire his TASER at you?

Well, if the officer uses his service revolver, at the very least you’re going to loose a lot of blood and feel a lot of pain; at the most you will no longer feel anything. If the officer uses the TASER, you will be temporarily incapacitated until he stops the TASER, and then the officer will cuff you and haul you to jail, with any lingering pain gone before you reach the jail house.

However, if we were to follow the recommendations of the UN, the officer’s only choice would be to shoot you with his service revolver. So, in light of this hypothetical, do you really think the UN knows what it is talking about, or do they have their heads up their asses as usual?

As a means to incapacitate those people who refuse to cooperate with the police, and may be twice as large as the officer trying to subdue them, the TASER is perfect. It allows one 180 pound man to subdue a suspect who could weigh as much as 350 pounds easily and without undue risk to himself or others. It is no great logical leap to surmise that since the use of the TASER became widespread, a huge number of suspects are alive today because the officer had a choice other than his service revolver.

Of course, none of this means anything to the UN. They would rather protect the rights of criminals rather than the rights of the law-abiding citizen. It’s almost as if they were all Democrats…

Gov. Rick Perry said Monday that Texans who are legally licensed to carry concealed handguns should be able to take the weapons anywhere, including churches, bars, courthouses and college campuses.

“I think it makes sense for Texans to be able to protect themselves from deranged individuals, whether they’re in church, or whether on a college campus or wherever they are,” he said. “The idea that you’re going to exempt them from a particular place is nonsense to me.”

This is why I love living in Texas. Not only do we lead the country in the number of criminal executions year after year, but now the ordinary citizen will be able to protect their family against these criminals at all times. In a perfect world, the number of criminals shot by their packing victims would rise as the number of criminal executions would fall.

As usual, there are those who dissent:

But the comments elicited sharp responses, and Perry’s stance puts him at odds with a major political ally, the Texas Association of Business, over the right of employers to continue to ban firearms from their property.

“We’re not in the Wild West anymore,” said Tommie Garza of Houston, executive director of Texans for Gun Safety. “It (the governor’s idea) doesn’t seem like the sensible thing to do.”

Gun Control advocates always bring up the “wild west” whenever someone starts talking about the Second Amendment. They’re trying to evoke memories of shootouts in the middle of main street  with bodies strewn all over the place. However, the facts show that the exact opposite happens when guns are allowed.

Just remember: An armed society is a polite society.