Preliminary Glossary Of Terms
Epigenetic Inheritance - the trans generational delivery of behaviors learned by the experiences of previous generations through what are called “epigenetic tags.”
The Human-Weapon Relationship - the anthropological fusion between human need, human activity and the development of the individual instrument of lethality.
The Three Levels Of Judicial Scrutiny - When the constitutionality of a law is challenged, both state and federal courts will commonly apply one of three levels of judicial scrutiny.
The level of scrutiny that's applied determines how a court will go about analyzing a law and its effects. It also determines which party -- the challenger or the government -- has the burden of proof. (Find Law / Snider)
Strict Scrutiny - This is the highest level of scrutiny applied by courts to government actions or laws.
The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that legislation or government actions which discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, and alienage must pass this level of scrutiny to survive a challenge that the policy violates constitutional equal protection.
This high level of scrutiny is also applied whenever a "fundamental right" is being threatened by a law, like the right to marriage.
Strict scrutiny requires the government to prove that:
-There is a compelling state interest behind the challenged policy, and
- The law or regulation is narrowly tailored to achieve its result.
Intermediate Scrutiny - The next level of judicial focus on challenged laws is less demanding than strict scrutiny. In order for a law to pass intermediate scrutiny, it must:
Serve an important government objective, and
Be substantially related to achieving the objective.
This test was first accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 to be used whenever a law discriminates based on gender or sex. Some federal appellate courts and state supreme courts have also applied this level of scrutiny to cases involving sexual orientation.
As with strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny also places the burden of proof on the government.
Rational Basis ReviewThis is the lowest level of scrutiny applied to challenged laws, and it has historically required very little for a law to pass as constitutional.
Under the rational basis test, the person challenging the law (not the government) must prove either:
The government has no legitimate interest in the law or policy; or
There is no reasonable, rational link between that interest and the challenged law.
Courts using this test are highly deferential to the government and will often deem a law to have a rational basis as long as that law had anyconceivable, rational basis -- even if the government never provided one. This test typically applies to all laws or regulations which are challenged as irrational or arbitrary as well as discrimination based on age, disability, wealth, or felony status.
Superficial Position - remedial, banal intellectual assessment; along with the associated communication from this level of mental activity.
The Force-Adequate Weapon (FAW) - The Genie Is Out of The Bottle and We must stay EQUAL with it.
Self-Preservation Via Self Defense (SPVSD) - Ultimately, like the belief in indivudual rights themselves, the belief in SPVSD is an individual choice. In the end humans usually either chose a life where, at any point, they will surrender their rights to the state, under the difficulty and pressure of what it takes to uphold it.
The Self-Defense Spectrum
Self-Preservation - “The protection of oneself from harm or death, especially regarded as a basic instinct in human beings and animals.” (Oxford)The Natural Law Tradition
Libido Dominandi - The will to power; the desire to dominate; the lust for government.
Microlithica - “the common field of tiny bladed tools, especially of the Mesolithic era, usually in a geometric shape (such as that of a triangle) and often set in a bone or wooden haft.” (Mirriam-Webster)Threat To The Right
Anglocentrism - “Anglocentric ideas, attitudes, or behaviour; a tendency to regard English culture, society, or language as pre-eminent.” (Oxford)Martial Awareness - In Japanese, known as “Zanshin”, it is the inherent, instinctual, ancient capacity inside of human perceptive capacity to call upon a maximum level of sensory input processing in order to deal with threats to the individual. Not an analogue to paranoia.
Incrementalism - “a policy or advocacy of a policy of political or social change by degrees; gradualism.” (Mirriam-Webster) (examples of incrementalism)
The 21st Century Gun Owner
Weapons Anthropology
Rider Of The Right
Liberal Gun Owners
Liberal Gun Owners is a Non-Profit Organization who is professionally engaged in the following two endeavors:
1. We provide structure and leadership for our online discussion community. LGO creates and maintains a continuing, respectful discussion experience so that members of our community can be free to contribute and develop a stronger relationship with both firearms, and with each other, outside of the typical gun culture morass. For the online liberal gun owner, there exists a consistent stream of legitimate threats to enjoyment, to the development of advancing thought, and to personal security when attempting to engage in firearms discussion online. These threats originate from both the left and the right side of the American political spectrum. Liberal Gun Owners provides our forum members with the required space and the required monitoring required to have constructive firearms discussion. In addition to this, we also provide time and some financial contributions towards professional legal services when our members are being harassed or stalked online.
As one of our primary commitments, Liberal Gun Owners will continue in this endeavor, in order to make sure that the future holds harbor for anyone (of our proximal sensibility) who may desire a closer relationship to the firearms ownership tradition. We will build on this foundation and increase the opportunities for our online community to engage in the firearms experience at a more mature, more enjoyable level than what the remainder of gun culture provides. This service is the result of a decade’s worth of consistent work and provides an underserved aspect of the firearms community with the ability to gain education, enjoyment, and solidarity through online interaction.
2. Through our recently established professional efforts, Liberal Gun Owners has now solidified a sincere core leadership team, a solid organizational development team, and our own cultural think-tank in order to provide a fresh, unique, 21st century approach to firearms ownership. The basis of our organizational philosophy stems from a lifetime of experience by those who constitute Liberal Gun Owners leadership. We have concluded that, in the ultimate assessment, the justification for engaging in firearms ownership is the purview of the individual and constitutes the individual’s statement about the place of individual rights in society. There exists no ultimate power of justification for any individual right, which includes the right to Self-Preservation Via Self Defense, inside the world of positive law or established government. Our statements as an organization come from a shared philosophical core - a representation of the varied range of leadership and developmental members who have contributed the most effort into the founding of Liberal Gun Owners. It does not represent the robust stretch of philosophical variation that is consistently expressed inside of our online forums. The organization’s fundamental view is summarized as follows:
A. That Self-Preservation Via Self-Defense (SPVSD) and the Self-Defense Spectrum, (along with the modern Force-Adequate Weapon’s role within this spectrum) are unassailable components of fundamental, individual rights.
B. That Self-Preservation Via Self-Defense (SPVSD) extends, in obvious fashion, towards defense against collections of people: mobs, governments, standing armies, etc.
C. That the ultimate bestower of individual rights is not government or positive law, but the hearts and minds of competent individuals themselves. We live within a social fabric and within a structure of law, and we accept the responsibility of working within those constructs. However, neither of those constructs are the bestower of individual rights.
D. That simple access to firearms, by those who are incompetent, is a sincere, continuing issue and one that is underserved by both our system of law and by gun culture itself.
E. That evolution inside of gun culture and the depoliticization of gun-related issues are paramount for both the mitigation of gun violence and the preservation of the firearms right through the 21st Century.
F. That the evolution required inside of gun culture should necessarily include the mitigation of the preponderance of propagandized thought, bigotry, and the elimination of large-scale, cultural propaganda production by the National Rifle Association.
G. That these eliminations require both the gun industry and gun culture itself to cease the provision of cover for these elements.
H. That one of gun culture’s greatest weaknesses is its inability to adequately represent scientific thought, academic thought, and advanced cultural authorship. As such, it offers no adequate bulwark against the overwhelming tendency of the scientific and academic communities to automatically associate gun ownership with deviance. 21st Century Gun Owners must increase their development and use of reason and intellect.
I. That a person can believe in the unassailable aspect of Self-Preservation Via Self-Defense (SPVSD) while they simultaneously have a sincere concern for the greater social fabric. That, simply put, a person can believe in the unassailable aspect of firearms AND believe in the social safety net, civil rights advancements, a woman’s right to choose, protecting the environment, public approaches to increasing mental health etc.
J. That, with vigor equal to their firearms passion, gun owners need to avail themselves to the realities of gun violence, domestic violence, and gun related suicide, in greater society, in order to become more active in solutions, and fulfill their responsibility as 21st Century Gun Owners.
In order to support our philosophical beliefs, Liberal Gun Owners has now begun a full and diverse professional strategy in order to enact our view, and take responsibility for our role in the greater society.
Primarily, each year, our think-tank and leadership will provide a published report on 21st Century Gun Ownership from our unique philosophical lens. You are currently reading the seminal volume in that effort. Included within each annual volume will be an assessment of a major aspect of gun violence, along with our recommendations for actions towards mitigation. When information and recommendations are needed mid-stream of the composition of each volume, we will post information and recommendations on some of our platforms. In addition to our future analysis and publications, Liberal Gun Owners has begun to create essential networks with people in the following areas:
The greater gun culture
The academic world
The scientific world
The world of law
The world of specialized security
The world of school administrative culture
The world of mental health professionals.
We expect the list of connected fields to grow in the years to come.
Liberal Gun Owners firmly believes that the NRA and their supporters are officially underserving the Second Amendment by isolating gun culture from the surrounding world through divisive and isolating behaviors . The NRA follows a strategy of combativeness while the simultaneously project cultural propaganda - painting the entire left side of the political spectrum as dangerous extremists. As such, it is incumbent upon The 21st Century Gun Owner to create new, fresh networks within gun culture itself to work against this reality. It is also incumbent on us to create strong networks with the rest of society. Our assessment is that the access to the unassailable aspect of SPVSD will not survive the 21st Century while the leading voice in gun culture (The NRA) operates as a machine of cultural propaganda and runs an “Us Versus Them” strategy. If the uber progressives want to run that game as well, we say, “let them.” The 21st Century Gun Owner needs to rise above it all.
Currently, we feel that our greater community can access the Liberal Gun Club if they require more assistance with hands-on training and community events. In the future, we will engage more with our greater community with such endeavors. Lib-gunners can always self-organize under their own banner and have community shoots. Liberal Gun Owners has recognized the above two endeavors as our priorities and we will support The Liberal Gun Club, where we can, to provide training and collective shooting for the lib-gunner community.
Individual Consideration / Social Fabric Consideration
21st Century Gun Ownership
Liberal Gun Owners observes that the representative language and concepts involved in mainstream American gun culture have now become irreversibly enmeshed with dogma and propaganda. While it is apparent that many people involved in the more visible aspects of gun culture, and of the gun industry are not themselves perpetuating many of the negatives, their lack of cultural sensibility lends to providing cover for a preponderance of low human behavior at the base. It has been incumbent upon us to view gun ownership with fresh eyes and to lend some innovative language to the experience. Our choices in language will not be perfect language. Our choices in concepts will not deliver perfect conceptualization. However, we believe that our choices will definitively lead to our own unique track for analysis and expression. It is this track that we feel will prove to be of exceptional value to the 21st Century Gun Owner.
We hope that others can benefit from some of our conceptual innovations and benefit from the intellectual space that they may lend. One of our many conclusions is that the typical language, and superficial viewpoints inside of gun culture are underserving the right, to the point of being counterproductive. Liberal Gun Owners observes that this counterproductivity of language is wending its way into the herd of legitimate threats to the future of firearms ownership in America.
It is our hope is that our contributions will find greater minds than our own, and that they will vault new activity that forces gun culture to evolve into a greater level. We conclude that the improvement of logic, reason, and conceptualization is paramount to gun culture evolution. And as we have previously stated, we do not believe that the access to the right, in its truest form, will survive the 21st century without significant evolution in the culture.
Before entering into the referral of the standard concepts of positive law…the American gun culture experience… (the Bill Of Rights, The Second Amendment etc.), we feel that it is critical for others to know our philosophical relationship with The Natural Law Tradition and/or our relationship to the fundamental concept of self-defense within the context of nature. Liberal Gun Owners will not now, nor ever start our consideration for the justification of firearms ownership at positive law. We begin our considerations within the combined lens of individual reason, heart, and instinct. Liberal Gun Owners believes that our basic observation of the continuing ills of society, followed by our well-labored conclusion that self-defense (in the 21st Century) is a valid or necessary pursuit, and is its own, ultimate validation. In our view, if a human being is either engaged in or considering self-defense practices, they should not be subjugating their own view to the view of the masses or any governing body. Our opinion is that, if your first consideration in firearms ownership is one of fear of reprisal from the population, or a body of law or governance, you should stay clear of the foundation of firearms ownership. As a gun owner, if your baseline perspective is consistently molded and changed by the consideration of what politicians and non-gun-owners are doing and saying, you are in the wrong culture.
At the core, firearms are an intense, serious matter. We are glad that our culture has been able to develop platforms for enjoyment and learning around that core. We embrace and honor the practice of sport and hobby ourselves. We do not see a future for gun ownership without the continuance of the more basic aspects of the American firearms tradition. However, Liberal Gun Owners concludes that the heart of American firearms ownership is not and the foundation of the American example of the right, is not about sport and hobby. While we embrace and practice sport and hobby ourselves, and see sport and hobby as an essential, irreplaceable part of modern gun ownership, these aspects do not possess enough strength to stabilize the most critical aspects of the right. These aspects are not about enjoyment. They are about life and death.
The Natural Law Tradition
The Three Prongs Of The Second Amendment
The entire soul of The Bill Of Rights was born out of The Natural Law Tradition, which again places inalienable, natural rights, the human experience, and the individual in a superior position to positive law and man-made systems like government. The embracing of the right to self-preserve via self-defense was excruciatingly common at the time of the framing. Largely fed by the reality of the early American frontier and the early rural American experience. The belief was so common that great debate was had over whether or not this aspect of the right should be included in an effort of enumeration, officially. Of course, at the time, there were opposing views - just like today. However, in our view, this extreme commonality is the reason why there is no direct language about self-defense in the amendment. What matters greatly in this consideration is the revolution in consciousness that was responsible for the push for liberty that created the United States. The extensive effort to stand up for natural rights was only common amongst a select sub-set of Americans that brought forth the overall innovation. When we say that the embracing of Self Preservation Via Self-Defense was common at the time of the framing, we mean, mostly, among the consciousness of the innovators and Patriots. The direct embracing of SPVSD is not something that the majority of humans consider on a day-to day -basis, even with it being in the most essential slot imaginable. If most people where pushed to fight for their most essential rights, beyond the threshold protest and voting, they would not. They would resort to the choice that leads to the least amount of effort possible, and to exceptional compromise - which usually means leaving the responsibility and leaving essential rights to the mercy of the state. The Natural Law Tradition, which is the fabricator of the very thread woven into the Bill of Rights, presumes, with almost comedic obviousness, that self-preservation via self-defense is a given. It was called “The first Natural Law” by… Self-Preservation Via Self-Defense is the “no duh!” of The Natural Law Tradition.
The reason why we see the militia accentuated in the amendment is because there was a great debate over the handling of the national defense. There was strong sentiment at the time of the framing which placed a standing army as the primary threat to individual liberty. If you combine the Natural Law Tradition, the “no duh” underpinnings of self-preservation via self-defense, and the philosophical struggle over the means of defending the new nation, you have the true essence of the Second Amendment.
We find it helpful to split the essence of The Second Amendment into the follow aspects:
The First Prong Of The Second Amendment
The entirety of The Bill Of Rights was born out of The Natural Law Tradition, which places inalienable, natural rights, the human experience, and the individual in a superior position to positive law and man-made systems like government. The embracing of the right to self-preserve via self-defense, was excruciatingly common at the time of the framing. The belief was so common that great debate was had over whether or not the right needed to be enumerated officially. Of course, at the time, there were opposing views - just like today. In our view, this commonality is the reason why there is no direct language about self-defense in the amendment. The Natural Law Tradition, which is the fabricator of the very thread woven into the Bill of Rights, presumes, with almost comedic obviousness, that self preservation via self-defense is a given. It was called “The first Natural Law” by… Self-Preservation via Self-Defense is the “no duh!” of The Natural Law Tradition.
The reason why we see the militia accentuated in the amendment is because there was a great debate over having the national defense handled by a standing army vs. state and local militias. There was strong sentiment at the time of the framing which placed a standing army as the primary threat to individual liberty. If you combine the Natural Law Tradition, the “no duh” underpinnings of self-preservation via self-defense, and the struggle over defending the nation via militia ora standing army, you have the true essence of the Second Amendment.
The Two Tiers Of Gun Ownership
In order for Liberal Gun Owners to be able to deal with the firearms experience properly, we have found the need to set up new language and new, basic models for communication and consideration. Please note that the ultimate goal of our thought process is to strengthen gun ownership and protect the road to the right through the 21st Century. We are not creating new delineations in order divide and weaken gun culture. We are creating new delineations in order to protect gun culture from its primary enemy: itself. In our view, there is no true bulwark against threats from the non-gun-owning world with gun culture operating as it currently does. We cannot even begin to hope to educate the non-gun-owning world while the leading cultural voice, the NRA, approaches society in a combative fashion. Gun culture is also much more segmented than most are aware. As such, Liberal Gun Owners feels that it should be a priority to stabilize the situation with a new core of gun owners who are evolved enough to both deal with internal and external threats. We like our new terminology because we feel it gives an honest view of the situation, and can lead people away from using terms like, “Fudd” etc. The new delineations should also serve to clarify the reality that there are MANY gun owners who, out of immaturity and poorly researched perspectives, are toxic towards gun culture evolution - event though, they themselves believe that they are bringing evolution or strength to the culture. The unfortunate reality is that there are a significant amount of gun owners who have a superficial understanding of the right and they are just as much of a threat to individual liberty as anyone else.
Our model for gun ownership is simple. There are two tiers to the model and each tier has a shadow element associated with it. The shadow elements of each tier represents a portion of gun culture which presents immaturity and poorly researched perspectives.
Tier 1 Gun Owners
The Human-Weapon Relationship / Human-Weapon Anthropology / Combatting The Gun Culture Monolith
In humans, an extraordinary amount of behaviors, instincts, beliefs and activities have been carried forward from our ancestral state to our modern state. The Human-Weapon Relationship is one example of such a phenomenon. We feel that including this concept in the assessment of gun ownership is important. It is important because it gives us the beginnings of a proper sociological and anthropological baseline for communicating to the non-gun-owning world. It can further enhance our efforts to both understand our own relationship to firearms and to express the merits of the relationship. Culturally, sincere negatives need to be eliminated from our equation. Otherwise, there can be no evolution. Liberal Gun Owners does not believe that the path to the firearms right will remain clear without evolution in gun culture. We feel that it is important to highlight for our community, and for the general firearms community, that bigotry and monolithic, tribal behavior is obviously and sincerely interwoven into the tapestry of mainline gun culture. Some of the greatest negatives inside of mainline gun culture are absolutely tied to an underlying Anglo-centrism. This evolving version of Anglo-centrism is not the same brand that was practiced during the time of the establishment of the Bill Of Rights: out and out denial of firearms rights to the African American, etc. It is a mostly, covert, cultural Anglo-centrism. It can present an openness to minorities, women, and the gay community, but on the basis that their views match or subjugate towards the symbols and philosophies of the existing, gun-culture-monolith. A monolith, incidentally, that has, for the time, captured control of the culture. It does not, however, hold a majority. The cultural split inside of mainline gun culture remains to be seen. The entirety of gun culture is complex and segmented, despite appearances.
The American contribution to the Human-Weapon Relationship, through its embracing of the Natural Law Tradition (vis-a-vis The Bill Of Rights), is an essential contribution to modern society. In the view of Liberal Gun Owners, the support of individual rights and of The Natural Law Tradition, by The 21st Century Gun Owner, obviously needs to be continued. At the same time, we observe that the most longstanding forbearer in our relationship with firearms is our critical, ancestral relationship to advancing projectile weaponry - which we can start to highlight approximately 70,000 years ago in Africa. The impact that projectile weaponry had on human evolution, and on the ancestral psyche (carried forward to the modern psyche) cannot be overstated. Whether weapons are perceived as a positive or negative, their presence is powerful. The impacts on society are enormous. The presence of The Human-Weapon Relationship, in history, has been exceptional.
Liberal Gun Owners will continue into the future with our hypothesis that our current desires for individual weaponry have a direct connection to the impact of advanced microlithica on early Homo Sapien dominance. There is tremendous, untapped, informational support for the Human-Weapon Relationship in understanding our desire for firearms as a function of this entire, valid history. We will not endeavor to cover the history in this report. However, segmenting and disconnecting the true thru-line of the Human-Weapon Relationship is something that we believe is a weakness in gun culture. This weakness is exploited by both the anti-gun left and the pro-gun right. They both unknowingly leverage the lack of Human-Weapon Anthropology to enhance untruthful, superficial perspectives in their respective subcultures. They can do so because the scientific community, the academic community and the political class fail to adequately validate the reality of the Human-Weapon Relationship in public.
Certainly, mainline gun culture subconsciously eschews the greater history of the Human-Weapon Relationship because, in order to embrace it, they would have to defeat their own Anglo-centric tendencies. In order to embrace the truth, they would have to evacuate all anti-intellectual, bigoted, and Evangelical influences from their base, because they would have to embrace the following concepts:
1. Based on the archeological record, it is reasonable to conclude that the development of advanced microlithica, and its role in early Homo Sapien dominance, was either equally essential to or more essential to human history than the firearms protections afforded by The Bill of Rights. This means that America was potentially less vital to the Human-Weapon Relationship than Africa.
2. That, at the time of this critical development and activity, everyone involved was black. And that, not only do we all evolve from these same people (who were black), but our precious relationship and love for firearms comes directly from the ancestral experiences of these people as well - all of whom were black.
Our succinct statement is this: whether it be overtly or covertly, perceiving and promoting gun-culture in an Anglo-centric lens is officially hurting the path to the right of gun ownership in America. We have been observing gun culture, intensively, for over ten years at the point of this writing. Many Latinos, many African Americans, many women, and many of those who are in the gay community actually have to struggle and strive more diligently to find support for their firearms relationship. This is due to the realities of the Anglo-centric, gun culture monolith. There is, officially, too much ignorance, political fomentation, puerile mentalities, bigotry, misogyny, and Anglo-centrism being broadcasted from baseline gun-culture. The baseline reality of general gun culture underserves the place of the right in American society and threatens the access to the right in the 21st Century, for all. They are also threatening the path to the right for themselves.
When disconnecting the Human-Weapon Relationship’s history at the timeline point of the Revolutionary War, gun culture cuts off or challenges the potential for future gun owners and takes away increased avenues for those in both the scientific community and the academic community who would be open to further understanding the Human-Weapon Relationship within the light of reason. The anti-intellectual and bigoted threads in the gun culture tapestry combine with the reactivity of intellectual arrogance inside of the academic and scientific world to create a cultural Chinese Finger Lock. In our opinion, it is this finger lock that needs to be undone for the benefit of American society. The tension that now exists between political extremes is too great. There needs to be a movement towards the middle. This is also true as it relates to gun culture. We cannot, necessarily, influence the academic and scientific communities, but we can influence gun culture. Dealing with the inherent, Anglo-centric monolith is critical, we feel, for those who ACTUALLY care about the right and want to keep the pathway to it clear in the future.
Relative Case Law
Our view on the school shootings phenomenon
Overall recommendations for liberal gun owners: gun culture and school shootings
Overall recommendations for non-liberal gun owners: gun culture and school shootings
Overall recommendations for citizens: school shootings
Our message to liberal gun owners and center / left gun culture
Our message to center to right gun owners
Our message to the Gun Industry and the Gun Establishment
Commentary:
The critical sentiment at the time of the framing:
The evidence of history overwhelmingly supports the continuing inability of governments to prohibit themselves from continuing to abuse the rights of the individual citizen. If the popular technique of old was overt and egregious then the popular technique of today is covert and incremental. The inability of the government to show forbearance is still obvious, none-the-less. Due to this fact, it should remain an element of sincere consideration, in the minds of the people, in perpetuity. In the current reality, holding to the ability to observe this evolving, advancing form of power abuse is a critical service to humanity. It should be incumbent upon those who are able to keep vigil over the matter, regardless of political affiliation. The same applies to the corporate world, as, at this point, the fusion between the state and corporate interest makes discernment between the two almost impossible.While Liberal Gun Owners believes that intellect, cultural activity, and the proper use of financial pressures are currently the most effective weapons against the encroachment of the shadow upon individual rights, we also are not deaf to the lessons of the past. The spirit of the time of the framing of The Bill of Rights, dictated to the future, in obvious fashion, that history not only justifies firearms in the hands of the competent civilian, it justifies, clearly, Force-Adequate Firearms. As we endeavor through the 21st century, it is vital that we keep ourselves within a balanced viewpoint, somewhere between hope and caution. Like our ancestors carrying fire into the cold uncertainty of the future, so too should we work to carry with us the spark of courage, the spark of reason, the spark of goodwill, the spark of hope, the spark of caution, the spark of warnings heeded, the spark of our Martial Awareness and the spark of our Force-Adequate Weapons.