I’m sending the following to Colt, Smith & Wesson, and Sturm Ruger. One letter isn’t going to affect their corporate policy, so I would hope that this gets sent to them by hundreds of thousands of angry gun owners; maybe then they will listen. At the end, should you choose to do this, I have included their mailing addresses. ~ Neal Ross
To Whom It May Concern:
I am, not only a customer who has either purchased, or shot the products you manufacture, I am also part of what you might call the gun culture of America; an individual who was raised around guns, taught proper safe handling skills, and learned how to shoot at a very early age. Firearms are as much a part of my life as my fingers and toes, or the knives and forks I use to eat my meals, and I am distressed at what is, and what has been happening to my right to keep and bear them.
In 1816 Thomas Jefferson drafted a letter to Charles Yancey in which he said, “...if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. the functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. there is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information.”
Jefferson was speaking of a free press, but it is the press today that is working hand in hand with instilling fear over the private ownership of guns in an effort to whittle away at our right to do so, and the bear them in defense of our lives, property and liberty.
This effect is worsened by the fact that our school systems have become socialist indoctrination centers that do not teach history and civics, they teach that government is their master and that patriotism is obedience to authority; and since they are not taught about the intent and purpose of their rights, that obedience often lead to them adopting and supporting measures that violate those rights.
People today think that their right to own guns is so that they can sport shoot or hunt; that it is the duty and responsibility of the police to protect and defend us against criminals; both the civilian and elected kind. In the Supreme Court Case of Warren v District of Columbia the court held that law enforcement is under no obligation to protect the people. Yes, they will respond to calls for help; but as people often say, “Cops are minutes away when seconds count.”
In 1772 Samuel Adams wrote, “Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can–Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.”
As a Law of Nature it is transferred down from one generation to the next and cannot be violated or infringed upon without the grossest of injustices being done to our ability to defend and protect ourselves, our property, and our liberty. Yet beginning in 1934, with the passage of the National Firearms Act, our government began a steady course of nibbling away at that right; a bit here, and another bit over there.
Now we live in a country where the entity created by the will and consent of the people; (and this is true in regards to both the federal and the State governments), requires that we register our guns with them, that we pay fees to purchase them, that we require a permit to bear them for our defense, that we cannot own certain types of guns, that we undergo a background check before being allowed to exercise that right, and now they are attempting to enact a nationwide policy of confiscating the guns from people who MIGHT commit a crime with them.
In Jefferson’s 1774 response to the Coercive Acts, he wrote, “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.”
That is the course government, at both the State and federal levels, has taken; the path which leads only to slavery for the American people; for what are slaves if they are not those who do not have the power to resist those who would deny them their essential freedom and liberty?
The 2nd Amendment was not written so that we could hunt and target shoot, it was written to preserve to us the means of fighting those who would reduce us to utter servitude and bondage through arbitrary laws that deny our liberty and our rights.
In 1833 Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote a comprehensive explanation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In his Commentaries on the Constitution Justice Story says this about the 2nd Amendment, “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”
Various court rulings since have held that our right to own arms is not limited by the 2nd Amendment, and cannot be limited by those who have the power to make our laws.
In 1846 the courts held, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right.” (Nunn vs. State)
In 1859 the courts held, “The right of a citizen to bear arms, in lawful defense of himself or the State, is absolute. He does not derive it from the State government. It is one of the “high powers” delegated directly to the citizen, and `is excepted out of the general powers of government.’ A law cannot be passed to infringe upon or impair it, because it is above the law, and independent of the lawmaking power.” (Cockrum v. State)
Finally, in 1878 the courts held, “To prohibit a citizen from wearing or carrying a war arm . . . is an unwarranted restriction upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of constitutional privilege.” (Wilson v. State)
The 2nd Amendment has not been modified, or amended, since it was ratified in 1791; the ONLY thing that has changed is how little people know about both it, and its purpose; to put the people on an even footing with any army their government might rise up to oppress them.
Our founders and framers often spoke of a standing army, and federal sheriffs; which we have an abundance of in the form of DEA agents, BATF agents, FBI agents, and all the other federal and State bureaucracies that write and enforce a multitude of laws and regulations upon we the people.
My point in providing this bit of historical background is the cause you, as the companies which produce the arms we supposedly have the right to keep and bear, to think about what is happening to our right to do so. I know you are businesses, and businesses require a profit to survive. However, you are also Americans, and the laws being written affect you just as much as they do me.
I cannot speak for you, but if I were the CEO of a company that manufactured firearms, and I saw the my government was enacting laws which denied my civilian customers right to keep and bear the arms my company produced, I would halt all sales of those arms to any government, or its subsidiary entities; such as the military, federal bureaucracies, and yes, even law enforcement.
If the people are to be restricted from owning those types of weapons, they by God the government should not be allowed to own them either! After all, government was created by the people, through their consent, and if the 2nd Amendment was written to provide the people with the means to resist tyranny, then as CEO of an arms manufacturing company, I’d do all that was in my power to make sure the playing field between tyrants and freemen was even.
Just a thought from a concerned citizen; but if you have been paying attention to what has been happening in States such as Virginia, South Carolina, Kentucky and Idaho, it would seem that I’m not alone in my concern over the governments steady encroachment upon my right to keep and bear arms.
I don’t know if you’ve given this any thought, but if things continue to progress on their current course, and if these infringements upon our right to keep and bear arms continue to their natural conclusion, (the complete ban of private ownership of arms), then YOU will lose a huge portion of your customer base, as only the government will be allowed to buy the weapons you manufacture.
So if you don’t care about the fact that the 2nd Amendment is under attack, at least look at it from the perspective of how it affects your profit margin and take a stand against these attacks by halting all sales to those who write these laws, and those who enforce them.
Thank you for your time,
As Promised, here are their mailing addresses:
Smith & Wesson Corporation
14500 N Northsight Blvd
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc.
200 Ruger Road
Prescott, AZ 86301
Colt Manufacturing Company
P.O. Box 1868
Hartford, CT 06144