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alice-tripp

“Firearms are the only manufactured product protected by the Constitution. You have no right to a car, house, job or television set. It was a way to feed yourself, a way to protect yourself. Just because you live in a house and turn on a faucet and water comes out, or you dial 911 doesn’t mean you won’t have to be your own first responder.” – TSRA Spokeswoman Alice Tripp in Law allows for antiquated process to find a gun owner [at houstonchronicle.com]

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46 COMMENTS

  1. ” You have no right to a car, house, job or television set.”

    So very wrong. On so many levels.

    People have EVERY right to own any thing in the world that is earned or produced, and not obtained by force – fraud or theft. Guns are simply one of those things, not some exception.

    • This. I was just about to post the exact same thing. Ma’am, I’d like to direct you to the 9th and 10th amendments.

      • Again, read the 9th Amendment. 9th Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

        I’d like to see some goobers drag Patrick Henry, John Hancock, Alex Hamilton, George Washington, Andy Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt etc off their horses and tell them it was a privilege bestowed up on them by the highway dept.

      • Ever hear of the 5th and 14th Amendments’ RIGHT TO PROPERTY, lady? We have a constitutionally protected right to our property. Jesus.

        • I’m pretty sure she meant that the Constitution doesn’t specifically protects those rights in the same manner as it does Firearms. Sure, we have the right to own those things, but its important that the Constitution specifically states the protection of your gun rights.

          She flubbed her words a bit. Give her a break. It doesn’t sound like she’s knocking 2A. How can you hate so hard on an cool old chick with the classy rifle like that?

      • You two are arguing past each other, from different premises.

        The right to property refers to the right to own, what you own, and, yes, it does predate the constitution.

        The right to property does not imply any obligation upon someone else to provide you with said property, however.

    • Bingo! There are too many government regulations (infringements) on things like owning you’re own home or driving your own car. The problem is, people today just accept the notion that a driver’s license and car registration equals safety. Further, property tax is about the most amoral tax around. Even if you own your land, if you don’t pay your yearly rent to the government, they have power to take it away from you.

      • Exactly! Plus the set the millage rate based on confiscatory predictions. Millage rate is a term straight out of the feudal system.

      • Marriage is another one of those.

        At one point, it was understood to be a holy union, now it’s not considered legit until the state gets their cut.

        Moreover, there’s also common law marriage. Where the state says “yeah, you’re not married, but I say you’re married, and I’m the state, so you’re married.”

        • Actually, this is a common misconception. In most (all?) states, for your relationship to count as a common law marriage, it requires that both partners act, live, and consider themselves as married. For example, you refer to each other as husband and wife, not boyfriend and girlfriend. You file taxes as married, etc. Absent evidence that you both have considered yourself as a married couple for some defined period of time, you are not legally common-law married and neither partner is afforded the protections/benefits a marriage brings with it (legally speaking). So for example you can be with your partner for decades, raise 5 kids together, etc etc. But if you always refer to them as your boyfriend/girlfriend/partner, always file taxes singly, etc in no state that I’m aware of would you be considered common-law married.

    • You inferred what she did not imply.
      I don’t have a right to a car. But I do have the right to buy any car I can afford provided I meet the legal requirements. Driving is a privilege.
      Housing is not a right either. No food.
      If these were “rights” then the government would have to authority to force others to provide them to you. This is actually how the left views healthcare. They believe the government has the right to force someone else to provide that service to you regardless the cost to the person or business being forced to provide that service.
      Second amendment rights are the only rights that are somehow inferior rights to those who seek to eliminate the second amendment entirely. They would rather we were like Mexico where only a powerful (and supremely corrupt) few have “legal” guns and the rest are left to fend for themselves against a growing, well armed criminal class.
      But then the left is usually on the same side of any argument as the organized crime 🙂

      • You made some valid points, but owning a car and driving it are not the same.

        Anyone can buy a car. A five-yr-old, a corporation or a trust can buy a car. Operating it on the public roadways is another matter.

        • As long as the car is the new playground for the 5 yr old, sure… But dont park it in your yard… your property tax may go up if the car is shown to be an improvement… you see what broad brush painting gets you??

      • Such convolutions. You don’t have a “right” to a gun you didn’t buy or manufacture either. But that’s what I took her to say… that guns were somehow different.

        I don’t usually even mention the word “rights,” since it is so badly misunderstood. I use the word authority instead, but it is equally hard for some folks to understand.

        Logically, you have a right (the authority to control) to your life and ethically acquired property. You don’t have any “right” to anything at someone else’s expense, or stolen from them.

      • “Driving is a privilege.”
        Really? So if say ‘pretty please’, jump through the right hoops & pay, I can drive? Goody, goody gumdrops! I’ve just been awarded a “privilege” by a govt bureaucrat. Thank you, sir!

        Interesting argument that the left believes cars, housing & food are rights & thus, “the government would have to authority to force others to provide them to you” and yet, “driving is a privilege.” If I acquire the raw materials, tools & other resources to build (or buy) a car & put gas in it, all at my own expense & with no help from the “gub-mint”, why is operating it ‘a privilege’? Because I should then be at the mercy of some unelected bureaucrat? I don’t think so. The myth that “driving is a privilege” should be dispelled forthwith, in my view. It could lead to a myth of “shooting is a privilege” and then only the people who are more equal than others may have it.

        Driving, as with shooting, may, but doesn’t necessarily, put others in danger, but that’s another discussion.

    • As much as you are well intentioned MamaLiberty, you are simply missing the point. While you do have a right to Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness, those rights are vague and intended to allow you the ability to gain those things through hard work and obviously money. So while you have many “things” protected in the bill of rights, Firearms are the only manufactured item called out and protected specifically….but you knew that already.

      • But Andrew… are you truly unable to see that all that is irrelevant. The “constitution” is irrelevant to the fact that each individual has the “right” to control their own life and property – all of it! That is inherent in being human and predates the “constitution” for as long as humans have existed.

        If you insist on framing it all with your “constitution,” then we’re talking about totally different things here. If you wish to be limited by that piece of paper, it’s no skin off my nose. 🙂 I’m not willing.

    • Nice cherry-picking the sentence out of context. Its clear to me she’s talking about Constitutionally protected rights.

      • Don’t you see that the “constitution” has nothing at all to do with your natural rights. The whole “bill of rights” is merely an attempt to prevent the central government from violating those natural rights that humans always have, regardless. And it is ultimately up to individuals and their voluntary associations to protect their rights.

        But whether this constitution was actually intended to violate those rights, or merely was not set up to prevent that happening… it is unfit to exist. Paraphrased.

        Look up Lysander Spooner for much more on that subject.

    • A reply to all comments in this thread.

      The constitution originally written assumes that inalienable human rights were obvious enough to not require being written. After that idea became an obvious mistake, the bill of rights was promised and amended into the constitution. The founders then likely assumed future generations would add rights in the form of amendments (think of women’s suffrage and the end of slavery).

      With enough support an amendment to protect car ownership could be added.

    • You really can’t be that dense. The article concerned ENUMERATED objects. And you have no right to your home unless you pay property taxes.

  2. “Just because you live in a house and turn on a faucet and water comes out, or you dial 911 doesn’t mean you won’t have to be your own first responder.”

    It doesn’t, but I pretty dang happy I have the option and that our predecessors saw fit to put that notion in the law.

  3. The article is behind a paywall. Can someone repost? The lede is a doozy:
    When Jim Pruett’s Guns & Ammo went out of business this summer, the owner surrendered to the federal government thousands of records related to every gun the shop had sold: sales logs and six-page forms, required by law, that contain information such as the purchaser’s name, age, race, residence and type of firearm.

    • That’s what happens to all of the form 4473’s and other records when you don’t renew your FFL.
      Box them up and send them to the ATF.

    • +1. I want that rifle.

      The funny thing is how many people get confused about rights. For instance I have a right to own a Ruger no. 1 but I have no right to own HER Ruger no. 1. So many people think both that they have a right to my money, and that I have no right to use my own money to buy a rifle, especially if it’s a scary looking one. Makes you wonder how we can be spending so much money on education and still so many people coming out of it with no sense at all.

      • Because, Gov. good sense and critical thinking are not part of the purpose of government ‘education.’ The whole purpose of government indoctrination centers called “schools” is to produce unthinking drones who will obey without question.

        Not actually working out too well producing the obedient drones, but they’ve done a hell of a job stamping out independence and critical thinking. sigh

  4. Nice rifle! Reminds me of a [supposedly] 8mm Mauser that a LGS posted on their Facebook page with a mannlicher stock like that. Kinda wish I had checked it out cause it really piqued my interest (no actual use for it other than I liked it). Haven’t found another pic online to match up to see what it really was, either (didn’t have any top wood or barrel bands that the normal K98’s have).

  5. The linked article is subscriber only.
    If the headline refers to the fact that it takes more than a little effort to track down the last lawful owner of a gun used in a crime, I’d say that’s not a bad thing. If it were easy, it would be de-facto registration.

  6. I’m not alone!

    I have our benevolent gov’t to provide for and take care of me, because I’m special and entitled everything I want.

  7. If you think you own your home, Stop paying property tax for it.
    If you think you own your car, stop licensing it, paying tax on it, insuring it and continue using it for it’s intended purpose.

    People can split hairs over the house versus the property it sits on.. But as long as the house is built on the property, it isnt going anywhere….Mobile home?.. It comes with title and registration fees
    and people can split hairs over a car and it’s intended purpose…If it’s yours.. you have no right to it,

    • We do have the right to acquire and keep anything that we acquire without force, theft, or deceit as another poster stated. Unfortunately our government routinely violates our right to property.

      In theory we have the absolute right to property. In practice government violates that right so flagrantly that it does not effectively exist.

    • Interesting you would bring up real estate taxes, which predate the United States by a thousand years or so.

      If you fail to pay those taxes, you will ultimately lose your property. But there is due process involved. In Illinois, a tax buyer must petition the court (after serving notice to the owner and all other lien holders) and obtain a court order for tax deed. And you can’t just buy a house for unpaid taxes, regardless what they say on the late night infomercials.

  8. “You have no right to a car, house, job or television set.”

    Yes, yes you do. As long as you didn’t steal any of those items, you have every right to acquire them and keep them.

  9. Of coarse there are those People who fight for Saudi Arabian Women to have the RIGHT to drive, while we here have to settle for the privilege to drive.

    Partially, because of the ignorance of people to see the difference..

    • Well, it’s no different than people who shy away from “dirty fossil fuels” and talk about “green” electricity.

      You mean the electricity generated by that coal plant… Or the one from the nature gas plant… You know, the nature gas we had to fracture the ground with water to procure… But, who needs water during a major drought when you have Brawndo, the thirst mutilator.

      Most people do not have a clue how the real world works.

      • “Most people do not have a clue how the real world works.”

        And a lot that do get labeled as loonies or crackpots by those that subscribe to the political horse puckey du jour.

  10. The right to own and/or bear arms shall not be infringed. Nor anything else she listed for that matter.

    However, others do not have the right to have the government forces your time, money, labor and skill to provide those same items to them. The only thing that comes close to that is the 6th Amendment, since the individual right to proof one’s innocence of an accused crime necessitates providing “an impartial jury of the State”, which requires monopolizing other individual’s time to appear on a jury.

    Not that the sentiment has been faithfully upheld though.

  11. Not true. Knives and baseball bats and anything that can be used as a weapon. Even long pointy things.

  12. The Second Amendment does not protect firearms as a manufactured product in any way. What the Second Amendment reaffirms and protects is the universal right to use force to defend oneself, one’s family, and one’s liberty. “Keep and bear arms” is the wording because even in our founders’ day, arms were the superior means of exercising force in human conflict, as they remain today. The Second Amendment is our founders’ way of stating that the people share the right to use force, and equal force at that, with our government in resolving conflict and fighting tyranny whether external or internal.

  13. Consider the phase…”that AMONG these (rights)…”. We have many rights that are not enumerated in the DoI and the constitution. All of them are protected.

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