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May 14, 2012 · By Bob Ellis · 7 Comments
South Dakota Gun Owners recently sent out a mailer about the weak responses of South Dakota Dist. 35 House candidate Jack Siebold.
Siebold is running as a Republican, but when I checked out his website after receiving his mailer a week or two ago, I began to wonder if he might be running in the wrong party. I saw statements on his website like “I will not allow a single issue to define me” and “I will not go into a debate with a closed mind, on any issue, on any position” and such. He also pooh-poohed surveys and scorecards–the kind that expose liberal politicians–as well as pledges for such things as not raising taxes or upholding values.
This is the kind of wishy-washy, leave-myself-room-to-wiggle-out-later spineless talk we’re used to from liberals (in both parties), not real Republicans. Real Republicans have investigated and researched the issues, thought them out, and as a result they know what they believe and why they believe it. Real Republicans don’t have a problem taking a position on an issue because they usually know what’s right and what’s wrong, as well as what works and what doesn’t. Only RINOs and Democrats feel the need to pretend to be “open minded” and “moderate” and “mainstream”…so that they can vote–or spew empty rhetoric–with however the popular winds seem to be blowing.
Then I read the candidate evaluation for Dist. 35 candidates by the South Dakota Liberty Caucus and found more of my suspicions confirmed.
Now this mailer (below) comes, and I see more evidence that, unlike fellow candidates Don Kopp and Chip Campbell, Siebold seems weak on one of the most important issues in American politics.
I see that Mr. Siebold has a statement on his website claiming of South Dakota Gun Owners:
The group is upset because I don’t believe guns belong in churches, schools, city parks, restaurants and libraries. Churches? If we need to carry guns in these places then we have a bigger problem than an argument over whether 2nd Amendment rights are absolute.
Mr. Siebold’s diatribe against the South Dakota Gun Owners (with whom I don’t always agree) sounded a whole lot like the childish preening of so-called lawmakers in the South Dakota Legislature who said outright that their primary reason for voting against a good gun bill was to “punish” a gun rights group–a group that has exposed the poor gun record of many of their RINO buddies in the past. If Mr. Siebold sounds like a RINO already, even before being elected, what might he sound like once he was securely in a legislative seat for the next two years?
Apparently Mr. Siebold needs to pay a little more attention to headlines and current events (an important requirement for someone seeking public office). If he did, he would know that, yes, even in church, being armed can be very important to defending the innocent from bloodthirsty evildoers. Christ said to turn the other cheek to a personal affront, not allow a lawbreaker to kill you or to allow the innocent to be slaughtered.
About the only problem bigger than those who would interfere in the right of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves in churches, schools, city parks, restaurants and libraries is the moral problem in this nation. Somehow, however, I get the impression from Mr. Siebold that he would be like most RINOs and pooh-pooh the moral rot going on in our society, the same moral rot that is making churches, schools, city parks, restaurants and libraries dangerous places because we are teaching children and people of all ages that they are nothing more than highly developed animals, that there are no moral absolutes, that morality and public life have nothing to do with each other, that we should not teach school children right from wrong, that the Ten Commandments and the Bible are “outdated, and that notions of “right and wrong” are “primitive” and “outdated” and only for “Bible thumpers.”
There really is no good reason to restrict a law-abiding citizen’s Second Amendment to keep and bear arms. Law abiding citizens tend to obey ALL the laws, and so are not a threat or danger to anyone. Lawbreakers, on the other hand, tend to break whatever law interferes in what they want to do. So if they want to carry a gun into a restaurant, city park, church or where ever in order to commit a crime, gun laws are going to restrain them about as much as wet toilet paper.
But gun restrictions will ensure that law abiding citizens are unarmed and ripe victims of the violent lawbreaker. As much as a violent lawbreaker might want to do harm to someone else, do you imagine he might think twice (or maybe three or four times) before bringing a weapon into a church, city park, or restaurant to do violence…if he reasonably suspected there might be two or three law-abiding citizens there who were packing—and would take him down before he could do as much harm as he’d like…long before police could ever arrive or even be dispatched (I’m former law enforcement–I KNOW how long it can take to get a unit on scene–an eternity, if your life hangs in the balance).
No, we don’t need elected representatives making our laws who will, like those of the past session, use our Constitutional rights as a plaything to punish those who cross them or who refuse to kiss their ring. We also don’t need people making our laws who don’t understand some rather fundamental differences between law-abiding citizens and lawbreakers…or how invaluable a few seconds (and a few armed good men) can be in a pinch.
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"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the party over to the so-called moderates wouldn't make any sense at all." - Ronald Reagan, Nov. 10, 1964 |
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