INTRODUCTION

The nexus of gun rights and public safety is a giant area of consideration. This is an area that requires a lifetime of dedication to grasp adequately. Because, ultimately, we are addressing the place where man-made law superimposes over natural law. We are looking at the place where positive human behavior butts into criminal behavior. Assessing this juncture has been a complex and difficult venture for an entire, centuries-old legal system. It is no different for a small, sparky-yet-humble gun organization. Human violence has never been, nor is it now currently solvable. Gun violence is not currently solvable. These problems are mitigable. The negatives are improvable. This is the reality. Any notion or subtext from a citizen, activist, politician, organization or media source that expresses complete and ultimate solutions to gun violence will end up being a hurdle or distraction in the effort to actually deal with the phenomenon in American society.  This part is important for us to accentuate: in American society. While we certainly need to be open to information and solutions that other countries have come upon, and while we certainly need to be open to embracing outside ideas that can be used to improve our own society, and while we certainly do track the shadow involved in our often abusive notion of exceptionalism, we, ultimately, are not supposed to be, nor should we strive to be as other countries. The Bill Of Rights, whether a citizen understands it or not, is the only legally bound, legitimate representation of natural rights protections on the planet - even if our system often serves it poorly. We can and often do possess a robust list of grievances towards our own country. At the same time, we realize the importance of The Bill Of Rights, and believe we must continue to better understand and support it. We want to make it clear that Liberal Gun Owners, the organization, is officially inside of the social effort to address schools shootings. It may not be in the manner in which others agree with, but we are here and committed none-the-less. We believe that we can hold strong to the Second Amendment and be effective towards gun violence. In our view, in America, this is the realistic, most mature approach.


There may have been legitimacy to the claims that the NRA was a necessary bulwark up until recently. But now this arrangement in our culture is officially dragging us down with it. The American bulwark to the Second Amendment is now a boat anchor tied to our ankle. Relative to the school shootings, it is not the fault of the NRA or guns in society, directly. The problem is that the NRA is exceptionally poor as the communicator between a truer heart in gun culture and the rest of American society. It advertises itself as the truer heart. It is not. The uber-hyped version of American gun-patriotism is being sold as a product, and the rest of gun-culture is being propagandized to believe that this has to be the dominant force in gun culture. Using our favorite term, we are officially stating that this is bullshit. As liberals, we are not stating that we own the heart of gun ownership. We are not stating that by a longshot.  The heart of American gun ownership is not a liberal or conservative phenomenon. It's an American phenomenon. observe that gun culture is much more than the NRA and its 3 million supporters. We state that ther uber-patriot corporatizing is absolutely not the true heart of the American gun owner. It dominates the perceived space because of marketing dollars, and because, frankly, gun culture's main demographics are filled with older people who just want to be at the range, in the field, or at the gun bench, and for the most part want to be left to their business. They want to do their thing and just throw the NRA a check every once in awhile.  Which, of course, would be fine, the NRA hadn't morphed into a divisive engine of propaganda - and if we weren't facing this new reality. Things have changed. Gun owners need to change. Relative to all of the challenges that we face, it's officially time for gun cultural to get up off of its ass. It's no longer enough to have your hobby, your passions, cut a check to the NRA and that defines your part. We need the mature minds and hearts in gun culture to embrace the current reality. We have big problems. Children are being slaughtered at schools, regularly, in a society where a large section of American culture is equating gun ownership with deviance. These school shootings are happening and the the Second Amendment is being blamed. In terms of our priorities, let us make one thing clear:

Our reaction to children being killed in schools is not, "They are blaming the Second Amendment! Save the Second Amendment!"

Our reaction is that we are heartbroken and want this to stop, immediately. We are not beholden to the NRA, nor are we addicted to our guns. However, we believe that blaming guns and the Second Amendment is extraordinarily immature, the result of a lack of understanding of gun culture, the result of poor research, and ultimately not useful in enacting solutions in regards to school shootings. The Second Amendment can and should remain in-tact as we move into fully integrated solutions to school shootings. This includes finding ways to use regulation to improve issues of competency and access to firearms. We, in no way, support any effort to use regulation to support the immature notion that gun ownership is inherently deviant, and that the Second Amendment is flexible, outdated, and representative of the attitude that owning guns is more important than children's lives. These sentiments are ridiculous, and present a very poor understanding of our American reality. We believe the most realistic, most mature, and most sustainable solutions lie within a full embrasure of the Second Amendment, with a passionate and vigorous dedication to public safety. This, of course, includes the safety of our schools. This is where we split off from the rest of gun culture. This is where we highlight why the NRA can no longer represent the voice of 21st century gun culture. They lack the ability to evolve into this view. 

 If we allow the NRA to be the voice of gun ownership in this scenario, we are all going to lose. Gun culture needs to put the NRA and their brand of insensitive, hyperbolic, falsely-patriotic rhetoric in its place . Reasonable gun owners of every stripe need to start forming their own networks to do this. Improvements with gun violence, in the long run, will depend upon this.

 We track that gun culture is officially suffering from isolationism, and is using the attacks by anti-gun progressives as the justification for furthering it. Gun culture, including liberal gun owners in our own community, use the statistics involved in the overall reductions in gun violence, mixed with political reactions to the gun grabbers, to further intensify the cultural isolationism. We shouldn't fear the sentiments that associate us with deviance. We shouldn't hide in a cave because of it.  Eventually, the negatives associated with this isolationism will become palpable for everyone in gun culture. Right now, as it is with most isolationist movements, there is a lot of cultural denial. There exists very little vision of how gun culture isolationism is playing into the worsening of our situation - and creating more hurdles for gun culture on the whole It creates more hurdles in the efforts to address phenomena like school shootings. Liberal Guns Owners is for the Second Amendment and we also have a propensity to care about the situation in the world around us. In the end, this is what makes us different from the rest of established gun culture. The LGO organization is going to embrace the Second Amendment and get into the big game, but not in the cliche' political fashion. Culture is where the real action lies. We are going to help to establish real, mature thought-leadership, along with other willing and reasonable gun owners of any ilk. We will use those relationships to bring gun culture into a 21st century reality. Don't believe it? It's already happening. Liberal gun owners need to embrace the Second Amendment and support societal improvements at the same time. This is how you can be a liberal and own guns. Here in this report are our suggestions for doing so, effectively.

 With this report, we want to provide practical, reality-based assessments and recommendations for our community. We hope that others can benefit from it. It is somewhat common for humans to desire a short, neat, low-effort, regulation-based list of "actionable" solutions in this situation. For those of you who are seeking that, you are about to be disappointed. We don't have that kind of a list for you. The goal for Liberal Gun Owners was to begin the study of what can be actually effective in dealing with gun violence, and in the concentration of this 2018 report, school shootings. We are not currently, nor will be ever be in the business of looking at ways in which we all can vote to get the gun-grabbers off of our backs. This pervasive attitude in gun culture is extraordinarily immature. We are now well into publishing and broadcasting our organizational belief that gun ownership is both a right and a responsibility. Along with that responsibility comes the need to be part of 21st century society, beyond just Second Amendment activism. The future of our organization belongs on the ground where a gun organization both supports the Second Amendment and is actively sensitive towards public safety, and sensitive to society in general. Liberal Gun Owners is already on that ground. As such, we have not endeavored into this report as some way to cling to our guns - to make appeasements to the gun-ban wave to save our precious items. This report is an educational guide for our members to get an intelligent start into being a gun owner, in the 21st century, during a time where our culture is showing some of the initial horrors resulting from the confluence of cultural aspects like: poor home environments, terrible parenting, inadequate mental health protocols, problematic young males being emotionally and psychologically stunted by a lack mature guidance, outdated school security, outdated school administration protocols (resulting in things like ignorance to threat assessment systems), poor communication in communities, incompetent and dangerous teenagers and young adults getting access to firearms, incompetent adults owning firearms and leaving them unlocked, insufficient execution of law enforcement protocols, the proliferation of the internet, the sensationalist aspects of media reporting contributing to copycat violence culture, etc. We will also give guidance on gun law and regulation. But you should know up front, undoubtedly, there exists no gun regulation that is a sincere first player in terms of having sustainable, long term effects in American culture. Gun regulations, used properly, can assist in an overall, bottom-up approach, heavy with preventatives. They will only ever be a secondary tool of assistance in our view, with most regulatory ideas having no real history nor any real potential to help in any significant way - despite the claims. If you are a one of the people who are truly interested in this report, we suggest that you drill down onto the difference between the things that are being said in the social media paradigm, and the information presented by dedicated experts in the related fields. 

We are already on the record: we will not be supporting any action to remove the semi-automatic rifle or pistol, or any magazine, of any capacity, from the market. We will continue to act in accordance with that view, but we will not sacrifice sensibility, nor sacrifice being an active part of the wider world because of it. The tendency in gun culture is to isolate based on the attacks of anti-gun political culture. We don't fear these attacks. We don't believe that this approach serves the Second Amendment, ultimately. In the end, this approach is immature and will end up costing the Second Amendment. Gun culture needs to grow up, and get in the game, beyond just defending the Second Amendment. Being a more reasonable part of what is now a significant social problem is ABSOLUTELY a legitimate action in defending the Second Amendment, because it gives a healthier relationship with the world around us. Our assessment is that, by far, gun culture no longer has a healthy relationship with the world around us - at least in the public sphere. A significant portion of that is because of anti-gun and high-regulation sentiment. A significant portion of that is due to the association of gun ownership, by progressives and the intelligentsia, with deviance. This is an issue that we will be vocal against, but in the end, we cannot control that level of ignorance. What we can do is to effect gun culture by improving it. We can impact the phenomenon of our unhealthy, distant, or inert relationship with society by dealing with the problems of our own culture. The largest of those problems being intellectual and emotional immaturity in gun culture, and, of course, the toxic bullhorn that The NRA has become.
 

It would be extraordinary if the situation were as facile as most people in American society would like to portray. The most accessible views on the gun issue are exceptionally politically-charged and under-informed. On both sides of the issue, there are superficial efforts to understand any of the essential, constituent pieces of the issue. The anti-gun activists or pro high-regulation activists misunderstand the importance of The Bill Of Rights, subconsciously assign deviance to all gun ownership, and have a poor understanding of the actual effects that regulation can have on criminal behavior. The average gun-owner misunderstands the importance of social and cultural evolution, and allows the gun-culture status quo to reinforce intense civic inertia. We see fast reactions and embarrassing levels of intellectual commitment. Most people are not drilling down on the questions. For our own community and hopefully for some people on the outside, this report can serve as an impetus for further understanding on the complexity of the issue. We hope that, eventually, people will grow to see that this is a four-square cultural issue above all else. As much as it pains us to say this, copycat mass shootings are now a cultural phenomenon. The belief that banning semi-automatic rifles is going to eradicate this phenomenon is immature. We agree, fully, that competence and access is absolutely the issue. But asking government to address this problem while failing to primarily ask families, communities, and school systems to address this problem is childish. The reality is that the main part of the solution lies in revolutionizing culture. Top-down solutions don't revolutionize culture. Citizens revolutionize culture. It has to start from the roots. Are you for the ban of high regulation or ban of semi-automatic rifles? Okay, fine. That's your prerogative to have that view. We won't be joining you on that. Work and vote as you see fit. We believe that road is not only incorrect, but it is going to be a magnet for ineffectiveness as it relates to truly dealing with school shootings. The current paradigm of the anti-gun . High-regulation gun activists and the dogmatic, inert position of the NRA has created a cultural Chinese finger lock. This finger lock is the ultimate enemy of creating the cultural change necessary to address school shootings. The future needs to include the Second Amendment, properly understood and supported, as well as more intense and dedicated protocols related to threat assessment and school shootings.

 What are the true effects of law on criminal behavior? What is the essential foundation of the Bill Of Rights? What is the Second Amendment actually saying? Are there examples of protocols and systems in place, currently, in the United States that have shown effect against deterring student threats and violence in schools? What are the existing laws, threat assessment protocols, behavioral protocols, or mental health protocols that were already in place during the time a school shooting occurred, but were engaged in an incompetent manner? etc.

The new social media paradigm is perfect for instantaneous, low-information, reactionary voices. Which is the exact opposite of the path we need to effectively deal with the problem.  It isn't just a matter of the NRA shilling for the gun industry, and politicians bowing to the NRA. It certainly isn't just a matter for "taking these weapons of war off of our streets." Even without the consideration of new regulation, of any kind, America has a problem with competence: competence as a people, competence politically, competence with gun owners, competence with school administration, competence with local law enforcement, competence with mental health professionals and systems, competence in the legal field, competence in communities, and competence at home.

If it were purely a regulatory matter, then this issue with mass school shootings would be as easy as the anti-gun activists would want us to believe. Whether someone can grasp the notion or not, we want the shootings to stop as badly as anyone. The reality is that this is not nearly as much of a matter with semi-automatic rifles and pistols as some believe. It is somewhat satisfying and expedient to the emotions of citizens who have a superficial understanding of the underlying realities to blast forward with maximum belief in a regulatory approach. We believe most all people want peace and happiness in the world. We do. We want people to be free to have the best experience that they can on this planet. We certainly do not want children being massacred at school. We certainly do not believe that gun culture is addressing things adequately, to say the least. The NRA does not represent Liberal Gun Owners, and as an organization, we certainly do not support what they have become. We agree that this is a new time. Things need to change. Attitudes and perspectives need to change. These changes need to become the future. There are many on the left, who are in our cultural communities,  that believe that this change and cultural improvement necessarily requires the mitigation of the Second Amendment. We believe there is effect and new ground to be captured here. The road to an assault weapons ban and the road to the continuing reductionism towards 2A is not the realistic or effective road to chose as it relates to getting true results with gun-violence and school shootings.

We would like to reintroduce something to American culture: the reasonable, intelligent observation.

The goal of this assessment and report is to give our members a firm basis for the issue of gun violence in society, with a concentration in school shootings. It is our hope that this simple effort can also be helpful to both non-liberal gun owners and also those non-gun owners who seek to better understanding the issue. Please note that, while this effort is thorough, in no way are we claiming that this is some definitive

 effort. There are conclusions and recommendations. But it all should be treated as a starting point. We, ourselves, are treating it as such and have committed ourselves, as is our responsibility, to addressing gun violence in society and to contributing to effective solutions. Of course, everyone has a different opinion on which actions are truly effective.

WHAT EVERYONE WANTS

Every reasonable person in America wants school shootings to stop completely. Most people involved in the issue want fast and complete solutions. Many people in our own community are looking for a list of 5 fast things related to legislative or top-down solutions.  Most people who are being vocal in the social media space, about school shootings and reducing gun violence, do so with an attitude of completeness and certainty to the solutions that they claim. To reintroduce the term that we have coined, most all of these voices are in a superficial position. In this case, it manifests itself as heavy conviction, low-effort in proper analysis. These people, on both sides of the issue, are choosing concepts that are expedient as it relates to their views and desires. Their level of of information isn not as effective as they believe. These voices are often mixed with political motivation. Often the choices are mixed with heavy emotion and opinion. But most all are coming from the position of being inadequately studied on the issue. We are here to make a recommendation to the Liberal Gun Owners community to help our community to step out of a superficial position and to become adequately informed on the subject of solutions as they relate to school shooting, mass shootings, and gun violence. Overall, the 2018 report will focus, primarily, on school shootings.


We will always recommend to Liberal Gun Owners to stop themselves from falling into the patterns of superficial position. Stop the habit of thinking that you have the answers, and backing that up by quick-grabbing links, articles, and memes. This is what the rest of the world is doing. It is an unfortunate habit of the times, and a gigantic cultural problem. To be honest, it's getting ridiculous and embarrassing. This pattern not only fails the attempt to better deal with gun violence in society, but it is completely failing the much needed effort to help in support of the Second Amendment. In the overall assessment of school shootings, the improving gun culture is still vital. In any issue that we face, regarding guns in society, a lack of effective thought leadership and maturity will always create more problems for us.

 In the example of the school shooting phenomenon, there have been scores of professionals adequately studying the phenomenon for almost two decades now. This basis of information is thorough enough and available. No one has the ultimate solution to violence in human society. But in terms if school shootings, there is already information and effort available that is a good place to start. Of course, this information isn't available in forms conducive to superficial position. It is information that actually requires some patience and effort to obtain. This is why we are trying to bridge the gap. This is why we are presenting this report to our community. This is why we have a Twitter feed that is almost solely dedicated to the phenomenon. The gulf that exists between online gun culture and what we would consider respectable information is gigantic. Again, we are trying to offer a better path

The first step in wanting to be more effective towards a long-term problem like gun violence is to stop engaging in superficial position. Superficial positions do not allow a person to engage in considering a truly comprehensive, long-term solution towards gun violence. Most of the suggestions that are out in the social media world are "pop solutions".

RECOMMENDATION 1:
Use this report as a basis to break the habits of superficial position in gun culture. Expose yourselves to the sources that we recommend.

Most people are looking for the solution that can be voted upon. Most people are looking for the solution that can be decided quickly and acted upon without very much effort. Many people are looking for the solution that agrees with their political identification. Many people mean well, and have opinions based on a value system that desire a better world. But often, those opinions are not as educated or informed on the issue as the person believes.

Stop engaging in the notion that there is an effective solution to gun violence / school shootings that is merely a matter of voting on things, that is an extension of legislation. Human violence is a constant, unfortunate part of our society. We should strive, constantly, to mitigate it. There has been no combination of decisions that we have made, as a society, that eliminates it. While, in some ways, we have seen reductions in certain aspects of violence, it persists. This should not, however, be a license to have an inert attitude towards gun violence and school shootings. We cannot legislate a way into an effective strategy towards school shootings. It would be nice if it were that simple. It is not. Legislation may be helpful, and may assist in a comprehensive strategy, but ultimately, if the goal is to reduce school shootings, the primary solutions to school shootings need to come from American culture, school culture, and the mental health industry, and security / local law enforcement. 

PRIMARY CONCLUSION:
Through all of the work of this report, a few things have become glaringly obvious:

1. As a culture, both American culture and LGO culture there are too many opinions and positions based on insufficient education regarding gun violence and school shootings.

2. People believe and focus too much on law and legislation (top-down solutions) as the path to effectively deal with school shootings. People are too focused on political culture. In regards to this phenomenon, liberals in our community are too focused on the politics of guns. As such, their eyes are looking in the wrong spot.

3. Addressing school shootings takes sustained, long-term commitments from American culture itself, school culture, the mental health industry, and law enforcement culture.

If you are a member of Liberal Gun Owners and you are seeking to understand how to better address the problem of school shootings, then you need to make efforts to start at the foundation. Our primary conclusion is that your best move is to research, understand, and support efforts for school systems to engage in both student threat assessment protocols and innovative school security. That's our primary conclusion. The politics of guns, and the possible of effects of legislation should be secondary, complimentary, if you truly desire to embrace solutions to school shootings.

So, in terms of this report, that is the prime answer to the question in LGO: "What do we do about school shootings?"

Learn about and support the necessary changes required of American culture, school culture, the mental health industry, and law enforcement culture that integrate effective systems for student threat assessment and innovative school security.

We recommend that you start with learning about The Salem-Keiser Threat Assessment System (STAS). We highly recommend that you buy and read John Van Dreal's book, Assessing Student Threats. Learn about an assessment program that is comprehensive, intelligent, sensitive to school environments, and one that has been active and in place since 2004. The STAS is customizable and can meet the needs of both urban and rural schools with either an urban or rural budget.

If you want to be a gun owner who is about real, sustainable solutions towards the issue, start from the bottom up. The STAS is a good place to start.

Once we have an understanding and approach to a solid foundation,once we address the issue in the place where it is most effective, we can then turn to the other aspects of the issue: other cultural changes needed, and possible legislative approaches. We are making inroads now with people involved in both student threat assessment and innovative school security. At some point, we can recommend to you the avenues for you to better understand these protocols and how to support them. For now, just continue to support LGO in any way that you can, while we engage in this work.

There is a tendency among us, as everyday people, to look for the most simple and direct line to action and solution. We now live and operate in a social media paradigm where people have goldfish attention spans and the drive to state their views overtly, backed up by insufficient levels of study or research. This may be all well and good for the more facile aspects of day to day life. But to say that this approach to the subject of firearms in society is insufficient is an understatement. As LGO has worked more and more diligently on this issue, one real truth has emerged: there are people who are adequately dedicated to the information required to understand the topic, and there are those who are not. The majority of people in this country, but much more importantly, the majority of gun owners in this country are in the latter category. This includes our own forums. We have said now, for awhile, that the most direct solution to any problem that we face is going to be gun culture evolution. We also just need a general evolution on the topic in American society itself. The integrative social action that is going to be required for *actual* effectiveness towards school shootings is going to require that people on both sides of the issue go deeper in their understanding. You can get your pet group of four things and go pull some lever somewhere, year-after-year, then get on social media and bark all you want. The same political loops will happen. We will end up in the same ground. If you believe that high-regulation is a primary solution in the long run, you display that you haven't completed even the most superficial tier of research. Other than what we now see as a fact: top-down approaches ignore the reality of the issue in our world, we have to include calculus for our own political reality. Both the 1994 American AWB and the Australian AWB were studied for actual effect, in both countries. Both studies concluded that the pre-existing trend in the reduction of gun-violence in each country made it hard to palpate for a reductive effect from the ban itself. Both studies claimed that they believe reductions in related gun-violence would be able to be measured as an increase, but that it would take a lot more time. For the high-regulation believers, this is the rub: no high-regulation approach will stand long in our country. An overt push for a long-standing high-regulation approach to gun violence, in America, will add to its initial inadequacy as an effective approach to the problem. Instead of not properly mitigating the issue at the schools, we will create a second, potentially more disastrous problem: more political tension and cultural division, making the loop of inertia worse. Can you imagine, culturally and politically, things going down hill from here? We can.

We do not think that it should be much to ask people to consider the point that bottom-up / regs second is going to be America's best, most realistic play here. We don't care about the NRA, or sucking-up to the gun industry, or what politicians think. We are interested in the actual effective solution in the actual context of American society.

Again, it is our hope that our own community can use this work to stimulate their relationship with the issue to leave superficial positions and head more towards being adequately informed. Our work is not claimi ng to be definitive. It is merely the start of Liberal Gun Owners dedicating itself to the topic in our own way. And this is something that we must get across. We all, in some way, want some course of action that is a 4 point list which leads people to the voting booth, and that's that. And this, dear friends, is a giant cultural problem.

In the end assessment, we are talking about human violence in society. This is a phenomemon that has yet to be solved, under any combination of positive law and cultural evolution. The notion that an array of new gun laws is going to have a significant effect on the problem is not the extension of adequate study on the matter. With us, the assigfnment of "gun-addict" or "Lemming of the NRA" cannot factually stick. We are here, in earnest, working to mitigate school shootings, mass shootings, and gun-violence. Our personal preferences are put aside, our tendency for political bias thrown in the hearth. We are here in earnest, and the reality is that the further that one engages in the true study of the matter, the more its complexities arise - the more we see the limits of gun regulation as a primary approach. The goal is to stop or to mitigate these shootings. It is a long term, cultural / societal issue. It will not now, nor ever, be adequately addressed by any viewpoint that thinks that the combination of a collective cultural call for political action, the federal government, and passed legislation will ever be able to adequately effect. The only effective role that this combination can play is a complementary one. Because the primary engine needs to be one of bottom-up, grass-roots, cultural evolution, thought evolution and evolution in related industries.

It is the findings of the leadership involved in Liberal Gun Owners, after decades of collective experience in American culture and American gun culture, after years of being exposed to open-source information, after years of familiarity in Amercan law, and now, after an extensive review of in-depth material related to the issues of the Second Amendment and Public Safety, we conclude the following:

As it relates to Firearms in Society, we conclude:

1. That the automatic association of gun ownership with deviance, by aspects of the American Intelligenstia, and the Progressive Left, is an actual, significant phenomenon.

2. That the same association is being made from the same sub-culture between the complete belief in the tenets of self-defense and some form of perceived incompetence in people who completely pursue self-defense as an aspect of self-preservation.

3. That the tenets of self-preservation ABSOLUTELY include human survival via self-defense.

4. That the pursuit of self-defense, in order to be effective, MUST include access to the modern standards of weaponry.

5. That, relative to firearms technology, semi-automatic rifles and pistols are the modern standard. They are not a special category of weapon.

6. That the natural desire to extend a perspective of self-defense to loved ones, community, and to our society in general is also being made analogous to incompetence by aspsects of the American Intelligentsia and the Progressive Left.

7. That the Second Amendment, in its actual meaning and context, is the legal representation of the natural right to use firearms in order to address self-defense in modern society, to address the possibility of American citizens being called upon in an 11th hour defense of our country, and to address the possibility of a tyranny taking away the democratic means to address our country and our lives.

8. That any call to remove the modern standards of weaponry from the free choice of qualified citizens, or any perspective that believes the Second Amendment to be a flexible issue, is a call for the direct impingement upon the necessary tenets of self-preservation and self-defense.

9. That the desires of self-preservation, self-defense, and martial instinct, inside of the competent military and non-military individual are fully legitimate and as such, should be developed and followed.

10. That the desires of self-preservation, relative to self-defense, do not legitimately live in the realm of intellect. They are instinctual. As such, they seem to be both dormant in many modern Americans and present in an inadequate amount in most all of the people who make up the aspects of the American intelligentsia and the Progressive Left that we are addressing.
11. That the lack of instinctual and logical understanding of the tenets of self-preservation, by the aforementioned subculture, creates a buffer and insulation between them and the darker realities of human life.
12. That this insulated viewpoint makes this sub-culture extraordinarily unqualified to lead to solutions on the issues related to firearms in society.
13. That the same lack of proper qualification to address firearms in society also exists inside of mainstream gun culture itself, and is evidenced by the overt insensitivity and blatant propaganda efforts espoused by the NRA.

14. That, unless American culture and gun culture find a more evolved viewpoint, and better leadership, all aspects of society, connected to firearms, are going to suffer.

As it relates to Public Safety, Mass Shootings, and School Shootings:

1. That most direct and immediately line of solution to mitigate the cultural problem of school shootings, is for all interested parties to immediately involve themselves in instituting student threat assessment systems integrated with innovative school security, nationwide.
2. That the best primer for the topic of student threat assessment systems is to study the Salem-Keizer Threat Assessment System via John Van Dreal's book, "Assessing Student Threats".
3. That the most effective path for citizens and politicians, who are seeking legislative action, is to vigorously pursue legislation that supports nationwide efforts to institute student threat assessment systems integrated with innovative school security.
4. That school culture, school security culture, law enforcement culture, and mental health culture need to evolve to facilitate this revolutionary paradigm.
5. That this is ultimately a multi-tiered issue, 
 

CULTURE

At its foundation, gun-violence is an issue of culture and society. In the case of school shootings, although profiling is certainly ineffective, a pattern emerges. These school shooters are essentially disaffected young men who are, typically:

1. Seeking justice for real or perceived wrong-doings
2. Meting out punishment for real or perceived wrong-doings
3. Seeking massive amounts of attention in order to make up for the attention and validation that they have lacked in their lives
4. Combining any of these reasons

In a mature assessment, our questioning needs to be along the lines of: How do we as a society help to positively affect the home-lives of troubled or unhealthy families? What avenues are being taken away from these boys, which is resulting in such toxic psyches?  Is it all just an unavoidable part of society?  This is a very difficult and complex problem. The deepest understandings and solutions relating to this cultural phenomenon are beyond the scope of this report, and should be left to those who have mastery of the subject. 

However, one thing that we would like get across are the true limits of law and governmental regulation, or governmental assistance, as it relates to this issue. Politically, and certainly, out in the social media space, we hear the loudest voices (politicians and activists) calling for action as if regulatory pressures are adequate enough to solve cultural issues. We now refer to this concept as "Solution By Government" or SBG. This is different than what we would consider the proper, effective, mature approach which we call "Improvement By Governance" or IBG. Improvement By Governance is the dynamic where communities change culture through their own efforts, and government provides complementary assistance when and where it is possible. The closer that an individual or community becomes to imbalance, or dysfunction, the less capacity they have to respond to subtlety, to ideas and concepts. The notion that federal dictates are somehow going to be able to solve or effectively mitigate familial, home, and community problems is immature. It may be useful for those who operate in the superficial realms of politics and activism, but the concept is immature.

Ultimately, in concept,  the institution of federal regulations towards a cultural issue is going to amount to the institution of a new system. As security expert Paul Timm highlights, "people determine the effectiveness of systems." If laws are passed, what would be the net-effect in a household that's abusive or dysfunctional, in a school system that is reticent to change, or in a local law enforcement office stuck in its ways? There would be little to no effect. It is people, communities and families that need to make themselves ready for improvement and assistance. Without the attitude of willingness, nothing changes. IBG is a reasonable consideration and variable here. No one in Liberal Gun Owners is ducking the consideration of federal assistance or pressure as it relates to shifting culture for the sake of school shootings. But we refuse the path of SBG, because that entire tendency and belief is problematic as it relates effective, long-term solutions and our rights and freedoms.

Violence is a giant problem for humanity. It is a giant problem in America. It exists in the cultural fabric. To quote our esteemed colleague, treasured member of our think-tank, accomplished lawyer and dedicated public servant:

"Clearly, law is not the best way to deal with crime."

There are real limits. Law and regulation may be able to have a complimentary effect on something cultural, if the culture has decided to evolve, to shift itself, to revolutionize itself. But if there is mass inertia, or the cultural habit of status-quo, then regulatory action will have a minimal effect at best. We will continue to say that that, what is needed to address mass shootings is a massive change in culture and awareness. Solution By Government is defeatable by mass inertia, status-quo, the revolving doors of our federal government, political backlash etc. This is a problem for us because we are here to research and work towards ACTUAL solutions. This means long-term, sustainable solutions. LGO tracks that our government is now inside of years of dysfunction andmis no longer adequate to meet the challenges of 21st Century America. It is aggravating to us that so much attention and fealty is being laid upon law and regulation as it pertains to this problem. Before we go hog-wild into laws and regulations, which can all be reversed in 4 or 8 or 12 years, we should be dedicating ourselves to stimulating cultural shifts.

It's obvious that the new American paradigm, our current culture, is indicating that young men are in trouble. It is indicating that families are weak, and dysfunctional. It is indicating that the systems and protocols available to our society are not enough. It is indicating that our social fabric, and community fabric is not enough. It is indicating that school culture is inadequate. It is indicating that school administrative culture is inadequate. It is indicating that School Security Culture is inadequate. It is indicating that mental health culture is inadequate.

We would also like to point out, and accentuate that these indicators did not start at Columbine. Although they have manifested differently, these indicators have been apparent inside of urban, African America culture for decades. The level of this issue has been with us, for some time - for some time, indeed.

If there are people that are reading this report who want to ban semi-automatic rifles: go right ahead and try. In the three subsequent studies done of the American Assault Weapons Ban (1994), the conclusion was made that there was no way to ascertain whether or not the lessening in gun violence in that range of time was due to the ban, or due to the pre-existing trend in gun-violence towards consistent reduction. It was also stated that the researchers believed that there could be enough data, eventually, to show that the ban was having an effect - but that it would take much more time. This conclusion was reached a decade after the ban was instituted. So, 10 years to deliver, "we aren't sure, but if we keep going, we think it might." So, what is that time-frame? 20 Years until we can tell?

We are not in support of banning semi-automatic rifles and pistols. We are also not in support of spending an extraordinary amount of time and effort on Solution By Government. Why? To cling to our guns? No. Because this CULTURAL phenomenon of school shootings is happening now. It is building upon itself. And ACTUAL solutions need to be employed now. The energy that it will take for the citizens and politicians interested in SBG will end up being a net-negative relative to the immediacy of the issue. Andrew Pollack, father of Parkland victim Meadow Pollack is one of the few activists who is out in the world pushing culture in a way that chooses IBG over SBG. One may not agree with his overall politics, or every concept he supports, but he is out in the cultural space, pushing culture and refusing politics.  This is, indeed, a cultural issue and we need to be asking ourselves how we deal with it. Federal or state assistance needs to be considered, but as a secondary player in the considerations. If we are to bump federal or state regulation up as a bigger player, it should only be to assist cultural shifting in the categories of: community health, family support, mental health, threat assessment training, innovative school security, administrative culture, and law enforcement culture.

Due to the increase in frequency of school shootings, we recommend that priority be placed on student threat assessment training and innovative school security. This should be the initial focus. School culture, and all of the related fields needs more training and overall awareness. Anyone reading this report should start researching, at the least, student threat assessment systems and protocols. We recommend looking into The Salem-Keiser Threat Assessment System (STAS), and we highly recommend that you read John Van Dreal's book : Assessing Student Threats.

This problem is cultural. Humans have not figured out how to eliminate violence from our culture. It is an unfortunate part of life on Earth. What reasonable person does not desire, in their hearts, the elimnation of such things? As gun owners, we share this desire. But human violence has not been solvable to this point. Gun-violence is not solvable, it is mitigable. We cannot use law to reach into all of these homes and fix all these boys, and their families. We also cannot use law to reach into all of these different sub-cultures and fix them. The cultures themselves must be honest and aware of the nature of this problem and start to shift from within. Cultures need to change and evolve. This needs to be a wake up call for all of us. In terms of gun culture, there will be an overall assessment that it's not the fault of guns, and that will be, as it always is, the excuse for gun culture to sit on its ass. This is where Liberal Gun Owners, the organization, is different. We see the red flags. We see the cultural need for gun owners to be sensitive towards this reality and testify that we do, indeed, see this problem. We won't be sitting on our ass. We are in the game, already. It is one of our hopes that the members of our forums, who see things the same, can now have some direction and structure to get in the game too.

Everyone is interested in focusing on laws. As we have said, we will focus on cultural change first.  But in regards to the use of regulation in this matter, we see that any consideration by gun owners on regulation needs to be backed by a true relationship to a sense of responsibility. We, gun owners, are the representatives of firearms in society - not the NRA. What needs to be left in the dust is the typical gun culture sensibility of "screw you! These are mine! I don't care what happens!". There are a million versions of it. While we understand that there is a time and place for that attitude, that we have a rightful relationship between our weapons, our self-preservation, and our enjoyment of life, "it's not the fault of guns. That's that. Pew pew! " should not be the only gear of sensibility that gun owners possess. The fact that it IS the only gear that many gun owners possess is a problem, and it's the main reason why gun ownership, in America, suffers - much moreso than the attacks by the progressive left. If we are mature enough to own firearms, then we need to be mature enough to self-assess. There's so much talk in our culture about people taking responsibility for their own problems and not passing the buck. Well, it would be great if gun culture applied that concept to itself. Violence might not be the fault of guns, but the declining phenomenon of gun culture in America is more due to the immaturity, and monolithic insensitivity of gun culture's voice. This phenomenon makes us detached, weak, and vulnerable to a progressive force that wants to paint us as deviants. While gun owners might largely be law abiding, and not deviant, we are very poor members of greater society, loudmouths, know-it-alls, and super immature. We fall into many of the generalizations that the "antis" place upon us, up to and including "addicts". Liberal Gun Owners has 10 years of experience now watching gunners of all stripes redefine and warp reality to suit the comfort that they get from owning and operating guns. We isolate. We bark at the rest of the world about the superiority of our view, and have very little to back it up - the exact same pattern as a textbook addict. We gun owners are our own worst enemy, and it needs to stop. We need to grow up. We need to evolve. Gun culture in America is in trouble, the Second Amendment is in trouble, but most importantly, there are kids regularly being killed in their schools. For all of this, it's time for gun culture to stop talking like they "have a set" and actually "grow a set". We need to protect the Second Amendment AND get in the big game. There is a cultural problem related to firearms in society and the voice of gun culture is not rising to the occasion. We track that gun ownership in America, and the support for the Second Amendment, is going to continue to trend downward. One of the main reasons for this is the aforementioned, unevolved attitude. Gun culture needs to live in the 21st Century. It doesn't. That needs to end.

A feeling of greater responsibility by gun owners is an extension of maturity and leadership. Whether or not liberal gun owners are aware of it or not, we all sign the social contract, each day that we enter the world - virtual or actual. There is no more real leadership in gun culture, because gun owners have lost the true notion of leadership and responsibility. Not just leadership and responsibility for guns - leadership and responsibility in the wider society. It is irresponsible for gun owners to use statistics related to overall reductions in violence to marginalize these school shootings. It's childish and happening daily, by the scores. This insensitivity and irresponsibility dominates gun culture and is the main engine of the NRA's operations.

So, what!?! The progressives want to turn the Second Amendment and the Bill Of Rights into an a la Carte menu. They don't represent all of America. We don't have to react to that like apes. Gun owners can stand by the Second Amendment fully, and pull gun ownership into the 21st Century. We should. In our opinion, if you care about the Second Amendment, WE MUST.


REPRESENTATIVE GUN CULTURE VS ACTUAL GUN CULTURE

THE UNIQUE AND SPECIAL FINDINGS OF THE LAY-PERSON

This heading is facetious. We consistently come across articles and posts from people, who have no special study on the matter and believe themselves to have had some unique and special "Eureka" moment about the reality and root causes of gun-violence and school shootings. There is typically, as seems to be the par-for-the course now in the social media era, an undertone of condescension towards the rest of society for not seeing the issue in the same light as this new, "special finding by the layperson". While we can appreciate the need for fresh ideas, and continuing assessment, any conclusion that pins the phenomenon down to one or two reasons is typically a function of an under-researched opinion. The reality is that this is a multi-layered phenomenon. In addition to that, since Columbine, there has already been a somewhat comprehensive understanding of the matter available through professionals dedicated to the subject. So, the questions then become:

1. If this is the case, why aren't people aware of it?

2. If a thorough understanding is pre-existent, why haven't solutions been enacted.

Great question. Would it be surprising that one of the answers to these questions is the same root cause as other social inadequacies that we suffer from? This answer is superficial position.

We don't know about the pre-existing foundation that exists for solutions to school shootings because everything from our individual political frame to our understanding of reality is now being morphed by the low-research, fast-grab, high-opinion operation that follows the lowest common denominator of the internet. Before that, operating with superficial position was being bolstered by entertainment media. Currently, both of these sources work in concert to feed superficial position. Our social communication is plagued with superficial position, our politicians operate based off of it, and our president is an extraordinarily egregious  example of it.

What are the examples of "Special Findings By The Lay-person"?

1. "It's men / boys!"
2. "It's the mechanized nature of our school-systems!"
3. "It's not an issue of mental health!"
4. "It's the guns!!"
5. "It's entitlement!"

6. "It's the internet!"
7. "It's bullying!"

Etcetera.

The reality is that while profiling is not an effective tool in the cases related to school shootings, patterns certainly emerge in aspects of this phenomenon which have bearing towards the phenomenon. They include a combination of any of the following:

1. The emotional / mental health of the shooter.
2. The emotional / mental health of the shooter's family.
3. A lack of structure, love, guidance, and discipline specifically related to the needs and problems associated with the young, adult male. 

4. Unrestricted use of the internet and social media.

5. Real or perceived abuse at home or at school / bullying.
6. A general cultural trend, in the social media era, towards: weaker socialization, more isolationism, and higher anxiety levels in teens.

 7. Outdated and insufficient aspects in school culture.

 8. Outdated and insufficient aspects in school administrative culture.
 9. Outdated and insufficient aspects in school security culture.
10. Outdated and insufficient aspects in the mental health and social-work fields.

11. Outdated and insufficient aspects in the operations of local law enforcement.


Also, the other main reasons why the more thorough assessments of school shootings are not more in the public view are denial, cultural inertia, the advent of the internet happening and creating cultural time-sinks, and plain laziness.

GUN REGULATION

First and foremost, we feel the need to guide our members on the realities of using law and regulation to mitigate or stop acts of violence. It is clearly not the most effective approach to deal with violence in society. We admonish our community to stop contributing to the under-researched habit of focusing on regulation as the premiere method towards solutions. This goes for all forms of violence. Even in our own community,  there is a rampant swath of superficial positions on the matter. The issue that we are dealing with here is quite serious. It requires more than embracing the links and blogs of the day. We don't take immature assessments seriously. You should not engage in them nor take them seriously yourselves. Out in the social media space, amongst everyday people and professionals alike, immature assessments run wild.  Liberal Gun Owners is not perfect, nor do we claim to be masters of the subject. But we are dedicated to leaving the world of the superficial behind and have been involved long enough in this study, and certainly long enough in American law, to understand that law and regulation should be viewed as complimentary tool inside of an integrated approach to issues. 

You will see, over and over again, attempts by the gun regulation activists to paint the NRA's viewpoint as full-denial of regulatory consideration due to gun addiction or to greed. However, the NRA is not completely inaccurate here. Top-down, regulatory solutions are not as effective as they are being painted. That isn't a statement based on gun-clinging. This is the reality of American society. Is it possible to evolve American society to the point where regulations would have maximum effect on violence? Well, if we could evolve that far, there wouldn't be much need for regulations on the matter. If that evolution is possible, there's certainly no way to evolve people and culture through laws. That kind of an evolutionary step has to come from the people themselves - from the bottom, up. However, even though gun regulation is not highly-effective towards the issue, that does not mean that gun owners cannot embrace the Second Amendment in-full and continually investigate possible, notable regulatory effects.

We would also like to suggest that members start considering this issue as a marathon, not a sprint. The only solutions worth considering are long-term, sustainable solutions. We absolutely believe that certain measures need to be enacted quickly. However, the overall, best solutions lie within the social marathon runner's mindset. The best approach here is the approach that is dedicated to the long-term solution. We need to make it clear that being involved in the best solution has nothing to do with the political victories or losses of the day in regards to the issue. As evidenced by the previous 15 years, it is possible for considerable mature, long-term solutions to go completely ignored, while American society, and American polity get drawn into superficial, fast, unsustainable cycles. Not only can things be reversed, they will be reversed. Which is why we must continue to point out that heavy consideration of gun regulation is not a a mature, effective viewpoint on the matter. Large amounts of time, energy, and money can be wasted on non-solutions. Something that can be reversed in eight years, or stalled in congress is a non-solution. We see, in our own community, members who only want to act on regulations in order to stave off the loss of gun rights. We cannot say this clearly enough: stop doing this. First and foremost, this report is mainly for people who want the school shootings to stop or to be mitigated severely. If, in the face of this new cultural phenomenon, your first reaction is towards your gun rights, you are officially a part of the gun culture immaturity that we are attacking in this report. If your first reaction to these school shootings is to reduce their reality by any means, or is to start with the consideration of your gun rights, you belong in the past - with the NRA's attitude and operations.
 

The question should always be: what will actually have the potential for a significant affect on school shootings? Even though we are honing in regulation and law in this section. The general answer, by far, is extraordinary cultural change. What we see out in the world, relative to this issue, is mostly a world that wants to change gun culture. It completely ignores that the real solution lies in changing all related cultures. This means changing, significantly, American culture.

Standing with the Second Amendment and standing with the effort for mature, long term solutions is the strong choice. If a gun owner looks to the political dynamics of the day and becomes reactionary, instead of educated in the matter, then they just get sucked into the same superficial cycles that have delivered us into broken government and a seemingly devolving culture. The division that we see in this country is directly related to the fight over the Second Amendment.

In the sample of school shootings that we have reviewed, we asked ourselves how any possible regulation would have an effect in each circumstance. We then extrapolated outward and assessed what preventative value any given regulation would have in possible future events, with similar variables.


1. Introduction

We have spent the last two months in extensive research and discussion on the nexus point of firearms and public safety. We have been particularly focused on the current increase in the phenomenon of school shootings. It needs to be understood, for anyone reading this summary, that Liberal Gun Owners does not believe in banning semi-automatic rifles, and/or 20-30 round magazines. We also believe that firearms and the Second Amendment are a responsibility for all those who exercise these rights. As such, respectable, mature gun owners need to embrace the fact that we are a part of the social contract. We need to sincerely consider the society in which we live. The considerations of firearms and public safety have occurred amongst our own think-tank, which includes members who have a better-than-average grasp of American culture, American gun-culture, and particular strength in the area of American law. This is a short list of recommendations from our comprehensive report on the matter, due to be published in the fall of 2018. By no means are we stating that our efforts are definitive. To properly understand the nexus point between firearms and public safety one would need a life-time of dedication and activity in the field. We are presenting here as a guidepost for our own LGO culture, and we have hopes that it will stimulate a more thorough consideration of any and all aspects related to the issues. We have hopes that it may do the same to both gun owners and non-gun-owners as well. As an organization, this work represents our responsibility to the society in which we live. Others may not agree with our conclusions, our recommendations, or our stance, but we are stating them, none-the-less.


2. Superficial Efforts And Myths

We would like to recommend that people avoid superficial efforts towards understanding the issue. Avoid the temptation to allow your understanding of the issue to start and stop at your time on the internet. While links and articles and blogs can serve as a starting point, the mature understanding of the issue will not emerge unless a person makes solid effort to expose themselves to a full range of resources, and to the voices of professionals who have been studying, publishing, and working towards solutions for decades. Seek out other people who are looking to move past the superficial, and converse with them. The modern malaise of the internet

We would like to start off by recommending that people avoid the myths of the issue. It is a myth that pre-existing viable, reasonable, actionable ideas are non-existent as it relates to school shootings. Some ideas and solutions already exists, and have been in play in school culture, since shortly after Columbine. Another myth we would like to dispel is that gun violence, of any kind, is adequately addressed by the philosophy of solutions by regulatory dominance. Clearly, law is not the best way to deal with crime. It can, and should be used in a complementary role towards a broad, integrated approach to the issue. Crime is an issue of society and culture. Law can play a part, but law is not a solution.

 Our goal here was to be honest about the best, most reasonable solutions to the problem of school shootings. Our answer ended up being a long-term, integrated approach, with contingencies for some faster stop-gap measures. Here is where we would like to advise against a third myth: that the solution is simple, and merely a matter of new laws and the quick pull of levers in voting booths. If you are interested in the actual path to dealing with school shootings, then consider the issue like a marathon runner. Legislative victories, in the current political culture, can take a long time and be reversed in a few terms. While this is no excuse for inactivity on the matter, we need to be realistic about that. Also, 

2. Cultural Growth

3. Gun Culture Growth

4.  Regulations Not Related To Firearms

5. Regulations Related To Firearms.


THE BEGINNING

The basis for a human relating to weaponry requires two different spheres of language: philosophy and law. The human relationship with weaponry began 70,000 years ago. As such, the language of jurisprudence, as it relates to the human relationship with weaponry, is not adequate if it is treated as the only sphere of relationship and explanation. It is certainly not adequate as it relates to highlighting the need and legitimacy of firearms in the hands of competent American civilians. We gun owners need to understand the relationship in both spheres.  While our culture in America may be dominated by the language of law, the foundations of our culture and subcultures pre-date the influence of European law on American cultural architecture.

The best way that we have found to delineate this is to use the terms Natural Law and Positive Law. Our version of Natural Law merely explains the relationship between humans and life on planet Earth, the nuts and bolts of existence without the complexity of modern systems. Positive Law refers to the lens of man-made law inside of modernity.

The basis of humans relating to firearms is the basis of humans relating to weaponry.

The fundamental relationship between humans and weaponry is self-preservation, not enjoyment. Enjoyment of firearms is a secondary manifestation. While secondary aspects of firearms ownership (marksmanship, competition, non-essential hunting, and collecting) are wonderful, and irreplaceable parts of gun culture, they alone are insufficient as an explanation for the second amendment. They, in and of themselves, will not ever serve as an adequate foundation or bulwark for the second amendment. To be clear, both tiers need one another. But placing the general sentiments of second tier gun owners into the dominant position in the discussion will lead to the erosion of the right. We firmly believe this and stand by the statement.

This is why it is critical for gun owners to remove themselves from a superficial position and look deeper into their own self-preservation tier of gun ownership. We contend that modern, second tier firearms enthusiasm largely does so because human beings have allowed modernity to close the door on visceral knowledge. It achieves such a thing by the human tendency to make more primitive, intuitive relationships analagous to either deviance or anachronistic.. Intellect is king. Modern living is king. Any phenomenon that lacks the same neatly organized attributes is drenched with condescension by the subconscious arrogance of many. Robust expressions of passion towards firearms are being squeezed from another internal compartment to another. Even within our own section of gun culture, many intellectuals who own guns  delegitimize first tier relationships with firearms.
The stereotype is that those who are in touch with more visceral realities are barbarians and morons. Perhaps in many cases, this is correct. However, one of our aims here is to show what we have learned in LGO by having extensive observation own specific sub-culture. In terms of what is best for gun culture; in terms of what should define 21st century gun ownership: extraordinarily intelligent people can also be well in-touch with visceral, intuitive and primitive sensibility. Its the integrated gun owner that will define gun ownership for the future. It's the gun owner that operates in both tiers of gun ownership, with both intellectual and visceral capacity that will define the future of gun ownership. It's the gun owner that not only desires to pursue the art and science of firearms, but also is an active part of the world around them - not just an active part in their own circles. The future is for  the gun owner that pursues self-preservation and enjoyment. The issues facing gun culture require that integrated gun owners step forward and lead. We cannot speak for the other side of the political / philosophical spectrum. But we can speak for our own organization. We have witnessed that liberal gun culture, by far, as the greater potential in delivering integrated gun owners. We see many gun owners who seek to be more integrated, who need assistance in growth, and are asking for it. This why we are here. It is one of the reasons for our think tank and our report. When it comes to dealing with any issue that may face gun owners in the future: cultural growth and maturity will be not be outmatched.

What are the answers to the societal issues related to firearms? The first answer is moving gun ownership into a 21st century sensibility. The way we do that is bolster the strong, integrated gun owner and to support the gun owner who wants to become more integrated. That's how we will do it. And we will do it. We aren't asking for permission, nor are we waiting. It's already underway. This report has many purposes. It just so happens that each purpose will be served by whole, complete, integrated, improving gun owners. Not necessarily improving at the range. Improving as humans.

   To understand the larger picture of gun culture, one must understand this. Despite the lens of modernity, and despite all of the different manifestations of secondary relationships, the basis of the human desire for firearms is self-preservation - whether gun owners are conscious of it or not. In terms of the competent civilian, self-preservation and access to a level of specific tooling that is designed to deal with a level of specific, highly challenging problems, is the essential basis for gun ownership. 

When anyone attempts to view the second amendment's relationship to self-preservation as anachronistic or in need of flexibility, they are indirectly assigning inferiority to the pursuit of self preservation and thus, the individual right to self defense. The individual right to self defense can never, and should never be subjected to a request or demand for more flexibility. In terms of Liberal Gun Owners, we will NEVER allow this notion to grab hold. This is because the notion is outlandishly immature. We can deal with firearms in society and properly deal with the issues of public safety without giving in to such a childish interpretation of reality.

THE ANTHROPOLIGICAL TRADITION OF SELF-DEFENSE: THE PRE-POLITICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR FIREARMS

Why do we have firearms in the modern world? Why do we DESIRE firearms in the modern world? At what point did firearms go from a mainstay to something secondary? Psychologically, why are we passified against self-reliance, because of the presence of the police?
Is the desire for firearms increasing or decreasing?

The anthropoligical tradition of readiness - looking into the future. The indigenous tradition. The homesteading tradition. The rural tradition.

Shitting on the part of the past that is outside of ones own values. The parts of the past that align with the values of the anti-gun liberal are worshipped, while the parts of the past that are outside of the liberals experience or view are marginalized or demonized.

The hypocrisy of speaking out against colonization, the massacre and marginalization of the indigenous, the Trump era, bigotry emboldened, minorities in greater danger while at the same time demonizing self-defense. in the end, that's what it is. The firearms are just the mechanism. The idea and spirit behind the the mechanism is the anthroplogical relationship to weaponry and it's role in self-preservation. It's the ESSENTIAL human relationship to the practice of self-defense. When AGLs are against guns, they are not merely against guns, they are against the ESSENTIAL human relationship to self-defense.

The presence of the the modern Police force is not a substitute for self-defense. No wizened police officer, lawyer, judge or academic professional in a related field should be telling citizens that law and the enforcement of law is a flawless preventative when it comes to crime. No one in this realm should be advising against self-defense. While a standing Army, a police force, and the insulation that can be provide by modern world may be able to act as variables in making a safer world, the presence of these systems has not eliminated the need for humans, who chose to do so, to eliminate the pursuit of self-defense.

THE TRADITION OF MARTIAL CAPACITY.

THE TRADITION OF PREPARING FOR EVENTUALITY.

SUPERCILIOUS - behaving or looking as is superior to others.

THE POSITIVE ASPECT OF CHANNELING THE MARTIAL DESIRE FOR WEAPONRY INTO HEALTHY CHANNELS.

Free hypodermic needles for addicts, condoms for prostitutes, but all guns have to go?
These first two concepts are progressive concepts, designed to alleviate issues related to criminal activity that is often associated with other, negative, dysfunctional human issues.
The desire to have a relationship with self-defense via the firearm is not the result of deviance. It is anthropologically, and archeologically reinforced, long-standing human tradition. A net positive. The heart of gun ownership is not deviant. 

"Cognitive Aristocracy" - Joel Klotkin
 

What is deemed as "sensible" in terms of high regulatory positions towards firearms is the direct effect of the academic superificiality produced by the cognitive aristocracy.

What is it called when a segment of modern culture turns around and shits on the entire past, including valuable tradition? I have to be able to show the difference between the irreplaceable gems of past efforts and the toxic or anachronistic habits of our less capable, past selves.

As Grossman claims, did governments stop report accurate crime data in '06?

Modern conservatives are a poor representation of firearms in society. We feel, as we dig deeper, we are going to find that they poorly represent firearms, even amongst other conservatives. We contend that the future of firearms in America is not cultural split, but a strong and reasonable core.

The AGPs want to delegitimize a valid, legal human tradition. Don't ever let anyone disconnect this part of the human story. Like all traditions, it is not a tradition for everyone. Like all traditions, it connects to the social contract, and cannot exist in a vacuum. As such, we cannot act as if it does. Because of the particular variables associated with firearms, there is a natural responsibility involved with them. This responsibility is OUR responsibility in the social contract. We consider the attitude that it's merely a right, and "nobody's business" to not only be extraordinarily immature, but a reflection of the very same unevolved status that makes the typical conservative gun morass unpallateable.

Firearms are lethal. We own them. We are a part of society.  We support the embracement of these concepts. We reject the notion of firearms being "nobody's business". in the hands of individuals or groups who act in isolatory ways, the honor that should be involved in firearms ownership is delegitimized. This isolatory dynamic, by far, is at the foundation of typical modern gun culture.  But, more importantly, it threatens the future of the 2nd Amendment in America. This cultural split into extremities is not going to last forever without great consequence. The 21st century gun culture needs to hold to the three prongs of 2A while becoming sensitive to the world around it - by becoming realistic and sensitive to the realities of firearms in greater American culture. The realities of firearms in America are subtle. In and of itself,  'from my cold dead hands' is not a platform or philosophy that will survive the future. Officially, the presence of 2A in America is beginning to suffer from it.

Gun Owners, we can hold on to the three prongs of 2A, but we must add subtlety to our approach to the responsibility and to our relationship with the wider culture.


Judging the human right to self-defense, from the mere lens of modern law and society is a major disservice to gun owners. ONLY using these modern structures to judge and define self-defense, and these structures alone, is a form of academic, modernity worship on par with the very same religious worship that many liberal and academic minds automatically seek to discredit. There's no difference between the the worship of modernity and the worship of gods. Self-defense is only debatable to the superficial person. It is an ancient, natural, intuitive force. Calling it a 'right' is even exceptionally superficial. It is a necessary force of self-preservation. Law, polity, and academics  are secondary players in this reality. We have been a country for 250 years. The basis of our law started in Europe *four hundred* years ago.

Homo Sapien started advancing spear-tip technology, which was directly used to self-preserve, at least 70,000 years ago. Using weapons to ensure the a person has the tools to persevere is, at its basis, an ANTHROPOLOGICAL phenomenon. Before it is a political discussion, before it is a legal debate, before it is part of yet another intellectual jerk-off session, it is an anthropological reality. While, through the momentum of time, generational genetic change-overs, the introduction of local police forces,  the structure and insulations of modernity, etc - some humans have found themselves without the intuitive consideration of such a thing - without the consideration of self-defense, many people have not. Many humans are born with. Some awaken to it slowly. Others are shocked into it by crisis and trauma. But the reality is that self-defense and human martial intuition is a non-intellectual, intuitive force that has been essential to  human survival.

There is no way on Earth that we are going to advance gun culture by starting from some imaginary place, a place that has no relationship to the foundation that conservative culture has already laid out. We consonsider conservative gun culture to be toxic beyond a redeemable threshold. But at the same time, they are right about a number of gun-related issues. However, instead of using those essential principles for truth, they now use them in an engine of political propaganda.

When we have a new gay member, or african american member come into LGO and they are looking for guidance on how to approach self defense due the the emboldening of bigotry in the Trump Era, that's not an academic issue, that's not an issue of jurisprudence, that's not an issue of human paranoia - that is a human being having a proper, VISCERAL, intuitive awakening of their own martial awareness. It's legitimate in and of itself. It's not made legitimate by The Bill Of Rights, or Heller, or The Supreme Court, or the local police force, or The Founders, or European law, or The Magna Carta. It is legitimate because we are humans on planet earth, in in the span of our anthropoligical experience, we have gained extraordinary ground with our relationship with weapons. Like it or not, we have gained EXTRAORDINARY ground with weapons. This includes the advancement of our individual martial capacity: self-defense.

Once this is understood, it is indeed important for the gun owner to then familiarize themselves for the modern nexus points between this natural reality, and modern law, society, polity etc. It is necessary that we do so. But these things are not ultimate justifiers of your desire for firearms. Your own martial alarm, your own visceral sense is the justifier.

STAND YOUR GROUND: THERE IS NO LAW THAT LEGALIZES THE AGGRESSIVE KILLING OF SOMEONE UNDER THE AUSPICES OF SELF-DEFENSE.

We have to look at this from awider lens than just the Anglo-American history of self-defense. There is a wider, deeper, anthropological history of self-defense that supercede assessments that worship modernity.
 

GENETIC KNOWLEDGE! INTUITION!! VISCERAL KNOWLEDGE!!! "In the bones". 

Dr. Brian Dias - "ancestral experience before conception."

Emory dept of Psych.
 

Etiology - cause, causation, study of origin.
 

Essential information, related to the essence of human survival, passed from the brain into the genome. The transference of ancestral experience before conception.
 

There isn't going to BE a more potent set of survival-based, visceral desires and alarms that supercede those related to self defense. They are in the category of sleeping, eating, drinking water, and sexual desire / procreative desire. Although the projections of modernity have seemed to accomplish the deadening of this sense in many people, it is certainly not dead in all people. We observe the transition of humans awakening tothis sense on a weekly basis. 

Based on Yemane's work, it is an awakening. Anthropoligical awakening.

We are going deeper and more broad with our lens because the standard lens for guns and society has now become muddied with manifold cultural and political poisons. Making the case for a higher functioning gun owner and making the case for a more modern approach to societal responsibility, officially demands that the memes and iconography of American gun culture be transcended. there's no way to rediscover the chivalry lost in gun culture, the spirit lost in gun culture, without it. the values being espoused and the integrity being projected by gun culture is two dimensional and corporate. the NRA is 2 dimensional and corporate. The entirety of the culture is saturated with propaganda and low-mindedness.

In the Liberal Gun Owners think-tank, we are not academic. We are just everyday people. We do not want people to perceive that we are making ultimate scientific or academic statements. We are not. To be honest, we see too much worship of these approaches from the intelligentsia. We are just people and we are presenting a cultural assessment as people. As gun owners, we can think of nothing more powerful. We don't ever want to be academically poncey or scientifically sterile. We embrace the necessary imperfection of including our hearts and our guts, as well as our minds. We can leave the perfection up to others. We don't worship statistics over individual observation. Subjective observation is human. It is also valuable, in our opinion. When someone in LGO experiences something, and reports on it, it counts. We are not going to wait on a double-blind study or a report from the FBI to validate the emboldening of bigotry in the Trump Era, when we have African Americans and people from LGBTQ joining us, regularly,  because they rightfully have a new, visceral desire to learn self-defense. We are humans first. Before statistics, we had observation. We embrace both.

 In our opinion, advancing gun culture is a risk that cannot be taken without imperfections. Because we will use our hearts, we will be imperfect. But, in the end, we feel that we will have a greater net-effect than academic and scientific efforts that require something more polished. Critics and skeptics are welcome to have at it.

In the end, it's just the opinions of a few people. However, we feel as if we have something remarkably unique in LGO, and we are going to step on the gas with it. We are going to go until we can't go anymore.

"We have decided that our society has been based upon laws, and that's the way in which we must live." This isnt the conclusion of a knowledgable person. It isn't broad enough to encapsulate the complexity of being a human on Earth. It is indicative of the shadow side of the modern human, ignoring the natural aspects of himself/herself. it is also the psychological foundation for systemic abuses of all kinds. For a gun owner, this kind of a mentality is a negative attribute.

An essential principle of life cannot be represented if the principle begins within the realm where the believer is steeped inside of fear or concern over repercussion. Beliefs that revolve around self-preservation are not supposed to be beliefs surrounded by fear of reprisal from entities outside of oneself.

Gun ownership is the reflection of the human relationship with self-preservation. The desire for self-defense is an extension of essential, visceral, survival based forces inside of the human psyche. These forces are not, in and of themselves, deviant. Although, they can be skewed into deviance. they are primitive, visceral, pre-political, ancient, ancestral, internal desires. They have NOTHING to do with human intellect, at their base. intellect may serve the phenomenon, or seek to understand it, but at the base, the desire for firearms is the extension of the desire for the persistence of self and others.
 

Part of the reason why the issue of firearms seems so unstable and tenuous is because the mechanisms of modernity have made it so. The issues surrounding firearms have become cloudy because modernity makes it so. it is actual a simple concept to understand, and simple to embrace by those who who have this natural, internal desire and relationship to the area of self-defense that deals with firearms.

Firearms can be a phenomenon of intellect and an issue of hobby and enjoyment, but that is not the root of our relationship with weapons. Intellect and enjoyment are not the mother and father of the human-weapon relationship. Intellect and enjoyment are the great-great-great-grandchildren. The mother and father of our desire for self-defense weaponry is prehistoric desire for the preservation of self, and the protection of others in our our closest tribe.

One of the most important things that we can do as gun owners is RECONNECT THE LARGER STORY OF GUN OWNERSHIP IN OUR OWN MINDS. The "tradition" aspect of gun ownership in America is EXCEPTIONALLY anglo-centric. because of this, it has fallen into the same low minded, bigoted, propaganda laced expression that conservative culture has fallen into. Whether we think of it or not, individual humans have a relationship with weapons that stretch back 70,000 years. And not just any relationship. A VALID relationship. That's certainly not 70,000 of deviance and crime. there is a prudent, robust relationship with weaponry that directly relates to justified, individual self preservation. It's not debateable. It doesn't belong to the conservatives. It doesn't belong to America. It belongs to human kind. One of the main reasons why we have had to struggle to connect with firearms in this culture is because conservatives, largely, have not only coopted the space, they have filled it with toxins and dressed it with the image purity via nationalism.

Tier 2 relationships with firearms are not strong enough to act as ballast or foundation for gun culture, because, ultimately, directly or indirectly, the don't acknowledge the essential realities, and extraordinarily long tradition of self-preservation / martial awareness between humans and weapons.

American culture cannot long survive the tensions and distance that are be created by both sides of our culture being so vulnerable to such a purposefully superficial stream of information from the range of our modern media. LGO may spend a lot of time criticising conservative culture, but it needs to be made clear that we also are turn-off by the biases and arrogance possessed in our own culture. We have a problem with both.
 

"Cause I said so" and "screw you" are also inadequate ways to actually be effective in reinforcing the future of the second amendment.

Gun owners VS Anti-gun progressives
Gun owners VS high-regulation activists
Gun owners vs society
Tier 1 gun owners vs Tier 2 gun owners

There are already laws and a system of laws in place to deal with firearms in society. And while some may be able to make a case for the consideration of better laws or additional laws, there exists NO legitimate case for stating that poor results in this situation are merely the function of inadequate or two few gun laws. Even with the perfect cadre of gun laws, or the perfect cadre of laws in general, criminal activity will still persist.
Inadequate gun laws do not explain-away crime.
 

AGP Myths, not to be entertained, not based in any truth:

• All gun ownership is deviant

• A desire for gun ownership and compassion cannot exist inside of a single person

• Many or all aspects of gun ownership are a function of low intelligence

• Many or all aspects of gun ownership are a function of paranoia

• Many or all aspects of gun ownership are a function of compensations for feelings of sexual inadequacy

• Many or all aspects of gun ownership are directly related to toxic masculinity

• Many or all aspects of gun ownership are analogous to illegitimate wars and war-hawking
  
  

In the case of school shootings, rarity does not equate to insignificant. School shootings are an egregious but important cultural phenomenon. Although, statistically, the case can be made that school shootings are following a historical pattern, we do not want to discount our right to basic observation. From the standpoint of the average person, we are in a legitimate spate of school shootings. This matters. Culturally it matters because it is gaining in the cultural consciousness of America and it is having effect everywhere: in schools, at home, in our government, in our police departments, at the polls.

This was the revolutionary and, like every revolutionary idea, at the time controversial point that Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975) made in 1962, when The New Yorker commissioned her, a Jew of who had narrowly escaped from Nazi Germany herself, to travel to Jerusalem and report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann — one of the chief architects of the Holocaust. In 1963, her writings about the trial were published as Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil(public library) — a sobering reflection on “the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us — the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”

 

You are quite right, I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical.

Because of the established script, these school massacres can now occur from a shallow, superficial, inelaborate level. Ordinary. Confused. 

Mark Fullman:

 "Concerned bystanders only notified law enforcement in 41 percent of the emerging cases." Talk. Report. Manny Tau's "Screepy".

Here, the FBI report underscores a crucial distinction—that mental health-related behavioral problems are not the same thing as having a clinically diagnosable mental illness. The FBI could only verify that 25 percent of the active shooters were known to have been professionally diagnosed with a mental illness of any kind prior to their attacks. Only three cases involved a psychotic disorder.

Law doesn't induce cultural change. Law doesn't induce behavioral change. Law doesn't induce evolution. Law doesn't induce increased awareness. Law is not an effective preventative. 

There was a simple reason, Meloy suggested, for the record number of people packing the room: Mass murder is on the rise. “We’ve seen this very worrisome pattern over the past five or six years of an increase in targeted violence in public places,” he told me later. “Personally and professionally, this is a big concern—that uptick is very important, especially as violent crime has decreased.”

 

"Inside The Race..." Follman
But such drastic measures are rare. “With a lot of these cases, you peel back the curtain and there are good social and mental health interventions that are diverting the person onto a better course,” Meloy says. Often the best initial step is the most direct—conducting a “knock and talk” interview, which has the dual benefit of offering help and putting the subject on notice. Simply realizing that authorities are watching can be an effective deterrent.

Threat assessment requires a remarkable shift in thinking for law enforcement because in most cases no crime has occurred. “Our goal is prevention over prosecution,” supervisory special agent Andre Simons, who led the FBI unit until this summer, explained when we met at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington earlier this year. “If we can facilitate caretaking for individuals who are not able to perceive alternatives to violence, then I think that’s a righteous mission for us.”
Mass murder is not an impulsive crime—and therein lies the promise of threat assessment.
Ever since Columbine, the FBI has been studying what drives people to commit mass shootings. Last fall it issued a report on 160 active-shooter cases, and what Simons could disclose from its continuing analysis was chilling: To a much greater degree than is generally understood, there’s strong evidence of a copycat effect rippling through many cases, both among mass shooters and those aspiring to kill. Perpetrators and plotters look to past attacks for not only inspiration but operational details, in hopes of causing even greater carnage. Emerging research—including our own analysis of the “Columbine effect“—could have major implications for both threat assessment and how the media should cover mass shootings.
 

The ACLU, in their report, writes:

“People who are not alleged to have committed a crime should not be subject to severe deprivations of liberty interests, and deprivations for lengthy periods of time, in the absence of a clear, compelling and immediate showing of need. As well-intentioned as this legislation is, its breadth and its lenient standards for both applying for and granting an ERPO are cause for great concern.

“The ACLU urges legislators to focus bills like these on addressing serious imminent threats to the public safety while safeguarding robust due process procedures before granting the courts and law enforcement agencies potentially intrusive powers over the liberty of individuals charged with no crime. A narrower bill with basic due process protections can provide the proper balance in promoting both public safety and constitutional safeguards.

“Gun violence is a deeply serious problem deserving of a legislative response, but not, Minority Report-like, at the expense of basic due process for individuals whose crimes are speculative, not real. The precedent it creates could reverberate in unexpected and distressing ways in years to come.”

In terms of law, we need to start with the structure that is in place, not the one that exists in the ideal. We can say the same for the world-at-large: we need to start with the mechanisms available in the world that we live in, not the ones that we would imagine would be in place in a perfect world.

MARTIAL AWARENESS / EVENTUALITIES / AND FORSIGHT. IMPORTANCE. ANTHROPOLOGICAL PHENOMENON.

THE NEGATIVES ASSOCIATED WITH THE ADVANCEMENT OF CIVILIZATION.

Getting people off of using social media and mass lay opination as a basis for understanding reality.

Tier 2 gun owners and non-gun owners have a hard time or an impossible time separating their understanding of an agreement with the social contract to a completely subjugation towards modern systems.
 

As long as the Oval Office is blue, we are natural and free and all is as it should be. But when the Oval Office is red, we are subjugates to an evil, over-structure. When it is technically impossible to create such a structure in a period of 4 years.

"All modern humans are descended from a population that originated in Africa sometime between 200,000 and 150,000 years ago. Between about 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, a founder population left Africa and gave rise to all Eurasians. They rapidly spread to almost all corners of the world and wherever they went, animals and other species of humans disappeared. Why it occurred at this date and how they were so successful has been a puzzle for a long time but most scientists think that the development of projectile weapons was important. Our research, from our archeological research from the cost of South Africa suggests that a new form of projectile technology was invented about 71,000 years ago, just before this expansion occurred. Spears are generally used for stabbing or are hand-cast. These have limited range and accuracy and they often have large, heavy tips. In many parts of the world, people developed spear throwers or atlatls - using assisted leverage to throw a spear or dart with far more distance power or accuracy. The darts typically have small, light sophisticated tips. They need to be light, otherwise they will drag down the projectile. Stone-age people often used a technology called microlithic technology to produce these atlatl tips. Microlithic means, 'small stone'.  The maker would typically produce a long, thin flake called a 'blade' - snap it into pieces, blunt one side, and that side would then be glued into a slot in a pointed piece of bone or wood. These are the barbs or sharp slicing edges that damage the animal as they penetrate. The production of these points has multiple steps and we think, likely, requires a sharp mind to invent and language to be taught to others. Our research shows that early humans, on the South African coast, had both the smarts and the weapons to break out of Africa and colonize the rest of the world."

Curtis Marean is a Foundation Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and associate director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.
http://www.wamc.org/post/dr-curtis-marean-arizona-state-university-early-human-weapons


" Early modern humans in South Africa had the cognition to design and transmit at high fidelity these complex recipe technologies. This ability facilitated effective weapons grounded in microlithic technology, conferring increased killing distance and power over hand-cast spears28. Microlith-tipped projectile weapons increased hunting success rate, reduced injury from hunting encounters gone wrong, extended the effective range of lethal interpersonal violence29, and would have conferred substantive advantages on modern humans as they left Africa and encountered Neanderthals equipped with only hand-cast spears."

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Panagiotis_Karkanas/publication/233331522_An_early_and_enduring_advanced_technology_originating_71000_years_ago_in_South_Africa/links/0912f513cbc695f63e000000.pdf

THE LIMITS OF LAW, GOVERNMENT, AND THE REALITY OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT.

Law is not the ultimate justifier of right, neither is government or our courts the bestowers. We live inside of a social agreement and we agree that it is useful to use a system of law to maintain an advanced society. However, our law system is clearly not adequate and imperfect in its practice, often. The right to self-preservation via self-defense through the force-adequate-weapon-of-the-age is not bestowed by government or law. It is a sense based decision and acknowledgement, by those who are either born with or unlock martial sensibility. It is not for everybody. The agreeing to the use of law to describe the phenomenon and to outlibe a committment to public safety is valid a is part of our social agreement, but the notion that law can take away the right, or take away the availablility of weapons that are force adequate for the task of modern self-defense is arrogant. It's preposterous.  Self-defense and martial awareness are extensions of natural human desire to deal with eventualities. Our relationship to foresight and dealing with eventualities tens of thousands of years old. As is our connection to force adequate , individual weaponry. 

Law doesn't induce cultural change. Law doesn't induce behavioral change. Law doesn't induce evolution. Law doesn't induce increased awareness. Law is not an effective preventative. 

THE HUMAN CAPACITY FOR FORESIGHT AND THE CULTURAL CONSIDERATION OF EVENTUALITIES

PEACE ON EARTH AND A WORLD WITHOUT GUNS


There are no simple answers or 100% effective approaches to prevent school shootings. There are approaches that have been used to successfully avert hundreds of planned school shootings. Working in this field for decades, it is frustrating to see a school ignore proven measures that have prevented deadly school shootings and bombings for decades.  While door locking devices may be useful or even necessary in some schools, other types of threats are more common. As we look at our active shooter response measures, we stay vigilant on student threat assessment and management, behavioral training approaches and suicide prevention. When schools engage in theoretical approaches that are not validated, it creates a serious risk to our students and those who educate them.

Chris Dorn SafeHavens International


While we agree with our role as critics of manmade systems and agents of change, we refus to fall into the traps that other leftists fall into. One of the major traps being the assignment of all classical American elements as toxic. We don't see much legitimacy in any fight that does not understand the importance of the Bill Of Rights and its essential uses. All of our considerations will first use Natural Law Theory and The Bill Of Rights as a yardstick. All other considerations, essential as they may be, are secondary. We must work within the actual situation that we find ourselves in. Whether you like it or not, we are in America.

"The decline of human capital."

Nick Ismail - macroeconomics

Declining self-reliance.

The Bad Apple Threshold and The Thin Blue Line


The Myth Of The Effectiveness Of Law

Lawyers, judges and politicians are just humans. Most of them believe in law beyond the degree of which law is effective. Like in in other industries, these people have their egos and need for validation wrapped up in their jobs. Very little ballast is provided in subcultures such as this. Law is clearly not the best way to deal with the ills of society and can rarely, if ever actually spark necessary cultural effect. It is a secondary phenomenon. Human values and cultural values, and their associated efforts, outside of the realm of politics and law, is the primary ground for change and action. This ground should then force law and politics to create supportive framework, where and when it is necesessary.

Law can only reach its potential when put in its place. Placing law, politics, and voting as the primary driver of society is the sign of superficial position. Law can be effective in a society that is taking both individual and communal responsibility seriously and making day-to-day efforts, in three dimensional reality. Law can be effective in a society where individuals consider the effects of their actions on the wider world. Law cannot be fully effective in a world filled with the minimum cultural efforts of cultural introverts and those who live in academic ivory towers. It cannot be effective in a world where the average time on the internet is growing well past the average time a person spends interacting in their community. Law cannot be effective in a world where people remain inactive due to a worship of existing statute or the arrival of a coming divine solution.

Law can only be 60% effective, in the best case scenario. Why do people subconsciously worship the use of law as if it is more effective. Political activity can only be 60% effective, in the best case scenario. Why do people subconsciously worship it as if it is more effective? The academic pursuit of epistomology can only be 60% effective in society, in the best case scenario. Why do people subconsciously worship it as if it is more effective?

Ego, vanity, self-absorption and their #1 product: superficial position.

There is no effective solution without understanding how individual psychology affects behavior and how behavior effects cultural efforts. If your head is up your ass, your voting might be able to eek out some small effect, but, because of the way that the effect was gained, the effect will be reversible. So it is with the efforts associated with superficial position. Cultural efforts work against superficial position, because the required, basic, daya-to-day sustained effort has a reducing effect on self-absorption. It enables long-term, collective efforts to truly bond.

Worshiping easy information, protesting twice a year, pulling a lever, wearing a button, and running the mouth on the internet does NOT enable the long term bonding of collective efforts.

This current tendency for all Americans, but our own Liberal culture specifically, to look upon political activity, law, and thus voting as a primary ignition for lasting change, particularly in the political environment of the last 10 years, is another unfortunate symptom of superficial position. "But we live in a land of laws..." is typically heralded by those in superficial position, who, although believe themselves to be connected to society, they are mostly isolated from a real understanding of human dynamics and society.
 

As an example: how many people in our forums react to school shootings by the limited considerations of what laws are needed? How many of these people just want a simple button to push, that enacts some mecahnism far away, that they never have to be TRULY involved in?

Too many.

How many people in gun culture, who have shown at least an inkling of concern about school shootings, have thought to research the matter for themselves and then set up a meeting with their local school district or closest friend or relative to start discussing the matter?

Not many. Why? Because it is inconvenient. And so it is with cultural effort. It's time consuming and it is a long-term committment by many members of society for an extended period of time. It's much easier for the lazy part of the human mind to believe that cultural issues can be dealt with in an industrial fashion: go to a building, push a button, say "hi" to Fred, go back home with a button on your shirt, tell everyone on the internet how awesome their support is on the internet. Easy.

The problem is, our society, officially, is showing signs of how this approach is inadequate. It is certainly showing it through the school shootings phenomenon. This baseline ignorance of human dynamics and society is a significant problem in American society. It is a GIANT problem in gun culture. And much like the phenomenon in greater American culture, it underlies all of the current and future challenges for gun culture itself. LGO will step out in an official voice when needed. But we will NEVER become an organization that reinforces this pattern in gun owners. We will never become an organization that is okay with people just pointing a finger towards us, wearing our buttons, and then sitting on their asses at home. We will provide our thought leadership for those that require it, we will provide materials and a philosophical basis for gun owners, or general citizens to take into their own individual activity. We cannot stress this enough: CULTURAL ACTIVITY IS FAR SUPERIOR TO POLITICAL ACTIVITY.  While we support political activity, when it is well researched, it is not nearly as powerful as cultural activity: people getting together and sparking day-to-day thought and activity in the basic world around them.

Law and the political realm should always be a secondary consideration.

Liberal Gun Owner Leadership and The Necessity Of Guns

That is correct. We said NECESSITY. If it is difficult for someone to understand how that can be the truth for Americans in the 21st century, then that difficulty is indicative of a major issue with the embracing of different realities. We see the consistent expression, by the core of Liberal Culture, of the cultural need to embrace different realities. While, at the same time, we see a complete deligitimization of any example where a citizen owns and operates a firearm because they, in both sound mind and pure heart, understand the self-protective firearm as a necessity. Are there truths to the claim that human paranoia can create an obsession with fiorearms ownership? Of course it can. But on the other hand, some people seem to be extraordinarily challeneged by the notion that an intelligent, compassionate, balanced, successful human has a relationship with guns out of necessity. For some, conscious or subconscious deviance, paranoia, or sexual insecurity are the only valid explanations for any and all gun ownership.

This is fallacy.

"If a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to 'bind me in all cases whatso-ever' to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them?"

~Thomas Paine, referring to Parliament's Declatory Act of 1776~


ERPOS - Bills of attainder - the act of a legislature to declare someone guilty without a trial.

ERPOS AS BILLS OF ATTAINDER

“FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS!” VS. “IT’S THE GUNS!”

One of the predictable products of superficial position is insufficient thought products. Insufficient thought products lead to non-solutions and socio-political / cultural loops. SOCIO-POLITICAL LOOPING. SPL is a negative phenomenon.

One of the main beliefs that drives SPL is the cultural belief that law drives societal innovation. In terms of our challenges in gun culture we can see any of the following:

• laws and voting as the primary pathway to innovation

• laws and voting as the primary pathway to reform

• laws and voting as the primary pathway to change

• laws and voting as the primary pathway to improvement

  In the instance of change needed in a school system’s overall safety, the effective path would be to start at the level of the general community itself: discussions, discovery, white-boarding, debate, researching, gathering of opinions and committments, meetings etc. This would be followed by actions associated with the school administration, district representatives, and communications with the wider community. This would be followed with your actionable voting and political strategy.
  
  You can see how this level of activity is much more involved than what is typically done, in both general society and gun culture:

• Go online and find the quickest links an articles that reinforce ones own, under-researched position.

• Go onto a forum or one’s own personal platforms and complain

• Involve oneself in philosophies of inertia like, “who has time for that?”, “this is just how the world works!”, “I give my money to the NRA.”, etc.

• Vote occassionally

• Even though you yourself did nothing effective or required towards actual change or improvement, go online and cast for guilt amongst those who didn’t repeat your own superficial activity.

  In thias country we seem to have an addiction to a false notion about the effectiveness of law. While we live in a society that uses a structure of law, and we must learn to use that system to effect, the law system is nowhere near the effective societal mechanism that American society believes it to be. Certainly, politicians are vested in the continuance of this belief. Certainly, lawyers are vested in this belief. Certainly, judges are vested in this belief. Certainly, aspects of Law Enforcement are vested in this belief. All of these industries have a subconscious stake, not just in the belief of the system of law, but they have a stake in the continuance of the myth of its level of effectiveness. We can be thoughtful, moral, and effective in society without believing that law, politics, government, and other societal structures are more effective than they actually are. having an accurate view of their effectiveness does not make one unAmerican, immoral etc.
  
  Generally, gun owners tend towards inertia. They tend towards superficial position. They tend towards an ineffective homeostasis. Like many hobbiests their minds are attracted to the course of action that keeps their enjoyments uninterrupted. They over-rely on the thought products of the past. They isolate. They live in an insular world. They look for others who reinforce these habits. They either engage in superficial position or use their intelligence to present studies and facts to reinforce inertia. The problem with this is that, because they are insular, they have no real sense of the wider world out in 3D reality. They have no sense or attraction to preventatives relative to any cultural phenomenon that may erode individual rights. They believe that the Bill Of Rights and supportive case-law will always be enough. They equate any reaction to over-reaction. This all falls within the bounds of the psychological mechanism that reinforce the negative aspects of homeostasis and inertia. We proffer that this is, by far, and moreso than general society, the tendency within gun culture. We proffer that this is the main contributor to gun culture having no truly healthy interface for the the wider world. We proffer that this is the cultural phenomenon that the NRA is the official voice of in American Society. Finally, we proffer that this cultural dynamic is currently showing signs that it is, BY FAR, one of the greatest threats to the future of gun ownership.
  
  What is LGO’s solution to this problem?
  1. Providing platforms and support for the left-of-center gun owner who is capable of evolving out of this dynamic.

  2. Providing platforms and avenues of communication, in the future, for any right-of-center or independent gun owner who is capable of evolving out of this dynamic.

  3. As a professional organization, acting in a manner that rises out of this dynamic by providing support and thought leadership, for anyone who needs it, who also sees the need to have gun owners who want to stand on new, 21st century ground.
  
  LGO RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ACTION:
  
  HOW TO APPROACH YOUR SCHOOL.
  
  SECURE SCHOOLS DONT HAVE TO BE PRISONS
  
  DECLINING SELF-RELIANCE IS THE PATHWAY TO THE EROSION OF RIGHTS
  
  While, as Liberals, we see the importance of use our governmental structure to protect our civil rights advancements, and can see the importance of governmental structure in advancing the cause of something like universal health care, we also easily observe the use of these importances to feed a cultural over-reliance on seeing government as a replacement for essential self-reliance. This is one place where we agree with Libertarians and Conservatives. Although, in our case, we are endeavoring to not use this viewpoint towards some other, ignorant political motivation. One can keep an eye on the boundaries for an effective application of government and an effective dose of self-reliance. LGO believes in starting from reality and working from there. We have THIS current system of law and governance. And while a few of us may see it as borderline irredeemable, and while a few of us understand that humans corrupt all systems, and while a few of us understand the importance, historically, of dismantling toxic systems (especially ones that advertise that they are regularly renewable and are, in actuality, not renewable at all), we still believe that working from within the system, is, at least, somewhat effective.
  
  Law, in society, is only effective when it’s put in its place. Worshipping it, seeing it as a panacea, believing it to be the only, or often, primarily seeing it as the primary road is not putting it in its place.
  
  One of the major purposes of this report and our subsequent reports is to give liberal gun culture and gun culture in general, innovative language to use in discussing firearms in society. The reality is that the standard gun terminology is over-trodden and attached to too much dogma. If one does not wish to use our views and terms, then we encourage one to come up with their own, innovative way. It can go a long way in advancing into 21st Century Gun Ownership.

  
  GUN STATISTICS AND THE HURRICANE MODEL

  There is a difference between what is focused on, Windspeed category, and the overall metrics of damage during a hurricane. Wind damage is not the only consideration, many times it isn’t even the most damaging variable. Sometimes that variable is flooding or storm-surge. But storm surge isnt as sexy for news reports and social media bluster.
  
  The cultural effects of schools shootings evade gun statistics and they have just as much value. The stat addicts, who are often stat addicts because it reinforces their homeostasis. While it may provide great ballast in terms of getting sucked into the wave of reactionary-ism, it also serves to just keep gun owners on their ass. Reactionary-ism and reacting properly are not analogs. Here, with LGO, we are striving, in earnest, to react properly. Often, the use of gun stats in gun culture is done so to avoid everything, not just over-reaction. In terms of the Hurricane model, gun stats are the windspeed category system. The cultural and societal effects of gun crime are storm-surge and flooding. Yes, overall, gun crime is trending downward. Yes, school shootings are still trending towards their own average.
  
  Both are true. But so is gun owners using stats as an excuse to not observe and take part in reality. We can embrace downward trending gun crime AND cultural storm-surge.
  
  Besides that, children are getting killed in schools, and the NRA spends its time saying, “thoughts and prayers”, and then fighting Alyssa Milano on Twitter.
  
  Stats or no stats:
  
  Gun owners, it’s a problem.
  
  No need to get blinded by emotional reactions. But, it’s a problem.
  
  Law And Its Limits
  Political Action And Its Limits
  
  THE BALANCE BETWEEN NATURAL LAW AND POSITIVE LAW

  THE EROSIVENESS OF THE TIER 2 SHADOW

• Placing positive law and political activity as the only legitimate factors in societal activity. Judging gun ownership from merely the considerations of law and voting. Making gun ownership analogous to deviance. Making the consideration of natural rights an analog to deviance or lesser intellect.
  
  THE EROSIVENESS OF THE TIER 1 SHADOW
  
  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF OUR VOICE AND NEW LANGUAGE

• Law And Its Limits
  Political Action And Its Limits
  
  THE BALANCE BETWEEN NATURAL LAW AND POSITIVE LAW

  THE EROSIVENESS OF THE TIER 2 SHADOW

• Placing positive law and political activity as the only legitimate factors in societal activity. Judging gun ownership from merely the considerations of law and voting. Making gun ownership analogous to deviance. Making the consideration of natural rights an analog to deviance or lesser intellect.
  
  THE EROSIVENESS OF THE TIER 1 SHADOW
  
  Viewing the current situation in America with the extremity of approach between gun owners and gun regulation activists, highlighted by the niche phenomenon of school shootings highlights a few things:

• In terms of effectiveness towards solutions to school shootings, the scenario tends towards long-term ineffectiveness.

• In terms of gun culture’s effect on the societal relationship to 2A and gun culture, mainstream gun culture’s approach to the greater society tends towards long-term ineffectiveness.

  
  
  Our core values and a message from leadership.
  
  Ultimately, the formation of LGO and the establishment of its organizational values comes from the input of the merited leaders of the organization, who have decades of collective experience in American life, in firearms ownership and in the practice and study of law. The tapestry of our value-set represents a wide and fair palpation for the overall mean of the LGO online community. It does not perfectly match every value represented in the greater community and will NOT EVER represent every value in the wider on-line community. It is a fair representation and it is our representation. Let it serve while being agreed with or while being disagreed with. There are aspects of it that we are no longer open to debate and discovery. Some things in life are unassailable. There is a notion present within online liberal culture that all things need to be subject to reversal in order to be legitimate. Not only is this notion immature, it’s toxic to essential aspects of gun ownership. You can expect that we will not be supporting such notions. The same can be said about the concept of flexibility. There is plenty to be flexible over. There are some things that should not be flexible.
  
  The freedom to make the decision to partake in the spectrum of self-defense disciplines is an unassailable human right. No law that holds against this right is just. Ultimately, no one should comply with such a law and invest in any culture that attempts to block or create hurdles to this right. We understand that people have different circumstances and are forced by society to place this right in a lower consideration than others. They cannot be faulted. We are all, in our own way, robbing Peter to pay Paul - all of us. Where it is possible, refuse the prohibition of the right. We understand that society is now too complex to merely take action based on the consideration of a single right.
  
  LGO’s leadership will now, and for the entire existence of the organization, do our level best to make sure that the road to self defense via the firearm is clear for those in the future who seek to use it. Each one of us has not only had a life experience which has included firearms, but has has also had a life where the possession of firearms became a necessity. We understand that this is not everyone’s experience. We do not believe that this needs to be the case for everyone and we do not wish that it BECOMES the reality for everyone. We do know, however, on the left side of the political spectrum, there is plenty of examples of gun owners who attempt to delegitimize both firearms as a tool of self-defense and firearms as a necessity. In our view, this erosive attitude is no different from under-researched, non-gun-owning, gun regulation activists. Both maintain a position that is immature in its understanding and works against the right.
  
  The focus of this message is on the self-defense aspect of firearms because, in the modern context, we feel that it is the most critical aspect to address and that it is legitimate in perpetuity. The other classic elements of the second amendment and of firearms ownership will be dealt with, in a greater fashion, in our subsequent writings.

  
  

  If there is no area, in existence, where humans can operate, outside of the perview of human-made systems, then how is it possible to act in defense of these systems when they cross the critical threshold into toxicity and abuse? When has there ever been a time where government, the legal system, or the structures of religion have not crossed this boundary? What kind of a human subscribes to complete compliance and dedication without the avenue of analysis and forebearance that lies outside of compliance? The natural state of a human, outside of the considerations and dictates of government, law, and religion is not a state that is automatically or even predominantly deviant. We would argue that it is actually, not only, the primary foundation of the human experience, it supercedes the version of the human experience that automatically complies with human made systems without consistant observation and analysis.
  
  In the end, the right to SPVSD, the right to own firearms, and the rights illuminated in the Bill Of Rights boiled down to one essential truth: that there are two basic forces of consideration going on in this world. One places man-made systems in the dominate role, bends itself to the primary consideration of the dictates of the system, and treats individual power as either secondary or non-existent. The second force considers the individual persepctive, and the freedom of the individual right to life, without abuse, as the prime factor of existence.
  

• What makes the US experiment innovative and irreplaceable is that, for the first time in history, the individual force has been given legal grounds to stop the encroachment of the abuses of systems. There is no understanding the actual value and power of the Bill Of Rights for those who pursue life based upon the first force. There is no properly supporting the Bill Of Rights for those who live their life by the first force. Because, the Bill Of Rights itself is a litmus test for which force an American serves. One cannot support the BOR AND have the apparent safety and stability provided by putting the state or established structures first. When a person in our community starts their considerations on the gun issue by considering politics, law, and voting first, they are displaying that they not only misunderstand the part that firearms play in self-preservation, they universal importance of The Bill Of Rights.
  
  The only way that the power of the Bill of Rights can be unlocked is when a human considers their own heart first, researches well the supportive structures of their philosophy, makes their determination, and then considers the social fabric and the structures of government and law second.
  
  With all of the bluster about that our own culture makes about equality and civil rights, or liberal culture is simultaneously running towards the advancing of systems worship - of placing essential aspects of existence into the hands of the state or other structures. America is running further and further towards the worship of systems. Very few people understand the critical nexus point that the BOR reprsents as the only true legal voice for the right to individual freedom and the right for the individual to step out of compliance with toxic systems.
  
  Incrementalism seems to be the order of the day. Perhaps an individual will not comply with overt tyranny or abuse anymore, but humans display, daily, how they will easily conclude that the lack of overt toxicity is an analogue to societal health. Humans will defend and comply with a structure as long as it is not overtly destructive while remaining blind to the myriad of small, almost imperceptible abuses that are present inside of systems.