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Show Comments By Escalante Residents On Proposed Gun Ordinance Continued ESCALANTE A number of local residents attended the recent " - public hearing in Escalante on a proposed ordinance relating to the rights of citizens to have Firearms '. in their homes. Their comments continue: Richard Costigan Escalante "I carried a weapon in defense of this country and I agree with a lot of what's been spoken, but I would hot let anyone in this room know that I have a gun or I possess one. I would much rather sit on the idea : of surprise till you come to my house looking for something and expect whatever it is that you expect. ex-pect. "But I think this is an absolute frivolous and ridiculous ordinance. And I go along, especially with Drew Cozby on the basis that as soon as you start having a list of '. who has and who doesn't have, if : you are not willing to do that, then you're in deep trouble because the government is going to come down and require that you enforce the ordinance. or-dinance. You will not find my name on a list having a gun or not having a gun." Mark Lizemby , Escalante Editor: Mr. Lizemby 's remarks re-marks were missed in part due to ; tape change. "Apparently people aren't aware of the war that's on our Constitution Constitu-tion right now. A war against our First, Second and Fourth Amendment Amend-ment rights. I don't know if anybody any-body is aware of the Kane-Feingold Bill that actually passed the Senate in the name of campaign finance reform. It's an outright attack on our First Amendment rights. "In California right now, Representative Repre-sentative Feinstein has gotten bills passed where they originally asked for permits for their guns. Okay. They turned right around, within a : (See COMMENTS onage 3-A) year after that and said, these guns are illegal now. My grandfather's 30.06 that I shot a deer with in California is now considered an armor-piercing assault rifle. This is what they are doing to us. "We need to find a way to protect pro-tect our rights. I think this is a good thing but it needs to be reworded. re-worded. We need our freedom of COMMENTS From Front Page choice; that's been said. But we also need our protection for our Constitution, because our Constitution Consti-tution is in trouble. And there are lobbyists out there fighting every day now. And, God forbid, I hate to see these things happen. "A lot of us use the First Amendment. Patrick Diehl, I do. I don't want to lose the First Amendment. I don't want to lose the Second Amendment. I don't want to lose any of them. I stand up for the whole Constitution, as a whole. That's what our country is based on. But we need to stand up and fight for it and protect it. Because Be-cause if we don't, it's not going to stand." Curt Richins Escalante "You know I've sat back and listened to everybody and everybody has good points. You've just seen the biggest reason why we need guns. And we need our rights protected pro-tected and start rejuvenating these laws so we can have the rights and maintain those rights. If we don't, we're going to have the same situation situa-tion we have up here right now. And we're going have problems that one family has with their cows in the rest of the families around here. "I mean: where is common sense? When the cows are on the desert if when these so called hikers or environmentalists are lost, they'd use their so called common sense that they think they know, they'd either follow the cow trails (that wouldn't be there, if the cows weren't there) for water or for help but if you take the cows off, they're lost; they couldn't find their way out a tumble weed." Barry Barnson Escalante "After listening to Patrick Diehl, there's a prime example of what's the use. If that guy had to stand up and defend this country, he'd lay down and wouldn't talk, and surrender to the first enemy that crossed our borders. "When we talk rights, we look to the great nation of Canada, to our north they've already lost their guns which is an ally to the United States of America and the the great nation of Australia, which has been an ally to the United States. "You've got this gentleman right here Drew Cozby a competition competi-tion shooter. People in Britain that (See COMMENTS on page 5-A) COMMENTS From Page 3-A shoot in the Olympics, have to do it outside of Europe, because they cannot pack a gun to defend themselves! them-selves! "It's my right as a citizen, whether I choose to use a weapon or whether I don't. I don't need an . ordinance from a town, or a state or a Federal government to tell me whether I can use that weapon or not. "This great nation has been given four years stay of execution with the new president. If it doesn't happen, you'll see this ; country in a revolution and you'd better be prepared to defend your family, your private; , property, whatever it takes. I don't need the city to tell me, I don't need the state to tell me, and I don't need the Federal government. I'm going to do whatever it takes to survive. I've been a firm believer in that my entire life. But our country is being be-ing governed today by a minority of the people which is environmentalists. envi-ronmentalists. They may have the majority of the money but they don't have the majority of the power in this country. "The center of this government ; to disarm the people, we're seeing it more and more every day. Twenty years ago you didn't see any of these marshmallow cops : running around. That's what I call ; - Don Mosier. The BLM these ; marshmallow cops, the first thing ' they want to do is run in, if some- ; body steals somebody else's ; - marshmallows they're gonna ; run in and take them back with -; guns. They're disarming the ' -1 American people and arming the .' government, one step at a time. "Go back to WWII. What did -. they do. They disarmed the people of Europe, they disarmed the people -! of Kosovo, the Soviet Union. We -; - wouldn't have had to go to Kosovo ; to fight their battle for them, if - they could have had the right to '. bear arms. They'd have fought their own battle. No, we've got to -; do this. It's exactly what they're ; ; doing to us. "I don't necessarily support this 100 percent, but I can see nothing wrong with it either." Eric Woolsey Escalante "You know I've been reading and I've been doing a lot of talking to a lot of people. And this ordinance, ordi-nance, I think, is a good idea, but I think it's worded wrong. I think we've heard that from a majority of . the people. I think we need some-: some-: thing, but I don't think we need ex-, ex-, -. actly what this proposes. "And I think, as far as Patrick ;'; Diehl goes, what he's done was '. just to stir us up. Instead of get-; get-; : ting here and being intelligent and -; - treating us like we're intelligent. ' ; ' We're not out to get you, Patrick, ' ; '. but when you come in and start '. picking at our lives this way, we : ; ; get a little excited too. You know, ; ; you're a human being; you need to ; -; be treated that way. So I think, ; '. ; when he speaks, let's just hold our ; '. - peace and let him go, and we'll all get along." -; - (See COMMENTS on page 6-A) COMMENTS From Page 5-A Victoria YVoodard Escalante "I wanted to ask Mr. Don Porter Por-ter a question about the third paragraph para-graph of the ordinance. It says "special interest groups are misusing misus-ing federal, state and various laws and regulations to further their own agendas and restrict the use of private pri-vate and public rights." What does special interest groups mean?" Council Member Don Porter who authored the proposed ordinance ordi-nance responded, "To define the exact ex-act word special interest I could be a special interest group, the fire department I'm on could be a special spe-cial interest group " Woodard: "But is the fire department de-partment misusing the laws, is that what this refers to? Which special interest groups are misusing the laws?" Porter replied, "There are a number of special interest groups. I'm not going to sit here and point fingers at any particular group, that's not " Victoria continued, "Okay, well, Council, I don't see what that has to do with crime which is what Don said the ordinance was about. So, in addition to feeling like my rights are violated and would be taken away by this ordinance, I feel like it should not be talking about special interest groups. I also have a problem with the next paragraph which says the federal government appears to be content to allow special spe-cial interest groups to be the deciding decid-ing factor. I'm afraid this is treasonous. trea-sonous. "You are arming the citizens for what? To fight the federal government. govern-ment. I don't think that's a good idea. So, again I agree with other people that have said this is unnecessary." Myron Carter Escalante "I'd like to thank everybody, especially es-pecially Don Porter and the town council and the mayor for trying to look out for our interests and our rights. And I'd like to thank everybody every-body who got up here and presented information. I always like listening listen-ing to everybody, even Patrick ." ' Larry Withers Escalante "Some people have said that we can't lose the Second Amendment rights. Well, how long ago were we saying that we could down on the desert with more than 1 3 people? peo-ple? That right was taken away from us. How long ago could you run your cattle on the desert? That was taken away from us. "They're not going to stop with these guns. This is a quote that Don stole from me about the timber tim-ber that was said in 1935, "This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation had full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient effi-cient and the world will follow our Jead into the future.' Adolf Hitler, 1935. "How close did we come to having hav-ing a president who wanted registration registra-tion of our guns. U can happen next time." Greg Christensen Escalante "As Chris well knows, I can't say everything I've got to say in two minutes. That, and Chris Council Member Christensen and I had a big discussion concerning this. I agree with everything Drew Cozby said and I agree with Ray Christian there's a part of this that needs to be rewritten. "I don't want you guys telling me that I have to have a gun. I don't want you telling me I can't have a gun. "The only part in this ordinance is furthermore, if somebody impedes im-pedes my right to defend myself I've got to run and tell the mayor. Well, when it comes down to time I'm not going to. Furthermore, it wouldn't do any good because there's no penalty attached to those people who infringe upon my right. "If we're going to pass an ordinance, ordi-nance, I would like the wording Ray had or something similar to that encouraging. But I would like a penalty, a big penalty attached at-tached to someone who tries to in- fringe upon my right to bear arms. "After our discussion (my 15-. 15-. year-old son was there) we got back home and my wife asked him what he thought about the discussion. He says, what he got briefly from the discussion was 'passing this won't do no more good than putting put-ting up a sign saying "we oppose gun control"." Mayor Marjie Lee Spencer called for any final speakers before closing the hearing off. With none coming forward, Spencer closed the hearing. She told to the group that the council will discuss the proceedings proceed-ings but she wanted to bring something some-thing to both the audience and the council's attention. She said she had called and talked with the town's legal counsel and he informed her he had not had time to check this out legally and see what it was and what it wasn't. And he wanted to do that before we voted on it. So it was his suggestion sugges-tion that the council not vote tonight to-night but table or postpone the items until such time as the attorney attor-ney could thoroughly check it out. Spencer said that the town did want to be legal and "not end up in a court fight that we cannot afford. We'd much rather lower the water, Drew. Having overused my share last month, I know how you feel." |