Rights are identical for everyone

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 4, 2026)

There's nothing like a political showdown to help you discover who is on your side, who isn't, and who's been a phony ally all along.

All the people, organizations, companies, and politicians who say "I'm a Second Amendment absolutist, but..." are lying. The Second Amendment doesn't come with any "unless", "except", or "but".

Is the political Left on my side? Absolutely not. They want me to hate myself, they want to steal my money and give it away, and they want to vote away any rights they don't approve of. Just like the political Right wants to violate my right to associate with whoever I choose, to criminalize standing up against kidnappers as long as the kidnappers are said to have "authority" to kidnap, and they want to legislate away any rights they don't approve of.

H.L. Mencken wrote: “The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

When President Trump said, “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with a gun. You can’t do that", he was wrong. No government rule or politician can overturn the Constitution or alter human rights, not even if the Supreme Court agrees.

Trump said those words because he was trying to gloss over a murder committed by a member of his gang. This will only work on those preprogrammed to believe it.

Trying to find loopholes so you can violate natural human rights, or violating human rights without such a loophole, is criminal. Violating rights is what criminals do; it's the definition of "criminal". Criminals excuse and justify each other.

Defending people from those who try to violate their rights can't be a real crime. Criminalizing defense and the proper tools with which to carry it out? That's the crime.

The Second Amendment isn't about who is allowed to carry what, when, or where; it's about prohibiting government from having any role in the conversation.

If you won't stand up for the rights of those you dislike, you don't really believe in rights at all. At best, you believe in privileges- things you can do as long as some government official agrees and gives you temporary permission to do it.

If this is you, at least admit it.

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An unfortunate rite of passage

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, 3 local teenage boys were in a high-speed wreck. A head-on collision with a semi, and a subsequent fire. Two are dead; one is in bad shape, facing possible brain damage, more surgeries, and months of painful recovery (he was thrown clear at the moment of impact). 

The deceased are being identified by forensics- you can probably guess why.

They were coming home from a party, and alcohol was involved.

The crash took place on the birthday of one of the dead teen's younger sisters. She'll never have another birthday without this dark cloud hanging over it.

My daughter knows two of them, including the one who survived. This is a small town- she'd known the dead one since kindergarten. She's pretty upset over the tragedy. I've been doing a lot of listening over the past couple of days. It's rough.

It seems like everyone I know has at least one story of someone they knew being killed in a crash in high school. It's almost like a rite of passage. A terrible one.

It happened when I was in high school. It happened to someone in my daughter's mom's class while she was in high school. Just about everyone has a similar experience.

When I remember the things I did at that age that could have killed me, I'm reminded of how lucky I was. And I wasn't a particularly wild kid or a partier. I just wasn't as smart as I could have been about taking unnecessary risks.

It's just part of being a teenager. Honestly, it's a little amazing that any of us survive to adulthood. Still, you really hate to see it happen. I hurt the most for the parents and other immediate family members.

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