Libertarian Candidate Calls For More Guns

by Paul Bass | Oct 31, 2013 12:23 pm

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Posted to: Westville, Campaign 2013

A last-minute Westville aldermanic candidate proposed a fix for New Haven’s street violence: take more young people to the gun range, and help them get more guns. That way fewer potential shooters would mess with them, argued the candidate, Aaron Freeman. Freeman just made the deadline to register as a write-in candidate in next Tuesday’s election for alderman in Westville’s high-voting 25th Ward. Until a week ago, Democratic incumbent Adam Marchand was running for reelection unopposed. Then Michael Pinto, a prominent backer of mayoral candidate Justin Elicker, announced an 11th-hour candidacy as a write-in candidate. (Read about that here.) And now Freeman has entered the fray. Pinto and Freeman are among two of five officially registered write-in candidates in next Tuesday’s municipal elections. The others are perennial mayoral write-in candidate Roger Uihlein of the Neverending Books store; and aldermanic candidates Kevin Diggs and Patricia DePalma, who lost Sept. 10 Democratic aldermanic primaries in Beaver Hills/Westville’s Ward 27 and Fair Haven Heights’ Ward 11, respectively. The candidates’ names won’t appear on ballots. But because they registered, their votes will officially count if people write in their names. (West Haven’s incumbent mayor, John Picard, is running for reelection as a write-in.) Aaron Freeman, a 59-year-old unemployed former pizza-delivery driver, is a registered Libertarian, he said, although “I haven’t paid the $425 [the party] has been asking me for.” He discussed his reasons for running the other evening in a conversation on a bench outside the Central Avenue apartment complex where he lives with his mother, a retired teacher and bookkeeper. “Want a Twizzler?” he said, beginning the conversation by defying a a stereotypical criticism of Libertarians as selfish (as opposed to people who believe protecting individual rights produces the greater social good). “Politics today needs more initiative at the grassroots level,” he said. “I see so many 2nd Amendment advocates who don’t take inner-city children out to the rifle range. We haven an entire constitution that needs to be brought into the spotlight to see what the moths have eaten away.” He said the rifle-range trips would help both the gun-owners and their young guests—while offering a better alternative to city officials’ attempts to stem street shootings by seeking to ban guns. “It would make [the 2nd Amendment advocates] a lot of friends. It would give them better political clout,” Freeman argued. “It would demonstrate some willingness of outreach.” Meanwhile young people would less likely become shooting targets, in Freeman’s view: “People are going to be shot less often if they are not afraid of guns. If you can’t scare a person by pointing a gun at them, then you either have to fish or cut bait.” Especially if more law-abiding citizens arms themselves. “The way to control the illegal guns is for the illegal gun owners not to know who’s carrying,” said Freeman (pictured). Freeman he doesn’t have a gun and can’t afford to buy one; he’d buy a “little target pistol” if he could. His campaign platform also calls for reexamining drug laws, making more of them legal. Legal drugs often cause more harm than illegal ones, he said. He said that the gunman who went on a deadly rampage at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., in September, and the 34-year-old Connecticut woman who was shot dead while crashing her car near the White House on Oct. 3 both used prescribed Trazodone. “The outlawed stuff is safer than the legal stuff,” Freeman argued. “It is not constitutional.” Asked about crack cocaine, he said he doesn’t know if the state should continue banning it. “It is the only illegal drug I’ve heard of with an actual addiction.” Freeman said he hasn’t been able to land a new pizza-delivery gig since the family’s car died. True to his free-market, limited-government beliefs, he does not intend to apply for welfare, he said. “The thought does not please me. I don’t want to sell my soul.”

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posted by: robn on October 31, 2013 12:31pm We’ll clearly be safer if everyone is armed; that’s why for Halloween I’ll be giving out Glocks instead of candy.

posted by: TheMadcap on October 31, 2013 1:26pm You ever notice the people calling for more guns and guns for self defense tend to live in areas where they never actually experience violent crime?(usually its the suburbs but in this case Westville)

posted by: Nathan on October 31, 2013 1:30pm Ignoring his thoughts about the impact of legal private ownership of firearms - because that issue, while relevant to some of the reported assaults, is not relevant to the posed questions about firearms violence - his thoughts regarding outreach to urban youth are not that different from what is advocated by some other groups with very different political affiliations. I would suggest that outreach centered upon education, vocation, and civil service would be more obvious candidates for progress than a trip to the shooting range, but it wouldn’t be as tantalizing to NHI as were Mr. Freeman’s statements.

posted by: JohnTulin on October 31, 2013 1:31pm Uhm, NHI, it is Oct 31st…..not April 1st!

posted by: Yaakov on October 31, 2013 2:08pm TheMadcap: A) Quite to the contrary, I’ve noticed that most of the people who seek to curtail the rights of legal gun owners live in areas where they never actually experience violent crime. B) Plenty of people in other neighborhoods of New Haven support legal firearm ownership. I know quite a few in Dwight, for example.

posted by: Anderson Scooper on October 31, 2013 2:18pm Can we all pitch in $20 to buy this Libertarian a hand-gun? I, for one, would feel so much safer if all the Mr. Freemans of this world were carrying pistols with them wherever they go….

posted by: THREEFIFTHS on October 31, 2013 3:58pm Like I said.The problem is we are focus on guns.The problem is not guns the problem is Gangs who use guns.Forget new laws because gangs represent organized crime networks w and trying to cut off their gun supply will be as effective as trying to cut off their drug supply.There is a war going on in America between gangs of young men who bear an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts in Sierra Leone or El Salvador. They live like them, they fight for control of the streets like them and they kill like them.Get rid of the gangs.

posted by: HewNaven on October 31, 2013 5:56pm I say we ban Twizzlers. They’re clearly dangerous. In this case they were used to lure Mr. Bass into an interview.

posted by: Chip on October 31, 2013 8:33pm What an absolutely idiotic concept! Just like Michele Bachman who said if everyone had guns we wouldn’t need the police. Right! Fact is that any kid with $100 can get a gun in an hour. With handguns most killings are done at very close range so it is not a matter of being a sharpshooter. So may of these killings are done by small town thugs who think they’re big men and being like big city gangstas, yet the real Bloods and Crips in places like LA would laugh at those fools.

posted by: David S Baker on November 1, 2013 8:53am I love Libertarians. The whole philosophy is , “Does the government HAVE to be in charge of that?” And when they talk about deregulating devices for killing or chemicals that make people jump off buildings it always sounds nutty. They are so far to the political right they start poking out on the left. Ironicly most think tanks theorists the ‘beltway DC’ and the national media draw from are front loaded with Libertarians because most change, these days, requires working with less. Sadly their social Darwinist attitude toward government is often misinterpreted as lack of compassion so they become the tiny party the DEMS and GOP can love to hate together. So, in a way, in any other town with TWO parties, this guy would be bringing us all together. (Cue Razzie calling Eliker GOP…) “Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.” -Harry Browne

posted by: Aaron Freeman on November 3, 2013 1:49am David, I should like to see New Haven as a two party city but, most of my fellow Libertarians still seem to think that obvious logic will reign victorious in a drunken brawl. The scale of Left and Right is strictly a socialist scale,

with Fabian Socialism, or “Third Way,” being in the middle. The scale of Libertarian to Totalitarian gives a second dimension, and the Nolan Chart tends to show the majority as 80% Libertarian.

ThreeFifths, my understanding of Gang War is from Freakonomics, rather than Familiarity, but I imagine that the low level drug dealers want wars for the opportunities of advancement, while the well paid distributors don’t want these wars getting in the way of business. Some guy works long and hard, at less than minimum wage, to get a Tec-9, then has to do some shooting to show he’s ready for the next war. Were we to arm all black veterans with clean criminal records, these guys would do their demonstration shootings in Westville, so I don’t think Racism should be allowed.

Anderson, I was thinking afterwards that giving people the idea that I can’t defend myself might not be the best defense, and I’ve had my eye on a cute little .25 black powder piece at Woodbridge Trading Post.

Robn, Glocks would be expensive, but a target range in your back yard could be quite the treat.

Madcap, Guns are not the answer, but I’d like Concealed Carry Permits to be more affordable for the law abiding people of New Hall Ville.

A much more pressing issue for New Haven is prescription medication that’s been recommended by agents of the City, as in our school system. Consider the insurance issues, when Methylphenidate is found liable for the deaths of children, under our Ct. Constitution, Article I, Sec 4.

posted by: JMS on November 6, 2013 12:42pm Just for the record Freeman recorded one single vote in Ward 25. One. Not two. Not three. One. His own I assume. I think it is safe to say this entire platform has thankfully been rebuked. http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/election_day_results/