Conservative Libertarian Outpost

So now a shotgun is equated with “Shoulder fired anti aircraft missiles?”

JAKARTA, April 30 (Reuters) – Parliamentarians around the world should press for urgent action on gun control, particularly in view of recent tragedies, the head of a global body representing lawmakers said on Monday.

Anders Johnsson, secretary general of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, was speaking after the launch of a handbook aimed at guiding legislators in the area of gun control. “We are pushing parliamentarians to act on this,” he said by telephone from the resort island of Bali where the IPU, which claims 148 affiliated national parliaments, is meeting. The handbook has been jointly launched by the IPU and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Geneva-based think tank. “The statistics are damning. There are currently an estimated 640 million small arms and light weapons in circulation, from handguns and assault rifles to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles,” Johnsson and Martin Griffiths of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue said in a joint statement. “Most of this arsenal, or about 60 percent, is in the hands of civilians. Recent dramatic events have proved the urgent need for action,” they added, noting that parliamentarians had a key role in gun control through drawing up national laws, improving implementation and enforcement, and leading public debate. The statement said small arms and light weapons took between 200,000 and 270,000 lives a year in countries that were at peace, through homicide and suicide. The gun control issue was thrown into the spotlight again in April by the massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech in the United States by lone gunman Cho Seung-Hui. The Democratic-led Congress has ignited fresh talk about tightening U.S. gun laws, but many politicians are reluctant to take on the nation’s numerous gun owners or the powerful gun lobby. Johnsson said that no U.S. lawmakers were able to attend the meeting this week in Bali.

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In the wake of last week’s shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, some Democrats cannot resist the urge to advocate more stringent gun control. New York Democrats Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy have introduced legislation that would grant $250 million to state agencies and $125 million to state courts to pay for computer upgrades so that information such as an individual’s mental-health history could more readily be made available to the FBI. Said Schumer: “[H]ad it been in place last week, [it] may well have stopped last week’s unspeakable tragedy.” As columnist Ann Coulter quipped, “We’ve banned mass murder and that hasn’t seemed to work. So now we’re going to ban mass murderers. Yes, that will do the trick!” Any chance we could enact a ban on mentally ill senators?

I doubt that we can ban Hopolophobes, but it’s a nice thought.

For Immediate Release
April 25, 2007

From: Dr. Ignatius Piazza
Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
http://www.frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719

Please Forward to Your Local Newspapers, Radio
Stations, Television News Stations, Family and
Friends

Las Vegas, Nevada: Several years ago, I asked a very
pointed question in a press release sent to the
National Wire Service immediately following the
killings at Columbine High School.

A few days after the Virginia Tech Massacre, I
again asked the same very direct question.

I asked, “How many times must we experience another
Littleton, Colorado or Virginia Tech before we wake up,
study the research and adopt policies which actually reduce
crime and begin saving our children instead of leaving them
helpless victims when the next psych drug user snaps?”

After Columbine, while most journalists and lawmakers
focused on whether or not my answer to protecting
children by arming teachers was the right solution,
it seems everyone missed my understanding of the root
cause that drove these kids to commit such atrocities!
The root cause was and continues to be the
psych drugs that are being pushed on our children!
In some cases children as young as kindergarten age!

After Columbine, nobody wanted to believe the founder
and director of the nation’s largest firearms training
institute when he pointed his finger at psych drugs as the
cause of the problem. During numerous radio, TV and
newspaper interviews I would bring it up and it would fall
on deaf ears with no reaction at all.

So I spent $300,000 to create a Hollywood produced, award
winning DVD entitled Front Sight Story, Chapter One: Your
Legacy. In “Your Legacy,” I interviewed people of age who
actually experienced an America when guns were so freely
available to children and youth, that you could order them
through the mail with no ID required, no waiting period, and
literally carry them to school to place in the back of the
classroom with no problems at all.

During this time, when guns were the most accessible in our
country’s entire history, there were no school shootings,
drive by shootings, or murderous teenage rampages.

What changed? Here is what changed: Powerful psych drugs
were developed and became the profitable, prescription
answer to a wide variety of extremely questionable if not
outright fabricated mental disorder diagnosis of youth.
Little Johnny doesn’t want to go to school? Take this
pill… Little Johnny isn’t learning? Take this pill…
Little Johnny feels anxious? Take this pill… Little
Johnny is sad? Take this pill… Little Johnny is restless?
Take this pill… Little Johnny is rebellious? Take this
pill…

And once Little Johnny started taking the brightly colored
pills to handle the normal challenges of youth that every
prior generation had overcome naturally through the process
of social maturity, Little Johnny began the downward spiral
of adverse prescription drug side effects leading to
multiple prescription, psycho drug cocktails… stronger
drugs… physical and psychological dependency… and the
now infamous and reoccurring homicidal and suicidal
reactions caused by these very powerful, mind bending drugs.

There is a truism I keep posted on the wall above my
computer. It reads, “People of integrity expect to be
believed. When they are not, they let time prove them
right.”

Well, unfortunately and tragically in this case, time has
proven me right. Numerous school shootings over the last
several years ALL linked to children and teens under the
influence of powerful, prescribed psych drugs!

Psych Drugs, NOT GUNS, Are the Common Deadly Thread in
School Shootings!

And now, instead of Dr. Ignatius Piazza, the Founder and
Director of Front Sight saying, Its Psych Drugs– Not Guns–
Doing the Killing, I am getting assistance in spreading my
message from some of the most unlikely, anti-gun sources you
could ever imagine…

See the link below to watch what Michael Moore, the Darling
of the Liberal Left, Anti-Gun Media now has to say about the
cause of Columbine.

Michael and I may never agree about the importance of an
armed society to the freedom and protection of law abiding
citizens or the fallacy of gun control, but we could be best
friends in our efforts to expose the truth about the profit
driven history of psych drug prescriptions systematically
creating homicidal and suicidal monsters out of our youth in
America. In fact, I stand ready and willing to assist
Michael Moore in any way possible on such an endeavor.

Now that people on both sides of the gun control debate
agree that psych drugs are creating suicidal and homicidal
maniacs out of our youth, the time has come to expose the
truth to all of America.

You can help save today’s youth from further psych drug
abuse and protect America’s next generation from the horrors
of psych drug prescriptions. It only takes 10% of the
population to unite, stand up and say, “No more!” for
social movements to succeed. You CAN do something about this!

Simply spread this press release far and wide to all on your
lists and ask your friends and family to do the same.
Instead of circulating the latest joke or cartoon of the
week, make the entirety of this earth-shattering truth the
next e-mail that goes ’round the world! Don’t rely on anyone
else to do what you should do. Don’t be apathetic.

Take one minute to do the right thing and you will feel
great about it for the rest of your life because the future
children you save from being shot by a psych drugged maniac
may be your own children or grandchildren…

See the links below for more irrefutable proof of the
connection between psych drugs and school shootings… It’s
Psych Drugs, Not Guns, Doing the Killing!

Michael Moore admits missing the target in his documentary
Bowling for Columbine– Psych drugs should have been the
right target:
http://www.drugawareness.org/Images/Moore/moore1.swf

Fox National News reporter Douglas Kennedy exposes the link
between psychiatric drugs and school shootings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-7aNPf33A

Medical Doctors and Psychiatrists Now Admit Connections
Between Psych Drugs and Homicidal and Suicidal Actions of
Children and Teens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZ9YTnSkLc

Experts Say Psychiatric Drugs Linked to Long List of School
Shooting Sprees:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55310

Get your free DVD copy of Dr. Ignatius Piazza’s, Front Sight
Story, Chapter One: Your Legacy
http://www.frontsight.com/freedvdoneprod.asp

For More Information on Front Sight Firearms Training
Institute and Dr. Ignatius Piazza’s free, 15 Gun Training
Reports click here:
http://www.frontsight.com

Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
http://www.frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719

 Context matters.

Seung-Hui Cho’s violent and disturbing play, Richard McBeef, tells a disjointed story of a broken family and the murder of a 13-year-old boy. The writing is childish and unimaginative; the scene is surreal. How does this differ from movies like Saw or Reservoir Dogs? Context.

Many aspiring authors invent horrific scenes. Some progress to successful writing and directing careers. Most linger in obscurity. A minute number go on to commit violent acts. For those few, writing is less an act of creativity than an expression of anguish and rage. Knowing the difference before the fact is sometimes impossible. It’s a question that mental health professionals have wrestled with for decades.

Perhaps one of the distinguishing marks of writing-as-a-cry-for-help is the context in which it occurs. By all accounts, Cho was an isolated individual who behaved in a bizarre fashion. From an early age, he was described as uncommunicative and brooding, and his stalking behavior speaks of a young man who was baffled by the rules of normal social discourse.

So why didn’t someone stop him?

Sadly, they tried. In fact, several individuals correctly read the signs and tried to intervene. Professor Nikki Giovanni reportedly insisted that she would resign rather than continue to expose herself and her students to Cho’s threatening behavior. Giovanni’s department head, Lucinda Roy, was so troubled by Cho that she reached out to him, offering individual lessons and reporting his behavior to campus police. Another of Cho’s professors, Lisa Norris, is said to have approached her Dean regarding Cho’s behavior. Norris also reached out to Cho, referring him to the university counseling center.

Others did the right thing, too. After Cho was arrested for stalking, campus police took him to a psychiatric facility rather than the county jail, which might have been easier. Later, a judge recognized the signs of mental illness and ordered Cho to participate in outpatient treatment. Both the police and the judge could have let him slip through the cracks entirely.

These are cynical times for some people. In the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology, author Mary Pipher laments that, “we no longer live in a culture where we know most of the people we encounter.” The article was titled, “America: A toxic lifestyle?”

But many of the individuals who crossed paths with Cho responded appropriately – even compassionately – to a very troubled young man. If a finger of blame can be pointed in any direction, it is at the paradoxical notion of the collective “we.”

It is the collectivist’s willingness to trade individual liberty for the illusion of safety that has created gun-free zones that are so very attractive to killers like Cho. And, ironically, the same government that intrudes too far into our lives has withered in one of the few areas where one can make a strong case for government intervention in the lives of individuals: responding to the severely mentally ill.

According to a 2004 study by New York University’s Michael Almog, mental health care is difficult to obtain for “a population that is disproportionately and increasingly male, younger and of non-white race-ethnicity…. Psychiatric inpatients are overwhelmingly discharged to ‘the community’ and with a diminishing probability of discharge to a long-term psychiatric care facility.” The parallels to Cho’s life are eerie.

In the 1960’s, our country began dismantling the state mental hospital system, along with the infrastructure that allowed for the assessment and care of the severely mentally ill. Most noticeable among this group are young men, similar in age to Cho, who are experiencing their first severe psychotic disturbance.

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act. It promised new outpatient mental health centers meant to replace state hospitals. State hospitals subsequently discharged their patients, but few of the new centers actually materialized. Even if the 2000 centers recommended by the National Institute for Mental Health had been built, decades of harsh experience have shown us that they are not equipped to handle severe mental illness. One of the biggest problems is that these patients simply don’t show up for treatment.

One of the reasons the state hospital system was dismantled was the promise of new medical knowledge. Another causal factor came from civil rights activists who regarded institutionalization as cruel and inhumane. Some activists seemed to regard mental illness as a right that should not be tampered with. “We” were willing to trade the safety of patients and the public for a utopian vision of boundless civil liberty. Now, the most severely mentally ill – those who were meant to benefit from deinstitutionalization – frequently end up homeless or in prison. They are too often the victims or the perpetrators of crime.

Clearly, “we” are confused about violence and civil rights. We force the responsibility of self-care on those who cannot manage it, while denying ourselves personal liberty and the means of self defense. But while collective confusion helped set the tone for the events at Virginia Tech, the wisdom of the individual nearly triumphed.

It was individuals – not an illusory collective – who acted heroically around Cho, even if they were unable to stop him. And it is individuals who will have the power and the responsibility to recognize and respond to the next troubled soul. Isolation, powerlessness, hostility, and pain: these are the context in which fantasies of violence can sometimes become reality. They are also the indication that it is time to follow the example of those who did what they could to prevent the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

References Almog, M. (2004). Managing United States mental healthcare policy: Changing patterns and trends in New York city acute psychiatry use, 1983-2000. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 64(7-A), 2640.

DeAngelis, T. (2007). America: a toxic lifestyle? Monitor on Psychology, 38(4), 50-52.

Moynihan, D. P. (July 12, 1999). Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill. 106th Congress. Downloaded April 23, 2007 from: http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/article22.htm.

Torrey, E.F. & Zdandowicz, J.D. (1999). Deinstitutionalization hasn’t worked. The Washington Post, July 9, 1999. Downloaded April 23, 2007 from: http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/article17.htm

By Shawn Smith

(c) 2007
The Independence Institute
13952 Denver West Parkway, Suite 400
Golden, CO 80401
303-279-6536
www.independenceinstitute.org

INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE is a non-profit, non-partisan Colorado think tank. It is governed by a statewide board of trustees and holds a 501(c)(3) tax exemption from the IRS. Its public policy research focuses on economic growth, education reform, local government effectiveness, and Constitutional rights.

Jon Caldara is the President of the Independence Institute.

Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an attempt to influence any election or legislative action.

PERMISSION TO REPRINT this paper in whole or in part is hereby granted provided full credit is given to the Independence Institute.

— VA Tech shootings now spurring the most far-reaching gun control
in a decade

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm

3. Please stand with Gun Owners of America — at
http://www.gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm — and help us to continue
this fight, as right now, we are combating this latest onslaught
ALONE in our nation’s capital. GOA spokesmen spent all of last week
doing radio and TV debates, interviews for newswires, and opinion
editorials for newspapers. This week, we begin the battle in
Congress to defeat legislation that could block millions of
additional, honest gun owners from buying firearms.

NOTE: In the first five years that the Brady Law was in existence,
there were reportedly only three illegal gun buyers who were sent to
jail. That is why in 1997, a training manual produced by Handgun
Control, Inc., guided its activists in how to answer a question
regarding the low number of convictions under the Brady Law. The
manual basically says, when you are asked why so few people are being
sent to jail under Brady, just ignore the question and go on the
attack. [See http://www.gunowners.org/fs0404.htm — GOF’s Gun Control
Fact Sheet.]

CONTACT INFORMATION: You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action
Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your
Representative the pre-written e-mail message below. And, you can
call your Representative toll-free at 1-877-762-8762.

Gun Owners of America has posted an analysis of HR 297 at
http://www.gunowners.org/110anatb.htm on its website, showing how the
bill will target millions of law-abiding gun owners, including
thousands of combat veterans who served our country bravely.

Sincerely,

GOA nails it yet again!

The Democrats are back in power and their anti-gun wing is trying to
make up for lost time as far as gun control legislation is concerned.
There are a number of bills that have been introduced already, but
GOA will be there to meet every challenge.

You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at
http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your Representative a
pre-written e-mail message. And, you can call your Representative
toll-free at 1-877-762-8762.

From NRA

COLORADO

Assault on Right-to-Carry Permits Heading to Colorado House Floor!  Senate Bill 34, sponsored by State Senator John Morse (D-11), passed the House Judiciary Committee today and is on its way to the House floor for a vote.  SB34, if enacted, non-resident carry permits will no longer be honored if the address on the holder’s identification is different than the state where the permit was issued.  Please contact your State Representative TODAY at (303) 866-2904, or if outside of Denver, at (800) 811-7647 and respectfully urge him or her to oppose SB34.

 Gun Tax Advancing in Colorado Senate!  Senate Bill 109, sponsored by State Senator Ron Tupa (D-18), seeks to increase the fee assessed for the instant criminal background check conducted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation prior to the transfer of a firearm.  SB109 passed the Senate Appropriations Committee.  Please contact your State Senator today at (303) 866-2316 and respectfully urge him or her to oppose this legislation.

Colorado Anti-Gun Legislation One Step Closer to Passage!  House Bill 1174, sponsored by State Representative Al White (R-57), is scheduled to be heard in the State Senate in the coming days.  House Bill 1174 would repeal the sunset review of the law enforcement database of carry permit holders.  Please contact your State Senator today at (303) 866-2316 and respectfully urge him or her to oppose this legislation.

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE
A Valentine’s Day Massacre (of the Constitution)
In some ways I’m surprised it took them this long. On Valentine’s Day, 14 February, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) began a campaign to grab just about everything but Cupid’s arrows with the introduction of her bill, HR 1022, “to reauthorize the assault weapons ban, and for other purposes.” This is the same Carolyn McCarthy who introduced HR 297 on the first day of the new Congress, attempting the most massive expansion of the Brady Law since its 1993 passage. McCarthy’s murky definition of “assault weapons” notwithstanding, the legislation’s intent is to re-enact the 1994 Clinton gun grab, while adding a few million more firearms to the haul.

All this leads me to wonder whether the anti-gun crowd simply skips over that pesky constitutional amendment stuck right there between the First and the Third.

Under the Clinton Gun Ban, which expired in 2004 under the Republican-controlled Congress, 19 so-called “assault weapons” —in reality semi-automatic hunting and sporting rifles—were banned for having characteristics that liberals found scary: certain stocks, grips, magazines and so forth. Under that 1994 law, manufacturers could still sell these weapons if they made them look less scary to liberals; HR 1022, however, would ban them entirely.

In addition to eliminating completely the weapons covered under the Clinton law, McCarthy’s bill adds more than a few firearms to the list, including the following:

All semi-automatic shotguns; all detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles; the most popular competition sporting rifles—including the Colt AR-15, the Springfield M1A and even today’s version of the American infantryman’s rifle of World War II, the M1 Garand; any shotgun or semi-automatic rifle having “any characteristic that can function as a grip”; any automatic fixed-magazine pistol exceeding a ten-round capacity; and any parts needed to repair or refurbish guns in circulation that are covered under the ban.

In addition, the legislation would give the Attorney General the prerogative to add any other shotgun or rifle to the list that the government ever deems not to be a “sporting” weapon. Not content with simply banning these weapons, HR 1022 also takes steps toward national firearm registration by mandating new rules for weapons and parts sales. Finally, as if all this weren’t enough, McCarthy’s bill would be a permanent ban, unlike the Clinton Ban, which expired after a ten-year trial period.

Legislation of this sort is becoming an obsession with Democrats. When the Clinton Ban was set to expire on 13 September 2004, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer introduced legislation to extend and expand it. At the time, President Bush took the calculated move to commit to signing the bill if it made it through Congress—since he knew it wouldn’t. Now, with Democrats in control of both Houses, anxiously aided by anti-gun Republicans aplenty, what will the President do if HR 1022 makes it to his desk? The Patriot said at the time that the Bush administration’s 2004 strategy was arrogance and folly—and now that folly may be coming home to roost.

Perhaps this administration should focus more on the long-term effects of its action on the Constitution and less on the short-term gains to be had from “playing to the crowd.” It is the Constitution, after all—and not men—that defines the rule of law.

The Constitution’s Second Amendment prohibition against government interference in the “right to keep and bear arms” is the singular right that ensures all others. As noted by Justice Joseph Story, appointed to the Supreme Court by James Madison: “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.”

Indeed, Madison himself wrote in Federalist No. 46, “The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation… forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any.” This is no less true today than it was in 1787.

When Feinstein-Schumer was coming around the bend in 2004, much hay was made of the Bureau of Justice Statistics data that firearms-related crime had declined 54 percent in the last decade (that is, the period covered by the Clinton Gun Ban). The number of violent crimes reported in 2002 was 980,000 fewer than in 2000, but a National Institute of Justice report (headed by Christopher Koper at the University of Pennsylvania) concluded, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

Feinstein’s own California Assistant Attorney General Patrick Kenady noted in an internal memo, “Information on [these guns] would not be sought from forensics laboratories as it was unlikely to support the theses on which the [Feinstein-Schumer] legislation would be based,” and even the Washington Post admitted that the banned guns “play[ed] a part in only a small percentage of crime.”

Like HR 1022 today, Feinstein-Schumer claimed to be aimed at the protection of law-abiding citizens from the “gun problem.” Of course, only law-abiding citizens comply with such restrictions—and at their own peril. Criminals don’t care whether the weapon they’re using comports with the 23,000 federal, state and local gun restrictions already on the books, but they do care whether their intended victim has a firearm. Indeed, extensive interviews with violent felons make it clear that they’d much rather prey on those who are least likely to possess a gun for self-defense.

In Commonplace Book, Thomas Jefferson quotes Cesare Beccaria from his seminal work, On Crimes and Punishment: “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” Again, no less true today than it has been throughout history.

Clearly, our Founding Fathers had it right. “To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them,” warned George Mason. “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty,” implored Patrick Henry. “Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”