Honesty and integrity are but two of the mandatory traits of leadership. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah possesses those traits in abundance. He takes on the establishment media in a great piece exposing the lies, and mis-truths that are being bandied around his home state.
Perhaps New York should listen to Senator Hatch, or even the State of Texas.
Broken clock politics again?
Leave it to the Brother of Blood to tell it like it is!
Spring had arrived in earnest, the sun shone brightly and the sky was clear as sportsmen rode up the verdant woods to practice shooting and archery last Saturday. The Commonwealth Foundation’s Live Free PA event couldn’t have come happened on a better weekend.
That’s not just because of the weather. The men and women who arrived at the Eltonsville Sportsmen’s Association came to celebrate their right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment. The Commonwealth Foundation began planning the event about a year ago, but it happened to land on a date just a few weeks after Gov. Ed Rendell, D, began a new push for more gun control.
After target practice around midday, rock songwriter and guitarist Ted Nugent spoke to the Live Free participants, as he pushed back against recent calls for greater restrictions on gun rights. Consistent with his reputation, he was articulate and upbeat.
“Your life is a precious gift from God,” he said. “You deserve, and I believe we have a duty to protect and defend it.”
Recent high-profile crimes, particularly police shootings in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have boosted the case for gun control in the eyes of some public officials. Mr. Nugent asked Americans to consider how firearms be more part of the solution than the problem.
He said jurisdictions in the United States with looser gun laws have lower crime rates than those that don’t. His assertion is backed by some prominent researchers, such as the University of Maryland’s John Lott. Mr. Nugent urged citizens to consider the good that gun ownership has done many crime victims.
“Anti-gunners side with rapists,” the musician and sportsman told his audience. “Either you like the rapists shot, or you like the rapists raping.”
He also said the push to limit gun purchases in cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh ignores the experience of other cities. Chicago, he noted, has enacted gun control to become an essentially “gun-free zone,” but has nonetheless seen crime rates skyrocket.
“Ed Rendell sees the dead bodies and wants more of this,” Mr. Nugent said. “I’m a different species. I don’t like increased innocent death. I like decreased innocent death.”
Mr. Rendell has won the support of police unions and other law-enforcement organizations for his the anti-gun case, but Mr. Nugent said he would have less success if he sought the backing of rank-and-file officers.
“In the vast majority of the instances,” he said, the anti-gun officers are “bureaucrats and desk jockeys.”
He has some firsthand knowledge of law enforcement, having served as a deputy sheriff in Michigan and a deputy constable in Texas.
After rousing the fervor of several dozen gun-rights supporters, he gave them a demonstration of his archery skills, refined by decades of practice. He landed several arrows perfectly on three targets shaped like a turkey, a deer and a bear.
It was a unique setting for a Commonwealth Foundation event. The organization spends most of its time defending Pennsylvanians’ economic liberties. But the think tank’s president, Matthew Brouillette, said “the other freedoms that we’ve got under attack” deserve attention as well.
“We don’t need a nanny state to tell us how to live,” he said. “We’re free Americans and should be treated as such by our government.”
As reported earlier here obama is still the number one “Gun Salesman” of the year! His attempts at misdirection via the use various lackeys has spurred the sale of firearms to heights not seen since the Clinton debacle.
John Sprague, the store manager at Johnson’s Sporting Goods in Adrian Township, gestures to half-empty shelves of ammunition behind the counter.
He said a campaign pledge by President Barack Obama to reinstate a weapons ban led to a rush on sporting goods stores to buy guns and ammunition, a buying trend that continues.
“Since before the election, when there was a good chance of (Obama) becoming president, sales went way up,” Sprague said Thursday. “I can’t keep most ammunition in stock.”
Because of demand, Sprague said, Johnson’s is temporarily limiting ammunition sales to one box of per customer.
Obama had pledged during his campaign to seek renewal of an assault weapons ban but has bowed to the reality that such a move would be unpopular in politically key U.S. states and among Republicans as well as some conservative Democrats.
Confronting a Mexican drug war that is “sowing chaos in our communities,” Obama signaled on April 16 that he will not seek renewal of the weapons ban, but instead will step up enforcement of laws banning the transfer of such guns across the border.
“He (President Obama) appears to be backing down, but sales are brisk,” Sprague said.
An Adrian Wal-Mart associate, who spoke Friday on the condition of anonymity, said the sporting goods department has difficulty keeping the 550-round boxes of .22-caliber ammunition in stock due to brisk sales. The smaller boxes of rounds, however, are more readily available.
“People want the large boxes,” she said.
A representative in the Adrian Meijer sporting goods department, who also declined to be identified, said he hasn’t seen a significant increase in ammunition sales since the election, and there is no rationing in effect at the store.
Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban prohibited the sale of ammunition clips with more than 10 rounds and a variety of rifles such as semi-automatic versions of AK-47s and AR-15s. Semi-automatic rifles fire a bullet each time the trigger is pulled. They differ from automatic rifles, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is pulled. Automatic rifles are illegal without a federal permit, and must be registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The ban expired in 2004 during President George W. Bush’s administration, and a 10-year extension proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was voted down.
The difference between what defined assault from otherwise legal weapons, Sprague said, was optional accessories. Those included bayonet mounts, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and gun flash suppressors. Except for those additions, Sprague added, there was no mechanical difference between those rifles being legal or illegal during the ban.
Sometimes all it takes to make an illegal weapon legal, such as a 9 mm LAR-15, is to have two or more of those options removed from the instrument.
Sheriff Jack Welsh said problems with assault weapons in Lenawee County haven’t been an issue, before, during or after the ban.
“I saw no concrete evidence that the ban ever significantly reduced violent crimes,” he said. “Legitimate gun owners register their weapons. Unfortunately, whether there is a ban or not, some individuals will find ways to get weapons that are illegal.”
Welsh added he is against any fully automatic weapons being possessed or sold, and is in favor of background checks for any weapons purchased. He added that, if the Obama administration attempts to reinstate an assault weapons ban, he will pay close attention to the issue.
Sprague said FBI crime statistics show most crimes aren’t committed with assault weapons.
“Besides, most criminals cannot afford these types of guns,” Sprague added, pointing to rifles with price tags of more than $1,000.
Cambridge Township Police Chief Larry Wibbeler said he also never saw any increase or decrease in violent crime during or after the ban, adding the criminals who are after the assault rifles will usually locate them through illegal purchase or theft.
“If they (the criminals) want them, they’ll find a way to get them,” he said.
Wibbeler said very few fully automatic assault weapons have ever been confiscated in Cambridge Township.
Just because this should never be forgotten, and we do remember that it was democrats that were running things…
Sixteen years ago we were reminded of the deadly danger of having the left-liberals in charge of the police state. The largest massacre of American civilians by the US government since Wounded Knee climaxed on April 19, 1993. The siege that had begun on February 28 with a botched ATF publicity stunt ended when the Branch Davidian church and home went up in flames, after an FBI-operated tank on lease from the military was driven through the building, pumping flammable CS gas for six hours into the place where women and children were cowering in fear. Chemistry professor George Uhlig later testified that the high concentration of the gas combined with poor ventilation subjected the women and children to conditions “similar to… the gas chambers used by the Nazis in Auschwitz.”
On April 12, the FBI had ruled out using gas because it was dangerous to children. A week later, Bob Ricks, FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge, said the gassing was “to make their environment as uncomfortable as possible until they do exit the compound.” This excuse came after weeks of throwing flash-bang grenades at the building when people tried to leave.
Attorney General Janet Reno said the gas attack “was not meant to be D-Day. This was just a step forward in trying to bring about a peaceful resolution by constantly exerting further pressure to shrink the perimeter.” This militaristic lingo was characteristic of the feds’ approach throughout the siege. The government had waged psychological warfare by blaring obnoxious music, shining glaring lights and cutting the Davidians off water, electricity, their friends, attorneys and the press. Firefighters were not permitted near the scene as the flames continued engulfing the home. When it was all over, the ATF stuck its flag up on the building to declare victory.
At a press conference on April 20, a day after the FBI gassed American civilians, President Clinton said he did not believe “the Attorney General should resign because some religious fanatics murdered themselves.” The press corps, in an unusually naked expression of solidarity with the government, applauded Clinton’s statement.
This underscores the dynamic of having this crop in power. If even the liberals are for a show of force, it must have been necessary. The blame was put on the “religious fanatics,” not the government fanatics, and the press and most Americans ate it all up.
The media slavishly pushed war propaganda in Bush’s first term, but they will prove even more sycophantic of Obama. Fair-weather left-liberals who often criticize the most violent side of the Republican state look the other way as their leader jails people without trial, builds civilian surveillance systems, and kills innocents.
Over the last eight years, muckraking liberal journalists dissected every word and deed of the Bush regime, but under Clinton very few were bothered about the unambiguously atrocious nature of the federal raid at Waco. They did not care that Lon Horiuchi, the sniper who murdered Vicki Weaver at Ruby Ridge in August 1992, had been brought to Waco. They were not jumping up and down about Janet Reno using internationally banned chemical warfare on American children. They did not condemn the FBI for using explosives in addition to flammable gas and then lying about it. They were not concerned what it meant for the militarization of law enforcement, and did not ask why David Koresh, who had befriended federal agents, was friendly with local law enforcement, and had opened the Davidian home up for inspection, was simply not arrested when he was jogging or visiting the bar. The liberals did not wonder why the excuse for the raid shifted from a meth lab to illegal gun ownership to child abuse. They assumed that, as much as the government might have messed up the raid, the fault was primarily that of the victims. The fact that the Davidians were different and armed – though no more armed than the average Texan – was enough to dismiss their suffering and excuse the death of 80 Americans, many of them children, at the hands of law enforcement.
Many mainstream conservatives also backed the administration after Waco, but the weak reaction by the left-liberals, who Americans rely on as the outspoken critics of police abuses, was more important. Incidentally, many libertarians, broadly defined, also took the government’s side. Notably, Objectivist Leonard Peikoff of the Ayn Rand Institute defended the state’s raid and demonized the victims.
When Democratic administrations murder, the law-and-order right is often split. The left is in denial or supportive. And the press tends to spin the story to make the administration seem soft.
The headlines today emphasize Obama’s rhetorical shift from the “war on terror” and his superficial changes in detention policy. The media push the notion that Obama has cut military spending, when he is doing the opposite.
Moreover, the continuity between the Clinton and Obama administrations is not encouraging. We have Hillary, who cheered on the belligerent foreign policy of her husband, the bomber of Belgrade, now in charge of State. We have a Justice Department even more committed to sovereign immunity than the last administration and headed up by Janet Reno’s Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.
Then there is the group the Democrats love to demonize: “Rightwing extremists.” Clinton built a proto-Bushian police state around fear of militias. We saw a major blow to federal habeas corpus, which liberals claim to love, when the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act passed in 1996, in response to Oklahoma City and the supposed epidemic of rightwing militias. When John Ashcroft was being confirmed as Attorney General, his very suggestion that the U.S. government could become “tyrannical” was mocked as ridiculous and extremist by Ted Kennedy and liberals nationwide.
Today, we’re seeing a return of anti-militia hysteria. Just as the federal government and its liberal defenders throughout the 1990s conflated patriotic Americans and peaceful separatists with dangerous “hate” groups and Rush Limbaugh’s listeners with Timothy McVeigh, we have the same kind of culture-war nonsense today.
The Department of Homeland Security recently circulated a report that warns against the “Rise in Right-Wing Extremism.” The document is apparently unclassified but nevertheless indicates it is “not to be released to the public, the media” or others who do not “need to know.” The libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, who has roundly criticized the tyrannical usurpations of both Republicans and Democrats, writes:
The thrust of this report is that in the present environment of economic instability, returning military veterans, those who fear of the loss of Second Amendment-protected rights, those threatened by an African-American president, and those who fear “Jewish ‘financial elites’” could all be a fertile breeding ground for groups whose power and ideas the government hates and fears. The document is essentially a warning for DHS and FBI officials to be on the look-out for rootless persons looking for the comfort of groups as they may be a danger to American security.
The summary (unclassified) document is terrifying. One can only imagine what is contained in the classified version. This document runs directly counter to numerous U.S. Supreme decisions prohibiting the government from engaging in any activities that could serve to chill the exercise of expressive liberties. Liberties are chilled, in constitutional parlance, when people are afraid to express themselves for fear of government omnipresence, monitoring, or reprisals. The document also informs the reader that Big Brother is watching both public and private behavior.
Do you oppose the Federal Reserve? Support states rights? Hate the income tax? Support the right to bear arms? Know the Constitution better than our rulers? You are a likely suspect of a hate crime. You are in the same class as violent racists and terrorists.
With the upsurge in gun and ammo purchases and the mysterious rise in mass shootings, we can expect more efforts to lump violent agitators together with normal Americans who simply wish to defend themselves and their families. With growing resentment about Washington’s saddling future generations with debt, there will be more attempts to characterize Americans who hate paying ransom to a distant government with people who hate their country or want conflict. With the neglected veterans of Bush’s wars having trouble readjusting to society or simply dissatisfied with the increasingly socialistic country they come home to after being told they were defending freedom, we will see this tragedy caused by the federal government disgustingly twisted into a way to bolster that government.
Many Republicans are making a big stink about the DHS report, but others have pointed out that the administration has also warned about “left-wing extremists” and so it is no big deal. Most grassroots conservatives are rightly outraged, although they do not see the continuity from the Bush era. As I warned them on LRC precisely four years ago:
Conservatives today might be able to wrap themselves in the flag and condemn dissidents as traitors, but before they know it, another Clinton might come to power and they’ll be the ones again accused of assisting the enemy by opposing the State. They might come, once again, to see the difference between love of country and love of the government, only it might be too late to bask in the distinction, thanks to the anti-dissident political atmosphere they are helping right now to create. Today’s leftists, it is to be hoped, will remember the feeling of being branded a traitor, should a Democrat be in power during the next national crisis or war.
The next national crisis has come and the left has for the most part not learned its lessons. Now that their guy is in power, we are back to the peculiar political dynamic of the 1990s, when the left-liberal police state conducted atrocities and dissent was thin.
Of course in reality, the policies are bipartisan. Ruby Ridge happened and Waco was planned under Republicans, and Waco was whitewashed by the Republican Danforth Report. The Homeland Security Department and the Fusion Centers going after rightwing militia were begun in the Bush era. Under Bush the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which targeted many of the same groups today targeted by Obama, won the support of the overwhelming majority of Republican Congressmen. But what changes most is the way the public reacts to state violence, and with left-liberals at the throne police brutality and massacres tend to be more tolerated by the mainstream. It is somehow politically correct when a Democratic administration cracks down on the most marginalized people in society.
Meanwhile, the Obama regime is raiding medical marijuana clinics in violation of the spirit of campaign promises, continuing most dictatorial Bush terror policies, and scheming new ways to censor and control us. They want to take over the internet. They are contemplating more citizen disarmament, a move toward national service and more cradle-to-grave welfarism. By casting “rightwing extremists” as the Other, they can use this domestic bogeyman to expand upon the tools of oppression Bush constructed in the name of fighting the foreign bogeyman. It will aggravate the culture war and cause social division, but we must remember it is the state that is doing this dividing.
Obama has already killed a lot of foreigners. He has already broken key promises on civil liberties and transparency. He has already looted enough for five years of profligate spending. Let us hope his team does not react to “rightwing extremists” the way Clinton’s did at Waco. They would get away with it.
More from the masters of mysandry and misdirection.
This week, in a typically misleading move designed to bolster their political agenda rather than reduce violent crime, the Brady Campaign released a report calling for background checks on “all gun sales in America, including at gun shows.” The Brady report was intentionally designed to correspond with, and bolster, a “gun show loophole” bill (S. 843) introduced this week by fanatical anti-gun Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ). In fact, the Brady report was released at the press conference Lautenberg held earlier this week.
Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, said in the group’s press release, “We can do this. It will have no impact on any law-abiding gun owner in the country.” Of course, that is absolutely false—the proposal will ONLY impact law-abiding gun owners, including any law-abiding person selling a firearm to a law-abiding buyer. Does Helmke really think that criminals, drug cartel members, and violent gang thugs are going to start legally purchasing firearms and submitting to a background check? Law-breakers, by definition, break the law. They are criminals; they are predatory, they operate outside of the law. You know that, we know that, Lautenberg knows that, even Helmke knows that.
Lautenberg’s new bill is essentially a re-introduction of the same bill he introduced in the 110th Congress—S. 2577. And as before, S. 843 calls for massive new government powers to register gun show customers, register gun owners, retain information on people who pass criminal records checks when buying firearms, heavily tax both gun collectors and gun sales, and require gun show promoters to police gun show customers, as if they were agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The bill is not about gun shows. Rather, S. 843 is a solution in search of a problem; numerous government studies have determined that gun shows are an insignificant or miniscule source of firearms misused in crime. For instance, a 2000 Bureau of Justice Statistics study, “Federal Firearms Offenders, 1992-98,” found only 1.7% of federal prison inmates obtained their gun from a gun show. Similarly, a 1997 National Institute of Justice study reported less than 2% of criminals’ guns come from gun shows.
In reality, gun shows are large, public events held in convention centers and banquet halls. But S. 843 defines “gun show” so broadly that it would include a person’s home. Merely “offering” to “exchange” a firearm at an “event” could be banned. The National Matches at Camp Perry and your local gun club’s Sunday trap shoot could be defined as “events” subject to the bill’s provisions. Even talking about a gun at an “event” could be seen as an “offer” to sell a gun. Even if you are not a dealer, but you display a gun at a gun show, and then months later sell the gun to someone you met at the show, you would be subject to the same requirements as if you had completed the sale at the gun show. The restrictions and regulations S. 843 would impose upon real gun shows, and upon gun owners’ personal activities that the bill would preposterously define as “gun shows” and “events,” are unprecedented. S. 843 actually imposes restrictions on “gun show” transactions well beyond those required for firearms transactions at a gun store. And running afoul of S. 843’s numerous, far-fetched provisions could send you to prison for years. Among other things, the legislation calls for:
Gun show customer registration: A person who attends a show, even without a gun, who even discusses the possibility of selling a gun, would be required to sign “a ledger with identifying information.” Gun show promoters would have to retain the ledgers indefinitely for inspection by the BATFE.
Absurd requirement on gun show promoters: Because a promoter cannot know whether a person who attends his show will discuss the sale of a gun, he will have to require every customer to sign the ledger, and check every customer’s identification to verify the information required on the ledger.
Invasion of privacy: In addition to records kept on gun show customers, this bill would allow the FBI to retain, for 90 days, personal information about people who clear instant checks when buying guns.
Gun collector registration: If you are at home with a collection of fifty or more firearms, it would be a five-year felony to “offer” or “exchange” a single gun — even between family or friends — unless you first registered with the BATFE and paid a fee, the amount of which would be at BATFE’s discretion.
The real objective of this legislation is to over-regulate gun shows out of business. Rest assured we will continue to actively monitor the bill and will apprise you of any developments.
Please be sure to contact your U.S. Senators and urge them to strongly OPPOSE S. 843! You can call your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121.
In a dark of the night move that would, and probably has Frank Lautenberg smiling your right to protest was abolished last Tuesday. For years I have been posting about not using terms like “law abiding citizen.” This is precisely what I saw coming. Welcome to the world of felons people!
Hat Tip to Anthony at The Liberty Sphere;
Have you ever heard of legislation in the United States of America that forbids any opposition to it?
Well, we now have it, and it is the law of the land, courtesy of the thugs in the White House and Congress.
Read all about it in my column at Columbia Conservative Examiner.
Thank-you.
This is from Town Hall from March, is LaPierre a clairvoyant?No, he just didn’t have any blinders on. Enjoy!
Americans don’t need the NRA to tell them that the Barack Obama-Joe Biden administration could spell oblivion for their freedoms: Americans are telling us!
Even during the poorest holiday spending season in almost 40 years, with consumer confidence in a freefall, Americans bought guns like they were going out of style—or going to be banned.
The month Obama was elected, FBI background checks for firearm purchases increased by 42 percent over 2007, setting an all-time record for purchases in a month. Right-to-carry permit applications soared from coast to coast.
It’s easy to see why.
After spending millions of dollars to convince Americans they would never take their guns, Obama and Biden, just three days after winning the election, posted a Web page detailing how they planned to do just that.
Their preliminary agenda included:
• “Making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent”—despite the fact that even after 10 years, the Clinton-Reno Justice Department couldn’t spin it as anything more than a total failure;
• Opening sensitive federal gun-trace data for abuse by politicians seeking to sue the firearms industry out of business for the criminal acts of third parties; and
• “Making guns childproof” through government mandates requiring nonexistent, unworkable or prohibitively expensive technologies, ultimately leading to bans on non-“childproof” firearms.
If gun bans are their goal, Obama and Biden have plenty of experienced players to run with the ball.
The leader of Obama’s transition team, John Podesta, served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, where he helped mastermind the strategy of using frivolous lawsuits to bankrupt America’s firearms industry through “death by a thousand cuts.”
Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was a key Clinton administration strategist on gun bans before he went to Congress, where he introduced the very gun ban that the administration now admits it seeks.
Obama’s choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, also served in the Clinton administration—as Attorney General Janet Reno’s lead salesman for various gun bans.
Last year, Holder signed a “friend of the court” brief defending the Washington, D.C., gun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court in the historic Heller case, arguing that “the Second Amendment does not extend an individual right to keep and bear arms.”
Now, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under his control, Holder will have the power not only to suppress gun sales through increased fees, regulations and harassment of dealers—just as Bill Clinton did when he drove 80 percent of gun dealers out of business—but also to bring suit in federal court to prevent the landmark Heller ruling from being applied to cities and states, or to quash it altogether.
For more than a decade at the United Nations, dictatorships have been working with global gun-ban groups funded by billionaire financier George Soros to impose a gun ban treaty upon the United States.
In 2010, the United Nations convenes a major gun-control conference. But you can bet that, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the U.S. delegation won’t oppose the U.N.’s gun-ban dictates, as it did in the past, but will now embrace American gun bans in the name of “international law.”
Under Obama, hunters may be as much of an endangered species as gun owners.
Obama’s pick for EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, held a similar post in New Jersey, where, in 2006, she shut down the state’s bear hunt—even after overabundant bears had begun killing livestock, invading homes and attacking kids. Could she shut down shooting ranges and hunters nationwide by regulating lead bullets out of existence as an “environmental toxin”?
If so, she surely won’t meet much resistance from Cass Sunstein, Obama’s choice to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. “We ought to ban hunting if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun,” Sunstein has said. “That should be against the law.”
In fact, in his book “Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions,” Sunstein wrote, “Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives.”
It’s easy to laugh, but this is no joke. Anti-gunners now control every lever of federal power. With the White House, nearly veto-proof majorities in Congress, and the ability to pack the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal bench and the vast federal bureaucracy with anti-gun extremists, they can attack your rights from every direction—executive, legislative, judicial, regulatory, even international.
If you agree with us, then join us. This is no time for silent assent or passive agreement. We must let those in power know we’re watching and we’re listening. We must stand with deeper ranks and broader strength and more resolve than ever.
So that if it becomes necessary—and I believe it will—the NRA will have the size and strength to swiftly act with the formidable unity and dogged resolve that have proven us the singular and most potent guardian of this freedom so essential to a free state.
So? What is hot across the Internet and MSM today as far as politics go?
Hillary Clinton thinks Dick Cheney isn’t a reliable source. Funny how no one addressed her credibility…
Frank Lautenberg, of high treason fame, yet again seeks to destroy the nation and Constitution that he swore an oath to protect. One tiny cut at a time or the the occasional full blown slice! The man needs to do a rope dance, not be in elected office.
The folks that dubbed a rather sizable chunk of America with a Domestic Terrorist label are yet seeking even more power. Talk about Chutzpah!
Then the impostor in chief pulls the populist card yet again but fails to even suggest hammering the big boys where it will hurt. As in getting credit reports flagged to indicate that these people were, and are being hounded by those operations, and attorneys that feed from their teats.
But, I digress…
It appears that just about every day the impostor in chief comes up with another sneaky method to deprive us of our rights. read on…
-- Even BB guns could be on the chopping block 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 Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Remember CANDIDATE Barack Obama? The guy who "wasn't going to take away our guns"? Well, guess what? Less than 100 days into his administration, he's never met a gun he didn't hate. A week ago, Obama went to Mexico, whined about the United States, and bemoaned (before the whole world) the fact that he didn't have the political power to take away our semi-automatics. Nevertheless, that didn't keep him from pushing additional restrictions on American gun owners. It's called the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials. To be sure, this imponderable title masks a really nasty piece of work. First of all, when the treaty purports to ban the "illicit" manufacture of firearms, what does that mean? 1. "Illicit manufacturing" of firearms is defined as "assembly of firearms [or] ammunition... without a license...." Hence, reloading ammunition -- or putting together a lawful firearm from a kit -- is clearly "illicit manufacturing." Modifying a firearm in any way would surely be "illicit manufacturing." And, while it would be a stretch, assembling a firearm after cleaning it could, in any plain reading of the words, come within the screwy definition of "illicit manufacturing." 2. "Firearm" has a similarly questionable definition. "[A]ny other weapon" is a "firearm," according to the treaty -- and the term "weapon" is nowhere defined. So, is a BB gun a "firearm"? Probably. A toy gun? Possibly. A pistol grip or firing pin? Probably. And who knows what else. If these provisions (and others) become the law of the land, the Obama administration could have a heyday in enforcing them. Consider some of the other provisions in the treaty: * Banning Reloading. In Article IV of the treaty, countries commit to adopting "necessary legislative or other measures" to criminalize illicit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms. Remember that "illicit manufacturing" includes reloading and modifying or assembling a firearm in any way. This would mean that the Obama administration could promulgate regulations banning reloading on the basis of this treaty -- just as it is currently circumventing Congress to write legislation taxing greenhouse gases. * Banning Gun Clubs. Article IV goes on to state that the criminalized acts should include "association or conspiracy" in connection with said offenses -- which is arguably a term broad enough to allow, by regulation, the criminalization of entire pro-gun organizations or gun clubs, based on the facilities which they provide their membership. * Extraditing US Gun Dealers. Article V requires each party to "adopt such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offenses it has established in accordance with this Convention" under a variety of circumstances. We know that Mexico is blaming U.S. gun dealers for the fact that its streets are flowing with blood. And we know it is possible for Mexico to define offenses "committed in its territory" in a very broad way. And we know that we have an extradition obligation under Article XIX of the proposed treaty. So we know that Mexico could try to use the treaty to demand to extradition of American gun dealers. Under Article XXIX, if Mexico demands the extradition of a lawful American gun dealer, the U.S. would be required to resolve the dispute through "other means of peaceful settlement." Does anyone want to risk twenty years in a sweltering Mexican jail on the proposition that the Obama administration would apply this provision in a pro-gun manner? * Microstamping. Article VI requires "appropriate markings" on firearms. And, it is not inconceivable that this provision could be used to require microstamping of firearms and/or ammunition -- a requirement which is clearly intended to impose specifications which are not technologically possible or which are possible only at a prohibitively expensive cost. * Gun Registration. Article XI requires the maintenance of any records, for a "reasonable time," that the government determines to be necessary to trace firearms. This provision would almost certainly repeal portions of McClure-Volkmer and could arguably be used to require a national registry or database. ACTION: Write your Senators and urge them to oppose the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials. Please use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your Senators the pre-written e-mail message below. ----- Pre-written letter ----- Dear Senator: I am urging you, in the strongest terms, to oppose the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials. This anti-gun treaty was written by international bureaucrats who are either stupid or virulently anti-gun -- or both. This treaty could very well ban the ability to reload ammunition, to put new stocks on rifles lawfully owned by American citizens, and, possibly, even ban BB guns! There are too many problems with this treaty to mention them all in this letter. The rest can be read on the website of Gun Owners of America at: http://www.gunowners.org/fs0901.htm Please do not tell me the treaty has not yet been abused in this way by the bevy of Third World countries which have signed it. We do not expect the real ramifications of the treaty to become clear until the big prize -- the U.S. -- has stepped into the trap. For all of these reasons, I must insist that you oppose ratification of the treaty. Sincerely,
The “Tea Parties” were viewed, if at all, by the MSM as some sort of anachronism if not with out and out antagonism. Branding the participant’s as “tea baggers,” the term used in a deviant manner. I suppose that is to be expected from a profession that has sank into the depths that, for the most part reflects an utter lack of moral fortitude. But, then again it was these same people that brought to you the term “Saturday Night Special.”
Too wit the blond with a brain adds this commentary:
“The point of the tea parties is to note the fact that the Democrats’ modus operandi is to lead voters to believe they are no more likely to raise taxes than Republicans, get elected and immediately raise taxes. Apparently, the people who actually pay taxes consider this a bad idea. Obama’s biggest shortcoming is that he believes the things believed by all Democrats, which have had devastating consequences every time they are put into effect. Among these is the Democrats’ admiration for raising taxes on the productive. All Democrats for the last 30 years have tried to stimulate the economy by giving ‘tax cuts’ to people who don’t pay taxes. Evidently, offering to expand welfare payments isn’t a big vote-getter. Even Bush had a ‘stimulus’ bill that sent government checks to lots of people last year. Guess what happened? It didn’t stimulate the economy. Obama’s stimulus bill is the mother of all pork bills for friends of O and of Congressional Democrats. … And all that government spending on the Democrats’ constituents will be paid for by raising taxes on the productive. Raise taxes and the productive will work less, adopt tax shelters, barter instead of sell, turn to an underground economy — and the government will get less money. … The lie at the heart of liberals’ mantra on taxes — ‘tax increases only for the rich’ — is the ineluctable fact that unless taxes are raised across the board, the government won’t get its money to fund layers and layers of useless government bureaucrats, none of whom can possibly be laid off.” –columnist Ann Coulter
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