Posts Tagged ‘Gun Control’

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

August 22, 2009

You can fool some of the people all the time…

From the ‘Non Compos Mentis’ File

The Leftmedia continue to portray town hall protestors as right-wing, gun-toting racist nutjobs, even when the shoe clearly doesn’t fit. As we noted last week, some “protestors” are carrying signs with Barack Obama sporting a Hitler mustache and the message “I’ve changed.” Of course, the media dutifully highlights the signs, while ignoring that they are distributed by and bear the Web site name of LaRouche PAC, the political action committee of seven-time Democrat presidential aspirant and committed socialist conspiracy nut Lyndon LaRouche. That doesn’t fit the template.

Protestors with guns are also a target. The Leftmedia frets that citizens can carry guns near some of these town halls, including outside one held by the president in Phoenix, Arizona. MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer commented, “A man at a pro-health care reform rally … wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip…. [T]here are questions about whether this has racial overtones. I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency, and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or onto their legs.” What Brewer failed to mention is that the man carrying the rifle was black. In addition, the video shown on MSNBC was carefully cropped to avoid showing that the man was black — it only showed the man’s back and waist, not his face.

Of course, the anti-gun narrative is not new to MSNBC or Contessa Brewer, and neither is the racial double standard mentioned Thursday by Mark Alexander. Truth, unfortunately, is kicked to the curb.

Abortion Will Be Part of ObamaCare

It should come as no surprise that the health care overhaul being designed by congressional Democrats include provisions for federally mandated coverage of abortions by insurance providers. After all, liberals embrace what President Obama has called “reproductive justice,” which apparently includes killing unborn children. (The “justice” aspect has us scratching our heads.) Some members of Congress and the president himself on occasion have stated publicly that no such mandate exists, but they are lying.

The word abortion does not appear in the draft legislation, but several provisions would not only force insurance companies to cover abortions, they would override several state laws and would ultimately lead to taxpayer funded abortions. This is what groups like Planned Parenthood have worked for all along, but the secret is out now, thanks in part to some liberal members of Congress who brazenly admit their stance that taxpayers should pay for abortions, regardless of their moral stance on the issue. “Abortion will be covered as a benefit by one or more of the health care plans available to Americans,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), “and I think it should be.” Naturally, a broad cross-section of the public is opposed to this idea, but that’s never stopped liberals before.

SOURCE

Mayor wises up to Bloomberg

August 22, 2009


Click here to vote in this week’s poll.

Since its creation, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) has signed up a large number of committed anti-gun politicians to its ranks. It has also signed up some politicians who failed to realize the true anti-gun nature of MAIG. A number of those mayors have resigned their membership when they learned the truth.

This past week, yet another mayor, Village of Walton Hills, Ohio Mayor Marlene Anielski (R), has resigned her membership. Mayor Anielski informed the Buckeye Firearms Association of her decision, reporting that she had not realized the real agenda of MAIG. In fact, she reported, she and her husband are NRA life members!

With the ongoing effort by MAIG to mislead the public and even its own members on its true agenda, it is no surprise that some mayors are choosing to leave the group. How many more mayors don’t know what MAIG is really all about?

All NRA members should ask: Is my mayor a member of MAIG? If you do not know, check the list here.

If your mayor is on the list, contact his or her office and politely let him or her know you are opposed to his or her membership in Mayor Bloomberg’s radical anti-gun organization.

2009 Firearms Law and The Second Amendment Symposium

August 21, 2009

The 2009 “Firearms Law & The Second Amendment Symposium” will be held on Saturday, September 12, at Northwestern University Law School, in Chicago, Illinois.  This event will be hosted by The NRA Foundation and the Northwestern University chapter of the Federalist Society.

Capitalizing on recent developments in our nation’s federal courts regarding the Second Amendment, panelists will discuss and debate current Second Amendment scholarship and related issues. Featured panelists at this year’s event will include scholars on the Second Amendment such as Professors Nelson Lund and Michael O’Shea, and other scholars including Clayton Cramer, David Kopel, and others.

This event promises to present a thought provoking discussion of one of the most relevant and important freedoms in the Bill of Rights.  Each Symposium registrant will receive a packet containing the panelists’ written materials on the subject- an excellent source for future reference.  For guests who are attorneys, this year’s event may once again meet state requirements for continuing legal education. The event, including all materials, food and beverages, is free.

The Symposium will be held:

Saturday, September 12, 2009
Northwestern University School of Law
Thorne Auditorium
375 E. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
(Registration and continental breakfast from 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.)

To register, please visit http://www.nraila.org/workshops/Symposium.aspx?ID=09chicago or call the NRA-ILA Grassroots Division at (800) 392-8683. And please be sure to invite your fellow law students and legal colleagues!

Taking guns to protests; Did it help or hinder gun rights?

August 21, 2009

Recently people have been taking weapons to Town hall meetings and impostor in chief appearances. A lot of things have been said about this. Mostly by hopolophobic politicians. The Christian Science Monitor has an article out dealing with this, and they missed at least one rather serious point. As have most reports.

The guys with no necks from Unions have been roughing people up, and otherwise intimidating peaceful protesters, as well as a few that were vocal about their concerns. Have the thugs been active at all when law abiding people, that don’t upset the Secret Service, still there bullying anyone?

Have the anti freedom types that believe that the First Amendment is sacrosanct, just so long as you agree with them, been out there challenging or twisting any arms when an armed lawful citizen is present?

Read the once believable Christian Science Monitor story HERE.

Contrast that puff piece with this.

Can you say scaredy cat? I knew ya could!

August 20, 2009

Any government that fears the people that it leads, has reason to fear. Because what that means is simply that they are ruling the people, not leading them, or, heaven forbid, representing them. Cloud an issue, then bury it with rhetoric and call it anything but what it is seems to be the playbook being used by today’s politicians…

Norton Calls on Homeland Security Officials to Restrict Gun Carrying Outside Public Events Where President and Federal Officials Appear in D.C. and Nationwide

August 19, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, today called on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan to restrict the carrying of weapons openly or concealed in or around the areas where the President of the United States and cabinet officials are appearing, following reports, photos, and videos of people carrying guns outside of  an Obama town hall meeting in Arizona earlier this week.  Norton said that this restriction is particularly necessary in the nation’s capital, where recently filed litigation seeks to overturn D.C. law in order to allow residents and visitors to carry concealed guns in public.

The President, cabinet officials and other top foreign and domestic officials regularly travel in motorcades in the nation’s capital.  The risks of public shootings, which threaten homeland security, have been minimized by gun laws in the District that restrict both open and concealed gun carrying in public.  After a Norton hearing last session that revealed that a similar bill would have allowed the open carrying of weapons in the District, even the National Rifle Association voluntarily withdrew the dangerous provisions.

Norton said that a reported 10 to 12 people were carrying weapons in Arizona on Tuesday in the vicinity of President Obama’s appearance.  “I seek no change in the local laws of other jurisdictions, and ask only respect for gun laws in my own district,” Norton said.  “However, it is clear that if the Secret Service can temporarily clear all aircraft from air space when the President is in the vicinity, the agency has the authority to clear guns on the ground that is even closer to the President.”

The Congresswoman said that she hopes that increasingly brazen NRA attempts to nationalize its no-holds barred approach to guns has finally gotten the attention of federal authorities.  “The NRA’s most recent actions show that the NRA intends to go national on the Ensign amendment approach, the amendment attached to the Senate version of the D.C. Voting Rights bill that would abolish all gun laws in the District,” Norton said.  She cited the recently defeated Thune amendment to permit the carrying of weapons openly as evidence that the NRA is pressing nationwide its view that there should be no local limits on guns in the nation’s capital or elsewhere.  “The NRA is using the District as a test case because it is uniquely subject to Congressional dictates.  Both in the courts and in Congress, beginning with the violation of D.C.’s home rule right to enact its own gun safety laws, the NRA is on a national gun campaign,” she said.  However, the NRA suffered a surprise setback in the defeat of the Thune amendment to the defense authorization bill, which would have allowed gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines, violating restrictions in other jurisdictions.  A similar but even more radical section in the Ensign amendment would make a unique exception for the nation’s capital to become the only U.S. jurisdiction where people could cross state lines to purchase handguns and bring them back, facilitating gun running by criminals, terrorists or gangs intent on breaching homeland security in the National Capital Region or public peace in neighborhoods.

SOURCE

Illinois style hopolophobia set to be the law of the land?

August 20, 2009

Illinois style hopolophobia set to be the law of the land? It sure appears headed that way. I have one thing to say to these black robed haters of liberty and freedom.

Molon Labe!

Read about this act of cowardice…

Appeals Court: Government Can Require Gun Registration

    Posted by Declan McCullagh

    (AP)

    An appeals court in Chicago has ruled that the federal, state or local government can require all citizens to register their firearms under penalty of law.

    A three-judge panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said that, even after the Supreme Court’s high-profile gun rights decision last year, the Second Amendment is no obstacle to mandatory gun registration.

    The case arose out of the Chicago-area town of Cicero’s mandatory registration requirement for firearms. A local man named John Justice was raided by the Cicero police on suspicion of violating business ordinances including improper storage of chemicals; the police discovered six unregistered handguns during the raid.

    Justice runs the Microcosm laminating company on 55th Ave., which sells special adhesives and does custom coatings for customers, and argued in a civil lawsuit that the local ordinance violated the Second Amendment. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

    Full Story

    Bloomberg Wants to “Counter” the NRA

    August 15, 2009

    It’s bad enough when, under color of authority, one commits federal felony’s (attempting to set up straw purchases; denying civil liberties under color of authority) while at the same time using armed body guards is a hallmark of elitist ideology; Now Bloomberg has the gall to go after those that seek liberty and freedom. Read on…

    It is old news to gun owners that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not a friend. As one of the leading proponents of new gun laws, Bloomberg has already earned his place in the Second Amendment rights hall of shame. But apparently, Hizzoner does not believe he is doing enough to destroy our rights.

    On an appearance on “Meet the Press,” Bloomberg announced that he would raise money to counter the influence of the NRA. Bloomberg was on the show to trumpet the 39 votes he was able to muster to squeak out a narrow defeat of national Right-to-Carry reciprocity. (To read more about the Thune/Vitter amendment, click here.) He took the opportunity to lament that the NRA has so much influence — and took upon himself the role of countering that influence.

    Of course, as anti-gunners regularly do, Bloomberg ignores the fact that the NRA only has clout because we represent the beliefs of tens of millions of Americans who oppose the anti-gun agenda. Recent polling has repeatedly shown that the majority of Americans support the individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

    And though it must be very frustrating to mayor Bloomberg, that support is growing. A recent poll by Zogby International revealed that 83% of Americans support Right-to-Carry laws. Bloomberg will no doubt continue to trumpet the 39-vote procedural “victory,” but the reality is, the American people are on the side of Second Amendment freedoms.

    Perhaps part of the problem is the inherent dishonesty of Bloomberg’s position. He claims to be opposed to “Illegal” guns, but his latest effort targeted the rights of law-abiding people who already carry a gun legally. To Bloomberg, any gun he does not like is an “illegal” gun.

    Mayor Bloomberg and his group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” represent a serious threat because of the attention the media will give them and the resources a billionaire like Bloomberg has at his disposal. That’s the money he is once again promising to use to fight against our Second Amendment rights.

    Fortunately, America’s law-abiding gun owners know how to fight the misinformation and anti-gun rhetoric of Mayor Bloomberg and his allies. NRA will continue to closely monitor Bloomberg’s anti-gun activities and will keep you informed about his efforts.

    SOURCE

    Clearing Up the Rumors: The Truth About The “Gun Tax Bill”

    August 15, 2009

    SB 2009 is like a petulant pouting democrat, it just won’t go away. Even when it is old, decrepit, and long gone…

    Over the past few months, NRA-ILA has received hundreds of e-mails warning us about “SB-2099,” a bill that would supposedly require you to report all your guns on your income tax return every April 15.

    Like many rumors, there’s just a grain of truth to this one. Someone’s recycling an old alert, which wasn’t even very accurate when it was new.

    There actually was a U.S. Senate bill with that number that would have taxed handguns — nine years ago.  It was introduced by anti-gun Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and it would have included handguns under the National Firearms Act’s tax and registration scheme.  This has nothing to do with anyone’s Form 1040, of course.

    Fortunately, S. 2099 disappeared without any action by the Senate, back when Bill Clinton was still in the White House. We reported about it back then, just as we report about new anti-gun bills every week. Now, it’s time for gun owners to drop this old distraction and focus on the real threats at hand.

    To read a story by NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox on this and other rumors, please click here.

    SOURCE

    New anti-gun strategy: Demonize CCW holders

    August 12, 2009

    The Examiners are turning out to be a very decent group. Even the ones that I don’t agree with. Now, if they would just let me have a general outdoors column… In any case, this reminds me a lot of a blogger that used to hang out at The Liberty News Forum. He is well stated, and backs up what he says.

    SOURCE

    Bigotry assumes many forms, hides behind many facades, but always it is the same; the social demonization of entire groups, classes or races of people in an effort to make them appear inferior and detrimental by their very existence.

    In the wake of a nasty multiple shooting at a Pittsburgh, PA-area fitness club by a not-so-clearly psychotic man identified as George Sodini, America’s gun prohibitionists – led by the Violence Policy Center and Freedom States Alliance – are clamoring for restrictions or repeal of concealed carry statutes.
    In the case against legally-armed citizens, the VPC has even manufactured an innuendo-riddled “study” to support their prejudices. My colleague, Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner Daniel White, writes about the shooting here.
    Their hardly subliminal argument appears to be that citizens licensed to carry concealed handguns for personal protection are a threat to the community. This contention is based on six shooting incidents over the past couple of years in which the gunman had, or apparently had, a carry permit.

    A 39-year-old Ypsilanti man used his concealed weapon and his experience in the Lebanese army to stop an alleged bank robber.

    Meanwhile, proponents of public disarmament haven’t said a thing about the estimated five million other citizens who are licensed to carry, and haven’t harmed anybody. There hasn’t been a peep from the gun prohibition lobby about the armed citizen who shot a convenience store robber in Virginia recently, heading off a bloodbath.
    Nor have the gun grabbers mentioned the incident a week ago in Topeka, KS in which a legally-armed store clerk fended off two robbers at closing time. Self-defense Examiner Eric Puryear wrote about that incident here.
    And you never heard applause from the hoplophobes – about whom I wrote the other day – after an Ypsilanti, MI man named Nabil Fawzi last year intervened in a bank robbery, did you?
    An employee with a concealed carry license used his handgun to defend himself and stop a pair of criminals who tried to rob his shop.
    Instead, what we get from the gun prohibitionists is a steady diet of fear mongering with but one purpose: The stripping of a fundamental civil right to keep and bear arms so that we lose our ability to exercise that most basic of human rights, that of self-preservation.
    Nowadays, about the only form of acceptable overt social bigotry is against gun owners. The gun bigots argue that when one person with a gun does something heinous, all gun owners are expected to bear responsibility, and surrender their rights as though it would undo the crime.
    Before the armed citizen, it was the owners of .50-caliber rifles who were likened to terrorists and cop-killers. Next week or next month, who will the prohibitionists smear in their effort to promote public hatred of fellow citizens whose only “crime” is that they exercise a constitutionally-protected civil right?
    The VPC and Freedom States crowd would have us all believe that every armed citizen is just like George Sodini, and that he is like all of us; a killer waiting to strike.
    While they are loathe to admit it, there is really no difference between gun bigots and racial or religious bigots. One form of class hatred is no less divisive than another.
    Visit with other Gun Rights Examiners:
    David Codrea
    Ed Stone
    Paul Valone
    Howard Nemerov
    Dan Bidstrup
    Daniel White
    Don Gwinn
    Kurt Hofmann
    John Longenecker
    Ron Bokleman
    John Pierce
    Candace Dainty
    Gene German
    Mike Stollenwerk
    And don’t forget to visit these forums:
    GunVoter.org
    TheHighRoad.us
    OpenCarry.org
    More About: gunrights · Crime · Gun Control · Second Amendment · Self-Defense · Supreme Court · Personal Protection · D.C. · Constitution · Liberty · Gun safety · Open Carry · National concealed carry · Gun bans · Homicide data · Hoplophobia
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    Guns in School? : Front Sight Newsletter

    August 12, 2009

    Front Sight was the very first thing that I put on my sidebar. Read this from the newsletter, and you will understand why.

    Packing for school: Guns on campus one year later

    Ann Work Times Record News
    Thursday, August 6, 2009
    David ThweattWICHITA FALLS — One year ago, David Thweatt made a decision so controversial and groundbreaking the story about it sped around the world.The superintendent of the isolated Harrold Independent School District, about 30 miles northwest of here, made history last August when he and his school board decided to allow select teachers and staff members at the 110-student school to carry guns on campus — a first for Texas and the nation.

    For Thweatt and his board, the decision was pure mathematics.

    The school, which sits in the middle of a prairie, was too far from law enforcement for police to come in time to fend off would-be attackers. The students and staff would be safer if on-site, trained staff members were equipped to handle a crisis at a moment’s notice, they decided.

    Thweatt had already installed a $100,000 state-of-the-art security system in the school. Now, arming certain unnamed school staff members by allowing them to strap a firearm under their clothing was the final flourish.

    In the year since that historic decision, a gun was never brandished or fired at the school. There were no problems, Thweatt said.

    However, one week after school began, police busted a methamphetamine lab set up in an abandoned house that sat 50 feet from the school property.

    A deputy had peered inside and “saw something in the walls and windows and called for backup,” Thweatt said. “They made it to the abandoned house in 15 minutes. We had figured it would take 18 to 20 minutes in a typical situation.”

    Had that been an armed intruder at his school, response time would have been too slow.

    “We’re the first responders. We have to be,” Thweatt said. “We don’t have 5 minutes. We don’t have 10 minutes. We would have had 20 minutes of hell” if attackers had targeted the school.

    Harrold students, who grew up on ranches and in the middle of the North Texas gun culture, were unperturbed by the school district’s new gun policy.

    “The kids just laughed about it,” Thweatt said.

    Thweatt himself is the son of a retired minister/missionary/teacher in Abilene and a 1978 graduate of Abilene High School and Hardin-Simmons University.

    Too small for athletics, Thweatt spent his time at Abilene High focused on his studies, particularly interested in journalism.

    He wrote music and played guitar in a Christian band on weekends and was active in his father’s nondenominational Abilene Fellowship ministry.

    Thweatt drove a school bus for the Abilene ISD and occasionally worked as a substitute teacher to help fund his education, graduating in 1983.

    In Harrold, media attention was fierce all year. He talked to reporters from as far away as Ireland and New Zealand; he participated on more than a dozen talk shows. The story continues to spread; recently he saw a write-up in a Jerusalem newspaper. Only Finland and Switzerland reporters ignored the story; they already have high gun ownership rates, he said.

    “I had a lot of interviews from kids and college kids,” he said. “They needed to learn. I’m an educator,” said Thweatt, who is opinionated but patient in interviews.

    “Would you stick a sign at a school that says, ‘No guns on this property’? Why wouldn’t you? It invites nasty people to come,” he said. “That’s what you’ve done to every public school in the nation. That’s why there were no shootings until Columbine. It’s turned into a dad-gum shoot fest.”

    Thweatt took calls from “just a handful” of Texas districts considering the same policy, but he wouldn’t say if any other districts had modeled Harrold’s M.O.

    According to Barbara Williams with the Texas Association of School Boards, Harrold remains the only Texas school district with a guns-on-campus policy.

    “We’re not aware of any others,” she said.

    However, when Harrold made its groundbreaking decision one year ago, she watched the story go as far as Malaysia. She was even called by the Dr. Phil show, who asked her to help plan a show on the topic because they were so fascinated by it. She refused.

    To her, it was so obvious as to be a non-issue. Dr. Phil, who claims to be a Texan, should know that, she said.

    “This is Texas. I have a magnet on my refrigerator of the state with a plastic gun glued to it that says, ‘We don’t call 9-1-1.’ We find that funny in Texas,” she said.

    When a London reporter asked Thweatt to explain why so many kooks go into schools looking for a body count, Thweatt said he couldn’t explain such a devolution of society, but he did know a simple way to stop it — the same solution he chose for Harrold ISD.

    “Good guys with guns — good,” he said. “Bad guys with guns — bad.”

    This is a story you won’t see in the main stream media so please forward this blog to everyone you know so it spreads across the Internet like wild fire as an example of the right solution for law abiding citizens who want to protect themselves, their communities, schools and families.

    To show my personal thanks and respect for Superintendent David Thweatt’s outstanding actions, I have placed a Front Sight Legacy Lifetime Membership in his name and look forward to seeing him at Front Sight in the future.

    I will be posting a different article on this blog each Monday so I look forward to your visit every week.

    If you have an interesting photo, story or tip about a relevant topic of interest to gun ownership, firearms training or Second Amendment issues, please feel free to send it to me at:

    info@frontsight.com or

    Ignatius@frontsight.com

    If you want to take advantage of the Greatest Course, Gun, and CCW Permit Offer in the firearms training industry see this link:

    https://www.frontsight.com/free-gun.asp

    See you next week.

    Dr. Ignatius Piazza
    Founder and Director
    Front Sight Firearms Training Institute

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