Posts Tagged ‘Gun Control’

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Lautenberg’s Axis of Evil at it again

July 3, 2009

Gun Hater Lautenberg Proposes “Extraordinary Powers” Be Given To the U.S. Attorney General To Limit Gun Sales.

Obama and the White House are looking the other way as Lautenberg seeks to ban guns from 1,000,000 US citizens on a secret FBI terrorist watch list. Obama has deliberately and repeatedly lied to America’s 90 million gun owners across the country when he insisted that he would not try to take away anyone’s firearms. Now Obama’s silence endorses Lautenberg’s latest attempt at banning guns.

Lautenberg plans to introduce legislation that would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales to people on terror watch lists. We must defeat this bill from giving extraordinary powers to limit gun sales to the Attorney General.

Lautenberg To Reveal Names on Secret List

The names of the people on the watch list are secret, and Lautenberg said he was frustrated by the F.B.I.’s refusal to disclose to investigators details and specific cases of gun purchases beyond the aggregate data.

Gun hater Lautenberg requested the gun grab study from the Government Accountability Office. He is using statistics, compiled in the report that is scheduled for public release next week to invade US citizen’s privacy and put more restrictions on the Second Amendment.

Lautenberg said he wanted a better understanding of who is being allowed to buy guns.

How you ask? Trial by innuendo and misinformation that has put 1,000,000 Americans and maybe even you on a terrorist watch list without your knowledge by saying: people placed on this government’s terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, and will also be stopped from buying a gun.

Lautenberg wants gun purchases stopped for just being on the list. Current law states federal officials must find some other disqualification of a would-be gun buyer, like being a felon, an illegal alien or a drug addict.

Is your name on the list and can you get it removed?

The government’s consolidated watch list, used to identify people suspected of links to terrorists, has grown to more than one million names since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It also has drawn widespread criticism over the prevalence of mistaken identities and unclear links to terrorism.

A CNN story raises questions about mistaken identities on the list – James Robinson is a retired Air National Guard brigadier general and a commercial pilot for a major airline who flies passenger planes around the country.

James Robinson is a retired brigadier general and a commercial pilot. His name is on the terrorist “watch list.”

He has even been certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon into the cockpit as part of the government’s defense program should a terrorist try to commandeer a plane.

But there’s one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government’s terrorist “watch list.”

That means he can’t use an airport kiosk to check in; he can’t do it online; he can’t do it curbside. Instead, like thousands of Americans whose names match a name or alias used by a suspected terrorist on the list, he must go to the ticket counter and have an agent verify that he is James Robinson, the pilot, and not James Robinson, the terrorist.

“Shocking’s a good word; frustrating,” Robinson — the pilot — said. “I’m carrying a weapon, flying a multimillion-dollar jet with passengers, but I’m still screened as, you know, on the terrorist watch list.”

History Repeating Itself?

The 1938 German Weapons Act, the precursor of the current weapons law, superseded the 1928 law. As under the 1928 law, citizens were required to have a permit to carry a firearm and a separate permit to acquire a firearm. Furthermore, the law restricted ownership of firearms to “…persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a (gun) permit.”

Lautenberg Must be Stopped

Recently Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Jack Reed (D-RI) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) have joined Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and victims and family members of the Virginia Tech tragedy, to introduce legislation to eliminate the private transfers of firearms and close the nation’s “gun show loophole.”

This Senate bill is in the Judiciary Committee, chaired by anti-gun liberal Democrat Leahy. Lautenberg’s gun hate is well documented and he says you are irrational if you support private gun sales.

“There is no rational reason to oppose closing the loophole. The reason it’s still not closed is simple: the continuing power of the special interest gun lobby in Washington” Sen. Lautenberg said ignoring the Constitution.

Lautenberg and the Gun Grabbers in the Senate are now tying to use the GAO to justify putting Americans on a secret gun ban list.

LAUTENBERG’S MOTIVES

Motives for his latest gun ban to are twofold:

  • First, he is taking small steps to enact gun control legislation this is just one step.
  • Second, eradicate the gun culture altogether.

All that seems to be on the minds of the Anti-Gun Senators and at the offices of gun control extremists is figuring out how to invade your privacy to erode and eventually destroy the right, and the means, of self-defense.

Now the Anti-Gun Coalitions are trying to use a self supporting GAO study to destroy the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms to protect themselves under the law. They are attacking and hiding behind an Anti-Terrorist Agenda while getting political and financial support from:

George Soros a Hungarian-born billionaire bank rolling efforts with his check book and spending more that $100 million to destroy the Constitution.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA) admitted that “guns would be banned and confiscated” if she could have her way.

The United Nations actively pushes globalism seeking to disarm all Americans.

We must Stop the Anti-Gun Coalition and get ready for the biggest gun control fight of the year from coast to coast. We can not do that without your support.

Stand up against this attack! Stand up for the right to not only defend yourself, but to defend your family, your children, your friends, and your classmates!

Alan Gottlieb
Chairman
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

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Posted in Domestic Violence, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Law, Men's Issues, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »

GOA Applause: NRA Past President on Sotomayor Nomination‏

June 30, 2009 
Gun Owners of America applauds immediate past NRA President Sandy
Froman, who stepped up to the plate last week with a call to arms for
all NRA members to vigorously oppose the nomination of Judge Sotomayor
to the Supreme Court. (See the article below).

GOA has been calling on our members to oppose this nomination since it
is clear that Sotomayor is anti-Second Amendment and wants to legislate
from the bench.

The official position from current NRA leadership is to take a "wait and
see" approach to the Sotomayor nomination which may well allow her to
wiggle through and be confirmed.

GOA calls on all pro-gunners across America to urge NRA leadership to
join in this critical fight to protect the Constitution -- and
especially our gun rights.

-- GOA Vice-Chairman Tim Macy

----------------------------------------

NRA Members Must Oppose Sotomayor
by Sandy Froman

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first nominee to the
U.S. Supreme Court, has a narrow view of the Second Amendment that
contradicts the Court's landmark decision in District of Columbia v.
Heller.  A heated debate has started in the U.S. Senate over her
opposition to the right to keep and bear arms. This issue, which has
decided the fate of presidential elections, could also decide her
nomination. Gun owners, and especially the members of the National Rifle
Association, must aggressively oppose Judge Sotomayor's confirmation to
the Supreme Court.

On June 24, senators began speaking on the floor of the Senate
expressing grave concerns over Judge Sotomayor's Second Amendment
record. Senator Jeff Sessions R-AL, the Ranking Member of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, pointed out that although her record on the issue
is "fairly scant," she has twice stated that the Second
Amendment is not
a fundamental right.  Senator Sessions also noted that in Second
Amendment and other constitutional cases, Sotomayor's analysis of
important constitutional issues has been lacking suggesting "a troubling
tendency to avoid or casually dismiss difficult Constitutional issues of
exceptional importance."  Sotomayor's view on the Second Amendment
clearly reflects an extreme anti-gun philosophy, and some Democrat
senators from pro-gun states are justifiably nervous.

Last year, the Supreme Court held in Heller that the Second Amendment
guarantees the right of individual Americans to keep and bear firearms.
But that ruling was a fiercely-contested, 5-4 split decision. Justice
Kennedy joined the four conservatives on the Court to make the majority,
with the four liberal justices writing passionate dissents about how the
Second Amendment does not apply to private citizens.

Bluntly speaking, the Second Amendment survived by a single vote. Had
one justice voted differently, the Second Amendment would have been
erased from the Bill of Rights forever. Today in the Supreme Court, the
right to bear arms hangs by a single vote.

The next question the Supreme Court will decide is whether the Second
Amendment is a "fundamental right" that applies to cities and
states,
thus preventing them from restricting gun rights.  Even the liberal
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held earlier this year in Nordyke v. King
that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right, yet Judge Sotomayor
disagrees.

When Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, it
belied his flowery rhetoric about respecting our constitutional gun
rights. Out of almost 200 federal appeals judges in this country, Judge
Sotomayor is one of only six to weigh in (after the Heller case) to hold
that the Second Amendment only limits federal actions. If your state or
city chooses to ban all guns or take away the ones that you already have
in your home for hunting and self-defense, Sonia Sotomayor says the
Constitution can't help you.

This position becomes all the more radical when it's revealed how she
reached this conclusion. Only six judges have denied gun rights against
the states. Of these, three did so in a recent Seventh Circuit case, NRA
v. Chicago, writing a detailed opinion that the Second Amendment doesn't
apply to the states because they thought an old 1800s Supreme Court case
tied their hands on the issue, and they commended the case up to the
Supreme Court after long and scholarly consideration. Judge Sotomayor
and two of her liberal colleagues, however, wrote only a single
paragraph on the whole issue when deciding their own New York case,
Maloney v. Cuomo. In one paragraph, she said the Second Amendment gives
people no rights at all when it comes to state or city laws. She gave no
explanation, and made no call for Supreme Court action.

Then we find that this has been a consistent belief for Sotomayor. In a
case before her in 2004, she and her colleagues concluded that there is
no fundamental right in the Second Amendment but provided no substantive
analysis to justify this conclusion. Throughout her career, Judge
Sotomayor's record is one of consistent opposition to the private
ownership of firearms.

America has almost 90 million gun owners who value their rights. And of
these, no one does more to protect the Second Amendment than the four
million members of the National Rifle Association.

I served as an officer of the NRA for nine years, including a two-year
term as president. I saw NRA members turn the tide on Election Day 2000
to defeat Al Gore. We fought again to help defeat John Kerry in 2004. We
can do the same with Sonia Sotomayor, if we call our U.S. Senators and
tell them to vote against this anti-gun judge. No fewer than fourteen
Democrat senators have solid records on the Second Amendment, and we
must urge them to oppose this nominee.

Next year, the Supreme Court is likely to take up NRA v. Chicago, which
will decide whether the Second Amendment applies to states and cities
like it does the federal government. This case is as important as
Heller, and will massively impact gun rights forever.

We already know where Judge Sotomayor stands. It's time to tell the
Senate, "Vote No! on Sonia Sotomayor."

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The Sullivan Act: Some History about Gun Control

June 27, 2009

The history of gun control is riddled with racism and corruption as well as outright deception. Based in elitism of one sort or another it is a subject worthy of soap opera drama that stirs the imagination.

One of the earliest examples is New York’s  Sullivan Act. Often pointed to by various advocates of the destruction of unalienable rights as some sort of morbid example of what those that know better than you do what you and your loved ones so desperately need it too is founded in corruption. One has to believe that Chuck Schumer and Frank Lautenberg both wish that they had written this law, and that their constant never ending attacks on liberty reflect that desire.

Some years or decades ago I researched and reported on the Sullivan Act, one of America’s first gun control laws.

New York state senator Timothy Sullivan, a corrupt Tammany Hall politician, represented New York’s Red Hook district. Commercial travelers passing through the district would be relieved of their valuables by armed robbers. In order to protect themselves and their property, travelers armed themselves. This raised the risk of, and reduced the profit from, robbery. Sullivan’s outlaw constituents demanded that Sullivan introduce a law that would prohibit concealed carry of pistols, blackjacks, and daggers, thus reducing the risk to robbers from armed victims.

The criminals, of course, were already breaking the law and had no intention of being deterred by the Sullivan Act from their business activity of armed robbery. Thus, the effect of the Sullivan Act was precisely what the criminals intended. It made their life of crime easier.

As the first successful gun control advocates were criminals, I have often wondered what agenda lies behind the well-organized and propagandistic gun control organizations and their donors and sponsors in the US today. The propaganda issued by these organizations consists of transparent lies.

Consider the propagandistic term, “gun violence,” popularized by gun control advocates. This is a form of reification by which inanimate objects are imbued with the ability to act and to commit violence. Guns, of course, cannot be violent in themselves. Violence comes from people who use guns and a variety of other weapons, including fists, to commit violence.

Nevertheless, we hear incessantly the Orwellian Newspeak term, “gun violence.”

Very few children are killed by firearm accidents compared to other causes of child deaths. Yet, gun control advocates have created the false impression that there is a national epidemic in accidental firearm deaths of children. In fact, the National MCH Center for Child Death Review, an organization that monitors causes of child deaths, reports that seven times more children die from drowning and five times more from suffocation than from firearm accidents. Yet we don’t hear of “drowning violence,” “swimming pool violence,” “bathtub violence,” or “suffocation violence.”

The National MCH Center for Child Death Review reports that 174 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2000. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that 125 children eighteen years old and under died from firearm accidents in 2006. In 2006 there were 77,845,285 youths in that age bracket.

Full Story

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 3 Comments »

Second Amendment: GAO Blames U.S. for Mexican Gun Violence

June 20, 2009

Well, it seems that even after being totally debunked the administration just keeps on ramming falsehoods at we the people…

“A new study by the Government Accountability Office says most firearms recovered in drug violence in Mexico come from the U.S., a finding that will likely fuel the politically charged debate over the U.S. government’s efforts to stem gun trafficking across the border,” reports The Wall Street Journal. As we have pointed out before, however, the data is flawed right from the beginning. According to the Journal, in 2008, Mexican law enforcement seized 30,000 weapons, but only 7,200 were submitted to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for tracing. Rather than look at the complete facts, of course, anti-gun demagogues pounced on the report. “The availability of firearms illegally flowing from the United States into Mexico has armed and emboldened a dangerous criminal element in Mexico, and it has made the job of drug cartels easier,” said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY). “It is simply unacceptable that the United States not only consumes the majority of the drugs flowing from Mexico, but also arms the very cartels that contribute to the daily violence that is devastating Mexico.”

Blaming law-abiding U.S. citizens for drug violence in Mexico makes little sense, other than as a justification for more gun control. In anticipation of a renewed effort by the Obama administration to reinstate the so-called “assault weapons” ban, 23 state attorneys general sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, saying, “We share the Obama Administration’s commitment to reducing illegal drugs and violent crime within the United States. We also share your deep concern about drug cartel violence in Mexico. However, we do not believe that restricting law-abiding Americans’ access to certain semi-automatic firearms will resolve any of these problems.”

SOURCE followed up by…

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this week entitled, “Firearms Trafficking: U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges.”

Among other things, the report asserts that Mexican officials consider illicit firearms the number one crime problem affecting their country’s security; that about 87 percent of firearms seized in Mexico and traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) in the last five years originated in the United States; and that these firearms are increasingly more powerful and lethal, including “high-caliber and high-powered” AK-47 and AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles. The report further contends that the country’s law enforcement agencies are insufficiently organized, and that Mexico has a history of corruption at the federal, state and local levels.

With regard to the “87 percent” statistic, the report’s figures make clear that BATFE only traces a fraction of the guns seized. Those firearms are not selected randomly, but are likely selected because they are the guns most likely to have come from the U.S.  Trace data reveals nothing about the large number of guns that are not traced.

The report also states “According to U.S. and Mexican government officials, these firearms have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years. For example, many of these firearms are high-caliber and high-powered, such as AK and AR-15 type semiautomatic rifles.” The report, however, states that about 25 percent of firearms traced were of that type, which works out to only eight percent of all firearms seized. Also, the report does not indicate what percentage of murders is committed with various types of firearms, but it does note, “The majority of the casualties have been individuals involved in the drug trade in some way.”

The report further states that, “The U.S. government faces several significant challenges in combating illicit sales of firearms in the United States and stemming their flow into Mexico.” These include “restrictions on collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases, a lack of required background checks for private firearms sales, and limitations on reporting requirements for multiple sales” and even the fact that the U.S. government is prohibited by law from maintaining a national registry of firearms.

But as we know, the gun control measures indicated would not be effective against purchasers who can pass instant background checks. As the report noted, “Firearms [purchases] at gun shops and pawn shops for trafficking to Mexico are usually made by ‘straw purchasers,’ according to law enforcement officials. These straw purchasers are individuals with clean records who can be expected to pass the required background check and who are paid by drug cartel representatives or middlemen to purchase certain guns from gun shops.”

Finally, the report noted that, “Another significant challenge facing U.S. efforts to assist Mexico is corruption among some Mexican government entities. Government officials acknowledge fully implementing these reforms will take considerable time, and may take years to affect comprehensive change.” And, “According to Mexican government officials, corruption pervades all levels of Mexican law enforcement — federal, state, and local. For example, some high ranking members of federal law enforcement have been implicated in corruption investigations, and some high publicity kidnapping and murder cases have involved corrupt federal law enforcement officials.”

Obviously, Mexico has a huge problem with rampant corruption that clearly cannot be blamed on the U.S. At the same time, Mexico has extremely prohibitive gun laws, yet has far worse crime than the U.S.

More evidence of what is truly happening in Mexico was brought out in a series of hearings held earlier this year. During those hearings, three representatives of U.S. law enforcement, one each from BATFE, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), made it clear that the increase in violence in Mexico is being misinterpreted by the media and politicians. They testified that the increase in violence is a direct result of the actions taken by Mexican President Felipe Calderon to take on the cartels.  The cartels, they testified, are being pressured more than ever before and are fighting back in desperation, resulting in casualties. (If you wish to view the hearings, please use the following links: House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere: “Guns, Drugs and Violence: The Merida Initiative and the Challenge in Mexico” , and Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs: “Law Enforcement Responses to Mexican Drug Cartels”)

For American gun owners, the battle will be to make sure that politicians who see an opportunity to advance their gun ban agenda do not use Mexico as an excuse to sacrifice our Second Amendment rights.

SOURCE

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Immigration, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 4 Comments »

Obama Care, Teddy Care, and so on…

June 20, 2009

I don’t know about you, but the more I am hearing about “health care reform” the more skeptical I become. From making gun control into a health care issue to deciding who gets what care, and when?

This entire issue is becoming a Trojan Horse from the looks of things. Here’s a thought though. On another thread a person argued in favor of a complete ban on mentally ill people from owning firearms. Alright, that sounds reasonable prima facie. In many places those will mental illness are also banned from voting. Therefore, those afflicted with the mental illness of Hopolophobia will be forever banned from voting, or owning weapons! Fat chance that will happen in this day and age of political correctness.

Obamacare Takes Center Stage

ABC News is lending itself to the Obama administration for the night of Wednesday, June 24, for a live broadcast of ABC World News Tonight from the Blue Room of the White House. This will be followed by an hour-long primetime special entitled “Prescription for America,” which will advocate the Obama health care plan. The Republican National Committee noted that with the absence of opposing views, the programming amounts to little more than a campaign commercial — one that should rightly be paid for by the Democratic National Committee.

ABC predictably took offense and claimed that it will have complete editorial control over the content of the program. Or at least as much control as the White House wants them to have. As columnist Cal Thomas observes, “By the way, guess who’s the new director of communications for the White House Office of Health Reform. It’s former ABC News correspondent Linda Douglass, who left journalism last year to join the Obama campaign.” How convenient.

The network claims it will have “thoughtful” and “diverse” perspectives on the plan, but one noteworthy absence is “20/20” anchor John Stossel, who will not be participating. A pity, too, for if anyone at ABC has the requisite “thoughtful” and “diverse” perspective, it’s Stossel. (See his 2007 health care report for more.)

Obama’s reason for taking to the airwaves is that his proposal is facing stiffer opposition than anticipated. First, his estimate of $634 billion over 10 years is wildly optimistic. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the plan will cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years and “result in a net increase in the federal budget deficits of about $1 trillion,” despite Obama’s reassurance that his reform (read: takeover) “will not add to our deficit over the next 10 years.” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) promised to cut $600 billion from the proposal and to pay for it with tax increases, spending cuts and other offsets. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) said the plan includes $600 billion in tax hikes and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

Furthermore, the CBO estimates that 23 million Americans will lose the insurance they currently have, contrary to Obama’s key promise that no one will lose insurance. “[T]he number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million,” the report says.

Obamacare only tastes good after the alcohol kicks in

The CBO estimate is so ugly for Democrats, The Hill reports, that “lawmakers are talking about changing the chamber’s normal accounting procedures,” substituting estimates from the White House Office of Management and Budget for those of the CBO. So much for “transparency.”

Considering the whole of Obamacare, one Patriot reader declared, “I haven’t heard health care advice so laughable since Lucille Ball flogged Vitameatavegamin on TV. ‘It’s so tasty too. It’s just like candy.’ Has our president been hitting the Vitameatavegamin bottle himself? Not to worry, though. Even though socialized medicine has proven an abject failure in every venue trying it, the United States is such a big country that, like Lucy and Ethel selling homemade salad dressing below the cost of their ingredients, no doubt ‘We’ll make it up in volume.'”

The BIG Lie

“Let me also address an illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system. I’ll be honest: There are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe — and I’ve taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief — that it’s important for our efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.” –President Barack Obama to the American Medical Association

When asked which countries’ citizens enjoyed their socialized medicine, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs later admitted, “I don’t know exactly the countries. … I assume Canada, Britain, maybe France.” Not the examples we’d pick to bolster Obama’s case.

On Cross-Examination

“It’s hard to know whether President Obama’s health care ‘reform’ is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it’s imperative to control runaway health spending. He’s right. The trouble is that what’s being promoted as health care ‘reform’ almost certainly won’t suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite.” –Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson

This Week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ Award

“I do not want the government to run things. I’ve got enough to do.” –President Barack Obama, attempting the equivalent of a Jedi mind trick: “These are not the droids you’re looking for.”

SOURCE

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Rogue Agency at it again!

June 19, 2009

After all these years, they are still just a rogue agency.

NRA-ILA has recently received several calls from NRA members in border states who have been visited or called by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In some cases, agents have asked to enter these people’s homes, and requested serial numbers of all firearms the members possess.

In each case, the agents were making inquiries based on the number of firearms these NRA members had recently bought, and in some cases the agents said they were asking because the members had bought types of guns that are frequently recovered in Mexico.

This kind of questioning may or may not be part of a legitimate criminal investigation. For example, when BATFE traces a gun seized after use in a crime, manufacturers’ and dealers’ records will normally lead to the first retail buyer of that gun, and investigators will have to interview the buyer to find out how the gun ended up in criminal hands. But in other cases, the questioning may simply be based on information in dealers’ records, with agents trying to “profile” potentially suspicious purchases.

On the other hand, some of the agents have used heavy-handed tactics. One reportedly demanded that a gun owner return home early from a business trip, while another threatened to “report” an NRA member as “refusing to cooperate.” That kind of behavior is outrageous and unprofessional.

Whether agents act appropriately or not, concerned gun owners should remember that all constitutional protections apply. Answering questions in this type of investigation is generally an individual choice. Most importantly, there are only a few relatively rare exceptions to the general Fourth Amendment requirement that law enforcement officials need a warrant to enter a home without the residents’ consent. There is nothing wrong with politely, but firmly, asserting your rights.

If BATFE contacts you and you have any question about how to respond, you may want to consult a local attorney. NRA members may also call NRA-ILA’s Office of Legislative Counsel at (703) 267-1161 for further information. Whether contacting a local attorney or NRA, be sure to provide as many details as possible, including the date, time, and location, agent’s name, and specific questions asked.

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Ted Kennedy Bill Could Send Your Gun Info Into A Massive Federal Database

June 18, 2009

More “Laird it over” from the Kennedy clan…

Ted Kennedy Bill Could Send Your Gun Info Into A Massive Federal
Database
-- And you could be forced to spend $13,000 of your own money toward
this effort!

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, June 16, 2009

At long last, Teddy Kennedy has partially revealed the health care
system he wants to foist on the whole country -- and it isn't pretty.

It won't be pretty for your pocket book... OR FOR YOUR GUN RIGHTS!

But first, let us explain what TeddyCare is all about.

At the center of the plan is what's called a "universal 
mandate." What
this means is that you -- and virtually everyone in the country -- will
have to buy as much health insurance as the government demands, and that
insurance plan will actually have to be approved by the government.

If you work for a small business, the business will buy the insurance on
your behalf. But you may be saddled with an enormous part of the cost.
And, if the employer's contribution is too large, you will be fired.

If you fail to buy TeddyCare, as the government orders you to do, the
IRS will fine you, garnish your wages, put a lien on your house, and,
ultimately, put you in prison.

How much will you have to spend on your TeddyCare insurance? Teddy's not
saying.

The portion of your paycheck that will have to be forked over to Teddy's
latest social experiment will be revealed ONLY AFTER THE MASSIVE HEALTH
CARE BILL IS SIGNED INTO LAW.

This should set off alarm bells in your brain, because, for instance,
the average family policy is currently $12,700.  "So," 
proclaims Teddy,
"everyone's going to get a subsidy to pay for this."  There's 
going to
be a "chicken in every pot," and no one's going to have to 
pay for it.

Yeah, right. If you're a welfare mother, the government will pay for
your TeddyCare, and it would pay for it -- the first time -- by taxing
employer-provided health benefits of working Americans. But if you a
"working Joe" your Kennedy-subsidy will be a microscopic 
fraction of the
cost of your mandated TeddyCare insurance policy.

Okay, all of this sounds ominous... but why is this a gun issue?

The answer is that TeddyCare will allow radical left Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to determine all of the fine print
in every TeddyCare policy -- which you will be required to buy under
penalty of imprisonment.

Currently, as a result of the stimulus bill and a whole lot of other
factors, the government is rapidly moving in the direction of
computerizing all of your most confidential medical records and putting
them into a federal database.

So remember when your son was asked by his pediatrician about your gun
collection? That would be in the federal database.

Or remember when your wife told her gynecologist that she had regularly
smoked marijuana ten years ago -- thereby potentially barring both her
and you from ever owning a gun again? That would be in the database.

Or if a military veteran complains to his psychiatrist that he's had
emotional stress since coming back to the States, that would be in the
database.

Or remember when gramps was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, thereby making
him a "mental defective" who would have to relinquish his 
life-long gun
collection? That's in there too.

And, while we are dangerously close to allowing BATFE to troll all of
that information, TeddyCare would allow Sebelius to put EVERYONE'S
private data in a database with a stroke of a pen.

When we say "everyone," we don't mean quite everyone.

Teddy has conveniently excluded Washington bureaucrats from his
TeddyCare mandate.

Also, Teddy and his friends in the media don't want you to hear about
the details until after the bill is passed. That's why they're trying to
slam it through within the next month and a half before anyone's had a
chance to read or debate it.

In fact, the TeddyCare proposal is currently circulating around Capitol
Hill without even a bill number.

ACTION:  Urge your two U.S. Senators to oppose Sen. Ted Kennedy's
mandate that will result in the registration of all your gun
information.

Please forward this email to your friends and family and urge them to
contact their Senators as well.

You can go to 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:

At long last, Teddy Kennedy has partially revealed the health care
system he wants to foist on the whole country -- and it isn't pretty.

At the center of the TeddyCare plan is what's called a "universal
mandate." What this means is that I -- and virtually everyone in the
country -- will have to buy as much health insurance as the government
demands, and that insurance plan will actually have to be approved by
the government.

But this is not only an issue of individual freedom; it is a gun issue.

This is because Teddycare will allow radical left Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to determine all of the fine print
in every Teddycare policy -- which Americans will be required to buy
under penalty of imprisonment.

Currently, as a result of the stimulus bill and a whole lot of other
factors, the government is rapidly moving in the direction of
computerizing all of our most confidential medical records and putting
them into a federal database.

So if a kid is asked by his pediatrician about his dad's gun collection,
that would be in the federal database.

Or if a wife told her gynecologist that she had regularly smoked
marijuana ten years ago -- thereby potentially barring both her and her
husband from ever owning a gun again, that would be in the database.

Or if a military veteran complains to his psychiatrist that he's had
emotional stress since coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan, that would
be in the database.

Or when gramps was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, thereby making him a
"mental defective" who would have to relinquish his life-long gun
collection, that would be in there too.

And, while we are dangerously close to allowing BATFE to troll all of
that information, TeddyCare would allow Sebelius to put EVERYONE'S
private data in a database with a stroke of a pen.

You cannot imagine how angry I, my family, and my neighbors are about
this most recent fraud scheme to cheat me out of perhaps over $10,000
for TeddyCare -- and to violate my privacy in the process.

I insist that you oppose TeddyCare -- immediately and loudly. Please do
not try to shower me with propaganda about how a mandate on how I spend
my own money is somehow good for me.

Sincerely,

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 4 Comments »

Deal between NRA leadership and Democrats leaves most Republicans in the dark

June 14, 2009

McCarthy Bill Rammed Through The House

Sunday, 14 June 2009 00:00

— Deal between NRA leadership and Democrats leaves most Republicans in the dark

Wednesday started out as a routine day in the U.S. Congress, with Representatives attending congressional hearings, meeting with constituents, perhaps devising clever new ways to pick our pockets.

At 8:30 in the morning an email went out to House Republicans indicating that a gun control bill, recently introduced by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), was on the Suspension Calendar (normally reserved for “non-controversial” bills).

Many Representatives didn’t see that email until it was too late. Less than three hours later, the bill passed by a voice vote. The bill in question, H.R. 2640, is a massive expansion of the Brady Gun Control law, the subject of many previous alerts by Gun Owners of America.

Its passage in the House is a case study in backroom deal making, unholy alliances and deceit. A sausage factory in a third world country with no running water has nothing on today’s U.S. Congress.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that a deal had been struck between the NRA leadership and Democrat leaders in the House. The headline read: “Democrats, NRA Reach Deal on Background-Check Bill.”

Red flags went up throughout the pro-gun community. Who was party to this “deal,” and how many of our rights were being used as bargaining chips?

The McCarthy bill, at the time, looked to be going nowhere. The general consensus among pro-gun Congressmen was that any gun bill offered by McCarthy was simply DOA.

After all, if there were such a thing as a single issue Member of Congress, it would have to be McCarthy. Rep. McCarthy ran for office to ban guns; Hollywood made a movie about her efforts to ban guns; and she is currently the lead sponsor of a bill that makes the old Clinton gun ban pale by comparison.

Even many Democrats wouldn’t go near a McCarthy gun bill. They have learned that supporting gun control is a losing issue. Enter Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), the so-called Dean of the House, having served since the Eisenhower administration. Dingell is also a former NRA Board member, and was in that capacity tapped to bring the NRA leadership to the table.

The end result of the negotiations was that this small clique among the NRA leadership gave this bill the support it needed to pass.

But why was it necessary to pass the bill in such an underhanded fashion? If this is such a victory for the Second Amendment, why all the secrecy? Why was a deal forged with the anti-gun Democrat House leadership, keeping most pro-gun representatives in the dark? Why was the bill rammed through on the Suspension Calendar with no recorded vote with which to identify those who are against us?

For starters, it would be a hard sell indeed for the NRA leadership to explain to its members what they would gain by working with McCarthy. If this legislation had gone before the NRA membership for a vote, it would have been rejected. For that matter, if it went through the House in the regular fashion, with committee hearings and recorded votes, it would have been defeated.

Consider also what the bill is: GUN CONTROL! The lead sentence in an Associated Press article accurately stated that, “The House Wednesday passed what could become the first major federal gun control law in over a decade.”

The bill’s supporters can talk all they want to the contrary, but forcing the states to hand over to the federal government millions of records of Americans for the purpose of conducting a background check is certainly an expansion of gun control.

This is a bill designed to make the gun control trains run on time. Problem is, the train’s on the wrong track. We don’t need greater efficiency enforcing laws that for years we have fought as being unconstitutional.

Sure, there are provisions in the bill by which a person who is on the prohibited persons list can get his name removed, but not before proving one’s innocence before a court, or convincing a psychiatrist that he should be able to own a gun (though most psychiatrists would be more likely to deem a person mentally defective for even wanting to own guns).

Sad thing is, this bill, which spends hundreds of millions of your dollars, will do nothing to make us safer. More gun control laws will not stop the next deranged madman. What will stop a killer is an armed law-abiding citizen. In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, we should be considering removing barriers that prevent honest, decent people from carrying their lawfully possessed firearms.

We don’t know where the next shooting will occur; that’s something the killer decides. So whether it is in a school, a church, a shopping mall or a government building, we should urge our elected officials to repeal so-called gun free zones and oppose more gun control.

Instead, we end up with a bill supported by Handgun Control and Sarah Brady, Chuck Schumer, Teddy Kennedy, Carolyn McCarthy, and the rest of the Who’s Who of the anti-gun movement, and all the while the NRA leadership maintains that this is a win for gun owners.

This is a Faustian bargain, which will repeatedly haunt gun owners in the years to come.

But you should realize why they had to do it this way. Your activism has resulted in an avalanche of grassroots opposition against this bill. Gun owners have raised their voices of opposition loud-and-clear, and many congressmen have been feeling the heat.

The fight is not over. They still have to run this through the Senate. Already, there is a small cadre of pro-gun senators who are ready to slow this bill down and do everything they can to kill it. To be frank, a bill that has the support of all the anti-gun groups and the NRA will be tough to beat, but we will continue to fight every step of the way.

Although we’ve suffered a setback, we want to thank all of you for the hard work you’ve done. Your efforts derailed the McCarthy bill for the past five years and we would have prevailed again were it not for the developments described above.

Be looking for an upcoming alert to the U.S. Senate. GOA will give you the particulars of the bill that passed the House, and we will provide you suggested language for a pre-written letter to your two senators.

Stay tuned. There is more to come.

Link for citation broken

Here is a more general link

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Law, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 10 Comments »

They just don’t get it, as usual…

June 14, 2009

“Some say Holocaust Memorial shooting signals a broader war.”

That’s the headline, and a more disingenuous article I may never have read before. It’s all about racism… It’s all about feeling displaced as power brokers, and it’s all about hating Israel and the Jewish people, further it’s all about taking guns away from people. That’s a summery of what the article says.

Of course logic tells us that simply cannot be true. There may be a combination of those factors that tend to set off a few unstable individuals. However, just like the DHS study that is noted in the story, and was reported on here, it lumps all sorts of people into the same profile.

Let’s go after the main points:

Racism; The article says that many whites are upset with things like affirmative action. Well, that’s racism, and or sexism period. Figure it out…

Illegal Immigration: This ties in with racism, and the so called fear of rising minority populations according to the article. Sorry folks, but it’s about obeying the rule of law and has nothing to do with race whatsoever.

Minority  Crime: Again, this ties in with the above issues. People, especially Blacks and Latinos, and a growing situation with Asians, suffer at the hands of criminals from minority groups at an alarming rate. So this is a “white” issue! Again, it’s not about race, it’s about crime and the rule of law, and that doesn’t matter one iota what color you skin is, or where your ancestors came from.

White Supremacy Groups, a.k.a  Nazi’s: If these groups are in fact growing it would be news to most conservative and libertarian types. As a group, we simply have no known dealings with people like that. The article lumps a lot of people of differing backgrounds with different morals and values together, and that in itself, is immoral. I suppose that Pam at Atlas Shrugged will be surprised that she hates Israel…

Multiculturalism: This failed ethical theory has been being shoved down peoples throats for quite some time now. It’s fine and dandy to be proud of ones heritage. Having said that, it’s not fine to shove that down other peoples throats. There is no room in America for hyphens, you are an American period. You may see yourself as I do as an American of Irish decent, and that’s fine. But to call yourself an “Irish American” disavows all that is America. For those that were not so lucky to be from Irish stock? Well, just insert the name of your own heritage in place of Irish. Further, Multiculturalism requires that none judge another person or peoples  background or morals. That folk’s is just plain wrong. I need not give any support to groups that still practice slavery, such as Islam for example. Nor, again using Islam as an example, need I support killing other people because they refuse to submit to my religion or political persuasion. Further, this failed theory finds that reparations for the actions of people that died centuries ago are appropriate. Nope, try applying a real ethical methodology to that, and it comes up pretty short. Let’s address it that way here.  Can this be understood by the common man? Answer; no, the common person cannot understand or agree with being held responsible for something that he had no part in doing. Therefore, this could never become universal law, and so fails the test of ethical reasoning.

Gun Control (Really weapon control.): The article treats this as an also ran, that people are worried about because of the current administrations position. Those people are, once again, concerned about law, as in the Constitution and more importantly, the Bill of Rights. The authors seem to be fearful that all gun owners are lunatics and are ready to overthrow the government. Which brings us too…

If the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are of such inconsequential value, then why even continue to have a United States of America? Answer, because all the people that the article points to as threats, other than the noted racist’s and insane types, are in fact Americans that love the United States of America, with all it’s warts, and believe that this kind of nation offers the best hope for freedom and liberty for all people now, and forever.

God Bless America, and those that love her!

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Posted in Economics, Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Immigration, Law, mysandry, News, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 2 Comments »

The Second Amendment and the States…

June 12, 2009

I was roundly blasted on several websites last year when the D.C. vs. Heller decision was rendered by the gutless cowards that make up the Supreme Court. All too many neophytes called it the greatest thing since smokeless powder for American gun owners. Guess what folks? The devil, as I always say, is in the details.

Thankfully, nearly all state Constitutions use wording that makes the U.S. Constitution look wimpy by comparison with regards to the populace owning and possessing weapons. The ability to defend oneself and others is an unalienable right, not an inalienable privilege handed to the serfs.

Hence now the Heller decision is being used to actually attempt to deny liberty and freedom to the masses by the forces that seek domination over them in complete denial of natural law. Read on… Oh, and don’t forget to read between the lines this time!

Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right—as opposed to a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well?

Although Heller never answered that question, Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion did provide a very potent hint. In footnote 23, Scalia observed that while the Court’s earlier ruling in U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876) stated that the Second Amendment did not apply against the states, “Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases.”

To appreciate Scalia’s meaning, consider that the Supreme Court has been protecting First Amendment rights from state and local abuse since 1925’s Gitlow v. New York. The Court has done so under the so-called incorporation doctrine, whereby most of the Bill of Rights and certain other fundamental rights have been incorporated against the states via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, which reads, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Cruikshank is therefore a dead letter when it comes to free speech. So why should it still matter for gun rights? As the footnote basically points out, Cruikshank was decided before incorporation had even been invented. So it’s the modern incorporation doctrine that matters now, not the long-dead reasoning behind Cruikshank.

This controversy lies at the center of last week’s unfortunate decision in National Rifle Association v. Chicago (formerly McDonald v. Chicago), where the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Second Amendment offers zero protection against the draconian gun control laws currently in place in Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois.

It’s a mistaken and also strangely misguided decision, as plaintiff’s attorney Alan Gura (who previously argued and won Heller) demonstrates in the appeal he quickly filed with the Supreme Court. As Gura notes, not only did the 7th Circuit decline “to perform the required incorporation analysis,” the court “erred in failing to heed Heller‘s cautionary statement that the pre-incorporation relics [including Cruikshank] lack ‘the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases.'”

Moreover, the 7th Circuit even suggested that federalism would best be served by letting the states disregard the Second Amendment entirely. “Federalism is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon,” Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote for the three-judge panel.

Yet as Gura rightfully responds in his petition, “To claim that of all rights, the Second Amendment must yield to local majoritarian impulses is especially wrong considering that the rampant violation of the right to keep and bear arms was understood to be among the chief evils vitiated by adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Indeed, the 14th Amendment was specifically written and ratified by the Radical Republicans after the Civil War to protect the recently freed slaves and their white allies from the depredations of the former Confederate states, including the infamous Black Codes, which curtailed property rights, liberty of contract, free speech, and the right to keep and bear arms.

The Second Amendment deserves the exact same respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights, nearly all of which have now been incorporated, something Gura is careful to explain. Which is precisely what the 7th Circuit should have said. Moreover, Gura persuasively argues that now is the right time for the Supreme Court to correct one of its most glaring historical errors by overturning the controversial Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), which essentially gutted the 14th Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, which reads, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” As numerous legal historians have now documented, the text, original meaning, and history of that clause all point in one direction: It was designed to nationalize the Bill of Rights and other substantive rights.

The 7th Circuit essentially breezed past this argument, though it’s perhaps worth noting that Judge Easterbrook did so while repeatedly referring to the “Privileges and Immunities Clause,” which is actually located in Article IV of the Constitution, when he quite clearly meant to write (and refer to) the 14th Amendment’s “Privileges or Immunities Clause.” It’s a small error, to be sure, though it’s still one that the federal circuit ought not to make.

So what does all this mean for the future of the Second Amendment and gun rights? Last January, the 2nd Circuit, including Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, reached the same erroneous conclusion about incorporation as the Seventh did last week. Yet in April, the 9th Circuit got it right, holding in Nordyke v. King that, “the right to keep and bear arms is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’… [and] is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty.” This split among the circuits means the Supreme Court will almost certainly take up the issue.

Given that Gura’s provocative and sharply reasoned appeal is now in the Court’s hands, and given that Chicago’s contested handgun ban so closely resembles the D.C. ban nullified last year in Heller, this case offers the perfect opportunity for the Court to fully restore the Second Amendment to its rightful place in our constitutional system.

Damon W. Root is an associate editor at Reason.

Bonus video: Reason.tv talked with Alan Gura last June about “The High Stakes of the DC Gun Ban Case” just before the Supreme Court released its decision in the Heller case. Click below to watch and go here for downloadable versions and related materials.

SOURCE

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Posted in Editorial, Opinion, Education, Gun Control, Law, Men's Issues, mysandry, News, Non Compos Mentis, Politics, Wordpress Political Blogs | 1 Comment »

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