Fairfax, VA -(AmmoLand.com)-
At a time when it’s more important than ever to maintain the right of
the American people to keep and bear arms for self-defense, law
professor David S. Cohen is calling for repeal of the Second Amendment.
“Americans’
rights are in mortal danger,” he says, unless Hillary Clinton is
elected president and stacks the Supreme Court with progressive judges.
In the repeatedly discredited rag, Rolling Stone, Cohen writes,
“sometimes we just have to acknowledge that the Founders and the
Constitution are wrong. This is one of those times. . . . The Second
Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to
liberty and a suicide pact.”
By “outdated,” Cohen means that the Framers of the Bill of Rights were unable to conceive of 19th
century semi-automatic firearm technology. “When the Second Amendment
was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the
AR-15 assault rifle (sic),” he said.
However, as the late, great
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the Supreme Court’s decision in District
of Columbia v. Heller, “Just as the First Amendment protects modern
forms of communications and the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms
of search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all
instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in
existence at the time of the founding.”
And in any case, there is
nothing outdated about the underlying principle of the Second Amendment:
to prohibit the government from interfering with the ability of people
to acquire, possess and develop proficiency with arms they might one day
need to defend themselves and their loved ones.
Cohen’s rant is
just one example of an astonishing amount of sheer nonsense that has
filled the Internet since the terrorist attack in Orlando. Anti-gun
politicians, and so-called opinion columnists and TV talking heads – who
pretend to be “experts” on every topic under the sun, but who in
reality know virtually nothing about even one topic – are confidently
calling the AR-15 an “automatic” weapon, a “military” weapon,” and a
“weapon of war,” and telling everyone that the most popular rifle in
America should be banned.
Of course, the First Amendment protects
the right of pundits to demonstrate that the size of their egos are only
matched by the depth of their ignorance on firearms and the Second
Amendment. And so it should be.
If history repeats itself, the
recent slew of half-baked, culture-war-based, ideologically-motivated,
attention-seeking statements against guns will only increase support for
the right to arms, and additional support may develop as people
increasingly realize that President Obama and Hillary Clinton, who are
urging gun bans, are the very politicians most responsible for the rise
of overseas terrorist groups who inspire and possibly direct evildoers
within our midst.
All the more reason for the American people to protect their right to protect themselves.
The Cook County Board has a proposed ordinance before it which will attempt to restrict the 2nd
Amendment rights of all law-abiding citizens in Cook County. The
ordinance calls for the “prohibitions on the sale of firearm to, and
purchase of firearm by, a person not covered by appropriate liability
insurance.”
This means Cook County residents would not be able to
purchase and own a firearm without first acquiring firearm liability
insurance.
The sponsor and others would like to compare firearm
liability insurance to having car insurance, which is like comparing
apples to oranges. A right granted by the 2nd
Amendment allows United States citizens to possess and own a firearm.
Driving a motor vehicle is a privilege granted by state law, not a right
covered under the United States Constitution.
The intention of the ordinance’s sponsor is to have a major
impact on gun violence. An admirable thought, however you must ask how
will this ordinance have any impact on gun-wielding criminals? The
truthful answer is it won’t. It’s a false notion to think that violent
criminals who are already breaking the law will stop and contemplate the
purchase of firearm liability insurance before committing their next
crime. Moreover, nearly all insurance policy coverage excludes criminal
acts from their coverage obligation.
If this ordinance were passed, litigation would certainly
follow in opposition to its constitutionality, which would mean a long
and costly legal defense for Cook County taxpayers. There is a reason
why this type of legislation has failed nearly everywhere it has been
introduced across the country.
This ordinance would not address violent criminal behavior,
but would instead restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding
citizens. I believe this is an unconstitutional overreach by government
which I strongly oppose.
We need to focus our efforts on preventative measures that
are truly substantive in nature and that will deter individuals away
from crime. We can do so by beginning to promote strong family
structure, by supporting the concept of community members turning in
known criminals and through increasing educational and employment
opportunities. Preventing criminal behavior must be the driving force to
addressing violent crime, rather than ineffective legislation placed
upon the citizen taxpayer without regard to consequence.
Sean M. Morrison Cook County Commissioner 17th District
Today the Cato Institute published my monograph “The Costs and Consequences of Gun Control.”
The policy analysis examines several gun control proposals which have
been promoted by the Obama administration and the gun control lobby:
bans on so-called assault weapons; bans on standard magazines;
confiscation; and the prohibition of all private sales, loans and
returns, except when processed by a gun store. After explaining why each
of these proposals is likely to do little good and much harm, the paper
discusses realistic alternatives which really can save lives. The most
important of these is providing a much broader safety net for people
seeking help for severe mental illness. In addition, respecting the
right to bear arms has been demonstrated to be successful in thwarting
would-be mass murderers.
Prohibiting certain guns or magazines will be futile without confiscation of such arms currently owned by citizens; so said a 2013 memo by Greg Ridgeway,
acting director of the National Institute of Justice (the research arm
of the Justice Department). Likewise, the NIJ memo explained that
“universal” background checks are useless without comprehensive
registration of all guns and all gun owners. Yet Americans have
historically resisted gun registration, precisely because of concerns
about confiscation. These concerns are not unfounded; registration lists
have been used to enforce confiscation in New York City, in Australia
and in Great Britain. In Australia, the confiscation was euphemistically
called a “buy back,” although it was in fact involuntary confiscation,
with only partial compensation paid for the confiscated items.
The Metropolitan Police have launched a two week gun surrender,
urging members of the public to hand in lawfully owned ” imitation
weapons, BB guns and air weapons”.
There are no restrictions on owning imitation firearms or BB guns,
though you must be 18 to buy them. Airguns are subject to some of the
controls on firearms, mainly on having a clean criminal record.
Coming on the heels of the EU gun ban proposals, the recent attack on
Paris and the seemingly thwarted attack on Brussels, demanding that
innocent people hand over lawfully owned toys is a pathetic response.
The Met insists that people handing over firearms (or, indeed,
children’s plastic toys, which if coloured black or grey now fall under
the classification ‘realistic imitation firearm’) “may not face
prosecution for illegal possession and can remain anonymous”, though
immediately continues its statement by saying “some weapons [will be]
forensically checked for evidence”.
Actual firearms can also be handed in to local police stations during the surrender.
The term ‘surrender’ is used in order to allow police to mount
prosecutions against people who hand in firearms or toys. Previously
such initiatives were labelled ‘amnesties’, which UK Shooting News
understands implied immunity from prosecution.
Detective Superintendent Stephen Clayman of the Trident and Area
Crime Command said, in a canned press release: “We are asking Londoners
to hand in firearms and imitation weapons to avoid them falling into the
wrong hands. In an inappropriate setting, imitation weapons will cause
fear and panic, and could lead to a police response involving the
deployment of armed police officers, with potentially tragic results.”
UKSN’s standard advice if you have an unwanted firearm or come into
possession of one, for example through an elderly relative’s death, is
to contact your local gun shop immediately. Registered Firearms Dealers
will in most cases be quite happy to help you safely and lawfully
dispose of firearms without exposing you to the risk of overzealous
police employees trying to make you into their next arrest and
conviction statistic.
In 2009 Surrey
Police arrested a man who found a shotgun in his garden and took it to
his local police station for unlawful possession of a firearm. He
was later convicted of the offence, which carries up to 5 years in
prison – but escaped with a suspended sentence. Unlawful possession is a
strict liability offence, meaning your intentions count for nothing in
court.
Democratic elected officials in Northern Virginia
worked together to engineer a campaign against a Fairfax County
firearms store in a bid to politicize gun violence and drum up support
for a Democrat in an election Tuesday, an exchange of emails shows.
JB Gates, owner of Nova Firearms,
opened a shop in McLean after protesters thwarted his expansion efforts
in Arlington County by pressuring his landlord into breaking his lease.
Delegate Kathleen Murphy, McLean Democrat, wrote an email to state Sen.
Barbara Favola, Arlington Democrat, seeking help in shutting down the
gun store. Ms. Favola was instrumental in organizing opposition to Mr.
Gates’ shop in Arlington.
“Basically, we convinced the land owner that his business tenants
would lose business,” Ms. Favola told Ms. Murphy in a reply. “In other
words, moving a gun shop to a small cluster of shops in the middle of a
neighborhood was bad for business.
“The argument has to be about
supporting small businesses,” Ms. Favola wrote in her email. “The ‘we’
versus ‘they’ argument is winnable with the NRA.”
Ms. Murphy forwarded that email Sept. 25 to other Democrats in her district, including Fairfax County Supervisor John Foust, who is up for re-election Tuesday, saying, “Lets do it.”
Bearing Drift, a gun rights blog, obtained the officials’ emails via a
Freedom of Information Act request and made them available to The
Washington Times.
Ms. Murphy and Ms. Favola did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the emails. Mr. Foust declined to comment on the messages.
On Sept. 26, when Mr. Gates held the grand opening of his McLean gun shop, protesters picketed outside. That
same day, an online petition was created to thank the protesters and
demand a boycott of the McLean Service Center, Mr. Gates’ new landlord.
Online
forums on the Fairfax Underground public message board posted the
landlord’s personal cellphone and home address and encouraged protesters
to demand he break his lease with Mr. Gates.
“We’re not leaving,
and our new landlords are backing us 100 percent,” Mr. Gates told The
Times. “Our customers who live in the area have asked us not to back
down and stay, and a lot of our customers are from McLean.
“They
protested us the day we opened, had about 115 people there. But, to be
honest, that helped us more than it hurt us,” he said. “[The protesters]
put us on the map. I have people statewide, in Maryland, Pennsylvania,
D.C., all the way down to Florida, saying they saw us on the news and
want to support us. Business is good.”
Still, Mr. Gates is
perturbed by the politicizing of the issue. His shop is less than two
blocks from his previous location but is closer to a school, which
Democrats have cited in efforts to pique voter turnout Tuesday. Mr. Foust issued campaign handbills saying his Republican opponent, Jennifer Chronis, is “wrong on guns” and defends Mr. Gates’ shop.
“There
have been 47 school shootings this year alone,” the Foust handbill
reads. “Don’t let Jennifer Chronis become Supervisor. Because it’s not
right to sell guns next to a school.”
However, Virginia county
supervisors have no jurisdiction over gun stores that are established in
accordance with national and state laws. Mr. Foust
acknowledged as much to his Democratic comrades, noting in an email
that “State law pretty much prohibits the county from regulating guns.”
He attached a verbatim copy of the law.
“They’re turning my store,
my livelihood, into a political debate,” Mr. Gates said. “You have this
guy running for supervisor, saying without a doubt he’s going to shut
us down and equating our gun shop with the reason there’s gun violence.
For one thing, he can’t shut us down because we operate within Virginia
state and federal laws.
“It’s just insensitive and unwise. He is using it for political gain,” Mr. Gates said. Mr. Foust sees things differently.
“Chronis
remained silent while I and other McLean area elected officials were
publicly condemning the gun store owner’s decision to locate next to an
elementary school,” Mr. Foust said in an email to The Times. “It appears that the pro-gun shop people were and are supporting her.”
He
cited a Nova Firearms Facebook post Oct. 6 — long after the store’s
grand opening and subsequent protest — that displayed Ms. Chronis’
campaign banner and said, “Make the Second Amendment an Issue in the
Local Election. By now you’ve learned about the efforts of NOVA Firearms, and the threats they’ve received from their local county Supervisor.” Mr. Foust emailed The Times a screen shot of the post, which has since been taken down.
Mr. Gates blamed Mr. Foust
for publicly agitating the issue of his store’s closure and helping to
organize the protest, but he said Ms. Chronis has remained largely
silent on the issue.
Ms. Chronis did make a statement at the McLean Citizens Association debate in October
“I know John [Foust]
has already addressed that there are very few things really that can be
done at the county level, other than addressing potentially some zoning
changes,” she said at the forum, according to a transcript posted on
her campaign website. “So here’s where I disagree with the way that my
opponent has handled the situation. I believe it is the role of elected
officials to do something about solving the problem, to de-escalate the
situation and work with both parties to come to resolution.
“It is
not the role of our elected leaders to publicly insult law-abiding
business owners, and in my opinion, to fan the flames of an issue and
only make worse the fears of the parents for political gain,” Ms.
Chronis said.
Mr. Gates said Mr. Foust has yet to sit down with him to discuss the issue.
-- Seek to blame all gun owners for actions of a lone Dirt Bag
“The President wants to blame an
inanimate object — the gun,” [said] Erich Pratt, spokesman for the Gun
Owners of America. “But that just deflects blame away from the real
culprit: gun-control policies that leave people defenseless in the face
of evil perpetrators who are never effectively prevented from acquiring
weapons.” -- Newsmax, June 20, 2015
They’re coming for you.
Anti-gun Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey just announced they want to bring back their toxic legislation stripping Americans of their gun rights without due process of law.
And the President is ready to sign this gun ban into law.
You may recall our battle against the Manchin-Toomey language in
2013. Their legislation sought to BAN private sales of firearms, forcing
all gun buyers to run to a dealer and submit to a background check
before purchasing a firearm from their neighbor.
Thankfully, Senators Toomey and Manchin failed because Gun Owners of America and its members got in their way. According to the New York Times, and other liberal media outlets, GOA was able to put enough heat on the Senate to defeat this pernicious legislation.
The new Toomey-Manchin proposal will be an infringement of Second
Amendment rights, and it will do nothing to stop real criminals from
getting guns.
Realize that this background check expansion is just a ploy to erect
more obstacles to owning guns. The more that people have to seek
permission to buy a gun, the easier it becomes for gun control advocates
to find reasons to deny them.
We’ve already seen this in the way veterans have been targeted and
prevented from owning guns because they suffer from PTSD -- symptoms
related to their service for our country.
Ironically, the recent South Carolina shooting demonstrates the
FAILURE of gun control. The Charleston gunman bought his gun from a
dealer and passed a background check.
The result: Nine people died at the church ... from gunfire ... in a gun-free zone.
Clearly, more gun-free zones and more background checks are NOT the answer.
But making it easier for law-abiding citizens to carry concealed WILL
make a difference. That will save lives. And that’s why your Senators
should cosponsor S. 498, introduced by Senator John Cornyn (R-TX).
Please note: While The Washington Post is reporting that Senators
Manchin and Toomey want to resurrect a new version of their 2013
legislation, they have not introduced it yet. But Senator Manchin says
he won’t bring the bill up “until he is sure he has rounded up the
necessary votes.”
So that’s where you come in! ACTION: Use the provided pre-written letter to urge your Senators to OPPOSE the new Manchin-Toomey gun grab.
First, Lott takes the media to task for misrepresenting the underlying
scope of the report, and for FBI's failure to adequately explain the
content to its readers. Rather than track mass shootings or murders, the
report in fact attempts to track "active shooter incidents." This is
significant because it encompasses events where no one was shot or
killed.
Despite this, media outlets ran sensational headlines, like the New York Times', "F.B.I. Confirms a Sharp Rise in Mass Shootings Since 2000."
Lott contends that FBI exacerbated this misperception, noting, "The
report discusses mass public shootings, but it never makes it clear to
the readers that these types of fatalities and attacks are actually not
increasing over time."
The media's distortion of
findings to fit their own anti-gun agenda is, unfortunately, to be
expected. When done under the auspices of the FBI, such behavior is
unacceptable. Whether this report is simply shoddy work, or veiled
advocacy, is not altogether clear; however, Lott concludes, "The FBI
report appears to be politically driven."
Next, Lott criticizes the authors for selecting their data
to show a notable increase in "active shooter incidents." Lott shows
that the inclusion of non-mass shooting incidents where zero or one
person was killed have the effect of skewing the data to show a surge.
Further, Lott explains that the researchers failed to include at least
20 shooting incidents, and that the omitted events were
disproportionately from the earlier years of the period studied.
Lott also takes issue with the limited time period studied
by the researchers. When data on mass shootings from 1977 through 2014
are used, and the incidents studied are limited to those where at least
two or more people were murdered, the supposed annual increase in
shootings is "no longer statistically significant."
A pair of researchers who worked on the FBI report issued a
defense of their work in the May edition of ACJS Today. The researchers
attempted to shift blame for the misunderstanding to the media, noting,
"We wonder if some members of the media intentionally misreported
findings in an attempt to generate a bigger headline or advance their
own agendas." As to why their report was missing so many relevant
incidents, they admit, "We acknowledge in the FBI report that our data
are imperfect."
The media's distortion of findings to fit their own
anti-gun agenda is, unfortunately, to be expected. When done under the
auspices of the FBI, such behavior is unacceptable. Whether this report
is simply shoddy work, or veiled advocacy, is not altogether clear;
however, Lott concludes, "The FBI report appears to be politically
driven."
A watchdog group today asked the Internal Revenue Service to
investigate the National Rifle Association for failing to disclose $33.5
million in political expenditures on its tax returns over a six-year
period.
In a letter to the IRS and a separate one to the Federal Election
Commission, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
cited a recent story in Yahoo News as evidence of what it believes are
multiple violations of campaign finance and tax laws by the country’s
premier gun-rights group.
A spokeswoman for the NRA called the charges “baseless and nothing more
than a PR stunt” coming from an organization with its own political
agenda. The spokeswoman, Jennifer Baker, acknowledged that the NRA had
incorrectly filled out its tax forms in previous years when it wrongly
checked a box stating that it had not engaged in any “direct or indirect
political activities.”
But she said this was a “clerical error” made by the NRA’s accounting
firm, adding that the mistake had no practical consequence and had since
been corrected. She also noted that the NRA had separately reported to
the FEC that it spent millions of dollars in “independent expenditure”
political ads.
“No one can contend that the NRA was trying to hide that we are engaged
in political activity,” she said. “The assertion that this represents
fraud on the NRA’s part is absurd.”
But Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of CREW, said that the
NRA’s explanation for the mistakes on its tax forms “just does not ring
true.”
“This is not a mom-and-pop shop,” Bookbinder said in an interview.
“This is a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar organization with many
layers of review. It’s hard to believe they simply missed this year
after year.”
The CREW complaint was prompted by an April 21, 2015, Yahoo News story
by independent journalist Alan Berlow disclosing that $1 contributions
he made to the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action,
through the organization’s website were misrouted to its political
action committee, known as the Political Victory Fund, or PVF.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a
challenge by gun rights activists to a San Francisco regulation that
requires gun owners to keep their weapons locked up or disabled when
stored at home.
By declining to hear an appeal filed
by gun owners and the National Rifle Association, the court left intact
a March 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals that upheld the measure.
The regulation, issued in 2007, states that anyone who
keeps a handgun at home must either store it in a locked container or
disable it with a trigger lock.
The challengers said
the regulation violates the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment, which
guarantees the right to bear arms.
Two of the
nine-justice court's conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin
Scalia, said they would have taken the case.
Thomas
wrote that the Supreme Court has outlined to lower courts how to
approach Second Amendment cases but the courts that oversaw the San
Francisco case "have failed to protect it."
In 2012,
the gun owners unsuccessfully sought an injunction that would have
prevented the regulation from being enforced.
The appeals court also had upheld a regulation banning
hollow-point ammunition that is designed to expand or fragment on
impact, but that was not at issue in this appeal.
The Supreme Court has not taken up a major gun case since 2010. In the
2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, the court held that the Second
Amendment guaranteed an individual right to bear arms. Two years later
in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court held that the earlier
ruling applied to the states.
As part of the 2008 ruling, the court struck down the District of Columbia’s trigger-lock requirement.
The case on which the court acted on Monday is Jackson v. San Francisco, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-704.
“Tommy Gnosis is someone named Jennifer Mascia,” Herschel Smith at The Captain’s Journal posted in March. He was describing someone who, under cover of anonymity, “visits web sites -- particularly gun rights web sites -- and spreads discontent and dejection.”
That’s consistent with the “elaborate subterfuge” technique for “infiltrating and disrupting alternative media online” used by those with an agenda. Per Canadian research, such “Internet trolls aren't just mean -- they’re sadists and psychopaths.”
That would also seem consistent with the control-all megalomaniac who
hired her, in a company-he-keeps kind of way. Mascia is one of two paid
flacks “attached prominently to the Everytown news project,” an experiment in virtual Astroturf that billionaire Michael Bloomberg will be rolling out this summer.
The guy wants to control everything else, so why not the narrative?
What drives Mascia is anybody’s guess, but chances are her father having been an underworld killer with multiple hits under his belt had an influence. That probably comes as a surprise to many gun rights advocates, unaware that Al Jazeera told its readers “America's best hope for tracking gun deaths is a mob enforcer's daughter,” and Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action gushed on social media that her story was “Amazing.”
That Mascia’s primary female role model -- a moral weakling of a
mother who knew about, but nonetheless supported and covered up for the
monster she was married to and did nothing to stop him -- no doubt also
had an influence. It also may explain an affinity for foolish and
contemptible lackeys that provide cover for those who would take all
choices away.
At this point, though, good people would still feel a degree of
sympathy. After all, Mascia had no control over who her parents were or
what they did. Their defects and failings were not her fault.
The problem is, she’s chosen to become part of an effort to make the
rest of us defenseless against sociopath predators like her father, and
enablers who help them kill, like her mother. She knows full well no
“law” proposed by her billionaire patron would have any effect on
stopping diseased animals like John Mascia from working his sick will on
more victims.
The creepiest thing is the way Mascia rationalizes the homicidal punk using “shades of gray,”
allowing her to view him as two unrelated personalities, “my dad and
... this separate John,” and to write a book as “my way of honoring my
parents [and] still loving them.”
There is no gray in the premeditated taking of human life for gain,
nor any claim to honor. It is blackest evil. It must be stopped, and
anyone interfering with your ability to do that is an ally of that evil.
Grieving families of victims the Mascia thug murdered could have loved
their fathers, sons or brothers as well.
So while empathy for a daughter dealing with traumatic stress is
understandable, when coping defects are taken out on the rest of us,
we’re under no obligation to tolerate resulting toxic and irrational
damage. In the case of Meadow Soprano
here, her “work” for Bloomberg would best be met with an invitation to
take her damn Daddy Issues out on something else, and leave our rights
alone.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon bill expanding background checks to
encompass nearly all gun sales in the state made it through the
Legislature on Monday, overcoming obstacles that stymied two previous
attempts to pass similar laws.
The measure now heads to
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, who has indicated support. Her signature
would make Oregon the eighth state to require screening before firearms
could be transferred between private, unrelated owners. No other states
have passed such legislation this year, advocates said.
Oregon’s effort is the latest
after the long-running debate over gun rights intensified following the
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Last year, Washington
state passed a ballot initiative requiring background checks on all gun
sales and transfers, and Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to
Prevent Gun Violence, said the group has the signatures for a similar
ballot initiative in Nevada.
Supporters have tried twice
before to expand background checks in Oregon, saying it closes a
loophole that allows people to purchase firearms online without a
review. Neither attempt made it past a Senate vote, but Democrats
managed to increase their majorities in both chambers after last year’s
election, partially because key candidates in the Senate were backed by
billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group, Everytown for Gun
Safety.
The bill that passed the state
House on a 32-28 vote Monday requires background checks on most private
sales and transfers, except those between close family members such as
spouses or siblings. There are some exceptions, such as sharing a gun
while hunting or handing over a firearm for use at a shooting range.
Three Democrats joined all 25 Republicans in opposition.
Once the measure takes effect,
private sales would need to happen in front of a licensed gun dealer who
would run the check through Oregon State Police.
There is an exception for gun
sellers and buyers who live more than 40 miles from each other. In that
case, the seller could send the firearm to a dealer near the buyer, who
would then run the check and hand over the gun to the buyer if they’re
cleared.
The bill has borne intense
opposition from gun rights supporters, and every legislative Republican
has voted against it. Many cited law enforcement officials in their
districts who said they wouldn’t enforce the law or that it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.
Senate Bill 941, worse than
doing nothing, gives false hope, because it represents to people that
felons are not going to get guns. And colleagues, I think we all know
that’s not true. They are going to get them one way or another,” House
Republican Leader Mike McLane said.
Others argued the bill would
trample Second Amendment rights or would make criminals of gun owners
who choose not to get a background check every time they hand over a gun
to a friend or neighbor.
The seller of a gun would face a
misdemeanor for a first offense, punishable by up to a year in jail and
a $6,250 fine. A second offense would be a felony, with a potential
sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Under current law, anyone
purchasing a gun from a licensed dealer has to pass a background check
to ensure the buyer isn’t prohibited from owning a gun because of
convictions for felonies or violent behavior. Oregon goes further than
federal law by also requiring background checks at gun shows under an
initiative voters approved in 2000.
“This bill is not about stopping
all gun violence in Oregon, and it’s not about taking guns of the hands
of law-abiding citizens,” said Rep. Jennifer Williamson, a Portland
Democrat. “It’s about keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,
those suffering from mental health crises, and convicted felons.”
Bloomberg and his minions just keep checking off states on their list one by one-Nevada’s next. I’ve posted many times about this-as
have a lot of others,apparently no one’s listening,because every state
on Bloomberg’s list is going down one after the other-and he’s going to
keep checking off states on his list because no one’s paying attention. Maybe when he buys enough votes in Nevada-people will wake up.
Anti-gun Oregon Democrat State Senator Chuck Riley says the Supreme Court was “right for the time” for upholding the enslavement of blacks as Constitutional. His comments came after questioning by gun rights
advocates who were attempting to understand his rational for supporting
citizen disarmament edicts, and was recorded by videographer “LaughingAtLiberals.”
The Library of Congress
“But that wasn't the end of it,” blogger Gateway Pundit noted. He embedded a second video,
where Sen. Riley and his staffers were unable to explain how the
“universal background check” edict would work at stopping violent
criminals, or do anything besides provide a registration list of gun
owners.
As for Riley's slavery
concession, we've seen such precedent-driven disconnects with freedom
before, even with checks and balances in place. Without them, things get
even worse. An activist court empowered to make up law on its own has
the potential to impose enslavement via a complicit executive branch. A
tyranny-minded legislature can write edicts that do the same, providing
they can get them enforced without judicial restraint. An unchecked
executive can use all sorts of justifications to impose despotism. And
all three branches working in concert have pretty much brought us to the
point where “shall not be infringed” has been rendered meaningless
beyond what those in power will politically tolerate -- for now.
That’s why the growing new paradigm
represented by the “I will not comply” movement represents such a
threat to those who would rule. Because ultimately, when the system
results in tyranny, an armed people retain the power to nullify bad enforcement just as informed jurors have the power to nullify bad edicts.
Of course the outcome of that is not assured (what is?), but to those
who have made the choice between defiance and surrender, it beats the
alternative.
That leads to some fair questions for the individual leaders of
self-designated “gun rights groups” that call for enforcement of
existing Intolerable Acts (gun laws), and who actually have publicly
joined with anti-gunners in disparaging civil disobedience activists as “extremists”: If, years from now, with a shifted Supreme Court majority enabled by an unchallengeable electorate (something foreseen by another Oregon Democrat),
a new ruling reverses Heller and says it’s Constitutional for the
government to start rounding up registered guns and jailing anyone who
has not obeyed, will you urge defiance and resistance, or will you ask
your members to plead with their oppressors (and send a donation)? If
the former, why wait until things become so desperate? And if the
latter, why shouldn't we know now if you ever envision a line in the
sand?
During a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Sen.
Joe Manchin (D-WV) defended his post-Sandy Hook gun control push as
something that “made sense” in 2013 and something that “makes sense
now.”
Host Joe Scarborough approached the subject
by talking about how he and Manchin came from different backgrounds —
one a Republican and the other a Democrat — yet they found common ground
in “[talking] about the need for background checks” and about how they
“disagreed with the NRA” post-Sandy Hook.
Scarborough said to Manchin: “You caught a lot of flack in your
district and in your state for [pushing expanded background checks]. Are
you going to campaign supporting background checks in [the future]?”
Manchin replied:
It made sense. For me to dodge, it would have been easy
to just keep quiet on that coming from a gun cultural state and not
saying a word and getting the wrath of anybody. But the bottom line is,
it made sense. Treat me, as a gun person that I am, treat me as a
law-abiding citizen. Don’t look at me that I’ve committed a crime just
because I own a gun and like to go shooting and hunting. On the other
hand, I’m going to make good gun sense decisions. I’m not going to sell
to strangers. And if I go to a gun show or on the internet, I want to
know who that person is and vice versa. That still makes sense. It made
sense [in 2013], it makes sense now.
There’s only one problem: Manchin’s gun control push did not make sense in 2013 nor does not make sense now.
It did not make sense in 2013 because background checks weren’t even
part of the equation in Adam Lanza’s heinous attack on Sandy Hook
Elementary — Lanza stole his guns.
That’s why Manchin admitted
the very gun control legislation he was pushing in response to the
Sandy Hook attack would not have stopped Lanza from carrying out his
slaughter in the first place. Manchin made this admission a mere three
days before his bill was officially rejected by his Senate colleagues.
Admitting that legislation it passed Monday will not stop violent crime, Cleveland politicians instead came up with excuses for imposing it on citizens anyway, Northeast Ohio Media Group reported.
All but one Council member, Zack Reed, voted in favor of the new
edicts, which in many areas duplicate state law, but supposedly will
allow the city to keep resulting fines.
Whether any such coveted revenues will outweigh further legal costs
the city will face is a question taxpayers should be asking their
representatives who insisted on reopening an issue presumably already
settled in the courts. Ohio Revised Code
claims preemption by the state in the field of non-federal firearms
regulation, and the matter was supposedly already settled when the City
of Cleveland lost against the state in 2010, with the Supreme Court of Ohio “uphold[ing] as Constitutional state law displacing local gun-control ordinances.”
In addition to the duplicate laws and creation of a “gun offender
registry,” the Cleveland diktats create several new burdens on
law-abiding gun owners, including presuming to dictate reporting
requirements for private sales (creating a de facto registry) and to
impose storage mandates. Ohio Code declares “a person, without further
license, permission, restriction, delay, or process, may own, possess,
purchase, sell, transfer, transport, store, or keep any firearm, part of
a firearm, its components, and its ammunition,” meaning the city has
nothing lawful to say about imposing constraints. The new decree also
imposes a stolen gun reporting requirement that would appear to exempt
criminals, as requiring them to attest they were in violation of the law
prohibiting them from possessing a gun in the first place would also require self-incrimination in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Rather than directly addressing Councilman Reed’s challenge to show
how the new edicts would have prevented any of the 25 homicides the city
has experienced so far this year, supporters of the legislation offered
unsubstantiated platitudes. Safety Director Michael McGrath fell back
on the “possibility of saving a life” talking point used to restrict the
rights of everyone else while saving nothing and no one. Councilman
Michael Polensek even admitted “the bad guys are not turning in their
guns. The bad guys are not registering. The kids who want to shoot
indiscriminately on the street won't stop," and Council President Kevin
Kelley “said that the legislation was not designed to stop gun violence”
and instead offered bromides about “council's values and ... good
public policy intended to encourage responsible gun ownership.”
In other words, knowing full well what they are imposing will
accomplish no reduction in violent crime, and in fact, violate Ohio law,
they are nonetheless using the coercive force of the city to mandate
citizen compliance -- or else. But the desperate to appear effective
politicians behind the scam will all get their names in the press and
claim bragging rights that they are both “doing something” and showing
leadership.
In any legitimate field of endeavor, that would be considered not just malpractice, but outright shameless fraud.
UPDATE: From an email alert received moments after publishing this article:
Telling supporters “We are in a race” and asking them to “please act now,” Oregon Firearms Federationwarned members Thursday
that a bill requiring police background checks on private firearms
transfers “is going to be fast-tracked through the Senate.” In response
to that information, the grassroots group is imploring Beaver State gun
owners to contact their representatives to urge them to oppose the bill.
The Bill in question is Senate Bill 941,
being represented by proponents as merely a “background check” measure.
That OFF responds by calling it a registration bill is hardly
hyperbole. No less an authority than the U.S. Department of Justice, in a
2013 National Institute of Justice summary report on firearms violence prevention strategies, noted “Universal background checks ... Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration...”
“The bill has a long list of co-sponsors including Val Hoyle who at
one time seemed to be rational on this issue,” OFF continued. Concern
there is especially relevant to gun owners, as many of them relied on her endorsement by the National Rifle Association, casting their votes and supporting her campaign accordingly under the assumption that she would support the Second Amendment.
To facilitate contacting representatives, OFF’s alert includes links
to a prepared message form that can be used or adapted to send a message
to any or all of them. The group also includes a link to the official
state legislature website for detached gun owners who need to find out
who their representatives are.
A video produced by States United Against Gun Violence purports to show a fake gun shop in New York City
appealing to first-time buyers, who are then recorded on a hidden
camera as a man behind the counter turns them against making a purchase
by telling them how the firearm he hands them was used to take human
life. As per standard practice, a well-financed Astroturf operation
relying on slick professional illusion-casters is counted on to make up
for lack of grassroots support.
States United to Prevent Gun Violence-You Tube video screen shot
States United/Ceasefire USA is one of the groups behind the recent #ImUnloadng campaign, in which prohibited person Snoop Dogg
tells all his fans that have 401Ks to not invest in gun companies
because of all his “friends, family members and associates” who
evidently make a regular practice out of shooting each other to death.
The first flag is raised when viewers are told the entire video setup
is a lie. That won’t surprise anyone familiar with “progressive”
anti-gunner practices, but the thing is, once someone admits they’re
lying, how are we to trust anything they say?
Is it reasonable to believe that not one person recorded challenged
the fraud behind the counter, told him off and walked out? Why is it the
“first time customers” were all so receptive to the technique of being
lied to that they swore off something they represented themselves as
wanting for reasons as valid as protection and belief in the Second
Amendment? If the monopoly of violence proponents are that persuasive,
if all they need do is tell someone the gun they’re buying was used in a
murder, why is it they’re not the ones with a five-million member
advocacy organization? And it’s hard enough to believe even one person
would be dumb enough to swallow the claim that a gun store carries and
sells real “crime guns,” let alone to accept that every single one of
the marks fell for it.
In the last few months, the
citizens of Washington State have come under fire from both state and
federal officials. They have been subject to everything from
surveillance to being viewed through the scope of a sniper’s
rifle—manned by a fellow citizen. The people have appealed to the
governor to no avail. According to Governor Inslee’s office, he has no
jurisdiction over the federal authorities who seek to subvert liberty
and control the populace. He is incorrect, but the People accept that
he is complicit in the criminal enslavement of the citizens.
The governor was served a list of grievances by We the People on 7
February 2015. Each of those grievances constitutes a crime against the
People, and against the founding documents of the state and our
nation. He ignored those grievances and did nothing. On 25 February
2015 a citizen of Washington State was illegally arrested, detained, and
interrogated as a domestic terrorist by federal officials who ignored
his rights secured by the rule of law. The governor refused to stand
and serve the citizens of his state as he swore to do, instead
submitting himself and the people of this state as subjects to an
overreaching federal government. On 9 March 2015, he was again called
to task and the People demanded that he uphold his oath to protect and
maintain the rights of the People as secured by the Constitution.
Again, the governor chose to ignore this letter and in doing so, ignored
the will of the People, and their unalienable rights.
It is for this reason that the people of Washington State now appeal
to the sheriffs, as the senior law enforcement official in each county.
When the system fails, it becomes their utmost duty to stand and uphold
the law. It is obvious that the system of Constitutional law has
failed; at every turn we see the blatant and gross violation of the most
basic of the People’s rights. The government is bound by the
Constitution to be accountable to the People; they derive their powers
from the consent of the governed. We, the people of Washington State,
reiterate our withdrawal of this consent in light of the government’s
refusal to honor the limits to their power and the unlimited rights of
the People.
Washington State law lays out the general duties of the county sheriff:
The sheriff is the chief executive officer and
conservator of the peace of the county. In the execution of his office,
he and his deputies:
(1) Shall arrest and commit to prison all
persons who break the peace, or attempt to break it, and all persons
guilty of public offenses;
Federal officials broke the peace by illegally and publicly arresting and detaining a citizen who had not committed a crime.
(2) Shall defend the county against those who, by riot or otherwise, endanger the public peace or safety;
Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson deprived the
citizens of their ability to defend themselves by imposing her personal
will through an illegal rule that violated their unalienable right. In
doing so, she endangered the public and safety of the people.
(3) Shall execute the process and orders of the
courts of justice or judicial officers, when delivered for that purpose,
according to law;
The sheriffs are duty-bound to stand and deliver
the judge, the Homeland Security agent, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation agent, and the United States Marshal involved in this
illegal arrest to justice.
(4) Shall execute all warrants delivered for
that purpose by other public officers, according to the provisions of
particular statutes;
Since the Judiciary of the State of Washington
is complicit in these crimes and refuses to prosecute or hold
accountable the persons responsible, We the People demand that the
sheriffs put forth warrants for their arrest.
(5) Shall attend the sessions of the courts of record held within the county, and obey their lawful orders or directions;
Because the orders and directions of the courts
are unlawful and criminal in nature, it is the duty of the sheriffs to
act on behalf of the Constitution and the citizens of Washington State.
(6) Shall keep and
preserve the peace in their respective counties, and quiet and suppress
all affrays, riots, unlawful assemblies and insurrections, for which
purpose, and for the service of process in civil or criminal cases, and
in apprehending or securing any person for felony or breach of the
peace, they may call to their aid such persons, or power of their county
as they may deem necessary.
United States Code 18 § 242 speaks very plainly
about the crime of depriving the people of their rights. The marshal,
agents, and the judge used the color of law to deprive the People; this
is punishable by a year in prison. They also, together with the snipers
on the rooftops in Spokane on 6 March, used deadly force to attempt to
impose their will on the People and deprive them of their rights; this
is punishable by ten years in prison. By illegally arresting and
detaining citizens they have engaged in kidnapping; this is a crime
punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
It is the duty of the sheriffs to apprehend and
secure these people for the felony crime of depriving the People of
their rights under the Constitution. As the state law makes clear, the
sheriff can call upon the people and the power of their respective
counties for assistance in performing their duties. If called upon, We
the People will support them…in any way necessary.
We the People will no longer allow our
government to treat us as subjects. We are free men, we will act as
such, and we will be treated as such. We will hold accountable those
criminals and tyrants in our government who seek to subjugate and
control us. We demand that you, the sheriffs of Washington State, stand
and perform your duties in accordance with the state law, the state
constitution, and the Constitution of the United States of America. If
you do not, it will show that you, too, are complicit in the destruction
of liberty, and therefore are its enemy.
We remain non-violent, we remain principled and peaceful, but make no mistake:
These abuses of our liberties will end now.
We will not comply.
Signed,
Liberty for All:
Kit Lange
Anthony Bosworth
Maria Bosworth
and the Patriots of Washington
Never doubt the linguistic and logical limberness of professionally coached anti-gun activists.
People in gun control circles are circling their wagons in reaction
to a recent Pew Research report definitively showing that more Americans
support the Second Amendment than support gun control. Pew’s
multi-decade survey on gun control again asked one basic question (among
others), namely: “What do you think is more important – to protect the
right of Americans to own guns, OR to control gun ownership?” Since any
form of gun ownership control is an infringement of the right of Americans to own guns,
it is a succinct and reasonably worded question. In the most recent
instance of this survey, six percent more Americans think that
protecting gun owner rights is more important than enacting gun control.
This isn’t the first time the majority has favored rights over
restrictions, though in Pew’s previous polling the margins have been
much thinner. Anyone who has watched tracking polls of the past few
decades knows that this is the culmination of a long term trend, and is
surprising only in as much as Pew’s research appears to be a little
behind other surveys (though Pew’s poll was called an “outlier” by an
outright liar from a gun control obsessed, maniacal medical school). But
members of the media nonetheless flatly proclaimed incorrectly that
this was the “first” time Pew had seen gun rights being more popular
than gun anti-rights. Maybe this explains why only 40% of the public
trusts the news media.
The backlash to Pew’s polling was predictable. Sympathetic
left-of-center members of the media sought the opinion of gun control
activists to flavor their “reporting.” My favorite was Media Matters,
an organization specifically devoted to attacking non-leftist
journalism. For a printable quote, they tracked down an assistant
professor at the Joyce Foundation funded Center for Gun Policy and Research.
Her CV states that she “focuses on how public policies affect mental
health, substance use, and gun violence” and also notes that her
education is “in Health Policy and Management” but does not mention a
background in research methodology design. So when she told Media Matters
that Pew’s research was an “outlier,” she either willfully ignored
other polling or pulled the conclusion out of her antidepressant pill
bag.
New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez is the subject of a Department of Justice investigation expected to result in criminal corruption charges, CNN reported Friday. Attorney General Eric Holder
has reportedly signed off on the prosecutor’s request to proceed with
the case against the career politician for allegations “he used his
Senate office to push the business interests of a Democratic donor and
friend in exchange for gifts.”
Menendez is the latest in a long line of Democrats pushing for more
edicts to disarm law-abiding Americans while appearing to be engaging in
criminal activities. Rated “F” by the National Rifle Association and
“F-“ by Gun Owners of America, a review of his “On the Issues” profile for “gun control” shows why:
Despite coming from one of the most heavily-controlled states in
terms of gun laws, Menendez supports even further restrictions, and on a
national level. As such, he supported a ban on magazines holding more
than 10 rounds, and sponsored a bill to ban so-called “large capacity feeding devices.”
A Fraternal Order of Police official said 5.56mm armor-piercing ammo is not typically used against officers
WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- The leader of
a national police organization this week said a proposal to ban
armor-piercing 5.56mm pistol rounds would be less effective than the
government thinks.
Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
said it plans to outlaw steel-tipped 5.56mm ammunition because it now qualifies as an armor-piercing round.
Sale of the ammo has been legal since 1986 because it's a round that
could not, until recently, be fired from a handgun -- the stipulation
necessary for prohibition of any bullet. Traditionally, the 5.56mm
bullets have been fired only in AR-15 rifles.
In a 17-page report,
the bureau cited new handguns that are able to fire the round,
increasing the likelihood, the ATF believes, that the bullets will be
used against law enforcement officers.
However, James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office
of the Fraternal Order of Police, believes that banning the ammunition
wouldn't amount to much additional protection.
"This specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem," he said in a report by the Washington Examiner. "While this round will penetrate soft body armor, it has not historically posed a threat to law enforcement."
With around 325,000 members, the Fraternal Order of Police is the largest organization of sworn officers in the world.
Pasco's statements give fuel to critics who allege the bullet ban is merely a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to render AR-15 assault rifles useless.
Supporters of the proposed ban, however, feel that newer handguns available to shoot 5.56mm ammo increase the threat to police.
"We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and
women in law enforcement and believe that this process is valuable for
that reason alone," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. "If
there are armor-piercing bullets available that can fit into easily
concealed weapons, that it puts our law enforcement at considerably more
risk."
Still, opponents to the ban believe it's unlikely criminals will
purchase the expensive handguns -- and even if they did, the firearms
are much too large to be considered a concealed weapon.
The ATF is asking for public comment regarding the ban, to be
concluded March 16. But the proposal has already encountered stiff
resistance. In the House of Representatives, more than half of lawmakers
have signed a letter challenging the ban, and the National Rifle Association is urging the public to ask Congress to prevent it. A similar measure is moving through the Senate.
Since news of the proposed ban earlier this month, sporting goods
stores have been selling large quantities of the affected ammunition --
now at higher cost.
