Dear Mrs. Clinton: ‘Our Guns Are None Of Your Business!’

/in , , , /by

BELLEVUE, Wash. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Responding to Democrat Hillary Clinton’s assertion yesterday during a “gun violence forum” in Philadelphia that there are “too many guns” in America, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) is telling the former Secretary of State that “Our guns are none of your business.”

Quoted by WCBM, Clinton told her audience Wednesday, “When it comes to guns, we have just too many guns. On the streets, in our homes, in our neighborhoods. And, you know, there’s been a lot of talk in this campaign, in the primary campaign, about the power of certain interests in our country. And we do have a bunch of powerful interests, make no mistake about it. But there is no more powerful lobby than the gun lobby.”

Attacking gun owners and the firearms industry has become a cornerstone of Clinton’s campaign to win the Democratic nomination.

“Who put Hillary Clinton in charge of deciding how many firearms are too many,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb questioned. “There’s no doubt she would like to be in charge of dictating how many guns someone can own, but the Constitution just might get in her way, not to mention tens of millions of American voters who don’t care for the demagoguery she represents. But, like the man she wants to succeed in the White House, it doesn’t appear that the Constitution or the Second Amendment rights of American citizens mean much to her.

“Clinton has made gun owners the collective bogeyman of her campaign rhetoric,” he continued. “For months she has been dragging the Second Amendment through the mud along her campaign trail. She has demonized the firearms industry, encouraged social bigotry against millions of honest American citizens and even said that she thinks the Supreme Court was wrong about the individual right to keep and bear arms.

“Hillary Clinton and her elitist friends have no business dictating to American citizens how many or what kinds of guns they can own, or how much red tape they have to wade through in order to exercise a constitutionally-protected civil right,” Gottlieb stated. “The irony is that every time she opens her mouth about guns, people open their wallets and buy more guns. She thinks there are too many guns, but the American public obviously thinks there are too many anti-gun politicians.”

ABOUT THE CITIZENS COMMITTEE FOR THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. Learn more about CCRKBA by clicking here.

When Satire becomes Politically Correct Policy: DePaul University bans chalk for student safety

/in , , , /by

trump chalk composit imageIn March we posted a political satire column titled “Students demand ‘chalk free zones’ after Trump 2016 graffiti found at Emory U.” The column stated, “Trump ‘chalking attacks’ are appearing on college campuses across America. It began on the campus of Emory University where ‘Trump 2016’, ‘Vote Trump 2016’ and ‘Trump’ graffiti was found on buildings, sidewalks and on benches written in chalk on the university campus.”

We concluded with the tongue-in-cheek, “The Keep Chalk on College Campuses (KCCC) free speech movement in a short statement said, “Chalk U!”

On April 4th we posted a second political satire column titled, “After a #Trump2016 chalk attack on the White House Obama signs Executive Order banning chalk.” The column stated:

Today the Secret Service reported a “#Trump2016 – Make America Great Again” chalk attack occurred at the White House. President Obama, his family and the White House staff were evacuated to a secret location until the chalker and his/her associates are apprehended.

[ … ]

Josh Earnest, Assistant to the President and Press Secretary, at a White House briefing noted:

The first family and those of us working in the White House now live in fear of the chalkers who want to make America great again.

FBI Director James Comey has just briefed President Obama on this growing existential threat.

These attackers are using chalk as their weapon of choice and they must be stopped at all cost.

After meeting with his National Security Council, President Obama has signed an Executive Order making chalking a federal offense and designating members of Make America Great Again Chalkers enemies of the collective.

The Executive Order calls for the arrest of anyone carrying chalk in a concealed manner. It establishes a federal, state and local law enforcement Joint Chalk Task Force (JCTF) to combat this growing threat to our progressive way of life.

Anyone owning chalk must report it and register on a new national database of chalk possessors.

trump chalking 4It appears that political satire has become politically correct policy at DePaul University.

On April 15th, Jazz Shaw from HotAir reports:

The struggle is real, my friends. We’ve already looked at the horror being inflicted upon special snowflakes around the country these days as #TheChalkening sends college students scurrying for their safe space. Who knows what sort of lasting damage could ensue if young adults turn a corner on their morning walk only to see a name or campaign slogan emblazoned on the sidewalk where they are walking, enshrined there for all time? (Or at least until the next rainfall.) Not everyone is taking this threat lying down, however. At DePaul University in Chicago, students will soon be able to perambulate around the quad without fear of such lasting mental scar tissue because the university has banned chalking the sidewalks after someone was tasteless enough to write the name of Donald J. Trump on the pavement. (Daily Caller and Campus Reform)

DePaul University will no longer allow students to chalk political messages on the sidewalks of its campus because of the “offensive, hurtful, and divisive” nature of pro-Trump chalking found on campus last week.

“While these chalk messages are part of national agendas in a heated political battle, they appeared on campus at a time of significant racial tension in our country and on college campuses. DePaul is no exception,” Depaul’s vice president for student affairs Eugene Zdziarski wrote in a campus-wide email obtained by Campus Reform…

Campus Reform reached out to DePaul to ask why university officials chose to respond to this particular chalking instance despite claims that chalking “regularly” occurs on campus. No response was received in time for publication.

The entire idea of “chalking” as a form of expression has apparently been a tradition at DePaul for quite some time, just as it is on sidewalks around the nation.

Read more.

We again quote those who support free chalking speech on college campuses with, “Chalk U!”

RELATED ARTICLES:

Florida Atlanti Uuniversity Students Takes Steps Toward Free Speech

Students Call for Police to Censor Classmates’ Political Messages

Student accused of violating university ‘safe space’ by raising her hand

Emory president: Students scared and in pain by Trump 2016 chalk signs

Emory University Students Upset at Pro-Trump Chalk

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of chalk guns is by artist and designer Mike Falk.

Clinton Caught In Lie About Guns

/in , , , /by

BELLEVUE, Wash. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton has been caught in a cleverly crafted fib about Vermont being a major source of illegal guns in New York, which should give voters in both states pause, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“Today’s Washington Post Fact Checker just handed Hillary a brutal ‘Three Pinocchios’ for what it says is ‘a significantly misleading impression’ Clinton created about Vermont being a major source of crime guns in the Empire State,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb.

The Fact Checker referred to Clinton’s assertion that Vermont is the source of the “highest per capita number of” crime guns in New York. But the Fact Checker noted, “The number of crime guns in New York from Vermont is so small that it could even be attributed to one or two bad actors. Using the per capita measure of trafficked guns originating from Vermont is as pointless as counting guns trafficked per 100,000 head of cattle.”

The Fact Checker, which twice challenged Barack Obama’s claim that 40 percent of gun sales are done without background checks, said “Clinton has carefully crafted her talking point to find the particular government data that support her point, which gives a wildly different view than how trafficking flows are tracked. We do not find the per capita measure as a fair assessment of gun flows from Vermont into New York. The difference between this point using per capita calculation and the raw number (1 percent of crime guns with source states identified in 2014 came from Vermont) is so stark that it creates a significantly misleading impression to the public.”

“From her tale of landing under fire from snipers to her email controversy, Hillary Clinton has created an aura of dishonesty,” Gottlieb observed. “She crafted this meme to discredit rival Bernie Sanders, who representsVermont in the Senate. It is dishonest and it reminds people why a Washington Post/ABC News poll last month said 57 percent of the people don’t think she is honest or trustworthy.

“New Yorkers should think about this as their primary looms next week,” he said. “This is the kind of political sleight of hand that one expects from a person who could not say for sure if she’s ever lied to the American people.”

ABOUT THE CITIZENS COMMITTEE FOR THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

‘Feelin’ the Bern’ Hillary Blames Vermont for New York Crime

/in , , , , /by

Hillary Clinton apparently wants to make sure that no matter how her current campaign fares, she will at least retain her title as the least trusted person in American politics. In campaign-panic mode on Monday, having lost the last five state caucuses to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton made another statement to be added to her ever-lengthening list of lies and misrepresentations.

The New York Post reports that Clinton falsely attacked Sanders by implication, telling a group of Democrats, “It’s going to be coming out in the very near future that many of the catastrophes that have taken human lives in the state of New York have been the product of guns coming over the border from Vermont.”  The implication, of course, is that Vermont’s lack of restrictive gun laws – as in New York – is to blame for New York’s crime woes.

Clinton must really be “feelin’ the Bern,” because her statement is preposterous, for at least three reasons.  First, ATF firearm tracing data show that crime guns don’t come from Vermont. In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, only 0.7 percent of guns recovered by police in New York had first been sold at retail in Vermont.

Second, the average time between a firearm’s original retail sale, and its recovery by police in New York, is 15 years. For all Clinton knows, the exceedingly small number of guns from Vermont made their way to New York legally. A person may have moved from Vermont to New York and subsequently sold a firearm to a firearm dealer in the state, for example.

Third, Clinton’s attack upon Sanders isn’t even rational. Vermont’s gun control laws are established by its state legislature and governor. Sanders, a U.S. senator, serves in Congress. And Clinton and Sanders are running for president of the United States. It shows how desperate Clinton is, when she thinks she can beat Sanders on the basis of issues that have no relationship to the presidency.

Vermont’s governor, who has a role in determining his state’s laws, is reportedly a Clinton supporter. But maybe less so now, after what Clinton said. Speaking as diplomatically as possible, Gov. Peter Shumlin said, “things are sometimes said by all the candidates that sometimes aren’t entirely accurate. . . . I think you’d have a hard time convincing Vermonters that New York’s crime problems are coming from Vermont.”

A McClatchy-Marist poll released on Wednesday, the day after Sanders trounced Clinton in Wisconsin (by 57-43 percent) finds that 25 percent of Sanders’ supporters wouldn’t vote for Clinton in November, while only 69 percent would do so. The poll also finds that Sanders edges Clinton among Democrats nationally.

Clinton certainly cannot expect to improve those numbers by hurling unfair and dishonest accusations against Sanders and the state from which he hails. To the contrary, if she persists in the dishonest style that have become her trademark, she only adds to the numerous reasons voters already have to keep her out of the White House.

VIDEO: Empowering Public Housing Residents to Defend Themselves

/in , , , , /by

In this News Minute from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, Jennifer Zahrn reports that, in Maine, Governor Paul LePage is expected to sign an NRA-backed bill that would allow residents of public housing to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The NRA’s Longstanding Campaign to Allow Guns in Public Housing Is Set for Its Latest Win

We need to protect public housing tenants’ right to protect themselves

ME Governor Paul LePage Declares Open Season On Drug Dealers (VIDEO)

Five Gun-Purchase Records Set in March 2016

/in , , /by

“Hillary Clinton is making gun control a central theme of her campaign” for president of the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports. But whether this is a strategy that will win the White House is in dispute, or certainly ought to be. Based upon trends in firearm background checks conducted by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), opposition to gun control may be stronger than ever.

The number of checks conducted in March 2016 was the highest for any March since NICS’ inception. The 2,523,265 checks topped the previous record for the month, 2,488,842, set in 2013.

March 2016 also marked the tenth consecutive month in which the number of checks was the highest for the month in question. Stated another way, there were more checks in May 2015 than in any previous May, more in June 2015 than for any previous June, and so on for every month since.

Also, the number of checks for the 12-month period ending the 31st of March was the highest for any 12-month period on record. The number for that 12-month period, 25,179,245, was over a half million higher than the number for the previous 12-month high, set at the end of February.

Finally, March was also the 5th highest month for checks since NICS’ inception, behind December 2015, December 2012, February 2016 and January 2016. Thus, four of the highest five NICS months on record have transpired as Clinton has gone from tiresome to shrill in her advocacy of gun control.

Obama’s Executive Clemency Program Putting Firearm Offenders on the Streets

/in , , , /by

We’ve often mentioned that President Obama, despite his insistent shaming of America over its supposed lack of gun regulation, has shown little interest in enforcing the gun control laws already on the books.

But it gets worse. A lot worse.

Information has now arisen that the Obama administration is granting executive clemency to dozens of felons imprisoned for firearm-related offenses, some whose crimes involved possessing or using a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking crimes. These criminals will for the most part be released back into the very communities that they exploited and victimized with their offenses.

The revelations were detailed in a March 31 letter from Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. According to the letter, of more than 200 federal inmates granted release under the president’s initiative for executive clemency, “33 were convicted of firearm-related offenses.”

These include, according to the letter:

  • Seven convictions of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime;
  • Four convictions of possession of a firearm by a felon; and
  • Two convictions of use of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense.

Sen. Shelby expressed his frustration with the administration’s actions:

Communities in my state, like other towns and cities all over America, are working hard to clean up their streets and make their communities safer. This is a constant struggle for some areas. Yet, this announcement from the President sends an unfortunate and resounding message to criminals everywhere: if you are convicted of a crime involving a gun, the federal government will go easy on you.

The president’s moves seem to be a glaring contradiction to his assertion last year that “the one area where I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied … is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common sense gun laws.”

Surely Obama’s advisors have apprised him of the hundreds of federal gun control laws already on the books. So you would think he’d be using every tool at his disposal to deal with the violent crime that, for example, plagues his own home town in particular.

But rather than focus on violent criminals, Obama’s most recent and highly-touted gun control offensive targeted hobbyists and collectors who make occasional gun sales, licensed dealers, and expanding the attack on veterans to include Social Security recipients. 

But rather than focus on violent criminals, Obama’s most recent and highly-touted gun control offensive targeted hobbyists and collectors who make occasional gun sales, licensed dealers, and expanding the attack on veterans to include Social Security recipients.

Sen. Shelby’s letter raised questions about whether the administration is following its own guidelines in the granting of executive clemency. These include prioritizing applicants who “are non-violent, low-level offenders without significant ties to large scale criminal organizations, gangs or cartels” and who “do not have a significant criminal history.”

The administration’s actions would seem to point inescapably to two possible conclusions. One possibility is that the president really is allowing dangerous criminals back out on the streets of their communities. If that’s the case, then his actions are reckless and irresponsible and gamble with innocent lives for the sake of politics.

Another is that he genuinely believes that individuals who use or possess guns to perpetrate drug crimes are not really a threat to public safety. If that’s true, then he is dangerously misinformed. It also makes his obsessive focus on purely technical violations of gun control laws – e.g., re-categorizing hobbyists as “dealers,” banning veterans from possessing firearms, and recently expanding the attack on veterans to include Social Security recipients – seem even more like political persecution and less like serious crime control.

Whatever the case may be, President Obama’s latest moves merely add to his reputation as more interested in style than substance.

This November, voters should carefully consider whether Obama’s would-be successor really has their best interests at heart or whether, like Obama, the next president would vilify his or her political opponents, while simultaneously coddling the very criminals that put innocent lives at risk.

No More Handgun Bans

/in , , , /by

On Monday, Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona of the United States District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands stuck down the last handgun ban in the United States in the case of Radich v. Guerrero.  Judge Manglona’s opinion held that the Islands’ bans on handgun possession, possession of any firearms for self-defense purposes, importation of handguns, and firearm possession by resident aliens violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

It’s fitting that the facts leading to this case illustrate why Americans continue to overwhelmingly support the right of law-abiding people to possess handguns for self-defense.  In 2013, married couple David and Li-Rong Radich sought firearm licenses for self-defense after Li-Rong was attacked in their home.  After no action was taken on their applications, the Radiches filed their suit challenging the bans.

Judge Manglona began her opinion by examining the application of the U.S. Constitution to the Commonwealth of the Mariana Islands.   She found that while some provisions of the Constitution do not directly apply to the Commonwealth, certain provisions, including the Second Amendment and section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, do apply via the founding Covenant that formed the Islands’ political union with the United States.

After finding that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments controlled, it was a simple matter of applying the Supreme Court’s precedents from District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago to the prohibitions in question.  Following those precedents, Judge Manglona found no justification that could preserve the Commonwealth’s bans on handgun possession, possession of any firearms for self-defense purposes, importation of handguns, and firearm possession by resident aliens.

This decision shows how far gun rights supporters have come from only forty years ago when the leading opponents of the right to keep and bear arms laid out their plan to end handgun possession in the United States. As Nelson T. “Pete” Shields put it in a 1976 interview with The New Yorker, “[t]he first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition—except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors—totally illegal.” At the time, Shields was the chairman of the National Council to Control Handguns, which was renamed Handgun Control, Inc. in 1979 and is now called the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. 

These days, gun control supporters don’t like to talk about their goal of banning firearms commonly kept for self-defense unless its with an oblique reference, but steps one and two of the plan laid out by Shields are still very much alive in the modern gun-controller’s toolbox.  Gun control groups continue to do whatever they can to marginalize gun ownership, and firearm registration – whether directly or indirectly – through “universal” background checks, and other “common sense” reforms. 

The Commonwealth could appeal this decision, but their likelihood of success is slim, at least for now, given Heller and McDonald.  But, that record is now more in jeopardy than ever given the potential shift on Second Amendment cases with Antonin Scalia’s passing.

RELATED ARTICLES:

More Guns Does Not Mean More Murders

Gun Control Advocates Seek Taxpayer Funding, Guise of Legitimacy

WAPO Fact Checker: Claims that Senate is Shirking a “Constitutional Duty” on Merrick “Mostly False”

Regressive Cosmo Video Targets Guns and the Men Who Own Them

ACLU warns UK Gun Owner ‘Snoopers’ Surveillance Program Orwellian

/in , , /by

It is often pointed out that UK government officials treat George Orwell’s “1984” less like the dire warning it was intended to be, and more as an instruction manual. Further evidence of this was provided this week when an astute member of the UK shooting community brought attention to an admission that UK intelligence agencies are using centralized records of UK firearm owners in their efforts to target “terrorists.”

An article featured on the blog UK Shooting News points to the initial draft of the Investigatory Powers Bill, a controversial and wide-ranging piece of government surveillance legislation derisively known in the UK as the Snoopers’ Charter. The legislation was given a second reading in Parliament on March 15.

Among the many provisions UK privacy advocates have taken issue with, the draft legislation gives the government authorization to force telecommunications companies to retain and make available an individual’s communications records for 12 months, engage in the bulk interception of private communications data, and provides loose legal thresholds for conducting surveillance. This is of significant interest to Americans, as the ACLU has pointed out that the UK’s growing surveillance state is a threat to our civil liberties as well.

Part of the legislation involves the acquisition and use of Bulk Personal Datasets, or BPDs. As described by the draft legislation document, BPDs are “sets of personal information about a large number of individuals, the majority of whom will not be of any interest to the security and intelligence agencies. The datasets are held on electronic systems for the purposes of analysis in the security and intelligence agencies.”

To justify the use of BPD’s, the document shared the following case study:

BPD Case Study: Preventing Access to Firearms

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008 and the more recent shootings in Copenhagen and Paris in 2015, highlight the risk posed from terrorists gaining access to firearms. To help manage the risk of UK based subjects of interest accessing firearms, the intelligence agencies match data about individuals assessed to have access to firearms with records of known terrorists. To achieve this, the security and intelligence agencies acquired the details of all these individuals, even though the majority will not be involved in terrorism and therefore will not be of direct intelligence interest. This allowed the matching to be undertaken at scale and pace, and more comprehensively than individual requests could ever achieve. Completing such activities enabled the intelligence agencies to manage the associated risks to the public.

While this document does not make clear the specific means by which the UK government “assessed” that an individual has access to firearms, certain avenues are available to the government given the UK’s stringent gun control regime. A separate government fact sheet on the Investigatory Powers Bill notes, “Lists of people who have a passport or a licensed firearm are good examples of a BPD – they includes a large amount of personal information, the majority of which will relate to people who are not of security or intelligence interest.” In the UK, a firearms certificate, obtained through an onerous application process, is required to own any rifle. In order to own a shotgun a prospective owner must acquire a moderately-easier-to-obtain shotgun certificate.

However, the author of the UK Shooting News piece suggests that the government’s BPD’s on those with access to firearms could go beyond certificate holders. The author notes:

All new members of Home Office approved rifle clubs have their personal details – name, address, telephone number, and so on – transmitted to the police by the club. This data transmission is a condition of clubs securing Home Office approval, which is a legal status that allows non-firearm certificate holders to handle firearms and shoot at club events.

The Home Office requires that the personal information of members of rifle clubs, even those that do not personally own firearms, are filed with the police. This is made clear in a government guidance leaflet titled, “Approval of rifle and muzzle-loading pistol clubs,” which states, “the club will inform the police of any application for membership, giving the applicant’s name and address, and of the outcome of any application.”

It’s unlikely that centralized databases for use by the intelligence services for ceaseless surveillance and unfettered data analytics experiments were what UK gun owners or most lawmakers were contemplating when the UK’s firearm licensing scheme was enacted in 1968. However, this creeping Orwellian violation of firearm owner privacy should stand as yet another example of why NRA and American gun owners guard our privacy so jealously.

NRA has continuously worked with our allies in Congress to enact statutory protections making clear that the federal government may not maintain centralized records of guns or gun owners. For instance, the landmark Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 made clear that the government may not promulgate a rule or regulation under the Gun Control Act of 1968 that would bring about “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions.” Similar statutory protections prohibit the federal government from using the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to compile data on guns or gun owners. When the National Security Administration’s mass surveillance regime threatened to circumvent these protections, NRA supported a lawsuit challenging the agency’s methods.

These protections have become increasingly important in recent years, as unfortunately, the notion of targeting gun owners for additional government scrutiny isn’t relegated to the British Isles. A 2009 U.S. Department of Homeland Security “Reference Aid,” titled, “Domestic Extremism Lexicon,” warned government officials of “A rightwing extremist movement” whose “Members oppose most federal and state laws, regulations, and authority (particularly firearms laws and regulations).” Another DHS document from 2009, titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” noted “heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms restrictions and returning military veterans… may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity.”

This administration’s suspicious posture towards gun owners and the federal government’s ever-increasing surveillance capabilities mean that working to ensure gun owner privacy is an important task requiring the engagement of all law-abiding gun owners. NRA will continue to work to preserve gun owner privacy, lest Americans be subjected to the demeaning and repressive tactics with which our UK counterparts are all too familiar.

Action Needed to Oppose Obama Supreme Court Nominee

/in , /by

On Wednesday, the National Rifle Association announced its strong opposition to President Barrack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the United States Supreme Court.

NRA-ILA’s executive director Chris W. Cox has this to say about the nomination:

“With Justice Scalia’s tragic passing, there is no longer a majority of support among the justices for the fundamental, individual right to own a firearm for self-defense. Four justices believe law-abiding Americans have that right – and four justices do not. President Obama has nothing but contempt for the Second Amendment and  law-abiding gun owners.

Obama has already nominated two Supreme Court justices who oppose the right to own firearms and there is absolutely no reason to think he has changed his approach this time. In fact, a basic analysis of Merrick Garland’s judicial record shows that he does not respect our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. Therefore, the National Rifle Association, on behalf of our five million members and tens of millions of supporters across the country, strongly opposes the nomination of Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court.”

NRA members’ voices need to be heard!  Rumors are starting to swirl that anti-gun organizations are beginning to mount pressure on U.S. Senators to support Garland. 

Contact your U.S. Senators now to oppose Obama’s attempt to stack the Supreme Court against our Right to Keep and Bear Arms.  Let your Senators know that you oppose the nomination of Merrick Garland.  Garland’s record of opposing the Second Amendment is clear – he simply cannot be trusted on our rights and must be opposed!

The U.S. Senate will be in recess for the next two weeks.  Please try to visit your Senators while they’re back in your state and let them know you want them to oppose Garland’s confirmation.

You may also write your U.S. Senators by clicking “here“.

RELATED ARTICLE: Why This Sexual Assault Survivor Is an Advocate for the Second Amendment

VIDEO: Gun Control Propaganda Debunked

/in , , /by

A thorough debunking of the propaganda presented by Vox in their video on gun control and “mass shootings” in the U.S.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Scotland Gun Control: Where Nightmares Are Reality

Gun Violence Is a Serious Problem – Gun Confiscation Isn’t a Serious Solution

The Evil of Gun-free Zones

EDITORS NOTE: Read more at http://LouderWithCrowder.com including all sources at http://louderwithcrowder.com/vox-gun-…

Scotland Gun Control: Where Nightmares Are Reality

/in , /by

Colion Noir predicted the future when he imagined a world in which air rifles are highly regulated. Now the government of Scotland is requiring this very measure of its citizens.

Ayn Rand wrote, “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”

Watch Colion’s video:

EDITORS NOTE: Please visit Colion Noir’s WEBSITE, FACEBOOK PAGE, on TWITTER an on GOOGLE+.

You Can Take the Word Liberal From Me When You Pry It From My Cold, Dead Mouth by Jeffrey Tucker

/in , , /by

I was in the middle of  a nice discussion with the man behind the counter at the firing range. He was surrounded by semi-automatic weapons and hundreds of handguns in the display case that separated us. I used the opportunity to tap his expertise, mostly because I don’t keep up with gun issues enough.

He explained to me the absurdity of the ban on automatic weapons, how and why it is that there is really no such thing as an “assault rifle,” and a bit about regulations on magazine size. He informed me that Clinton’s partial ban on assault rifles expired in 2004 due to a sunset clause.

This is where the conversation became interesting.

I asked: “So the law has been liberalized since Clinton?”

He raised his eyebrow and there was a long pause.

Finally he said in a deep Southern drawl, “I don’t know about no liberalism. I don’t like liberals.”

“Ok,” I said, “that’s not what I mean. I mean ‘liberalized’ in the sense of more liberal: like more freely available.”

That didn’t help. He just said, “I’m just saying that I don’t like much about what liberals are saying or doing.”

So I tried again.

“Well, more precisely, what I mean by liberalization is that American citizens are now more free from restriction than they once were to import and use certain kinds of weapons. We are more liberated to choose than we were before.”

Still, he stood there in silence, staring. Finally a co-worker walked by and said to him, “This customer means liberal like in the old way: a different way than you mean the term.”

I piped in and said, “yes, just the English-language ‘liberal’ meaning less government control over what we do.”

Even then, this nice man couldn’t understand what the heck I was talking about. The word “liberal” to him was like the Mark of the Beast. He somehow thought I was standing there promoting evil. Nothing I said would overcome his sense that I was somehow on the enemy side, simply because I was uttering this word.

Are we really so far down the path? Has our political terminology become so confused that we can’t even use regular English words and be understood?

Demonizing Liberals

Maybe this was an extreme case. Maybe it is not so bad all over. But I do wonder.

For years, right-wing radio commentators have been using “liberal” as a swear term: the worst epithet you could ever hurl at someone, indicating an individual hell-bent on destroying your life. They have contrasted the malice of “liberals” with the greatness of “conservatives,” who favor God, country, and free enterprise (with a bit of war thrown in). And book after book are published for conservative consumption using the term “liberal” to identify the most depraved values.

To be sure, this is not new. It has gone on since after World War II, when Russell Kirk’s Conservative Mind appeared and was promoted on the cover of Time Magazine. This  kicked off a long-running demonization of one of the great words in the English language.

Now, you might correctly point out that the “liberals” started it. About a century ago, everyone knew what a liberal was. A liberal favored free speech, freedom of action, a free economic order, and religious freedom. A liberal opposed war. A liberal favored the ever-increasing liberation of the world from oppression, poverty, suffering.

That began to change in the Progressive Era and especially with the New Deal. Liberals had to make a choice between the free economy and the fascist model of the New Deal. They chose poorly. Yet they kept calling themselves liberals. Ten years later, it had begun to stick.

Conservative Is Not What We Are 

So when William F. Buckley set out to, as he alleged, “stand athwart history and yell stop,” he needed a different name for his “anti-Left” movement. The name he chose was Kirk’s “conservative.”  The new “conservatism” differed from that of the old English Tories in that it had affection for free enterprise. Yet it harkened back to those bygone reactionaries by favoring war, the cops, and social control. The new “conservative movement” co-opted the classical liberal remnant of the time.

Already distorted, the conservative acquiescence to the left on terminology made a bad situation worse. And it has only worsened further over the decades, to the point that today the word liberal has become practically unusable in some corners, in spite of its rich and glorious history.

And yet this is mostly true just in the United States. In most places in the world, the word “liberal” still means what it is supposed to mean. More substantially, it is the right word. It has a beautiful tradition. And I agree with Mises who said there is no suitable replacement.

“This usage is imperative,” he wrote in 1966, “because there is simply no other term available to signify the great political and intellectual movement that substituted free enterprise and the market economy for the precapitalistic methods of production; constitutional representative government for the absolutism of kings or oligarchies; and freedom of all individuals from slavery, serfdom, and other forms of bondage.”

I’ll say it again: Don’t give up the term liberal. You might even be one.

Despite the gruff gun salesman behind the counter, I won’t give up the term “liberal.” The way I feel about that grand word is the same way he feels about his guns. You can take “liberal” from me when you pry it from my cold dead mouth.

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email.

Clinton-era report on gun violence in Mexico ‘fallacious’ and ‘politically-motivated’

/in , , /by

Recoil Magazine published an article titled, “Rich Grassi Explores Clinton-era Report on Gun Violence in Mexico.” The Recoil staff write:

In a recent issue of the Tactical Wire, editor Rich Grassi takes a hard look at a Clinton-era report on gun violence in Mexico, some of the conclusions General Barry R. McCaffrey, USA (Ret.) made, and how those conclusions are as fallacious as they are apparently politically-motivated. Seems apropos given the significance of gun control in the current election process — though gun control isn’t quite as important, apparently as focusing on the brutality of our nation’s police force–who are being murdered on duty, if you weren’t aware, at the rate of about one every day and a half right now. Most recently it was a female former Marine rookie on her first day on the street with her Field Training Officer and then a Euless, TX officer just hours later.

Not that we’ve heard anyone from the current administration address that.

Here’s a quick excerpt.

Sometimes it’s hard to find what someone has on the ball however. A person fitting that category is General Barry R. McCaffrey, USA (Ret.) A “drug czar” under President Clinton, the General is apparently still active and seeking something to do. On the internet, I found his “after action report” (AAR) to a visit to Mexico, that visit occurring on 5 through 7 December 2008.

While showing extraordinary good sense in going south for the winter, our intrepid General showed nothing else by way of good sense. In his AAR, subtitled “Memorandum for Colonel Michael Meese, Professor and Head Department of Social Sciences” (sic), he determined that the cause of the massive violence from the Mexican drug cartels along the border was the U.S., specifically that nasty little cultural quirk that citizens can be armed if they want to be.

You can read this article in its entirety — and see how Grassi disassembles the nonsense — right here.

The Tactical Wire is one of the firearms industry related publications many of our writers read on a regular basis. Not necessarily because of the news (we get all those press releases too) but because of the op-eds and commentary at the bottom: features like Editor’s Notebook and Around the Water Cooler. TTW’s editor Rich Grassi spent a lifetime serving his community as a LEO. As our web editor David Reeder puts it, “Rich has forgotten more about common gunsensical truth than droves of self-proclaimed experts out there now can ever hope to know. He’s a good man with a wealth of knowledge and definitely one of those worth paying attention to. Plus, he was great as Sgt. Esterhouse on Hill Street Blues.”

You may follow The Tactical Wire online here.

Read more.

RELATED ARTICLES:

ICE: 124 illegal immigrants released from jail later charged in 138 murder cases

Border Ranchers Cry for Help!

Gun Control Supporters Distort Iowa Legislation on Youth Handgun Possession

/in , , , /by

Willful ignorance of firearm function, culture, and law are well-known characteristics of the gun control movement. However, the principals in a recently manufactured controversy, surrounding legislation in Iowa that would allow properly supervised youth to use handguns for the shooting sports, have shown a particular disregard for the facts and prevailing law.

Current Iowa law makes it a misdemeanor to transfer a handgun to those under the age of 21, with a few exceptions. A parent, guardian, or spouse over 21 may allow those ages 14-20 to possess a handgun while the minor is under their direct supervision, or while receiving instruction. Iowa has a blanket prohibition on handgun possession for all those under 14, regardless of parental supervision. Current law even prevents those under 14 from engaging in traditional handgun safety instruction.

This restriction is significantly out-of-step with the vast majority of the country; including some of the most anti-gun jurisdictions. While the various states have different contours dealing with youth handgun possession, a cursory look at Iowa’s immediate neighbors proves instructive.

Take for instance Iowa’s neighbor, Illinois. The Land of Lincoln allows those under 18 to participate in “lawful recreational activity” using a handgun, while in the custody or control of a parent or guardian with a valid Firearm Owners Identification Card. Similarly, Wisconsin, allows those under 18 to participate in “target practice under the supervision of an adult or in a course of instruction in the traditional and proper use of the dangerous weapon under the supervision of an adult.”

In Minnesota, those under 18 may possess a handgun “in the actual presence or under the direct supervision of the person’s parent or guardian.” Nebraska law makes clear that their restriction on the possession of handguns by those under 18 does not apply to the “temporary loan of handguns for instruction under the immediate supervision of a parent or guardian or adult instructor.”

South Dakota law bars handgun possession by those under 18, but provides exceptions for youth in certain circumstances with the consent of their parent or guardian. Missouri prohibits transferring a firearm to those under 18 without consent of the minor’s parent or guardian.

These state laws properly place with parents the right and responsibility for determining when a young person is mature enough to safely handle a handgun.

NRA is supporting legislation to bring Iowa law in line with the rest of the country. House File 2281, the Youth Safety & Parental Rights Act, allows those under 21 to possess a handgun while under the direct supervision of a parent, guardian, or spouse, or when receiving instruction. The legislation holds the parent or guardian strictly liable for any damages. It is important to note that under this legislation, Iowa law would still be more restrictive than much of the nation, as persons ages 18-20 would still require supervision in order to possess a handgun. H.F. 2281 was passed by the Iowa House on February 23, and is now being considered by the state Senate.

Unfortunately, from reading accounts in the mainstream press about this simple fix to Iowa law, one might get the impression that the Hawkeye State is about to resemble Lord of the Flies.

Iowa State Rep. Kirsten Running-Marquardt did her part in the fear-mongering campaign with absurd comments reported by Des Moines CBS affiliate KCCI. The news outlet quoted Running-Marquardt as stating, “What this bill does, the bill before us, allows for 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds to operate handguns. We do not need a militia of toddlers. We do not have handguns that I am aware of that fit the hands of a 1- or 2-year-old.”

Shortly after the bill’s passage in the House, the national anti-gun media felt compelled to weigh in. Syndicated anti-gun columnist Dan K. Thomasson called the legislative fix “insanity” and accused the “gun lobby” of “bringing up baby in the sacred gun culture.” In his rambling hyperbole-filled screed, the writer managed to attack the mundane proposal using ridiculous references to 1930s gangster John Dillinger and “African rebel armies… made up of AK-47 carrying children as young as 9 or 10.” Media outlets have run stories with deliberately misleading headlines, such as “Iowa Lawmakers Approve Bill That Would Let Kids Have Handguns,” and “Iowa Legislature Debates Giving Handguns to Children.” Such stories fail to recognize the prevailing law throughout the country.

The opponents of this legislative fix are hoping that those unfamiliar with firearms law will have a knee-jerk reaction to a salacious headline about kids in Iowa owning handguns. It is up to NRA members to help explain to others how this legislation brings Iowa in accordance with prevailing national standards, and how the gun control movement and a willing media thrive on ignorance.