Trump: Protecting Our Second Amendment Rights Will Make America Great Again

/in , , , , , /by

Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump released his position on the Second Amendment. Trump’s policy states in part:

The Second Amendment guarantees a fundamental right that belongs to all law-abiding Americans. The Constitution doesn’t create that right – it ensures that the government can’t take it away.

[ … ]

We need to get serious about prosecuting violent criminals. The Obama administration’s record on that is abysmal. Violent crime in cities like Baltimore, Chicago and many others is out of control. Drug dealers and gang members are given a slap on the wrist and turned loose on the street. This needs to stop.

[ … ]

All of the tragic mass murders that occurred in the past several years have something in common – there were red flags that were ignored. We can’t allow that to continue.

[ … ]

Gun and magazine bans are a total failure. That’s been proven every time it’s been tried.

[ … ]

The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway. That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states.

[ … ]

Banning our military from carrying firearms on bases and at recruiting centers is ridiculous. We train our military how to safely and responsibly use firearms, but our current policies leave them defenseless.

To read Donald Trump’s full policy on the Second Amendment click here.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Third Time’s the Charm: Federal Appeals Court Voids Provisions of D.C. Gun Control in Heller III

Congressman Sam Johnson Introduces Bill to Protect Social Security Recipients From the Obama Administration’s Most Ambitious (and Outrageous) Gun Grab to Date

CNN Poll Offers Bad News for Gun Controllers, Anti-gun Candidates

Martin O’Malley: I’m More Anti-Gun Than Hillary!

Latest Gun Control Proposal Doesn’t Pass Constitutional Muster

Florida: Campus Concealed Carry and School Safety Bills Advance

/in , , , /by

Bills to remove the prohibition against Concealed Weapons License Holders carrying firearms on college or university campuses were heard in committees in both houses today.

Wednesday, September 16 at 9:00 AM SB-68, Campus Carry by CW License Holders  by Sen. Greg Evers (R- Baker) was heard in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee House and PASSED by a vote of 3-2.  Republican Senators Bradley, Brandes, and Evers voted in Favor of the bill while Democrat Senators Clements and Gibson voted Against it.

On Wednesday, September 16 at 10:30 AM HB-4001, Campus Carry by CW License Holders by Rep. Greg Steube (R-Sarasota) was heard in the House Criminal Justice Committee and PASSED by a vote of 8-5.  Republican Reps. Baxley, Fant, Harrell, Latvala, Plakon, Spano, Trujillo and VanZant voted in Favor of the bill while Republican Ray Pilon voted Against it.  Democrats Bracy, Kerner, Pritchett and Watson also voted Against it.

Under this bill, adults 21 years of age or older who have a valid Florida Concealed Weapons or Firearm License will have their rights restored and will be able to carry their concealed firearms on college or university campuses for protection.

VIDEO: Playing Politics with a Tragedy

/in , , , , , /by

In this News Minute from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, Jennifer Zahrn reports that gun control activists like Hillary Clinton and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe are exploiting the recent tragedy in Roanoke, Virginia to push gun control.

Summer 2015: New Record for Gun Sales?

/in , , /by

Data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) indicate that firearm acquisitions set a new record during June, July and August, and are on track to finish the year higher than any year except 2013, when firearm acquisitions soared in reaction to President Obama’s push for gun control.

There were more than 2.6 million firearm acquisition-related checks during June through August 2015, a figure 100,000 higher than was achieved during the 2013 surge, and well above the figures for any other year since NICS’ inception in November 1998.

For the first eight months of 2015, January through August, the number of firearm acquisition-related checks was the second highest on record, at 7.7 million, well behind the 9.3 million tallied during the 2013 surge, but running 365,000 ahead of the number achieved last year.

In addition to checks conducted on customers at gun stores and FFL customers in other venues, other NICS checks are conducted for purposes of obtaining firearm purchase permits or carry permits, the latter of which in some states exempt the holders from redundant NICS checks when acquiring firearms.

NICS check numbers are not a precise measure of the number of firearms acquired, of course. They indicate only the number of checks conducted. However, viewed over time, they indicate that gun control supporters are off-base in claiming that firearm ownership is on the decline. To the contrary, the long-term trend in firearm ownership is indisputably on the rise.

Gun owners should never allow the anti-gun media to diminish their hope or expectations that our fundamental rights will be fought for and protected.  Our numbers are growing and our resolve is unquestionable — the misinformation of Michael Bloomberg, Barak Obama and the mainstream media notwithstanding.

Study: Criminals Don’t Get Guns From Legal Sources

/in , , , /by

police gusnNumerous studies conducted by academic researchers and by the federal government have shown that criminals do not use legal markets to obtain guns. And now we have more evidence of this reality, this time looking at criminals in Chicago.

Philip J. Cook, Susan T. Parker, and Harold A. Pollack conducted interviews with criminals being held in the Cook County Jail.  Their primary findings were that criminals get guns from their “social network,” i.e. friends and persons known to them, but generally not from the various legal sources available to them.

They do not buy guns in gun stores.  They do not get guns at gun shows. They do not buy them from Internet sources.  The study even found that criminals only rarely steal guns.

Cook and colleagues also found that criminals do not often buy guns on the used market, as they have a fear of buying a gun from a source they do not know.  Fear of police stings, or from being turned in by law-abiding gun owners leads them to obtain guns from sources they trust, most often, family, fellow gang members, and other criminals. They also found that criminals do not hold guns for a long period, fearing that a gun could be traced to a specific crime.

The findings were clear.  Criminals do not engage in activities that would make them subject to any sort of a “universal” background check requirement or any of the other common proposals put forth by the anti-gun crowd.  As usual, this study illustrates that laws and regulations only impact the law-abiding.

So what did these findings lead the researchers to conclude?  If you thought the “obvious,” you’d be disappointed.

They concluded that since criminals do not hold guns long, “disrupting” the supply chain would have a positive effect on criminal gun use. That seems like a safe conclusion driven more by common sense than any evidence from an expensive academic study.  But how this “disruption” can be achieved is not spelled out or suggested.

Of course, the authors refuse to offer the obvious conclusion many will draw from their results: expanding background checks would have no impact on the criminal acquisition of guns.  Since these criminals do not use gun stores, gun shows, or even legal private gun sellers, there is no point in the criminal supply chain where a background check would make any difference whatsoever.

But these researchers could not admit that glaring reality.

Instead of admitting that their own research argues against the primary goal of the anti-gun movement right now — expanded “universal” background checks — the authors reveal their pre-established bias.

Liberalism Created the WDBJ Killer

/in , , , , /by

Barack Obama won’t be saying, “If I had a psycho son, he’d look like Vester Lee.” But he might as well. Because Vester Lee Flanagan II, the bigoted maniac who murdered the WDBJ reporter and cameraman Wednesday on live TV, was a philosophical offspring of the Left.

It’s well known now that Flanagan was a professional victim, nurturing grudges against all and sundry based on his “status” as a homosexual black man. He had an axe to grind with white women because they supposedly made racial statements to him, and against black men because they supposedly directed anti-homosexual remarks his way. And it didn’t seem as if he liked anyone very much.

Of course, most of the bigotry he perceived from others was in his head, a function of his own prejudice, inculcated via decades of liberal indoctrination. When you dislike others, you view them through tinted lenses and ascribe negative motivations to everything they do. Where a fair-minded individual might interpret a comment as innocuous, simply a misunderstanding or an example of the issuer merely having a bad day, you see malice. “Of course it was racial! That’s the way white people are.” And, “That had to be ‘homophobic’ in this society, which macro and microaggresses against everything that I am!” (of course, certain things are supposed to be stigmatized). These notions, again, were put in Flanagan’s mixed-up head by liberals and liberals alone. They disgorge hateful, pure and utter nonsense such as microaggression theory, “white privilege,” critical-race theory and 1000 other things designed to divide with lies. It is evil.

Flanagan had described himself as “human powder keg,” but what was he so angry about? He lived in the most prosperous nation in the most prosperous time in man’s history; he could walk into any supermarket and avail himself of thousands of delicious foods from the world over at reasonable prices, a luxury that would have made the jaws of people existing in former ages drop. He was living, as we all do, in Shangri-la. But his attitude was hardly inexplicable.

To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, “Goods look a lot better when they come wrapped as gifts.” Everything is a gift, but the Left teaches just the opposite: to have a sense of entitlement, to believe you’re owed, to ever and always view our very large glass as half empty. Some have asked, quite naively, how it is that despite Flanagan’s pathetic performance as a reporter, he was hired by more than one media outlet and given chance after chance to right the ship. Well, golly gee, Cletus, it’s a mystery.

Flanagan was clearly an affirmative-action hire, enjoying the daily-double victim status of being black and homosexual. And that was part of the problem: too much was given to him on a silver platter — because of liberalism.

There have been many articles in recent years about how college graduates today enter the workforce with unrealistic expectations about their economic self-worth and starting salary. We hear about how so many of them can’t tolerate criticism and rejection; act as if their own feelings are inordinately important and should command respect; and how they lack a sense of propriety, a grasp of their place in a workplace’s hierarchy. As a consequence, they may barge into an office to vent their feelings, even if it’s neither the time nor the place.

This is all the result of liberal parenting, of the psychobabble disgorged by the likes of Dr. Benjamin Spock. It’s no wonder many young people today have little sense of just hierarchies — their permissive liberal parents didn’t establish a just hierarchy in the home. Instead, they acted as if their family was a dysfunctional democracy and junior a special-interest group that political correctness dictated must be coddled and catered to. Junior seldom heard the word “No!” uttered in exclamatory fashion; junior seldom had to delay gratification; junior got participation trophies just for showing up. He was treated as a little prince around whom the world revolved. He was marinated in “self-esteem” pap in schools, telling him how great and special he was. The result? Junior and many of his peers (not that he imagined he had any peers) grew up to be narcissists.

As for Flanagan, it has been reported that his refrigerator was covered with pictures of himself. We know what this means. A mother may display numerous pictures of her children because she loves her children. And a man would display numerous pictures of himself because…?

It all reminds me of the Satan character’s line in the film The Devil’s Advocate: “Vanity is my favorite sin.” “Pride” is probably even more accurate. But it all gets at the matter’s heart. We don’t need some hard and fast psychological diagnosis here. Whether Flanagan was most correctly characterized as a “narcissist” or just a self-centered, entitled jerk, the bottom line is that his state was attributable to a philosophical disease, a disordered way of thinking that masquerades under an ideological banner:

Liberalism.

Of course, liberals will blame guns. This is partially because, unlike with Dylann Roof, they can’t blame Confederate flags or 19th-century statues. But it’s also because they’re incapable of putting the blame where it really belongs: the man in the mirror.

Guns don’t kill people. Liberalism does.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Texas Cop Killer Charged: Attended Same University as Sandra Bland

VIDEO: Black Marine GOES off on Black Lives Matter With Message Facebook Is Trying to Silence

Armed Black Panthers to Texas Cops: ‘We Will Start Creeping up on You in Darkness’

Virginia Killer Wrote Disgusting Notes on This Subject [+video]

EDITORS NOTE: You mAY contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Research Findings a Blow to Anti-gun Academics

/in , , , , /by

For decades, anti-gun academics have attacked firearms and firearm owners by conducting “research” that purportedly offers insight into the psyche of gun owners. The dubious findings of these psychology studies typically portray gun owners in a negative light, and are frequently published in uncritical academic journals, and then touted by gun control activists and the mainstream media as legitimate science. However, as a study published this week in the journal Science reveals, the entire field of psychology research warrants severe skepticism; and consequently the field’s frivolous attacks on gun ownership.

Perhaps the most famous item on this topic that has long been heralded by gun control activists is Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage’s, already largely debunked, “Weapons as Aggression-Eliciting Stimuli,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1967. This research popularized the notion of a “weapons effect,” where supposedly the mere presence of a firearm elicits aggression in an individual.

More recently, in 2012, researchers James R. Brockmole and Jessica K. Witt’s article “Action Alters Object Identification: Wielding a Gun Increases The Bias to See Guns,” was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. This paper contended that when individuals are armed with a gun, they are more likely to perceive others as being armed. Gun control advocates were quick to seize on the findings to promote the idea that gun owners are paranoid and prone to react with outsize responses to potential threats.

Some recent psychology studies have attacked gun owners more personally. A 2013 item published in PLS One titled, “Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions,” tried to link gun ownership to racism. The researchers concluded “Symbolic racism was related to having a gun in the home and opposition to gun control policies in US whites.” Anti-gun publications, such as the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, and Salon.com were all-too-willing to parrot the findings.

The study recently published in Science is the result of a four-year effort to improve the accuracy of psychological science. A team of 270 scientists led by University of Virginia Professor Brian Nosek attempted to replicate 98 studies published in some of psychology’s most prestigious journals by conducting 100 attempts at replication. In the end, according to a Science article accompanying the study, “only 39% [of the studies] could be replicated unambiguously.”

In the same article, University of Missouri Psychologist and Editor at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (which published the Berkowitz and LePage study) Lynne Cooper, was quoted as saying of the findings, “Their data are sobering and present a clear challenge to the field.” She went on to note that the journal is working on reforms that will push “authors, editors, and reviewers… to reexamine and recalibrate basic notions about what constitutes good scholarship.”

The scale of the problem could be even greater than the recent study reveals. In an article on the team’s findings, the journal Nature noted, “John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, says that the true replication-failure rate could exceed 80%, even higher than Nosek’s study suggests.

Further, psychology isn’t the only field to suffer these problems. In reporting on this matter, the New York Times noted, “The report appears at a time when the number of retractions of published papers is rising sharply in a wide variety of disciplines. Scientists have pointed to a hypercompetitive culture across science that favors novel, sexy results and provides little incentive for researchers to replicate the findings of others, or for journals to publish studies that fail to find a splashy result.” For better, or worse, results involving guns might accurately be described as “sexy,” and the editors of the nation’s major newspapers appear willing to splash any gun control supporting findings all over their publications.

These findings and the accompanying comments by those in scientific research community encourage a healthy dose of skepticism when examining studies; regardless of how prestigious the journal, or the schools the authors hail from. The problems outlined in this study, along with pre-existing knowledge of the political bias in some portions of academia, should embolden gun rights supporters to further confront the findings of anti-gun studies, while hopefully also causing those who report on these topics to question research findings more critically.

White House, Media Mislead on Crime Trends, Ignore Evidence that Could Save More Lives

/in , , , /by

Tragedy strikes – and the White House immediately shifts into exploitation mode, trying to use raw emotion to push “solutions” that don’t fit the facts. From Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review comes a timely reminder, however, that despite well-publicized crimes, the nation as a whole is getting safer and less violent.

As Mr. Cooke notes, the U.S. firearm homicide rate peaked in 1993 and has fallen dramatically since then. Meanwhile, he adds correctly, gun control has been rolled back and the number of firearms in private hands has increased dramatically. Yet 88% of the public were unaware of favorable crime trends in a May 7, 2013, Pew Research Center Poll. Mr. Cooke attributes this knowledge gap, in part, to the increasing prevalence of “round-the-clock news” and more powerful forms of social media.

It’s a sad commentary that more news and more communication may have somehow led to greater ignorance on important matters of public policy. Your NRA, for its part, has been doing its level best to keep the record straight, including with the reports mentioned here and here.

Yet it’s no accident on gun control advocates’ part that they mislead the public on the true state of affairs. As we’ve mentioned before, a PR firm hired to produce a gun control messaging guide advises, “Always focus on emotional and value-driven arguments about gun violence, not the political food fight in Washington or wonky statistics.” It also counsels advocates to act quickly after a highly-publicized event, while emotions are at their highest. As for the facts, gun control advocates are told, “Don’t wait for them.” Instead, “The clearest course is to advance our core message about preventing gun violence independent of facts that may shift on us over time.”

Once again, sadly, we see that advice in action. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, for example, was using Wednesday’s televised murders in Roanoke to call for universal background checks, even before the suspect had been apprehended and before news emerged that the perpetrator had, in fact, passed a background check to buy the gun he used.

Evil and violence are terrible things, and Americans understandably react with horror and sadness when confronted by them. Yet denying reality and exploiting emotions do not solve problems. Ensuring that peaceable, responsible people have the means to defend themselves is why NRA remains resolute in its mission to defend and protect the Second Amendment.

Rather than promoting “solutions” that offer false promises, like “universal” background checks, policy makers should study what’s working redouble their efforts on those fronts. Dismissing the crime deterring benefits of firearm ownership is neither smart nor compassionate. Empowering good people to defend themselves against violence is, and this defining principle will continue to drive everything that NRA does.

Reduce Firearm Ownership, Say Anti-Gun Researchers

/in , , , /by

A new “study” by David Swedler, trained at the (gun control crusader Michael) Bloomberg School of Public Health, and co-authored by longtime anti-gun researcher David Hemenway, of the Harvard School of Public Health, uses rigged methodology to conclude that law enforcement officers are more likely to be murdered in states that have higher levels of gun ownership. As a result, Swedler and Hemenway say, “States could consider methods for reducing firearm ownership as a way to reduce occupational deaths of LEOs.”

In what may be the understatement of the century, Swedler and Hemenway concede that it’s “possible” that law enforcement officers are more likely to be murdered than other Americans because they have “more frequent encounters with motivated violent offenders.” To say the least. According to the FBI, from 2004 to 2013, 46 percent of officer murderers had prior arrests for crimes of violence, 63 percent had been convicted on prior criminal charges, 50 percent had received probation or parole for prior criminal charges, and 26 percent were under judicial supervision, including probation, parole, and conditional release, at the time of the officers’ murders.

On the other hand, Swedler and Hemenway say, law enforcement officers are able to defend themselves because they carry handguns, an argument that on its face endorses the carrying of handguns by private citizens, which is certainly not what the anti-gunners intended.

In painstaking academic detail, economist John Lott shows that Swedler and Hemenway skewed their study by comparing the number of law enforcement officers murdered with firearms in each state, to the percentage of suicides committed with firearms in each state, pretending that the latter accurately measures each state’s level of gun ownership. Additionally, the anti-gun researchers didn’t extend their comparisons over time to determine whether law enforcement officer murders increased or decreased in each state or did so in comparison to other states.

The anti-gunners also try to measure gun ownership with survey data, which is problematic, because over-reporting takes place in states where people are more supportive of gun ownership, while under-reporting takes place in states where anti-gun viewpoints are more common.

For the obvious reason, Swedler and Hemenway didn’t point out that law enforcement officer murders have been decreasing while ownership of firearms has been increasing dramatically. From 1993 to 2013, the most recent year of data from the FBI and BATFE, the annual number of law enforcement officers feloniously killed with firearms dropped 61 percent, while the American people acquired 140 million new firearms. In 2013, the number of law enforcement officers feloniously killed with firearms was less than half the annual average of the last 20 years.

That, however, is not what you want to point out if you’re jockeying for a cut of the $10 million that President Obama has asked Congress (p. 8) to throw at so-called “gun violence research” or to continue to promote an anti-gun agenda.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the NRA/ILA website.

VIDEO: Liberals and Teaching Children Gun Safety

/in , , , /by

We have turned our children over to idiots! Time for some sanity and gun safety education.

How would President John F. Kennedy deal with the threats facing America today?

/in , , , /by

Given the threat of a nuclear armed Iran, the bloody onslaught of the Islamic State, Russian saber rattling in Ukraine and China’s cyber warfare against U.S. interests perhaps we should remember what President John F. Kennedy said when confronted with such evil:

“We in this country . . . are—by destiny rather than choice—the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility . . . and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of peace on earth, goodwill toward men. That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago, ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain’.”

America has historically been the watchman on the wall! That has all changed under President Obama.

Peace through Strength

President Kennedy once said, “It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.”  Today, JFK would be called a “warmonger” by Democrats for his words.  This idea provided the foundation of Reagan’s policy of “Peace through Strength.”  JFK believed in preserving America’s military might as a force for good, not in destroying it by dismantling its most effective weapon programs.  (Read about Obama’s elimination of programs.)

On Israel

Kennedy said this about America’s Jewish allies:

“Israel was not created in order to disappear—Israel will endure and flourish.  It is the child of hope and the home of the brave.  It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success.  It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.”  (Read more here.)

Contrast this with the rhetoric of Jimmy Carter and Hillary Clinton about the Jewish State, calling it an “occupying force in Palestine.”

JFK and the Second Amendment

In an age when the Islamic State is conducting attacks within the U.S., JFK’s statement, of April 1960, is more prescient now than ever:

“By calling attention to ‘a well regulated militia’, the ‘security’ of the nation, and the right of each citizen ‘to keep and bear arms’, our Founding Fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy.  Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country.  For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important.”

On March 20, 1961, JFK accepted a Life Membership in the National Rifle Association.

JFK and the Role of the Media

In an address given before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, on April 20, 1961, Kennedy said,

“The President of a great democracy such as ours, and the editors of great newspapers such as yours, owe a common obligation to the people: an obligation to present the facts, to present them with candor, and to present them in perspective.”

President Kennedy would be horrified by today’s corrupt journalism that omits stories about the high crimes and misdemeanors of impeachable politicians.  JFK would have been horrified by any president who actively orchestrates the destruction of American dissident opposition and its rights of free speech and press.

It was JFK who inspired me the become a U.S. Army officer. I was a JFK Democrat until the Democrat Party left me and JFK behind.

Florida Campus Carry: An Interview with Rep. Greg Steube

/in , , , /by

Reporter Lee Williams with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune conducted a special TV interview with Rep. Greg Steube on the campus carry issue and the bill (HB-4001) he has re-filed for the 2016 Florida Legislative Session.  The interview link accompanies his blog article.

Excerpt from blog article: 

“During the last legislative session, Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda broke ranks and supported the campus carry bill. The Tallahassee Democrat gave moving testimony about how she used a pistol to stop an assault while she was a college student.”

“Asked if Steube’s bill represents a choice between campus carry and campus rape, Hammer said, ‘I would not argue with that.’

“As a mother who raised three daughters, and as a grandmother raising a granddaughter now in college, I would certainly not argue with that,’ Hammer said. And I would suggest to you, that Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda would not argue with that either.”  

Click Here to watch the TV Interview.

CAMPUS CARRY COMMENTS by Lee Williams

Few bills have been subjected to more myths and misconceptions than Rep. Greg Steube’s campus-carry legislation, which he recently re-introduced.

Opponents act as though the three-term state rep will be handing out Glocks during freshman orientation.

Mike Young and I invited the Sarasota Republican to a special edition of The Gun Writer TV, to explain his reasons for the legislation — his legislative intent.

For Steube, it’s about making sure that concealed-carry licensees are not stripped of their right to self defense, and removing another gun-free zone, which are magnets for trouble.

While his bill has garnered some opposition, it’s received even stronger support.

Marion Hammer, executive director of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida and a past president of the National Rifle Association, strongly supports the campus-carry legislation.

“A gun-free Campus creates a Sanctuary campus and safe haven for rapists and criminals. Don’t you think it’s odd for the League of Women Voters to engage in this anti-women, anti-self-defense movement?” Hammer said.

“Not only are opponents of license holders having guns on campus engaging in a war against the Second Amendment and self-defense, they are engaging in a war against women who need to be able to defend themselves against rape and physical violence on a college campus.

“Women should not be required to surrender their constitutional right of self-defense and they clearly should not left defenseless against a rapist.

“Those who oppose self-defense by women don’t have the facts on their side. When they can’t back up their political views with facts and reality, they resort to emotional rhetoric and predictions of doom,” Hammer said.

The Florida League of Women Voters has said they plan to oppose the bill, again. The League has a history of anti-gun activism, which began in 1990 with “support of banning assault weapons, requiring all dealers to run criminal background checks at gun shows, and opposing laws that grant special protection for the gun industry.

”The League’s activism continues to this day. Last week, Chuck O’Neal, the League’s First Vice-President, filed suit to stop the statewide bear hunt. The League also opposed the removal of the ban on using suppressors for hunting in Florida.

When the ban was lifted, they filed suit against the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and lost. They also opposed campus carry during the last legislative session.

Bloomberg proxy group Everytown for Gun Safety has also voiced their opposition to Campus Carry in Florida last month.

During the last legislative session, Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda broke ranks and supported the campus carry bill. The Tallahassee Democrat gave moving testimony about how she used a pistol to stop an assault while she was a college student.

Asked if Steube’s bill represents a choice between campus carry and campus rape, Hammer said, “I would not argue with that.”

“As a mother who raised three daughters, and as a grandmother raising a granddaughter now in college, I would certainly not argue with that,” Hammer said. “And I would suggest to you, that Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda would not argue with that either.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Seattle Moves Forward with “Gun Violence Tax” on all Guns and Ammo

Response to Tallahassee Democrat Op-ed on ‘Docs v. Glocks’ by Marion P. Hammer

/in , , , /by

Below is Marion P. Hammer’s response in the Tallahassee Democrat to anti-gun editorials attacking the courts on the “Docs v. Glocks” issue.

It’s not about the First Amendment

By Marion P. Hammer,

My View 4:57 p.m. EDT August 4, 2015

The column “Free Speech does not threaten gun ownership” (Aug. 3) by Howard L. Simon of the ACLU is a smokescreen.

Twice now federal judges have ruled that the so-called “Docs & Glocks” law does not violate First Amendment free speech rights of doctors and medical personnel. The law stops pediatricians and other physicians from prying into our personal lives, invading our privacy and straying from issues relating to disease and medicine into questioning children or their parents about gun ownership and guns in the home.

Read, “Free speech is no threat to gun ownership,” by Howard L. Simon posted  in the Tallahassee Democrat on August 4, 2015.

In both rulings, the court made it clear that the law is an appropriate regulation of professional speech. The state has a duty to protect the rights of vulnerable patients against doctors who use their examining rooms to interrogate parents and children about gun ownership for the purpose of delivering their anti-gun political messages.

If a patient answers questions like, “Do you own a gun?” or “Do your children have access to guns in your home?” or “Did you know that having a gun in your home triples your risk of becoming a homicide victim?,” the patient is likely to be given the “Advice to parents” the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends on their website: “Never have a gun in the home. Do not purchase a gun. Remove all guns present in the home.” That is not medical care. That is politics.

That political motivation has nothing to do with the health care and medical treatment we seek for our children and for which we are paying when we enter a doctor’s office.

Read, Federal court says state can enforce ‘doc vs. glocks’ law by Gary Fineout in the Tallahassee Democrat posted on July 29, 2015.

Further, these questions are ethically wrong. Any doctor who asks them is committing a form of unethical conduct known as an “ethical boundary violation.” Any doctor who commits an ethical boundary violation can and should be disciplined. We need to be able to trust our doctors. Doctors who intentionally step over that ethical and legal boundary clearly cannot be trusted.

Other ethical boundaries don’t allow doctors to take advantage of vulnerable elderly patients and question them about property and assets they own, allow them to encourage these elderly patients to make gifts of cars, jewelry or other assets to the doctor, or make the doctor a beneficiary in a will.

Additionally, entering the answers to gun ownership questions into medical records and computer databases is a de facto form of registration of gun owners and is already prohibited by law.

Any pediatrician truly concerned about gun safety is free to hand out gun safety brochures to all parents. The First Amendment smokescreen that is being used to excuse unethical and political abuse of patients privacy rights needs to stop and doctors should stick to medical care.

ABOUT MARION P. HAMMER

Marion P. Hammer is a past president of the National Rifle Association and current executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida.

RELATED ARTICLE: Seattle Approves New Tax on Guns, Ammunition

Plano Texas – Gun Nut Capitol of the World

/in , , , /by

The USA has, by far, the highest per capita gun ownership in the world. Progressives will tell you that this is what makes America the Murder Capitol of Planet Earth.

But we’re not, and in this devastatingly effective Firewall, Bill Whittle shows why the center of Gun Nut Nation is in fact one of the safest places in the world.

RELATED ARTICLE: Seattle Approves New Tax on Guns, Ammunition

Florida: Appeals Court Upholds ‘Docs vs. Glocks’ Gun Law

/in , , /by

In 2011, at the urging of the NRA and Unified Sportsmen of Florida, the Florida Legislature passed  HB-155 by Rep. Jason Brodeur & Sen. Greg Evers  to stop doctors from interrogating patients about gun ownership and entering gun ownership information into medical databases — thereby creating a de facto database of gun owners.

Simply put, physicians interrogating and lecturing parents and children about guns is not about gun safety. It is a political agenda to ban guns.

Parents do not take their children to physicians for a political lecture against the ownership of firearms, they go there for medical care.

The final version of HB-155 passed both the House and Senate with more than two-thirds majorities.

However, numerous national level organizations (known to be anti-gun) filed a lawsuit to stop enforcement of the new law, creating a four year legal battle.  Yesterday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law.

Below is a news report that is reprinted with permission:

APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS DOCTOR-PATIENT GUN LAW

By JIM SAUNDERS
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, July 28, 2015………. For the second time in little more than a year, a federal appeals court Tuesday upheld a controversial Florida law that restricts doctors from asking questions and recording information about patients’ gun ownership.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a victory for the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates and a defeat for medical groups that argued, at least in part, that the law infringed on doctors’ First Amendment rights.

The appeals court last July also upheld the 2011 law but issued a revised ruling Tuesday. After last year’s decision, medical groups continued challenging the law, including asking for a rehearing before the entire Atlanta-based appeals court.

Dubbed the “docs vs. glocks” law, the measure includes a series of restrictions on doctors and other health providers. As an example, it seeks to prevent physicians from entering information about gun ownership into medical records if the physicians know the information is not “relevant” to patients’ medical care or safety or to the safety of other people.

As another example, the law says doctors should refrain from asking about gun ownership by patients or family members unless the doctors believe in “good faith” that the information is relevant to medical care or safety. Also, the law seeks to prevent doctors from discriminating against patients or “harassing” them because of owning firearms.

A federal district judge in 2012 sided with opponents of the law and issued an injunction against it. But the appeals court last July and again Tuesday overturned the injunction.

“The purpose of the act, as we read it, is not to protect patient privacy by shielding patients from any and all discussion about firearms with their physicians; the act merely requires physicians to refrain from broaching a concededly sensitive topic when they lack any good-faith belief that such information is relevant to the medical care or safety of their patients or others,” said the majority opinion, written by Judge Gerald Tjoflat and joined by Judge L. Scott Coogler.

But Judge Charles Wilson wrote a lengthy dissent arguing that the law violates the First Amendment rights of physicians.

“Simply put, the act is a gag order that prevents doctors from even asking the first question in a conversation about firearms,” Wilson wrote. “The act prohibits or significantly chills doctors from expressing their views and providing information to patients about one topic and one topic only, firearms.”

The Republican-dominated Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott approved the law after hearing accounts of doctors unnecessarily asking questions about gun ownership or even refusing to continue providing care if such questions were not answered.

In Tuesday’s majority opinion, Tjoflat repeatedly pointed to instances in which doctors can continue justify asking about firearms, such as in the case of a patient considered at risk of suicide.

“Thus, a physician may make inquiries as to the firearms-ownership status of any or all patients, so long as he or she does so with the good-faith belief — based on the specifics of the patient’s case — that the inquiry is relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety, or the safety of others,” the majority opinion said. “If, for example, the physician seeks firearm information to suit a personal agenda unrelated to medical care or safety, he or she would not be making a ‘good-faith’ inquiry, and so the act plainly directs him to refrain from inquiring.”

But Wilson’s dissent raised questions about whether the law stemmed from anecdotal incidents. He also argued that doctors should have the right to ask questions about guns in addressing the well-being of patients.

“There is nothing to suggest that the doctors’ inquiries or messages regarding firearms were not genuinely believed to be in the patients’ best medical interest when given,” Wilson wrote. “But there is evidence in the legislative history to suggest that the harassment provision (of the law) is designed to prevent these conversations from taking place in the future. That is certainly the result it will achieve. Doctors will largely cease inquiring into and counseling on the topic of firearms, lest they be accused of crossing the line between providing life-saving preventive medical information and promoting an anti-firearm political agenda.”

–END–
7/28/2015

© 2015 The News Service of Florida. All rights reserved. Posting or forwarding this material without permission is prohibited. You can view the Terms of Use on our website. Independent and Indispensable http://www.newsserviceflorida.com