Presidential Candidates, Members of Congress, and Governors Call for Military Right-to-Carry

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Following the murder of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy sailor by a terrorist in Chattanooga, presidential candidates, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), businessman Donald Trump, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker (R), and former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), have called for a change in federal law to allow stateside military personnel to carry firearms for protection. In addition, the governors of Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas have directed the adjutants general of their National Guards to authorize Guardsmen to be armed in their states.

Before the attack in Chattanooga, congressional Armed Services Committee Chairmen Sen. John McCain and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) had been planning to include legislation in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act to clarify an Army post commander’s authority to allow the carrying of personal firearms for protection. Now, numerous other senators and representatives have stated their support for legislation to allow military personnel to be armed for protection of themselves and their fellow troops here at home.

The outpouring of support for allowing military personnel to protect themselves is more than justified by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which included an attack upon the Pentagon, and events related to other military facilities thereafter.  In 2009, a terrorist killed 12 military personnel and one civilian, and wounded 30 others on Fort Hood, Texas. That same year, another attack occurred upon a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, resulting in the death of one soldier and the wounding of another. Over the next two years, law enforcement authorities foiled planned attacks upon military facilities in Baltimore and Seattle. In 2013, 12 people were killed and four were wounded in an attack upon the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard. And only eight months ago, the FBI issued a warning that ISIS was recruiting extremists to attack our military personnel here at home.

Military personnel are effectively prohibited from carrying personal firearms for protection by a Department of Defense Directive of 2011, which states:

Arming DoD personnel with firearms shall be limited and controlled. Qualified personnel shall be armed when required for assigned duties and there is reasonable expectation that DoD installations, property, or personnel lives or DoD assets will be jeopardized if personnel are not armed…

That directive traces back to another Directive from the early 1990s, which contains similar language.

EDITORS NOTE: We encourage readers to contact their U.S. senators and representatives, to voice their strong support for legislation to allow our military personnel to carry firearms for their protection.

Social Security Administration Stripping Gun Rights of Millions of Seniors

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As the L.A. Times reported this morning, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is currently developing a program to strip the Second Amendment Rights of over four million Americans currently receiving SSA benefits through a “representative payee.”  Not only would this amount to the largest gun grab in American history, but according to the published report, would take place without any due process protections for recipients, amounting to a nullification of Second Amendment rights for millions of Americans who don’t pose a threat to themselves or anyone else.

This new program appears to have been instigated by the SSA in response to a memorandum issued by Obama in January of 2013 which directed all federal agency executives to “improve the availability of records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).” This memorandum required all agency heads to submit to the Department of Justice (DOJ) a plan for “sharing all relevant Federal records” for submission to the NICS.

Evidently, Obama’s SSA bureaucrats read “all relevant Federal records” to mean all Social Security recipients who have a “representative payee” assigned to their accounts to help them manage their payments and receipts. Obviously, many individuals swept up in this egregious case of bureaucratic over-reach would not otherwise be prohibited from owning, possessing, or acquiring firearms under federal law.

The federal prohibitions against acquiring or possessing firearms apply to those “adjudicated as a mental defective,” among others. The term “adjudication,” however, refers to a determination made after a judicial-type process that includes various due process protections.  In no case does the federal law describe or contemplate the type of prohibition by bureaucratic fiat exercised by the SSA in developing its guidelines for those with “representative payees” assigned to their accounts.

But SSA is not alone in this directive. The memorandum names several agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, and “such other agencies or offices as the Chair may designate.” Potentially, bureaucrats in all these agencies could be working hard to identify and forward “all relevant Federal records,” to the NICS pursuant to the Obama mandate.

In total, this program could easily grow to include many more millions of Americans who have any connection to the Federal government through the various agencies named in the memorandum.

Unfortunately, this fits a pattern of abuse within the Obama Administration which is clearly hell-bent on destroying the Second Amendment in any way possible. As we reported previously (here and here), the Veterans Administration (VA) has already implemented a similar program to designate veterans as “prohibited persons”  when they have a fiduciary assigned to administer their VA benefits.  Like the SSA program described above, the VA procedures are also devoid of significant due process protections or any requirement that the beneficiary be found a danger to self or others. According to the L.A Times article, 177,000 vets have been swept into NICS with the bureaucratic short-cut.

The implications of this policy are too far reaching to fathom at present. Social Security is one of the more prolific and relied upon Federal programs in American history. That Obama’s directive could so easily be implemented within the SSA suggests that bureaucrats could effectively cloak such a program in any agency within the growing leviathan that is the federal government.

EDITORS NOTE: Readers who may wish to call or write their members of congress may do so using the Congressional switchboard at 202-225-3121 or send an email to their lawmaker by using the NRA-ILA “Write Your Representatives” tool.

Florida Governor Rick Scott Takes Action to Expedite Concealed Weapons Licenses for Military

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THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA — Alarmed by a shooting rampage in Tennessee that killed four Marines and a sailor, Gov. Rick Scott on Saturday issued an executive order designed to increase protections for members of the Florida National Guard.

Scott directed Adjutant Gen. Michael Calhoun to temporarily move National Guard members from six “storefront” recruitment centers to armories. Also, he ordered Calhoun to work with local law-enforcement agencies to arrange regular security checks of armories and said the state will expedite processing of new concealed-weapons licenses for members of the National Guard.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that all of our National Guard members are safe,” Scott, who was scheduled to hold a late-afternoon news conference in West Palm Beach, said during a CNN interview.

The executive order said Guard members will be moved from the recruitment centers to armories until Calhoun “can fully evaluate and make recommendations for improving the security” of the centers. It said possible improvements could include installing bulletproof glass and enhancing video-surveillance equipment.

The move to expedite new concealed-weapons licenses would apply to Guard members who do not have such permits. Scott said during the CNN interview that the move is designed for “personal protection when they are not on duty.”

Scott issued the executive order two days after 24-year-old Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire at a military-recruiting center and a Navy Reserve facility in Chattanooga, Tenn. Abdulazeez, whose name has been spelled in different ways by news organizations, killed four Marines, and a Navy petty officer died early Saturday of wounds, according to the Washington Post.

The shooting spree has spurred investigations into whether Abdulazeez, who also died, had links to terrorist organizations. In a Twitter post Saturday, Florida House Speaker Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, said he supported Scott’s executive order to “help protect our military from acts of terror.”

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, whose agency administers concealed-weapons licenses, issued a statement that said he is “fully committed to supporting our military members, and we look forward to expediting their concealed-weapon license applications.”

Background Check Bill Seeks to Create Backdoor Gun Prohibition

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Demonstrating why he’s rated an “F” by the NRA, anti-gun Representative James Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Tuesday introduced a bill that would in effect vastly expand federal prohibited person categories. Worse, he is exploiting a recent tragedy and misinformation reported in the media to do so.

The bill, H.R. 3051, seeks to repeal a critical safety valve in federal law that allows for a firearm transfer to proceed three business days after a NICS check is initiated, provided “the system has not notified the [FFL] that the receipt of a firearm by [the buyer or transferee] would [violate federal law.]” This provision ensures that Americans’ rights to acquire firearms are not arbitrarily denied because of bureaucratic delays, inefficiencies, or mistakes in identity.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was designed to be just that: instant. Recognizing, however, that some determinations might require additional research to resolve authoritatively, the law states that if an immediate answer is not available, the transfer must be put on hold for three business days to give the FBI more time to research the matter.

After the three days, the FFL has the option to release the firearm to the buyer or transferee, so long as the FFL has no other reason to believe the person is prohibited from possessing it. The FBI will then continue trying to resolve the case for up to 90 days. If it turns out the recipient is determined to be prohibited, the FBI queries the dealer to see if the firearm was transferred. If so, the FBI notifies the BATFE, so appropriate action can be taken (for example, confiscation of the firearm and prosecution of the illegal possessor, if appropriate).

The safety valve provided by the three-day provision is necessary for several reasons. First, and most obviously, mistakes happen. Identities can be confused or records can be incomplete (for example, an arrest record could have been followed by dismissal of the charges or an acquittal at trial). Second, it encourages the FBI to administer the system quickly and efficiently. Third, it preserves a critical aspect of America’s constitutional system, the due process principle that the government cannot arbitrarily deprive a person of his or her rights without making its case against that person.

According the FBI’s most recent NICS operations report, 9% of FBI NICS checks in 2014 were delayed “for additional review.” The report does not go on to detail how many of those delays extended beyond three days. Nevertheless, based on the total number of NICS check the FBI ran in 2014, these delays affected some 743,102 people.

Meanwhile, the delays resulted in only 2,511 actions for firearm retrievals (or three-tenths of one percent of total delays). Thus, in over 99.6% of delayed cases, the delay was less than three days, the FBI could not substantiate the person was prohibited, or the FFL did not transfer the firearm.  That hardly seems to indicate a public safety crisis demanding congressional intervention. This is especially so, because where prohibitions are substantiated after firearms are transferred following the three day window, law enforcement authorities already have the tools to act under current law.

None of this matters to Rep. Clyburn, of course, who is hoping the recent tragedy in South Carolina will give his legislation the momentum it needs to succeed. Clyburn claimed in his press release announcing the bill that “[u]nder current law, the Charleston shooter should have been barred from purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer.” That assertion is by no means clear, with media outlets now reporting that the suspect was arrested for a misdemeanor, not a felony, as originally reported. A single misdemeanor arrest, without more, is not cause for a denial under federal law (on the other hand, if the suspect had been formally charged with a felony, he would have been federally prohibited from buying a gun).

Should Clyburn’s bill become law, people who are unjustly subjected to NICS delays for reasons beyond their control would, in effect, be prohibited from exercising their rights to obtain firearms from dealers. In essence, every extended delay would become an extra-legal firearm prohibition. The FBI could affect denials without having to substantiate them, as they must under current law. Meanwhile, determined criminals can always obtain firearms illegally to carry out their plans.

Piling on the bandwagon, as usual, is Bloomberg’s front group, Moms Demand Action, who are now demanding that large firearm retailers like Cabela’s “voluntarily” adopt the restrictions Clyburn hopes to make law. As with Clyburn, they are insisting that the Charleston suspect was a prohibited purchaser at the time he obtained his firearm, although they have no legal basis for this claim. As with Clyburn, they also believe Americans should be presumed legally ineligible to possess firearms, even where the government lacks substantiation.

All of this just goes to show what we all already know. Gun control advocates are shameless in their willingness to exploit tragedy to achieve their agenda. We urge you to contact your Congressional representative and urge him or her to oppose H.R. 3051.

EDITORS NOTE: Readers may contact your U.S. Representative at 202-224-3121 or use the “Write Your Lawmakers“ tool.

Florida Supreme Court Opinion is Anti-Self-Defense

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Judicial activism is alive and flourishing on the Florida Supreme Court.  The victims of this activism is the Second Amendment and citizens of the Sunshine State’s fundamental right of self-defense.

On Thursday, July 9, 2015, liberals on the Florida Supreme Court issued an opinion in a self-defense case that clearly has a chilling effect on the constitutional right of self-defense and the immunity from prosecution for exercising self-defense provided by the Legislature in the “Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground” law.  The presumption of innocence until proven guilty has been turned on its head.

Rather than follow the intent of the Legislature, the Court chose to rewrite the law to achieve its own policy goals.

In the Opinion Justice Pariente, who was joined by Justices Labarga, Quince, Perry and Lewis, defiantly said:

“We conclude that placing the burden of proof on the defendant to establish entitlement to Stand Your Ground immunity by a preponderance of the evidence at the pretrial evidentiary hearing, rather than on the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant’s use of force was not justified, is consistent with this Court’s precedent and gives effect to the legislative intent.”

In a dissenting opinion in which Justice Ricky Poltson concurred, Justice Charles Canady correctly wrote:

“By imposing the burden of proof on the defendant at the pretrial evidentiary hearing, the majority substantially curtails the benefit of the immunity from trial conferred by the Legislature under the Stand Your Ground law.”

The entire majority opinion and the dissenting opinion is here:

“By imposing the burden of proof on the defendant at the pretrial evidentiary hearing, the majority substantially curtails the benefit of the immunity from trial conferred by the Legislature under the Stand Your Ground law.”

The entire majority opinion and the dissenting opinion is here:

http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2015/sc13-2312.pdf

Below is a link to an example of how others see this opinion:

Here’s What the Legislature Should Do After Bretherick by Greg Newburn, FAMM State Policy Director posted to FAMM.org on July 10, 2015

New Gun Ownership Study is ‘bunkum — pure fiction’

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The NRA-ILA in an email writes, “Once again we owe thanks to reporter Lee Williams, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, for his willingness to expose the agenda of those who are the enemies of Freedom and the Second Amendment.  On the day before Independence Day — July 4th, he released an article exposing the agenda of those who conspire against the Second Amendment.”

Below is the column by Williams which shows a recent study is “bunkum – pure fiction.”

Study: Gun control groups should undermine our ‘gun culture’ to reduce gun ownership

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Lee Williams  Sarasota herald-Tribune

There’s a dangerous scientific study making the rounds, even some pro-gun websites have featured it, titled “Gun ownership and social gun culture.”

It’s bunkum — pure fiction.

It’s an insidious piece of work, written by four academics who used firearm policy information from the Brady Center and the CDC’s Injury Prevention and Control Center — two groups well known for their opposition to the Second Amendment.

The gist of the study appears to say that since gun control supporters’ long term goal is to reduce gun ownership, they ought to consider not only campaigning for gun control laws that make it more difficult to acquire or possess guns — background checks, gun registration, gun owners licensing, etc. — but focusing on policies that could undermine the social aspects of gun ownership.

To be clear, the authors say gun control groups need to undermine our “gun culture.”

The study does not describe these social aspects in much detail, but you can guarantee they mean everything from hunting, to target shooting competitions and clubs, to marksmanship training classes and gun shows.

This is not a new approach.

Since the 1980s, gun control groups have realized that once a person becomes part of the gun culture, they’re likely to become a single-issue voter focused on protecting the right to keep and bear arms.

This is why anti-gun activist groups are now pushing the lie that — even though Americans have been buying guns in unprecedented numbers — gun ownership is declining.

They hope other people will essentially say, “Well, if no one is owning guns, I guess I don’t need to own guns either, or fret about additional restrictions.”

This new tact coincides with an admission by gun control supporters that pushing for extreme restrictions — handgun bans of the 1970s, “Assault Weapon” bans of the 1980s, “cop killer” bullet legislation of the 1990s, and more recent magazine restrictions — has failed.

None of these tactics worked.  In the 1970s, when they claimed more handguns would mean more crime, Americans tripled the number of handgunsthey owned in little more than a generation.

In the 1980s, gun control supporters started trying to stop states from adopting Right-to-Carry laws. But Florida ignored them, adopting its law in 1987, 32 states followed Florida’s lead, and now nearly every state has right-to-carry legislation, and the nation’s murder rate is
at an all-time low.

In 2012, the administration and its gun control supporters in Congress tried to convince Americans that support for gun control was overwhelming, and no further debate over the subject was necessary. But Americans responded by buying guns in unprecedented numbers, and
Congress rejected the President’s agenda.

The Pew Center reported in December 2014 that among nearly all demographic groups, support for gun ownership is rising and support for gun control is decreasing. Gallup showed that self-defense is the primary reason why American own guns.

The ultimate goal of the study is obvious given its use of the anti-gun Brady Campaign’s scorecard to assess the gun ownership culture in the states.

The Brady Campaign gives most states school grades of “F” or “D,” because they don’t have the myriad of gun control laws that Brady wants.

Finally, I should point out that in the 1990s, several anti-gun groups tried to funnel taxpayer money to their like-minded pals in academia — an effort thwarted by Congress.

Maybe now the four academics responsible for this little study are hoping to carve themselves a lucrative niche in the anti-gun research cottage industry.

Defenseless Women are Kidnapped, Raped and Murdered

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There are those who believe that women should be defenseless. A woman defending herself creates discord and may lead to them fighting back when kidnapped, raped and threatened with death.

There are those who believe in a woman’s right to choose, so long as they do not choose to defend themselves from predators.

Nia Sanchez, Miss USA 2014, ruffled a few feminist’s feathers after answering a question regarding rape on college campuses. Angry viewers took to Twitter to express their outrage that Miss Nevada would actually suggest women learn self-defense to help fend off an attacker. Sanchez, a master at self-defense, said:

I think more awareness is very important so women can learn how to protect themselves. Myself, as a fourth-degree black belt, I learned from a young age that you need to be confident and be able to defend yourself. And I think that’s something that we should start to really implement for a lot of women.

Most of the outrage that rang through the Twitterverse came down to the argument, “We don’t need to teach women to defend themselves, we need to teach men not to rape.”

How about we do both? Perhaps we should teach our children to respect both sexes equally?

In my column “Mainstream: Girls with Guns in America” Iain Harrison, Editor of RECOIL Magazine wrote: Guns are no longer something icky you have to keep secret from your neighbors. They’re mainstream.

Harrison writes, “During this past year we gun owners as a community have weathered one of the most serious threats to our proud heritage and way of life since the early ’90s. And we came out on top. Despite throwing enormous amounts of money and influence into passing firearms laws that would have done nothing apart from inconvenience the law-abiding, for the most part anti-gun politicians came away with the square root of bugger all to show for it.”

“The reasons for that are numerous, but one key difference between the Clinton era and the landscape today is that, in most of the nation, guns are no longer something icky you have to keep secret from your neighbors. They’re mainstream. When something becomes mainstream, it’s much harder to demonize,” notes Harrison.

I believe one of the major reasons gun ownership has become mainstream is because of American women. More women are buying, shooting and training to defend themselves with firearms. RECOIL Magazine has an entire section of their website titled “Girls with Guns“. If you Google the words “girls with guns” you will get 155 million links.

Is it not the unalienable right of a woman to choose to defend herself?

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote:

“I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.”

Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. The simple lie is guns are icky. The complex truth is men and women are buying guns is large numbers and guns are now mainstream.

RELATED STORIES:

GUNS ON THE RISE: Federal Government’s Automated Weapon Registration System Swamped by Surge in Registration and Transfer of National Firearms Act Covered Weapons

Girls Just Wanna Have Guns: Gun Permits for Indiana Women Up 42%

President Obama Bans the use of Guns in all Films, Television Shows and Video Games

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After the tragic shooting at an Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina President Obama has issued an Executive Order to ban the use of guns in all Hollywood films, television shows and video games. The White House issued the following statement:

“It is time to eliminated the root cause of guns violence in America. It is time to make Hollywood a ‘gun free zone’. It is for the greater good of the American people that families and our children are not exposed to wanton gun violence in film, on television and in video games.

It is the proper role of government to deny gun use by Hollywood actors, screen writers, directors and producers for the welfare of all.

It is time for the Terminator to be terminated.”

The White House is considering whether to extend its ban on the use of guns to the music industry.

Michael Bloomberg, founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, supported the President’s decision stating, “I support President Obama’s efforts to remove guns from all media. I am frustrated by Hollywood producing more films involving gun violence, which works against efforts by organizations such as Mayors Against Illegal Guns. All guns in the media should be considered illegal and anyone using one must be tried by the Department of Justice to the full extent of the law. Additionally, from this point on Bloomberg will no longer use the word gun in any of our publications. The word gun, phrases such as gun violence and shooting will be stricken from our style manuals.”

The American Screen Writers Association and the ACLU issued a statement warning against this unprecedented violation of Hollywood’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms while on camera. The ACLU statement warned, “We are on a very slippery slope when anyone denies the right of screen writers to use guns in scripts and the right of actors to keep and bear arms while on screen. President Obama is clearly violating the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We plan on initiating a lawsuit against this illegal Executive Order. We hope that the Ninth District takes up our lawsuit and provides a stay order on President Obama’s illegal action.”

The Screen Actors Guild is concerned about the loss of jobs due to President Obama’s Executive Order. Screen Actor’s Guild President Ken Howard warned, “This Executive Order will cause a collapse of the film industry and massive loss of jobs. Those actors and actresses, film crews and support persons who provide the silver screen audience with great action films, such as Die Hard, The Expendables, Lethal Weapon, The Godfather, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, James Bond and Fast and Furious to name a few, will now find themselves out of work. This will devastate the film industry and harm our union workers.”

The Walt Disney Company, owners of the Star Wars franchise, has petitioned President Obama to exempt light sabers, Jedi mind control and the force from the ban.

The National Rifle Association in a press release stated:

All Hollywood actors, screen writers, directors and producers must be immediately subject to background checks. Due to the criminal backgrounds and drug abuse by many in Hollywood, it is imperative that gun use be tightly controlled in Hollywood.

We support President Obama in his efforts to control violence in the media.

The NRA will be partnering with the President and Democratic members of Congress to provide over-site during the implementation of his Executive Order banning all use of guns in the media. NRA members may now report violations on a White House hotline 800- Gun Free or via Twitter #GunFreeHollywood.

The NRA thanks President Obama for making Hollywood a gun free zone.

Hillary Clinton issued the following statement:

No comment!

EDITORS NOTE: This column is political satire. It is appropriate using satire to turn the tables on those wanting to implement gun control on law abiding citizens but not special interest groups such as Hollywood. Please leave a comment if you wish.

Our thoughts and prayers to the Christian martyrs who died and their families in Charleston. Christianity is under attack in America. This is a sad and bloody example of that persecution.

Anti-Gun Politicians Get Woman Killed in New Jersey

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Carol Bowne

Carol Bowne / Courier-Post

Add Carol Bowne to the ever-lengthening list of people who have been killed because gun control supporters in elected office prohibited them from defending themselves.

In the most direct sense, Bowne, a resident of Berlin Township, New Jersey, was murdered, on June 3, by a violent ex-con she had prior reason to fear. But in a broader sense, anti-gun politicians also bear responsibility for Bowne’s avoidable death. It is they who forced her to choose between obtaining a handgun quickly and carrying it with her for protection — at risk of imprisonment, fines or worse at the hands of New Jersey’s law enforcement authorities and courts — or subordinating her self-preservation instincts to the dictates of those same politicians — at risk of death at the hands of her eventual killer.

To the eternal regret of those of us whose memory of this sickening story will not be erased by the banal arguments gun control supporters raise, as they try to escape the blame they very much deserve, Bowne, as a law-abiding citizen, paid the ultimate price.  In short, New Jersey’s extreme gun control laws provided Bowne’s murderer with exactly what he needed to perpetrate this horrific crime — a defenseless victim.

Bowne applied with her local police department for a permit to merely purchase a handgun — a permit to carry a handgun being out of the question in New Jersey — and waited. By law, state officials were required to process her application within 30 days.

They didn’t. As Charles C. W. Cooke noted this week, in Jersey, they rarely do. “Instead, would-be gun owners report waiting for three, four, six, and even nine months for permission to exercise what the Second Amendment makes clear is an unalienable individual right,” Cooke said.

In short, New Jersey’s extreme gun control laws provided Bowne’s murderer with exactly what he needed to perpetrate this horrific crime — a defenseless victim.   Much taller and heavier than Bowne, her assassin stabbed the defenseless Bowne with a knife in her driveway, repeatedly, twice walking away and returning to stab her again, then kicked her after she fell.

Someone of low moral caliber might ask “what difference does it make?” that the killer used a knife instead of a gun. But anyone who has to ask the question is incapable of understanding the answer. It is, simply, that gun control laws do not disarm murderers, they disarm their victims.

Because they deserve much of the blame for Bowne’s death, gun control supporters — if there are any who have a shred of decency and any sense of shame — should remain silent, while the sane among us go about the long overdue business of repealing New Jersey’s despicable gun control laws and any like them in other states. Several legislators in New Jersey have said they will take the very small — but important — step to introduce legislation requiring that handgun permit applications be expedited for women in Carol Bowne’s situation. But the far better solution is clearly to scrap the state’s absurd gun control laws altogether.Someone of low moral caliber might ask “what difference does it make?” that the killer used a knife instead of a gun. But anyone who has to ask the question is incapable of understanding the answer. It is, simply, that gun control laws do not disarm murderers, they disarm their victims.

Gun control supporters will not remain silent, of course. They will continue to press for more of the same restrictions that got Carol Bowne killed, and worse. One might ask “why,” but at some point, it doesn’t matter why gun control supporters do what they do — whether it is because of ignorance, a desire to control others, or a feeling of inferiority to, and disdain for, people willing and able to protect themselves. What matters is what they do, and what they do gets people killed.

Henceforth, let the gravest of risks be to the political careers of those who impose laws devoid of logic and contrary to the founding documents of this great country which jeopardize the lives of the people they are supposed to serve. On Election Day, in New Jersey and elsewhere, let’s remember Carol Bowne’s and that in all cases, elections truly do have consequences.

Vince Vaughn Is Actually Right about “Gun Free” Zones

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Vince Vaughn, Ron Paul supporter and star of the forthcoming second season of True Detective, has been making waves with his comments on Edward Snowden and guns in a wide-ranging interview with GQ magazine.

One section that has gun control activists fulminating (and many libertarians swooning) is his comments on gun rights and, especially, on guns in schools:

I support people having a gun in public full stop, not just in your home. … All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones.

Take mass shootings. They’ve only happened in places that don’t allow guns. These people are sick in the head and are going to kill innocent people. They are looking to slaughter defenseless human beings. They do not want confrontation.

In all of our schools it is illegal to have guns on campus, so again and again these guys go and shoot up these f***ing schools because they know there are no guns there. They are monsters killing six-year-olds. …

Of course [guns should be allowed in schools]. You think the politicians that run my country and your country don’t have guns in the schools their kids go to? They do. And we should be allowed the same rights.

We usually shouldn’t pay any notice when celebrities talk about politics, for obvious reasons, but this is worth the attention because Vaughn actually has a point about “gun free” zones.

The Independence Institute’s David Kopel has pointed out that just saying that an area is “gun free” doesn’t actually make it so. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, Kopel wrote,

The bucolic campus of Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va., would seem to have little in common with the Trolley Square shopping mall in Salt Lake City. Yet both share an important characteristic, common to the site of almost every other notorious mass murder in recent years: They are “gun-free zones.” …

In Virginia, universities aren’t “gun-free zones” by statute, but college officials are allowed to impose anti-gun rules. The result is that mass murderers know where they can commit their crimes.

Private property owners also have the right to prohibit lawful gun possession. And some shopping malls have adopted anti-gun rules. Trolley Square was one, as announced by an unequivocal sign, “No weapons allowed on Trolley Square property.”

In February of this year, a young man walked past the sign prohibiting him from carrying a gun on the premises and began shooting people who moments earlier were leisurely shopping at Trolley Square. He killed five.

Fortunately, someone else – off-duty Ogden, Utah, police officer Kenneth Hammond – also did not comply with the mall’s rules. … He bought time for the local police to respond, while stopping the gunman from hunting down other victims.

At Virginia Tech’s sprawling campus in southwestern Va., the local police arrived at the engineering building a few minutes after the start of the murder spree… Cho committed suicide when he realized he’d soon be confronted by the police. But by then, 30 people had been murdered.

Kopel isn’t anti-gun free zones, however. Rather, he’s anti-fake gun free zones. On the Free Thoughts podcast, he argues, “Gun free zones I think are fine — as long they really exist.”

In Colorado, like most of the country, we have a fair process for law-abiding adults to get a permit to carry a handgun for protection. But the state statute says, “What about government buildings?”

And the answer is, if a government building wants to ban licensed carry in there, they can. They can have a gun free zone. They just have to make it real. Which means, at every public entrance, you have metal detectors, and you have armed guards.

That will work. Once you’re inside the Department of Motor Vehicles, you know that nobody is going to be carrying a gun because we’vechecked to make sure about that.

What is harmful — drastically harmful — is the pretend gun free zone, where you put up a sign that says “no guns allowed.” The only people who will obey that are the law-abiding people. And it means for the criminal you’ve got a great opportunity of unarmed victims.

Real gun free zones are fine; guns really shouldn’t be allowed some places. But pretend gun free zones are a dangerous illusion. Sometimes even Hollywood celebrities can see that.

Check out the rest of the podcast below and Vaughn’s GQ interview here.

Anything Peaceful

Anything Peaceful is FEE’s new online ideas marketplace, hosting original and aggregate content from across the Web.

Here It Comes: Obama’s Final Assault on the Second Amendment

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The Justice department is moving forward with a flurry of new rules. according to list of rules the agency has proposed to enact before the end of the Obama administration.

HERE IT COMES FOLKS!

The Hill Reports:

The regulations range from new restrictions on high-powered pistols to gun storage requirements. Chief among them is a renewed effort to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally unstable or have been convicted of domestic abuse.

Gun safety advocates have been calling for such reforms since the Sandy Hook school shooting nearly three years ago in Newtown, Conn. They say keeping guns away from dangerous people is of primary importance.

FULL STORY HERE:

Administration preps new gun regulations | TheHill

Blurred Lines: When Guns Become Speech by JEFFREY A. TUCKER

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Suing the government is always risky. It’s mostly unsuccessful. But the inventor of the first 3-D-printed gun (“The Liberator”) is forging ahead anyway. He has filed suit against the U.S. Department of State for forcing him to take down his digital files from the Internet.

The New York Times quoted several constitutional attorneys who believe that Wilson case is non-trivial and could possibly be decided in his favor. First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams told the Times: “On the face of it, it seems to me like a serious claim.”

The grounds he has chosen are interesting and compelling. He says that by forcing his data offline, the government violated his free speech rights. He did nothing but post a file type with digital content, essentially just a series of 1s and 0s

The State Department scrambled to find some old regulation to use to force it down. They scrounged up Cold War-era regulations concerning “International Traffic in Arms” — legislation designed to control the flow of arms from the U.S. to Soviet-bloc territories in Eastern Europe.

But Wilson never trafficked in guns. He didn’t even manufacture any with an attempt to market them, much less transport them across national borders. He merely shared an idea through the medium that is the primary vehicle for the exercise of speech in our time. How can a law designed to prevent guns exports pertain to the sharing of an idea?

What is the difference between a real gun and a digital model of a gun? Guns are physical, weighty, take up space, and subject to the constraints of scarcity. To be transported, they have to be packed and shipped.

But what if you can take the model for printing a gun and render it in an infinitely malleable, portable, reproducible, weightless file that can shared like an email? Anyone who obtains that file can print a functioning gun.

Under those conditions, a gun leaves the physical world to become part of the realm of ideas. To invent it, change it, and share it is no different from inventing, changing, and sharing any other idea. It is a human right. And that is precisely what the First Amendment seeks to protect. For any government to forbid it is to muzzle the freedom to think and to speak.

Wilson publicly posted his computer-aided design (CAD) files on a distributed network. He did nothing more. It’s a form of speech. But the government said no. Over the following two years, Wilson tried his best to comply with the regulations to which the government claimed he was subject, but never did receive a green light.

Meanwhile, this being the Internet, his CAD files migrated to a thousand other places online. Wilson very cleverly assured that this would happen by releasing his file with a compelling video that garnered massive media attention. Millions of downloads took place. Just days after the files had been posted, crowd-sourced improvements to his 3-D gun were all over the Internet, and YouTube was hosting video tutorials in how to print and assemble them.

The case really pushes us to think about the implications of government regulation in the digital age.

Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen the acceleration of a great migration of the physical world to the digital world. It began with messaging, moved to images, and then onward to sound files and movies.

With 3-D printing, potentially any object can be digitized and ported peer-to-peer anywhere in the world, making a mockery of production controls, consumer regulations, trade barriers, patents, taxes, and a thousand other government restrictions. With the migration of money from physical to digital, and from national to global, as with Bitcoin, the same new reality presents itself.

The more this revolution progresses, the more we become aware of just how outmoded our systems of government control really are. They were created in an analog age where all sources of economic value seemed to be instantiated exclusively into scarce, physical goods. When government sought to control them, they were really controlling physical things and persons. This is what government does well, by use of its monopoly of coercive control in a particular geography. Government is a uniquely analog institution.

But what happens in a digital age when the physical inhabits a digital space in which “things” become infinitely portable (regardless of borders), infinitely malleable (regardless of regulations), and essentially indestructible (regardless of how much coercion is used)?

Government experiences a loss of control. It becomes ineffective, outmoded, and obsolete. Inner contradictions begin to reveal themselves.

In a digital world, government attempts to control really amount to an intervention in fundamental civil liberties such as speech that nearly everyone believes must be protected.

The American left — which has long believed it could heavily regulate the “economy,” while leaving civil liberties intact — will have trouble making sense of this one. The American right — with its belief that free enterprise can live happily alongside censorship — faces a similar cognitive dissonance.

What’s beautiful in this case is that Cody Wilson knew of this tension all along, and his gun was designed to underscore the point: If you try to control the Internet, you are really attempting to control people in ways that are unconscionable. He is a student of the libertarian tradition, and his passions are fundamentally with the cause of human liberty. He is not a “gun nut” so much as a “human rights nut”; now he can fairly be said to be a free speech nut. Matters are playing out exactly as he had hoped.

Regulating in the world was much easier when we are talking about land, heavy machinery, and other things that take up space. It all comes down to who has the most manpower and firepower.

But when the truly valuable things in the world cross that great divide between material and merely intellectual, the balance of power shifts too. The cause of freedom has the advantage. This is the single most salient feature of the politics and economics of our time.

I truly hope that Wilson wins his case. But even if he loses, he has made his point: Either we shut down the progress of the world toward ever more sharing of information, or we stop trying to impose atavistic forms of coercion and control.

Meanwhile, I just Googled for CAD files of printable guns. In a fraction of second, 2,000 different models filled my screen. In some ways, Wilson has already won. You can’t stop the signal.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.

Michael Moore and the 2nd Amendment by B.K. MARCUS

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Would the left support gun rights over police monopolies? 

In the wake of the Baltimore riots and the latest charges of police violence against unarmed suspects, Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore has called for disarming American cops, saying in his Twitter feed, “We have a 1/4 billion 2nd amendment guns in our homes 4 protection. We’ll survive til the right cops r hired.”

Is that an implicit endorsement of private individuals’ right to armed self-defense?

Probably not.

Moore, who became the darling of the gun-control movement in 2002 for the movie Bowling for Columbine, is an outspoken critic of the 2nd Amendment, saying that the Founders themselves would have excluded gun rights from the Constitution if they had known what firearms would become over the next two centuries:

If the Founding Fathers could have looked into a crystal ball and seen AK-47s and Glock semiautomatic pistols … I think they’d want to leave a little note behind and probably tell us, you know, that’s not really what we mean when we say “bear arms.”

It’s tempting, therefore, to dismiss Moore’s April 30th tweets as conscious hyperbole — perhaps confronting law-and-order types with the logic of their own support for gun ownership.

But if you look at the full set of Moore’s tweets on the subject, a consistent libertarian logic is evident:

  1. Government agents currently do more to endanger private citizens than they do to protect us.

  2. That oppression can only continue while the government holds a monopoly on armed violence.

  3. We need to shift the balance of power away from the state and back to the people.

Is that too much to read into one angry Twitter rant?

If Moore’s goal was to outrage the American public, he has certainly succeeded. Pro-police conservatives are jerking their knees at the far-left filmmaker’s provocations. But advocates of liberty can find at least a sliver of common cause with those who see the visible fist of government power in Baltimore and too many other American cities in recent months.

Many libertarians consider the police to be among the few legitimate roles for a night-watchman government; defense and security are necessary to protect the rights of individuals. But there is no question that the government’s most heavily armed agencies have grown well beyond the role of night watchmen, if that was ever really their function. And then there is the proliferation of armed agents to organizations like the Fisheries Office, NASA, the EPA, and the Department of Education.

As the sharing economy chips away at other cartels in our over-regulated economy, we need to accept that the police, too, need competition — and we have the opportunity right now to ally with many on the American left who are beginning to suspect the same thing.

When government agents hold a monopoly on the tools of violence, is it any wonder when they behave like a cartel? Privately owned firearms are part of the decentralized solution to both looting and the police violence that triggers the protests.

By allowing individuals to defend themselves, their homes, their businesses, and their communities from crime and rioting, they need not rely exclusively on police forces that may be ineffective or corrupt. (The famous defense of Koreatown by armed shop owners during the LA riots shows this principle at work.)

If you don’t recognize the right to armed self-defense in principle, you are either dogmatically opposed to private guns, or you think the question is pragmatic and that there is a calculus of trade-offs: which is more dangerous at the moment, armed citizens or a police monopoly?

There isn’t much say to dogmatists on the matter. But the question of practical trade-offs may resonate with those on the left who currently see the police less as protectors and more as a danger.

Would such an alliance evaporate as soon as our allies perceive themselves to be in power again? Probably. Moore doesn’t see the problem as permanent: “We’ll survive til the right cops r hired.”

But we have the opportunity right now to drive home the point that the government needs more than checks and balances within itself. The people must have the ability to defend themselves independently of the state, and that’s harder to do when the government has all the guns.

B.K. Marcus

B.K. Marcus is managing editor of the Freeman.

Could You Spot a Potential School Shooter?

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In April 1999, we were all stunned by the news that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had attacked and killed students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and, more recently, in December 2012, that Adam Lanza, after killing his mother at home, then massacred twenty-six staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. These events evoke dread of potential events, a quest to understand why they occurred, and ways to avoid further comparable killings.

Cover - School ShootersPeter Langman has authored “School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators.” It offers very little comfort, but only because this psychologist, widely recognized for his expertise, is refreshingly honest.

“Many people seek to reduce school shootings to a bite-sized explanatory chunk, but the phenomenon defies easy analysis,” says Langman. “There is no one cause of school shootings, there is no one intervention that will prevent school shootings, and there is no one profile of a school shooter.”

He offers a wealth of information about forty-eight shooters He divides them into “Psychopathic shooters” whom he describes as “profoundly narcissistic, arrogant, and entitled; they lacked empathy, and met their needs at other’s expense” and ”psychotic shooters” who “suffered from schizophrenia or a related disorder. They were out of touch with reality to varying degrees, experiencing hallucinations or delusions.”

“Unlike the psychopathic and psychotic shooters, who generally came from well-functioning, intact families, traumatized shooters endured chronic abuse as children. They grew up in violent, severely dysfunctional homes.” Most fell into the first two categories.

I would like to offer the reader some comfort that school shooters can be “spotted” in advance, but in most the cases that Langman cites, they looked like everyone else in any school. Only if one of them was to confide his plan was there any opportunity to intervene and then only if he was reported.

Among the psychopathic category “at least 75 percent (nine out of twelve) had body issues. Many of these physical characteristics had a direct bearing on perceived manliness, including short stature, thin build, chest deformity, and fear of sterility” leading Langham to suggest a link between feeling weak or damaged and extreme narcissism. It is widely believed that bullying is linked to these events, but Langham notes that while about forty percent were harassed only one targeted a bully. While there is concern these days about bullying in schools, it is mostly due to a heightened awareness, not because there is more or less of it than has ever existed.

One thing does stand out, however, “nearly all shooters had bad educational experiences, including academic difficulties (failing classes, repeated grades, not graduating) or disciplinary problems…at least 92 percent had negative academic or disciplinary experiences.” And then there’s this: “At least 38 percent of shooters had relatives who worked or volunteered in schools.”

Another common factor was that “at least half of the perpetrators engaged in substance abuse (illegal drugs, prescription drugs, or alcohol.) In addition, “at least 42 percent of the shooters had a history of legal troubles, including arrests, contempt of court, and loss of a driver’s license.”

“Many shooters had trouble getting or holding jobs.” This was particularly true of the older shooters. Charles Whitman, an American engineering student at the University of Texas, gained infamy when in August 1966 he killed his wife and mother in their homes and later that day went to the Austin campus where he killed sixteen people and wounded 32 others over the course of ninety minutes, firing from the observation deck of the main building before being killed by an Austin police officer.

To academic and employment problems, add romantic failures. “Most shooters either failed to establish any romantic or sexual relationships or else suffered breakups or rejections that contributed to their anguish and anger.”

It should surprise no one that a number of the shooters “had specific role models for violence, including serial killers, mass murders, and other school shooters.” Most of them were psychotic, whereas the psychopaths “felt no need to attach themselves to a source of power; they were the source of power.”

Out of this densely documented book Langham concludes “There is no one way to prevent school shootings.” What also emerges is the fact that “Most school shooters leave a trail of warning signs that are either not noticed or not responded to.”

What the shootings are not about is gun ownership. Many of the shooters came from families that owned guns and used them for hunting or sport shooting. They had little reason to regard them as instruments with which to kill people other than their own twisted psychological interpretation.

What I came away with was the conclusion that the shooters are people we would all easily identify as “losers.” Beyond that, there is no specific way of identifying them, only suspicions of their capability to do the unthinkable.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

BOOM! Allen West Goes After Muslim Student Association Cancelling American Sniper

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american sniper posterIt is the highest grossing war movie in U.S. history but — as we’ve reported previously — it is in the target sights of Muslim students. Once again, a showing of “American Sniper” has been cancelled, this time at the University of Maryland, College Park.

As reported by Foxnews.com, “The University of Maryland announced it will postpone indefinitely an upcoming screening of “American Sniper” after Muslim students protested – calling the film Islamophobic, racist and nationalistic.

“American Sniper only perpetuates the spread of Islamophobia and is offensive to many Muslims around the world for good reason,” read a petition launched by the university’s Muslim Students Association. “This movie dehumanizes Muslim individuals, promotes the idea of senseless mass murder, and portrays negative and inaccurate stereotypes.”

“The critically-acclaimed film about the life of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle was supposed to be screened May 6 and 7. It was “postponed” on April 22 by the university’s Student Entertainment Events (SEE). While SEE did not mention the Muslim Students Association’s petition, they referenced a meeting with “concerned student organizations” about the film. “SEE is choosing to explore the proactive measures of working with others during the coming months to possibly create an event where students can engage in constructive and moderated dialogues about the controversial topics proposed in the film,” read a statement from SEE posted on the university’s website. The Muslim Students Association posted a Facebook message praising the university’s capitulation to their demands.”

“Praising the university’s capitulation to their demands” — in other words, the surrender of our freedom of speech and expression. Now, I find it doggone funny that the Muslim Students Association (MSA), an organization affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, is allowed to operate freely on our colleges and universities in the first place. I furthermore find it unconscionable that this group of 250 who signed this petition would influence the decision on a campus of some 28,000.

However, consider this irony: black students were allowed to freely stomp on the U.S. flag at Valdosta State College and an Air Force veteran who sought to claim the flag for proper disposition was physically restrained by campus police, arrested, and ordered never to step on the Valdosta State campus again.

Are we upside down or what?

Regarding the MSA protest, I’m starting to believe something is up with states that begin with the letter “M.” I know this banning of “American Sniper” has occurred at the Universities of Missouri, Michigan, and now Maryland — where next, U-Mass?

But who are these individuals to tell an American university what can be shown on its campus? I wonder if the movie “Twelve Years a Slave” was shown at the University of Maryland? And if these MSA students believe “American Sniper” is offensive to Muslims it means means they are supportive of Islamic terrorism and jihadism.

If they stand for freedom, liberty, and democracy, they should not be offended. As a matter of fact, Kyle’s exploits came primarily in Al Anbar province — Fallujah and Ramadi — is it offensive to these Muslim students that ISIS, the reconstituted al-Qaida in Iraq, is now driving Muslims from their homes in Ramadi? Then again, MSA is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is affiliated with Hamas and supports Islamic terrorism and jihadism, so maybe the gist of all this is that these Muslim students are upset to see the story of a heroic American who fought against their compatriot jihadist brothers.

Maybe they don’t want the truth to be known about the savage barbarism of their associates. And the University of Maryland SEE and leadership is so cowardly that they succumb to these “demands.”

The President of the University and the SEE should have sent back a simple letter with a one-word response, “Nuts.” Now, the question I have, is there a Coach John Harbaugh on the campus of Maryland, someone who will stand up to these stealth jihadists who would seek to advance their intolerance in order to suppress our rights? And let me ask a very basic question — why are they here in America studying in our schools and universities promoting their beliefs which are counter to our Constitutional Republic?

If they don’t like the fllm then doggone, don’t go see it! But, how dare they make a “demand” and worse, Maryland caved.

“We sincerely appreciate your commitment to exercising your freedom of speech to create an inclusive, just and safe campus community,” MSA wrote. Furthermore the Muslims Student Association said “American Sniper” creates a “dangerous climate for Muslim students and severely devalues the community atmosphere.”

So what the heck does beheading Christians create? What kind of climate exists in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the hotbed of ISIS recruiting? What type of community atmosphere exists for Christians and Yazidis in Mosul?

“Breyer Hillegas, president of the university’s College Republicans, told Fox News that he was furious about the cancellation. “Universities are always trying to satisfy the political correctness police and worry about who they might offend – rather than standing up for principle and the First Amendment of the Constitution,” Hillegas told me. He said the College Republicans had been behind the effort to convince SEE to show the film. “If the university prevents a movie like that from being show – it promotes intolerance and stifles dialogue and debate – and goes directly against the atmosphere that the University of Maryland is supposed to support,” he said.

What do the University of Maryland Campus Democrats have to say on the matter? Crickets. Their silence is deafening — and telling.

So here is my message to the MSA:

I and many other Americans deployed to Muslim countries to bring a chance for liberty and freedom. We lost our brothers and sisters. Some lost their limbs — all gave some, some gave all. And to have you here in our country “demanding” the story of one of our own not be told is offensive.

Your time is running out, as we will not tolerate the intolerant for much longer. You will be crushed and defeated, because in America we just don’t take crap for too long — regardless of the complicit bond you’ve found with progressive socialists — stretching from the White House to the College and University campuses — Islamic fascism will not prevail in these great United States of America.

Two words: Molon Labe!

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.