shotguns Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

Brady Campaign Labels NRA “Terrorists”

October 17, 2015/in Culture War, Gun Rights, Policy, Politics/by NRA Institute for Legislative Action

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has never had a firm grasp on the English language, as evidenced by the repudiation of their bizarre interpretation of the Second Amendment at the U.S. Supreme Court. However, this week, in an attempt to demonize NRA, Brady Campaign took their hyperbole to a new low, referring to the NRA as “terrorists.” That’s right; according to the Brady Campaign, the grassroots organization comprised of 5 million freedom-loving members that are dedicated to using the democratic process and legal framework to defend the constitutional rights of all Americans are “terrorists.”

The craven statement was made by Brady Campaign President Daniel Gross to The Hill. In the article, Gross criticized two Democratic presidential candidates, the NRA D- rated Bernie Sanders and F rated Lincoln Chafee, for not sufficiently conforming to the group’s radical gun control agenda. In taking particular issue with Chafee’s debate performance, in which the candidate stated he would try to negotiate with NRA, Gross stated, “[t]his is not a negotiation with the NRA… We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

Unfortunately, this is not the first time radical gun control advocates, and others, have used this type of reprehensible language to slander gun owners or NRA. In early 2013, Stop Handgun Violence founder and president John Rosenthal, who is best known for his anti-gun billboard outside Boston’s Fenway Park, said on the Ed Schultz radio show that the NRA “in my mind is a terrorist organization as far as I’m concerned.”

Beyond full-time gun control advocates, the culprits are often their allies in the media. As recently as this month, New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi wrote, “NRA should take its rightful place on the State Department list of terrorist organizations.” Last year, Mother Jones promoted a cartoon likening NRA to violent jihadis. Of course, the anti-gun Twittersphere and blogosphere are replete with similar inflammatory name-calling.

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has gotten into the act. In June 2014, during a CNN “town hall,” Clinton remarked that gun control opponents “hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” However, never one to rest on her laurels, Clinton outdid herself in early October, comparing NRA to a state sponsor of terrorism when she told an Iowa crowd, “NRA’s position reminds me of negotiating with the Iranians or the communists.”

Those attempting to vilify NRA as terrorists or extremists should recognize that NRA’s positions are well within the American mainstream. A 2014 Gallup poll revealed that 63-percent of Americans believe that having a gun in the home makes the home a safer place to be. Further, another 2014 Gallup poll showed that when asked “[i]n general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?” 52-percent of Americans opted to keep the laws the same or make them less strict.

In 2011, Barack Obama made a speech in Tucson, Ariz. following a tragic shooting, where he implored the nation to embrace civility in our political discourse. Obama noted that “only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation.” Perhaps Obama would do well to direct similar comments more specifically at his increasingly base allies in the anti-gun community. We won’t hold our breath.

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Gun Rights Group Thanks Hillary Clinton For Energizing Gun Owners

September 29, 2015/in Elections, Gun Rights, Policy, Politics/by Dr. Rich Swier

BELLEVUE, Wash. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today publicly thanked Hillary Rodham Clinton for energizing the nation’s firearms owners to political action and virtually assuring their heavy turnout for the 2016 presidential election.

“Thanks to all of her anti-gun-rights statements, Hillary Clinton will guarantee that gun owners will exercise their voting rights next November,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “She seems eager to double down onBarack Obama’s failed attempts to stick pins in gun owners.”

Clinton, the former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York, has a history of supporting gun control measures. She supports a ban on popular modern sport-utility rifles and original capacity magazines, and she suggested that gun owners are “a minority of people that hold a viewpoint that terrorizes a majority of people.”

“Just as it has been for the past seven years, since Barack Obama was elected in 2008, a Clinton nomination in 2016 will guarantee continued strong gun sales and expanded gun ownership,” Gottlieb contended. “Even among those who favor expanded background checks there is strong sentiment for protecting gun rights rather than controlling gun ownership.

“At the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference held over the weekend, one of the biggest concerns among the activists in attendance was a Clinton nomination, followed by a Clinton election victory,” he said. “American gun owners are convinced that she will turn the Oval Office into a nuclear war room against the Second Amendment.

“Between now and November 2016,” he continued, “we expect Hillary Clinton to try to stigmatize and marginalize gun owners, but in fact she will energize those millions of law-abiding citizens whose votes she fears the most. That’s why we’re grateful for her campaign rhetoric.

“By this time next year,” Gottlieb predicted, “if there is any apathy within the firearms community, it will have been transformed into activism.”

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

Reduce Firearm Ownership, Say Anti-Gun Researchers

August 23, 2015/in Gun Rights, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Dr. Rich Swier

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.

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

May 31, 2015/in Featured, Gun Rights, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Allen West

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

Colorado’s Experience Soundly Refutes Common Anti-gun Talking Point

July 26, 2014/in Gun Rights, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Dr. Rich Swier

Last month, while addressing a group of Colorado sheriffs, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper spoke on the topic of the state’s 2013 measure outlawing almost all private transfers of firearms. According to the Denver Post, Hickenlooper told the sheriffs, “I think we screwed that up completely… we were forming legislation without basic facts.”

A new Associated Press report examining Colorado background check data in the first year of the new law proves the accuracy of Hickenlooper’s statement, and should (although likely won’t) end the repetition of an already discredited anti-gun background check factoid.

The report states that the Colorado Legislative Council, an offshoot of the state legislature that is tasked with analyzing legislation, estimated that 420,000 additional background checks would be conducted in the two years following the new private sale restrictions. This led the Colorado legislature to allocate $3 million to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to handle the anticipated increase.

However, the AP notes, “officials have performed only about 13,600 reviews considered a result of the new law — about 7 percent of the estimated first year total.” The article goes on to state, “In total, there were about 311,000 background checks done during the first year of the expansion in Colorado, meaning the 13,600 checks between private sellers made up about 4 percent of the state total.”

How did the Colorado Legislative Council get their estimate so wildly wrong?

They relied on the same bogus statistic (that 40 percent of gun transfers occur between private parties) which gun control advocates and the White House have been using to advocate for expanded background checks all over the country.

The 40 percent statistic is from a Police Foundation survey, the results of which were published in a 1997 National Institute of Justice report titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms. The figure has been debunked repeatedly by the NRA and others, and even earned the President “Three Pinocchios” from the Washington Post’s fact-checker for his repeated use of the misleading stat.

Unfortunately, these public admonishments haven’t deterred gun control supporters from using this absurdly inflated figure. In November, Sen. Dianne Feinstein repeated the factoid in an opinion piece for the San Jose Mercury News. As recently as early July, the Brady campaign asserted in a press release, “Approximately 40 percent of all guns sales go unchecked.” A May press release from Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety reiterated estimates “that 40 percent of gun sales occur without a background check in the U.S.” Even President Obama’s official website, whitehouse.gov, has a page for his “Now is the Time” gun control campaign that continues to claim, “Right now, federally licensed firearms dealers are required to run background checks on those buying guns, but studies estimate that nearly 40 percent of all gun sales are made by private sellers who are exempt from this requirement.”

The data from Colorado’s first year of restricted private transfers makes continued use the 40 percent figure untenable. Still, some gun control advocates might seek to blame Colorado’s low increase in background checks on scofflaws, and those unaware of changes in the law, circumventing the new restrictions. Even if these factors did have a role to play in the underwhelming check numbers, they could hardly be expected to raise the percentage of undocumented private transfers by a factor of 10. Even if they could, it would merely weaken the case of the efficacy of private transfer restrictions. Evidence of background check avoidance would simply underscore NRA’s position that background check laws cannot affect the behavior of those who intentionally or unknowingly violate them.

Colorado’s expensive foray into background check expansion should serve as a warning to state and federal legislators as to the limited effect these laws can have, and the importance of collecting the “basic facts” before crafting legislation that inhibits the rights of their constituents.

Yet the tactics of gun control supporters are nothing if not shameless, so don’t expect them to relinquish the 40 percent myth any time soon. President Obama has openly embraced the confiscatory gun bans of Australia and Great Britain, and he and other gun control radicals realize they can’t achieve that goal without registration. “Universal” background checks are the next step in that direction, so for their proponents, the ends justify their dishonest means.

For everyone else, however, Colorado’s example is a resounding reminder that the war the proponents of “universal” background checks are waging is one of ideology, not one of facts, and it is certainly not in the service of “gun safety.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column is by the NRA-ILA with accompanying graphic.

Duck Dynasty is Happy, Happy, Happy with new line of Mossberg Guns

January 2, 2014/in Gun Rights, Must Read/by Dr. Rich Swier

“The family-owned business featured on hit reality television show “Duck Dynasty” has partnered with Mossberg & Sons manufacturers to make its own line of shotguns. The Duck Commander company will produce with Mossberg nine different firearms, including two semiautomatic shotguns and a semiautomatic handgun, CNN reported,” writes Girls Just Want To Have Guns.

Mossberg & Sons has already started shipping shotguns to distributors, gauging interest and drumming up business, said company spokeswoman Lisa Powell. She declined to tell which retailers had expressed interest so far, according to CNN.

Phil Robertson, the family patriarch, founded Duck Commander 40 years ago near his Louisiana home. He and his sons are in several advertising spots on Mossberg’s website about the new firearms line, one of which includes Mr. Robertson saying, “Do you know what makes me happy ladies and gentlemen? To blow a mallard drake’s head smooth off.”

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