YouTube reporter Redsilverj exposes the same ole’ crisis actor script in latest Virginia shooting. Alleged family members appear on TV the same day their loved one is brutally murdered. They show very little emotion except fake anger to promote gun control legislation.
Hundreds of Gunowners Show up in Temple, TX with Loaded Guns At the “Come and Take it” March
This past weekend Hundreds of Gunowners staged a successful armed march in Temple, TX with Loaded Weapons At the “Come and Take it March”.
Temple, TX police chief Gary Smith holds a meeting about the “Come and Take It Temple” gun rights rally on 1 June 2013.
In the face of the outrageous IRS intimidation scandal now sweeping across America, gun control advocates are changing their tune. All of a sudden, the idea that the federal government could engage in tyranny against the People of America is no longer a “conspiracy theory.” It’s historical fact right in your face thanks to all the recent scandals now bursting onto the scene: IRS intimidation, secret targeting of non-profit groups for possible “thought crimes,” the Department of Justice seizing AP phone records and so on.
Just which liberals are changing their minds on all this? Piers Morgan, for starters. The man who once called Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America a “very stupid man” on live national television is suddenly reversing course. Here’s what Morgan now says in the wake of the IRS intimidation scandal:
“I’ve had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here saying to me, well the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government, and I’ve always laughed at them. I’ve always said don’t be so ridiculous. Your government won’t turn itself on you. But actually when you look at this [IRS scandal]… actually this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government. I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior, I think what the Department of Justice has done to the Associated Press is bordering on tyrannical behavior.”
Here’s the video: (until YouTube bans it)
InfoWars.com, by the way, is now publicly challenging Piers Morgan to admit the U.S. government has become “fully tyrannical,” not just “bordering on tyrannical.” It begs the question: If using the IRS as a political weapon to intimidate people over thought crimes, books, Facebook posts and prayers isn’t full-on tyranny, what exactly will it take for Morgan to admit a full tyranny is now upon us? The government knocking on his door?
Going even further than Piers Morgan, “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough also admits gun owners were right all along, saying:
“I have been saying for months now… that I believe in background checks. After Newton, after Chicago, we need background checks. And my argument has been, don’t worry,background checks aren’t going to lead to a national registry. The government’s never going to create a national registry, right? … I don’t have to even complete my sentence, do I? My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals. Because people say hey, if they do that with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights? This is DEVASTATING! This IRS scandal is devastating all across the board…”
Well yeah, Joe. This is what we’ve been warning you about all along, you see?
See the video here:
To be a progressive / liberal person, you have to hold to the belief (i.e. have “faith”) that governments can never go rogue. Governments can never become tyrannies. Governments are always and forever trustworthy and compassionate.
Every progressive government policy logically follows from those core beliefs: government should regulate what people eat, control how businesses run themselves, monopolize national health care, grant amnesty to undocumented illegal immigrants, take all the guns away from the citizens and concentrate power into its own hands. This is all justified because you can trust the government, right? … RIGHT?
Enter exhibit A: The IRS intimidation scandal. The targeting of political enemies. Thought crimes. The IRS demands to know all your Facebook posts, the titles of the books you’ve recently read and even the contents of your PRAYER! The IRS then uses this information to selectively delay only the applications of non-profits that teach the Constitution, or patriotism, or are opposed to Obama. Can you say criminal corruption and total abuse of power? This is anti-American and traitorous!
Enter exhibit B: The Department of Justice, run by the nation’s top criminal Eric Holder,runs a vicious surveillance and secret police campaign against none other than theAssociated Press. When the outrageous behavior of the DoJ comes to light, Eric Holder claims, “I know nothing! Nothing!” (Same story for Obama… they knew nothing!)
Exhibit C: The Benghazi narrative pushed by the White House is now obviously a total lie, and this lie strongly influenced the presidential debates and 2012 election. The Benghazi attack was actually a terrorist attack — and the White House knew it! But they covered it up, lied to the public, and even stood down U.S. forces to make sure the ambassador was killed so that he couldn’t spill the beans on the U.S. weapons transfers being made to terror groups in Syria.
What do exhibits A, B and C prove? That you can’t trust the government!
Now the illusion of trustworthy government has been completely shattered. If the IRS would selectively intimidate and threaten Constitutional groups it didn’t like, what else is the government capable of?
All of a sudden those of us who warned everybody about gun confiscation, FEMA camps and false flags don’t seem so outlandish anymore. Now almost everyone realizes the government is capable of ANYTHING. Especially the Obama administration, which respects no laws and no limits to its power. (Drone strikes, secret kill lists, the continuedrunning of secret military prisons, bypassing Congress with executive orders, and so on.)
Now the Second Amendment makes total sense. Why do we even have a Second Amendment? The honest, blatant answer is so that as a last-ditch firewall against a tyrannical takeover, the American people can march on Washington with rifles in hand and shoot all the criminals dead. That is the essence of the Second Amendment — a last-ditch failsafe for liberty. The only real way to keep government in line, after all, is to make sure those who hold office know that if they become outright traitors to America and refuse to abide by the limits of government described in the Constitution, they might be shot dead by citizens who take their country back by force. (I’m not calling for such an action, by the way. I’m only explaining the historical context of the Second Amendment and what it really means.)
When citizens are well armed and have the power to do such a thing, that power should never actually be needed because the government fears the people and thus stays within the limits of power. But when the people are disarmed, the government fears nothing and so expands out of control, functioning as a rogue, tyrannical cabal of mobsters and criminals. Read your history books if you don’t believe me. This is the repeated story of government’s rise and fall throughout history.
Ultimately, this is why the Obama administration wants to take your guns away: Not to make the children safer but to make the citizens defenseless against government tyranny. And yes, that tyranny exists right now. The debate is over. The gun grabbers lost and the Second Amendment won.
Now, the Obama administration is permanently discredited, and the strength of the Second Amendment movement is stronger than ever. Just as it should be.
So I want to thank Piers Morgan, Joe Scarborough and all the other gun control advocates who are now rethinking the logic of their positions and concluding the government can’t be trusted after all. And if the government can’t be trusted, then it only follows that the citizens are the final defense against government tyranny. Furthermore, that role of citizen defense is only viable if the citizens are well-armed with rifles and hi-capacity magazines.
The more the government knows there are millions of law-abiding citizens who are armed and trained in rifle skills, the less that government is likely to overstep its limited powers and try to concentrate power in its own hands.
http://www.naturalnews.com/040398_gun_control_trust_in_government_tyranny.html#ixzz2TjwqKO00
Several NJ Senators were unknowingly recorded on a hot microphone mocking gun owners and scheming for “a bill to… confiscate, confiscate, confiscate”
It seems that our State Senators in New Jersey look at the Second Amendment as a joke, and mock gun owners who took the time to testify at their committee meeting. Remember New Jersey may have the second most strict gun laws now!
The following link is to a You Tube video:
Video Description:
Audio captured and brought to attention by NJ2AS members
Loretta Weinberg (D-37), Sandra Cunningham (D-31), and Linda Greenstein (D-14), Nellie Pou (D-35)
What’s that you say?! They aren’t coming for our guns you say?!
This is INCREDIBLE!
We’ve narrowed down to who we believe was speaking in this video.
From waypasthadenough
The Second Amendment, as the rest of the Bill of Rights, is an acknowledgement of our natural-born rights, not a granting. The entire Bill of Rights is about keeping the governments in their place. The Second Amendment is about the common person’s right to own weapons of war so that we can keep the governments in their place by keeping the ‘monopoly on force’ in the hands of the people where it belongs, as in ‘We the people.’ Remember that? It will not be infringed any further and the ‘gun laws’ in existence will be repealed. End of discussion.
Guns don’t kill, governments do. Gun free zones are the problem, they allow armed criminals to kill. Arm the teachers, the administrators and the parents. Don’t allow the “Liberal”(commie) trash who control the so-called educational system to teach mindless pacifism that is ensconced in their arrogance of false civility.
If we have violent criminals in prison who have been convicted of a crime and can’t be trusted with weapons why is the govt. turning them back out on the street? So they can point at them and say “See, the sheeple can’t be trusted with guns.” The ‘crime’ argument is a red herring.
Time to repeal all of the ‘gun laws’ including GCA ’68 and the NFA; Shut down the evil BATF Nazis and try them for treason, and murder where appropriate and distribute their retirement funds among their victims; Then enforce the Bill of Rights on places such as Commiefornia and New Yawk and Chigawgo and if necessary bring the troops home and have them restore Liberty here and remove Amerika’s natural born traitors in the process.
Millions will dig the ditch they are told to dig then wet their pants when the machine gun bolts slam home and die stupidly wondering “How did this happen to me?” The tiny minority will have to do what will be required.
It’s time to stop arguing over the culture war. It’s time to stop hunkering down for the apocalypse. It’s time to stop waiting to get beamed up. It’s time to start thinking Normandy.
If you sit home waiting your turn you deserve to have your gun taken from your cold dead hands.
The Founders didn’t wait for the Brits to knock down their doors. They gathered at the green and stood up like men and they killed government employees all the way back to Boston.
What will you do when it’s time to hunt NWO hacks, republicrats and commies(“Liberals” and ‘progressives’)?
Don’t understand? Go to willowtowndotcom and read the quotes page first. Then read my column “Prepping for Slavery.”
More from IntelliHub:
NJ State Senator’s Hot Mic On Guns: “Confiscate, Confiscate, Confiscate”
by Dean Garrison
Freedom Outpost
May 12, 2013A few air-headed New Jersey State Senators proved that claim on Thursday when they had their own unknown “open-mic” moment. Though this may never compare to King Obama’s intimate moment with Medvedev, it has to rank as one of the top ten open-mic moments in the history of communist America.
The Examiner Reports:
A microphone left on after the gavel fell at a New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday shows the “true view” of some of the senators toward gun owners, and provides proof that gun confiscation is a goal on which they agree, the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs revealed in an email to members and supporters today. The group is the official NRA state association.
“The discussion that was caught, apparently among several senators and staff, is outrageous, and reveals legislators’ true view of gun owners,” ANJRPC reports.
“The discussion appears to be among Senator Loretta Weinberg (D37), Senator Sandra Cunningham (D31), Senator Linda Greenstein (D14), and at least one member of Senate Democratic staff,” the gun group’s email explains.
Interesting lines allegedly coming from Weinberg, Cunningham, Greenstein and company include the following:
“We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”
“They want to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad guys, but they don’t have any regulations to do it.”
“They don’t care about the bad guys. All they want to do is have their little guns and do whatever they want with them.”
“That’s the line they’ve developed.”
I personally don’t care about personal attacks toward gun owners and pro-2nd amendment Senators. Sticks and stones, as they say…
What should concern the people of the great State of New Jersey and Americans all across the land is this “confiscate, confiscate, confiscate” garbage.
It is unclear which of the Senators uttered these remarks but I have a message for her and all of her sexually retarded, emotionally immature friends.
MOLON LABE! Yeah I’m talking to you princess…
“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.” -Sigmund Freud, General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. (1920)
Come on. You didn’t think I would throw those insults without a solid psychological basis for doing so. Did you? I’m no Sigmund Freud but when she repeats the word three times I feel like she must be triply-troubled. We had better get her on that confiscation list for the mentally unstable as soon as possible. She might be a left-wing terrorist in the making. Just saying.
Here is a video report on a Dallas store manager using his handgun to fend off an attempted robbery by five armed robbers. There’s also audio of the 911 call from the Dallas store manager asking for police help because of the robbery. Reports indicate he asked for police to come because the armed men had tried to rob his store. The storemanager shot at the men with a .38 Caliber revolver, sending the robbers scurrying away, and wounding one of them twice. But his call was misclassified because the operator did not understand he was saying in his frantic call that he had shot one of therobbers, and it took police an hour to arrive. In fact, it was so long, the manager went home and was called back by police when the did arrive.
It takes a “good guy with a gun” to ward off five armed robbers.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.
Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.
In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.
The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.
The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes — less than 1% — reported using a firearm to defend themselves.
Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.
It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news.
“It’s hard to know what’s going on there,” said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center. Women, people of color and the elderly were more likely to believe that gun crime was up than men, younger adults or white people. The center plans to examine crime issues more closely later this year.
Though violence has dropped, the United States still has a higher murder rate than most other developed countries, though not the highest in the world, the Pew study noted. A Swiss research group, the Small Arms Survey, says that the U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country.
Experts debate why overall crime has fallen, attributing the drop to all manner of causes, such as the withering of the crack cocaine market and surging incarceration rates.
Some researchers have even linked dropping crime to reduced lead in gasoline, pointing out that lead can cause increased aggression and impulsive behavior in exposed children.
The victims of gun killings are overwhelmingly male and disproportionately black, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Compared with other parts of the country, the South had the highest rates of gun violence, including both murders and other violent gun crimes.
If a group at the National Rifle Association convention gets it way, free shotguns will be handed out in Chicago.
CBS Chicago reports the group made the bold announcement at a convention in Texas, and as you might imagine it is causing quite a controversy.
The group is called the Armed Citizen Project, and as, their name says they want to arm citizens by giving them shotguns.
They aim to give out shotguns to people in fifteen cities including Chicago.
They’ve already started giving out the guns in Houston where at least four mothers have received free guns.
The group’s founder says they give the free guns to people living in medium to high crime areas so they can defend themselves from criminals.
Kyle Coplen founded the group based on his belief that guns are the ultimate deterrent to would-be criminals.
“It’s our hypothesis that criminals do not want to die in your hallway. We think that society should use that fear to deter crime,” said Coplen. “We’re giving folks the tools with which to defend their life, liberty and property, we’re training them how to use the weapons and empowering citizens.”
In Houston, Coplen says he hopes to arm one fourth of the neighborhood where his group is now giving away guns. Then signs would be put up warning criminals that the neighborhood is armed.
Coplen says they want to come to Chicago but are checking with their lawyers to make sure any legal concerns are addressed ahead of time.
Chicago has traditionally had more restrictive gun laws, and that’s why the Armed Citizen Project says they want in so they can put their theory to the test here.
In February, CBS Houston reported that Coplen gave away 20-gauge single-shot shotguns to residents in mid- and high-crime neighborhoods to test whether or not the weapon will help reduce crime in the area. Coplen said the weapons are not of much value to criminals, but are especially useful for citizens looking to protect themselves from criminals.
President Obama has side-stepped Congress by implementing portions of the UN Small Arms Trade Treaty through an executive order which can be used to ban the import of all firearms, ammunition and related supplies and accessories.
While patriots across the nation rejoiced when the US congress rejected flat on its face an attempt to force the United States into the UN Small Arms Treaty just weeks later a more sinister ulterior motive has been revealed.
Today, President Obama by passed congress and signed an executive which gives the federal government a power to completely ban the importation of guns, ammunition and even parts and accessories related to firearms.
While the UN Small Arms Treaty would have prevented the United States from both importing and exporting weapons, Obama has effectively signed on to the treaty with his new executive order while allowing the United States to export weapons of deaths to covertly funded clandestine operations in overseas nations where it seeks to further its imperialistic agenda.
At the same time, with nearly every other nation in the world signing on to the UN Small Arms treaty, other nations are now banned from doing the same which further leverages the United State’s power of shotgun diplomacy in nations that refuse to be puppets for the globalist elites that control America.
Back in the homeland Americans now face a dire situation.
With the United States government already having complete control over domestic corporations the power to ban all international imports effectively create what is nothing short of a firearm and ammunition killswitch.
At the same time, despite our elected representatives rejecting such legislation flat on its face, dictatorial executive orders continue to be enacted.
Not only are we being subject to international rules and regulations mandated by the UN, without any representation in the process, we also not longer are being represented in major political decisions being made at home.
This comes as the media has spent the last several days repeatedly selling the public on the notion that it is okay for the government to suspend the constitutional rights of a citizen at anytime and haul them off to a CIA blacksite to be tortured in the wake of the Boston Bombings.
In this video BeforeItsNews.com staff writer Alexander Higgins joins Arch Angel to discuss the newly signed executive order and how it has effectively set the stage for the government to completely suspend the constitution.
This hard hitting piece from Mac Slavo at ShtfPlan.com explains the order in detail.
Obama To Ban Importation of Ammo, Magazines and Accessories Without Congressional Approval
Over the course of the last month, while Americans were distracted with the threat of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and the devastation wrought by the Boston bombings, President Obama was quietly working behind the scenes to craft laws and regulations that will further erode the Second Amendment.
Congress, and thus We the People, may have unequivocally rejected federal legislation in March which aimed to outlaw most semi-automatic rifles, restrict magazine capacity, and force national registration, but that didn’t stop the President from ceding regulatory control over firearms importation to the United Nations just two weeks later. What the UN Arms Trade Treaty, passed without media fanfare by 154 counties, would do is to restrict the global trade of, among other things, small arms and light weapons. Opponents of the treaty argue that loopholes within the new international framework for global gun control may make it illegal for Americans to purchase and import firearms manufactured outside of the United States.
To further his gun-grabbing agenda, however, President Obama and his administration didn’t stop there.
Now they’re taking another significant step against Americans’ right to bear arms – and they’re doing it through Presidential Executive Action, a strategy that, once again, bypasses Congressional oversight and the legislative process.
…it appears that the BHO Administration is taking executive action on firearms importation. Take a few minutes to read this: After Senate setback, Obama quietly moving forward with gun regulation. Here is the key portion of the article:
“The Importation of Defense Articles and Defense Services — U.S. Munitions Import List references executive orders, amends ATF regulations and clarifies Attorney General authority “to designate defense articles and defense services as part of the statutory USML for purposes of permanent import controls,” among other clauses specified in heavy legalese requiring commensurate analysis to identify just what the administration’s intentions are. Among the speculations of what this could enable are concerns that importing and International Traffic in Arms Regulations [ITAR] may go forward to reflect key elements within the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”[Emphasis added.]
Depending on how it is implemented, the implications of this change could be huge. With the stroke a of a pen and without the consent of Congress, ATF bureaucrats could make ANY gun part or accessory (including magazines) or ammunition that were originally manufactured or perhaps even those designed for military use no longer legal for importation for civilian use. That might mean no more milsurp parts sets. No more milsurp magazines. No more milsurp ammo. No more milsurp optics. Perhaps not even spare firing pins. This could be ugly.
I strongly recommend that you stock up on magazines, ammunition and spare parts for any of your imported military pattern guns, as soon as possible! Once an import ban is implemented, prices will skyrocket.
Source: James Rawles’ Survival Blog via The Prepper Website
Just five days ago the President vowed to push forward on gun control without Congress and Nancy Pelosi argued that no matter what Congress says, gun control is inevitable.
This latest round of Executive Actions is what they meant.
A direct on attack on the Second Amendment is difficult if not impossible, so they are trying to slither their way in through the backdoor by restricting international trade so we can’t import new firearms, by restricting access to accessories and gun parts, by heavilytaxing ammunition and gun purchases, by mandating policies like forcing gun owners to have liability insurance, and of course, by identifying potentially dangerous gun owners and simply taking their firearms because of public safety concerns.
The President recently suggested that the American people have spoken, and that they want guns to be restricted, banned and heavily regulated.
If that’s so, then how is that a bipartisan Congress overwhelmingly rejected the President’s bid to restrict and outlaw private ownership of millions of weapons and gun accessories?
Going through the United Nations and now implementing Executive Actions to bypass America’s Constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is an act of desperation.
Those who would take our rights have been left with no choice but to try and force their agenda upon us through dictatorial means.
Over the course of the last month, while Americans were distracted with the threat of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula and the devastation wrought by the Boston bombings, President Obama was quietly working behind the scenes to craft laws and regulations that will further erode the Second Amendment.
Congress, and thus We the People, may have unequivocally rejected federal legislation in March which aimed to outlaw most semi-automatic rifles, restrict magazine capacity, and force national registration, but that didn’t stop the President from ceding regulatory control over firearms importation to the United Nations just two weeks later. What the UN Arms Trade Treaty, passed without media fanfare by 154 counties, would do is to restrict the global trade of, among other things, small arms and light weapons. Opponents of the treaty argue that loopholes within the new international framework for global gun control may make it illegal for Americans to purchase and import firearms manufactured outside of the United States.
To further his gun-grabbing agenda, however, President Obama and his administration didn’t stop there.
Now they’re taking another significant step against Americans’ right to bear arms – and they’re doing it through Presidential Executive Action, a strategy that, once again, bypasses Congressional oversight and the legislative process.
…it appears that the BHO Administration is taking executive action on firearms importation. Take a few minutes to read this: After Senate setback, Obama quietly moving forward with gun regulation. Here is the key portion of the article:
“The Importation of Defense Articles and Defense Services — U.S. Munitions Import List references executive orders, amends ATF regulations and clarifies Attorney General authority “to designate defense articles and defense services as part of the statutory USML for purposes of permanent import controls,” among other clauses specified in heavy legalese requiring commensurate analysis to identify just what the administration’s intentions are. Among the speculations of what this could enable are concerns that importing and International Traffic in Arms Regulations [ITAR] may go forward to reflect key elements within the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.”[Emphasis added.]
Depending on how it is implemented, the implications of this change could be huge. With the stroke a of a pen and without the consent of Congress, ATF bureaucrats could make ANY gun part or accessory (including magazines) or ammunition that were originally manufactured or perhaps even those designed for military use no longer legal for importation for civilian use. That might mean no more milsurp parts sets. No more milsurp magazines. No more milsurp ammo. No more milsurp optics. Perhaps not even spare firing pins. This could be ugly.
I strongly recommend that you stock up on magazines, ammunition and spare parts for any of your imported military pattern guns, as soon as possible! Once an import ban is implemented, prices will skyrocket.
Source: James Rawles’ Survival Blog via The Prepper Website
Just five days ago the President vowed to push forward on gun control without Congress and Nancy Pelosi argued that no matter what Congress says, gun control is inevitable.
This latest round of Executive Actions is what they meant.
A direct on attack on the second amendment is difficult if not impossible, so they are trying to slither their way in through the backdoor by restricting international trade so we can’t import new firearms, by restricting access to accessories and gun parts, by heavily taxing ammunition and gun purchases, by mandating policies like forcing gun owners to have liability insurance, and of course, by identifying potentially dangerous gun owners and simply taking their firearms because of public safety concerns.
The President recently suggested that the American people have spoken, and that they want guns to be restricted, banned and heavily regulated.
If that’s so, then how is that a bipartisan Congress overwhelmingly rejected the President’s bid to restrict and outlaw private ownership of millions of weapons and gun accessories?
Going through the United Nations and now implementing Executive Actions to bypass America’s Constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances is an act of desperation.
Those who would take our rights have been left with no choice but to try and force their agenda upon us through dictatorial means.
It was called the strongest pro-gun bill in the country, and now it’s the law in Kansas.
The law is designed to counter the push by liberal federal lawmakers for increased restrictions on gun rights. It nullifies any new limits on firearms, magazines and ammunition – whether enacted by Congress, presidential executive order or any agency.
If Congress would have passed the Senate amendment expanding federal background checks, for example, the Kansas law would nullify it in the state.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, signed Senate Bill 102 into law yesterday, which exempts Kansas from any laws the federal government might pass that would infringe on Second Amendment rights.
Specifically, the Kansas law prevents federal law enforcement officials from enforcing any laws restricting Second Amendment rights.
To ease concerns by some lawmakers over showdowns, federal officers would not be handcuffed or jailed, but they would be prosecuted.
The law is significant not just because of its intent, but because of who signed it. Brownback is a major political figure in the Republican Party who served as a congressman and a senator for the state until election as governor in 2010. Throwing his weight behind a “nullification” law lends credibility to a growing trend.
An impressive 32 state legislatures have now introduced pro-Second Amendment “nullification” bills. The progress of the bills can be tracked at the Tenth Amendment Center’s website.
Montana began the trend with its Firearms Freedom Act. The law is currently tied up in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard arguments last month. The Cato and Goldwater Institutes have filed a friend-of-the-court brief, “arguing that federal law doesn’t preempt Montana’s ability to exercise its sovereign police powers to facilitate the exercise of individual rights protected by the Second and Ninth Amendments.”
As WND reported, several more states have now passed laws modeled after Montana’s Firearms Freedom Act. Earlier this month, Arizona joined Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, Tennessee and Montana.
The laws are generally justified by references to the Second, Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Second Amendment guarantees the right to firearms. The Ninth Amendment makes it clear that citizens have rights not specifically listed in the Constitution. And the Tenth Amendment says states have powers not specifically given to the federal government or specifically denied to states.
Supporters of states’ rights have said the Tenth Amendment can nullify federal laws that are unconstitutional or beyond the federal government’s powers.
“Nullification” has been used as a legal argument to try to overturn everything from pro-slavery laws to Obamacare, always unsuccessfully. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law is superior to state law and that federal courts have the final say on interpreting the Constitution.
But with the momentum of 32 states having introduced pro-Second Amendment nullification bills, that may change.
Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, said there are many ways to nullify a law.
“The courts can strike a law down. The executive branch could refuse to enforce it. People in large numbers might refuse to comply. A number of states could pass a law making its enforcement illegal. Or a number a states could refuse to cooperate in any way with its enforcement.”
Before it became law, Boldin called the Kansas measure the strongest nullification bill in modern American history.
A key provision of the Kansas’ Second Amendment Protection Act reads:
(a) Any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States which violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.
Boldin wrote yesterday that another key part of the law is that Kansas “would not be allowed to participate in any federal gun control measures that restrict the individual right to keep and bear arms as understood in 1861.”
That’s because any federal laws undermining the Second Amendment would not be part of what Kansas agreed to when it joined the U.S.
According to Boldin, there is another key factor that may swing power in the favor of states seeking to enforce nullification laws.
He wrote, “The federal government does not have the manpower to enforce all its laws. State and local law enforcement often times carry the water during investigations and actual arrests.
“If states pass laws banning both state and local participation – in any way – with the enforcement of a federal law – that federal law would never be enforced.”
As WND reported earlier this month, a key supporter of Montana’s Firearms Freedom Act says nullification laws are needed to break a near-monopoly on guns by the federal government.
According to Gary Marbut of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, the “current federal scheme of regulating the supply system for new firearms in the U.S. is so complete it might actually constitute a government monopoly on the supply of firearms.”
“Under current federal regulation, no firearm may be made and sold to another person without federal government permission – not one firearm,” he said.
To submit to a government gun monopoly, he said, would be to believe “that the Constitution is an old, dead, obsolete and meaningless piece of paper, the Ninth Amendment is as worthless as the rest, and has no relevance to the [Montana Firearms Freedom Act].”
Derek Sheriff reported at the Arizona Tenth Amendment Center that Arizona’s bill asserts the state’s “sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment and the people’s unenumerated rights under the Ninth Amendment.”
“They also emphasize the fact that when Arizona entered the union in 1912, its people did so as part of a contract between the state and the people of Arizona and the United States,” he said.
Kurt Hofmann of the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner said the surging movement across the states is “a challenge to the federal government’s grotesquely expansive use of the interstate commerce to regulate – well … everything, whether it has anything to do with interstate commerce or not.”
“Liberty doesn’t just happen – it needs to be worked for,” he said. “Getting that work done can make the difference between having to work for liberty, and having to fight for it.”
Marbut, who has described himself as the godfather of the Firearms Freedom Act movement, has reported previously that while the Constitution’s Commerce Clause can be viewed as regulating interstate commerce, it also can be viewed as having been modified when the later Second Amendment assuring citizens of the right to own weapons was adopted.
No less significant, he suggests, is the Ninth Amendment, which states, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Boldin said Washington likely is looking for a way out of the dispute.
“I think they’re going to let it ride, hoping some judge throws out the case,” he told WND. “When they really start paying attention is when people actually start following the [state] firearms laws.”
WND reported that when Wyoming joined the states with self-declared exemptions from federal gun regulation, officials there took the unusual step of including penalties for any agent of the U.S. who “enforces or attempts to enforce” federal gun rules on a “personal firearm.”
The penalties could be up to two years in prison and $2,000 in fines for an offender.
But the bellwether likely is to be the lawsuit agaisnt the Montana law, which was the first to go into effect.
As WND reported, the action was filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Montana Shooting Sports Association in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont., to validate the principles and terms of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, which took effect Oct. 3, 2009.
Marbut argues that the federal government was created by the states to serve the states and the people, and it is time for the states to begin drawing boundaries for the federal government and its agencies.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/new-law-protects-2nd-amendment-from-feds/#vemd78M1tKKbBb4f.99
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks.
“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
Mr. Bloomberg, who has come under fire for the N.Y.P.D.’s monitoring of Muslim communities and other aggressive tactics, said the rest of the country needs to learn from the attacks.
“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11,” he said.
“We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff. That’s good in some sense, but it’s different from what we are used to,” he said.
The mayor pointed to the gun debate and noted the courts have allowed for increasingly stringent regulations in response to ever-more powerful weapons.
“Clearly the Supreme Court has recognized that you have to have different interpretations of the Second Amendment and what it applies to and reasonable gun laws … Here we’re going to to have to live with reasonable levels of security,” he said, pointing to the use of magnetometers to catch weapons in city schools.
“It really says something bad about us that we have to do it. But our obligation first and foremost is to keep our kids safe in the schools; first and foremost, to keep you safe if you go to a sporting event; first and foremost is to keep you safe if you walk down the streets or go into our parks,” he said. “We cannot let the terrorists put us in a situation where we can’t do those things. And the ways to do that is to provide what we think is an appropriate level of protection.”
Still, Mr. Bloomberg argued the attacks shouldn’t be used as an excuse to persecute certain religions or groups.
“What we cant do is let the protection get in the way of us enjoying our freedoms,” he said. “You still want to let people practice their religion, no matter what that religion is. And I think one of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a terrorist. That’s not true … That would let the terrorists win. That’s what they want us to do.”
Nancy Pelosi has been sworn into Congress eleven times. Each time, she has taken the same oath to defend the American Constitution. This oath states, in relevant part, that “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same….”
Proving that both her listening and critical thinking skills are a bit sub par, Pelosi believes she’s taken a different oath, one that obligates her and her fellow Congressmen to “protect and defend the constitution and the American people.” In other words, based on an imaginary oath to protect and defend the American people, she is violating her real oath to protect and defend the American Constitution.
After President Obama’s aggressive push for gun control went down in flames on Wednesday, Pelosi immediately promised the American people that she would continue to ignore her oath of office and, instead, attack the Constitution. During a press conference, she announced that gun control is “inevitable.” Said Pelosi, “It’s a matter of time. It might be inconceivable to the NRA that this might happen; it’s inevitable to us.”
Ignoring that recent polls show that only 4% of the American people give the gun control issue priority in their lives, Pelosi blithely announced that “Something must be done, because that’s what the American people expect and what they deserve. We’re just not taking no for an answer.”
Using the usual illogical thinking we’ve come to expect from Democrats, she attacked those Democrats who voted against gun control of turning their back on public safety – even though there’s no evidence that any of the proposed legislation would keep guns out of the hands of criminals and crazy people. Buoyed by magical thinking, Pelosi tried to shame those Democrats who placed their careers and the Second Amendment ahead of the Progressives’ gun grab, people control agenda:
It always makes me wonder at a time like this how important we each think we are, that any one of us thinks our survival politically is more important than the safety of our children, that we can’t have the courage to take a vote. You’re afraid of the gun lobby? How about the fear of the children who had to face that violence in the classroom?
Now that you’ve had a moment to laugh at Pelosi’s ignorance and irrational thinking, remember that this is not the time for those who genuinely support the Constitution to relax. The Left, in its overwhelming arrogance, will never stop its quest to disarm American citizens. Because we know human nature, and because we know evil exists, we also know that there will be other Sandy Hooks, and that the Progressives will again try not to let a crisis go to waste.
Even though the gun bills died in the Senate, they didn’t in Connecticut, or New York, or Colorado, or Maryland. It’s up to us to remind other Americans that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. If we give up on this message, then the next time something bad happens, or the time after that, or even the time after that, Nancy Pelosi will win.
According to Vice President Biden, “President Obama literally has a buttload of executive actions coming down the pike” on gun control, the phrasing of which stirs disturbing surrealist images in my mind.
Okay, I paraphrased him. His actual words were, “[T]he president is already lining up some additional executive actions he’s going to be taking later this week.” I still can’t tell, Biden–are you speaking literally or figuratively? You haven’t specified!
You know what? On second thought, I think a ”literal buttload of executive actions” would be less disturbing than “additional executive actions.” This is of course doublespeak for “executive orders,” a term this administration has been cautious to avoid, despite running the government on these orders. Liberals don’t like executive orders—or at least they pretend not to—so this administration uses the term “executive action.”
Obama spent his first term trying to get Congress to pass the most unpopular legislation of modern times, socialized health insurance, in the form of Obamacare. That was at a time when healthcare was at the bottom of Americans’ list of priorities for our benevolent leaders to work on.
Obama won that battle as only a corrupt politician can: unfairly, with bribes.
The President has chosen the battle to waste his second term on, and that is gun control, yet another issue near the bottom of Americans’ list of priorities. Fortunately for them (us), it appears as though Obama has lost, with the Senate voting down the Manchin-Toomey background-check bill.
Obama was visibly angry the other day, pouting at the podium to publicly shame those who voted against the bill, which would have expanded background checks to personal and gun-show sales, but only for law-abiding citizens–those who don’t commit mass-shootings–and not to those who would commit mass-shootings since those people don’t submit to background checks.
“No matter,” says Biden, as paraphrased by me again. “We don’t like the way the vote turned out, so Obama’s going to ignore the vote, bypass the rules, and just write his own laws from the Oval Office. What do you think this is, a constitutional republic? You think it matters whether your representatives represent you or not? We in the executive branch make the rules, not your representatives.”
You have to wonder at some point if this administration really does believe that congressional voting procedures are a mere formality they must go through, the hoops through which they must jump in order to keep up the illusion that the will of the American people is represented. They are either knowingly being tyrannical, dictatorial, or else they do not understand that voting in Congress is not just for show. As in so many other areas of this administration, it comes down to those two possibilities: either Obama’s failures stem from a place of malice and ill will, or from a cavity in his brain that renders him incompetent and ignorant.
Whatever it is, neither possibility bodes well for us.
Ironically, while accusing others of lying, President Obama resorted to false claims and statistics about current laws, including the repeatedly debunked argument that 40% of gun sales are private, and that guns can be bought over the Internet without background checks. It was partly the dishonesty of those very arguments that had led potential supporters of new bipartisan legislation to doubt the administration’s motives in supporting the bill.
The administration’s defeat came earlier Wednesday, when the Senate failed to pass a cloture motion to end debate on a bipartisan proposal introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Only 54 votes of the necessary 60 votes could be found to support an expanded federal background check system (among other changes), partly because of fears that extending such checks would require the creation of a federal gun registry that could lead to confiscation.
The failure brought an end to four months of fervent campaigning by the president during which he used the Newtown disaster–or, in the eyes of many critics, exploited it–to make an argument about the urgent need for new laws, even if such laws would not have prevented the Newtown atrocity itself. Many Democrats rallied behind him, hoping at first to pass a new assault weapons ban, then abandoning that effort for more modest regulations.
Along the way, the administration lost the support of Democratic Senators in conservative states, many of whom will face re-election in 2014. President Obama made clear his intention to use Wednesday’s defeat to rally supporters against Republicans, whom he blamed directly and angrily, suggesting that they had defied the will of the American people and attempted to silence the families of Newtown victims who had a “right” to be heard in the debate.
Forced to cover a rare political defeat for the president, the mainstream media largely echoed his emotions. Virtually all of CNN’s correspondents agreed that the Manchin-Toomey bill had been defeated because of the power of the National Rifle Association and the fear of politicians afraid to take on Second Amendment activists. None considered that support for gun control has been declining, or that the legislation itself was deeply flawed.
Again and again, President Obama noted that 90% of Americans, and a majority of National Rifle Association members, supported expanded background checks. The former constitutional law lecturer seemed to expect that that majority’s will should be self-executing, ignoring the fact that constitutional rights like the Second Amendment exist precisely to protect minorities against majoritarian passions and presidential demagoguery.
Indeed, while the president described the failure of the legislation as a failure of “Washington,” it was also–and primarily–a failure of his administration. A White House operation and Obama campaign apparatus that is regarded as brutally effective ought to have been able to sell a proposal allegedly supported by 90% of the voting public. Yet persistent troubles in execution and failures of policy raise questions about whether Obama secretly preferred failure to success.
His opponents, the president insisted, refused to make it more difficult for “dangerous criminals” to buy weapons–ignoring one of the core arguments of the other side, namely that dangerous criminals frequently ignore the law to obtain weapons, while law-abiding citizens bear the burden of new rules and restrictions. He reduced his opponents’ motives to pure politics, accusing them of being afraid of being punished by an organized, determined minority.
Rarely have Americans ever seen a president attack his opponents so viciously, expressing and evoking such visceral emotions–especially at a time of mourning. President Obama’s tirade contrasted with his reserved, measured response to the Boston Marathon bombings, in which he urged Americans to speak and act with restraint. If this has been, as he claimed, “a pretty shameful day in Washington,” the president’s tantrum was the most shameful moment of all.
Dear Friends,
Please be aware that there are what we call “Bloomberg shills” lurking in the comments of gun blogs and forums atpresent. It has been going on since before the election, and we first noticed it as far back as our January 8th, 2012 article “2nd Amendment Voters Should Vote Ron Paul.” At first it seemed like fun because they got a lively discussion going, and many of our articles have over 400 comments just because of a few anti-gun comments peppered in by a shill here and there. But as more and more of them have come in, we have begun to realize that it is better to delete them. The anti-gunners have a plan, and that plan is to make gun people look stupid, heartless, and separate from the values of mainstream America. A recent “whistleblower” post about the Boston Marathonexplosions is especially troubling. If you are part of a gun blog or forum, please don’t allow this post to spread, and beware that more attempts to make 2nd Amendmentdefenders look bad are coming.
As most of us have come to understand, this crisis has gone far beyond politics. We have seen an unprecedented and sustained attack on not just our guns, but the entire pro-2nd Amendment and avid shooter culture itself. We are being sold to the public as stupid and selfish people who don’t care about the safety of children. I got a forwarded Facebook post from an 86 year old family friend and staunch Libertarian yesterday that said “The NRA Doesn’t Represent Me.” If only he knew what a fool he is being played for, but if you read through the lines, it is pretty clear that Bloomberg’s media campaign isworking. The medicated masses are buying the story, because it is being presented in social media environment where people have already let their guards down.
For that reason, we have ceased to allow any anti-gun comments on our articles. This was a difficult decision, but we only did so after calling out several of the commenters and directly accusing them of being hired Bloomberg shills. None of them defended themselves, and we believe that this is exactly what they are. The anti-gunners aren’t just buying TV ads. They are hiring what are probably unemployed young people in New York City to fish around in pro-2nd Amendment social media to plant seeds of division, trying to hook the emotions of the vulnerable and anti-depressant medicated.
A common theme among the shills is to make us look stupid and ruthless in the furtherment of our cause. We think that they threw some bait into the water yesterday that could make gun people look very bad. It is a “whistleblower” post about the explosions at the Boston Marathon, warning that it is some kind of false flag to ban the private sale of gun powder. I believe this “warning” is meant to be re-posted on gun blogs and boards, and on a quick Google search, I see that it has already hit the FAL Files and a few survival boards. We am not going to include the post in this email because there is no benefit in spreading it, but it begins “I work on a security commission and I’ve just received word to start on a campaign we’ve been working on for the last two months and now it all makes sense.”
The “warning” then goes on to say that that explosions were a pre-planned event meant to result in the banning of the private sale of gun powder, and that a young person is to be arrested Friday with NRA magazines in his possession. The creators of this farce are hoping Alex Jones and all of the conspiracy websites pick it up, and some of them already have. We believe that this is a Bloomberg shill to make us look stupid, and ruthless, that we would co-opt a tragedy to further our cause. Obama’s people have indeed already tried to tie the explosions to “Tax Day” in the hopes of making right wingers look like terrorists, but as we have explained before, Alex Jones is a turd in the punchbowl of 2nd Amendment freedom. You don’t have to have any “theory” about the conspiracy to take away our 2nd Amendment rights. American “gun control” was born in the aftermath of slavery, to keep guns out of the hands of freed slaves. Today it continues. The anti-gunners are using the deaths of 20 white kids to keep the guns out of the hands of their racial minority voting “slaves” in the inner cities.
It could very well be that consumer black powder, not smokeless powder, was used to make those bombs. Upon seeing the billowing white clouds of smoke from the explosions, anyone who has ever shot black powder should probably have suspected that this was the explosive used. Bomb detecting equipment, and most likely the dogs as well, are not trained to detect black powder. I know this because I freaked out one day when I had to go through a airport sniffer after shooting BP. I hadn’t even washed my hands and realized it only when I was far too deep into the line. But the sniffer didn’t even hiccup. We have all heard the reports that the police were doing bomb dog drills before the explosions, and it could very well be that one dog thought he smelled something early in the day so they brought in more dogs, who unfortunately weren’t trained to sniff BP.
Somebody grabbed the obvious possibility that black powder was involved and turned it into this fake “whistleblower” post about the more generic term “gun powder.” Apparently U.S. Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said “most likely gun powder” was used in the devices. The “Lone Wolf” language of that articledoes make it sound like they will pin this on a “right wing terrorist,” but what makes this “whistleblower” warning so suspect as a shill is that they do not specify black powder. As many of you know, modern smokeless powder, the kind you find in normal ammunition, does not explode when ignited. It burns, and it is of course also fairly “smokeless.” Billowing clouds of white smoke like the ones we saw in Boston only come from black powder, and it is a lot easier to get than C4, and you don’t have to make it like the concoctions they speak about in the bomb making books. Granted, McCaul did specifically say “gun powder,” but it is just too convenient that this post showed up yesterday, at the same time the talking point was implanted into the discussion. The post is almost definitely fake, and planted by people trying to make us look bad.
It is your choice how you treat and respond to anti-gun comments in a pro-2nd Amendment environment here on the internet. Please just be aware that these Bloomberg shills are lurking in your comments and on your boards, and that this is most likely only one of what will be many attempts to make 2nd Amendment defenders appear to have different ideals than mainstream America. We are mainstream America, and after the Heller and McDonald Supreme Court decisions, we were on our way to giving the opportunities of “mainstream” to all Americans. Arm the permanent victims in our inner cities and we will give them back not just 2nd Amendment freedom, but all of the other freedoms they are robbed of by living under the umbrella of a permanent criminal narco-economy. The Wild West didn’t have the violent crime rates of Chicago and Washington DC, because in the Wild West, the good guys could shoot back.
http://www.gunsamerica.com/blog/a-warning-to-all-gun-bloggers-and-forums-boston-marathon-explosions/
Rocky Mountain Pawn & Gun is confident about its own cultural identity. Before entering the shop – a palace of weaponry and camouflage gear – customers must pass a sign indicating that hippies should use the back door.
“Until they change that question, there’s no way,” said Chris Burnett, manager of Rocky Mountain Pawn & Gun, who said the federal form all firearms purchasers are required to fill out effectively prohibits the sale of firearms to medical marijuana card holders.
Then, in a glass display case inside the shop, another sign reads, “Federal Law Prohibits the sale of firearms to medical marijuana card holders.”
According to Chris Burnett, the store’s manager, the second sign isn’t a “hippies can’t have guns” joke, but an edict handed down from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a federal agency.
Burnett said the shop put up the sign after an ATF agent called Rocky Mountain Pawn & Gun and said “anyone who has a medical marijuana card will not pass a background check.”
The ATF did not respond to requests for comment.
Nearly 100,000 Coloradoans are licensed to use medical marijuana, which treats a range of ailments, including pain, insomnia, nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite and muscle spasms.
Colorado law is in conflict with federal law, which criminalizes marijuana in all circumstances and by definition applies to the whole country.
Burnett said on the application to own a firearm, which is submitted to the federal government, the applicant is asked whether he or she has ever used illegal drugs, and because marijuana is illegal according to federal law, medical marijuana users must answer “yes” or commit a crime – meaning they are categorically disqualified from gun ownership.
While the gun lobby and the grass lobby are not intuitive political allies, this is the too-rare legal determination that has both in uproar.
“It’s difficult to explain it to people who we have to turn away, because they say, ‘I did this the right way, I got a permit,’ meanwhile, people who are buying it from their neighbors can still go out and by a gun,” Burnett said.
Though Burnett feared the federal government had amassed a database of medical marijuana users, against which the federal government would cross-check firearm applications as it putatively does felony convictions, Mark Sally, spokesman with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said that was impossible.
Only the state has that list, he said, and like all matters between doctors and patients, it is confidential.
Stuart Prall, a lawyer and marijuana advocate, said Rocky Mountain Pawn’s dilemma was indicative of the confusing state of the law regarding cannabis.
“I don’t think anybody should be denied rights, because people are taking one medicine as opposed to another medicine, and that’s true for parental rights, gun rights, any rights,” he said.
He said the unresolved and increasing contradictions in state law and federal law regarding marijuana meant that “it’s completely confusing to everybody.”
http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20130410/NEWS01/130419961/0/News/Guns-verboten-for-pot-users
(Fox News) Controversial gun legislation cleared a key Senate hurdle Thursday, as lawmakers voted 68-31 to start debate on the package which includes expanded background checks and new penalties for gun trafficking.
Senate Democrats, joined by 16 Republicans, were able to overcome an attempted filibuster by GOP senators opposed to the current bill. Those senators could still slow-walk the debate, but the Senate will eventually begin votes on amendments — one of which is considered crucial to winning support for a final vote.
The White House called Thursday’s tally an “important” but “early milestone,” as both sides of the issue prepare for a grueling debate — one that is being waged in Washington and on the airwaves.
The amendment likely to be at the front of the line is one from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., which would scale back the call for universal background checks. The plan would expand checks to gun-show and Internet sales, but exempt certain personal transactions.
The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights supporters voiced concern about the new proposal, saying it still goes too far. But the plan, offered by two lawmakers who are at the conservative end of their respective parties, could help ease opposition ahead of a final vote.
The legislation required at least 60 votes to advance Thursday. If the bill ultimately passes the Senate, it would still have to pass the Republican-dominated House.
“The hard work starts now,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged after Thursday’s vote.
He assured Democrats that a proposal to renew the assault weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines would get a vote as an amendment, though it was dropped from the main bill amid intense opposition. The main bill also includes a measure to increase school safety funding.
Reid lost two Democrats in Thursday’s vote — Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., and Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, both lawmakers from states with a strong tradition of gun ownership.
More than a dozen Republican senators for days had threatened to hold up the bill Thursday. They voiced concern that the proposal — namely, the background checks provision — would infringe on Second Amendment rights and impose a burden on law-abiding gun owners. They also expressed frustration that, while Manchin and Toomey touted their compromise measure, the bill on the table Thursday did not yet include that. Rather, it included a stricter background checks provision.
“Because the background-check measure is the centerpiece of this legislation it is critical that we know what is in the bill before we vote on it,” Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; and Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in a statement. “The American people expect more and deserve better.”
Thursday’s vote follows an intense week of lobbying by gun control advocates, including the families of the victims of the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. That shooting prompted calls at the state and federal levels for new gun legislation.
Advocates like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns group are likely to spar intensely with the NRA and conservative lawmakers in the coming days as lawmakers debate the bill and advance to a final vote.
CNS News – by Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr.
During Barack Obama’s presidency there have been 32 background checks for gun purchases every minute.
Since February of 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, there have been 70,291,049 background checks for gun purchases, according to data released by the FBI.
Using February 1, 2009 as our starting date, and March 31, 2013 as our end date, (the latest data from the FBI) Obama has been president for 1,520 days.
That equates to 36,480 hours, or 2,188,800 minutes.
Divide the 70,291,049 background checks by 2,188,800 minutes and you get approximately 32 checks for gun purchases every minute!
(Todd Starnes) – The father of a Connecticut child is furious after discovering that his son’s school is teaching students that Americans don’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms.
“I am appalled,” said Steven Boibeaux, of Bristol. “It sounds to me like they are trying to indoctrinate our kids.”
Boibeaux’s son is an eighth grader at Northeast Middle School. On Monday his social studies teacher gave students a worksheet titled, ‘The Second Amendment Today.’
“The courts have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not ensure each individual the right to bear arms,” the worksheet states. “The courts have never found a law regulating the private ownership of weapons unconstitutional.
The worksheet, published by Instructional Fair, goes on to say that the Second Amendment is not incorporated against the states.
“This means that the rights of this amendment are not extended to the individual citizens of the states,” the worksheet reads. “So a person has no right to complain about a Second Amendment violation by state laws.”
According to the document, the Second Amendment “only provides the right of a state to keep an armed National Guard.”
Boibeaux said he discovered the worksheet as he was going over his son’s homework assignments.
“I’m more than a little upset about this,” he told Fox News. “It’s not up to the teacher to determine what the Constitution means.”
Mat Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, called the lesson propaganda – that is “absolutely false.”
“In fact, the US Supreme Court has affirmed that the Second Amendment ensures the individual the right to bear arms,” Staver told Fox News. “The progressive interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t give you the right to bear arms – that it’s a corporate right of the government – but that has been rejected by the Courts.”
Boibeaux’s son’s teacher also told the students that the Constitution is a “living document.”
As noted in the worksheet provided to students – that means “the interpretation changes to meet the needs of the times.”
“The judges and courts of each generation provide the interpretation of the document,” the worksheet states.
Boibeaux called that concept mind-boggling.
It’s not up to the teacher to determine what the Constitution means,” he said. “If you want to learn about the Constitution, recite it word for word.”
Staver said the idea that the Constitution is a living document is another progressive tactic.
“This idea that this school is propagating that the Constitution can simply be changed at the whim of someone – or that the Second Amendment does not protect the individual right to bear arms is absolute propaganda and absolutely false,” Staver said.
Boibeaux said he’s demanding meetings with the principal as well as the board of education.
“I just don’t appreciate this as a parent,” he said. “I expect teachers to teach my kids and tell the truth – not what they think their point of view is.”
Ellen Solek, the superintendent of the school district, told Fox News they have now decided to pull the assignment from the classroom.
“It is no longer an assignment in that particular school,” she said, noting that it was an “administration decision in the best interest of the district.”
She refused to answer any questions about the content of the lesson, how it became a part of the curriculum or how many students were assigned the lesson. She also refused to acknowledge whether the school will apologize to students and parents.
“No comment, thank you,” she said.
Washington DC – -(Ammoland.com)- In a poll conducted by PoliceOne, a majority of law enforcement personnel said universal background checks, “assault weapons” bans, and “high capacity” magazine bans do not make police safer and will not lower violent crime. Armed citizens, on the other hand, do make a positive difference.
In the poll of 15,000 law enforcement professionals, 71% of respondents said an “assault weapons” ban would have zero impact on violent crime. Of those surveyed, 95.7% said the same of a “high capacity” magazine ban, and 79.7% said the same in response to a question on universal background checks.
Over 90% of these law enforcement professionals said “mandatory sentences with no plea bargains” for those who use a gun in perpetrating a crime would reduce violent crime.
When asked if they supported concealed carry laws for citizens without a felony in their past, 91.3% of respondents answered “yes” on “without question and without further restrictions.”
Additionally, 80% of these law enforcement professionals also agreed that casualties at Sandy Hook Elementary would “have likely been reduced” if “legally-armed citizens” had been in the school.
Manasquan, NJ –-(Ammoland.com)- Remember all those who denied that firearms confiscation as a result of New York’s new gun laws was too “insane” to even consider?
That it was strictly in the realm of paranoid conspiracy theorists and the “it cant happen here crowd”?
Those were and remain some of the standard replies to anyone who even thought about the possibility, let alone gave voice to it, despite the fact that Gov Cuomo and numerous other officials made public comments about such a plan, as I discussed in my article “Feinstein & Cuomo Admit Planning Australian Style Government Gun Buy Back” .
Elected Officials, the media, various Gun Control Groups and their zealous forced disarmament supporters, even some firearms owners themselves all insisted it was to crazy to even consider.
There’s just one huge problem it is happening now in New York State!
It seems those that tried desperately to warn of such an insidious plot had hit the bullseye with their warnings after all. News came from multiple NY State based firearms enthusiast websites late Friday that confiscations of Pistol Owner ID Cards, as well as firearms and accessories has commenced in NY under the provisions of the horribly flawed, draconian and blatantly unconstitutional NY SAFE Act.
Those folks having their weapons and FID cards confiscated have been discovered to have been prescribed multiple different types of psychotropic drugs, such as those for Depression or Anxiety. These are known as SSRI ( Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) class drugs and have the potential to cause serious and adverse side effects, something I wrote about extensively last week in an article that went viral in days and caused multiple Anti Gun and Progressive News Groups to initiate a concentrated denial of service hacker attack against Ammoland Shooting Sports News (see Daily KOS ” Keeping Track Of The RKBA Crowd” http://tiny.cc/ug67uw), in an effort to keep the information from the public.
From NY http://tiny.cc/nyfirearms
“John Doe, an upstanding professional with no outstanding criminal convictions and no history of violent action received a letter from the Pistol Permit Department informing him that his license was immediately revoked upon information that he was seeing a therapist for anxiety and had been prescribed an anxiety drug. He was never suicidal, never violent, and has no criminal history. The New York State Department of Health is apparently conducting a search of medical records to determine who is being treated for anxiety drugs and using this as a basis for handgun license revocation.
Those are the facts. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Get your FREE 2A Flashmob Patch – See if your eligible here!
Now, before anyone trots out the old saw about how this is nothing more then a paranoid, unsubstantiated rumor on a “gun nuts” internet forum. I spoke to the Attorney of Record in this matter on the phone this morning and he confirmed that the above snippet is accurate and these cases are happening!
James Tresmond Esq confirmed in our conversation that the above mentioned case is occurring in Erie County NY, it is his client that has been effected, and as yet unknown sources have seen fit to take it upon themselves to share confidential medical records with NY State Officials without authorization, a massive HIPPA violation.
It seems these supposedly confidential records are then compared against a list of known NY pistol license holders and letters are sent out demanding their Pistol Owner ID Cards be surrendered, as well as any firearms and accessories.
This is an unprecedented violation of a Citizens 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendment RIGHTS, brought to fruition by power and control hungry tyrants holding elected office who swore an Oath to uphold and defend the very rights they are now actively stripping from their constituents.
Moreover, the confiscation efforts underway in NY State have had another, albeit unintended effect. By undertaking this course of action, those in power have inadvertently pulled back the curtain on something they have suppressed from the Citizens for far to long, leaving them with precious little wiggle room to explain away their actions.
Those are the only two possible explanations.
If anyone still feels some level of doubt regarding the veracity of this story, Attorney Tresmond welcomes anyone to visit his website tresmondlaw.com, Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/james.tresmond.7 ), or send an email to TresmondLaw@gmail.com.
Mr Tresmond asks that those making inquiries be mindful and respectful of the fact that they have been deluged with inquiries in recent days and therefore a personal reply may be delayed or impossible due to the volume.
(Ammoland.com)- Vociferous Pro-Victimhood Advocate David Hemenway, PhD, Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center managed to insult 10′s of millions of Americans in a recent interview by declaring that anyone who chooses to defend their lives or the lives of their loved ones is a “wuss“. ( http://tiny.cc/o1b8uw )
“The gun is a great equalizer because it makes wimps as dangerous as people who really have skill and bravery and so I’d like to have this notion that anyone using a gun is a wuss. They aren’t anybody to be looked up to. They’re somebody to look down at because they couldn’t defend themselves or couldn’t protect others without using a gun.”
So the good doctor deigns to look down from his ivory perch and hurl invective at anyone that is handicapped, injured, weak (or weaker, such as women vs man, elderly vs criminal), outnumbered or simply not a martial arts expert as “wusses“.
Dr Hemenway has a long and “illustrious” history of doing anything necessary to advance the Citizen Disarmament agenda of the elites. He also admits his desire, parroting that of Eric Holder and Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Control and Prevention (NCIPC) who in 1994 told The Washington Post:
“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned. That it is imperative to “change the social norms”
“This is not acceptable behavior anymore. Another area we talk about where social norms have changed is smoking. What a magnificent change we’ve had in smoking in the United States. We need to see a social norm change on gun violence. “
According to Hemenway, and far to many others, we are supposed to simply accept the notion that only a “wuss” would insist on armed self defense, that a 110lb woman must be able to defeat her potential attacker(s) or submit to rape or anything else that happens to her, or she is not worthy of respect. That a senior citizen (such asMary Sheppard, who was savagely beaten by a recently released violent felon) , that can not cold cock their significantly younger and stronger attacker should be viewed with contempt, or that even a mixed martial arts expert that cannot win out when set upon by multiple attackers such as those found in repeated cases of rampaging flash mobs around the Country is some kind of “lessor” being.
Of course this is also presuming that the potential attackers are all also unarmed, which is never the case.
Give the Dr this much, he’s at least open and public with his contempt, disdain and bigoted views, something that many Anti Gun advocates try desperately to hide from public view. The thing is, his public remarks are a huge, arrogant mistake.
Generally speaking its considered a good idea to not insult millions of people you are trying to persuade to come around to your view point.
Then again, Anti’s like the Dr make these same arrogant mistakes all the time, and as a rather famous General and Political Leader once said ” Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake” – Napolean Bonaparte.
In that light, I would strongly encourage the good doctor to keep opening his mouth at every opportunity.
DENVER, CO – U.S. President Barack Obama addresses gun control issues during a speech at the Denver Police Academy on April 3, 2013 in Denver, Colorado. Obama commended Colorado’s newly passed gun control laws. (Photo by Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
by Shepard Ambellas
Intellihub.com
April 6, 2013
ELBERT COUNTY, COLORADO — President Obama announced Wednesday in Colorado, that he plans to press the Congress to pass at least one assault weapons ban and stringent universal background checks for the purchase of firearms. This comes after the recent wave of mass shootings that have seemed to plague the United States.
One thing is clear, the establishment has used these “domestic terror” events to their advantage, further stripping US citizens of their rights. The New York SAFE Act is an example, signed into law 1 hour after it passed the senate by Gov. Cuomo in January of 2013. The Act limits the amount of rounds firearm magazines can hold.
Although it is widely publicized that the presidents visit to Colorado is indeed propaganda as we see in a Huffington Post piece which reads, “The trip is heavy with political symbolism. Colorado expanded background checks and placed restrictions on magazines despite being a state with a deep-rooted hunting tradition, where gun ownership is a cherished right. Moreover, Obama will meet with law enforcement officials and community leaders at the Denver Police Academy, not far from the Aurora suburb where a gunman last summer killed 12 people in a movie theater. The president’s trip is occurring in the same week that prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty for James Holmes, accused of carrying out the Aurora rampage.”
You can clearly see how the establishment has seized on the opportunity.
Recently Elbert County Colorado Sheriff Shayne Heap responded to president Obama’s visit to Colorado in a video message. In the video Heap states, “To enact laws that are both constitutionally questionable and punitive to law abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong, borders on legislative abuse.”
The Sheriff points out how Obama flew in from Washington DC which has an extremely high murder rate and tell Colorado what to do.
(investmentwatchblog.com) Newtown parents, including Mark Barden, spoke at the state capitol building on Monday to call for a complete ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines
Lawmakers in the US state of Connecticut have agreed to a sweeping set of gun restrictions, including a ban on new high-capacity magazines.
The proposal requires background checks on all gun sales and expands the state’s assault weapons ban.
It comes as new federal gun measures appear to have stalled in Congress.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21997806
HARTFORD, Conn. (CBSNewYork) — Connecticut state lawmakers came to an agreement Monday on what they said will become some of the nation’s toughest gun control laws.
As CBS 2?s Lou Young reported, the deal included a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, such as the one that was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre in Newtown. The deal also calls for a new registry for existing high-capacity magazines, and background checks that would apply to private gun sales.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/04/01/connecticut-lawmakers-reach-deal-on-gun-control-laws/
Connecticut lawmakers announced a deal Monday on what they called some of the toughest gun laws in the country that were proposed after the December mass shooting at a school in Newtown. Some highlights from the proposal:
GUN LAWS
—Ban sales of high-capacity ammunition magazines;
—Background checks for private gun sales;
…
Connecticut Lawmakers Agree to Gun Control Bill – Bans Magazines over 10 rounds, Requires a State Issued Permit to Buy Ammo, & Mental Checks!
Connecticut Lawmakers Agree to Gun Control Bill
Bans Magazines over 10 rounds
Requires a State Issued Permit to Buy Ammo
Must submit to universal background and Mental Checks
Bans any weapon with any “assault weapon” characteristics (pistol grips or anything that “looks scary”)
http://offgridsurvival.com/connecticutgunban/
Conn. lawmakers unveil bipartisan gun control plan
(fromthetrenchesworldreport.com) The communist insurgents within the United States continue their push to disarm we American nationals, even to the point of presenting poll numbers which have been proven to be false via their own previous admissions. Captain Mark Kelly, the husband of ex-Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was making the rounds over the weekend, spouting his sedition while trying to present himself as some kind of American hero.
Let’s look at this logically and ask the question. Does the government grant the people their rights? Was the Bill of Rights written by the government to outline the privileges they were to bestow upon us, said privileges of course to be revoked, altered, or regulated at the government’s whim?
This is the position the government would like to establish. It is however absolutely a fiction. This government did not grant us our rights, as all power within this nation resides in the people. We granted the government limited power, which they have distorted. Our rights are inalienable, they cannot be removed as we are born with them and they stay with us until our deaths.
The 2nd Article to the Bill of Rights states in part: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This is an absolute statement and there is no way it can be misconstrued.
Infringe is defined as: “Act so as to limit or undermine; encroach on”, therefore any government action that alters, in the smallest degree, any American nationals right to arm, as he or she sees fit, is by definition an infringement and is not law, but rather an act of sedition.
The infringements that have been levied upon our Bill of Rights are too numerous to count. These infringements have in fact brought us to the precipice of slavery. The only thing standing in the way of a complete takeover of the people by the government is our possession of our firearms which have not yet been made a part of the infringements.
This is not just about our 2nd Article right. This is about our freedom and liberty, et.al. A person who is governed by another person is not free. This is why our Republic emphasizes self governess of, by, and for the individual.
Mark Kelly spouted the lie that 92% of the American people support universalbackground checks, which can only be accomplished through universal registration. Again, this is a lie, but even if it were not, it would not matter. If 99.999% supported it, no one of us can alter the rights of another.
Our employees in the government are forbidden by law to advocate in any way to alter our Bill of Rights. The 1934 Gun Control Act was and is an infringement, and tell me how bold would these actors within this police state be in attacking our homes, if we still had our machine guns and hand grenades? The 1968 Gun Control Act was and is an infringement, as the 2nd Article to the Bill of Rights does not say “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed except for those who are felons. “
These communists are parasites of the lowest degree and have sleazed their way into our lives in taking our kindness for weakness, said kindness fostered in reality via stupidity as the most feared threat to our safety is an armed government wielding tyranny over an unarmed population.
These present infringements have been put forth for no other reason than to segment another portion of our population to be without their inalienable rights. And with the new mental health aspect, hell you do not even have to be accused of harming anyone. Now, instead of being dispossessed of our rights via conviction, which again is unconstitutional, we are to be disarmed for what could happen: an ‘if’ or a ‘maybe’.
We must stand firm in our defiance of universal background check registration and let these communists know that not only are they going to cease and desist in their attempt at further infringement, but we demand that all past infringements be removed as a precursor to their trials for sedition.
God bless the Republic, death to the international corporate mafia, we shall prevail.
It took “conservative” Republicans to trot out mandatory and market-based health insurance in the same mouthful. 
Don’t ever forget to thank them for this.
Well, it’s time for the next step: Mandatory guninsurance – also “market based” and “incentivized,” of course.
Here it comes, directly from one of the insurance Mafia’s chief consiglieries, Robert Hartwig. He is president of something called the Insurance Information Institute – which is an outfit funded by the insurance Mafia for the purpose of spewing propaganda favorable to the insurance Mafia and to wheedle for more laws that extort fresh “customers” for the insurance Mafia:
Mandatory gun insurance, he says, would “. . . (cover) individuals whose person or property was in some way injured or damaged as a result of the use of a firearm.”
What Hartwig avoids mentioning is the guns that will be pointed at gun owners who decline to be “covered.”
But why would anyone decline such a valuable “service”?
Perhaps so that they can afford to keep the gun. Or even buy one in the first place.
And here we come to the true object of this enterprise: To make the legal ownership of guns progressively more expensive, so that within a period of years, very few people except the affluent elites (and eventually, perhaps not even they) will be able to legally own guns. No registration – or confiscation (as such) will be needed. The public – most of it – will be disarmed via being priced out of the “market” using “incentives” provided by the insurance Mafia.
Or they will be criminalized – by the government – for not having bought the required insurance. Exactly as has been done already to car owners who fail to purchase the required insurance. And will soon be done to people who fail to purchase the required health insurance.
It’s quite brilliant, really.
The Mafia would “reward” gun owners who own fewer guns – and levy surcharges upon those who own “too many” guns – or guns deemed “too powerful” or “excessive,” such as those of a certain caliber, or which have magazines that hold “too many” bullets. Conceal carry? Higher risk – you pay more.
It will work in exactly in the same way that the insurance Mafia has made owning powerful cars and motorcycles – especially more than one – financially untenable for most average people. Gun owners who do not keep their guns stored unloaded and /or locked up – and therefore, largely useless for home defense – will be surcharged into penury. And just as the insurance Mafia is already pushing hard for in-car monitors for drivers, so also will the insurance Mafia push for random checks or in-home monitoring for gun owners – to “make sure” the guns are “kept safe.” Either accept these terms and conditions – or give up your guns.
Or, become an outlaw – subject to potentially years in prison if they ever find out you failed to comply.
Every gun owner will be strongly “incentivized” to become a good little Clover – to do as he is told.
And most will.
Bet your bippie that Obamacare – brought to you by these same “conservative” Republicans – never forget that – will tie into this. Already, doctors are asking probing questions of their patients: Do you own a gun? The patient is Catch-22′d either way. If he says yes, the doctor – now in cahoots with the government and the insurance Mafia – will jot that information down on the patient’s files – files that are no longer private. Files that are going to be read with great interest by the government – and the insurance Mafia (which amounts to the same thing) because your “health care” is now a matter of public concern – and must be “incentivized” with “market-based” nudges – you know, orders enforced at gunpoint (the guns owned by not-you, of course).
Or, the patient lies and says no.
Now he’s probably committed some sort of actionable offense – one must always tell the truth to the government – even though the government rarely retruns the favor and is never obliged to. The patient who fibs to Uncle – his eternal in loco parentis – must live in perpetual fear of Uncle discovering his fibbing.
Much worse – for the patient – he tells the doctor to piss off and mind his own goddamn business. Patient is belligerent and paranoid; potentially dangerous. Immediate e-mail to Homeland Security. Cue the thug scrum. (This is no exaggeration, by the way. It has already happened to several people. Their doctors narced them out to the insurance Mafia’s enforcers – you know, the police – and “for their safety,” these people’s guns were physically taken away despite their having done nothing to anyone – much less committed any crime. See here and here and here, for openers.)
Don’t just bet your bippie. Bet your ass this is coming.
Efforts are currently under way to get mandatory gun insurance laws passed in the following states: California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. But the real push will come from Washington – from deep within the reticulated colon of tyranny, soon to issue forth its predictable product.
This is their strategy – and I expect it’s going to work. Because for it not to work, there would have to be a successful challenge of the idea of forcing people to buy insurance, period. Put another way, if it is wrong – or even merely unconstitutional – to force people to buy insurance in order to legally own a gun (even in their own homes) then it must also be wrong to force people to buy health insurance to “cover” their ownselves. Or their cars, for that matter. To be compelled to buy any insurance at all – except in cases of property not yet fully paid for, in which case one has the free choice to not buy the property – or to wait until one has the means to do so outright, without taking a loan.
The very idea of mandatory insuranceitself must be thrown in the woods.
Do you expect that to happen? The system hasalready decreed it’s just fine – ethically peachy and legal – to literally threaten to cage people at gunpoint for failing to purchase a health insurance policy. And a car policy. What makes you think they will stop at that?
I don’t think they will stop.
The basic idea behind mandatory car and health insurance has been accepted by most people – to say nothing of the courts. And that is the real problem. If you have to buy car insurance because you might cause damage to someone else’s property (even if you never actually do) then surely you should also be required to cough up for a gun insurance policy. If you have an obligation – enforceable at gunpoint – to hand over money to the health insurance Mafia for “coverage” because you might get sick and might impose “costs on society” – then surely you have the same obligation when it comes to owning a gun.
Right?
Who will argue the principled opposite? That it is better to accept that when it comes to any given thing,some people may (indeed will) occasionally behave irresponsibly – and accept the consequences of this (and hold only them responsible for their actions) as the price of living in a free society – than it is to chase the unicorn of a risk-free society and along the way, treat everyone as presumptively irresponsible? To put a finer point on it: To punish the responsible – the innocent – based upon the actions of the irresponsible and the guilty – in an ever-speeding-up vortex of dumbing-down and its inevitable corollary, the clamping down on whatever freedom of action remains. A world in which nothingyou do or might do isn’t someone else’s business. And theirs, yours. Everyone a prisoner of everyone else – and hating one another for it.
Hell on earth, realized.
We are well on our way there.
Jefferson characterized the either-or this way:Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem. That is: Better freedom with danger than slavery with safety. And even the sage of Monticello made the error of accepting the premise that slavery can buy safety; it can’t – it never has. Ask the Soviet-era Ukrainian kulaks how “safe” they were under Stalin’s “protection.” Or on a smaller scale, the 77 victims of Anders Behring Breivik, all of them living in a legally disarmed, “safe” society that proved to be anything but “safe” for them.
So, here’s our choice.
Either people take a principled stand – and forget the utilitarian arguments – or they will accept what’s coming. They must reject not just the idea of being compelled to purchase gun insurance in order to be “allowed” to own a gun, they must question the whole filthy juggernaut that’s steaming along behind it. The very idea of mandatory any insurance.
It’s as simple – and as complicated – as that.
Government, if it has any ethical justification at all, exists solely to protect the rights of the individual. It is an assault on the rights of the individual to deprive him of his rights before he has done something to justify it. That he – that “someone” – might behave irresponsibly is thin gruel, inadequate to override the fact that he hasn’t yet. Any government that abuses any person’s rights – that punishes any person pre-emptively for things he hasn’t done but which someone “might” – is itself abusive and no longer legitimate.
Our rights are sacred – but we’ve forgotten. Most of all, we have forgotten that there has to be a damn good reason to forcibly deprive any human being of any of them.
Doing so because some other person did something – or might do something (and thus, “you might, too”) – is an absolute outrage.
And to accept it, a degradation.
Will you accept it?
Throw it in the Woods?
More @ http://ericpetersautos.com/category/politics/
(Bloomberg) -They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mentally unstable.
“What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?” Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model.
As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they don’t track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported.
“Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have,” said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.
Harris, a 48-year-old Democrat, has asked California lawmakers to more than double the number of agents from the current 33. They seized about 2,000 weapons last year. Agents also took 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,000 high-capacity magazines, according to state data.
“We’re not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun,” said John Marsh, a supervising agent who coordinates the sometimes-contentious seizures. “I got called the Antichrist the other day. Every conspiracy theory you’ve heard of, take that times 10.”
The no-gun list is compiled by cross-referencing files on almost 1 million handgun and assault-weapon owners with databases of new criminal records and involuntary mental-health commitments. About 15 to 20 names are added each day, according to the attorney general’s office.
Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a “disqualifying event,” such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isn’t sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said.
At a house in Fontana, agents were looking for a gun owner with a criminal history of a sex offense, pimping, according to the attorney general’s office. Marsh said that while the woman appeared to be home, they got no answer at the door. Without a warrant, the agents couldn’t enter and had to leave empty- handed.
They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.
“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.
In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while she’d been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition.
Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment.
Phillips said her husband used the guns for recreation. She didn’t blame the attorney general’s agents for taking the guns based on the information they had, she said.
“I do feel I have every right to purchase a gun,” Phillips said. “I’m not a threat. We’re law-abiding citizens.”
No one was arrested. Most seized weapons are destroyed, Gregory said.
“It’s not unusual to not arrest a mental-health person because every county in the state handles those particular cases differently,” Gregory said by e-mail. “Unless there’s an extenuating need to arrest them on the spot, we refer the case” to the local district attorney’s office, she said.
Agents more often arrest convicted felons who are prohibited from buying, receiving, owning or possessing a firearm, Gregory said. Violation of the ban is itself a felony.
The state Senate agreed March 7 to expand the seizure program using $24 million in surplus funds from fees that gun dealers charge buyers for background checks.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, a gun lobby based in Fairfax, Virginia, that says it has more than 4 million individuals as members, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the program.
Sam Paredes, executive director of the Folsom-based advocacy group Gun Owners of California, praised the program, though not how it is funded.
“We think that crime control instead of gun control is absolutely the way to go,” he said. “The issue we have is funding this program only from resources from law-abiding gun purchasers. This program has a benefit to the entire public and therefore the entire public should be paying through general- fund expenditures, and not just legal gun owners.”
MERRIMACK, NH (CBS) – One of the posters in the front window of a New Hampshire gun shop depicts President Obama as “Firearms Salesman of the Year.” Below the president are two AK-47 rifles.
A second poster featuring the images of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong accompanies a statement that reads, “All Experts Agree, Gun Control Works.”
WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Carl Stevens reports
The signs are in the front window of Collectable Arms & Ammo in Merrimack. Store Co-owner Keith Cox makes no apologies for the storefront that has irritated some neighbors.
“We like to have the creative storefronts which are sort of fun in one aspect and in another aspect if we have an opportunity to make a statement we’ll do that as well,” said Cox.
(Photo Credit: Carl Stevens)
Cox says he is sending two separate messages and is not connecting Obama to the dictators.
He says Obama’s picture is meant to thank him for sending gun sales surging with all the talk in Washington about gun control.
As for the images of the three dictators, Cox says his message is that people armed with guns are better able to protect themselves against tyranny.
Chuck Mower, who lives down the street from the shop, says he understands free speech, but says the message is over the top and unnecessary.
“I can’t even imagine any president’s picture being portrayed on the front of a business with crossed assault weapons underneath it,” Mower said. “When those kinds of things appear and take the public presence…they paint us more as a gooberville in Arkansas.”
Mower, a longtime Merrimack resident, has filed a complaint with the city.
“It’s not a good community standard message and it doesn’t add to solving any of the complicated issues,” he said.
Outside the store on Friday, there was curiosity about the controversy.
“If people want to show it then so be it, it’s their freedom of rights,” said one Merrimack resident.
“One thing great about this country is you can agree to disagree, but to take these extremes I think it’s shameful and I’m sad to say it’s the town I live in,” said another resident.
Regardless of the controversy, the signage is not coming down.
“I certainly would not ask them to change a flag hanging on their homes or a sign in their yards because I am offended by it or disagree with it,” said Cox. “I will support anybody’s freedom of speech.”
Town officials in Merrimack tell WBZ-TV the storefront is not breaking any town ordinances.
(RT) -Lawmakers in South Dakota have passed a bill that would allow school districts to arm staff and teachers with guns to make their schools “safer”.
State Senators on Wednesday voted 21-14 to pass the measure, despite large-scale opposition from school administrators and personnel, who are largely opposed to bringing weapons into their schools.
Supporters of the bill claim that arming teachers could prevent tragedies like the Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City, said that he would leave the decision to arm teachers up to individual school districts, but that he strongly recommends it.
When Craig advocated for the measure earlier this year, he said that having gun-free schools would simply make them more vulnerable and invite potential mass murderers.
“The possibility of an armed presence in any of our schools is a deterrent,” Craig told Fox News, claiming that no shooter would attack a school whose teachers are armed.
Supporters of the bill also argue that teachers would only become armed after partaking in a “School Sentinel program” that would provide them with firearms training by law enforcement officers. No teachers would be forced to take part in the program and could choose to remain unarmed.
But opponents, including many teachers themselves, remain uncomfortable about the prospect of having dangerous firearms in schools. Rep. Troy Heinert, D-Mission, said teachers should not be employed to act as law enforcement officers and that arming them would make him uncomfortable about sending his child to kindergarten.
“Doesn’t this blur the line between a teacher and a law enforcement officer?” he told Fox News. “Do we want to tell our children the only way to be safe is to carry a gun?”
The South Dakota Education Association claims that guns should only be provided to trained professionals and that no training program could properly instruct a teacher how to respond to a situation like the massacre in Newtown, Conn.
“It’s one thing to have firearms training,” the group’s spokesperson, Sandra Waltman, told KTIV TV. “It’s a completely different thing to be trained on how to handle those very difficult circumstances if they should arise. We believe that students should be taught by professional teachers, and we think they should be protected by professional law enforcement.”
Some school officials and administrators have expressed their concern about gun-related accidents. Others say the weapons would distract from the purpose teachers serve in schools.
“It defects everything we’re trying to do with reading, writing and arithmetic, and getting the kids ready for society,” Dakota Valley Superintendent Al Leber told KTIV. “All we do, we spend hours and hours debating whether there should be a gun or shouldn’t be a gun in school.”
Despite the ongoing debate on such a sensitive matter, the legislature has passed the bill, leaving the decision to arm schools in the hands of the state’s individual school districts.
The vote comes days after an online national survey by the School Improvement Network found that 91.6 percent of teachers feel safe in their schools and 72.4 percent would most likely refuse to carry a firearm, even if it were allowed. The South Dakota bill goes against the wishes of the national majority, but legislators believe that the solution to gun violence is arming instructors and giving them to capability to protect their students.
Firearms Freedom Act Map as of 3-1-13
Montana Shooting Sports Association
Missoula, MT –-(Ammoland.com)- Nearly a decade of carefully planned effort to challenge federal Commerce Clause power will see another landmark on Monday, March 4th 2013, when MSSA v. Holder has oral argument before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland, Oregon.
MSSA in the case caption is the Montana Shooting Sports Association whose President, Gary Marbut, crafted the original Montana Firearms Freedom Act (MFFA) in 2004 specifically to lay the groundwork for this current litigation.
Although the MFFA was introduced in the Montana Legislature in 2005 and 2007, it didn’t take off until 2009 when the Montana Legislature passed it and Montana’s Governor Brian Schweitzer signed it into law. Soon thereafter, MFFA clones were enacted in seven other states and MFFA-clone bills were introduced in 20-something other states. See: www.FirearmsFreedomAct.com
In its Commerce Clause challenge, the MFFA declares that any firearms made and retained in Montana are simply not subject to any federal regulatory authority the states gave to Congress to “regulate commerce … among the several states …” in the Constitution.
On the day the MFFA became effective in Montana, the MSSA filed its planned lawsuit to validate the principles of the MFFA in federal court. Marbut is an individual plaintiff in this lawsuit, and the Second Amendment Foundation is an organizational plaintiff along with MSSA. MSSA v. Holder quickly gained support from many interested parties, including the Attorneys General of nine states, the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, the Goldwater Institute, Gun Owners Foundation, Montana legislators, more recently CATO, the Pacific Legal foundation, and others.
MSSA v. Holder was dismissed by the federal district court over standing issues, which dismissal is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit. Plaintiffs do not believe a favorable ruling from the Ninth Circuit is likely, which would actually position plaintiffs better for an appeal to the US Supreme Court. Ultimately, only the Supreme Court can grant the remedy plaintiffs seek, to reverse over a half century of unfavorable Commerce Clause precedent that has shifted massive amounts of effective power from people and states to the federal government.
Normally, the Supreme Court is reluctant to reverse precedent, under the doctrine of stare decisis. However, Chief Justice Roberts recently addressed the subject of stare decisis in the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision where he instructed that precedent should be ignored or revised, “… when the precedent’s underlying reasoning has become so discredited that the Court cannot keep the precedent alive without jury-rigging new and different justifications to shore up the original mistake.”
Hardly any better description may be made of the Court’s history of Commerce Clause precedent.
Once MSSA v. Holder gets to the Supreme Court, plaintiffs will have the opportunity to advance significant new arguments that have never effectively been made about federal Commerce Clause power, one of the “enumerated powers” in Article I of the U.S. Constitution. Court-allowed expansion of federal Commerce Clause power has arguably ushered in the greatest expansion of federal power over states and people since the Civil War.
As a part of the process, MSSA v. Holder plaintiffs are determined to breathe significant life back into the much ignored Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, arguing that the Ninth and Tenth are not irrelevant surplus, but actually amended the underlying Constitution, including proper interpretation of the Commerce Clause. In the Supreme Court’s D.C. v. Heller decision, Justice Scalia closed with, “… it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Ditto the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Will these fresh arguments about the Commerce Clause prevail? That remains to be seen. However, the nation seems to be in the mood to challenge federal power on many fronts. The Supreme Court is certainly aware of these winds of change blowing across America.
Gary Marbut is a successful citizen advocate, the creator of political efforts such as the Firearms Freedom Act movement, is President of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, is a student of the Constitution, and accepted in state and federal courts as an expert in self-defense, use of force and firearms safety.
(Gun Owners of America) -It’s Looney Toons on Capitol Hill.
Everyone’s heard about the “red herring” Feinstein Gun Ban, which “red state Democrats” will vote down in order to pretend they’re “pro-gun.”
But the bigger danger is that Obama will sign “non-controversial” gun control which is just as dangerous, but no one but us is talking about.
Take the gun licensure bill which anti-gunners are trying to dub the “gun trafficking bill.” In the Senate, the bill is S. 54, and was introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) — although it appears that it could have been drafted by an intern.
GOOFBALL PROVISION #1: The bill would impose a 20-year prison term if you planned (“conspired”) to purchase a firearm in order to give or raffle it to a person who, unbeknownst to you, is a “prohibited person.”
Who is a prohibited person?
Well, there are the 150,000 law-abiding veterans who are “prohibited persons” –- for no other reason than that a psychiatrist appointed a fiduciary to oversee their financial affairs.
But probably the biggest category of “prohibited persons” is persons who smoke marijuana. Under 18 U.S.C. 922(d)(3) and (g)(3), you cannot possess a firearm in America if you are “an unlawful user of … any controlled substance…”
In over a dozen states, marijuana has been wholly or partly legalized under STATE law.
It doesn’t matter … if you even think about selling or raffling a gun to this expanding class of persons, you can go to prison for 20 years under S. 54.
GOOFBALL PROVISION #2: The bill would make you a federal “prohibited person” if you are prohibited from owning a gun under “State or local law.”
What does that even mean?
In places like New York and Chicago, everyone is prohibited from owning a firearm without a license. Does that mean that everyone in these jurisdictions is a federal “prohibited person” under S. 54?
What if someone applies for a license and is found not to have a need to possess one? Under the slip-shod language of the Leahy bill, these individuals would probably become federal “prohibited persons” because the bill denies any person from owning a firearm if they are “prohibited by STATE OR LOCAL LAW from possessing, receiving, selling, shipping, transporting, transferring, or otherwise disposing of the firearm or ammunition.” (S. 54, Section 5.)
Oh, incidentally, under the Veterans Disarmament Act, states are required to send the names of 95% of their prohibited persons to the FBI’s NICS system -– or lose federal funding.
So now you will have millions of law-abiding citizens — living in places like New York City and Chicago — who have their names placed in the NICS system. And the Leahy bill doesn’t address some very important questions related to their status as gun owners.
How will these banned citizens get their names cleared? The federal government has for years continued enforcing the Schumer amendment which defunds the ability of the ATF to restore the rights of non-violent prohibited persons. Will New Yorkers and Chicagoans get their gun rights restored after they move away from the localities that banned them from owning guns and which turned them into prohibited persons?
Again, the bill doesn’t say. But we could expect that a few years from now, a future anti-gun President could use the language in S. 54 to impose a federal licensure requirement on these persons — as part of a new 23-point Executive Action memo — and make non-licensees federal prohibited persons (with all that that implies).
Maybe –- just maybe -– the courts would save us from the implications of Leahy’s goofball language.
But answer us this: Why do anti-gun senators and representatives continue to push language which they know is fatally flawed –- just so they can say they “broke the back of the gun lobby”?
The solution is clear: Senators –- if they are pro-gun -– MUST vote against a “motion to proceed” to any of this goofball legislation. That is, they must vote to keep ALL gun control from even being considered on the Senate floor.
ACTION: Click here to contact your Senators. Urge him to vote against any motion to proceed to goofball anti-gun bills like S. 54.
(GovtSlaves) -A crowd of people rallied against gun violence at the Georgia State Capitol in honor of Trayvon Martin Tuesday, the one year anniversary of his shooting death. Many of the protesters were speaking out against so-called “stand your ground” laws, which allow gun owners to use deadly force if they feel as if their lives are in danger.
During the rally, one female protester — wearing an Obama hat — told WGCL-TV that using a firearm in self-defense “is not an option.”
“It’s not an option,” she repeated.
The reporter then asked her, “But what if someone is trying to kill you?” She replied, “They’ll just have to kill me.”
“What an incredible admission on this woman’s part,” CNSNews.com’s Stephen Gutowski writes. “She’s willing to let everybody know that she’d rather be murdered than use a gun in self defense. She’d rather be a victim than be armed.”
Another protester said gun control only hurts law-abiding gun owners, not criminals.
“I think that people should have the right to defend themselves. It’s our Second Amendment right and any sort of legislation on guns or any sort of gun control, all it’s doing is hurting the victims.”
(Business Insider) -A Democratic congressman from California said on Wednesday he wants to make a late addition to the gun proposals being considered by Congress and the White House.
Expanded background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines have been all the talk in the push for gun control after the Newtown, Conn., schoolhouse massacre, but Rep. Mike Thompson said there should also be a discussion of paying states to take guns away from criminals and the dangerously mentally ill who are prohibited from owning them.
This week, Thompson introduced a bill that would do just that.
The Armed Prohibited Persons Act of 2013 would create a program within the Justice Department to give money to states that track down people who are barred from having firearms but own them anyway.
Thompson is in charge of crafting gun proposals for Democrats in the House, but it’s unclear whether the bill has a chance to pass. No such proposal has been part of discussions in the Senate, where a bipartisan group has been working on a deal to expand background checks.
And it has not been among the major proposals being pushed by President Obama and the White House, which include a ban on high-powered rifles. Thompson’s bill also does not specify how much he would like to see the government spend on his idea.
Still, at least one gun rights group in Thompson’s home state has voiced support for the California program that served as inspiration for the bill, indicating there might be some room to negotiate with gun rights supporters.
“There are knuckleheads out there who do have guns and they are confiscated and they should be confiscated,” Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, told TPM. “We don’t have a problem with that. That’s OK. That’s crime-fighting.”
But Paredes said that his organization keeps an eye on how the program is carried out and stressed that “it cannot be a cookie-cutter approach nationwide.”
Thompson’s bill was inspired by a California program created in 2001 that has since seized thousands of guns statewide. It is run by the the Firearms Bureau of the California Attorney General’s Office, which cross-references state records of gun purchases with criminal history and mental health data.
The office looks for people who legally bought guns before they were blacklisted. The result is California’s Armed Prohibited Persons System, which currently shows about 20,000 people illegally own an estimated 40,000 guns. The Bureau estimated 30 percent of prohibited gun owners are on the list due to mental illness.
The bureau has a team of 33 agents who dedicate almost all their time to tracking down people on the list and rounding up their illegal guns. Teams of about eight agents knock on the doors of people on the list and ask to search for guns. If they find any, they take them. If the person does not consent to a search, agents can return with a warrant.
In the first 11 months of 2012, agents seized more than 2,000 firearms, 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,000 illegal high-capacity magazines, according to statistics compiled by the California Department of Justice.
The program initially won over broad support in California, even from Republicans and gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association. But in a sign of how the landscape of the gun debate has shifted, the NRA no longer supports it, according to an attorney for the organization in California.
It’s “good in theory but bad in practice,” the attorney, Chuck Michel, told TPM on Wednesday. Michel said the details of the program, like its high cost and its funding through a fee on gun purchases, have made the NRA change its mind on the program.
“Nobody’s opposed to seizing firearms from violent felons,” Michel said. But he added that the state could find a more efficient way to do it. He said he’s uncomfortable with the state tracking gun purchases.
“This is a form of registration leading to confiscation,” Michel said. “But I’m not gonna defend people who are prohibited from possessing guns from losing them.”
One reason California is able to carry out the program is because it maintains gun sale records more than most states. In order to have enough information to implement a similar program, many states would have to improve their gun sales databases, an idea many Republicans are likely to oppose. In fact, the issue of whether to maintain sale records has been a sticking point holding up federal background check legislation in the Senate.
Thompson objected to the idea that the seizures of illegal guns would even be deemed confiscation like Republicans have worried about. A more appropriate description, he told TPM Tuesday, was “facilitation of court orders.”
“They don’t kick your door down,” he said. “It’s outreach.”
(CAV News) Michigan – Perhaps you live in a state (New York, California) that has proposed legislation that would weaken, possibly eliminate the rights of gun ownership or make life even more difficult by introducing laws that would add restrictions to gun ownership. In Michigan, the state is looking to do the exact opposite.
Preserving the sacred right of bearing arms is the target for lawmakers in Michigan.
Detroit Free Press
• Exempt the state from federal gun regulations for weapons made in Michigan. Another bill would exempt Michigan entirely from “unconstitutional” federal firearms legislation.
• Allow anyone to carry a gun in a school. Another bill would allow school employees to carry weapons into schools.
• Exempt firearms registration and license information from the Freedom of Information Act.
• Eliminate firearms licensing databases in certain circumstances and prohibit firearms dealers from taking pictures of people who are buying and getting licensed for guns.
• Shift the responsibility for issuing concealed weapons permits from counties to the Michigan State Police.
• Include libraries in the facilities that can choose to be a gun-free zone, where people could not carry concealed weapons into the building.
Wyoming and Montana are other states that come to mind when it comes to protecting the right to bear arms and the protection against a tyrant government, such as the one that is forming in front of our very own eyes as I write this.
Utah is also joining the fold, and a lawmaker is proposing similar legislation threatening to arrest any gun grabbers from the Federal government.
Salt Lake Tribune
There are 22 states attempting to pass a variation on what Greene pitched with HB114. His measure would give local police authority to arrest federal agents attempting to take guns away from residents. It also would require the attorney general to provide a legal defense for federal agents who were caught up in an attempt to take firearms — a felony under Greene’s proposal. The legal analysis on HB114 — titled “Second Amendment Protection Act” — is that it would be in violation of the supremacy and commerce clauses of the Constitution.
The more states speak out, the more sheriffs and other local law enforcement officials speak out, this will put the Obama administration in a tough situation to enforce any gun grabbing legislation.
By: Derek Wood
Sources: Salt Lake Tribune, Detroit Free Press
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