Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists

According to Fox News, the Ninth Circuit Court has declared that it will no longer accept “interveners” in opposition to it’s decision earlier this year that California’s concealed carry protections were unconstitutional.

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would bar other law enforcement officials, including state Attorney General Kamala Harris, from gaining “intervener status” to join in further challenges of its ruling in a case originally brought by an independent journalist who sued the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department over its policy of requiring a specific reason for being allowed to carry a concealed weapon in public.

[…]

In its bombshell ruling earlier this year, the 9th Circuit found those policies to be unconstitutional and held that law-abiding citizens have a right to bear arms under the Constitution’s Second Amendment and could not be required to justify their reasons for carrying concealed weapons.

That could be bad news for DC, too, where WTTG’s journalist Emily Miller was told that she didn’t need a carry license, according to Katie Pavlich;

To make things worse, during an interview a D.C. police department employee essentially argued that Second Amendment rights don’t apply in D.C. because they were written “for when the British were coming.” For the record, “the British were coming” (a reference from Paul Revere’s famous ride) in 1775. The Second Amendment wasn’t written until 1787.

Yeah, well, ISIS is coming.

Chief Tango sends us a link from the Washington Post written by Aaron Blake who explains why the Senate had a tough time passing gun control legislation last year. Mostly, it’s because Americans agree with the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” And here’s Aaron’s chart with the stats;

Although gun ownership is up since Sandy Hook, it’s down marginally from 2010;

While the Senate was debating increased background checks after Newtown, gun-control supporters were fond of citing polls that showed as many as 90 percent of Americans supported the concept of the legislation. It wasn’t enough to get the bill across the finish line, and the NRA won.

Anyone who takes up the cause in the future ought to heed this poll and recognize that the vast majority of Americans believe in guns, not just in general, but for protecting their own homes. LaPierre’s position on guns and self-defense is embraced by broad swaths of the American public.

To their detriment, that’s something some of the most ardent gun-control supporters can’t really relate to.

Well, mostly because those 90% of Americans weren’t asked the right questions. The poll asked “Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?” But that wasn’t what the Senate wanted to do.

If the pollees were asked “Do you support or oppose requiring background checks on all gun buyers and using that information for a national database for gun registration?”, which is what Manchin and Schumer wanted to do, they would have got a completely different result in their poll. Increased and more stringent background checks wouldn’t have prevented the Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Santa Barbara or the most recent shooting in Washington State.

The gun grabbers want to close that nebulous “gun show loophole” – meaning that they want to inconvenience law abiding people who buy guns in private sales, because in none of those incidents were guns purchased by the shooters in private sales.

A poll of incarcerated criminals who committed gun-related crimes found less than 1% bought their guns at gun shows. Mostly they steal their guns or buy the guns from shady back-alley dealers…because they can’t get past current background checks at legitimate gun dealers.

The politicians know that, the Washington Post knows that and in spite of knowing that, they still want to drive towards the background checks hoop so they can feel good about themselves for having done something, or at least giving the public the impression that they did something. Despite the fact that they will have done nothing except make it more difficult for law abiding Americans, the ones in the chart above, to protect themselves and their families in a culture that is sick.

The Associated Press makes Gabby Giffords a very sympathetic figure in their piece about her struggle – a woman shot in the head by a mad man stands up to the giant National Rifle Association and their single-minded Bubba constituency as she tries to make guns an issue in this election.

As Giffords visited nine states in the past two weeks, the National Rifle Association was working in at least 30, with advertising and get-out-the-vote manpower, to strengthen its position in Washington and state capitals. She will be widely outspent this year by the NRA and others who support the rights of gun owners.

Two days after Giffords’ appearance in Seattle, a 15-year-old high school student shot and killed two people and killed himself in an attack north of the city that seriously wounded three others. The shooting has barely made a ripple in the final days of the campaign.

Let’s make something very clear here. Nothing being proposed by any legislator anywhere in the United States would have prevented Gabrielle Giffords’ tragic wounding. Nothing is being proposed that would have prevented that 15-year-old from killing those people in Washington State. It’s already against written laws for a 15-year-old to have a gun. It’s already illegal for anyone to have a gun in school.

The article continues that Giffords campaigns against Joni Ernst in Iowa by spending her massive donations from her organization for anti-Ernst propaganda;

“Joni Ernst won’t vote to close the loophole that lets some dangerous people still get guns,” Story County Sheriff Paul Fitzgerald says in the ad set to run through Election Day.

What loophole, Sheriff? The one that is used by less than one percent of criminals who commit gun crimes? And there it is – after the incessant yelling and screaming following the tragic Newtown shootings, we all calmed down and looked at the actual facts, you know, after the emotion dissipated. That’s why Colorado, New York, Connecticut and Maryland rammed their idiot laws through their legislatures, before everyone came to their senses. Came to their senses and realized that government can’t stop these incidents from happening – well, not as long as guns remain the hands of the bumpkins.

The Giffords and the Bloombergs talk about “sensible gun laws” and ridding our communities of “illegal guns”, but we already have sensible gun laws and, in their eyes, all guns are illegal because sensible guns laws aren’t making us safer – and the solution to every problem is legislation, you know, when you’re a hammer…er…lawyer. If their legislation isn’t eradicating gun violence, then we simply need more legislation. All legislation, no matter how well-meaning, makes someone less free, leaves fewer choices for someone.

The NRA isn’t the big evil lobby that the Giffords, the Bloombergs and the Associated Press makes them out to be. They represent 5 million Americans who legally and responsibly own firearms for various reasons.

The culture is sick. Colorado takes guns away from law-abiding citizens and makes pot legal, so irresponsible behavior get a pass. Gun owners have more of a reason to want to protect themselves and their families because the government is becoming more permissive of irresponsible behavior. Just read through some of the comments in our more active “feel good stories” where folks condemn us because we cheer when a legal gun owner walks away from a bad situation and the criminals don’t. The culture is sick. The Giffords, the Bloombergs, all feed off of that sickness in order to make themselves relevant in an irrelevant discussion.

At CNN, Clintonista Paul Begala frets over a remark that Joni Ernst, the Iowa candidate for the Senate, made in 2012 to the NRA;

“I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family — whether it’s from an intruder, or whether it’s from a government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.”

Huh?

This notion — that the Second Amendment gives citizens the right to fire upon federal officials, or their local police, or sheriffs or even U.S. military personnel — is common among right wingers.

Of course, his point is that it is irresponsible for a Senate candidate to make remarks about defending her self and her family from the government. Begala continues;

President Washington and his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, sought to enforce a tax on whiskey, which Congress passed in 1791. A group of Pennsylvania whiskey distillers objected, violently. In what was known as the Whiskey Rebellion, they refused to pay the tax and burned the home of the federal tax collector.

Washington personally led 13,000 troops to crush the rebellion (the only time a president has commanded troops in the field). Washington was willing to shed blood to ensure no one took up arms against his or her own country.

To argue that the Second Amendment allows citizens to turn their guns on their government is to repudiate the actions of George Washington, as well as the Constitution itself.

Um, Mr Begala, President Washington had just finished a war against his government and tossed that government out of the country and led a new government, so how do we know that was his intent in Pennsylvania? And since then, the government’s taxing power has led the State government of Maryland to tax homeowners for the amount of rain that falls on their houses. I’m pretty sure that President Washington would be leading Maryland property owners to Annapolis to toss out Marty O’Malley and his criminals in response to that odious tax. So you really need another example, Mr Begala.

So he goes on to tell us how he owns guns…the typical liberal “I know a black person…” response. You know, how folks tells us that their cousin’s neighbor’s doctor knows a veteran so they understand veterans’ issues.

At last count I have 22 guns. I use them to hunt, shoot targets, and bond with my family. My grandfather was a hunter and gun owner, as is my father, as am I — as are my sons.

But neither we, nor Ms. Ernst nor any American has the right to turn those weapons on American military personnel, peace officers or other government officials. To suggest otherwise betrays our Founders, our Constitution, and common sense.

Um, yes, we do have that right, and the right isn’t granted by the government, it’s granted by our Creator, whoever you think He is. At least that’s what the Founders said in the Declaration of Independence. Hopefully, we’ll never have to use that right, but having that right, having guns in my home with an appropriate amount of ammunition for my modern sporting rifles will keep the government in line without actually pointing my firearms at anyone.

As long as there are people like Ms. Ernst to remind the government of our rights, the less likely it is that we’ll need to fulfill that prophecy.

Fox News reports that the United Kingdom has new policy that went into effect on October 15th which allows unannounced inspections of gun owners’ property there;

Britain’s gun owners were subject to the home visits before the update, but the inspection had to be conducted with prior notice.

“Where it is judged necessary, based on specific intelligence in light of a particular threat, or risk of harm, the police may undertake an unannounced home visit to check the security of a certificate holder’s firearms and shotguns,” the updated policy says.

In a letter to legal gun owners, a British police organization, the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the revamped guideline does not grant police any new powers but clarifies “the basis on which the visits should be conducted.”

I’m sure there are tons of gun grabbers who just peed in their pants a little at the thought of this happening here. Of course, the UK has no real Bill of Rights, but here we do.

The New York Post reports on the FBI latest report on gun violence and mass shootings. Apparently, they changed the definition of mass shootings to include incidents in which no one died, as opposed to their former metrics which required at least four deaths to qualify;

While the FBI study discusses “mass shootings or killings,” its graphs were filled with cases that had nothing to do with mass killings. Of the 160 cases it counted, 32 involved a gun being fired without anyone being killed. Another 35 cases involved a single murder.
Three-quarters of the missing cases came in the first half of the study’s time period, thus again biasing the results toward finding a larger increase over time.

It’s hard to see how the FBI can count these incidents, which make up 42 percent of its 160 cases, as “mass killings.” They plainly don’t fit the FBI’s old definition, which required four or more murders, nor even its new one of at least three murders.

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For example, in 2010, the FBI reports that there were 29 of these active shooter cases, but just nine involved more than a single fatality.

The FBI study also ignored 20 out of what should have been a total of 113 cases where at least two people were killed.

For example, it missed a 2001 shooting at a Chicago bar that left two dead and 21 wounded, as well as a 2004 Columbus, Ohio, attack at a concert that left four dead.

According to John Lott, the author of “More Guns, Less Crime”, who wrote the Post’s article, the report skewed the numbers by starting in 2000, a year with a low number of mass shootings. The report left out incidents in the early years to show a huge increase by the time of the study’s end in 2013 from 1 incident in 2000 to 17 in 2013. I don’t suppose that the FBI wrote this report for political reasons. But I’m sure we’ll hear about the report in the months after the mid-term elections.