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Archive for December, 2012

2013 Assault Weapons Ban

December 29th, 2012 by Rich Szabo

We need this to go viral. Pass it to as many people as possible. Email your Congresmen and women.

Dianne Feinstein has released details for her proposed 2013 Assault Weapons Ban. This new Assault Weapons Ban is far more restrictive than the 1994 law she helped to pass. This new law will ban many popular handguns, rifles and shotguns and will require registration for most gun owners. Please get involved to stop this legislation now.

JOIN THE NRA: http://membership.nrahq.org/default.asp?campaignid=XR020174
JOIN THE GOA: http://gunowners.org/

This link will take you to a Congressional website where you can quickly and easily email your Senators, Congressmen and the President: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/mail/?alertid=61046526&type=ML

You may use this message to send to your Senators, Congressmen and the President:

Greetings,

Due to the recent events at Sandy Hook elementary school we now face renewed threats to our Constitutional rights. While I understand how painful the loss must be for those touched by this tragedy, blaming firearms or their owners and punishing them is not the answer to the challenges we face as a nation.

We already have laws that were violated by a man who was likely psychotic and heavily medicated. This man was stopped by the mandatory background check from purchasing firearms. He then decided to murder his mother and take her legally owned firearms to commit this tragedy.

If your true goal is to protect our children, then enact legislation that will do that. Banning firearms that are rarely used in crime (less than 1% of the time) is not going to stop such tragedies, that was proven in 1999 when the Columbine shooting took place under the 1994 ban. Do something meaningful, please. Make committing the insane easier. Put armed security guards in our schools. But do not strip us of our rights and property by passing additional anti-gun laws that have historically had no positive effect on crime in our nation or others.

Thank you.

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Transcript: The NRA’s press conference reacting to the Sandy Hook shooting

December 21st, 2012 by Rich Szabo

Below is the transcript from the NRA press conference held earlier this morning:

The National Rifle Association’s 4 million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters join the nation in horror, outrage, grief and earnest prayer for the families of Newtown, Connecticut … who suffered such incomprehensible loss as a result of this unspeakable crime.

Out of respect for those grieving families, and until the facts are known, the NRA has refrained from comment. While some have tried to exploit tragedy for political gain, we have remained respectfully silent.

Now, we must speak … for the safety of our nation’s children. Because for all the noise and anger directed at us over the past week, no one — nobody — has addressed the most important, pressing and immediate question we face: How do we protect our children right now, starting today, in a way that we know works?

The only way to answer that question is to face up to the truth. Politicians pass laws for Gun-Free School Zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.

How have our nation’s priorities gotten so far out of order? Think about it. We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses — even sports stadiums — are all protected by armed security.

We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers.

Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them utterly defenseless, and the monsters and predators of this world know it and exploit it. That must change now!

The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school he’s already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave — while provoking others to try to make their mark? A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

And the fact is, that wouldn’t even begin to address the much larger and more lethal criminal class: Killers, robbers, rapists and drug gang members who have spread like cancer in every community in this country. Meanwhile, federal gun prosecutions have decreased by 40% — to the lowest levels in a decade.
So now, due to a declining willingness to prosecute dangerous criminals, violent crime is increasing again for the first time in 19 years! Add another hurricane, terrorist attack or some other natural or man-made disaster, and you’ve got a recipe for a national nightmare of violence and victimization.
And here’s another dirty little truth that the media try their best to conceal: There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting
shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.

Through vicious, violent video games with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse. And here’s one: it’s called Kindergarten Killers. It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?

Then there’s the blood-soaked slasher films like “American Psycho” and “Natural Born Killers” that are aired like propaganda loops on “Splatterdays” and every day, and a thousand music videos that portray life as a joke and murder as a way of life. And then they have the nerve to call it “entertainment.”

But is that what it really is? Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?

In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18. And throughout it all, too many in our national media … their corporate owners … and their stockholders … act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators.

Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away.

The media call semi-automatic firearms “machine guns” — they claim these civilian semi-automatic firearms are used by the military, and they tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers … when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don’t know what they’re talking about!

Worse, they perpetuate the dangerous notion that one more gun ban — or one more law imposed on peaceful, lawful people — will protect us where 20,000 others have failed!

As brave, heroic and self-sacrificing as those teachers were in those classrooms, and as prompt, professional and well-trained as those police were when they responded, they were unable — through no fault of their own — to stop it.

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It is now time for us to assume responsibility for their safety at school. The only way to stop a monster from killing our kids is to be personally involved and invested in a plan of absolute protection. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Would you rather have your 911 call bring a good guy with a gun from a mile away … or a minute away?

Now, I can imagine the shocking headlines you’ll print tomorrow morning: “More guns,” you’ll claim, “are the NRA’s answer to everything!” Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word “gun” automatically become a bad word?

A gun in the hands of a Secret Service agent protecting the President isn’t a bad word. A gun in the hands of a soldier protecting the United States isn’t a bad word. And when you hear the glass breaking in your living room at 3 a.m. and call 911, you won’t be able to pray hard enough for a gun in the hands of a good guy to get there fast enough to protect you.

So why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect our President or our country or our police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in their schools?

They’re our kids. They’re our responsibility. And it’s not just our duty to protect them — it’s our right to protect them.

You know, five years ago, after the Virginia Tech tragedy, when I said we should put armed security in every school, the media called me crazy. But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?

Will you at least admit it’s possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America’s gun owners that you’re willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal left to surrender her life to shield the children in her care? No one — regardless of personal political prejudice — has the right to impose that sacrifice.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no national, one-size-fits-all solution to protecting our children. But do know this President zeroed out school
emergency planning grants in last year’s budget, and scrapped “Secure Our Schools” policing grants in next year’s budget. With all the foreign aid, with all the money in the federal budget, we can’t afford to put a police officer in every school? Even if they did that, politicians have no business — and no authority — denying us the right, the ability, or the moral imperative to protect ourselves and our loved ones from harm.

Now, the National Rifle Association knows that there are millions of qualified active and retired police; active, reserve and retired military;
security professionals; certified firefighters and rescue personnel; and an extraordinary corps of patriotic, trained qualified citizens to join
with local school officials and police in devising a protection plan for every school. We can deploy them to protect our kids now. We can immediately make America’s schools safer — relying on the brave men and women of America’s police force.

The budget of our local police departments are strained and resources are limited, but their dedication and courage are second to none and they can be deployed right now.

I call on Congress today to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school — and to do it
now, to make sure that blanket of safety is in place when our children return to school in January.

Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else, as soon as our kids return
to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work —
and by that I mean armed security.

Right now, today, every school in the United States should plan meetings with parents, school administrators, teachers and local authorities — and draw upon every resource available — to erect a cordon of protection around our kids right now. Every school will have a different solution based on its own unique situation.

Every school in America needs to immediately identify, dedicate and deploy the resources necessary to put these security forces in place right now. And the National Rifle Association, as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years, is ready, willing and uniquely qualified to help.

Our training programs are the most advanced in the world. That expertise must be brought to bear to protect our schools and our children now. We did it for the nation’s defense industries and military installations during World War II, and we’ll do it for our schools today.

The NRA is going to bring all of its knowledge, dedication and resources to develop a model National School Shield Emergency Response Program for every school that wants it. From armed security to building design and access control to information technology to student and teacher training, this multi-faceted program will be developed by the very best experts in their fields.

Former Congressman Asa Hutchinson will lead this effort as National Director of the National School Shield Program, with a budget provided by the NRA of whatever scope the task requires. His experience as a U.S. Attorney, Director of the Drug Enforcement Agency and Undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security will give him the knowledge and expertise to hire the most knowledgeable and credentialed experts available anywhere, to get this program up and running from the first day forward.

If we truly cherish our kids more than our money or our celebrities, we must give them the greatest level of protection possible and the security that is only available with a properly trained — armed — good guy.

Under Asa’s leadership, our team of security experts will make this the best program in the world for protecting our children at school, and we will make that program available to every school in America free of charge.

That’s a plan of action that can, and will, make a real, positive and indisputable difference in the safety of our children — starting right now.

There’ll be time for talk and debate later. This is the time, this is the day for decisive action. We can’t wait for the next unspeakable crime to happen before we act. We can’t lose precious time debating legislation that won’t work. We mustn’t allow politics or personal prejudice to divide us.

We must act now.

For the sake of the safety of every child in America, I call on every parent, every teacher, every school administrator and every law enforcement officer in this country to join us in the National School Shield Program and protect our children with the only line of positive defense that’s tested and proven to work. And now, to tell you more about the program, I’d like to introduce the head of that effort — a former U.S. congressman, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas and former administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Honorable Asa Hutchinson.

ASA HUTCHINSON
Thank you, Wayne.

One of the first responsibilities I learned at Homeland Security was the importance of protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure, and there is nothing more critical to our nation’s well being than our children’s safety. They are this country’s future and her most precious resource.

We all understand that our children should be safe in school, but it is also essential that the parents have confidence in that safety. As a result of the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, that confidence has been shattered. Assurance of school safety must be restored with a sense of urgency.

That is why I am grateful that the NRA has asked me to lead a team of security experts to assist our schools, parents and communities. I took this assignment on one condition: That my team of experts will be independent and will be guided solely by what are the best security solutions for the safety of our children while at school.

Even though we are just starting this process, I envision this initiative will have two key elements: First, it would be based on a model security plan — a comprehensive strategy for school security based on the latest, most up-to-date technical information from the foremost experts in their fields.

This model security plan will serve as a template — a set of best practices, principles and guidelines that every school in America can tweak, if needed, and tailor to their own set of circumstances.

Every school and community is different, but this model security plan will allow every school to choose among its various components to develop a school safety strategy that fits their own unique situation, whether it’s a large urban school, a small rural school or anything in between.

Armed, trained, qualified school security personnel will be one element of that plan, but by no means the only element. If a school decides for whatever reason that it doesn’t want or need armed security personnel, that of course is a decision to be made by parents at the local level.

The second point I want to make is that this will be a program that doesn’t depend on massive funding from local authorities or the federal government.

Instead, it’ll make use of local volunteers serving in their own communities.

In my home state of Arkansas, my son was a volunteer with a local group called “Watchdog Dads,” who volunteer their time at schools to patrol playgrounds and provide a measure of added security. Whether they’re retired police, retired military or rescue personnel, I think there are people in every community in this country, who would be happy to serve, if only someone asked them and gave them the training and certification to do so.

The National Rifle Association is the natural, obvious choice to sponsor this program. Their gun safety, marksmanship and hunter education programs have set the standard for well over a century. Over the past 25 years, their Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program has taught over 26 million kids that real guns aren’t toys and, today, child gun accidents are at the lowest levels ever recorded.

School safety is a complex issue with no simple, single solution. But I believe trained, qualified, armed security is one key component among many that can provide the first line of deterrence as well as the last line of defense. And I welcome the opportunity to serve in this vital, potentially lifesaving effort.

Thank you very much.

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WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

December 20th, 2012 by Rich Szabo

There are no words for what happened in Connecticut this past week. It was a travesty like nothing else. My heart breaks for the children and adults that were killed by a tortured young man and for the families and friends who were devastated by this act of a lunatic.

Our president and the press immediately jumped on this to go after the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. They have been using jargon, incorrect terminology, statistics, as if it were fact.

The president called on Congress Wednesday to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 and to pass legislation that would close the gun show “loophole,” which allows people to purchase firearms from private dealers without a background check. Obama also said he wanted Congress to pursue the possibility of limiting high-capacity ammunition clips. [6] Nancy Pelosi is now asking for a ban of “Assault Magazines”. Again there is NO SUCH ANIMAL! If you are going to try to argue, PLEASE learn the correct terminology. Otherwise you sound like a total fool. [9]

Let’s get something straight. An AR-15 IS NOT an assault weapon. It is a semi-automatic rifle. The media put the label assault weapon on guns with plastic furniture. To be honest, you can do more damage with a 12-gauge shotgun than with an AR15. The term “assault weapon” was a spin-off of the U.S. military’s definition of assault rifles. The U.S. Department of Defense has long defined assault rifles as fully automatic rifles used for military purposes, not semi-automatic. In 1954, Eugene Stoner designed the AR15 for Armalite. Armalite sold the patents to Colt and in1959 the AR15 was introduced to the public. Early Colt AR-15s, their magazines, and their operator’s manuals were marked with ArmaLite’s name. Colt retained the AR-15 designation on commercial rifles. To this day Colt has a model designation with the letters AR, which stands for “ArmaLite Rifle” NOT “Assault Rifle” which most people assume it means. [8]

Fully automatic weapons have been prohibited in the U.S. since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Fully automatic firearms can spray fire with a single pull of the trigger, while semi-automatic guns fire one shot with each pull of the trigger. You can purchase full auto but the paperwork and price is prohibitive. For example: A Class III M16 which is what the AR15 is based on starts at $15,000 IF you can even find one for sale. The National Firearms Act of 1934 is very strict. [10]

I would love for someone to explain what the gun show loophole is? Do any of you really know? There is no loophole. All firearms purchased at gun shows must have the proper paperwork filled out and a background check is done on each person who purchases a firearm. Each purchase is run through the national database run by the ATF, FBI and State Police in each State. The purchase cannot be completed until the background check is run and approved. There is no such thing as a “private dealer”. All dealers MUST possess a Federal Firearms License more commonly known as an FFL and run the background check. It is a felony not to.

Obama has no idea what he is talking about. There is no such animal as a “high capacity clip”. There are magazines and clips. Clips feed a magazine a magazine feeds the firearm. He is referring to a magazine that holds more than ten rounds.

I would appreciate everyone to watch this video “The Truth About Assault Weapons” and educate yourself as to what an assault weapon really is. Once you get your terminology straight we can have an honest discussion about this. I can almost bet that 99.9% of the people in this country have no real knowledge of firearms except what they hear and see in the news, movies and television. Here is the link to the video:

Semi-automatic firearms were introduced in the late 1800s, but gun control supporters didn’t begin calling them “assault weapons” until the 1980s, when they realized that they had failed in their original goal—getting handguns banned—and needed a new issue. That assessment is not based upon a mere hunch. In 1988, an anti-handgun group led by the former communications director for the National Coalition to Ban Handguns encouraged gun control supporters to recognize that efforts to get handguns banned had failed and to shift their energies to semi-automatic “assault weapons,” describing it as a “new topic” that could “strengthen the handgun restriction lobby.”

For the benefit of people who aren’t familiar with firearm terminology, a fully automatic firearm can fire repeatedly and very fast when the trigger is pulled; an example is the military’s M16 rifle, which can fire 30 rounds of ammunition in about 2.5 seconds. Fully automatic firearms are defined as “machine guns” under federal law, and are heavily regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and longstanding state laws. Hollywood movie studios are allowed to use fully-automatic firearms for movie-making purposes, so most people are familiar with them from their use by fictional action heroes, pretending to mow down extraterrestrial aliens and other sensational adversaries with exaggerated amounts of make-believe gunfire. However, other than for gun control supporters’ propaganda purposes, fully automatic firearms have nothing to do with semi-automatic “assault weapon” legislation or laws, all of which have come about since the early 1980s.

Semi-automatics and all other firearms, such as bolt-actions, pump-actions, lever-actions, revolvers, double-barreled shotguns, and single-shot firearms, fire only once when the trigger is pulled. They’ve been commonly used for self-defense, hunting and target shooting for more than a century. Though gun control supporters initially demanded that only semi-automatic firearms be banned as “assault weapons,” today they want pump-actions banned as “assault weapons” too, apparently on the theory that people who don’t know one century-old firearm type from another will go along with banning it, so long as it’s called an “assault weapon.” (2)

So-called “assault weapons” aren’t fully automatic machine guns, or “military,” or “rapid-fire” “weapons of war” “designed for “combat” or “the battlefield,” or “designed to be spray-fired from the hip.” But gun control supporters and some in the media refer to the guns in that manner. TV news programs even go so far as to show fully automatic machine guns being fired during stories about semi-automatic “assault weapons.”

Dow Jones Factiva search found over 90,000 newspaper articles and editorials referring to semi-automatic firearms as “assault” guns since Jan. 1, 1985, and thousands of them used other verbiage appropriate only to fully automatic machine guns. Many appeared in the weeks before the federal semi-automatic “assault weapon” ban was imposed in 1994, and before it expired in 2004, periods during which gun control supporters were trying to panic the public into urging Congress to vote for the ban.

As noted above, in 1980 the New York Times incorrectly and oxymoronically referred to moderately powered semi-automatics designed for civilians as “high-powered semiautomatic military assault weapons.” In 1985, Newsweek incorrectly and hyperbolically referred to semi-automatic firearms as “machine guns,” “automatic weapons,” “military-style assault guns,” and “modern combat weapons,” and with other such terms. And in 1988, the New Right Watch said “[T]he public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons — anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun — can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

In 1989, following a crime involving a semi-automatic rifle, Time magazine, having previously said that it didn’t consider itself obligated to be objective about guns, after having been challenged about its earlier articles containing unsupported, provocative statements advocating gun control, led the media’s campaign for a national gun ban with its “Armed America” issue, employing a Halloween-style cover. Scary covers are a newsstand sales gimmick for which Time has become known, inspiring Reason magazine to compose a “Top 10 list of the most horrifying, silly, irresponsible, or downright ridiculous Time cover panics from the past 40 years.”

Other than for gun control supporters’ propaganda purposes, fully automatic machine guns used by the military “on foreign battlefields” have nothing to do with the semi-automatic “assault weapon” issue. As noted, fully-automatics — commonly seen on TV or YouTube.com being used by our troops against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, or by Hollywood action heroes, mowing down extraterrestrial aliens and other sensational adversaries — can fire repeatedly, as long as the trigger is held down. For that reason, they’ve been defined as “machineguns” and heavily regulated by the National Firearms Act since 1934, their importation and manufacture for private purposes have been prohibited under the Gun Control Act since 1968 and 1986, respectively, and they’ve been prohibited in about half the states for decades. By comparison, semi-automatic firearms, which gun control supporters call “assault weapons,” fire only one shot when the trigger is pulled.

On Nov. 17, 1993, just before the Senate voted for the federal “assault weapon ban,” NBC’s Today show tried to encourage the legislation’s passage with a story that showed fully automatic machine guns being fired, falsely portraying such guns as the type covered by the legislation. Criticized for its error, NBC admitted in writing that it had made a “mistake,” but it ran more machine gun footage in another “assault weapon” story two weeks later, and again in April 1994, just before the House of Representatives voted on the proposed ban.

A decade later, just before the 10-year federal “assault weapon” ban expired in 2004 — when gun control supporters were trying to panic people into urging Congress to make the ban permanent — CNN’s John Zarella teamed with gun control supporter Ken Jenne — later convicted of mail fraud and tax evasion, and sent to a federal penitentiary — in a story showing a fully-automatic machine gun being fired, followed by Zarella and Jenne falsely claiming that guns of that type would be freely sold if Congress allowed the 1994 “semi-automatic assault weapon” ban to expire.

Similarly, in 2009, NBC-5 Chicago reporter Kim Vatis teamed with gun control supporter Andrew Traver, the Special Agent in Charge of BATFE’s Chicago office, nominated by President Obama to be promoted to the agency’s director, to deceive TV viewers about the kinds of guns that were affected by the federal “assault weapon” ban. “It’s a killing machine. Assault weapons (sic) made for the war zone,” Vatis intones, as video footage of overseas war zones rolls, the sounds of machine guns being fired echoing in the background. Vatis’ and Travers’ sham continues with the pair taking turns recklessly firing a fully-automatic machine gun, a type of firearm that is indeed common to overseas war zones, but which has nothing to with the semi-automatic “assault weapon” ban.

Pretending that she is about to fire a semi-automatic “assault weapon,” Vatis says that the gun–in fact, a fully automatic machinegun possessed by the BATFE–is “almost impossible to control.” Then, to prove the point, Vatis appears to deliberately wave the machine gun back and forth as she wildly fires a large quantity of ammunition over a wide area, a dangerous stunt that Travers should have known better than to allow. The text version of Vatis’ story–as inaccurate as her gunfire–disapprovingly notes, “The assault weapon ban expired in 2004.” [3]

I do feel that anyone who is going to own a firearm should have to go through a psych exam, training and qualification in order to purchase and own. Just as you have to take classes and qualify to drive a car. There are more car fatalities than gun fatalities in the United States. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/05/bruce-krafft/comparing-car-and-gun-fatalities-is-misleading-and-irrelevant/ and have to re-qualify once a year or every other year just as law enforcement does.

What happened in CT is horrible and should have never have happened. However, if this whack job wanted to kill people he didn’t need guns. He could have built a bomb just like the crazies in Oklahoma City. They used kerosene and fertilizer to make the bomb and a rental van to deliver it. So should we ban fertilizer, kerosene and rental vans? Richard Speck the serial killer strangled women with their own panty hose and then stabbed them with a knife. Should we ban panty hose and knives? What about the lunatics running around stabbing children to death in China? No guns involved and children are dead. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7715249/China-censors-attack-news-to-calm-panic-after-ninth-child-stabbing-in-weeks.html. If these nut jobs want to kill, they will. No regulation is going to stop them.

It has now been over 10 years since gun owners in Australia were forced by law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own Government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. It didn’t work. Crime is up in Australia.

While the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns. Criminals in Australia now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws ONLY adversely affect only the law-abiding citizens. I find it interesting that the States with the very strict gun laws are the States where all these killings are happening. The revisionist history of anti-rights proponents who claim that since Australia instituted their gun ban, there have been no mass murders, despite the recent “gun-free” massacre of 135 Australians. [7]

Look what happened in Norway last year. Did the gun ban prevent a mass killing? I think not. (1)Norway already has strict regulation of firearms, but this is an irrelevance when considering the actions of Anders Breivik. There are also laws in that country against impersonating a police officer, against setting off bombs, and against massacring children. Most people follow these. But then, most people are not the problem. Most people do not get out of bed and plan terrorist attacks. Those who do are beyond the law and will not be constrained by changes to it. In a free society, maniacs will always find a way.

This is not a new concept. Cesare Baccaria outlined this truth in his seminal book Crimes & Punishments in 1764, in a passage that made such an impression upon Thomas Jefferson that he copied it into his daybook and quoted it at length in letters to his nephew and to
James Madison:

The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to commit the crime which the laws mean to prevent. Can it be supposed, that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, and the most important of the code, will respect the less considerable and arbitrary injunctions, the violation of which is so easy, and of so little comparative importance? Does not the execution of this law deprive the subject of that personal liberty, so dear to mankind and to the wise legislator? And does it not subject the innocent to all the disagreeable circumstances that should only fall on the guilty? It certainly makes the situation of the assaulted worse and of the assailants better, and rather encourages than prevents murder, as it requires less courage to attack unarmed than armed persons.

A better question than “How did the shooter get his guns?” is “What would have happened had others at Utøya had had access to weapons too?” If Breivik had been denied his monopoly on violence, we may have read a different story. As it was, Breivik could have been fairly confident that he would not be challenged — even by the police, who are unarmed except in special circumstances, and who took an hour and a half to get to the scene.

Norway’s system is the worst of both worlds. Licenses are tied to interests — farming, hunting, sports — rather than to rights. Transportation of firearms is heavily restricted, and there is no such thing as a concealed-carry permit. The police are unarmed. We have heard much about how “uncontroversial” the issue is in Norway, but it should be more so. Currently, it is a veritable paradise for those with ill intent who know that their actions will go unchecked.
The United States is no stranger to gun violence, but it is inconceivable that a shooter could have terrorized such a large area for an hour and a half with impunity in, say, Idaho. When Charles Whitman ran amok at the University of Texas in 1966, his intended victims started shooting back. A policeman eventually killed him. As John Lott Jr. has persuasively argued, the relationship between guns and crime is counter intuitive; even those who do not own guns are protected by those who do, both actively and, because criminal behavior is affected by calculation of risk, passively.

To live in freedom is to expose ourselves to the occasional outburst of the insane and the criminal. We cannot stop those who have evil in their hearts, but we can make sure that those who do not — the citizenry and the police — are given a fighting chance to protect us all.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the “assault weapon” ban of 1994 and other gun control attempts, and found “insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence.” A 2004 critical review of research on firearms by a National Research Council panel also noted that academic studies of the assault weapon ban “did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence” and noted “due to the fact that the relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban … the maximum potential effect of the ban on gun violence outcomes would be very small.”

The United States Department of Justice National Institute of Justice found should the ban be renewed, its effects on gun violence would likely be small, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement, because rifles in general, including rifles referred to as “assault rifles” or “assault weapons”, are rarely used in gun crimes.

That study by Christopher S. Koper, Daniel J. Woods, and Jeffrey A. Roth of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania found no statistically significant evidence that either the assault weapons ban or the ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets had reduced gun murders.

Research by John Lott in the 2000 second edition of More Guns, Less Crime provided the first research on state and the Federal Assault Weapon Bans. The 2010 third edition provided the first empirical research on the 2004 sunset of the Federal Assault Weapon Ban. Generally, the research found no impact of these bans on violent crime rates, though the third edition provided some evidence that Assault Weapon Bans slightly increased murder rates. Lott’s book The Bias Against Guns provided evidence that the bans reduced the number of gun shows by over 20 percent. Koper, Woods, and Roth studies focus on gun murders, while Lott’s looks at murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults. Unlike their work, Lott’s research accounted for state Assault Weapon Bans and 12 other different types of gun control laws.

Again I will say that a psych exam, training, qualification and re-qualification should be required for anyone to own a firearm.

China has censored news of school attacks in an attempt to calm public panic after seven toddlers were hacked to death with a cleaver in the ninth violent assault on children in weeks. [5]

All Israeli children are protected by at least one armed person in every school, on every school bus, at school functions and field trips. Parents and teachers are trained and armed. They volunteer to protect their children because they love them. They made a conscious decision that killing them would never again be made so easy. Last week, a total of zero children died in school shootings in Israel. [4]

So you don’t need a gun to commit a mass murder. As I stated earlier, did the whackjobs in Oklahoma City use guns? No, they used fertilizer and kerosene with a truck delivery system. So should we ban fertilizer, kerosene and trucks? Richard Speck the serial killer used panty hose and knives to kill his victims. Should we outlaw panty hose and knives?

The bottom line is this: The Connecticut shooter was an emotionally disturbed young man who snapped, took his mother’s guns and killed as many people as he could. A knife, a baseball bat, a chainsaw or even his bare hands could have had the same results.

The “conversation” we should be having is whether there are ways to identify such troubled individuals early and intervene with appropriate mental health services so that the Adam Lanzas of the world never get to the point of picking up a gun or any other weapon.

With guns, we are ‘citizens’. Without them, we are ‘subjects’.

So once again, please know what you are talking about before you start making statements about what you think you know is fact.

1. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/272787/norway-and-gun-control-charlie-cooke#

2. http://gunbanfacts.com/Get_the_Facts/History.aspx

3. http://www.gunbanfacts.com//Get_the_Facts/History/hoping.aspx

4. http://www.ammoland.com/2012/12/18/children-are-dying-for-our-insanity-emulate-israel-to-prevent-mass-killings/#axzz2FX0P4uJQ

5. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7715249/China-censors-attack-news-to-calm-panic-after-ninth-child-stabbing-in-weeks.html

6. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/19/obama-gun-violence-task-force_n_2331238.html

7. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2225517/posts

8. http://www.armalite.com/images/Library%5CHistory.pdf

9. http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/12/pelosi-assault-magazines-have-to-be-outlawed/

10. http://www.atf.gov/firearms/nfa/

11. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/05/bruce-krafft/comparing-car-and-gun-fatalities-is-misleading-and-irrelevant/

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AN AUSTRALIAN BOOMERANG

December 10th, 2012 by Rich Szabo

Written
by
  Alan Abel

Two Australian DJs who pranked a call from the Queen of England to the Duchess of Cambridge should not shoulder total blame for the tragic suicide of a hospital nurse, who unwittingly connected the culprits’ telephone call to the Royal Suite. How many of the hundreds of prank calls made by Howard Stern in the USA, or the late Jeremy Beadle in the UK, have injured an innocent participant? Probably none.


The events leading up to nurse Jacintha Saldanha’s death are going to receive intense scrutiny by Scotland Yard, and certainly Her Majesty’s security team. An autopsy should reveal any critical medical problems. MI5 interviews with Mrs. Saldanha’s family will discover her prior behavior profile. All this information can realistically determine if she had suicidal tendencies. We just have to wait and see.

Meantime, some Monday morning quarterbacks, both journalists and talk show hosts, have voiced a desire to ban all further prank phone calls made by FCC licensed radio and television programs.  That would certainly hinder David Letterman from taking another faux call from Jesus Christ, as he did recently on his nightly show. Yet, nobody in the Bible Belt ended their life over his irreverence.


All the worldwide outrage about Jacintha Saidanha’s unfortunate death is understandable. But we must not rush to judgment by condemning the DJ pranksters. Nor should we curtail further fun on the phone. Tragic consequences in life are inevitable and we must all cope with them accordingly.


You can visit Alan’s website for more information: http://www.alanabel.com

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