Posts Tagged ‘firearms.gun laws’

Growing support for gun rights, and groaning scoundrels who despise the trend

Posted: March 17, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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by Chuck Michel
3:00pm Monday, March 16, 2015

Never doubt the linguistic and logical limberness of professionally coached anti-gun activists.

People in gun control circles are circling their wagons in reaction to a recent Pew Research report definitively showing that more Americans support the Second Amendment than support gun control. Pew’s multi-decade survey on gun control again asked one basic question (among others), namely: “What do you think is more important – to protect the right of Americans to own guns, OR to control gun ownership?” Since any form of gun ownership control is an infringement of the right of Americans to own guns, it is a succinct and reasonably worded question. In the most recent instance of this survey, six percent more Americans think that protecting gun owner rights is more important than enacting gun control.

This isn’t the first time the majority has favored rights over restrictions, though in Pew’s previous polling the margins have been much thinner. Anyone who has watched tracking polls of the past few decades knows that this is the culmination of a long term trend, and is surprising only in as much as Pew’s research appears to be a little behind other surveys (though Pew’s poll was called an “outlier” by an outright liar from a gun control obsessed, maniacal medical school). But members of the media nonetheless flatly proclaimed incorrectly that this was the “first” time Pew had seen gun rights being more popular than gun anti-rights. Maybe this explains why only 40% of the public trusts the news media.

The backlash to Pew’s polling was predictable. Sympathetic left-of-center members of the media sought the opinion of gun control activists to flavor their “reporting.” My favorite was Media Matters, an organization specifically devoted to attacking non-leftist journalism. For a printable quote, they tracked down an assistant professor at the Joyce Foundation funded Center for Gun Policy and Research. Her CV states that she “focuses on how public policies affect mental health, substance use, and gun violence” and also notes that her education is “in Health Policy and Management” but does not mention a background in research methodology design. So when she told Media Matters that Pew’s research was an “outlier,” she either willfully ignored other polling or pulled the conclusion out of her antidepressant pill bag.

Read the whole thing @ http://www.calgunlaws.com/growing-support-and-groaning-scoundrels/

Police rep says proposed 5.56mm ammo ban unnecessary

Posted: March 5, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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A Fraternal Order of Police official said 5.56mm armor-piercing ammo is not typically used against officers

WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) — The leader of a national police organization this week said a proposal to ban armor-piercing 5.56mm pistol rounds would be less effective than the government thinks.Last week, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it plans to outlaw steel-tipped 5.56mm ammunition because it now qualifies as an armor-piercing round. Sale of the ammo has been legal since 1986 because it’s a round that could not, until recently, be fired from a handgun — the stipulation necessary for prohibition of any bullet. Traditionally, the 5.56mm bullets have been fired only in AR-15 rifles.

In a 17-page report, the bureau cited new handguns that are able to fire the round, increasing the likelihood, the ATF believes, that the bullets will be used against law enforcement officers.

However, James Pasco, executive director of the Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, believes that banning the ammunition wouldn’t amount to much additional protection.

“This specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem,” he said in a report by the Washington Examiner. “While this round will penetrate soft body armor, it has not historically posed a threat to law enforcement.”

With around 325,000 members, the Fraternal Order of Police is the largest organization of sworn officers in the world.

Pasco’s statements give fuel to critics who allege the bullet ban is merely a backdoor attempt by the Obama administration to render AR-15 assault rifles useless.

Supporters of the proposed ban, however, feel that newer handguns available to shoot 5.56mm ammo increase the threat to police.

“We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and women in law enforcement and believe that this process is valuable for that reason alone,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. “If there are armor-piercing bullets available that can fit into easily concealed weapons, that it puts our law enforcement at considerably more risk.”

Still, opponents to the ban believe it’s unlikely criminals will purchase the expensive handguns — and even if they did, the firearms are much too large to be considered a concealed weapon.

The ATF is asking for public comment regarding the ban, to be concluded March 16. But the proposal has already encountered stiff resistance. In the House of Representatives, more than half of lawmakers have signed a letter challenging the ban, and the National Rifle Association is urging the public to ask Congress to prevent it. A similar measure is moving through the Senate.

Since news of the proposed ban earlier this month, sporting goods stores have been selling large quantities of the affected ammunition — now at higher cost.

Bipartisan Majority of the U.S. House Opposes Obama Administration’s Ammo Ban

Posted: March 5, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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238 Members Sign Letter Opposing Proposed Ban on AR-15 Ammunition

Fairfax, Va. – In an overwhelming show of bipartisan opposition, 238 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed a letter to the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, opposing the Obama Administration’s attempt to ban commonly used ammunition for the most popular rifle in America, the AR-15.  The National Rifle Association worked closely with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) to gather signatures on this critical effort.

 “This letter sends a clear message to President Obama that Congress opposes his attempt to use his pen and phone to thwart the will of the American people,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “Obama said he would enact his gun control agenda ‘with or without Congress.’ He is now trying to make good on that promise. The NRA would like to thank Chairman Goodlatte and all who signed the letter for opposing this unconstitutional attack on our Second Amendment freedom.”

The NRA is working with Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on a similar letter of opposition from the U.S. Senate.

Read the letter @ https://shared.nrapvf.org/sharedmedia/1507341/letter-to-atf-director-jones-apa-framework-final.pdf

Anti-gun Blatherings From the Mayor and Police Chief of St. Louis

Posted: March 4, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares that “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Since its adoption, scholars and lawyers have debated what the Second Amendment means, and how it applies. Until recently, there seemed to be a consensus that reasonable regulations on guns, the purchase of guns, and the use of guns were both constitutional and wise policy.

That consensus no longer exists in our state.

Last year, we argued against a proposed constitutional amendment that made Missouri law far more protective of guns than the federal Second Amendment requires. We spoke out against the new state amendment because there are too many guns on the streets. Guns are too easy to get, and the plentiful supply of legal guns means they are readily available to criminals. Hundreds of guns are stolen from law-abiding citizens each year: In 2014 alone, more than 470 guns were reported to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department as stolen. The number of unreported stolen guns in Missouri is not known, because even the simple requirement that legal owners report stolen guns to local police departments is apparently too controversial to be a law.

We also argued that the proposed state constitutional amendment was ambiguous. We warned, loudly and in many venues, including the courts, that it could lead to unforeseen results, results that could endanger our city.

But despite the warning and even though the language was ambiguous, sponsors of the proposed amendment were not dissuaded. They asserted that the amendment could not be used to protect the “right” of a convicted criminal to carry a gun anywhere he pleased. One of the amendment’s proponents, a state senator, even said explicitly that the intent of the amendment was to leave in place the laws prohibiting convicted criminals from carrying guns.

Reassured by this, voters of Missouri adopted the new amendment. Now, we are starting to see the troubling results of that decision.

Last week, a state judge in St. Louis declared that the law banning criminals from carrying guns was unconstitutional, based on the amendment. He ruled that a convicted felon in undisputed possession of a firearm cannot be charged.

The judge’s decision will be appealed, though the law will still be enforced, and the city will follow the case closely through the court system. Also pending in the Missouri Supreme Court is a challenge brought by law enforcement officials and an advocacy group of parents to declare the amendment itself invalid. The outcome of neither case is certain.

The Missouri Legislature, therefore, should not wait.

Many voters took legislators at their word that Amendment 5 would not make it more dangerous for police officers and more difficult for prosecutors to their jobs. It has. Legislators should act immediately to restate the law barring felons from possessing firearms.

In the meantime, we should be resolved as a region to take a hard look ourselves at gun laws. We cannot stand by and allow careless state policy to trump reasonable regulations aimed at keeping our families safe. We must begin to push the limits at the local level, looking at all of our legal options, whether that is a new ordinance, new policing strategies, or a new gun docket in the court system to track those gun criminals that are prosecuted. And we must press our legislative delegation to either fix the law, or to revisit the constitutional amendment in 2016, and let the voters decide whether they want to keep this amendment on the books now that we know how bad its results are.

Francis Slay is mayor of St. Louis. Sam Dotson is the city’s police chief.

Lawmakers aim to repeal Safe Act

Posted: March 4, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

COOPERSTOWN — State Sen. Jim Seward, R-Milford, is sponsoring legislation that is aimed at repealing and amending the controversial NY SAFE Act gun control legislation enacted two years ago.

Seward, in a statement, this morning, acknowledged that winning passage of the package of four bills will be “a difficult fight” because of what he called New York’s “political landscape.”

To repeal or significantly amend the law would require that the measures co-authored by Seward and Assemblyman Anthony Brandisi, D-Utica, would require that that the bills be approved by the Assembly, which is dominated by New York City area Democrats, who largely favor the gun control measure advanced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The SAFE Act was also supported by Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, who heads the GOP conference of which Seward has been a member for 28 years.

Cuomo has maintained the law has helped protect New Yorkers from gun crimes. But many county sheriffs, including Otsego Sheriff Richard Devlin Jr., Schoharie Sheriff Tony Desmond and Delaware Sheriff Thomas Mills, have criticized the statute as an encroachment on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Seward, who voted against the SAFE Act, said though he favors the full repeal of the law, he is also “working to chip away at several of the law’s worst features.”

“The reactionary, hastily drafted and passed NY-SAFE Act was meant for headlines and has done nothing to stop criminals from getting guns and using them for illegal purposes,” Seward said. “We need to take action now to correct the many technical issues the law created for responsible gun owners who shoot for sport, collect firearms, and carry guns to protect themselves and their families.”

The Seward-Brindisi package aims to accomplish the following:

■ Amend the NY-SAFE Act to again allow for the gifting of long guns to close relatives and to holders of valid statte pistol licenses.

■ Repeal the provision struck down in federal court which limits the number of legally permissible cartridges in a 10-round magazine to seven.

■ Terminate an “ overly burdensome” state program requiring all ammunition retailer register with the state and conduct background checks on all customers. The bill also redirects state funding allocated to this program to public school districts to assist in the hiring of school resource officers.

■ Prohibit county judges and other licensing officers from imposing “extraneous restrictions that go above and beyond state law” when issuing pistol and handgun licenses.

White House: AR-15 Ammo Ban Would Save Cops’ Lives

Posted: March 4, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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The White House says a proposed bill that would ban a popular ammo for the AR-15 assault rifle would help protect police officers.

“We are looking at additional ways to protect our brave men and women in law enforcement, and believe that this process is valuable for that reason alone,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday, according to The Washington Times.

The proposal would make it illegal to buy and sell the .223 M855 green-tip ammo commonly used in the AR-15, a civilian version of the military’s M16 rifle. The legislation would use the fact that the ammo is armor-piercing to declare it illegal.

Earnest said the ban would save first responders’ lives.

“The president has long believed that there are some common-sense steps that we can take … to ensure that we’re protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans while also taking some common-sense steps to prevent people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them,” Earnest said.

“This seems to be an area where everyone should agree that if there are armor-piercing bullets available that can fit into easily concealed weapons, that it puts our law enforcement at considerably more risk.”

More than 100 lawmakers in Congress have signed a letter addressed to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Todd Jones that is against the legislation, reports the Times. The ATF is asking the public to comment on the proposal.

“[The ban] will interfere with Second Amendment rights by disrupting the market for ammunition that law abiding Americans use for sporting and other legitimate purposes,” the letter reads, according to the Times.

The lawmakers add that there are no documented cases of a single M855 green-tip round being fired at a police officer.

Maybe there’s enough of a backlash growing that this dumb assed ban won’t happen?
We can only hope. If BATFEIEIO bans M85 surplus ammo,what’s to stop them from banning 7.62×51 surplus ammo because it can be fired from a handgun? (TC Contender,etc.)
This is a very slippery slope BATFEIEIO is going down,we all know the ban has nothing whatsoever to do with “officer safety”,it wasn’t too long ago that Holder’s DOJ claimed cops were racist trigger happy civil rights violating threats to society-now it’s all about protecting cops? Bullshit.
BATFEIEIO needs to be disbanded,the FBI already does the NICS checks-which also need to go,but hey,one corrupt useless ,gov inc. gestapo type agency with it’s own stormtrooper force at a
time-we can get rid of the FBI next,followed by DEA,BLM,USFS,USFWS,DOI,EPA,DOE-(education and energy)-HUD,HHS…

Gun Owners of America to score amnesty votes in politician gun ratings

Posted: March 3, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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News that can help shape the political landscape of the gun rights advocacy community was broken last night on the nationally-syndicated Armed American Radio program, when Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, announced GOA will begin scoring politicians on their support or opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens.

GOA has been alone among national gun rights groups warning that a “pathway to citizenship” will provide for millions of new anti-gun voters with the electoral clout to undo all hard-won legislative and judicial gains gun owners have enjoyed in recent years. That the administration is working toward that and other agenda goals is corroborated by what Homeland Security Jeh Johnson told the United Conference of Mayors, when he maintained that “the approximately 11 million people who are in the country illegally have ‘earned the right to be citizens.’”

The danger of allowing that to happen was emphasized recently by Oregon’s Rep. Kurt Schrader, who declared immigration “will decide who is in charge of this country for the next 20 or 30 years.” Plus, Obama’s counting on that.

The discussion took place in the third hour of the program, beginning at the 45-minute mark. I was one of the panelists, along with Pratt, host Mark Walters, Neil W, McCabe of Human Events, and blogger, trainer and gun authority George “Mad Ogre” Hill. Referencing back to a guest from the second hour, Georgia Congressman Doug Collins, I regretted not being able to establish his position on joining with so-called “Republican rebels” and separating Barack Obama’s amnesty from Department of Homeland Security funding.

“I know that there are pro-gun politicians that get A-ratings and things like that, but should not amnesty also be a part of the way that these people are scored?” I asked Pratt.

“Well the answer you’re going to get from us at GOA is absolutely, it should be a part of scoring, and it’s something that we plan on including in our rating of Congress this next year, because as we’ve already discussed, if we don’t block this amnesty move now, before we get five, eight-million previously illegal aliens now voting 85 percent anti-gun Democrats, that’s the ballgame,” Pratt replied. “That’s it.

“We lose our Second Amendment, it doesn’t matter whether it’s still in the Constitution in writing or not,” he continued. “The National Archives can’t protect it from this kind of assault.”

At that point, legislative and judicial avenues will be closed, and all gun owners will need to make a decision that carries terrible personal consequences.

GOA’s decision will offer further contrast with the way political grades are assigned by the larger National Rifle Association. With NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that “[T]o defend firearm freedom, we need more than just firearm freedom … One right depends on another,” with a recent NRA advertising campaign promoting the message that all rights are connected, and with NRA’s bylaws mandating the organization to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States [and] promote public safety, law and order, and the national defense,” the continued “single issue” excuse for avoiding amnesty is neither consistent nor credible.

http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-owners-of-america-to-score-amnesty-votes-politician-gun-ratings?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Grandstanding Doctors and Lawyers Call for Gun Control

Posted: March 1, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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From NRA-ILA

On Tuesday, nine doctors and lawyers, claiming to represent their medical and legal organizations (and by extension, the members of their professions), strained their credibility and made fools of themselves with a call to action in favor of gun control.

The nine are Steven E. Weinberger, of the American College of Physicians; David B. Hoyt, of the American College of Surgeons; Hal C. Lawrence, of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; Saul Levin, of the American Psychiatric Association; Douglas E. Henley, of the American Academy of Family Physicians; Errol R. Alden, of the American Academy of Pediatrics; Dean Wilkerson, of the American College of Emergency Physicians; Georges C. Benjamin, of the American Public Health Association; and William C. Hubbard, of the American Bar Association.

If their proposals for dealing with “firearm violence” sound familiar, it’s because you’ve heard them all before, mostly from anti-gun politicians (like President Obama) and dedicated gun control advocates (like Michael Bloomberg). Doubtless, all concerned hope the usual tired agenda will sound more convincing when promoted by learned professionals. Instead, it just makes those professionals sound like they’re out of their depth and playing politics.

The group calls for “background checks for all gun purchases, including sales by gun dealers,” believing that “purchases at gun shows do not require such checks.”

Seriously? They really don’t know that dealers have to run checks at gun shows?

Here’s another. They claim “40% of firearm transfers take place through means other than a licensed dealer; as a result, an estimated 6.6 million firearms are sold annually with no background checks.” The source of these figures, they claim, is a summary of the Cook-Ludwig Guns in America survey of 1993.

Two years ago, the authors of the survey saidthat the correct number is probably between 14 and 22 percent, but “we don’t know the current percentage — nor does anyone else.”

There’s more. They claim, “The only way to ensure that all prohibited purchasers are prevented from acquiring firearms is to make background checks a universal requirement for all gun purchases or transfers of ownership.”

They really believe that background checks stop criminals from stealing guns, buying them on the black market, and hiring “straw purchasers” to buy guns for them?

They claim that a ban on “assault weapons” and “large” magazines would be “compliant with the Second Amendment” and “constitutionally sound” according to the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller(2008).

The same Heller decision that said “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms,” and questioned only whether fully-automatic firearms were within the amendment’s scope, on the grounds that they’re not commonly owned.

“Patients trust their physicians to advise them on issues that affect their health, and physicians can answer questions and educate the public on the risks of firearm ownership and the need for firearm safety,” the anti-gunners claim.

First, however, these doctors and lawyers might want to educate themselves. Better yet, they should stick to medicine and law, rather than dabble in matters in which they have little understanding and zero practical experience. For bunion removal or estate planning, doctors and lawyers have a lot to offer. When serving as the gullible mouthpieces for a political agenda, they do themselves and the good standing of their professions a disservice

Washington activists plan peaceful armed assembly response to activist’s arrest

Posted: February 27, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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Reacting to the “catch and release” of one of its leaders for openly carrying a firearm on federal grounds that ban firearms inside the facility, Washington activists are planning a responsive armed demonstration, the Our State, Our Rights coalition announced today on Facebook. Liberty for All and Defend Amendment X will gather in front of the Tom Foley Federal Building in Spokane next Friday to protest the arrest and detention of Anthony Bosworth by DHS police on Wednesday.

“Bosworth … was arrested, detained for five hours in a steel cage without charges, denied Miranda rights, and access to an attorney, interrogated by the FBI as a domestic terrorist, and then released with a citation for ‘failure to comply,’ even though his civil rights were clearly violated at every turn,” the protest announcement explains. “His only action was that he was standing outside the federal courthouse at a 10th amendment rally, while legally openly carrying a firearm. The Feds have still not returned his firearms.”

Read the rest @ http://www.examiner.com/article/washington-activists-plan-peaceful-armed-assembly-response-to-activist-s-arrest?CID=examiner_alerts_article

Illinois Democrat’s ‘Firearms Registration Act’ may test new paradigm

Posted: February 25, 2015 by gamegetterII in anti-gun asshattery
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David Codrea
Gun Rights Examiner

Setting the state up for massive gun owner civil disobedience along the lines of what has occurred in California and is currently happening in New York and Connecticut, Democrat State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins filed the Firearms Registration Act with the Secretary of State on Friday. The act was then presented for first reading and referred to the Democrat-dominated Assignments Committee.

Is Democrat Illinois State Senator Jacqueline Y. Collins ready to enforce her demands against gun owners who will not comply?

Collins’ measure “[p]rovides that every person in the State must register each firearm he or she owns or possesses in accordance with the Act,” the official synopsis declares. It also “[p]rovides that a person shall not purchase or possess ammunition within this State without having first obtained a registration certificate identifying a firearm that is suitable for use with that ammunition, or a receipt demonstrating that the person has applied to register a suitable firearm under the Act and that the application is pending.”

In addition, it requires “the Department of State Police must complete a background check of any person who applies for: (1) a registration certificate for a firearm that was lawfully owned or possessed on the effective date of the Act, was brought into the State by a new resident, or was acquired by operation of law upon the death of the former owner; or (2) a renewal of a registration certificate unless, within 12 months of the date the renewal application is submitted, the applicant passed a background check conducted by the Department in connection with the applicant’s acquisition of another firearm.”

Ominously, it also “Provides that it is a Class 2 felony to sell or transfer ownership of a firearm to another person without complying with the registration requirement of the Firearms Registration Act.” That can get someone three to seven years, a punishment equivalent to that people who intentionally transmit HIV are sentenced to.

This new batch of proposed infringements is in addition to requirements already imposed by Illinois State Law requiring gun owners to have a Firearms Owner Identification Card to purchase firearms and ammunition. In fact, it’s an in-your-face to gun owners from an avowed gun hater.

Collins is a former CBS-TV in Chicago “news” editor with credentials from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, among other credentials from “progressive” academia. Fittingly, she was a “2001 Legislative Fellow for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.” She was also endorsed by the Brady campaign at the same time it threw its weight behind (former?) “gun communist” Bobby Rush and future felons (and prohibited persons) Jesse Jackson, Jr. and Rod Blagojevich.

When she joined rabidly anti-gun “priest” Mike “Snuffy” Pfleger for a media blood dance, they were strangely silent on the fact that the ones doing the killings in Chicago are exempt from gun registration schemes they would impose on the law-abiding. That’s because in Haynes v. U.S., the Supreme Court ruled that requiring felons to register guns violated Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Collins knows this, of course, as do all gun-grabbers who would require registration, which is a prerequisite for confiscation. That increasing numbers of gun owners know that and have defiantly told those enacting such Intolerable Acts to get bent is not lost on impotent and enraged state monopoly of violence cultists, who vent their fury by demanding others employ that violence to bend the “scofflaws” to their will.

Whether or not Collins’ latest deliberate act of spitting on freedom stands a chance of being enacted remains to be seen. Regardless, a critical mass of gun owners will not let that alter their resolve to hold fast to their rights and to not back up another inch. There’s a new paradigm, with a growing number of determined citizens recognizing what colleague Mike Vanderboegh has identified as two countries sharing the same territory, and where his fundamental question “Do the people serve the government or does the government serve the people?” has yet to be ultimately tested in our time.

Whether or not it is tested depends on how far domestic enemies with “appetites for the liberty and property” of others are willing to press those they would compel obedience from. If they’re not willing to enforce against all, it will show a self-defeating weakness in the Chicago machine, and encourage other gun owners to join in and spread mass defiance even further. And if they are, we’ll all get an unequivocal answer to that question.

http://www.examiner.com/article/illinois-democrat-s-firearms-registration-act-may-test-new-paradigm?CID=examiner_alerts_article

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