A Christmas Day story from the AP gives a pretty clear outline of some of the threats liberty will face in the coming year.  The piece includes extensive quotes from leading hoplophobes and anti-rights organizations, and provides an edifying look into their strategy for the coming year.  The antis boast about the tens of millions of dollars and thousands of paid staff and volunteers they are lining up to push their agenda in the run-up to the 2014 elections.  We can only hope that they are successful at forcing another vote or two in Congress and the 15 or so states that they are targeting with their effort, because nothing turns out GunVoters better, and distinguishes political friends and foes more clearly than a noisy anti-rights campaign and politicians taking record votes on gun control bills.

The article also inadvertently points up one of the major flaws in the anti-rights agenda: their solutions don’t solve their flagship problems.

Everyone knows that the prime motivator for the resurgence of the gun control movement was the atrocity committed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December, with various other senseless violent assaults being thrown in for good measure.  But none of the antis’ primary objectives would have the slightest impact on those attacks, nor on any to come.

Keep in mind that the Sandy Hook attack occurred in Connecticut, a state which was rated fifth in the nation for “good” laws by the Brady Campaign.  Only California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York have stricter laws.  The state also boasts one of the lowest crime rates in the nation.  That’s to be expected from a state with among the highest per capita income, and the benefits that go along with that: some of the best schools, health care providers, mental health services, and high ratio of law enforcement officers to the citizenry.  Still, with all of that going for it, one aberrant 20-year old found a way to access weapons and commit one of the most evil acts of mayhem in modern history.  It is also worth noting that, considering the target of his violence was a handful of unarmed women and dozens of helpless little children, just about any weapon – bludgeon, blade, or incendiary – would have sufficed. 

Continue reading Bloomberg’s Coming →

Rights advocates around the country need to be on the lookout for an insidious new tactic being launched by Mike Bloomberg and his mercenary minions.  Their latest line of attack is mental health.  This actually isn’t so much a new approach as a refocusing and turbo charging of an older plan.

The strategy is to use the wide acceptance of the idea that the mentally ill should not have access to firearms, as a front for prohibiting a broad array of “normal” people from possessing guns or ammunition.  As with most things, the devil is in the details.  What is mental illness? Who is mentally ill?  How mentally ill must one be to warrant revocation of a fundamental human right?  Who makes that determination?  Who is “normal,” and how “normal” do they have to be to own guns? 

Recently, one of Bloomberg’s pet politicians, Ralph Northam, whom Bloomberg spent over a million dollars to get elected as Lt. Governor of Virginia, spelled out the plan during a “gun violence” symposium.  The event turned out to be a gun control meeting discussing a strategy of trickery and deception to get firearm restrictions passed through legislatures by hiding it in bills dealing with mental health.   My friend Philip Van Cleave, the President of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, was at the meeting and reported that Northam was very candid about the plan and the sneak attack strategies for bypassing committees and public comment, and preventing rights groups from being able to mount opposition until it’s too late.  He particularly lauded the Connecticut and New York models where both states used “emergency” legislation to pass draconian bills with no hearings, no committee votes, and no public input.  He also discussed strategies to gain support from rights leaders by quietly negotiating deals to keep a bill “clean” and leave out overt anti-rights provisions, while concealing the provisions that seriously threaten rights.

Continue reading Gun Controllers Plan Sneak Attacks →

Typhoid Mike Bloomberg Strikes Again

New York City’s controversial billionaire mayor was slapped down again in races in Colorado and Virginia on Tuesday.  Unfortunately, Unfortunately, in Virginia, the slap was only symbolic as Bloomberg’s chosen gubernatorial and Attorney General candidates actually won their elections.  The fact that the races were so close and some Democrats are blaming the razor-thin margin of victory on Bloomberg’s “help.”  Democrat Terry McAuliffe, whom Bloomberg supported to the tune of about $2 million, eked out a win over Republican Ken Cuccinelli.  This in spite of the fact that all of the polls had the former Clinton fundraiser ahead by double digits just a couple of weeks ago, before Bloomberg started flooding the airwaves with anti-gun, pro-McAuliffe TV ad’s.  At least one Democrat leader has suggested that Bloomberg and his ads helped to drag McAuliffe down and almost cost him the election.

Bloomberg also spent a million dollars on advertisements targeting Republican Mark Obenshain in his race for Virginia Attorney General.  At this point it looks like, Obenshain has lost that race by a total of 32 votes out of over 2 million cast.  While both Virginia races go in the Win column for Bloomberg, the speculation among Democrat campaign pros that Bloomberg and his money cost votes rather than buying votes is significant.

On the other side of the country, Bloomberg didn’t come anywhere close to winning.  For the third time this year he suffered a crushing defeat in the state of Colorado.  Only a month ago two of his minions were defeated in the first ever recall of State Senators in Colorado’s history, then, on November 5, Bloomberg was heavily invested in an effort to pass an education initiative.  Coloradans saw the initiative as a massive tax increase and rejected it overwhelmingly in spite of – or possibly to some degree because of – Bloomberg spending a million dollars in support.

Continue reading Follow the Money →

Gun Control Hurts People           

We often hear gun control advocates say something like, “If it saves just one life, isn’t it worth it?”  Well of course it is – if it doesn’t cost many more in the process.  The reality is that gun control costs lives, while guns save lives.  That’s why cops carry them.

Let’s do a little reality check:

1. Crime – including violent crime, and “gun crime” – is not going up, it has been going down pretty consistently across the country for at least 20 years.

2. Mass Murders and Rampage Killings are not happening with more frequency, nor are such events resulting in more deaths.  The number of such events and the average deaths resulting from them has remained relatively level for decades.

3. There has been no rise in firearm accidents or unintentional injuries – among adults or children.  Firearm-related accidents, deaths, and injuries have been steadily declining for decades thanks to increased safety awareness initiatives from the firearms and hunting communities.

4. All of these reductions in “gun crime,” reductions in firearm accidents, and statistical stability in mass murder events have been achieved while the number of firearms in public hands has more than doubled, and the number of individuals with firearms has gone up dramatically.  Also during this time, firearm quality, reliability, durability, and capacity have been going up, as have the number of people able to lawfully carry firearms for self-defense.

Continue reading Gun Control Laws Reality Check →

Armed Citizens an Answer to Terrorism?
The head of INTERPOL says they might be.

The head of the international police organization INTERPOL created a minor stir last week when he suggested that armed civilians might be a more realistic answer to the evolving trend of terrorists attacking “soft targets” like shopping malls, schools, and public events, than trying to “harden” those areas with more physical barriers and police officers.  While the comments have been picked up by some conservative media and the rights movement, they have been roundly ignored by the traditional media, not just in the US, but worldwide.  You can bet that his comments won’t be ignored by the statist authorities at the UN and the White House though.  I think it is very likely that this very prominent, popular, and effective law enforcement official will soon find himself under fire for all sorts of seemingly unrelated matters, and in a relatively short time, be looking for a new job.  It is simply not politically acceptable for anyone within the “circle of trust” to be trusting of the common people.  Taking a public position in favor of armed civilians over expansion of police presence and powers is unlikely to go unpunished.  

In an interview with ABC News, which was reported on ABC’s web site, but, so far as I have been able to find, not aired on the television network, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said that in free societies, governments have only two viable options for addressing attacks on civilians: “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that,” he said alluding to the positive impact of a few civilian gun owners during the assault and siege on the Westgate Mall in Kenya last month.  “Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”  Security that he indicated would be unfeasibly prohibitive in costs of both money and liberty.

Continue reading Secretary General Ron Noble – Arm “Soft Targets” →

California Dodges a Bullet – Catches Some Flak

California Governor Jerry Brown has wisely vetoed a number of anti-rights bills pushed through the State Legislature this year.  Unfortunately, he failed to veto all of the bad gun bills that made it to his desk this year – only the worst ones.

Among the dozens of firearms and hunting-related bills proposed in the California legislature this year, a total of 20 made it to the Governor’s desk.  Of those, Governor Brown signed 13 and vetoed 7.  The bills vetoed were some of the worst we’ve seen passed anywhere this year, and would have stacked onto some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country.  They included a bill that would have reclassified as “assault weapons,” any centerfire, semi-auto rifle capable of accepting a removable magazine – banning future sales and requiring that owners of those already in circulation register them.

This bill again proves the lie that the anti-rights crowd is only interested in restricting “weapons of war” and “military-grade hardware.”  Not only did the bill do away with the various cosmetic “military feature” tests typical of “assault weapon” bans, it abandoned all pretense that crime reduction is a motivating factor in passing these laws.  Of the guns affected by this ban, virtually none of them have been used in a serious crime in the past 50 years – if ever.  This was a case of hoplophobes trying to eliminate anything that they consider potentially scary, and, in essence, admitting that they’re scared of virtually everything.  Thankfully Governor Brown was wise enough to see that the bill would unduly burden the innocent while providing no additional safety or security to the people of California.

Continue reading California’s Latest Gun Laws →

Citizen Gun Owners – First Responders in Kenya

When two teams of cowardly Muslim extremist terrorists stormed the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya last month, police and government forces were slow to respond, but local gun owners were not.  Kenya has very strict gun laws, banning most semi-auto rifles, and tightly restricting possession of handguns, but, like New York City, those with the right connections, enough money, and who are persistent enough, can own, and even carry, personal defense handguns.  One such concealed carry license holder was standing in line at a bank in the mall when the shooting started.  A New York Times story from September 26 reported that the man, identified as Raju, immediately sent out an urgent text message to friends in his shooting club.  The story then says that shooting club members, neighborhood watch volunteers (like George Zimmerman?), and “plainclothes police officers” rushed to the mall and gave the terrorists something to worry about while they helped people trying to get out of the besieged buildings. 

While the Times story focused primarily on the delayed response of the police and military, the fact that it even mentioned armed civilians as first responders is pretty shocking to those of us in the rights movement who have suffered the slings and arrows of the Times’ anti-gun bias for decades.  For them to even mention Raju and his friends from the gun club is pretty significant, though we assume it was an aberration and don’t expect any shift in the Times’ position on guns and the right to arms.  Apparently the Times thinks private gun owners in Kenya are somehow more responsible than private gun owners in the US though.

Continue reading Westgate Shopping Mall-Nairobi →