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 →

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.

It should be noted that the Westgate mall in Nairobi is not a posted “No Guns” zone.  Few people in the country have the legal right to carry personal defense firearms, the whole country is considered a “gun free zone” with exceptions made for those authorized by the government.  Here in the US, where millions of people exercise their right to carry personal defense firearms, criminals and lunatics bent on killing as many people as possible almost always choose a location that forbids legal, civilian firearms.  The deranged punk who attacked the audience of the Batman movie in Colorado, for instance, passed by two other, larger theaters, to get to the theater where he carried out his attack.  The difference was that the other theaters were not posted.  Why would he do that unless he was hoping to reduce the chances of running into armed resistance inside the theater?  An exception to that rule was the attack at the Gabby Giffords meet and greet, which occurred in a grocery store parking lot in Tucson.  In that atrocity, one of the civilian first responders who helped to subdue the attacker was carrying a gun, but he arrived a few seconds too late to need to use it.  Had one of the victims not interfered with the mad man’s reload, that armed citizen – who, like the gun owners in Kenya had rushed to the sound of the gunfire – would have been the only thing standing between the people in that parking lot and at least another 15 rounds of 9mm.

Continue reading Westgate Shopping Mall-Nairobi →

Starbucks and Guns

When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz posted a public letter asking gun owners not to bring their guns into Starbucks stores, some in the media and anti-rights crowd declared it a victory, while some in the gun-rights crowd called it a declaration of war.  It was neither. 

As a company, Seattle-based Starbucks tends to lean left, supporting “progressive” causes and candidates, but when the professional hoplophobe lobby got upset about seeing some Starbucks customers legally, open carrying firearms, Starbucks offered a reasonable response.  They refused to give in to demands that they ban the practice.  The anti-rights lobby was furious and several different groups decided that Starbucks must be punished, so they called for boycotts.  In response, pro-rights advocates called on gun owners to show their appreciation for Starbucks’ reasonable position by making it a point to do business with the company, especially during the antis’ boycott periods.  The result was that on the designated boycott days, Starbucks locations around the country did more business than normal.

Unfortunately, some of the rights activists took things too far.  Someone (the first we recall seeing was on an anti-gun site) reworked Starbucks’ iconic mermaid logo, placing guns in the mermaid’s hands and adding a message about “Guns and Coffee” in the circle around the picture.  This image became popular among some pro-rights advocates and the parody logo found its way onto T-shirts, baseball caps, and coffee mugs.  It was sort of cute and clever, but those sporting the bastardized logo were being rather insensitive at best to the folks at Starbucks.  After all, the company has spent years and millions of dollars to build their brand, and businesses rarely consider it a friendly act to modify or repurpose a logo without specific permission to do so.

Continue reading Starbucks Anyone? →