Animal Rights Crazies Attack US Olympic Athlete

           Animal rights advocates launched a vicious social media attack on US Olympic trap shooter Corey Cogdell, just days before the 24-year old Alaska native’s effort to best her 2008 Bronze Medal performance in Women’s International Trap.  Her Facebook page and Twitter accounts were inundated with comments calling the beautiful young athlete a bitch, psychopath, and murderer, and suggesting that she should shoot herself, be used as a target, or be physically assaulted.  Some of the commenter’s went so far as to directly threaten physical violence on Corey, while others stuck to name calling and expressing their hope that she would fail in her Olympic efforts.

The reason for the nasty assaults is that along with being a world-class trap shooter, Corey Cogdell is an avid hunter and outdoorswoman.  Photographs of Cogdell with game she had taken were spread among animal rights networks along with outrageous claims of animal cruelty and waste.  As the photo’s and lies spread, the threats and viciousness escalated and the lies grew bigger. 

Along with direct attacks on Cogdell, the anti-hunting extremists began lobbying the International Olympic Committee to have Cogdell – and any other athlete who engages in the lawful, and long-honored tradition of hunting – banned from Olympic competition.  While the idea of banning hunters from the Olympics may seem a bit far-fetched, there is a strong anti-gun / anti-hunting sentiment among the elites who run the IOC.  Just look at the outrageous reaction when a couple of members of the Australian swim team posted a picture of themselves holding guns in a California gun shop.  The two were threatened with expulsion from the team, but, after contrite apologies, they were allowed to compete.  They were, however, required to leave London as soon as their events were over rather than staying for the conclusion of the games with the rest of the team.

Continue reading Olympic Athlete Cory Cogdell →

How mass murder fuels debate and feeds lobbyists

 By Jeff Knox and Chris Knox

         The images are all too familiar – police tape around blood-spattered pavement, horror-struck onlookers, friends of victims bent over in grief, ambulances lined up like cabs at an airport.  Atrocities like the one that took at least a dozen lives and left scores more injured in Aurora, Colorado last week are unfathomable.  As a community and a nation we grieve with the families and friends of the dead and wounded and do our best to understand their pain.  It is our empathy and realization that what befalls others could be visited upon us that defines our humanity and guides our actions.  As we discuss what happened in Aurora, we must remember that we’re talking about real people, not empty statistics or fictional characters in a movie.  They loved and were loved, and the horror of what happened to them cannot be overstated.  We all should take a moment to put ourselves in the shoes of the survivors and the families of the victims and imagine the pain we would go through if this happened to our loved ones.  We should also resolve to maintain civility and respect as we engage in the debates that are already flowing from this terrible crime.

Hard on the heels of condolences, finger pointing, and calls to “do something,” have come the pleas for money.  Barely 12 hours after the most recent attack took place, the Brady Bunch was skipping over the formalities and using the atrocity as a fundraiser.  Brady president Dan Gross barely even bothered to acknowledge the tragedy of the situation when he said; “When I heard the news this morning, first I felt tremendous sadness for the victims’ families.  But then I felt enormous anger.  Anger because once again America’s horrendous gun laws have robbed Americans of our basic freedom – the right to live in safety.” 

Continue reading Mass-Murder Cash Machine →

Arms Trade Treaty promises US harm

           I have to admit that I was skeptical about the UN ever getting their act together enough to construct an Arms Trade Treaty that they could all agree on, but I underestimated the level of cooperation attainable by that body when their target is liberty.  With the terrorist-exporting state of Iran in a leadership role, the committee has been plowing down obstacles and rapidly moving toward an agreement.  The final treaty language is expected to be released by the end of July, and the Obama administration has committed to supporting it – if it doesn’t interfere with their interpretation of the Second Amendment.

That’s not a very big “if” when you consider that we’re talking about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom have expressed support for the Second Amendment and in the same breath endorsed the idea of banning entire classes of firearms.

Continue reading The UN’s Latest Attack on Liberty →

Unresolved Contempt

The US House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scheme and its cover-up.  The Department of Justice, which Holder heads, promptly responded with a statement that they didn’t find anything criminal in their boss’s actions, and that they were not going to prosecute. 

Now the matter will be debated and brokered, and perhaps eventually argued in court, but it doesn’t look like we will soon get answers to the core questions of the case: Who knew about the tactic of allowing guns to be recklessly transferred to operatives of Mexican drug cartels?  Who authorized those tactics?   What were the actual objectives of the operation?  And who did what to conceal the answers to those questions and why?  That is why I have repeatedly called for the creation of a Special Prosecutor’s office to initiate an independent, non-partisan investigation into the matter.

Defenders of Holder in Congress and the media have painted the whole mess as political theater generated by NRA and Republicans as a way to embarrass Holder and Obama in an election year.  This presumes that Republicans knew that the investigation would be stymied and blocked for over a year by Mr. Holder and his minions so that it would actually be fought out in an election year rather than the mid-term year in which the investigation began.

Continue reading Unresolved Contempt →

National Training Week

On Independence Day 2012 we will celebrate several things.  In addition to celebrating the 236th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we at The Firearms Coalition will be celebrating our 28^th anniversary as an organization, and the 4^th anniversary of the release of the book Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War, a compilation by my brother Chris of highlights from our father, Neal Knox’s, extensive writings on the gun rights movement stretching from 1966 to 2000.

July 4 also marks the 4^th annual celebration of National Training Week.  A week set aside in conjunction with Independence Day to remind people that liberty and independence are closely tied to responsible possession of firearms.  Every American owes a debt of thanks to our forefathers who had the courage to secure liberty through the force of arms, and then saw fit to enshrine the right to arms in our Constitution, thus securing liberty by forcing government to look over its shoulder at an armed populace. 

Continue reading 4th Annual Celebration →

Reese family finally headed to court 

Eighteen months after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona by Mexican bandits using guns purchased through a US government program called Fast and Furious, we still don’t know who within the Department of Justice knew about the program, much less who authorized it.  Certainly there has been no serious talk about prosecuting any of the people responsible for assisting in the illegal sales of over 2000 guns to Mexican arms traffickers – guns that were subsequently involved in the murders of BPA Terry and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata, as well as possibly hundreds of Mexican citizens.   But while that investigation has dragged on, with Attorney General Eric Holder denying knowledge of the program, denying knowledge of who was involved, and denying congressional investigators access to tens of thousands of documents that might answer those questions, New Mexico gun dealer, Rick Reese and his two sons Ryin and Remington, have sat rotting in separate detention centers, jails, and prisons around the state accused of a similar crime involving some 30 guns.  The Reese family, including Rick’s wife Terri, ran a gun shop in Deming, New Mexico, and were arrested in late August of 2011 on charges of knowingly selling guns to Mexican smugglers, and various other related charges.  After spending 6 months in jail, Terri Reese was finally granted bail in March of this year, but Rick and the boys have been repeatedly denied bail on the pretext that they are flight risks or might try to engage in a Ruby Ridge type standoff.  The rationale for denying the Reeses’ constitutional rights is that Rick knows some people in Mexico, his home has a well and solar power, and there were guns and ammunition in their homes and businesses when they were arrested.  That’s right, guns and ammo in the home and business of a federally licensed firearms dealer (all of which were seized a year ago and have never been returned) is being offered as evidence that they can’t be trusted – and a judge bought it.  Well, there’s also the fact that Rick and Terri were involved with a local Tea Party group.  That’s probably reason enough right there.

Continue reading Guilty Until Proven Innocent →

On May 25, the  State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China published a report titled The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 as a counterattack response to a US human rights report that was critical of China.  The first thing on China’s list of US Human rights failures was our failure to adequately protect our citizens from crime and specifically the easy availability of firearms.  The report laments that, “The United States prioritizes the right to keep and bear arms over the protection of citizens’ lives and personal security and exercises lax firearm possession control, causing rampant gun ownership. The U.S. people hold between 35 percent and 50 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns, with every 100 people having 90 guns.”  The same idiotic complaint we have heard from propaganda groups like the Brady Bunch and the Violence Policy Center for decades as firearms ownership has climbed sharply while crime has simultaneously gone down to record lows.

The report went on to attack the US over our failures regarding freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.  It pointed to select reports about the way the “Occupy” protests were shut down (with no mention of the illegal activities and unsanitary conditions involved), and critical essays from rights advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation complaining about government interference with the Internet.  Columnists warning about potential dangers in the Patriot Act and erosion of rights in the name of the “War on Terror” were presented as proof of the nations flagging commitment to individual rights of privacy and due process, as were examples of wrongful imprisonment, police abuses, and our overall prison statistics.

Continue reading Defending a Human Right →