Time and time again the media and pretty much every anti-gun zealot suggest that President Obama hasn’t pushed for gun control, or has shown any anti-gun stance. Fortunately our friend Dave Workman compiled just a few examples:
During his first term, President Obama has:
Appointed anti-gunners Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they could influence Second Amendment rulings for several years.
Appointed liberal anti-gunners to lower federal courts, where most gun rights cases will be decided because the high court is under no obligation to accept every gun case for review. Their rulings could govern gun rights for several decades, because these judicial appointments are for life.
Reversed standing U.S. policy on the proposed international Small Arms Trade Treaty.
Appointed avowed anti-gunner Eric Holder as attorney general – whose performance was discussed in this column earlier – gave us the Operation Fast and Furious cover-up scandal. Holder will forever be remembered by Northwest shooters as the man who wanted to “brainwash” people against guns, as this column discussed.
Let his bureaucrats push through a multiple sales reporting requirement on long guns in four southwest states because of the gun trafficking scandal.
Blocked, by executive order, importation of thousands of surplus M1 rifles from Korea. (Remember what Clinton advisor Paul Begala once told a reporter: “Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool.”)
Attempted to nominate an anti-gun bureaucrat to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Can you be in favor of gun ownership and national gun control at the same time? You apparently can if you are a career politician like Brian P. Stack, Mayor of Union City and State Senator of New Jersey. He writes:
I am in favor of law abiding citizens who wish to responsibly purchase and own a firearm.
He then adds:
I encourage federal legislators across the nation to put politics aside and sign a uniform gun bill into law. Give our law enforcement officers a fighting chance. Let’s take the guns that are purchased in Florida off of the streets in Union City, Jersey City, Newark and New York City.
So in other words a law abiding citizen would be highly restricted from where they can buy a gun. And yet this doesn’t address that many criminals buy illegal guns on the black market and would continue to do so.
But of course a good politician knows to support all sides of an issue and the center.
Few organizations have more strongly proclaimed their disdain for our right to keep and bear arms and self-protection.
According to a recent FoxNews.comop-ed piece by acclaimed author and scholar John R. Lott, Jr., in April alone, the George Soros-backed Media Matters ran no fewer than 32 articles on its website attacking NRA.
And Media Matters hasn’t limited its vitriol to NRA; it’s been attacking Lott as well. According to the article, since January 2011, Media Matters has criticized Lott in 25 pieces.
Media Matters’ latest hit-job, “John Lott Continues Media Tour In Defense Of ‘Kill At Will’” (http://tinyurl.com/7nwbnou) attacks Lott and “stand your ground” laws, in a feeble attempt to make political hay in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case.
Media Matters and the anti-gun media would have you believe that guns are evil. They don’t want you to own guns and they don’t want you to use them. As such, we can expect them to play fast and loose with the truth when they report on our issue, and we can expect them to continue their vilification of guns, gun owners, and pro-gun laws.
NRA always has and always will advocate the passage and preservation of self-defense laws. That’s what really matters.
About:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
Was it really necessary for New York news site Gothamist to mock Steven Holper, the blind gun collector from New Jersey who recently won his right to have his firearms collection returned? Here is how Gothamist saw it:
So justice is blind, but still has the constitutional right to carry guns, especially if her friends at the shooting range testify that she has “incredible” aim, as Hopler’s friends did to CBS.
It then concluded the story noting:
Now that Hopler has his guns back, he should consider finding a Russian waitress, heading down to Honduras for some gambling, and really having a time of it: (video to Warren Zevon’s song “Lawyers Guns And Money”)
How about next time mocking handicapped children Gothamist?
While Ted Nugent’s remakes continue to make the rounds, this week another musician – Dave Mustaine of the heavy metal group Megadeath offered his thoughts:
Mustaine: “When people in Washington say they’re going to take away my guns, they better bring theirs if they’re going to take mine.”
We guess not everyone in the entertainment biz is on the Obama bandwagon this time around!
Last week the York Daily Record offered a pro/con debate on whether the Second Amendment should be repealed and how did the author of the who stated “Yes – guns are too costly for society” try to make his case:
There are 788,258 words in a standard King James Bible. The word “gun” isn’t one of them.
The words TV, Internet, airplane, automobile, and lawnmower aren’t in there either. But no one is opposed of someone mowing the lawn or flying.
He adds:
America today has something else it didn’t have in 1787 – a million law enforcement officers whose job it is to protect the public and enforce the rule of law. They do an exemplary job and every single one of us is safer because of their efforts. Gun owners might feel safer packing their own heat, but data gleaned from the FBI’s 2010 statistics on firearm-related deaths suggests that gun owners are just as likely to die from firearms as their unarmed brethren, which tells me that the “gun for protection” argument doesn’t hold much water.
After 225 years, the Second Amendment has clearly outlived its original purpose. What America needs today is something different. What I’m talking about is a new Constitutional Amendment – one that values a communities’ right to safety over the right of individuals to unfettered ownership of instruments of death. That end can only be accomplished by allowing all levels of government the power to regulate gun ownership in the same way we regulate our right to drive vehicles or conduct other hazardous activities.
So basically another rallying cry for a police state, one where we can only hope criminals don’t get their hands on guns.
Perhaps part of the problem with the media’s war on guns is that many journalists start out as bright eyed idealists who believe the world can somehow magically be a better place. Last week Jay Omar, a journalism student at the University of Nebraska offered this commentary:
The Trayvon Martin tragedy has given gun control activist new ammo. Another American is dead because we don’t exercise enough control over who carries guns, and few Americans want to admit this is a problem.
Guns seem to be everywhere, including many places where they should not be. Inevitably they end up getting people killed.
The Trayvon Martin death would not have happened if the man accused in his killing, George Zimmerman, had not been carrying a firearm. There was no need for Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman of a gated community, to be armed.
There is no need for the average American to be armed.
Let’s tackle this argument one issue at a time. Few Americans want to admit there is a problem because it is widely overstated. Law-abiding citizens are typically not the problem.
Second, people do get killed because illegal guns are often the ones in places they should not be, in the hands of those who shouldn’t have them. Shouldn’t law-abiding citizens have the right to fight back?
And we don’t know how this would have turned out if Zimmerman hadn’t been carrying a gun. Perhaps he’d be dead at the hands of Martin. But it is interesting that such an idealist wouldn’t give Zimmerman his day in court!
The writer later concludes:
If all gun owners acted responsibly — became educated and secured their guns when not in use — guns wouldn’t cause nearly as many problems.
This is a sad comment to make, because the absolute truth is that MOST law-abiding gun owners do in fact act responsibly. As noted, it is those illegal guns that are the problem.
So here we have a future journalist that automatically equates gun owners with criminals, and assumes all gun owners act irresponsibly.
This past weekend, John Achibald offered an interesting take on the Second Amendment, he stated, “Gun problem is a First Amendment issue.” By that he states:
Because the biggest threats to the Second Amendment are not the anti-gun, tree-hugging Greenpeace hippies. The biggest threats to responsible gun owners — and to public safety — are idiots with guns.
He later adds:
Prayers and processions, gun buybacks and waiting periods have not solved our problem. Perhaps gun safety training for thugs — or marksmanship — is the answer.
And finally notes:
We need to learn again to talk about guns in realistic, honest ways, without all the knee-jerk political baggage. We need to talk safety, and consequences. We need to discuss ways of limiting gun supplies to criminals without threatening the rights of responsible owners.
OK, so does this make sense – probably to someone who is anti-gun even if they don’t know it. The problem is the First Amendment, yes, but it is because the media – as in the press – hypes only those idiots that Archibald calls out. People do stupid things with cars too, but the media doesn’t call for a ban.
And this nonsense about training is of course non-sense, but in making a joke, Archibald actually addresses why words can’t solve the problem. Thugs won’t take safety classes, but more importantly won’t lay down their guns either. So this “ways of limiting guns supplies to criminals” is just a moot point.
Criminals shouldn’t have guns. We all agree with that fact, but calls for gun control only stop the law-abiding.
We don’t often call out letters to the editor, but we do feel it necessary from time to time. In this case, it was a letter to the Santa Maria Times by Robert Hoffman. He writes:
The 2nd Amendment confers the right to bear arms. It is, however, unlikely our founding fathers could have envisioned the muzzle-loading muskets of their era, essential for food and defense, evolving into weapons capable of inflicting the carnage modern weapons make possible.
This is a typical anti-gun rant. But Hoffman should also know that in the time of muzzle-loading muskets of that era a wound was typically a death sentence due to the medicine of the day.
Also, this notion that the guns were “essential” for food is nonsense. Does anyone think that the Founding Fathers, who were rich land owners, needed to hunt to eat? Why do people like Hoffman assume that the United States was all wilderness? There were actually cities in North America, and most people were actually farmers. This notion of backwoods men and rugged Daniel Boone types is not accurate.
He adds:
The price for our gun obsession is about 30,000 killed and 65,000 wounded annually. Most fatalities are not premeditated murders or in self defense and would, likely, not have happened had guns not been part of the equation.
And how many of those are killed are done so with illegal guns? The truth is that the vast majority of people killed with guns are killed with illegal guns. The NRA isn’t out to protect illegal guns in the hands of criminals.
He adds:
The “well-regulated militia” included in the text of the 2nd Amendment were the colonial militias that served as our only defense in the absence of a standing national army, before we had a National Guard and the most potent military in the world.
Yes, we’ve heard this before. So we should lay down our arms, live in a police state and basically except that the army will protect us, and the police will keep the streets safe.
Finally he adds:
Neither the Constitution nor its amendments is set in stone. Both have been amended when changing circumstances warranted change. It is time we revisited the 2nd Amendment and the relevance of the broad interpretation given it by the NRA and the gun enthusiasts it represents.
Spoken like a true anti-gun zealot. He doesn’t like guns so it is time to change the laws. Doesn’t matter that criminals won’t heed the new laws, doesn’t matter if gun enthusiasts want their guns – no for the good of America this anti-gun zealot believes it is time to change.
