One Law for The Rich and Famous?
Hoodlum rapper Lil’ Wayne (Dwayne Carter) is finally going to where he belongs… jail. What is upsetting about this story is not that the convicted rapper, who was arrested for having a machinegun on his tour bus, had his sentencing postponed twice, but that fans don’t think it is fair he’s going way.
From MTV.com, wrote one reader:
“Wow, that really sucks. I think that this is so stupid. … He is a good artist and donates a lot of money to charities. I hope he gets out early!!!”
And Vibe magazine offered this take:
“In the weeks leading up to his imprisonment, everyone from Drake to Baby to Young Jeezy went on the record to talk about how much they’re going to miss Lil Wayne while he’s locked up on Rikers Island for the next year (or the next eight months with good behavior, as some folks are already hoping).”
Clearly any regular gangsta from the streets wouldn’t get this level of love. Shameful to say the least.
Chicago’s Daley Looks for New Gun Bans
Even as the Supreme Court hears the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the anti-gun zealot mayor is working over time in an effort to create a prohibition of guns. The Chicago Sun Times reported:
“Daley backed changes to state law that would require background checks for those buying a gun in a private sale, ban assault weapons, require that gun dealers be licensed and limit the number of handgun purchases to one per person per month. Those were all ideas that failed in previous legislative sessions.”
We’d like to ask Daley, or anyone in favor of limits, why they think this would work? Criminals clearly aren’t following the complete ban on handguns in Chicago, so if the Supreme Court overturns the ban, why would criminals suddenly listen to a new law on the limits of guns one can buy? This only hurts the law-abiding citizens.
On a positive note, the paper adds:
“The mayor also is asking the General Assembly to make it a Class 1 felony to knowingly sell a gun to a known gang member.”
Now that is a gun law that actually makes sense. So why should good men like Mr. McDonald have to be treated almost as bad as the gang members?
Rachel Maddow Brings Expert Who Doesn’t Know Guns
Don’t you love it when liberal talking heads get all worked up about firearms with so-called experts, who then just randomly start making up terms, which just proves that they’re not really all that experienced in the topic. Case in point, on the Rachel Maddow Show, Frank Shaeffer, author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back and a Huffington Post blogger offered this insight:
“I don’t take kindly to looking at a bunch of old white guys about my age with pot bellies grabbing 50-millimeter machine guns and putting them on pickup trucks .”
Maybe this was an off the cuff slip up, but he never corrected himself. There is a big difference between a .50 caliber machinegun and a 50mm gun. Big difference!
Video is available from our friends at Newsbusters.org.
NY Times News Story Offers Opinion – Anti-Gun Opinion at That
In a piece looking at both sides of the “open carry” debate that is raging around the country, The New York Times threw in just a tad about of anti-gun rhetoric:
“Newer, more driven by grass-roots and the Internet than the N.R.A., open-carry groups are also less centralized, less predictable and often more confrontational in their push for gun rights.”
The author goes on to suggest to the reader the dangers of such a move:
“Gun control advocates have raised particular concerns about open-carry laws because under these laws in many states, gun owners are not required to have a permit or any sort of training or testing.”
What is the point of stressing the issue of permits for example? On the one hand the new groups are described as “less predictable” and “confrontational,” wording that could imply these to be “dangerous” to some New York readers. Likewise, it is practically implied that it would create a wild west situation without any permits where novices carry guns. This news piece reads like an editorial at times, but should we expect anything less from the “old gray lady?”
Chicago Columnist Offers Insight in Gun Crime in Chicago
In discussing how a legally purchased handgun was used in a grisly and tragic murder in the suburbs of Chicago, Daily Herald columnist Chuck Groudie offers a unique look at the gun debate. While he doesn’t exactly take sides, he does stress that this was also not a random case of violence. This was a case of pre-mediated murder, and one point Groudie doesn’t offer is that if the Kramer family had a gun they could have fought back.
Give his piece a read, and you decide whether a second legally purchased gun wouldn’t have meant a very different outcome.
Six-Year Old Suspended From School for Make Believe Gun
Now it seems even a pretend gun can land a child in trouble. We’re not talking a realistic toy gun, or even a picture of a toy gun; we’re talking about a child using his fingers while playing! The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan noted:
“Mason Jammer, a kindergarten student at Jefferson Elementary in Ionia, curled his fist into the shape of a gun Wednesday and pointed it at another student, school officials said it was no laughing matter.”
For the record we have no problem with the reporting on this one, but we must question Ionia’s school board on this judgment. The child just turned six-years old, and some other form of discipline should have been used.
Who Guards the Guards: Sheriff’s Office Sells Tommy Gun for $20,000
The Citizen’s Voice of Luzerne County in Pennsylvania is reporting that the acting sheriff has come under fire for “keeping poor records of gun possessed” by the department. This comes after it was found that the former sheriff had agreed to sell a Thompson submachine gun in 2009 for $20,000. The paper didn’t say whether the buyer could legally own a fully automatic weapon or whether it was a semi-automatic version, although it was described as being an “antique” suggesting it was fully automatic.
Let’s see if the mainstream media picks up on this story.
CSM Asks Whether Guns Really Protect Us From Tyranny
In a surprisingly well-researched sidebar to the gun rights debate raging in the Supreme Court, Warren Richey of The Christian Science Monitor looked at whether firearm ownership actually keeps a nation free from tyranny. And while the paper is usually fairly biased against guns, this piece presented key facts that would suggest past tyrants succeeded because they first disarmed the population.
It is a shame more stories in the mainstream media aren’t so unbiased, and actually try to present facts for readers instead of opinion.
Newsbusters Uncovers NPR Bias Against Guns
Thank you to our friends at Newsbusters,org for watching how National Public Radio has reported on the issue of gun rights. According to the post, it seems that there is a double standard when the word “rights” or “advocates” are used.
In other words, NPR uses the word “rights,” which implies (to many of us anyway) that it is the “right thing” or something people believe is the “right thing” when discussing the topic of abortion, as in “abortion rights.” Only once was the phrase “abortion advocate” used. But the word “advocate” was used far more often with guns, again implying (at least to us) that NPR doesn’t think this is a “right.”
Of course liberals are often about rights… for the issues they support, such as “gay rights,” “abortion rights,” and so on. The irony is that if they don’t like the topic it is about “control,” as in “gun control.”
Owner of Seized Airsoft Guns Responds
As we’ve been reporting, Airsoft Outlet Northwest had 30 Airsoft guns seized last fall at the port of Tacoma with the ATF responding that the items looked too much like real guns, and that these could be somehow converted to live machineguns. To get some insight on 
the story, we interviewed Ben Martin, owner of Airsoft Outlet Northwest, LLC and here is what he had to say:
FirearmsTruth: What was the exact model Airsoft gun that was seized? This was a replica of an M-4, but the body is mostly plastic, so what “internal” parts did ATF tell you that could be changed?
Ben Martin: They have 16 WE TTI M4A1’s and 14 WE TTI CQBR’s. The externals are pretty much exact to the weight and feel of a real firearm.
As for what the ATF has told us, well, it’s not much other than these can are readily convertible to machine guns. We’ve asked for the proof in which they retreated behind the Freedom of Information Act and haven’t given us any evidence that they’ve been able to convert one of these to shoot a round. We’ve had a gunsmith take a look at the compatibility and we’ve posted our findings.
