Gun Rights Policies with John Snyder: Religious, Gun Rights Advocates Must Unite Against Obama on Civil Rights
Gun Rights Policies with John Snyder:
Gun rights advicates have been wise to Obama from the start, and religious leaders are now beging to wake up to the threat of this president.
Civil rights advocates of various interests must unite against Obama because he cannot be trusted to uphold civil rights.
GunRightsPolicies.orgJohn M. Snyder
Manager
Telum Associates, LLC
Arlington, VA
202-239-8005
About John Snyder:
Named the Gun Dean by Human Events, “the senior rights activist in Washington” by Shotgun News, a “champion of the right to self-defense” by The Washington Times, and “dean of gun lobbyists” by The Washington Post and The New York Times, John M. Snyder has spent 45 years as a proponent of the individual Second Amendment civil right to keep and bear arms as a National Rifle Association editor, public affairs director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, treasurer of the Second Amendment Foundation, and founder of www.GunRightsPolicies.org.
A former Jesuit seminarian, Snyder is founder/manager of Telum Associates, LL.C., founder/chairman of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, Inc., a director of Council for America, and serves on the boards of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and the American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens. He is also the author of the book Gun Saint. Visit: www.GunRightsPolicies.org
NRA News: Support Grows for Marine Who Brought Gun to Empire State Building
Cam Edwards talks to Dave Bruce, a Boston lawyer and Former Marine who is trying to help Ryan Jerome, a fellow Former Marine who was arrested in New York City for his concealed handgun
Illinois Gun Licenses Rose Six Percent in 2011
The media is reporting an interesting story this week. Illinois residents are buying guns, as licenses rose by six percent. Even those from the Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence noted to local Chicago media, “that is a pretty big increase.”
So is there more to the story? What the media is only touching upon is that Chicago ended – by way of the Supreme Court – a ban on handgun ownership. And in the Windy City gun ownership, or at least the number of people with firearms cards, increased by 16 percent in 2011.
This is a story, a big story. Now some anti-gun types are no doubt going to say, “This is bad” and cite possible increase in violence. But the truth is that Chicago has had gun violence because the criminal element ignored the gun ban. So maybe we could actually see some decrease in crime as the innocent law-abiding citizens won’t have to automatically be victims.
Virginia Citizens Defense League Legislative Update & Action Items 1-26-12
Virginia Citizens Defense League:
Yesterday the Senate Courts of Justice Committee heard a bunch of gun bills and some important ones, like the repeal of One Handgun a Month and repeal of Fingerprinting for CHP applicants, passed out of committee. Read more
NRA News: Emily Miller from The Washington Times – I bought a gun, but…
Cam Edwards talks to Emily Miller from The Washington Times, who is writing a series on her efforts to get a gun in Washington, DC
Indian Magazine Shows Why Some People Shouldn’t Talk About Gun
Author Lionel Shriver talked to Tehelka, independent weekly news magazine from India, on a number of topics, and the author of “We Need To Talk About Kevin” was of course asked about gun control. While her novel maybe about a fictional school massacre, she shows ignorance on the issue of firearms.
The article offered this exchange:
[Question]We Need To Talk About Kevin was published in 2003, yet little change in gun control legislation has taken place. Last year saw the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Is this issue being addressed at all?
[Shriver]I’m greatly in despair. It should not be possible for people to walk on the street and casually be able to buy a semi-automatic. The constitutional amendment has to change. Until then, there are always lunatics in every society who will wreak havoc because of the easy availability of guns in America.
This is an argument that is used all too often, which blames the guns and not the shooter. Yes, unfortunately there will always be lunatics in every society but the havoc isn’t just because of “guns in America.”
We also don’t know what she means by “buy a semi-automatic.” Does she mean handguns, long guns, assault style weapons, etc.? This is vague, but with some anti-gun types it is vague because they likely don’t know the difference and it is vague because they really mean “all guns,” when they talk about bans.
It is also interesting that someone would say, “the constitutional amendment has to change,” and then tries to suggest that violence will continue until it is changed. We’re pretty sure there were wars, crime and violence before guns.
San Antonio Columnist: The Second Amendment’s Faustian bargain
There have been calls for “reasonable gun control,” and this week O. Richardo Pimentel, writing for The San Antonio Express-News offered an interesting twist in a column titled, “The Second Amendment’s Faustian bargain.”
He tells the story of how guns can be used to save as well as take lives. He makes a compelling argument, writing:
Everyone should be pleased by innocent lives saved as a side effect of gun ownership for the right people. But we can still recognize that the same laws that allow that also create a climate of too many guns in the wrong hands — and innocent lives taken.
This is true, and while we respect his opinion, the issue we have is that “reasonable gun control” would limit what the law-abiding can buy, while criminals would simply ignore the law.
As we long have tried to argue, the problem with this view is that the Second Amendment isn’t what gives criminals access to guns. There is no Amendment that makes murder legal, yet it still happens. There is no Amendment that grants the right for drug addiction, yet we still have drug addicts. So why would new gun laws stop criminals?
So no, we don’t think this is a Faustian bargain. Selling our souls for safety in the guise of gun control would be the real Faustian bargain.
New Civil Rights Movement Offers Shameful Headline; Misleading Facts
This week The New Civil Rights Movement ran a story titled, “GOP Now Pushing For Guns in Kindergarten Classes.” That sounds ominous, sinister and really scary. But is it factual?
Not by a long shot – pun intended. The story doesn’t even do actual reporting, but turns to left-leaning Think Progress, which reported:
Conservatives have twisted school massacres at Columbine and Virginia Tech to argue that there need to be more guns in schools to fight back against armed attacks. Last year more than a dozenstate legislatures took up bills that would allow guns on college campuses — and some even considered lifting their gun bans at K-12 public schools. Florida suspended discussion of their controversial bill after the emotional testimony of a father whose daughter was killed at Florida State University when another student accidentally discharged a rifle.
In other words, no this is misleading, twisting and actually the worst example of “journalism” that we’ve seen in a while.
The author also makes a bold statement:
Almost 10,000 people are killed by someone with a gun every year in America. Given the loosening of gun laws by the GOP, these numbers will escalate.
First, that number is actually a tad high. Likewise, the statement by the author that “these numbers will escalate,” is based on opinion not fact. There is no source to this, and the truth is that gun ownership is on the rise and the murder rates – along with crime overall – have fallen. The opposite is happening, but this doesn’t seem to mater.
And this story, which offers the guise of news, ends with a truly disgusting closing statement:
Oh, and a word to journalists: CAn [sic] we please stop calling it “gun rights”? Guns don’t have rights, people do. Let’s just be honest and call it “attempts to expand deadly weapons usage.”
Sorry, but we are journalists and we find this sort of statement to be obnoxious, inaccurate and distasteful. People do have rights, and according to the Second Amendment that includes the Right to Bear Arms!
WaPo Suggests Gun Lobby Stronger Than Obama
This week, just prior to the State of the Union, The Washington Post suggested (gasp!) that President Obama isn’t Superman – or if he is, the gun lobby is his kryptonite. In an editorial titled, “A prime-time call for gun control would honor Rep. Gabrielle Giffords,” the editors offered this thought:
Mr. Obama last year delivered his State of the Union just weeks after the Tucson massacre and in the presence of victims’ family members. Yet he, like so many politicians intimidated by the gun lobby’s muscle, could not muster a single word about the need for reasonable gun control measures to ward off such violence in the future.
We would love if President Obama called for gun control and made it his pinnacle platform! By all means, because it would surely lower his chances for re-election in November.
However, we do have to ask – how is it that the most powerful person on the planet is “intimidated” by a lobby group? Doesn’t this actually suggest that this is a hot button issue with voters? This is a point that the gun hating media never seems to grasp. If Obama is “intimidated” by the gun lobby, it is only because he knows making it an issue will cost him his job.
And since this is the case, doesn’t that mean MORE Americans are pro-gun. But to the gun-hating media that doesn’t seem to matter.
Editorial Key Point: Gun Violence Isn’t Just About Guns
Time and time again the media blames the guns when there is a tragic shooting. It is funny that when the young women, Sarah McKinley defended her home the shotgun wasn’t praised. So why are guns blamed when there is a shooting?
Cristina Janney, managing editor of The McPherson Sentinel makes this point – a rarity in the mainstream media – that “Gun violence isn’t just about guns.” She notes that the mental health system failed in the case of Jared Lee Loughner, and that had he been treated his shooting rampage need not have happened.
Of course for the most of the media… it is easier to blame the guns!
