Call for Texas Law to Impede Firearms Ownership: Lower the Drawbridge

Paul Kamprath, a writer for the Austin Liberal Examiner (need we say more?) is calling for a Texas law that would require any gun purchaser to prove that he or she passed a firearms safety course. At the beginning of the editorial Kamprath recalls the story of a recent and unfortunate shooting. A business owner shot a formal employee when that employee returned looking for his old job back. The owner shot the man after a verbal confrontation and was later arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Read more

New York Democrat Calls Open Carry “Throwback to Wild West”

While U.S. News and World Reports offered the floor to both sides of the debate with editorials, it seems odd that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) would be the anti-”open carry” voice. As a democrat serving New York’s 4th district on Long Island she lives in a part of the state has some very strict gun laws, as this is in a county adjacent to New York City. So when she says in her piece, “I have never been against people owning guns for protection, hunting, or sport,” we have to believe she doesn’t need to be against people owning guns as the state, city and county laws already make it very difficult.

This is the sort of smoke and mirrors that these liberal politicians play. She can say she isn’t against guns, but the district she represents has very strict gun laws already! To this point, she is not one who qualified to speak out about the “open carry” gun laws in other parts of the country. But she also attempts to make her point by bring up some key facts:

“In the summer of 2009, a man stood just outside a venue in New Hampshire with President Obama inside talking about healthcare reform. He had a gun openly strapped to his thigh. Another time while the president was giving a speech at the convention center in Phoenix, a dozen people were openly carrying guns, including one who walked around with an AR-15 assault rifle strapped to his back. In this session of Congress, laws were passed to allow guns on Amtrak trains and in our national parks. Where does it end? When will people realize that we are moving backwards in reducing gun violence? And now it is happening throughout the states.”

Let’s tackle these one at a time. The man who stood outside a venue in New Hampshire, was as she says “outside.” He didn’t attempt to bring the gun inside, and who is to say whether anyone “illegally” had a concealed weapon? We just don’t know. The same goes for the situation in Phoenix. The guns were never near the POTUS, and no one was hurt. To the Amtrak trains, passengers can’t take guns to their seats, and guns must travel as “cargo.” What’s the problem? Already people could just as easily bring guns illegally as well. Same goes with the national parks, just because the law is changing doesn’t mean that people weren’t previously breaking the law.

But to the final point in her above statement: “gun violence.” Violent crime in the country is down, as ownership of firearms is up. But Rep. McCarthy lives in, and represents a district that has such strict gun laws that she probably knows (or represents) few actual gun owners. This makes her unqualified to discuss Open Carry.

Boston Globe Mommy Column Weighs in on Gun Issue

The issue of guns and children comes up a lot, but a letter to the Child Caring column in The Boston Globe clearly had an anti-gun bias. First the letter was written (and/or edited) to make it seem a bit more sensational than it needed to be:

“I have a 9-month-old daughter, and her dad and I have split up.  He has a .45 and he owns rifles that he uses to go hunting.  He keeps the rifles in his gun safe but has his .45 sitting in a drawer right next to the baby’s crib.” Read more

New York Times Offers Biased Take on Canadian Gun Laws

In an article from The New York Times this week it sounds like the old gray lady believes Canada to be more enlightened about firearms, and health care!

“OTTAWA — Like public health care, Canada’s tight gun-control laws help distinguish the country from its powerful neighbor to the south. But as Canadians commemorated the 20th anniversary of one of the country’s most notorious shooting sprees on Sunday, their Parliament was on course to eliminate one of its most significant gun-control measures.”

The question we’d like to ask is whether these laws actually distinguish Canada in a good way? Anyone? But let’s look at some other questionable points in the article. First up, note how the firearm is described in this passage:

“A decade before the Columbine high school shootings set off a national debate on gun violence in the United States, an angry, unemployed 25-year-old armed with a semiautomatic hunting rifle stormed the École Polytechnique, an engineering school in Montreal.”

Then the article goes a bit further, and note the use of the wording here:

“The current debate does not involve handguns, whose registration has been required since 1934. Nor does it involve a variety of military-style weapons like assault rifles and sawed-off shotguns, which are banned outright. And the law’s repeal would not alter the requirement that gun buyers take safety courses and obtain a license.”

A “military-style weapon” is not a “hunting rifle” nor is a “sawed-off shotgun” a military weapon or hunting weapon. This is just another case where lots of different scary sounding words are thrown around to confuse the reader. Not exactly solid reporting, now is it?