Media Misinformation: Assault Clip
One new term has shown up that the mainstream media seems determined to use. This of course is “assault clip,” a term coined by Paul Helmke, outgoing President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Helmke coined this phrase following the tragic Tucson shooting from January 2011.
It was used so often that the mainstream media has accepted this term, despite the fact that prior to Helmke’s usage it was never actually uttered. The sad truth is that it is just a high-capacity magazine, but here is the twist – in addition to labeling this an “assault clip,” Helmke also noted that all magazines that hold more than 10 or 12 shots are in fact “assault clips.”
Suddenly this wasn’t just about a 32-round pistol magazine, but became about every high-capacity magazine, and yet the MSM has done a fabulous job of never actually making this point clear. In fact, the MSM has jumped on the band wagon.
National Shooting Sports Foundation: Congressman Attempts to Misdirect ATF Investigation Instead Promotes Anti-Gun Agenda
From the National Shooting Sports Foundation:
Despite having expressed support for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s investigation of ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious, the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.-7th), held a forum last week that tried to turn the investigation into an opportunity to advance gun control.
Rep. Cummings trotted out gun-control proponents at his “forum” and issued a report entitled “Outgunned” that suggests a lack of gun control is somehow responsible for Operation Fast and Furious – an ATF operation that allegedly allowed as many as 2,500 firearms to be illegally straw purchased.
Witnesses at last week’s forum included Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center (VPC) and Michael Bouchard, a retired ATF assistant director. The witnesses used their time to call for, among other things, banning the sale of modern sporting rifles and requiring sales reporting of long guns.
Other witnesses included Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, anti-gun Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), representatives from the Mexican Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a Cook County, Illinois prosecutor.
Members of the firearms industry are proud of their longstanding cooperative relationship with federal, state and local law enforcement. If we’ve learned one thing from Operation Fast and Furious, it’s that federally licensed firearms retailers serve as a primary source of information for law enforcement combating illegal trafficking and routinely reporting questionable transactions to authorities, including ATF.
It is clear that federally licensed retailers were the original source of information that gave rise to Operation Fast and Furious and retailers allowed ATF special agents to stand behind the counter of their shops so that they were better able to observe the transactions ATF asked them to make.
It is unfortunate that what should be an objective, bipartisan, fact-based investigation is being used as a political football to advance gun control. Rep. Cummings’ “forum” only served to undermine Chairman Issa’s legitimate investigation.
About NSSF
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade association for the firearms industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of more than 6,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations and publishers. For more information, log on to www.nssf.org.
CCRKBA SAYS CUMMINGS’ GUN FORUM A SMOKESCREEN TO SHIFT BLAME
From our friends at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:
Cummings, ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has held hearings on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Operation Fast and Furious, has invited a Who’s Who of anti-gunners to speak at this forum, which begins at 10 a.m. tomorrow in the Russell Senate Office Building, Room 428A.
“This isn’t a forum,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “It’s a Capitol Hill kangaroo court with the singular goal of deflecting public attention away from the Justice Department’s horrible mishandling of a gunrunning sting that has flooded Mexico with guns. Operation Fast and Furious is a product of the Obama administration, and Cummings is running interference for the White House and Attorney General Eric Holder.
“The real culprits here are the ATF officials and people in the Justice Department who either approved this operation or knew about it and allowed it to happen, and everybody knows it,” he continued. “Operation Fast and Furious allowed guns to get into the hands of people who murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and countless Mexican citizens, including a prominent attorney.
“But Cummings isn’t interested in pursuing the truth,” Gottlieb stated. “With a speaker lineup that includes anti-gun Sen. Charles Schumer, Kristen Rand from the Violence Policy Center and Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke – and nobody representing any major gun rights organization or any of the ATF whistleblowers – this forum is a flimsy sham with one clear purpose. Mr. Cummings wants to whitewash a Justice Department debacle and blame the mayhem in Mexico on gun rights, gun owners and gun dealers.”
Paul Helmke Says “Congress Needs To Question Its Own Behavior”
Outgoing Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke once again showed that he is an anti-gun zealot that knows no bounds. This week, writing for the Huffington Post with an op-ed piece titled “In the AFT ‘Fast and Furious’ Controversy, Congress Needs To Question Its Own Behavior,” Helmke somehow blames Congress for the ATF fiasco.
He writes:
“If California Rep. Darrell Issa and other congressional members who are in lock-step with the NRA bosses want to get to the bottom of the ATF gun trafficking operation, they need start looking at their own actions and lack of action. By blocking and loosening laws to prevent gun violence they, too, are culpable in ATF’s ‘Fast and Furious’ apparent debacle.”
This is absolute nonsense. This is akin to blaming a victim when a crime is committed. ATF made the mistakes, but of course Helmke sees this as an opportunity for more gun control.
Paul Helmke Steps Down From Brady Campaign
Former three-term mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana Paul Helmke has announced that he is stepping down from his post as head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center effective July 10.
The group’s vice president Dennis Henigan will serve as the acting president while the organization’s board of directors looks for a new president.
Sour Grapes from AP on Obama’s Gun Policy?
This week the Associated Press, via ABC News, offered a story titled “PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama yet to Act on Gun Safety.” This highly biased piece suggested President Obama was completely lax on gun laws.
The article even offered commentary from Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke, thus implying that Obama has done nothing anti-gun. Of course the facts aren’t so cut and dry.
The article failed to note anything about the ATF debacle known as Fast and Furious, nor did it bother to note that Obama himself reportedly said to Sarah Brady, one of the Brady Campaign founders, that gun control is on the agenda, but just “under the radar.”
This shameful article implies that Obama is soft on guns. It doesn’t note the blocked importation of M1 rifles from South Korea, nor does it note that the EPA had listened to a proposal that would ban lead ammunition. And finally it failed to note that Obama appointed two Supreme Court Justices who are each extremely anti-Second Amendment.
Obama is extremely dangerous to our Second Amendment rights, whether AP wants to believe so or not.
Paul Helmke: How Many Lives the Brady’s Saved
In a column for Huffington Post, titled “Jim and Sarah Brady: We’ll Never Know How Many Lives They Saved,” Paul Helmke tries to suggest all the ways that anti-gun efforts of saved lives. Of course, we think people like Otis McDonald of Chicago, whose home was broken into many times might disagree.
But the debate aside, we suggest Helmke fact check before he makes some statements. Helmke writes:
“From outlawing armor-piercing ‘cop-killer’ bullets to banning metal-detector-evading ‘plastic’ guns; from their support of laws to limit illegal gun trafficking and curtail corrupt gun dealers…”
There really is no such thing as a metal-detector-evading ‘plastic’ gun. Even if such guns were to exist, they wouldn’t be sold at gun shows, and more importantly the bullets would still set off the alarms!
Also, we note the mention of “corrupt gun deals” and gun trafficking, but no mention is made of the recent ATF debacle that has allowed thousands of guns to walk to Mexico.
Helmke notes the Tucson shooting as well:
“The shooter was armed with large-capacity assault clip that allowed him to shoot 32 bullets in just under 16 seconds.”
What again is an “assault clip?” This is not a term that has ever been used to describe the high capacity magazines. Helmke seems to have coined a term, just for the purpose of banning it!
Finally, he calls for new laws that would make it harder for law-abiding citizens to buy firearms:
“The passage of sensible new guns laws making it hard for dangerous and irresponsible people to get guns would be a tribute worthy of these special Americans, who have given this nation their all.”
The laws would make it hard for law-abiding citizens to buy and sell guns. It would raise the cost, result in a national data base of guns, something that would no doubt be a concern to those who suddenly are tracked yet never did anything wrong. In other words, it could turn law-abiding citizens into criminals, thus making it hard for them to own guns.
And would it really save any lives?
Assault Clips? What Exactly are Assault Clips?
Earlier this week we noted that Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign called for a ban on “assault clips,” but what exactly is he talking about? Our friends at Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms help explain:
Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke has, perhaps inadvertently, revealed his intentions to push for an expanded ban on semiautomatic sport-utility rifles, and he invented a new demon in the process, proving he has no intention of finding common ground with gun owners, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
Writing yesterday in his blog on the Opposing Views forum about his meeting with Obama administration officials last week, Helmke outlined his wish list, which includes “increasing the number and type of military-style weapons, including ‘assault clips,’ that should not be readily available to civilians…”
“So, this is Paul Helmke’s definition of a ‘new discussion’ that President Obama mentioned in his Op-Ed column two weeks ago,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Sounds like the same old rhetoric to us. Helmke wants to ban a larger number of commonly-owned firearms, and he has invented a new term to demonize a commonly-owned shooting accessory. Maybe that’s what Helmke thinks Obama meant.”
In his column, Helmke once again alludes to the “flood of guns being illegally trafficked” to Mexico. Gottlieb said there is one glaring omission in his statement.
“Nowhere does Helmke mention that this so-called ‘flood of guns’ was evidently accelerated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ scandalous Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious,” he observed. “Maybe Helmke doesn’t watch CBS news or read the newspapers, which have revealed that those ATF operations funneled thousands of guns into the black market pipeline that goes into Mexico.
“Helmke complained that one gun rights organization has declined to participate in what is quickly looking like a charade,” Gottlieb stated. “The Citizens Committee is still waiting for an invitation, because we would be happy to talk about all of the guns this administration has supplied to Mexican criminals.
“Paul Helmke and Barack Obama aren’t interested in any ‘new discussion’,” Gottlieb concluded. “They’re just putting a new wrapping on stale ideas and hoping the public doesn’t recognize the difference.”
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the Internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to InformationRequest@ccrkba.org.
Brady Bunch Leader Notes NRA Won’t Come to Table
Paul Helmke in his column for Opposing View took time this week to note that “Brady Campaign Attends Obama Gun Summit, Not NRA.” The article mostly praised how the President essentially responded to the Tucson shooting – only two months after the fact. Helmke notes that the NRA refused to even come to the table, in a meeting that “lasted more than 90 minutes.”
The recap is summed up best in this statement from Helmke:
“I began the discussion by listing basic measures that the Brady Campaign, and others, felt could make a difference. The list included: a strong background check system, with good and complete records of dangerous and irresponsible people, applicable to all commercial gun sales; more tools for law enforcement to stop trafficking in illegal guns; increasing the number and type of military-style weapons, including ‘assault clips,’ that should not be readily available to civilians, like machine-guns and fully automatic weapons. Administration officials then asked questions. My colleagues and I gave examples and arguments for legislative, administrative, and voluntary policies that could help reduce the bloodshed.”
What is interesting here is that Helmke calls for tracking of commercial gun sales, but what about private sales between individuals? Others in the Brady Bunch have suggested that all private sales should be ended. So which is it?
But beyond this laundry list, which suggests that “military-style weapons” are a serious issue – which they are not; they merely look like military firearms, hence the “military-style,” something that doesn’t mean they operate like a machine gun – we don’t see really the point.
It is no surprise that the Brady Campaign wants to tighten gun sales and ownership. The NRA does not. So is it really a surprise that the NRA refused to meet? In the end Helmke calls for action, so obviously the NRA is going to be opposed. No surprise.
Wane.com Proves What We Already Know About Anti-Gun Zealots
Are gun control advocates opportunists, willing to turn a tragedy into an opening for their agenda? Most certainly, and Wane.com, a news site from Fort Wayne, Indiana, practically brags about it:
“Could January’s mass shootings in Tucson, Arizona lead to new gun restrictions? Fort Wayne’s former mayor, Paul Helmke , hopes so.”
The problem is that the article is that it praises Helmke’s efforts, yet offers no rebuttal. So the head of the Brady Campaign is able to make his statements without any challenge – talk about an opportunity. The article even quotes Helmke:
“”I am not anti-gun. I am not trying to take your guns away. I’m looking for some common sense.”
The problem here is that we don’t know, or do we believe, what he is saying. What is the common sense? He constantly campaigns for stricter gun control – which for the record was the original point of the Brady Center. So he may say that he is “not anti-gun” but that’s a far cry from being pro-gun, or even being silent on the issue.
And sorry, but we do think he is, in fact, trying to take our guns away.
