More Huff and Puff About Stand Your Ground
This week Joe Grace, a gun violence prevention advocate, writing for the Huffington Post called on the NRA to stand down on “stand your ground.” The irony is that grace says he’s actually sick of the silence coming from the gun lobby. How can the gun lobby stand down on any issue that they aren’t making an issue?
Of course this isn’t about just “Stand Your Ground,” but guns in general. Grace offered some thought:
I was in St. Louis this past weekend, where more than 60,000 gun enthusiasts gathered at the NRA’s annual convention. You could enter a booth and squeeze off virtual rounds from an array of high-powered weapons, hear pro-gun speeches by candidates, and join debates about the right to carry concealed guns.
First would like to know what he actually means by a high-powered weapon, as most of the firearms are not actually high-powered. However, the use of this adjective is common from anti-gun zealots, who use it to evoke fears in the uninformed.
He added:
What was absent from the NRA convention, however, was any real discussion on the “Stand Your Ground” law that encourages armed confrontations, and makes all of us less safe. This dangerous “shoot first, ask questions later” law has been raised as a potential defense for George Zimmerman, the self-styled neighborhood watchman who stands accused of murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida.
We’d like to ask whether the NRA noted examples where guns were actually used in self-defense? In other words why should a single shooting, or bad example, be used at the convention?
Grace and his rant with the following statement:
Stand Your Ground should be abolished from the land.
However we don’t believe him, as what he really wants abolished from the land is the Second Amendment.
Huff and Puff Rants “Guns Help People Kill People”
Once again, the Huffington Post offered a misguided rant that attempts to use flawed logic to make its case. Writer Cynthia Kounaris, Executive Director, Women Ecommerce Execs, begins with the headline, “Guns Help People Kill People.”
She writes:
The NRA is a powerful gun industry lobby and an effective marketing machine. It has too many people convinced that any rules — obvious, commonsense rules, rules that are similar to those that Americans accept about other aspects of their lives — are an infringement on their Constitutional rights. And with respect to the Second Amendment — why is the “right to bear arms” aspect emphasized and the “well regulated militia” part is not? How have gun control advocates ceded that argument to the NRA? Since when did a “militia” come to mean “anyone who wants a gun”?
Like many using this argument, she neglects to note that the militia was armed with personal firearms. The government did not supply the guns to the militia. Nor does this mean “anyone who wants a gun” as she would have you believe. Read more
What Did You Say Joe?
Good old Joe Biden once again proved that the Vice President of the United States can get by on his looks alone. The VP made this outrageous statement this week during interview on Face the Nation on CBS:
“You know, the bulk of the people who are shot with a weapon — other than these drug gangs taking on one another — end up being shot with their own weapon.”
Amazingly, Biden said this while somehow defending – or was it mocking – the Second Amendment.
NRA ILA Grassroots News
NRA Grassroots News 4-13-2012
NJ2AS: WHO NEEDS THE SECOND AMENDMENT?
The most shocking thing about the Second Amendment is that it is truly unnecessary! The question every human must ask themselves is “Who owns my LIFE”? The answer can only be one of two possibilities. Either *YOU* are the owner of your life or someone else is. If you declare that your life belongs to someone else, then they can do with you whatever they wish. You need not worry about the right to keep and bear arms. Your life is not yours to defend. In essence the answer to this question is a choice between FREEDOM and SLAVERY. Read more
Gun Control Myth15: Gun Ownership is not a Constitutional Right
Gun control zealots often try to suggest they know the intentions of the Founding Fathers, and as such these gun prohibitionists argue that the Second Amendment confers a right to bear arms only on duly enrolled members of a state militia. But that is not what the document says. It specifically grants the right to keep and bear arms to “the people”.
“The phrase `the people’ meant the same thing in the Second Amendment as it did in the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments — that is, each and every free person,” writes constitutional scholar Stephen Halbrook in his book That Every Man Be Armed.
Even Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe – a gun-control advocate known for his liberal views – admitted, in the 1999 edition of his book American Constitutional Law, that the Second Amendment confers an individual right on U.S. citizens to “possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes.”
Editorial Questions Lack of Gun Control – Really!
This past weekend, writing for Opposing Views, Elayne Clift, a writer and activist, asked about gun control. She wrote:
Ever since Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head and several people were killed while she was rapping with constituents at a shopping mall I’ve been wondering why there hasn’t been any mention of gun control. I wonder the same thing about the killing of Trayvon Martin.
I thought maybe I was missing some under-the-radar political action in the name of stopping gun violence in this country so I went online to see who was doing what to stop the madness. The answer is no one. There were no postings dated beyond the 1990s other than a few statistics. That silence and the absence of calls for gun control legislation speak volumes, mainly about the NRA and its powerful lobby, which might as well be pointing a pistol straight in the face of every legislator in the country.
Well, she must have missed that President Obama has in fact claimed to be working on gun control “under the radar.” And this got us thinking, why would someone want the government to work “under the radar,” as she suggests? Doesn’t this mean that our freedoms don’t’ matter?
But once again, here is an anti-gun zealot who seems to think that the NRA is the real villain. Gun sales have been up, and public opinion on gun control is down. Isn’t that the truth that the gun control types don’t want to hear? So how does she respond? With nonsensical statements that prove she has NO IDEA about this topic.
She writes:
Nevermind that the Second Amendment, ratified in 1791 when life was entirely different in a new America than it is now, states only that “A well regulated Militia,being necessary to the security of a free State,the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (italics mine).
The last truly significant federal gun law, passed in 1994, was the Assault Weapons Ban. A subsequent bill designed to subject handguns to the same restrictions as machine guns died in Congress. Now attempts to close the so-called Gun Show Loophole languish. There is no pending gun legislation in the present 112th Congress.
So what she is arguing is the usual, the founding fathers couldn’t have foreseen the guns today so that means anything more than a musket should be banned. Nice try, but as we always like to mention how about the First Amendment and radio, TV and the Internet? Should those not be protected as well?
Likewise, back when that was written the militia went into battle with PERSONAL firearms! Maybe a history lesson is in order.
Finally, she talks about the Assault Weapons Ban and then later discusses “machine guns,” which are not the same thing. In fact machine guns are tightly controlled by the National Firearms Act of 1934, and machine guns have nothing to do with the AWB. Again, knowledge of the topic can go a long way. And this writer lacks that knowledge to make a compelling argument.
SEN. MORAN’S BILL TO PROTECT 2A FROM U.N. HAILED BY CCRKBA
Sen. Moran’s proposed Second Amendment Sovereignty Act, S. 2205, is similar to legislation introduced in the House by Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh in December. Like the Walsh bill, Sen. Moran’s measure would prohibit the Obama administration from attempting to influence Arms Trade Treaty negotiations that might restrict the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.
“We’re delighted that Sen. Moran has unveiled this bill,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “With the U.N. poised to move on its proposed treaty this summer, it is important for Congress to fulfill its responsibility to protect our Constitutional rights, rather than allow them to be eroded by international political correctness.”
Like the Walsh bill, Sen. Moran’s legislation was developed with cooperation and assistance of CCRKBA staff, Gottlieb confirmed. Read more
California Gun Shows in Crossfire
This week the Contra Costa Times noted how California gun laws are making private sales and even dealer sales at gun shows very tricky. The paper noted:
For the Glenn County couple, the South Bay is a small island amid a sea of hostility toward their TS Gun Shows. Bay Area counties from Alameda and Marin to San Mateo have enacted laws that forbid the sale or possession of guns on government property, effectively banning gun shows at some of the best spots to hold them.
So what is the hope? Interestingly this is going to the courts:
(Russell and Sallie) Nordykes believe those laws are unconstitutional — and on Monday, a federal appeals court will once again take up their 12-year quest to strike down the regulations.
The case offers another crucial test of Second Amendment rights that could have repercussions for California’s sweeping slate of state and local gun control laws.
Specifically, an 11-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is to hear arguments in the Nordykes’ legal challenge to Alameda County’s ordinance, which has outlawed gun shows at the fairgrounds in Pleasanton since 1999.
Election 2012: NRA Endorses Richard Mourdock
Yesterday the National Rifle Association officially endorsed Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock over current Sen. Dick Lugar. The NRA blasted Lugar for his “seeming contempt for gun owners in Indiana.”
This comes as several left-leaning media outlets have questions the “myth” of the NRA. Now we think we’ll see whether the NRA members, and more importantly gun owners and Second Amendment supporters, will voice their opinion at the ballot box.
