Several of our readers have commented on House Resolution Number 45. You can read it here. Take the time to read it in detail.

It speaks for itself. Chillingly.

If there was ever anything that called out for each of us to express our views to our Congressional delegation, it is this.

Meanwhile, the anti-gun owner civil rights lobby is crowing that the results of the last election constitute a victory for “gun control” sentiment. Commentator Howard Nemerov vehemently and articulately disagrees, here.

1 COMMENT

  1. Why am I not suprised?

    I think this is only the “beginning” of the end for gun owners in the new united socialist amerika Mas.

    Biker

  2. Another Bill to keep an eye on…

    It seems that H.R. 1022 has gained a few new cosponsors since my last check. H.R. 1022 now has 66 cosponsors. The most recent 6 have signed on in just the last couple of weeks. Someone is stirring the pot and pushing this horrendous piece of legislation. More than 15% of the House are now signed onto this bill as cosponsors. Not bad for a bill that everyone insists is dead in the water.

    HR1022, the McCarthy Gun Ban, which bans a number of common sporting and target rifles, in addition to many common shotguns.

    The Bill does not merely ban “assault weapons” , whatever they are, it bans two of the most common target rifles being sold today, including the AR-15, and many models of the Ruger 10/22.

    It is so badly worded, that it would, in effect, ban all semi-automatic shotguns, and many common semi-automatic rifles like the M1A, and the M1 Garand. The Ruger Ranch Rifle would also be banned under this bill. It give the attorney general authority to ban any firearm, so long as the attorney general makes a judgement that they are not sufficiently “sporting” guns, by whatever definition the attorney general chooses to use.

  3. “…he attorney general makes a judgement that they are not sufficiently “sporting” guns, by whatever definition the attorney general chooses to use.”

    And we all know the new, anti-gun AG Eric Holder will have quite a broad brush approach to determining what is “sporting” and what isn’t.

    Shouldn’t we really be holding Congress’ feet to the fire about such nonsense in the wake of Heller? After all, no other Supreme Court decision has so clearly stated that the Second Amendment means an individual right to arms. I see no provision about “sporting arms” in either Heller or the Second Amendment. Drafting legislation that revolves around a “sporting” definition is at odds with both. The framers of the Constitution weren’t concerned with duck hunting nor do I believe Dick Heller was concerned with a trigger lock on his deer rifle.

  4. What interesting timing…..Just after Holder gets approved as AG. Massad is dead on target when he said this time we need to act and act quickly, collectively and forcefully to pressure our conserative elected officials to resist these (HR 45 and HR 1022) beginning gun control measures. This will do nothing but create a huge black market for firearms and exacerbate the illeagal gun trade.

  5. I can`t beleive what I have read. Do these idiot politions honestly believe what they write. Most dont know anything about firearms to distinquish what is an assault or sporting rifle. They get on the anti-gun band wagon hoping to get elected, or re-elected using this on there agendas. Wake up . PRo-gun voters will also speak out and vote accordingly. All these new bills proposed will do nothing to reduce any crimes. It only puts a burdon on the tax payers and law abiding citizens .Its time for all of us to truly come together and show these polititions that we are tired of them threading on our 2nd ammendment rights.

  6. Read this a few days ago somewhere else. Sounds like the Illinois FOID card B.S. Not suprising considering the contingent of crap obama dragged along with him. Mix that up with the clintonistas and it’s a damn vile mix. Sucks! God help the Republic.

  8. Just for nchuckles I was checking the White House website and found the following position statement under “Urban Policy”, to wit:

    “Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.”

    Is anybody surprised? I mean really……. disgusted? Sure! But surprised? Didn’t think so.

  10. Regardless of which bill we are talking about here, and there will be several more, we need to keep constant contact with our elected officials. Straightforward but polite letters telling them exactly what they have to lose by being on the wrong side of the so-called gun control issue.

  11. Hi Mr. Ayoob,

    Enjoy your various writings! I was wondering if you had any prelimanery thoughts on the transit shooting where the officer has now been charged, and whose defense seems to be that he thought he’d grabbed his stun gun, and not his sidearm.

    Thanks,
    Anton

  12. We have been reading Bookwoods Home for a long time, and I really enjoy your articles. I even went out and bought the Socom II after reading what you had to say about it, and I really like it, I had the M14 in the service and maybe that is why? I have sent that H.R. 45 Bill to everyone I know, boy that is one scary bill. Thank you for all the great articles you have written over the years, I look forward to reading them, I have even bought to 6 in pipe with caps lol.

  14. I have been reading HR45 a few times and it does seem that it’s the same bill brought up several times over the past several years and never got anything but a first reading. HR1022 though is new to me and I need to read that one.

    Now just because HR45 has failed several times in the past does not mean it will fail again, this ain’t Kansas anymore!

  15. Okay, here’s the problem. I know Blair Holt’s family. It was an enormous tragedy and there was great public outrage. People want a solution to the killing and it’s perfectly understandable that they are promoting legislation like this in order to achieve that solution. The thing is, if we don’t show up and use our expertise to help solve the problem and only contribute as naysayers, we lose hands down. We are seen as being on the side of the criminals. That has been the biggest strategic blunder of the last twenty years.

    The undeniable fact is that good people really are being killed. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, but this is turning the tide against us. There are more victims of gun violence and friends of victims of gun violence than there are of us and it’s time to use our heads and change the way we talk about this issue. We as gun owners have to pay attention to this or we’re going to lose it all.

    Look, I sympathize with the victims. Blair’s family are good people. His father is a police officer and now he uses every spare moment to change the gun laws because some idiots who should never have gotten their hands on a gun in the first place are ruining it for the rest of us. You get enough people single-mindedly opposing us who have lost kids and family members and we’ve got a opponent we can’t hold out against.

    So when do WE rise up against the bad guys instead of protecting their interests at every turn? I’m sick and tired of being asked to work for their benefit every time I turn around, opposing legislation, calling politicians to stop a law that actually might do some good for society.

    People are waiting for us to do something besides sit around whining and complaining all the time and making threatening phone calls to our legislators. We have a responsiblity to do something about the tragedies that are taking place and stop stonewalling the issue of gun violence and stooping to the childish namecalling and ad hominem attacks. Protecting an ideology is not a viable longterm strategy in this climate. Justice Scalia proved that in the Heller case.

    Don’t you see how stupid we look in the media? Innocent people are being killed and we look like we don’t care about anything except owning more guns. That’s not a sympathetic position. And please stop using that “if they only carried a gun” line. Any sensible person knows that’s a ridiculous argument and you lose everytime you use it, especially in this type of situation.

    So here’s the thing, given that innocent people are dying of gunshot wounds everyday, given that children do find the gun in the nightstand and kill their playmates, given that criminals get guns too easily and we are protecting their ability to do so, given that I don’t want to ever have to shoot back because someone who shouldn’t have access to a firearm is shooting at or threatening me, given that “enforcing the gun laws we already have” means all too often that a victim has to be created first, and given that we are not the sympathetic parties in this issue, then we have to recognize that we have a real problem in our society and we are at least at some fault for ignoring it by not coming to the table and trying to work out a solution that everyone can live with. It may require some compromises, but I find myself having less and less sympathy for the true paranoids out there. The more I hear them talk, the more I conclude that they’re mentally unstable and shouldn’t have guns anyway.

    So, my advice, take it or leave it, is that we can’t keep protecting the criminals, the cowards, the profiteers, and the paranoids and win on this issue. If people are selling guns illegally, they need to be put out of business, really. Gun runners shouldn’t be able to supply Chicago with guns that they bought in Mississippi or Indiana from the back of their van . Law enforcement shouldn’t be outgunned by the bad guys because military style weaponry is being sold on the civilian market.

    We need to cut the ideology crap and start thinking strategically because in ten years, all the old reliable politicians will be retired and gone and the life member good old boys at the NRA conventions will be dead of heart attacks. Those gun owners of us who are left must, repeat, must, come to the table to save this sport that we love, otherwise, people who don’t know anything about guns will decide it for us and write all the legislation.

    That’s really the only question at hand here, do you want to have input in writing some bipartisan legislation that will protect our rights and reduce the carnage. If you don’t come to the table with everyone else who is involved in this issue who is on the other side, then you are merely contributing to our demise.

    I am not as fatalisticly resigned and distrustful as many of you and so I, along with many other gun owners I know, have begun behaving responsibly and have already started dialoging with the Brady Campaign and some other mainstream gun violence prevention organizations. I’m contributing my knowledge and expertise on firearms to the conversation. I’m teaching them about firearm construction and proper usage. I’m trying to humanize the “decent law-abiding gun owner,” I’m telling them what I can live with regarding legislation and what I’m okay with knowing that inconvenience is not the same as infringement. Shoot, Judge Scalia gave them HB45 on a silver platter in his comments on the case. Nothing in that bill violates anything he listed as allowable, so where does that leave us? It leaves us twisting in the wind unless we stop being so selfish and stupid.

    I’m going to work on tearing down the fence between the two camps. Blair’s family has made a convert of me. I’m still a gun owner and advocate, but I also recognize that we can’t fight the victims. We’d better start learning to talk to them. Anybody with me?

  16. BillJ, please share with us what you think would constitute compromise acceptable to both sides of this highly polarized issue.

    Looking forward to hearing from you,
    Mas

  17. Mas,

    Thanks for your interest. First, I think it’s important to recognize that the polarization on this issue seems to be perpetuated, in my opinion, from our side. People feel threatened and they respond strongly, and many times, unkindly. But as I have gotten to know and speak with many people in the gun violence prevention community, including the Brady leadership, I find that it is the rare exception of only the most extremely traumatized fringe victims who do not recognize that owning guns for target shooting, personal defense, and hunting are legitimate.

    They may have a personal issue with shooting Bambi’s mom, but that’s not a “gun rights” issue. They just don’t like, or understand hunting. They may not want their children to play in a home where there is a gun in the nightstand, but that’s not a “gun rights” issue, either. There have simply been too many stories in the news of kids who have played with dad’s gun and shot their playmate. They want no guns in the hands of criminals, to keep dangerous guns out of the hands of dangerous people, and seeing the example set by other countries, they wonder why we can’t have it here. I think that’s a legitimate expectation and as a responsible gun owner, I have a responsibility to help that become a reality. Canada’s rate of firearm death is lower than any single US state and most cities medium sized and larger. That’s just insane. Blood’s already running in the streets. We’re already too late to stop it. And what’s worse, it’s destroying the reputation of something you and I care about.

    So, what can we do to fix it?

    First, take gun ownership seriously again. We’ve given up the farm on this one. We encourage people to buy guns without encouraging or insisting that they take a training course first. That’s a no-brainer to me. The casual gun owner is reckless, careless, and dangerous, not to mention often stupid when it comes to guns. People lose their guns, don’t store them properly, and use them thoughtlessly. This is a result of our not putting the pressure on society to remember that gun ownership is a serious responsibility. Many states have concealed carry laws that require basic training for a CCL, however, in my opinion, this should be a minimum requirement for all gun ownership in the first place. And while we’re at it, let’s make sure we keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, remembering that extreme paranoia is a sign of mental illness. Gun owners need to not be mentally ill, or talk as if they are.

    Second, effectively cut out the criminal market. I am not so pessimistic to think that we won’t be able to keep the bad guys from getting guns. Of course we can keep bad guys from getting guns, other countries do. The first step is to shut down the bad gun dealers. Can you even begin to rationally justify the 1 – 2 % of the gun dealers that are knowingly selling to criminals? The next gun they sell could be used against you or your family and friends. Get tough. Take names and kick some butt. Put these guys out of business before they ruin it for all of us. Stop buying guns from them. Tell police officers to not buy from them. If we don’t self-regulate, we can hardly complain when Bloomberg sends in concealed cameras, now can we?

    Third, eliminate the straw purchase and trafficking market. In my granddad’s day, if a gun dealer didn’t like your look, they didn’t sell you a gun. These people had some integrity and were really about protecting the community with their gun sales. Today, it seems as if nobody cares if some petite woman comes into a store and looks at the .45 Mags. for her self-defense handgun. Of course she passes a background check and then hands the gun to her boyfriend waiting outside. Sometimes they don’t even wait outside. Shopkeepers in other states look the other way when people load their vans up with rifles and handguns with high street value and drive away to cities like Chicago and Washington, DC. Then we have the gall to complain that the gun laws in those cities don’t work. Once again, we shoot ourselves in the foot protecting people that don’t deserve to be protected. We’re nothing but whiners and complainers and we sold our souls to the devil when we started to support this reprehensible behavior.

    Fourth, stop making this an us against them issue. None of us wants people dying in the streets. But when we start sounding unsympathetic towards the victims, we sound like rubes and lose our credibility. When we don’t try to help write the legislation restricting military-style weapons, we can’t complain that the bills are “badly written.” These people may not be experts on guns, but they are experts on gun violence and they’re gaining ground every year. If you don’t want their bill to outlaw your favorite hunting gun because it’s too broadly written, then help them write a bill that meets both needs. We need to work together and start making sense with the other side with some good dialog if we’re going to keep our heads above water. Also, when we do talk, we need to be honest and put away the shenanigans. Wayne LaPierre told the NRA convention several years ago that the organization did not support guns on school grounds, yet the NRA lobbyist I associated with at the time was killing bills that would have done just that. And more recently trying to get guns on college campuses. Please. Ludicrous and unreasonable initiatives like that are going to chase away even our most ardent legislative supporters.

    Fifth, get the military guns off the streets. I will not apologize for wanting to keep AR-15s and the SKS rifles as well as the TEC-9’s, MAC-10’s and the rest of that lot out of civilian ownership. A lot of people agree with me that we cannot continue to crow over the expiring of the Assault Weapon’s Ban when cops are getting killed with these firearms. As the old saying goes, “if we can save one life, it has been worth it.” We can do without these guns in civilian hands and we can stop the outrageous quibbling over terminology. I have a Gun Digest book on my bookshelf entitled “Assault Weapons” and it has lots of formerly banned guns in it. If we’re going to use the term, we can hardly complain when the other side uses it. In my opinion, too many folks have gotten into the “gearhead” mentality with firearms. I’m losing respect for people who are too insistent on owning these firearms. I can’t help but suspect there’s another agenda there.

    Sixth, I think licensing and registration are fine, as long as we have some say in writing the legislation and negotiate a reasonable compromise. I am not paranoid and I’m also a realist. I know that in a country with 250 – 300 million guns in private hands, it would take over 10 years to confiscate all the guns at a rate of 2000 guns in every state every day. Licensing and registration, specifically mentioned by Justice Scalia in the Heller ruling, forces people to take their gun ownership seriously. Fewer guns would be “lost” or “misplaced” or “stolen” if people were held to a greater level of responsibility.

    Seventh, make sure the manufacturers are not poisoning the well. We can use our influence to keep the manufacturers honest. I think they need are still badly in need of a code of ethics. Maybe not the one proposed by S&W in the Clinton years, but they do need one. Without one, they are no better than Big Tobacco in the public’s eyes. Practices such as buying back a police department’s issued firearms in order to outfit them with new ones at a discount and then selling those refurbished guns on the secondary market are also reckless and dangerous. It endangers the police and the rest of us when the secondary market does not receive proper oversight. Of all the industries, gun manufacture should be the most honorable and unimpeachable because so much is at stake. Sadly, it is not always so and I try to conduct my gun purchases accordingly.

    Eighth, effectively regulate the secondary market. Again, I have no sympathy for folks who just want to make money off their guns at the expense of public. Inconvenience is not infringement. You can take a blood test from me if I can still buy a gun at the end of the day. I have never had any trouble buying a gun when I wanted with a little planning ahead. It’s not a violation of my rights to pass a background check. Happy to do it. Licensing and registration? If it’s going to make people more thoughtful and conscientious about what they do with their guns, I’m okay with that. But don’t make it easy for some gang-banger to blow some poor innocent kid away, and don’t ask me to protect their interests by asking me to call my legislator and kill a bill that could save that kid’s life. People who try to get around the law are dangerous, and they are not abiding by the “enforce the laws we have” policy that seems to flow so freely these days.

    Finally, stop protecting and associating with the bad guys. I have a friend who writes to the NRA every time she hears about an NRA member committing a crime so that their membership can be revoked. I like that idea. If you commit a felony, you should not only lose your gun rights, you should lose your associations with gun owners. Men who commit acts of domestic violence need to lose their gun privileges upon arrest. Forget about restoring gun rights to felons just so they can go hunting. Sorry, you screwed up and we’re done. We need to stop protecting the bad gun dealers, the bad gun owners, the criminals. They should be unwelcome at our clubs, our gun shows, and other events and associations. Let’s dial back the rhetoric and stop trying to protect people who don’t deserve our protection. We lose credibility every time we do. We don’t want to be responsible for making any more victims, do we?

    Bottom line is, I’m not going to put profit over safety. I know the gun industry has been losing sales over the past couple decades, but that’s no reason to sell your soul and make it easy for criminals to buy guns. I don’t really care if John Smith’s Gun Shop goes out of business, nor do I care if Colt or another gun maker goes out of business or has to discontinue a product line because there just isn’t a legitimate market for their products. Let the market work. If too many guns are being supplied for responsible gun owners to buy them all, then we just have to cut back on the manufacture. Pretty simple, really. Anything else is irresponsible and utterly without honor.

    There are plenty of areas where we can come to an agreement with non-gun owners who are rightly concerned about safety without being unreasonable for either side. There really is a respect there for most of us and the pursuits we are interested in. And there are plenty of ways we can make progress together. Try it sometime, you might be surprised at how decent they really are.

  18. BillJ, your arguments certainly merit some discussion, and some counterpoints.

    Let’s begin with one place where we have some agreement, your very last paragraph. For some years I’ve been a member of one of the few entities that has brought members of these two polarized factions together: the New Hampshire Firearms Safety Coalition. This organization encompasses members of CeaseFire and GO-NH (Gun Owners of New Hampshire) alike, along with non-politicized members of the public safety community. Good has come of it, primarily in public school and community gathering efforts promoting firearms safety, awareness of teen suicide issues, and related matters.

    But, to get back to the meat of your commentary…

    I asked for areas where you felt there could be compromise. You named several areas where you thought the pro-gun side should concede to the anti-gun side, but offered absolutely no areas where you felt anti-gun groups could offer concessions to the gun owners.

    Was that left out unintentionally? Or has your experience with “the other side of the debate” convinced you that they are not willing to concede on anything?

    Bill, you refer to “1%-2% of the gun dealers that are knowingly selling to criminals.” Do you or the Brady organization have any evidence for that statement? If so, why has it not been turned over to the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives?

    In your first post on this topic (yesterday, above) you began by stating that you know Blair Holt’s family. As we both know, young Mr. Holt was an honor student who died courageously while trying to shield a young woman from the gunfire of a sixteen year old gang member (Gangster Disciples) who opened fire on a rival gang member on a crowded bus, with an illegally possessed handgun. The victim’s father — ironically, a Chicago police officer assigned to a gang crimes unit — stated subsequently that he and his wife were “Pushing for more youth-mentoring opportunities, better gun laws, and other initiatives aimed at curbing juvenile violence.”

    Since you know the Holt family, please extend my condolences on their loss. Please, also, tell us what progress they’ve been able to make on the youth-mentoring efforts and other initiatives aimed at curbing juvenile violence.

    Blair Holt was murdered by a teenage gang member who illegally possessed a .40 caliber pistol, given him by another teenager in equally illegal possession who knew the killer intended to maliciously shoot someone with it in the interest of a gang feud. This happened in a city with the most restrictive handgun ban and “assault weapon” ban in the nation. In a further irony, HR 45, named “Blair Holt’s Bill,” was introduced by Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther who is said to have served six months in prison circa 1969 on a firearms conviction.

    Can you please tell us how this legislation could possibly have prevented the murder of Blair Holt, had it been in place at the time?

    BillJ, we keep things civil here, and for the most part you have. I appreciate that. However, when you say “The casual gun owner is reckless, careless, and dangerous not to mention often stupid when it comes to guns,” you are painting with a very broad brush. Could you perhaps define for us exactly what you mean by “casual gun owner”?

    Some here might take it as an insult when you write, “…let’s make sure we keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, remembering that exteme paranoia is a signal of mental illness.” Some of us feel that penalizing law-abiding citizens for planned murder attempts by committed criminal gang members is sufficiently illogical to constitute delusional thinking, another indicator of mental imbalance. It would be best if arguments such as these could be left out of further discussion here.

    BillJ, I look forward to hearing back from you on this topic.

  19. BillJ,

    I’m a casual gun owner. I’m not a criminal, mentally ill or in it for the money. I store my guns and ammo responsibly. I own guns for hunting and self protection. I resent your assertions that the majority of casual gun owners are in one or more of theses categories and or leave their guns casually and loaded for a “5 year old” to find.

    I’m tired of being made to feel like I should apologize for owning guns or constantly defending my CHOICE and would like to address a few items you brought up.

    First, gun ownership is not just for “sporting” purposes. As a matter of fact, it was included in the bill of rights so we would always have away to fight tyranny. If you read the federalist papers and numerous other writings of the founding fathers you would clearly see that. Not once is there a mention of legitimate sporting uses of guns or even any restrictions on ownership or uses of any particular weapon.

    This brings me to the “Assault Weapons” that are sooo evil and dangerous to the police and civilians alike. Back when the constitution was written muskets and flintlocks were the “Assault Weapons” of the time. Every one hade one and they were used as hunting tools, for self defense and yes, to fight a tyrannical government.

    These assault weapons that are causing all this fuss today are not the choice of criminals, Actually, police departments nationwide agree that criminals do not prefer these weapons. Police View: Over 100,000 police officers delivered a message to Congress in 1990 stating that only 2% to 3% of crimes are committed using a so-called “assault weapon”.

    Florida study: In Florida, only 3.5% of the guns recovered by the police were guns that could loosely be defined as “assault weapons”.

    New Jersey: The New York Times reported that, “Although New Jersey’s pioneering ban on military-style assault rifles was sold to the state as a crime-fighting measure, its impact on violence in the state . . . has been negligible, both sides agree.” Moreover, New Jersey police statistics show that only .026 of 1 percent of all crimes involve “assault rifles.” ( Theses facts and more can be found on the Gun owners of America website). It also has been proven that criminals prefer cheap concealable hand guns to expensive not easily concealable military style weapons.

    That covers the misconception of the criminal use of these “Assault Weapons”. The true reason the government wants to ban them is to restrict one ability to fight them. It would be much easier to defeat people restricted to bolt action rifles that hold 5 rounds or less then face a people similarly armed.

    Take away those guns and you limit the ability to of the average citizen to fight back. Like it or not, fighting government is the main reason for gun ownership, target shooting and hunting are a way to keep trained and proficient in weapons use as well as fun.

    The mental illness card has been played by many countries because it is very easy to label some one “mentally ill”. The government has already disarmed Many veterans and any one who has a stressful job.

    How? The Veterans Disarmament Act HR 2640 (look this one up) — has placed any veteran, cop or EMT who has ever been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) on the federal gun ban list.

    The ban is actually broader then stated above. Anyone who is diagnosed as being a tiny danger to himself or others will have his gun rights taken away … forever. It is section 102(b)(1)(C)(iv) in HR 2640 that provides for dumping raw medical records into the system. Those names — like the 83,000 records mentioned above — will then, by law, serve as the basis for gun banning.

    Any one who has a stressful job who might have PTSD should not be put in a position to seek an expungement. They have not been convicted (after a trial with due process) of doing anything wrong. If a veteran is thought to be a threat to self or others, there should be a real trial, not an opinion (called a diagnosis) by a psychiatrist.

    Another vaguely written law written to disarm people with out due process. Until there is a reliable test to prove 100 percent that some one is “Mentally ill” and a danger to themselves or others, this issues should handled very delicately. Today it’s PTSD next ADD or even an eating disorder…

    I am “fatalistically resigned and distrustful” of the Brady Campaign and all other mainstream gun violence prevention organizations. Why? Because of what they them selves said.

    Read this:

    “With a 10,000% tax we could tax them [guns] out of existence.” – Daniel Patrick Moynihan, US Senator

    “We’re here to tell the NRA their nightmare [ban on guns] is true…” – Charles Schumer, US Representative

    “Our main agenda is to have ALL guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn’t matter if you have to distort facts or even lie. Our task of creating a Socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.” – Sarah Brady

    “The Constitution is a radical document… it is the job of the government to rein in people’s rights.” – Bill Clinton

    Need more? Google anti gun quotes. I have every right to take them at their word and would be foolish not too. Once bitten twice shy, nuff said about that.

    “Effectively cut out the criminal market. I am not so pessimistic to think that we won’t be able to keep the bad guys from getting guns. Of course we can keep bad guys from getting guns, other countries do.”

    You mean Like England and Australia have? It’s been years since they banned all guns and guess what?

    England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997

    Australia: Readers of the USA Today newspaper discovered in 2002 that, “Since Australia’s 1996 laws banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24% and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%.”

    Canada: After enacting stringent gun control laws in 1991 and 1995, Canada has not made its citizens any safer. “The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic,” says Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser in 2003. “Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted.”

    Next…. Ohhh, The children finding guns and killing a playmate excuse.

    Fact: Accidental gun deaths among children have declined by over 50 % in 25 years, even though the population (and the gun stock) has continued to increase.

    Fact: Despite the low number of gun accidents among children, most of these fatalities are not truly “accidents.” According to Dr. Gary Kleck, many such accidents are misnamed — those “accidents” actually resulting from either suicides or extreme cases of child abuse.

    Dr. Kleck also notes that, “Accidental shooters were significantly more likely to have been arrested, arrested for a violent act, arrested in connection with alcohol, involved in highway crashes, given traffic citations, and to have had their driver’s license suspended or revoked.”

    Myth: One child is accidentally killed by a gun every day. Dr. Gary Kleck notes that to reach this figure, anti-gun authors must include “children” aged 18-24. As noted above, there were only 142 fatal gun accidents for children in 1997.
    That’s debunked….

    And finally licensing…. The power to license a right is the power to destroy a right. If it is your right you do not need permission from anyone to exercise it. Here are some real problems with licensing that people are facing today.

    Arbitrary Delays — While New Jersey law requires applications to be responded to within thirty days, delays of ninety days are routine; sometimes, applications are delayed for several years for no readily apparent reason.

    Arbitrary Denials — Officials in New York City routinely deny gun permits for ordinary citizens and store owners because, as the courts have ruled, they have no greater need for protection than anyone else in the city. In fact, the authorities have even refused to issue permits when the courts have ordered them to do so.

    Arbitrary Fee Increases — In 1994, the Clinton administration pushed for a license fee increase of almost 1,000 percent on gun dealers. According to U.S. News & World Report, the administration was seeking the license fee increase “in hopes of driving many of America’s 258,000 licensed gun dealers out of business.”

    Here is also proof that it is illegal and unconstitutional for government to license a right.

    Officials cannot license or register a constitutional right
    The Supreme Court held in Lamont v. Postmaster General (1965) that the First Amendment prevents the government from registering purchasers of magazines and newspapers — even if such material is “communist political propaganda.”

    Your Ideas on gun control and compromise have been proven wrong on many occasions by many different organizations. You said “ you might be surprised at how decent they really are”. Any one that is willing to take away a god given right from me is not looking out for my well being no matter how well meaning or well intended their motivation is… sorry not buying it.

    Show me one gun control law that is not abused, infringes on ones rights or saves lives for that matter. If you can come up with them I’m willing to listen. Till then I’ll fight tooth and nail to preserve my rights. Sorry this is so long but it could not be helped.

    ~Brogan

    “Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est”
    (“A sword is never a killer, it’s a tool in the killer’s hands”)
    ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca “the younger” ca. (4 BC – 65 AD)

    “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”….
    — Plato(429-347 BC)….

  20. I am truly hoping Obama understands the gravity of the SCOTUS 2nd amendment decision. I cannot see how he can’t “get it”. If he does, he will leave well enough alone and focus on other issues. If he doesn’t, I’ve got to question his legal chops, not just his judgement. I suppose time will tell.