2nd Amendment

Washington Post Surprised Gun Control Didn’t Work as Advertised

Published by Papa Giorgio

Editors note: below is a GRAPHIC video of a police officer being executed — filmed from a building. I can’t help to think that if this was in Texas someone from that same vantage point would have a clear shot to dissuade such an execution, and, maybe kill a bad guy (if the person was a good shot with a pistol).

  • “Three policemen had arrived on bikes but had to leave because the men were armed, obviously… Then the attackers took off in a car.” (HotAir)

Gay Patriot notes the Washington Posts amazement that gun control doesn’t work:

Since 1939, France has had the kind of “Common Sense Gun Control Laws” that groups financed by Mike Bloomberg claim to favor (although the laws don’t go far enough, in their view, because they still permit a small number of private citizens to own firearms.) The editorialists at the Washington Post are baffled why France’s strict gun laws failed to prevent the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

A genuinely troubling question: Why didn’t France’s gun laws save the Charlie Hebdo victims?

[….]

There is no right to bear arms for the French, and to own a gun, you need a hunting or sporting license which needs to be repeatedly renewed and requires a psychological evaluation.

You mean the Mohammedan terrorists refused to apply for gun permits or sit for psychological valuations, but decided to get guns anyway? Jamais dans la vie!…

…read more…

Keep in mind that police officer that was executed was unarmed as well as the three police officers that responded on bicycle to the Charlie Hebdo attack that turned tail and ran the other way. BECAUSE they were UNARMED!

  • CBS News relayed reports from Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that the first two officers to arrive “were apparently unarmed” and “fled after seeing gunmen armed with automatic weapons and possibly a grenade launcher.”
  • The UK’s Independent reported that “three policemen arrived on bikes but had to leave because [the attackers] were armed.” A policeman who had been assigned the position of bodyguard to Charlie Hebdo editor, Stephane Charbonnier, was killed, and one policeman on a mountain bike was killed, as well.

(Breitbart)

Sick!

Murder Rate Drops With Increased Conceal Carry Permits

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Above) Dr. John Lott is the author of More Guns, Less Crime, and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. At National Review Online, he has written, “Bogus Gun Control Numbers,” in which he takes issue with the statistics concerning concealed-carry cited by the Violence Policy Center. Dr. Lott notes that their report, “Concealed Carry Killers,” is riddled with false data – and conclusions. Originally aired on the Sportsman Channel 4/29/14.

Fox News carries this commentary on a recent study, “Murder rate drops as concealed carry permits rise, study claims” ~ with a h/t to Wintery Knight:

A dramatic spike in the number of Americans with permits to carry concealed weapons coincides with an equally stark drop in violent crime, according to a new study, which Second Amendment advocates say makes the case that more guns can mean safer streets.

The study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans now have permits to carry concealed weapons, up from 4.5 million in 2007. The 146 percent increase has come even as both murder and violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent.

“When you allow people to carry concealed handguns, you see changes in the behavior of criminals,” said the center’s president, John R. Lott, a Fox News contributor. “Some criminals stop committing crimes, others move on to crimes in which they don’t come into contact with victims and others actually move to areas where they have less fear of being confronted by armed victims.”

[….]

Six states don’t require a permit for legal gun owners to conceal their weapons, and Lott notes those states have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation.

The real measure of the deterrent effect of concealed carry permits, according to Lott, is not laws on the books, but the percentage of a given state’s population that holds the permits. In 10 states, more than 8 percent of adults hold concealed carry permits, and all are among the states with the lowest crime rates. Lott claims his group’s analysis shows that each one percentage point increase in the adult population holding permits brings a 1.4 percent drop in the murder rate.

“We found that the size of the drop [in crime] is directly related to the percentage of the population with permits,” Lott said.

Between 2007 and the preliminary estimates for 2013, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.4 per 100,000….

Trigger Words, Or Picture, Cause The ELOI Trolls Discomfort

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was a photo posted by a loving boyfriend of his girlfriend… out… experiencing life, and this is what was said by some:

“Jessa, of all the things you can be representing, please consider this … with all the horrific and senseless killings that have been occurring in our society lately, it’s not the wisest thing in the world to be casually holding a machine gun in a photo for all to see,” one individual wrote in a comment.

“No human needs a machine gun,” another added.

“While I believe in the right to bare arms, I can’t believe a Christian would send out this photo because it’s fun. if you want to be an adult act like one. I doubt her parents are proud of that picture,” echoed yet another person.

(Via The Blaze)

As this American culture is battered with the hyper-sensitivity of political correctness in even “trigger words” ~ even a picture sends some into a tizzy.

Welcome to the world of cultural Marxism. I noticed as well, over at The View, when WIll Cain showed with simple facts how liberals say over-arching statements to support a specific that the previous statement does not address:

Whoopi argued that shootings/crime with gun was going up, Will Cain said no, it is going down (see previous post):

While Cain was guest-hosting “The View” on Wednesday, Whoopi Goldberg, a gun owner, began a segment by saying there have been 74 school shootings since the tragedy at Sandy Hook in 2012. Cain immediately stepped in to correct her.

“I don’t think it is the 74th,” Cain said. “That’s a stat put out by this group called Everytown USA, who is for gun control. We know a couple stats, these are by Pew and the FBI. Gun violence is down drastically over the last 20 years. I mean, drastically. What I will tell you is, every time these terrible things happen, we want to learn a lesson. And it’s understandable — we want to grab sanity. … What can we do to ensure this doesn’t happen? I don’t know. Crazy people exist.”

“I will suggest this,” Cain continued. “I think when the media reports so breathlessly and salaciously on these things, these guys copycat each other.”

(The Blaze)

BTW, it looks — to me — like Will Cain was holding back. He has an image to uphold with the entertainment world, the Views pop-culture. It seems like he could have unloaded (pun intended) much more than he did… but was aware of whom he was talking to.

  • Whoopi says: “If it’s ten a week, or five a week, it’s too many man… it’s too many kids… it’s too many…”
  • Will Cain responds, almost facetiously [but politely with a sarcastic smile on his face] says: “I can’t disagree with that. It’s Always too many.”

If you cannot win an argument on the specifics, make up a meta-narrative to win. I wish to also point out a similarity between people posting on Jessa Duggar’s pic posted by Ben Seewald, and the above video. At one point the co-host, Sherri Shepherd — bless her little heart — said that you can take a semi-automatic and spray the crowd in 5-seconds:

“If you have a semi-automatic – I’m not talkin’ about a regular ‘pow-pow’ ….”

Will Cain responds to her diatribe, and then we get this convoluted non-response to tug on uneducated heart strings:

“In five-seconds a semi-automatic can spray this entire audience.”

This is like someone on the shot of Jesse Duggar saying: “No human needs a machine gun.” DUMB! And frustrating. No one had machine guns in any of the shootings so enamored in the press by the Left.

The Left has no idea about guns. Remember this statement from Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette who has been the lead in two Congresses by sponsoring a bill for a federal ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines:

Another example comes from California State Senator Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) who made a fool of himself as he attempted to explain the capacity of an automatic rifle — HERE. Jesse’s pic was just another example for the trolls of the Left to show their devolution in interacting with the world around them… creating a more secluded world where they dream of lollipops and unicorns farting rainbows.

May I also note the “legalism” many people put on the Christian faith. When someone says basically that a Christian shouldn’t own or take pictures holding a gun… they are applying a layer of legalism only found in the most fundamentalist churches. However, this is the point of the illiberal egalitarianism found on the left (cultural Marxism via political correctness). It is legalistic. And Galatians rejects this type of Phariseism, clearly, and resolutely.

Mass Shootings Have Decreased ~ Obama vs. Australia

Published by Papa Giorgio

The American Spectator has this great information that sets the record clear by giving guidelines to the debate:

Type “mass shootings” and “common” into a search engine and you’ll get all sorts of breathless commentary that might lead one to believe there Americans face a genuine epidemic of shooting rampages. A few headlines:

  • Vox: “Mass shootings on campus are getting more common and more deadly.”
  • ThinkProgress: “Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent.”
  • NPR: “Study: Mass Shootings Are On The Rise Across U.S.”
  • Washington Post: “Why are mass shootings becoming more common?”

[….]

Homicide in America is far more common than it ought to be. But mass shootings — defined as four or more murders in the same incident — constitute a minuscule share of the total, as I discuss in “The Shooting Cycle” in the most recent edition of the Connecticut Law Review…

I want to break here and post something Mother Jones said in trying to define what a Mass Shooting is… “she” says this:

Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.

Mother Jones then goes on to quote the definition — after being ambiguous about it — as four or more [excluding the shooter]. Wikipedia says this:

The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more persons during an event with no “cooling-off period” between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others.

  • Aggrawal A. (2005) Mass Murder. In: Payne-James JJ, Byard RW, Corey TS, Henderson C (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, Vol. 3, Pp. 216-223. Elsevier Academic Press, London
  • “Serial Murder – Federal Bureau of Investigation”. Fbi.gov. Retrieved 2012-03-07.

It is odd to me why Mother Jones would be ambiguous about it while at the same time use the accepted FBI terminology/definition. At any rate, I HIGHLY suggest reading this Debunking of Mother Jones’ “10 Pro-Gun Myths,” worth the read.

Obama recently praised Australian gun-control.

ANN COULTER tackles this “Australian Stat” often mentioned. She quotes the New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal as saying this:

Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia’s gun laws, as if it’s a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:

“After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. … Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent … said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.”

John Lott Responds:

…Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn’t often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.

For example, homicides didn’t fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time…

…ELSEWHERE he states:

…This is actually pretty amazing given the threat that the government could actually again try to confiscate guns in the country. That imposes a real potential tax on gun ownership.

Australians own as many guns now as they did at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, despite more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed, new research reveals.

A University of Sydney study has shown there has been a steady increase in guns imported into the country over the past decade, with the number of privately owned guns now at the same level as 1996. . . .

Weirdly, gun control advocates are claiming that the buy back is lowering suicides at the same time that they are upset that gun ownership is back to it pre-buy back levels. One doesn’t need a semi-auto to commit suicide. While Australia’s population grew by 20 percent between 1997 and 2011, apparently its gun ownership rate grew by 45 percent. If they are right, the pattern should have been clear: suicides with guns should have plunged in 1997 and then quickly grown after that. Obviously that pattern wasn’t what was observed….

Crime is dropping recently in Australia, but this can be attributed to gun ownership rising back up to the previous rates before the ban. GAY PATRIOT comments on the before mentioned Obama quote about Australia:

I reiterate the two hidden rules of “Common Sense Gun Laws:”

1. “We only want to keep guns away from dangerous persons.”

2. “Anyone who owns a gun is a dangerous person.”

NATIONAL REVIEW also makes the point that in order to praise Australian “success,” one is praising anti-Constitutional actions:

Let me be clear, as Obama likes to say: You simply cannot praise Australia’s gun-laws without praising the country’s mass confiscation program. That is Australia’s law. When the Left says that we should respond to shootings as Australia did, they don’t mean that we should institute background checks on private sales; they mean that they we should ban and confiscate guns. No amount of wooly words can change this. Again, one doesn’t bring up countries that have confiscated firearms as a shining example unless one wishes to push the conversation toward confiscation.

[….]

Obama gave the impression that gun-violence is on the increase. This is false. As both Pew and the Department of Justice recorded last year, the majority of Americans believe that gun violence is proliferating when it is in fact dropping. This year marked a 20-year low. More than anything, America has a copycat problem in its schools.

Just a long side-note, continuing with the AMERICAN SPECTATOR article:

 

…The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that from 2002-2011, 95 percent of total homicide incidents involved a single fatality, 4 percent involved two victims, 0.6 percent involved 3 victims, and only .02 percent involved four or more victims. Another study performed between 1976 and 2005 yields similar results — that less than one-fifth of 1 percent all murders in the United States involved four or more victims. In other words, the bottom line is that out of every 10,000 incidents of homicide, roughly two are mass killings.

Further, contrary to what the zeitgeist may suggest, mass shootings are not on the rise. Prominent criminologist James Alan Fox has found “no upward trend in mass killings” since the ’70s. Take campus statistics as an example: “Overall in this country, there is an average of 10 to 20 murders across campuses in any given year,” Fox told CNN  (and roughly 99 percent of these reported homicides were not mass shootings).  “Compare that to over 1,000 suicides and about 1,500 deaths from binge drinking and drug overdoses.” Mass shootings on college campuses lag far, far behind many much more prevalent social and mental health problems.

The rare nature of these incidents also holds true for safety in K-12 schools, which garnered a significant amount of attention in the wake of the tragedies in Columbine and Newtown. According to two reports by the Centers for Disease Control, the probability of a child “dying in school in any given year from homicide or suicide was less than one in 1 million between 1992 and 1994 and slightly greater than one in 2 million between 1994 and 1999.”

…READ IT ALL…

Of course any story like the above needs a positive one added to it. The Blaze has this:

Two armed criminals reportedly put a gun to a 17-year-old girl’s head on Monday night as she was outside retrieving something from a car. The man, whose intentions still aren’t entirely clear, then ordered the teenager to take them into her house — a decision that would prove to have deadly consequences.

Peering out the window of the St. Louis home were the girl’s mother and father, each prepared to protect their daughter with deadly force. There was also a 5-year-old boy in the house, though his relationship to the family wasn’t known on Tuesday.

The girl’s father, a 34-year-old man, reportedly observed the men walking towards his home while holding a gun to his daughter’s head, a sight that no father ever wants to see. He quickly retrieved his firearm and his wife did the same.

The brave dad then confronted the two criminals and opened fire, hitting both suspects with accurate shots…

MSNBC Panel Is Reminded That the UCSB Killer Also Used a Knife and Car

Published by Papa Giorgio

“You know, I wonder if I missed something. My understanding is that some of his victims were stabbed to death. Other of his victims were hit by a car that he was driving. And all of a sudden one weapon is, in fact, under attack. And not only is it under attack, people are talking about stepping on the constitutional rights of law-abiding people.”

(Via Truth Revolt) n MSNBC this afternoon, commentator and Republican politician Ken Blackwell was on as part of panel discussion about guns and gun control in the wake of this weekend’s killing spree in Santa Barbara. Host Craig Melvin runs down a laundry list of various ways of saying gun or shooting and so on before finally asking Blackwell how something like this could happen. Blackwell’s response was absolutely pitch perfect.

Of course, he immediately interrupted by the host. Diverting attention away from MSNBC’s anti-gun agenda is the fastest way to get cut off during an interview on the network. Melvin says he didn’t mean to “attack guns” and the he was just trying to lay out “the facts.” Only the facts are as Ken Blackwell laid them out, contrary to Melvin’s one-note recitation.

There were three weapons used in this murderous rampage. That is the fact. It’s a fact that the hosts at MSNBC clearly aren’t interested in dealing with. Ken Blackwell, however, isn’t going to let them get away with it.

Gay Patriot notes a story about registering cars like you do guns:

For every purchase, you will have to fill out a questionnaire confirming you’re a US citizen, do not use drugs or abuse alcohol, have never had a conviction for alcohol related incidents or reckless driving.  Lying on this form will be punishable by 10 years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine.

New cars will only be purchased from Federal Automobile Licensees who must provide fingerprints, proof of character, secure storage for all vehicles, and who must call the Federal Bureau of Motor Vehicles to verify your information before purchase.  They may approve or decline or delay the sale.  If they decline, you may appeal the decision in writing to a review board.  If they delay, it becomes an approval automatically after 10 days. However, the dealer may decline to complete such a sale in case of later problems.

Federal Automobile Licensees must agree to submit to 24/7/365, unannounced, unscheduled searches of their entire homes, businesses and any relates properties and personal effects to be named later.

Read the whole thing.

Disarming the Warriors ~ Fort Hood I & II, Norfolk Naval Station

Published by Papa Giorgio

We are defanging our military. What’s more, is that we are taking away their basic human rights to defend themselves, their Second Amendment rights to bear arms in their own self-defense, while asking them to volunteer to defend us. Moreover, we are choosing time and time again to deny them the mental health and veterans’ benefits, while giving more money to entitlements for other communities. Meanwhile, shootings on bases have occurred now multiple times, and 22 people in our armed services commit suicide daily. This is unacceptable–hear why in this Afterburner with Bill Whittle.

When Preachers Wade Into Constitutional Matters (Franklin Graham)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This comes via Shall Not Be Questioned… unless your a preacher?

I’ve noticed anti-gun folks jumping on the fact that Franklin Graham is leading the NRA Annual Meeting Prayer Breakfast, and they hope that he’ll publicly challenge NRA at their own event to accept the President’s background check agenda since Graham endorsed the White House’s private transfer ban proposals last year.

Nightmare

“As ministers, we agreed together that we could stand on a united front for universal background checks…”

(Guns.com)

First, as much experience as I have with NRA Annual Meetings, I couldn’t tell you which office puts on the prayer breakfast because I have no idea which office is responsible for booking those speakers. I’m 99.99999% sure it’s not ILA, the office that actually keeps up with politics and pays attentions to such important policy details. This is an event that has never been a big deal before, really just an opportunity for people who don’t want to miss church or miss out on the giant three day gun show.

The anti-gunners highlight this interview with Time that Franklin Graham did in early March of last year. The key section:

Graham…told TIME [he and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention] have agreed to back universal background check legislation put forward by the administration in the wake of last year’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

By specifically citing the administration-backed proposal at the time of the interview, it’s kind of important to look at the details of the legislation anti-gunners want Graham to bring up at the Prayer Breakfast. The language in the Senate that the White House was backing at the time of Graham’s interview came from Chuck Schumer. That language would have made teaching someone to shoot on your own land a felony, as well as loaning your hunting rifle to a friend for a hunting trip. The record keeping requirements would have created a registration system, and spouses would have faced possible felony prosecution if their spouse who bought the gun left home for more than 7 days without officially designating the “transfer” of said firearms as a gift. As Sebastian said in his summary after reading the language:

This bill has nothing to do with ensuring people who are getting guns are law-abiding, and everything to do with getting backdoor registration, and creating a patchwork of rules and laws that will land anyone who uses guns, and isn’t a lawyer, in federal prison for a long time.

The bill that Graham was backing at the time he talked to Time was not Toomey-Manchin, the somewhat less extreme bill that was later voted down in the Senate.

Now, his views on that terrible bill from Schumer aren’t directly related to his ability to preach a sermon. But, given the venue and host group, I don’t think most attendees who paid for tickets really expect a preacher who publicly backed the White House’s bill that would leave many of them open to felony prosecutions for simply passing on their traditions or going on a long business trip.

At this late date, I wouldn’t really put money on a bet that we’ll see any changes to the speakers, but it will be interesting to see if Graham decides to act on the encouragement of the gun control groups. He certainly didn’t come out and condemn the White House-backed Senate bill once the language and summaries became widely available, so presumably he maintains his support of the policies. That certainly could be a very big problem if he does decide to go along with the gun control groups and use NRA’s event as a venue to promote the bill again.

…read more…

If anything, Graham should be preaching to arm our soldiers:

On April 6th, Lynda Voyles-Konecny said concealed carry allows her to be better armed than her son who was 100 feet from the Fort Hood shooter on April 2nd. She is asking Congress to change this.

According to Huntsville, Alabama’s WHNT 19, Voyles-Konecny said military personnel “defend us overseas, but they’re defenseless at bases.”

She continued, “They’re trained. They know the rules of engagement, we send them off to war, they have their guns, they come home, and then [their guns are] taken away from them on their home bases.”

Obama’s Surgeon General Pick Another Wolf in Doctors Clothing

Published by Papa Giorgio

Investors Daily Business has a story about the extreme goals of Obama appointee picks. In this case it is his [OBAMA!] U.S. Surgeon Generals choice:

Second Amendment: The administration’s choice to be the nation’s doctor in chief views gun ownership as a public health issue and not a constitutional right, and wants doctors to query patients about guns in their homes.

Cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal’s champion, Debo Adegbile, President Obama’s defeated pick to be assistant attorney general for the civil rights division at the Department of Justice, is not the only radical on President Obama’s wish list.

That list includes gun-grabbing advocate Dr. Vivek Hallegere Murthy, Obama’s nominee to be U.S. Surgeon General.

Nose In Air

Another guy who seems like he can tell ordinary citizens what to do and what not to do.

Murthy is the 36-year-old president and co-founder of the anti-gun group Doctors for America, which advocates ObamaCare and gun control laws.

His group, which has been dubbed “Docs vs. Glocks,” has pushed Congress to ban “assault” weapons and “high-capacity” magazines.

He also wants to spend more tax dollars on more research to prove that fewer guns mean a lower crime rate, despite the fact that a number of reputable studies prove the opposite.

[….]

The call for universal background checks, including at all gun shows, ignores that the guns Adam Lanza used at Sandy Hook were legally purchased and registered by his mother.

Just such a gun-free zone policy is why the Aurora, Colo., shooter carefully chose the theater he did. And unlike the mall in Clackamass, Ore., where a concealed-carry holder prevented a massacre, there was no one in Aurora to shoot back.

At Sandy Hook, 27-year-old teacher Victoria Soto hid students in a bathroom or closet and died trying to protect them from shooter Lanza. If she, the principal or any of the other adults at the school had access to a firearm, things might have turned out differently.

A recent Department of Justice study found only 0.7% of guns were purchased at gun shows and only 20% of guns used in crimes were purchased anywhere. Chicago street gangs, which are responsible for most of that city’s homicides, are unlikely to line up for gun permits.

The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which did nothing to prevent Columbine, was largely based on a weapon’s cosmetic appearance, not on its capability for carnage.

…read more…