State of the Second Amendment
It’s clear from President Obama’s State of the Union address that gun control is a major goal for his second term.
Senators—senators of both parties are working together on tough new laws to prevent anyone from buying guns for resale to criminals. Police chiefs are asking our help to get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets, because these police chiefs, they’re tired of seeing their guys and gals being outgunned.
If you want to vote no, that’s your choice. But these proposals deserve a vote, because in the two months since Newtown, more than a thousand birthdays, graduations, anniversaries have been stolen from our lives by a bullet from a gun. More than a thousand.
Obama benefits from the confusion created by media and anti-rights politicians who intentionally mislabel modern semi-automatic sporting rifles. “Weapons of war” were severely limited by the 1934 National Firearms Act, which required a stamp tax and registration for all military firearms purchases by private citizens. In 1986, the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) limited civilians purchasing automatic firearms — true assault rifles used by military — to what existed in civilian inventory at the time FOPA took effect. As a result, sub-machine guns over 25 years old, like the Heckler & Koch MP5, regularly sell for $20,000 or more. Murderers aren’t likely to spend $20,000 and then wait for ATF approval of their purchase.
Obama’s “more than a thousand” claim is confusing. Was he implying there were 1,000 firearms-related deaths in the last two months? Gun banners like the Violence Policy Center claim “more than 30,000 Americans die in gun suicides, homicides, and unintentional shootings.” According to the FBI, a monthly average of 715 firearms murders occurred in 2011, or 1,430 over two months. If Obama based his claim on government data not yet publicly available, this means America is experiencing a historic drop in firearms-related fatalities.
According to available government data, the firearms murder rate declined 52% between 1991 and 2011, while the civilian firearms inventory grew 66%.* The handgun murder rate declined 56%, while the handgun inventory grew 99%. Even in raw numbers, firearms-related murder decreased 40%; handgun-related murders decreased 46%. More guns, less murder.
The 1968 Gun Control Act was supposed to reduce crime by — among other things — limiting interstate firearms and ammunition commerce to federally licensed dealers, limiting handgun sales to adults age 21 or older, and restricting long gun sales to ages 18 and older. However, the graph below shows that murder rates continued rising after 1968, and peaking in 1980. After enactment of FOPA, murder rates again increased to a second peak in 1991. When the first Brady Bill took effect in 1994 — background check and 5-day waiting period on handgun sales — murder was already declining.
The Clinton gun ban also took effect in 1994, making it “unlawful to manufacture, transfer and possess semiautomatic assault weapons [or] large capacity ammunition feeding devices [holding over 10 ammunition cartridges].” In 1998, the Brady law replaced waiting periods with the National Instant Check System for all firearms purchase through licensed dealers. Murder rates leveled off between 1999 and 2007, dipping 3% in 2004, the year the Clinton ban sunset, before rising 3% again in 2005. Then between 2007 and 2011, murder rates declined another 16%.
Overall violent crime rates generally mirrored murder trends, beginning their decline after 1991, two years before enactment of the Brady and Clinton laws (see graph below). Violent crime continued declining through 2004, when the Clinton ban sunset, then increased 2% by 2006. Two years doesn’t signify a reliable trend, especially considering the crime rate was higher in 2003 than in 2006, and considering that violent crime declined 18% between 2006 and 2011.*
Between 1991 and 2011, the violent crime rate declined 49% while civilian firearms inventory grew 66%.* More guns, less crime.
Obama said: “I know this is not the first time this country has debated how to reduce gun violence, but this time is different.”
But where’s the epidemic “gun violence” problem that gun control is supposed to address? What’s “different” this time? Violent crime rates are lower than they’ve been since 1970; the murder rate is the lowest since 1963. Yet gun ownership is at an all-time high.
Many experts agree that the Brady Bill and Clinton gun ban had no impact on crime. For example, Philip J. Cook, “regarded as the nation’s foremost authority on gun control” by the University of Virginia School of Law, concluded that the Brady Bill “had no statistically discernible effect on reducing gun deaths.” Both the Centers for Disease Control and National Academy of Science concluded that results were too inconsistent to clearly endorse the Brady Bill as a crime-fighting tool. The National Academy of Science also found the Clinton gun ban to be ineffective in reducing crime. The National Gang Crime Research Center found: “Gang members were significantly more likely to report it has been easier since the Brady Bill went into effect to acquire illegal guns.”
The above two graphs also note the number of right-to-carry (RTC) states, where liberalized laws enable law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns in public. Prior to enacting these laws, many of these states had outright carry bans.
When Congress enacted FOPA in 1985, there were 10 RTC states. In 1991, when violent crime peaked, this number increased to 17. By 2011, there were 41 RTC states, more than double the 1991 count, yet the violent crime rate declined 49%.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that by the end of 2011, there were “at least 8 million active permits to carry concealed handguns in the United States.” The graph below shows that since 2001, RTC states’ violent crime rates were 30% lower, on average, than states which restrict citizens’ right to carry.
One mantra repeated by Obama during his speech was that crime victims “deserve a vote” on his gun control proposals:
The families of Newtown deserve a vote.…
The families of Aurora deserve a vote….
The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence, they deserve a simple vote.
According to President Obama’s criteria, the eight million people who invest their time and money — and take material and emotional risks to help make their communities safer — deserve a vote, too.
Women are the fastest growing demographic of gun owners. CBS reported: “More women than ever are picking up rifles, shotguns, and handguns. And target shooting is one of the fastest-growing female sports.” After Newtown, another news outlet reported:
Nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of respondents in the National Sporting Goods Association’s annual survey of firearms retailers reported an increase in female customers in 2011 over the previous year.
States like Texas and Oklahoma report that women account for an increasing percent of new concealed handgun licenses.These women often are the only line of defense between their children and violent attackers: The Supreme Court decision of Castle Rock v. Gonzales confirms that police have no duty to protect their children; even a restraining order doesn’t create an “entitlement” to police protection.
President Obama, these women deserve a vote, too.
Speaking in Minneapolis on his gun control proposals, President Obama stated: “But if there’s even one thing we can do, if there’s just one life we can save, we’ve got an obligation to try.”
The graph below shows that since 2001, RTC states’ murder rates were 38% lower, on average, than carry-restricted states. Perhaps the president should follow his own advice and eliminate the federal laws restricting concealed handgun carry by law-abiding citizens.
In recent weeks, many lives were saved by defensive gun use. Here’s two examples:
- Debi Keeney of Highland, Illinois, saved her sister Donna’s life when an intruder broke into her apartment and began choking Donna.
“If it saves a life…”
- A Loganville, Georgia woman was working at home when an intruder broke in using a crowbar. She took her 9-year-old twins into the attic to hide. When he found them, she shot him five times. Her husband said: “My wife is a hero. She protected her kids.”
“We’ve got to try.”
When a madman murders people, gun banners want to restrict law-abiding citizens’ right of self-defense, claiming one life saved justifies infringing everybody’s freedom. But when lives are saved using a firearm, we hear nothing.
Mr. President, why the double standard?
* FBI ATF, National Shooting Sports Foundation, United States International Trade Commission data compiled into Excel workbooks.
Country 1 Murder Per # of Guns
1. Taiwan 1 Murder Per 5,664 Guns
2. Netherlands 1 Murder Per 9,272 Guns
3. Germany 1 Murder Per 15,822 Guns
4. Italy 1 Murder Per 16,786 Guns
5. Ireland 1 Murder Per 17,142 Guns
6. Belgium 1 Murder Per 25,714 Guns
7. USA 1 Murder Per 29,521 Guns
(WrittenWord Consulting, 2012)
I’d like to link to this source. What is WrittenWord Consulting? Their website suggests they are a ghostwriting, ghostblogging site, not a recognized compiler of statistics.
Do you mean a leftist leaning statistical propaganda machine? From the graphs shown in this piece, I would say the statistics quoted by our divider in chief and his allies are more subject to “fact checking” than anything produced by WrittenWord Consulting. With all of this hand wringing, I would say we should convene a Constitutional Convention to address the matter of “gun control”. Other than the states with massive ghetto like cities, I doubt you would have much support in altering the Second Amendment. Of course that will never happen, our current pack of politicians would rather achieve their aims by dictatorial executive orders.
You really want a public that twice elected Comrade Obama to have a part in writing a new US Constitution?
Dept. of Justice turns a blind eye for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, and turns on the First Amendment
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2013/02/14/dept-of-justice-turns-a-blind-eye-for-u-s-attorney-patrick-fitzgerald-and-on-the/
HELL NO!
Matter of fact, I don’t want any part of my life to be determined by such moral cripples. Soon I’ll be outta here.
Dictatorial edicts are what are ahead for us by our Moron in Chief. But Tom J. also had advice to us for this instance too.
It is called ‘watering the tree of Liberty’.
Soon we will be to this decision and then we will see how it goes.
Freedom or Slavery that is the question? Should we suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or should we stand up and claim our freedom that G-d gave us with our Creation and our Forefathers gave us with our Nation….
We will all have make the choice to suit ourselves and our own morality.
For me, there is no choice to make, I was born FREE!!
You missed the point of that post I think. It shows an -inverse- relationship between number of guns and murder rate.
Say Belgium had 20 guns and 4 murders, they would have 1 murder per every 5 guns in their country.
Say the US has 2000 guns and 20 murders, that would be 1 murder per every 100 guns. We would have “more murders” but fewer per gun. Our guns could be described as “less murder-y”.
It’s not really a useful statistic, guns don’t commit murders, people do, but it too jibes with the idea that more guns do not equal more crime.
I like to stop with that lesser claim, rather than going to “more guns = less crime”, because that is somewhat disputable, turns into a math fest that turns off most voters, and is unnecessary. We have an absolute right to lawful keeping and bearing, we don’t need to prove it is actually helpful to society. Rights don’t have to be justified.
The burden is on those who restrict the right to prove that lawful exercise is so significantly damaging to public safety as to justify restricting lawful exercise. More guns don’t equal more crime, so that justification does not exist.
We need to re-frame the debate so the voters who don’t really care understand that the anti’s have the burden of proof and then show that they don’t have the evidence to back up their claims.
Very well put.
I’ve been tracking gun sales using government data, the correlating that with CDC firearms-related deaths (murder, suicide, accidents, legal intervention, etc.) As of 2010, the number of firearms per firearms-related death is 8,853.
On the other hand, when correlated with the firearms ownership rate since 1991, you find the Spearman’s rho = 0.99, a nearly perfect correlation. This means that as firearms ownership increased, the firearms per firearms death also increased. This may seem confusing, so let’s look at it another way.
I correlated the firearms-related death rate with the firearms ownership rate, expressed as deaths per 100,000 population and firearms owned per 100,000 population. This time, there’s a -0.99 Spearman’s rho, a nearly perfect negative correlation. Using John Lott’s terminology, this means as firearms ownership rates increased, the firearms-related death rate decreased. More guns, less death.
“Is Obama’s gun control plan good for America?”
In a word – YES; though only because it’s part and parcel of what’s actually waking us up to how tyranny actually works in the trenches. The fact that we’ve had to learn some horrible and terrible lessons in regards to our departure from the Constitution and the founders’/our “vision” of our future; is humbling. Yet, here we are relying on politicians to “save” us; “if we could only elect a conservative; if we could just have (fill in the blank); or Dr.Carson for example; things would be better. Yet; how can we explain that the stock market is reaching new heights? This in spite of Obama’s meddling. There is a dynamic at work in the midst of all this big government tyranny; a providential hand that is gently steering the U.S.A. and keeping it on course to its destiny. We do have a future … we will have leaders that love God and the marketplace will be filled with young people that love life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The pro-life march on DC was filled with young people who KNOW and PROCLAIM that abortion in America WILL be aborted and they are passionate about the preciousness of life. THAT’s part of what gives me hope for the future … young people are fed-up with aging morons that don’t know “shit from shinola”. Establishment corrupt DC is rightly afraid of what’s coming ….
Husky seems to be writing from the omniscience of youth culture. Perhaps he believes in a culture of violence that gun control laws will modify. I have no own view of such a formulation laid out here: http://clarespark.com/2013/02/14/is-there-a-culture-of-violence/. Husky, do you want to be associated with these characters?
The stock market keeps rising because the Fed keeps printing money and holding the prime at basically zero. That and Frank-Dodd mean there is nowhere else for the money to go. But it’s all a fantasy. You can’t keep printing money forever. At some point the chickens will come home roost. When that happens watch the market slam down below 10,000 and inflation take off.
I recently heard a report on the radio that said (going from memory here) just 10 companies generate 80% of the S&P 500′s earnings. That means the vast majority of the businesses in the index are either treading water or losing money.
Another sign of a major top is the advance-decline line, which has been negative lately (more stocks going down than up on a daily basis). When you combine that stat with a rising Dow, look out below.
In a word, no.
“Is Obama’s gun control plan good for America?”
Is Obama’s – fill in the blank – plan good for America?
>>Is Obama’s gun control plan good for America?<<
Sure, if you want to live in a leftist dictatorship. If that's not your idea of paradise, then no, not so much. We may end up in a leftist dictatorship anyway (goodness knows, we're headed that way, hard and fast), but if they succeed is disarming the American public, it'll happen a helluva lot faster, as in almost overnight.
How many Chicago and D.C. examples do we need to provide clear evidence that U.S. gun control laws once implemented, have the inverse effect of intent?
We don’t need to speculate. The empirical evidence is readily available. And to the best of my knowledge and without researching further, I am not aware of one restriction in gun ownership leading to a reduction of death and violent crime in the United States – just the oppposite.
These gun proposals very much remind me of government’s monumental blunders of business regulation and compliance to solve what ails us, more specifically Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd-Frank: Punish the populace and not the perpetrator, add a huge cost to compliance that the law abiding pay for, have no discernible effect to rectify the problem and in most situations confuse and compound the problem wishing to be solved, and then demagogue the greatness of its passing to an ignorant citizenry, too uninformed or too stupid to ask, “What did these new laws do?”
If were really lucky, nothing. Generally, were not that lucky.
Gun control is about what the rest of Obama’s agenda for America is about: (1) Growing government and (2) Decreasing individual rights and responsibilities. When judged objectively in terms of the likelihood of their reducing crime or violence, Obama’s proposals are a dismal failure, as this article shows. But when judged by the President’s real objectives, if passed, they will be a great success.
Bingo! It’s not difficult to understand that Gun control is about what the rest of Obama’s agenda for America is about” and in terms of gun control it started a while back … with burdening the ammunition manufactures with huge orders for ammo to supply government entities. This also works in terms of the UN Small Arms Treaty; if you ask ammo importers in Britain and Europe how difficult it has become to actually get American ammo; you’ll have confirmation. When asked; importers of American ammunition onto Britain and Europe will all tell you that State Department regulations and delays make it a huge pain in the patootski (my word). Start with ammo, and starve the beast, that’s the MO of this administration and good ol’ Rahm of Chicago.
We CANNOT sit on our hands on this one.
The era of pointing out with facts how wrong headed the big eared murderer of Benghazi is over.
Logic doesn’t work when you have a biased media that doesn’t run with the facts, but chooses ObamaObfuscations to bed down with.
This is the era of fighting fire with fire. These are the tactics.
You throw so much hyperbole and mean spirited innuendo at Obama and his cohorts that he doesn’t know if he’s coming or going.
You don’t make a false war on women. You make a real war on the mainstream media, and really take it to them.
You do everything from insulting the King and his cowards face to face to firing every weapon you own at 5pm, Thursday, January 1, 2014. Making leftists ears ring is a game that needs to be popularized.
Obama laid out plans to transform America. It’s time the shoe was put on the other foot.
You create your committees of correspondence; your Constitutional American Party or whatever name strikes your fancy and you lay out a plan to politically lay out Obama. Expose him for the traitor he is.
You buy guns and ammo till the stores run out. You give it a name. How about Operation Duck and Cover if you’re fondest wish is to trash the second amendment.
What also has been in the news is a large killer at large. A kind of man who looks like a bear. Funny he decided to visit a town whose name he almost looks like.
It was enlightening to me.
Leftists knew from what they read on the internet that they couldn’t pin Chris Dorner on the philosophy of Sarah Palin and the tea party so they decided to come out of the closet and root for Dorner to escape the cops. Maybe take away a few more pig husbands from their families. Sometimes, the truth does come out. And how ugly it has been looking.
I hope you know that half the leftists running around willy nilly in this nation would rob your house and kill your kids if they thought you wouldn’t kill them first.
At this point, Obama and Holder have made it clear that leftists are in the sweet spot of not having to fear the law. They’re in the driver’s seat. Obama won’t enforce the law against them.
When the Black Panthers put the 100 thousand dollar bounty on George Zimmerman’s head, Obama and Holder immediately called Irene Fluke to make sure she wasn’t running out of birth control pills. That war on woman is hell. When the Black Panthers stood in camouflage garb with billy clubs and intimidated voters they got off scot free compliments of Holder and Obama.
Literally, unless you’re a mass cop killer like Mr. Fribaby, Chris Dorner, leftists from the Black Panthers to illegal alien drug smugglers can get away with murder.
I know you’ve heard of Pete Rose but have you heard of Charlie?
I never do because he makes me ill but tonight I was watching Charlie Rose interview Dick Chaney. Rose smells like a big C communist though I know he’s just a small fish in a leftist pond.
Rose asked the dumbest question of the year. Not an original question because if you watch any mainstream media program, you hear the question over and over again.
I guess somebody thinks it’s smart because Republicans who apparently take dumb pills before they appear in public, can’t answer it.
It’s about need. It’s the corollary to the leftist favorite word of 2012, “FAIR”.
Whenever you hear “need” or “fair” out of the mouth of a liberal, that should be the tipoff, like in football if the tight end stays in to block, they’re probably calling a running play, or in the world of politics, if you hear the word, need or fair, the leftist in front of you is asking to be taken apart piece by piece, question by question.
Unfortunately, the dumb pills are the weapon of choice for too many Republican spokespeople.
Even Dick Chaney answered Rose’s question like Chaney was in some kind of intellectual force field where clear thinking evaporates almost as fast as rapists crime plans when the perp notices the target female’s hands are wrapped around the handle of a Glock 36. Erectile dysfunction and desire to commit a crime ( a real act of war against a woman) wilt like a penis looking down the business end of a Colt 45.
Sport, the number one cause of erectile dysfunction isn’t the beta blocker. It’s the fear of hot steel playing the gotcha game for keeps.
But Did I tell you the question that made Cheney look like a school girl lost in the forest?
Rose said, “Tell me, Dick, really, who needs an assault rifle with a banana clip?
Of course, you can answer it two ways. One: Well, who needs a Cadillac? Who needs a wig? Who needs a 2 million dollar vacation? Who needs a President who hates half the citizens.
That’s one way to handle it.
The word, need, is irrelevant. If you live in the free country and you want something, need isn’t worth discussing.99% of what’s purchased in this country has little or nothing to do with need.
Of course, though, if you live in a communist country, need takes on a whole nother meaning. For that matter, if you’re a Communist mole in America the same is true.
The other way to answer the question.
Well, Charlie, if you live on the border of Mexico, say in Texas, Arizona or New Mexico where drug runners with assault weapons run rampant thanks to Obama’s crack homeland security ace, you could very well be in real need of some real firepower.
Complements of Obama’s Operation Fast and Furious, who gave assault rifles to drug cartels like they were candy and it was Halloween, you could be on your own land in the U.S. and in a pack of trouble.
See, Charlie, there are drug smugglers armed to the teeth with assault rifles heading into America who will turn you into Swiss cheese without the slightest provocation.
If an American owning land near the border is confronted by one of these guys with assault rifles intent on having human target practice, you may need some defense; and I’m not talking about a Sears single shot bolt action 22.
By the way, Charlie, when was the last time you found yourself near the border of Mexico looking down the barrel of someone carrying an AK47 who wanted to cross your property?
If you’ve got a brain, you’d be worried for your life, especially if a neighbor lost their life in a similar situation which even the mainstream media can’t cover up completely.
Don’t blink, Charlie. Forget the self directed gestures. Just answer the question.
NEVER. Oh, I see, Chuck, you never were assault rifle “needy”.
You were never involved in a situation where your best friend at a particular moment in time turned out to be an assault rifle, like maybe a STG44 or a Galil ACE 21.
You asked who needs an assault rifle. The answer is a hell of a lot of Americans near the Mexican border.
An excellent essay Mr. Nemerov. I only wish that each claim was more explicitly sourced. Then I could reference them with confidence. Question, what’s the source of “civilian firearms inventory grew 66%”? I haven’t been able to locate that. I read that the number of households with guns has diminished slightly over the last 20 years. If both claims are true, fewer households have guns, but they have 66% more.
As you can see, it takes a lot of work to compile relatively accurate data. These are my sources. The Excel workbook is only free to academics and industry professionals.
Annual Firearms Manufacturers And Export Reports
http://www.atf.gov/statistics/
Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf
Small Arms Production in the United States, National Shooting Sports Foundation, 2008 (by request to NSSF)
U.S. Firearms Industry Today http://www.shootingindustry.com/Firearmsreport10.pdf(no longer available online)
http://www.shootingindustry.com/u-s-firearms-industry-today-2012/
United States International Trade Commission (must set up your own account)
Thank you Howard. I recognize the difficulty of this. I’m just a small timer, not a professional, only investing a couple of dozen hours researching counters to Facebook friends. Nevertheless, I’ve found that the information I wanted to present on one occasion involved merging multiple tables of data into excel, perhaps retyping it. After 2-3 hours of investigation, I decided against entering an argument.
I’m not asking for your work. Your essay appears factually based, what I shoot for. But without proof through solid sources, people like me will not leave ourselves exposed by referencing statistics that are not sourced. I understand all the reasons you don’t want to do it. Maybe with my post, I’m just registering the fact that there’s a benefit to it. Thanks.
You could reproduce my results using the sources I listed. One of the gold standards of scientific research is being able to independently reproduce results. On the other hand, you have to pick your battles.
The stock market is up because the central banks of the United States, England, Japan, have injected trillions of dollars, pounds, yen, into the financial markets over the past 3 years. Money that is made up from nothing. Essentially counterfeit. Not from economic growth. It is another bubble of tremendous size, and will burst.
Bingo! And yet Faux News, supposedly fair and balanced, is giddy with glee; even FBN (Lou Dobbs) is all smiles but nobody is making the connection you just made.
Zimbabwe here we come.
It’s called inflation. Too much money, too little value.
Although statistics can be bent to perform well for both sides of the gun control discussion, it really does not matter. We the people do not care! We the people will NOT give up our right to bear arms and to protect ourselves. As long as the government has “personal protection weapons” we will have the same. That is the ONLY reason we are not a banana republic 237 years after Paul Revere rode. If you want safer streets, eliminate criminals. It is obvious that the value of human life is low in high crime areas. Fix that! Stop clammering about guns, you are not going to get them anyway, you are wasting your breath.
“Although statistics can be bent to perform well for both sides of the gun control discussion…”
I disagree. I’ve never, ever heard of gun control activists using actual statistics, besides quoting the number of gun deaths. And citing news reports, such as – “an ‘assault weapon’ was found at the scene of the massacre of 20 children” – is not using statistics. Even liberal sheriffs supporting gun control never quote any statistics except “I believe reducing guns will reduce gun violence”. They tend to make vague statements that “use of ‘assault weapons’ in crime is rising” without any statistics or sources to back up their statements.
Numbers once mattered. If Americans can be persuaded by numerical results and logic, Mr. Nemerov will lead us to rational constructive action. He has done his homework. But I no longer believe Americans are rational about weapons. The Second Amendment was, and is, a bedrock law written by men who knew the horrors of a tyrant, and knew that an armed population is, though not a guarantee, was a significant deterrent to enslavement. Soft headed people, who can not face reality, want to surrender this basic right, self defense, to a useless hope that a benevolent government can protect them, at all times, from violence. This is delusion.
The leftist media repeats that the US has the highest murder rate among “developed” nations. This is cherry picking. We are mid range among all nations, if “developed” is omitted. There is a tiny percent of the American population which dominates our murder rate. The largest cohort, a few percent, is black intercity teens, living in a fatherless home, who are involved in the drug trade. A much smaller cohort is the violent mentally ill. (This group is a huge danger to themselves, suicide, but a trivial danger to others.) The basic reason why this continues is that very powerful interests, on the left and right, would lose their power if America faced these devils. Leftists would rather black children be murdered than solve their community problem. Rightists do not want to pay for “them”. So Americans die.
No magazine size, or prohibited ugly gun will do any good. The definition of a weapon is a devise which kills. Democrats attempt to square a circle; it is stupidity. The problem is a melt down of our society. I emphasize “our”. Trash religion, family structure (fathers), civility, respect for others, self discipline, an uncorrupted educational system, and you get poverty and crime. The society is not developed.
An excellent discussion of this: Our Real Problem Is Cultural Decay, Not Guns, Walter Williams, Investor’s Business Daily – February 13, 2013
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/02/13/our_real_problem_is_cultural_decay_not_guns_301883.html
The solution is known. No politician wants the solution.
Look the 2nd amendment is about defending yourself, and your beliefs, against unjust oppression. An unarmed public is wide open to being oppressed. Blacks were not allowed weapons in the south which made it far easier for the KKK to work. Had Blacks had AK-47s, they would have been voting far sooner than the mid 1960s.
Also the 2nd amendment is about having a pool of young men (a well regulated militia) who can quickly be called up for service. We are to be a nation of citizen-soliders, a nation of warriors. Not like most nations that have an unarmed population and a warrior class.
The bottom line of the Obama administration is that virtually everything it releases to the media is disinformation, distortion, or outright lies. But why should any of us be surprised, since corruption of information by our Community-Organizer-in-Chief is right out of the Communist Playbook.
It doesn’t matter whether his lies are about numbers of jobs “created”, or how much he has “cut” spending, or how many lives his gun control program will “save”. It is all lies, and I can’t help but believe that even the media that slobbers over his footsteps knows it is lies. The media also knows that if the truth is ever exposed later, it can downplay the truth so expertly that few will ever notice (such as those much later “corrections” to job data).
One of the worst examples of Leftist lies is that it now appears that the crazy school-shooter used only pistols to shoot all those kids – and not one of those kids was killed by a “deadly military-style assault rifle”.
The police now say the rifle stayed in the shooter’s car the whole time. It seems the truth is that only pistol cartridge casing where found on the school room floors in the Newtown, CT, school. But no one except police were allowed to go into the school to see. Now that the coroner has released some information, the media should be screaming at the police who had misled them for so long, but you will never find a correction in the national media stating that an AR-15 type rifle, or a so-called “Assault Weapon”, was not used in the school shooting.
The shooter actually went into the school with 4 handguns; not an assault rifle as the media and all the anti-gun politicians have charged. Despite the police having initially said they found the rifle in the car, the assault rifle became the weapon to hate. Apparently the news media had a pre-planned anti assault weapon campaign ready and jumped on that line of reporting, and didn’t care if it was a lie since it would be much easier to demonize so-called “deadly military-style assault weapons”, rather than handguns, among the ignorant and gullible public.
Therefore the media concentrated on getting people to hate “assault weapons” first by defining them as “machine guns” and “weapons of war”. People like Piers Morgan fell right into line by saying the shooter used an AR-15 that shoots hundreds of rounds per minute, as if it were a machine gun.
Then once “assault-weapons” were banned, a new media campaign could be launched to get the ignorant and gullible public to hate those “deadly military-style automatic pistols” (like a 9mm Glock Auto, or a .45 Colt Auto) by constantly calling them “automatic pistols” to make people think they are just small machine guns. In reality, all so-called automatic pistols can only fire one shot at a time with one trigger-pull, and the “automatic” part of the name refers only to the pistol being able to eject the empty case and chamber a new cartridge from its magazine automatically.
And then there is Hillary – and Benghazi. Lies and more lies, and the media and the Democratic Party do not care about her lies because Hillary is another Leftist media-darling. Some Democrats even tried to ridicule those Republicans who challenged her, because that tactic of ridicule is also right out of the Communist Playbook.
Now we have the beginning of a new series of lies concerning how the cop-killer Christopher Dorner died. It was obvious from yesterday’s press conference the police are massively covering up – something. Notice after that debacle of a press conference, the TV media has already gone on to other topics.
I am totally confused about the Newtown slaughter weapon(s). I have read six distinctly different accounts on the weapons used at the home, school, and what was found in the car (used or unused)? This is rookie police work, one glance at the spent cartridges would inform any officer. Normal investigation would identify the exact location of every round, within hours.
The ammo for rifles, shotguns and hand guns are obviously different. Why do we not know, with certainty? In February there are only two possibilities: gross incompetence, or lying, by police, or journalists. What is the truth?
How about a link to the school shooting info.
I think the President is going to get “pantsed” on this one.
Not even his biggest demographic supporters in the last election (African Americans with 93%) are going to get in line with him on gun control.
Oh sure, he will be able to fill up a podium full of Black Police Chiefs and crime victims to exploitate. But I have a feeling that the VERY vast majority of Black Americans are just as concerned about their 2nd Amendment Rights being violated as the most conservative of us honkys.
Politics does indeed make strange bed fellows.
One more Supreme Court appointment & the Second Amendment is gone.
With Ch. (Which ever way the wind blows)Roberts it could already be in jeapardy.
Roberts doesn’t care “which way the wind blows”…he cares about ONumbNuts releasing photos / proof of his extramarital affair. ONumbNuts has Robert’s number..he’ll do whatever the Clueless One asks as long as the proof stays in the desk in the oral office. Look at Petraeus.
In the immortal words of Dem Rep. Corrine Brown: “Don’t Confuse Me With Any Facts”…
February 13, 2013 KING 5 News
Pentagon Creates NEW Innocent Civilian Killer Merit Badge
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j79eusvYKE
On a couple levels, this pol from Chicago mindlessly reads the line written for him.
I am an old man with projects on the drawing board that will take far more years to complete than I will have left – therefore I must practice self-discipline to save all the time possible to devote to my projects. After four years of Obama I have concluded that I do not need to invest time to examine his proposals and what he has to say about anything. I KNOW – it is a scientific certainty – that whatever his position, the opposite side will be the correct one. If he remains in office this entire second term he will have damaged America very seriously.
The deceit euphemistically labeled gun control is a ruling class tactic based upon the statists stratagem of creating a crime through the application of imposing lawless diktat upon innocent subjects for the purpose of turning ones future enemies into criminals. In this fashion of totalitarianism, one can then choose who to imprison, who to sanction, and ultimately who to kill. So yes, it is gun control: controlling who gets to have guns, who controls those guns, who is allowed not to be controlled by them, and ultimately who gets to control everyone because only they have guns.
The elites ruling America have aptly labeled through incessant agitprop, social engineering, crisis’s as means and foisting huge lies through a complicit press, the AR-15, and other civilian rifles, an “Assault Weapon” It is well to understand, as the elite tyrants and criminals running our governments understand, it is these arms labeled assault weapons, which our founding fathers foresaw essential to the preservation of our Liberty, and left us the lawful and moral tools of redress for our use, who wished for us to posses, and use, to assault, and replace, the inevitable creation of the class of criminal tyrants within our system of representative government, harassing and eating out our existence today.
Remember, Hitler said it best:
“It is convenient to have a system of laws where everyone is a criminal.”
Those who forget the past…take the dirt nap first.
History bares in stark terms, it is “gun control”, that is the lead up to the deaths of hundreds of millions at the hands of those in power.
I see the scope of the lawless disregard for The Rule of Law expanding exponentially by the day by the very nature of corruption of the elites lust to retain absolute power.
So, lets not beat around the bush. This, everything today, is All about guns. Everything the elites ruling our great Republic do revolves ultimately about guns. It is guns that give these tyrants their power. It is guns that they fear most. It is guns they must never allow to control them. It is guns that they must control, if they are to take over our country in order to rule with an iron fist. It is guns that they must take from the populous in order obtain and assure that absolute power. It is guns they understand like none other are the real power behind anything. It is guns this system of government we now live with, that itself now lives by, instead of the rule of law. It is guns that they use ultimately, to ultimately enforce everything.
And it is guns in the hands of We The People that they fear more than anything.
It is these so called “Assault Rifles” the elites understand perfectly are the lawful and moral arm of of we the sovereign that may end up used to assault them and their tyranny.
Any thing else is a cheap side show.
Do we have a cite for the Hitler quote? I hate those things, they almost never turn out to be Hitler, and it invokes Godwin’s Law.
“The problem with quotes from the internet is that it’s hard to verify their authenticity.”
—Abraham Lincoln
I love guotes by Abe, especially those that invoke modern technology.
Lets see, this great nation is about to become the worlds largest banana republic, and your concerned about the authenticity of a quote from Adolph Hitler. Or are you obama regime troll paid to alynski truths that exposes the elites and their agenda?
Are you one of king putt’s useful dupes?
Hitler and Lennin had them too.
Maybe you should check the veracity of that, it’s a quote by me.
You might also find the source of it beneficial to your near future existence as a free man living in Liberty.
Never give up your guns.
How about Homeland Securities latest proclamation. If you are within 100 miles of an international boarder you are in a boarder security zone and search warrants are not needed for searching citizens. No wonder they don’t want citizens to be armed.
Things are getting worse faster.
The evidence is clear, more guns less crime. It is time for “evidence based” (Per Nancy Pelosi) action. Don’t hold your breath. The gun control debate is really about political power. Progressives lust for for more political power and the means by which to compel adherence to the party line. Without the Second Amendment our natural rights evaporate. With firearms Americans are citizens; without, we are subjects.
It makes no difference whose plan is good or bad. Any plan has to agree with our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and with what our Creator gave us with our first breath of air.
All of this is what and who we are. Like it or not. We are all Free People and we all have the right to the very same freedoms. I am not any more free than anyone else and this clown in the WH, if he is a Citizen, then he has what we all have as Citizens.
The 2nd Article in the Bill of Rights says exactly what it says and that is our Rock to rely on.
There Shall be no Infringements of this Right. Hand grips be damned, Magazine capacity be damned and any other infringement be damned together.
Self Defense is our right and our duty to our country!!! We all have the right to any weapon that we can buy or build for the defense of our Nation, our property and our anything that we can call ours…..
Once we start parcing our words and leaning with the wind, we are going to lose our rights.
Do not let these Communists basta#ds redefine the arguement, there is only one position….
WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO WHATEVER WEAPON WE DEEM WE NEED TO PROTECT OURSELVES FROM ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC, WHO WISH TO DO US HARM IN ANY MANNER.
Does the 30,000 deaths per year include people shot by the police? If so, isn’t that noteworthy?
What percentage of the 30,000 deaths per year are gang bangers shooting it out among themselves? I don’t excuse those shootouts, because innocent people do get caught in the crossfire, but as to the gang bangers themselves, why should we worry about them?
I certainly do not care about these gansta types one single bit and hope there are even more of them eliminated till they are extinct!
Graphs can be manipulated to show just about anything…. but it does show the Brady bill had a positive effect. I admit with so many weapons out there it’ll take 50 years to rid us from most. The Second Amendment is safe under President Obama, Only when ALL weapons are band do we have a problem. Even the courts say “there are LIMITS to the second amendment” , Thee argument is where do we set those limits? Remember Most all people who comment a crime with a gun were (at one time) “Law abiding Citizens”
Ahh, so all law abiding citizens are just criminals in waiting? Well that argument is of no importance. Anyone who actually studies the Constitution and the writings of the founders will understand that the 2nd Amendment was placed there to deter or oppose a home grown tyrannical government. If you don’t like it then amend the Constitution in the way provided by that self same Constitution. Until then you are just indisputably wrong.
The thing that you must understand is that in the real world there are bad evil people. They will try to do bad and evil things to other people whether they have guns or not and the largest and strongest will win. Guns allow the victims a fighting chance. That is a fundamental principal of the human condition.
hey needful ! , nothing is safe under “barry ” and the courts are god ? , the framers truly new what they were doing when they wrote the constitution , decleration and bill of rights ! they new that one day we would run into an “idiot’ like barry and so created these documents to hopefully stop this kind of subterfuge ! what part of infringed don’t you understand ! . you and your ilk are clueless and present a clear and present danger to this nation and its freedom !!!!!! only when this nation is put back on the ” biblical foundation ” it was created on will it ever get rid of “scum like you and “barry ” !!!!!!!
GROUP OF SECOND AMENDMENT-SUPPORTING GUN MAKERS NOW REFUSING TO SELL ARMS TO LAW ENFORCEMENT IN NEW YORK (AND OTHER GUN-RESTRICTING STATES) Feb. 15, 2013
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/15/group-of-second-amendment-supporting-gun-makers-now-refusing-to-sell-arms-to-law-enforcement-in-new-york-and-other-gun-restricting-states/