Posts Tagged ‘gun control’
Posted by Richard on August 13, 2018
Episode #13,496 of Not The Onion:
She ran on responsible gun regulation, now she’s accused of killing her campaign treasurer
ATLANTA – A former Georgia Congressional candidate has been charged with murder after her former campaign treasurer was found dead inside her apartment.
Kellie Collins, of Thomason, turned herself into the McDuffie County Sheriff’s Office just as authorities in Aiken County, South Carolina found the body of Curtis Cain, Collins’ former campaign treasurer.
Investigators said Cain did not show up for work on Tuesday, so deputies went to his home to check on him. That’s when they found him dead from an apparent gunshot wound.
…
In 2017, Collins ran as a Democrat against incumbent Rep. Jody Hice, a Republican, for Georgia’s 10th District. She ultimately dropped out of the race, citing personal reasons.
During the race, she touted her support for responsible gun regulation to protect the community.
The typical gun banner wants to disarm you and me because we lack impulse control and might in a moment of rage shoot someone. That’s called projection.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: crime, democrats, georgia, gun control, politics | 3 Comments »
Posted by Richard on May 29, 2018
Last Thursday, in the most recent example of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy, the bad guy started shooting into a busy Oklahoma City bar and grill when two armed citizens independently confronted him and one of them shot him dead. Newsbusters noted that this event was barely mentioned by CNN and completely ignored by NBC and MSNBC. It will never be included in the list of “mass shootings” that the media and (other) gun control advocates compile because the bad guy only wounded two and didn’t kill anyone. As the NRA noted:
…Like a perverse Goldilocks, gun controllers will discount cases where a criminal was stopped before they were able to carry out sufficient carnage, and, as in the case of the shooting in Southerland Springs, dismiss a case where the killer was able to exact significant violence before an armed citizen could arrive.
According to a 2017 study by the excellent Crime Prevention Research Center, the number of concealed carry permit holders nationwide has grown to over 16 million, up 256% since 2007. But that’s still just 6.5% of the adult population, so it’s pure luck when a good guy (or gal; carry permits for women have been growing much faster than for men) with a gun and the willingness to act happens to be on hand when a bad guy starts shooting.
But per FBI data, that lucky happenstance is happening more and more often, and as David French noted, increasing the number of good guys and gals with guns has been shown to have no downside and is far more likely to provide a benefit than any proposed gun control laws (bold emphasis added):
Any sophisticated approach to a problem involves discussing potential solutions both left of boom (before the shooting) and right of boom (after the shooting starts). Gun control is a classic left-of-boom approach, designed to prevent attacks before they can happen. …
In fact, as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler found in a now-famous fact check, no recent mass shooting would have been prevented by any of the conventional gun restrictions progressives often propose.
But this isn’t a left-of-boom essay. Let’s talk about what happens when the shooting starts. Here, the FBI provides extremely helpful data. How do shootings end? The most common ways are exactly what you’d expect: The shooters kill themselves or flee, or the police exchange gunfire with the shooter and/or apprehend him. But a surprising amount of the time, citizens stop the killer, and an increasing percentage of those citizens are armed.
From 2000 to 2013, only five times did an armed citizen (who was not a police officer) exchange fire with the shooter. Three times the citizen killed the shooter, once the shooter committed suicide, and once the shooter was wounded. Fast forward to 2016–2017. In that time period, six armed citizens confronted active shooters. They stopped the shooting four times (in one case, the shooter fled to a different site and continued shooting, and in the other the armed citizen was wounded before he could stop the shooting).
The lesson? Armed citizens can make a difference, and as more Americans obtain carry permits, more Americans will be on-scene and able to react. Moreover, what’s missing from the data is any indication that armed citizens make the crisis worse. The stereotype of carry-permit holders spraying panicked gunfire is simply wrong.
Police can’t saturate populated areas. There are simply not enough cops to go around. The records of their responses are heroic (the incidents include large numbers of police casualties), but, as the saying goes, when seconds count, police are minutes away. But, by definition, people do saturate populated areas. And when an increasing number of those people possess carry permits, the instant response grows more likely.
It’s foolish to argue that “more carry permits” is the solution to our national challenge. I think it’s also wrong to claim that more carry permits isn’t part of the answer. But for carry permits to help, it requires a government to protect liberty and a citizen to exercise that liberty responsibly.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: concealed carry, crime, gun control, gun violence, media bias, oklahoma | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on October 23, 2016
The Podesta emails released by Wikileaks contain a wealth of examples of how dependent on fraud, fakery, and manipulation of a compliant press the Clinton campaign is. Gateway Pundit pointed out an example of interest to those of us concerned about our civil gun rights:
So much about Hillary’s campaign is fake, even some of her supporters. A blog posted to Medium in January was made to look like it was written by a Hillary supporter who was a victim of gun violence was actually orchestrated and written by her staff. Then the piece was customized for the person assigned as the author.
RTWT.
HT: Billlls Idle Mind, which appropriately labeled the Medium post as fantastic, according to one of the definitions of that word.
UPDATE: NRA-ILA reported this story along with a lot of other evidence from the leaked emails of the Clinton campaign’s commitment to make war on gun owners. See also their dissection of the preposterous lie Clinton told during the third debate when asked about her statement that the Supreme Court is “wrong on the Second Amendment.”
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: clinton, deception, fantasy, firearms, gun control, hillary, politics, presidential candidates | 3 Comments »
Posted by Richard on December 6, 2015
I didn’t watch the President’s prime-time speech tonight. But I took a quick look around the interwebs later, and I thought The Onion came up with a hilarious parody headline:
Obama: Increasing Gun Control, Rejecting Islamophobia Are Key to Combating Terrorism
Oh, wait. That’s not The Onion. That’s Slate. And they’re serious. He’s serious.
I guess I’m not all that surprised.
Obama did finally acknowledge that San Bernardino was a terrorist act. Prior to tonight, he, his lackeys, and their sycophants in the MSM had clung to the “workplace violence” theory to the point where it was laughable.
No surprise: Obama wants to trash the Second Amendment. He’s passionately opposed to discriminating against Muslims in any way, but he’s demanding that everyone on the government’s outrageous no-fly list be denied a fundamental human and Constitutional right without due process of law. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy was on the no-fly list, and it took him forever to get off. IIRC, at least 40% of the people on the no-fly list are there for no good reason.
Big surprise: Obama didn’t claim that limiting carbon dioxide emissions was the third key to combating terrorism. Maybe after the joke that was the Paris climate summit, he’s decided to cool it with the climate change rhetoric for a while.
You see what I did there?
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, islamophobia, obama, terrorism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on July 17, 2015
The gunman who attacked a recruiting station and a Naval and Marine Corps facility in Chattanooga, TN, killing four Marines before being killed himself, was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazee. He was a naturalized American citizen, born in Kuwait, who came to the US as a child with his parents. The Washington Post described them as “a conservative Muslim family,” and his father was at one time investigated by the FBI for ties to a terrorist organization.
But never mind that. The President described Abdulazee as a “lone gunman” and the FBI is investigating it as “domestic terrorism.” That’s the phrase they use when there’s believed to be no connection to an international terrorist organization like al Qaeda or ISIS. It’s apparently the policy of the Obama administration to never utter the words “Islamic terrorism,” “jihad,” or anything like that.
Well, I will. Abdulazee’s “lone jihad” was a textbook example of exactly the kind of attack that ISIS has been urging its followers in the West to carry out. He may have acted alone, but he was acting under direction of, in support of, and in furtherance of the mission of ISIS and the Islamofascist movement to destroy Western Civilization and impose political Islam across the globe.
But the head-in-the-sand attitude of our leadership isn’t what made me really angry about this incident. What made me really angry was seeing this Fox News image of the recruiting center entrance:
Notice the “gun-free zone” sign on the door amidst all the bullet holes. “I don’t understand,” say what Rush calls the new castrati, “why didn’t the sign work?” The sign worked fine; what it really says is “everyone inside is unarmed and helpless.” Heck, Abdulazee shot up the recruiting center from his car outside, so he didn’t even violate the “gun-free zone” rule.
After that, Abdulazee drove seven miles to the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center, where he killed four unarmed Marines. During that drive, he was being pursued by police, and they apparently are the ones who shot him. The Marines and sailors at the facility couldn’t have, because they too were unarmed.
Throughout the United States, all the military personnel who’ve been trained at great expense to expertly handle various weapons and fight valiantly in defense of themselves, their buddies, and their country, are disarmed and defenseless. Despite the fact that we’ve had several jihad attacks (not “workplace violence”) at military installations, and despite the fact that ISIS is explicitly urging its followers to perpetrate more such attacks.
Damn it, stop this gun control in the military nonsense! Arm our armed forces!
If you agree, tweet #ArmOurArmedForces.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: chattanooga, gun control, islamofascism, jihad, military, terrorism | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on January 9, 2015
Eugene Robinson, the rabidly anti-gun Washington Post columnist, was on MSNBC today, where he told Andrea Mitchell that it’s a good thing this week’s terrorism and hostage-taking in France didn’t happen in the United States. You see, he opined, in the US “weapons are universally available and so it is actually a very good thing that, that the tensions are not exactly the same because we would expect to have a lot more carnage.”
There’s your typical anti-gunner’s mindset: if people other than the jihadists had guns, they’d just be shooting wildly, leading to who knows how many more deaths (never mind that the additional casualties would likely be the jihadists). Thank goodness France has strict gun control so that the terrorists’ targets were unarmed and helpless, thus keeping the body count down.
Remember that chilling video of the wounded policeman lying on the ground with his hands up when the terrorist shot him in the head? Apparently, like many French cops, he was unarmed. I guess to the Eugene Robinsons of the world, that’s a good thing because if he’d been able to shoot his attacker, that would have just added to the “carnage.” As we say on Twitter, SMDH*.
This Twitchy post has some of the Twitter reaction to Robinson’s remarks, including Ace of Spades’ apt “one-note simpleton” characterization.
* shaking my damn head
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: france, gun control, media bias, msm, terrorism | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 27, 2014
There’s nothing unusual about gun control advocates turning out to be hypocrites (there are many more examples, from Carl Rowan to Sean Penn). But Leland Yee takes the cake. Yee is the leading gun control advocate in the California state senate — not an easy distinction to achieve, I’m sure. It turns out, if charges are true, that he’s been involved in international weapons trafficking and associated with a criminal gang leader:
SAN FRANCISCO — In a stunning criminal complaint, State Sen. Leland Yee has been charged with conspiring to traffic in firearms and public corruption as part of a major FBI operation spanning the Bay Area, casting yet another cloud of corruption over the Democratic establishment in the Legislature and torpedoing Yee’s aspirations for statewide office.
Yee and an intermediary allegedly met repeatedly with an undercover FBI agent, soliciting campaign contributions in exchange for setting up a deal with international arms dealers.
…
Yee, D-San Francisco, highlights a series of arrests Wednesday morning that included infamous Chinatown gangster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, whose past includes a variety of charges including racketeering and drug crimes. Targets of the early-morning raids appeared in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon.
A 137-page criminal complaint charges 26 people — including Yee and Chow — with a panoply of crimes, including firearms trafficking, money laundering, murder-for-hire, drug distribution, trafficking in contraband cigarettes, and honest services fraud.
Yee is charged with conspiracy to traffic in firearms without a license and to illegally import firearms, as well as six counts of scheming to defraud citizens of honest services. …
The charges are particularly shocking given that Yee has been among the state Senate’s most outspoken advocates both of gun control and of good-government initiatives.
Laws are for the little people.
UPDATE: Wow. The affidavit alleges Yee offered to provide $2 million of automatic weapons to Islamic rebels.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: california, corruption, gun control, hypocrisy | 2 Comments »
Posted by Richard on February 26, 2014
From the Citizens Committee for the Right to Bear Arms:
BELLEVUE, WA – The FBI’s semi-annual uniform crime data for the first half of 2013 confirms once again what the firearms community already knew, that violent crime has continued to decline while gun sales have continued to climb, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.
The report, issued last week, says murders declined 6.9 percent from the first half of 2012, while aggravated assaults dropped by 6.6 percent nationwide and robberies were down 1.8 percent. Forcible rapes declined 10.6 percent from the same period in 2012 and overall, violent crime fell by 10.6 percent in non-metropolitan counties and 3.6 percent in metropolitan counties.
“This new information reinforces the notion that not only do guns save lives, their presence in the hands and homes of law-abiding citizens just might be a deterrent to crime,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The National Shooting Sports Foundation has been reporting a steady increase in firearm sales for the past few years. Taken as a whole, one cannot help but conclude that the predictions from gun prohibitionists that more guns leads to more crime have been consistently wrong.”
Gottlieb said the tired argument from the anti-gun lobby that more firearms in the hands of private citizens would result in sharp increases in violence have run out of traction. Not only has the decline in crime corresponded with an increase in gun sales, it also coincides with a steady rise in the number of citizens obtaining concealed carry licenses and permits, he noted.
“The FBI report says burglaries and auto theft have also decreased,” Gottlieb said, “and it is impossible to look at this pattern and not suggest that increased gun ownership just might be one contributing factor. Gun prohibitionists would, of course, dismiss that suggestion as poppycock, but you can bet your life savings that if the data was reversed, and violent crime had risen, the gun control lobby would be rushing to every available microphone declaring that guns were to blame.
“This continuing pattern brings up a pertinent question,” he concluded. “If the gun ban lobby has been so wrong about more guns resulting in more crime, what else have they been wrong about? The word ‘everything’ comes to mind.”
2013 was yet another record year for gun sales.
In Detroit, where government services including law enforcement have been cut back, more and more people are taking responsibility for defending themselves. And, wonder of all wonders, they have the support of the police chief:
Detroit Police Chief James Craig has been an outspoken supporter of arming law-abiding citizens, and has publicly stated that “Good Americans with concealed pistols translates into crime reduction.”
Living conditions in Detroit have declined in recent years. The city’s bankruptcy led to a reduced police force, and residents have had to learn to protect themselves. Self-defense killings in Detroit rose to 2200% above the national average in recent years, and Chief Craig says that more than 300 legally armed citizens defended themselves last year.
Maybe wanna-be thugs in Detroit will think twice about messing with homeowners in the area.
UPDATE: Related — Michael Barone says the evidence of the last quarter-century has changed his mind regarding “shall issue” concealed carry laws:
The result has been that over the years the entire nation has become carry-concealed-weapons territory, as shown in a neat graphic in a Volokh Conspiracy blog post by Dave Kopel. Back in 1987, some people, myself included, worried that such laws would lead to frequent shootouts on the streets arising from traffic altercations and the like. That has not happened — something we can be sure of since the mainstream media would be delighted to headline such events.
To the contrary, violent crime rates have declined drastically during the last quarter-century. I don’t think you can prove that concealed-weapons laws caused that result, but they have probably contributed to it, because would-be criminals are less likely to assault people they believe might be armed. In any case the argument that concealed-weapons laws would lead to more violent crime has been about as thoroughly refuted as an argument can be.
One lesson, I think, is that responsible citizens tend to behave like responsible citizens, even if — or perhaps especially if — they’re armed. Another lesson is that the national political dialogue can be totally irrelevant to what really happens in American life.
HT: Instapundit
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: crime, firearms, freedom, gun control, human rights, second amendment, self-defense | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on January 17, 2014
The Filippidis family — John, wife Kally, and their three kids — was driving back home to Florida after attending a family wedding in New Jersey. John has a Florida concealed carry permit, but left his .380 Kel-Tec at home because he knew they’d be traveling through gun-hostile states. They had just entered Maryland when a Maryland Transportation Authority Police car started following them, then drove alongside, then pulled in front, and finally dropped back behind them. This went on for ten minutes before the cop finally turned on the lights and sirens and pulled them over. Was John speeding? He says not.
“You know you have a police car behind you, you don’t speed, right?” Kally adds.
Was it a busted tail light? Or maybe the car fit the description of someone the cops were looking for? Apparently not. The officer asked for license and registration, and then returned to his car. Then it got bizarre. And outrageous.
Ten minutes later he’s back, and he wants John out of the Expedition. Retreating to the space between the SUV and the unmarked car, the officer orders John to hook his thumbs behind his back and spread his feet. “You own a gun,” the officer says. “Where is it?”
“At home in my safe,” John answers.
“Don’t move,” says the officer.
Now he’s at the passenger’s window. “Your husband owns a gun,” he says. “Where is it?”
First Kally says, “I don’t know.” Retelling it later she says, “And that’s all I should have said.” Instead, attempting to be helpful, she added, “Maybe in the glove [box]. Maybe in the console. I’m scared of it. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. I might shoot right through my foot.”
That’s a top contender for dumbest thing anyone said all year.
The officer came back to John. “You’re a liar. You’re lying to me. Your family says you have it. Where is the gun? Tell me where it is and we can resolve this right now.”
Of course, John couldn’t show him what didn’t exist, but Kally’s failure to corroborate John’s account, the officer would tell them later, was the probable cause that allowed him to summon backup — three marked cars joined the lineup along the I-95 shoulder — and empty the Expedition of riders, luggage, Christmas gifts, laundry bags; to pat down Kally and Yianni; to explore the engine compartment and probe inside door panels; and to separate and isolate the Filippidises in the back seats of the patrol cars.
An hour and a half or two hours later, with no weapon found, the Filippidises were sent on their way with a warning — for what is not reported.
What kind of bogus probable cause is “Kally’s failure to corroborate John’s account”? Is it now Maryland policy to stop cars from states that have “shall issue” concealed carry (unlike Maryland) to determine whether an occupant could potentially be violating Maryland’s draconian gun laws? Talk about profiling.
More importantly, how does the Maryland Transportation Authority have access to a list of Florida concealed carry permit holders??
(HT: Personal Liberty Digest)
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, second amendment | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on November 27, 2013
In September, grassroots gun-rights defenders in El Paso and Pueblo counties made history by successfully recalling two state senators, John Morse (the senate president) and Angela Giron. Morse and Giron were puppets of Michael Bloomberg and instrumental in ramming gun control legislation through the Colorado legislature.
In the wake of that tremendous success (truly a political “shot heard ’round the world”), gun-rights defenders in Arvada (Jefferson County) decided that State Sen. Evie Hudak also had to go. See Recall Hudak Too for the long list of reasons.
The Hudak recall movement made Colorado’s Socialist Democrats nervous. After the Morse and Giron recalls, they held only a one-seat majority in the state senate; a successful recall of Hudak would cost them that. Some people started hinting that Hudak could (should) resign so that the Socialist Democrat vacancy committee could appoint her replacement. Hudak dismissed the idea, vowing to fight the recall and win.
But with a week to go in the recall petitioning effort, it looked like the required number of signatures were a near-certainty. So either Hudak had a change of heart (perhaps wanting to spend more time with her family?) or the Socialist Democrat leadership, not feeling good about her chances with the voters, put the screws to her. Today, she resigned her seat effective immediately.
Good. I wonder who the vacancy committee will appoint in her place. That interim appointment is good only until the 2014 general election. Think it will be someone who’s an outspoken anti-gun zealot like Hudak? I suspect not. I’m guessing it will be someone with no public record on the issue. Not someone who actually supports our right to armed self-defense (the Socialist Democrat leadership wouldn’t have that) — just a stealth gun-banner.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: colorado, gun control, politics, second amendment | 2 Comments »
Posted by Richard on September 10, 2013
For the first time in history, a Colorado state legislator has been recalled from office, and it’s a terrific victory for Second Amendment supporters across the country. State Sen. John Morse, president of the Colorado Senate, has conceded defeat. With 93% of the votes counted, it’s “Yes” on the recall by 51%-49%. Morse has been Michael Bloomberg’s stooge in Colorado, and he shepherded Bloomberg’s gun control laws through the state senate. Bloomberg personally spent more than $300,000 fighting the recall of Morse and State Sen. Angela Giron.
In Pueblo County, the recall of Giron is still up in the air, with vote totals coming in very slowly and the county clerk blaming a crashed website. The Pueblo election has seen rampant irregularities, including the wholesale distribution of absentee ballots in heavily Democratic precincts under questionable circumstances. Absentee ballots were the first to be counted there, and about 70% of those went for Giron (voted “No” on the recall). But as the ballots of actual people who went to an actual polling place to vote were counted, the numbers started shifting dramatically. Right now (10 PM MDT), with 43% counted, “Yes” leads 57%-43%. So it’s starting to look good. As Hugh Hewitt said a few years ago, “If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat.” 🙂
UPDATE (11 PM): Giron recalled by a 56%-44% margin! Amazing — Giron was defeated by a much larger margin than Morse. According to the pundits, Giron had the advantage. Morse barely won re-election, and his district is pretty evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Giron’s district, on the other hand, is 47% Democratic, 29% unafilliated, and only 23% Republican. Lots of blue-collar pro-gun Democrats in Pueblo, I guess.
Message to Mike Bloomberg: New Yorkers may meekly accept your neo-fascist paternalism, but don’t try to export it out here. Message to all the other state legislators in fly-over country who’ve been courted by Bloomberg’s army of lobbyists: You carry their water at your own peril.
Democrats now have just a one-seat majority in the Colorado Senate, and they’ll have to choose a new Senate President. I suspect that he or she won’t be taking calls from Mike Bloomberg. Next question: Will the Colorado GOP have the cojones to push hard for repeal of the Bloomberg laws next year? I suspect they could get some Democrat votes.
UPDATE (11:50): I was vaguely aware that the recall supporters were outspent by all the money from Bloomberg and all the other liberal gun-control groups pouring money into these elections, but I had no idea the margin was this large:
Takes some real chutzpah to outspend the other side 6-1 in an election and still complain about NRA involvement. #CORecall
— AG (@AG_Conservative) September 11, 2013
That makes these victories that much sweeter — and that much more impactful.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: colorado, gun control, politics, second amendment | 3 Comments »
Posted by Richard on July 11, 2013
Back during the Colorado legislative session, when the Socialist Democrats were ramming through a series of gun control measures, a KDVR-TV Fox 31 reporter asked Gov. Hickenlooper about allegations that New York Mayor Michael “let’s hear it for the nanny state” Bloomberg was involved. Hickenlooper pooh-poohed the notion, and that was the end of the story.
A while ago (and I just noticed), the Independence Institute’s Todd Shepherd did the investigative work that KDVR and other Denver news outlets couldn’t be bothered to do (or chose not to do for reasons best explained by them). It turns out that (1) Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (which should be more honestly named Mayors Against All Guns Except Those Carried by Our Bodyguards) had several registered lobbyists at the Colorado State Capitol pushing those bills, and (2) Mayor Bloomberg called Gov. Hickenlooper at least twice during that time.
I like the comment posted at the Watchdog.org story about this by Lemur!:
In other news, local man actually surprised by this information…….
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: bloomberg, colorado, gun control, hickenlooper | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Richard on April 19, 2013
Massachusetts has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country. Probably, some of the residents of Watertown, Cambridge, and surrounding communities attended recent pro-gun-control rallies in the Boston area and cheered the call for even more gun control in their state and nationally.
So I have to wonder how those people felt in the past 18 or so hours. They were warned that a dangerous armed terrorist might be roaming their neighborhood. They were ordered to remain inside with their doors locked until law enforcement found and apprehended the suspect.
As we know now, it ended well. But I wonder how many of those affected residents, hunkered down in fear in their own homes for many hours, desperately wished they had a pistol by their side — just in case.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: gun control, jihad, massachusetts, terrorism | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on March 20, 2013
Today, Gov. Hickenlooper signed three gun control bills into law:
HB1224 – Bans magazines with a capacity greater than fifteen rounds and makes magazines below that limit that have a removable floor plate illegal because you can install a magazine extender to increase their capacity (that means virtually all existing magazines since floor plates are generally removable to facilitate cleaning or spring replacement).
HB1228 – Imposes a “gun tax” for a Colorado Bureau of Investigation background check when purchasing a firearm, even though the FBI will do the background checks for free.
HB1229 – Criminalizes the private transfer of a firearm, so you can’t give a gun to your son or daughter, or loan a gun to your friend or to a neighbor who’s afraid that a former husband or boyfriend might come after her.
Jon Caldara, President of the Independence Institute, wasted no time making it clear that these bills will be challenged in court. Here is the complete text of his email update:
“Over? Did you say it’s ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is. Was it over when the Germans bomber Pearl Harbor? Hell no! And it ain’t over now!” – John Blutarsky
Today Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper confirmed Colorado as a pawn in a national game of gun control. He signed three anti-Second Amendment bills into law, making our previously liberty-loving state into the nation’s Hate State against gun owners.
Independence Institute was the lead voice educating policy makers and the Governor himself of the dangers and sloppiness of these bills. They wouldn’t listen to us. They wouldn’t listen to Coloradans. They instead listened to Mayor Bloomberg and Joe Biden, who called legislators and Hickenlooper personally.
We urged the Governor to veto the bills and send them back to the legislature for re-drafting. Our Second Amendment expert, Dave Kopel, told him that the magazine ban is horribly miswritten, with numerous constitutional problems, even beyond the core Second Amendment issue.
But the national anti-gun interests have more influence in Colorado than we citizens. Now the sale or transfer of nearly every gun magazine in Colorado will be crime, because almost every single magazine is “readily convertible” to hold more than 15 rounds. Watch our video on this here.
And due to the must “maintain continuous possession” clause to grandfather in previously owned mags, I won’t be able to teach my daughter how to shoot my gun – she cannot hold the gun that uses the original magazine. My brother, a volunteer gun range officer will not be able to assist a gun student with a malfunctioning gun. As he says in this op-ed, he will have to choose between keeping the gun range safe or becoming a criminal. A husband cannot lend his gun with an original magazine to his wife. Watch our video on this here.
All 62 County Sheriffs vigorously opposed these bills. Many say that won’t enforce them when they become law because they cannot be enforced.
We have said for years that Colorado is the national test case to turn a freedom-loving western state into a progressive strong hold. Today Colorado citizens learned the hard way that elections have consequences. Today our Governor cemented our path to become California.
But I guarantee you, this fight has just begun. We at Independence love Colorado and love liberty too much to just sit back and watch in dismay.
Today I am proud to announce that the Independence Institute will lead the civil rights lawsuit against the State of Colorado to free us from these unconstitutional laws.
Our lawsuit will be based on the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, among other grounds. The lawsuit will be brought on behalf of a large coalition of local and national law enforcement, including many of the Sheriffs who opposed the bills, disability rights organizations, gun safety organizations, civil rights organizations, and others.
Lead attorney in the lawsuit will be Dave Kopel, who is also a Denver University Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law. Kopel served on the U.S. Supreme Court oral argument team which won the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller. His briefs and scholarship have been cited by Justices Alito, Breyer, and Stevens, and by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, among others.
This will be a long and expensive legal battle. But that is nothing new to us. We are honored to fight for Freedom, to fight for Colorado. We are honored to fight for you.
I’ve just donated $100 on top of my usual annual contributions. If you’re a Colorado resident and either a gun owner or just concerned about our rights and freedoms, please join me in supporting this legal battle. Go to www.i2i.org and click the “Click Here to Donate” button.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: civil liberties, colorado, gun control, second amendment | 1 Comment »
Posted by Richard on February 24, 2013
I’m disgusted by the fear-mongering about the sequester by Obama and the Socialist Democrats, and I’m even more disgusted at all the Republican politicians who are joining the hysteria. Massive cuts, my ass. Jeez, by their own fraudulent “baseline budgeting” accounting, the sequester amounts to less than 3% of federal spending. And as Sen. Rand Paul has pointed out, that’s not even a real cut, but merely a reduction in the rate of increase.
The GOP leadership ought to be declaring over and over, “Mr. President, if you and your cabinet can’t cut spending by 2.5% without closing national parks, endangering the food supply, and inconveniencing air travelers, then you’re not competent to run the federal government.” They ought to embrace the sequester as at least a decent start.
Here’s another reason to embrace the sequester: According to DNC chief Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, it will delay action on gun control. Let’s hear it for the sequester!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: budget, congress, gun control, politics, spending | 2 Comments »
