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Survey of police: Obama/left-wing gun control fetish wrong on nearly every point.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
April 10, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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I’m a pro-gun rights advocate because I’m sane, and because I’m a conservative and believe in my individual rights and freedoms such as the fundamental right to defend myself.

President Obama’s anti-gun, pro-gun-control, multimillion dollar bully-pulpit campaign (and oh by the way, convenient political fund-raising stunt), currently taking place across the country aboard Air Force One at a taxpayer cost of untold millions, is ridiculous and as usual, misses the real targets, such as the mental health issues, gangs, the breakdown of the family, and more, behind the recent outbreaks.

Like so much of the liberal-left or progressive politics, Obama’s latest well-timed fetish is loaded with a gun-Beretta 92FS S maxiclip full of specious feel-good appeals to the emotions (once again using kids — including dead kids — as his stage props), and in symbolism, rather than reason and empirical evidence. And of course his proposals promise more big government, nanny-state solutions. More government and government regulations and controls and social-engineering and increased spending are the answer to every problem (even spending problems), according to progressives.

The measures the Obama Left propose would do practically nothing to reduce gun violence, and might in fact increase gun violence. They would clearly reduce citizens’ rights and freedoms. And contrary to the blather about being “smart” and”pro-science”, as Obama always falsely claims to be, his proposed measures are not at all smart and are completely unscientific. In reality, Obama’s big-government answers are really based in nothing but pure left-wing, partisan politics, with an eye to increasing the size and scope of government, and winning left-wing power in upcoming congressional elections in 2014.

If Barack Obama were an ex-cop or some sort of expert in crime prevention, or was at least a law and order advocate with any history or expertise in that area, it might give his ideas more fire power. But his record of success is that of being a left-wing politician, formerly representing Chicago  –  the city with more murders (500+ last year alone) than the troops in war-torn Afghanistan  –  and Chicago is the city with some of the toughest gun control measures in America. So his gun control ideas are based on what expertise or success? None, inasmuch as Barack Obama has expertise and success in just about nothing except rallying the left to his sophistic causes.

But the authoritative police community website PoliceOne.com wanted to explore the thinking of their own police community, and conducted an extensive survey among its members to that end. I think I’ll take their opinion more seriously than Barack Obama’s. Here are some of the key points (not complete — see the complete survey here) I found most interesting in their survey:

PoliceOne’s Gun Control Survey: 11 key lessons from officers’ perspectives

In March, PoliceOne conducted the most comprehensive survey ever of American law enforcement officers’ opinions on the topic gripping the nation’s attention in recent weeks: gun control.

More than 15,000 verified law enforcement professionals took part in the survey, which aimed to bring together the thoughts and opinions of the only professional group devoted to limiting and defeating gun violence as part of their sworn responsibility.

Totaling just shy of 30 questions, the survey allowed officers across the United States to share their perspectives on issues spanning from gun control and gun violence to gun rights.

Top Line Takeaways
Breaking down the results, it’s important to note that 70 percent of respondents are field-level law enforcers — those who are face-to-face in the fight against violent crime on a daily basis — not office-bound, non-sworn administrators or perpetually-campaigning elected officials.

1.) Virtually all respondents (95 percent) say that a federal ban on manufacture and sale of ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds would not reduce violent crime.

2.) The majority of respondents — 71 percent — say a federal ban on the manufacture and sale of some semi-automatics would have no effect on reducing violent crime. However, more than 20 percent say any ban would actually have a negative effect on reducing violent crime. Just over 7 percent took the opposite stance, saying they believe a ban would have a moderate to significant effect.

3.) About 85 percent of officers say the passage of the White House’s currently proposed legislation would have a zero or negative effect on their safety, with just over 10 percent saying it would have a moderate or significantly positive effect.

5.) More than 28 percent of officers say having more permissive concealed carry policies for civilians would help most in preventing large scale shootings in public, followed by more aggressive institutionalization for mentally ill persons (about 19 percent) and more armed guards/paid security personnel (about 15 percent). See enlarged image

6.) The overwhelming majority (almost 90 percent) of officers believe that casualties would be decreased if armed citizens were present at the onset of an active-shooter incident.

7.) More than 80 percent of respondents support arming school teachers and administrators who willingly volunteer to train with firearms and carry one in the course of the job.

9.) More than half of respondents feel that increased punishment for obviously illegal gun sales could have a positive impact on reducing gun violence.

Bottom Line Conclusions
Quite clearly, the majority of officers polled oppose the theories brought forth by gun-control advocates who claim that proposed restrictions on weapon capabilities and production would reduce crime.

In fact, many officers responding to this survey seem to feel that those controls will negatively affect their ability to fight violent criminals.

Contrary to what the mainstream media and certain politicians would have us believe, police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry, would like to see more guns in the hands of responsible people, and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership, or accessibility.

Interestingly, even as I write this, a group of bi-partisan senators have struck-up a deal which includes some extra background checks for commercial gun purchases (which I should note would not have prevented many of any of the recent gun tragedies), increased punishment of gun trafficking, and would bolster federal funding for school security plans — something which you’ll remember the NRA advocated but which was shot down by the left when they immediately fired their automatic weapons (their word holes) at it, using their usual knee-jerk shoot first, ask questions later, mentality.

Here is a statement from the NRA today:

Fairfax, Va. - Expanding background checks at gun shows will not prevent the next shooting, will not solve violent crime and will not keep our kids safe in schools. While the overwhelming rejection of President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg’s “universal” background check agenda is a positive development, we have a broken mental health system that is not going to be fixed with more background checks at gun shows. The sad truth is that no background check would have prevented the tragedies in Newtown, Aurora or Tucson. We need a serious and meaningful solution that addresses crime in cities like Chicago, addresses mental health deficiencies, while at the same time protecting the rights of those of us who are not a danger to anyone. President Obama should be as committed to dealing with the gang problem that is tormenting honest people in his hometown as he is to blaming law-abiding gun owners for the acts of psychopathic murderers.

• Also see my recent article “5…4…3…2…1…BANG, you’re dead!”
• and (UPDATE!) Ann Coulter’s latest: “Liberals Go Crazy For The Mentally Ill”

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
April 10, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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“5…4…3…2…1…BANG, you’re dead!”

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
April 5, 2013  •1 Comment
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Cross-posted at ProudToBeCanadian.ca and Joel Johannesen.com.    

 

Something about gardening and getting right down there in the dirt with your bare hands makes clear things that might otherwise be convoluted. For example, this happened:

“Five… four… three… two… one… BANG, you’re DEAD!”

toy_gunThat’s what the kid yelled.

And that’s what me and my wife heard last weekend while we were innocently working away out in the garden amongst our tulips and daffodils in our quiet little white picket fence suburban neighborhood. (Our house literally has a white picket fence, so there.)

The pseudo-auspicious warning — or play-by play commentary — wasn’t directed at us, luckily, and I’m happy to report we’re still alive — but rather at a group of other kids and/or adults a couple of doors down. And it was just a bunch of kids playing on the street, like kids do. Playing “guns.”

I wouldn’t have given it another thought, but I love to jump down liberals’ throats and expose their sundry sophistry and logical fallacies whenever I can.

In the context of today’s bombastic and always idiotic gun control rhetoric coming out of liberal/left America as led by the sophists-in-chief Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein, foot-in-mouth numbskull VP Joe Biden, et al, post-Newtown shooting; and out of the even more idiotic (at least on this subject) Smith_and_Wesson_640_hand_gunCanada’s liberal left, my mental meandering has the added value of being at least a little apropos of something, unlike 90% of liberal-leftist blather on any pet subject.

Here’s what stuck: that kid didn’t learn what today’s liberals would deride as horrible, red-neck, right-wing, conservative whackjob-style, pro-gun rhetoric from the NRA, as liberal leftists the continent over would love you to falsely believe. No, rather, he almost certainly learned it from today’s liberals in Hollywood. Yes, liberals from the blathering liberal-left anti-gun, anti-conservative, anti-NRA set in notoriously liberal-left, Obama-supporting Hollywood (or “Hollywood North” — Vancouver, or Toronto — which is the exact same class of weapon). He got it from a TV show, movie, rap or hip-hop “song”, or video game from liberals in what we all know to be that hypocritical-on-nearly-every-issue, holier-than-thou, liberal Hollywood and their liberal-left media industrial complex.

The NRA doesn’t teach “5… 4… 3… 2… 1… BANG, you’re DEAD!” or anything like that kind of theatrics. They don’t advocate for alarming, penultimate warnings to the end of innocent life at the hand of kids role-playing an awesome man with cool, fearsome weaponry. Hollywood does. Liberals do.

So own it, Hollywood. And moreover liberals. Own what you created. Hey maybe liberals should be registered, or banned, since they cause gun violence! And by the way, actually, I’m kidding. I say that because some liberals are so dumb they may take me seriously and actually volunteer, much as they do with regard to paying higher taxes.

A couple more notes on this subject: It brought back a “discussion” around the Christmas turkey dinner table (I’m itching to claim the turkey was picked-off by a well-placed shotgun blast, but it probably wasn’t) with family (where I’m surrounded by liberals and outright socialists — yeah, real fun). An in-law, truly aghast at the audacity of the NRA to defend gun ownership after that Newtown elementary school shooting, said (in that liberal way — wherein they speak as though it is assumed everyone in the room agrees with them, which in this case nearly everyone did) that the NRA keeps making these totally “idiotic” claims about guns being a “constitutional right” (said using excessive eye-rolls and air quotes), “and junk like that” — or at least words to that dismissive, pejorative effect.

I quietly reminded her that it was, in fact, a constitutional right, in America, for citizens to have guns. “Well they should change their constitution then!” she shot back.

Of course my brain comes fully loaded with a magazine full of real science and information and actual facts and objective truths rather than knee-jerk emotional responses based on sophomoric rhetoric, so I quietly reminded her that they had, in fact, changed their constitution. “It’s called The Second Amendment,” I said. If I’d had a mic I’d have dropped it.

This is where liberals usually take to calling me an idiot, or something I find even funnier (Hitler, a Nazi, racist, homophobe, a swear-word, or whatever), then do an adroit about-face and storm off, but alas, it was at the very start of Christmas dinner and we were too crammed in there for her to get up and storm off. Suffice it to say she won’t be sending me any Christmas cards (or even “festivus” or “happy tree” or “highly regarded seasonal values and greetings!” cards) in the future.

gun-Beretta_92FS_S_maxi250-202x140Another point, which I mention for my Canadian brethren: It’s actually the right of Canadians, too, to defend themselves, regardless of what liberals tell you to the contrary. I’ve been a member of the NRA for years. (And by the way, I’m not a hunter. Or a “Hitler.”) This past month or so, I also joined the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, and donated to the National Firearms Association.

I’m loath to remind my readers (oh who am I kidding, I love it) that when I took the Canadian Firearms courses and got my license to acquire and possess guns in Canada (including semi-automatic rifles and handguns), I nearly failed one of the tests when I was told to unload the magazine from the Beretta semi-auto I was being tested on (exactly as pictured, above right), and I accidentally turned the muzzle downward, toward my left toe, instead of keeping it pointed down range. While I got nearly perfect and perfect scores on the written tests and the other practicals, I had to go back and take the handgun practical test over again. My wife passed all the tests with flying colors. Shut up.

So I’m not perfect, but at least I know all about guns, and what, for example, a “military-style” “assault” weapon is, unlike another in-law who blasted off several rounds of liberal-left talking points total BS last Christmas about the supposed need to ban those guns… but don’t get me started again.

Which is why everyone should work in the garden.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
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Snippets from the Joelosphere

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
March 7, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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Lines I liked this morning:
First up: from Ann Coulter’s latest column. She’s continuing to try to edify liberals (good luck with that, Ann) on the stupidity at the root of their pathological gun control fetish, the construct of which has them purposely shielding their gaze from some of the actual roots of the actual problem.

… Of course, the vast majority of mentally disturbed individuals are not dangerous. But looking at it from the other end, more than half of all mass murder is committed by the mentally ill. Gun ownership doesn’t lead to random murder rampages; mental illness does.

And the good news for Republicans is: Democrats will only pretend to support keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous psychotics, while working frantically to gut and undermine such measures. Liberals fear “stigmatizing” the mentally ill more than they fear another mass murder.

Instead of proposing serious reforms, the Democrats play politics by demonizing responsible gun owners and the Republicans who defend them.

The Democrats’ gun proposals are like the joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamplight:

“Is that where you dropped them?”

“No, but the light’s better here.” …

I might add that in my opinion, the pose struck by liberals on the gun control issue reminds me of a drunkard pissing in the wind, and then lying and blaming the direction of the wind on “man-made global warming” and, of course, as if I had to tell you, Bush. And yes, my over-the-top mixed metaphor is happily acknowledged.

Another favorite quote comes from the equally inimitable James Taranto, and his Best of the Web column at the Wall Street Journal, today. Part of it concerns the death of the evil socialist dictator Hugo Chavez:

The socialist Venezuelan demagogue died of cancer yesterday, as London’s left-wing Guardian notes in an over-the-top obit:

No one imagined it would end like this. A ravaged body, a hospital bed, a shroud of silence, invisible. Hugo Chávez’s life blazed drama, a command performance, and friend and foe alike always envisaged an operatic finale.

He would rule for decades, transform Venezuela and Latin America, and bid supporters farewell from the palace balcony, an old man, his work complete. Or, a parallel fantasy: he would tumble from power, disgraced and defeated by the wreckage of revolution, ending his days a hounded pariah.

Oh give us a break. Chavez announced he had cancer almost two years ago, and it had been clear for months that his condition was terminal. It would take either an overactive imagination or none at all to fail to imagine “it would end like this.” Still, Chavez’s expected death calls to mind Hilaire Belloc’s “Epitaph on the Politician Himself”:

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician’s corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged,
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

I don’t even appreciate poetry, but that struck a bell with me. I appreciate the facts of life, and that there is good, and there is evil, and Hugo Chavez was firmly, if not also arrogantly and glibly, on the side of evil. Yes, that is a little ironic too, given his speech at the U.N., the supposed bastion of diplomacy, where he sneered that he could smell sulfur in the wake of President Bush speaking there just before him. Bush actually being squarely on the side of good. So I, too, longed to see Chavez hanged, if metaphorically.

Obama_and_his_staged_ploy

Obama staged an apocalyptic freak-out show for weeks, using first-responders and others as props, to scare Americans into siding with him and hating Republicans.

Finally, it’s not so much a quotable quote, but an observation by Michael Reagan this morning, which gave me some hope for the salvation of what I’ve come to worry is a nation full of what Rush Limbaugh calls the “low-information voter.” (By the way, that term is, in its own right, a spot-on term worthy of serious consideration among conservatives hoping to win elections; i.e. inform them, preferably with Reagan’s father’s own method: speaking in “bold colors!”).

Michael Reagan is talking about a vote during this week’s Los Angeles mayoral primaries, which because they are pretty much going bankrupt after years of progressive party rule, included a proposition to raise city sales taxes (and adhering to one of the real modi operandi of the political progressive liberal left, it would of course also raise government spending). See if this image doesn’t look familiar:

Proposition A was backed by the police chief and outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who used police academy recruits as props and warned of losing 500 city cops if the sales tax hike was defeated.

Yes…

Just as Obama tried to scare the public into believing that the sequester would hurt our national security, the local pols here tried to scare voters into thinking public safety would be endangered without Proposition A.

And yet… perhaps hoist with their own petard (the petard being lie-bomb Obama), the lying politicians in the left coast’s center of the left-wing universe lost the vote.

 



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When I Want a Progressive’s Opinion on What Guns I “Need” or “Don’t Need”…

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
January 22, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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My buddy, Green Beret badass Bryan Sikes, shot a massive whitetail buck last week during our South Texas Purple Heart Adventure. He whacked said muy grande with a LaRue Tactical OBR chambered for the glorious .308 Win. round. Oh and BTW, Sikes used a high capacity magazine during this hunt.

For those of you who aren’t hip to the LaRue, it is a weapon that progressive darlings say we should not have because we don’t “need” such a weapon for hunting.

Hunting, according to these wizards of odd, is what they think our founding fathers had in mind when they penned that pesky Second Amendment, and according to these control freaks we don’t need a tactical weapon with a high capacity magazine to hunt with.

First off, dipsticks, the Second Amendment has nada to do with hunting. The founding fathers weren’t worried about their right to put the bam to Bambi (although we should be because progressives hate hunting and would love nothing more than to bring that activity to a grinding halt). If you don’t believe me, just corner one of these little darlings and ask them what they think about hunting.

Secondly, who are they to tell us what we “need” or don’t need when it comes to anything? Typical of the Left, they think they know what’s best for we the people. If you want to talk about “needs,” Ms. Leftist, we don’t need iPhones, Porsches, crazy straws, American Idol, beer, leaf blowers, and I don’t need a gorgeous Italian wife. But that’s America, folks. Stay out of our business.

Regarding the need for high capacity magazines for hunting, please tell the ranchers in the west when they’re doing depredation work on predators and nuisance animals that they don’t need such weapons. You might be surprised.

Now, for the record, I do not have a black weapon. I’m a bolt action, lever action, double rifle, and traditional side-by-side shotgun freak. I like the classic lines of beautiful sporting guns.

However, the more I contemplate our current milieu I’m beginning to think that a semi-auto, like the LaRue Tactical chambered for the .308, has got to be the ultimate gun. Why? Well, it’s quite effective on game up to moose, and it has been proven in battle against tyrants—which is exactly what the Second Amendment is all about, namely, whacking overreaching, freedom-strangling little King George wannabes should they oppress.

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
January 22, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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Massacre Solution: The Brady Bunch Bill to Prohibit the Procreation of Irresponsible People

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
January 13, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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As most of you know, Vice President Joe Biden has been appointed by Obama to make certain that another Sandy Hook never goes down on American soil. Being an American who digs freedom, I’m not getting the warm and fuzzies about this legislative venture. A myopic cyclops staring into the sun can see where this duo is heading.

And as most of you can guess, Biden and Obama are talking about levying an executive order on our populace that would ban certain semi-automatic rifles and high capacity pistol and rifle magazines. It’s a similar policy to the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban that did nada to stem school and workplace violence from 1994 to 2004. Matter of fact, school shootings spiked during that epoch. What is it they say about the definition of insanity?

Anyway, as the Left gears up to bear down on law-abiding people because some demoniac’s murder spree has left us all reeling, I would like to put forth a proposal that doesn’t mitigate our constitutional right to keep and bear arms but rather makes it more difficult for people to hook up and breed. It’s an expanded version of what Dennis Miller alluded to back in the mid ‘90s—namely the Brady Bunch Bill: a waiting period before people get married and start a family.

Yes, I’m more worried about high capacity idiots than I am about high capacity magazines. Look, you and I can ban such tools all day long, but demented tools will still find a way to get at them or switch deadly devices. For some reason evil people won’t obey our laws. Indeed, the crazy will search for other ways to McVeigh us into McSmithereens. BTW, all Timothy needed was fertilizer and a Ryder truck; an extended magazine didn’t come close to accomplishing what that satanic soul had in mind. Should we ban ammonium nitrate, nitromethane, racing fuel and rental trucks?

No, I think we should point our policy and derision not upon firearms but rather upon crappy parents who don’t raise their kids right or who don’t rein them in when they’re going off the rails on a crazy train. Pardon me for sounding simplistic, but until people who wish to bump uglies and have kids prove to us that they’re going to superintend their brood into becoming an amicable part of the American collective, I say we prohibit their reproductive rights.

Check it out. Here’s what I propose: Those desirous to mate or adopt would have to pass a thorough psychological and criminal background check and a five-year (at least) proving period where they would have to affirm the following:

1). Will you stay married and work your crap out so that it doesn’t decimate your children to the degree that they one day take their rage out on kindergarteners?

2). Will you raise your kids to obey the Golden Rule? No? Well then, forced sterilization for you.

3). Will you love and nurture your offspring versus pawning their upbringing off on satanic pop culture, violent videos, paranormal peers and Hollywood death flicks? Huh, D-bag?

4). Will you refuse to allow your kid to have a petty entitlement mentality and a woe-is-me vengeful spirit of hatred?

5). Will you quit going about business as usual if your kid starts worshipping Satan and giggles when he hears or sees people murdered or raped?

6). Will you turn your kid in if he begins talking to imaginary people while stockpiling a weapons cache that rivals a small nation’s battery?

7). Will you, in the event that the aforementioned has not helped to move your kid away from the morose, refuse to teach your child how to shoot and either get rid of your weapons or lock them in a vault that he cannot crack nor move with a Hyster 36-48T forklift?

8). And finally, will you take full responsibility (to the point of prosecution and imprisonment) if your teen or twentysomething kid kills anyone because you have fundamentally failed doing your duties as a parent?

If a couple cannot answer in the affirmative and do not show responsible and respectful behavior during the preliminary five-year waiting period then we disallow said couple to breed. How’s that?

Look, folks, we can ban all manner of weapons until the cows come home, but until parents start raising their kids right and steer them clear of this rancid culture this junk is going to plague us ‘til the end of time.

Finally, my advice to the policy wonks is this: Until the Brady Bunch Bill is put into effect, stay the hell away from our guns because we’re going to need the wherewithal to put down your bad seed should he attempt to kill our innocent sons and daughters.

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
January 13, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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Girls With Guns

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Ashley Herzog
January 8, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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In my last column, “Good Guys With Guns,” I wrote about the Mayan 14 incident, in which a shooter was halted by an off-duty cop. I referred to the cop as a “good guy,” and my readers were quick to issue a correction: the good guy was actually a girl. Lisa Castellano shot the wannabe James Holmes after he ran into the Mayan 14 theater and began firing—and managed to snatch away his gun.

I don’t know about you, but Lisa Castellano is my new hero.

I’ve written about women and guns before, when I was the lone conservative columnist on the staunchly liberal Ohio University campus. As you can probably guess, readers sneered at the notion that guns serve a legitimate self-defense purpose. A self-described feminist activist claimed that women should be more afraid of “facing charges” for shooting an attacker than being raped or murdered. A male reader condescendingly suggested women should “carry mace.” I want better than that.

So did 18-year-old mom Sarah McKinley. On New Year’s Eve 2011, she was at home alone with her infant son, having lost her husband to lung cancer just a week earlier. When she heard two men trying to break in, she called 911—and grabbed her guns.

“My husband just passed away. I’m here by myself with my infant baby. Can I please get a dispatch out here immediately?” McKinley pleaded.

Twenty minutes went by with no police response. McKinley fired, killing one of the two men, both of whom were armed with 12-inch knives.

“It was either going to be him or my son. And it wasn’t going to be my son,” McKinley told reporters. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a woman with a child.”

As the mother of a 15-month old daughter, I second that.

In October 2012, 12-year-old Kendra St. Clair was also at home alone when a home invader kicked in her back door. Her mother advised her over the phone to hide in the bathroom. Luckily, the preteen grabbed her parents’ handgun first—and shot the intruder in the shoulder.

“When I had the gun, I didn’t think I was actually going to have to shoot somebody,” she told ABC News. “I think it’s going to change me a whole lot, knowing that I can hold my head up high and nothing can hurt me anymore.”

Now that’s girl power.

Two weeks ago, Abilene resident Lawanda Taylor was awakened at 2 am by a break-in. The intruder turned out to be her violent ex-boyfriend, who began assaulting her. Taylor managed to grab her gun and shoot her attacker in the side—likely saving her own life and the lives of her two children.

Last Friday, a Georgia mother spotted a strange man breaking into her home with a crowbar. She hid her 9-year-old twins in a crawlspace and called 911. When the intruder discovered the family, she shot him five times with her revolver.

Guns can’t and shouldn’t be used for self-defense? Tell that to these women and countless others who never make the news. Every two minutes, a woman in this country is sexually assaulted. Three are murdered every day—a third of them by boyfriends, husbands, or exes. Millions become victims of crimes like robbery.

“My wife is a hero. She protected her kids,” Donnie Herman, the Georgia woman’s husband, told reporters last week. “Her life is saved, and her kids’ life is saved… She did what she was supposed to do as responsible, prepared gun owner.”

I couldn’t agree more. America might be a dangerous place for women, but it’s less dangerous when they can defend themselves with a gun.

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Ashley Herzog
January 8, 2013 •Leave a Comment
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Good Guys With Guns

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Ashley Herzog
January 8, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

That statement, from NRA president Wayne LaPierre, was immediately turned into a laugh line by the press, deemed everything from “deadly spin” to “delusional” to “paranoid.” The New York Daily News proclaimed that anti-gun cranks—oops, I mean “mental health experts”—who had never met LaPierre had diagnosed him as crazy.

As someone who went to journalism school and has worked in media for years, I’m used to this. Left-leaning editors and reporters declare what “everyone” knows and “everyone” thinks, while pretending to be objective. Their preferred method of slanting the news is covering stories that bolster their worldview while completely ignoring others. Because whether the “good guy” is a police officer or a private citizen, LaPierre’s statement is absolutely true—and several incidents ignored by the media prove it.

Two days after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a San Antonio man burst into the Mayan 14 movie theater and began shooting, “sending panicked moviegoers rushing to exits and ducking for cover,” according to MySanAntonio.com. But instead of becoming the next James Holmes, the suspect was shot by an off-duty cop. Unlike the Aurora theater shooting, the incident ended with only two wounded—thanks to a good guy with a gun.

How many of you have heard the name “Mayan 14” before today? Is it any surprise that a network like CNN, which employs Piers Morgan, let this story slip under the radar?

When most Americans hear “school shooting,” they think Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook. They’re all incidents where the gunmen took a dozen lives or more. We rarely think of Edinboro, Pennsylvania; Pearl, Mississippi; or the Appalachian School of Law. Why? School shootings there were all halted by good guys with guns. They also had dramatically lower death tolls—one, two, and three, respectively.

At the Appalachian School of Law, the gunman was tackled by three men, two of whom had rushed to their cars to retrieve their guns. The media covered the story—but selectively edited the details.

“What is so remarkable is that out of 280 separate news stories in the week after the event, just four stories mentioned that the students who stopped the attack had guns,” wrote economist John Lott in his book More Guns, Less Crime. “In the other public school shootings where citizens with guns have stopped attacks, rarely do more than one percent of the news stories mention that citizens with guns stopped the attacks.”

The media deemed LaPierre’s “good guys with guns” line as a delusion of wannabe cowboys everywhere, who fantasize about Wild West-style shootouts with cartoon villains. Maybe they should go back and read one of my favorite Townhall columns of all time: Chicks Carrying Guns and Kicking Tail by Mary Katharine Ham.

Ham’s examples aren’t fantasies or hypotheticals. They’re true stories of women who chased away thugs, rapists and thieves with guns. The potential victims included elderly women and a pregnant mother of two, who shot an armed gunman who kicked in her door. A woman named Charmaine Dunbar was accosted by a rifle-toting gunman and shot him twice with her handgun. It turned out he was a suspect in six sexual assaults in her area.

As Ham put it, “This is the kind of women’s empowerment that gets me going.”

The mainstream media might have a bigger audience and more influence, but the conservative media should refuse to ignore these stories and countless others. Instead of letting the anti-gun camp control the debate, let’s turn “Mayan 14” into a household name.

 



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Can You Imagine King George III Telling Our Nation’s Founders They Couldn’t Have Muskets?

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
January 7, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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Don’t you love how the Left and their step-n-fetch media mavens are trying to make law-abiding gun owners the bad guys? You don’t? Yeah, me neither.

From Hollywood’s heavily armed guarded elite to the radical, anti-gun commie rag Journal News, peaceful and upright average Joes are being isolated and concentrated on as the bane of America’s existence just because we righteously and lawfully keep and bear arms.

Hollywood has even cobbled together a little tsk-tsk black and white video demanding our government do something about gun violence. That would be the very gun violence they have glamorized on the big screen for the last few decades. Hello.

I believe the total head count of the people slaughtered on film from all the participants from the “Demand a Plan” anti-gun clip comes out to a whopping 100,000 on screen murders.

Yes, Hollywood, please lecture us about gun violence wrecking our culture. Life imitates art, morons, and your films probably spawned half of the killers’ bloody dreams for the last two decades. Lecture us? Please. Physician, heal thyself.

Check it out: When upright, law-abiding Americans want your opinion on guns we’ll give it to you, Hollyweird. Now, go back to Spago and suck on some edamame beans, you duplicitous little dandies.

Oh, and by the way, if you truly want to stem the tide of violent deaths, you should have made a video about the danger of hammers and clubs, as the FBI reports they kill more people every year than rifles do. Dorks.

You know what else is funny? The multitudinous politicians and pundits—mostly progressives—telling us what type of guns we should and should not own. “Oh, we shouldn’t have semi-automatic weapons with thumb holes and extended mags,” they say. “You should only have hunting guns,” they opine.

First off, if you think for a second that Leftists are cool with hunting and Americans owning any type of firearms then you are definitely a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

These tree-humpers would have banned hunting and hunting guns yesterday if they had the wherewithal to do it. Secondly, the right to keep and bear arms was never about putting the bam to Bambi; it was always about the right to self-defense, especially against oppressive governments. Ah-hem.

Therefore, when a progressive tells you what kind of gun you should and shouldn’t own, you should yawn and go out and buy what they just said you shouldn’t have, like millions of other Americans have.

Finally, can you imagine if King George told our original rebels that they shouldn’t own a musket? The Brown Bess, the Charleville and the Kentucky long rifle were the military/police weapons of the day, ladies and gents. “Yes, by George, you colonists shouldn’t have a musket. Who needs a musket? You can hunt with a bow and arrow or a slingshot or a snare. No one needs a dangerous musket. We have the muskets, and we’ll protect you … maybe.”

Our founding rebels with a cause would have said (did say), “Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, Georgie Boy. We’ll leave our self-defense to ourselves. Now bugger off, you snaggle toothed oppressor, and don’t make me use this.”

Oh, one last thing: Here’s a little history lesson regarding gun-grabbing and the carnage that ensued:

  • In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
  • In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
  • Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
  • China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
  • Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
  • Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
  • Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
  • Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the 20th century because of gun control: 56 million.

You won’t see this data on the U.S. evening news or hear politicians disseminating this information. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws adversely affect only the law-abiding citizens.

Take note, Americans.

 

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The Assault Weapons Ban Didn’t Work Then and It Won’t Work Now

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
January 3, 2013  •Leave a Comment
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Senator Dianne Feinstein is queuing up come January 2013 to retable—yet again—an Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) in order to “severely mitigate the possibilities of another Sandy Hook atrocity.” Great idea, Dianne, as the first AWB that Clinton signed into law worked wonders in schools from 1994-2004. It was awesome. It panned out wonderfully aside from the following:

  • November 7, 1994: Wickliffe, Ohio: (Wickliffe Middle School shooting) Keith Ledeger, 37, a former student at the school, shot and killed custodian Pete Christopher and wounded four other adults.
  • January 12, 1995: Seattle, Washington: A 15-year-old Garfield High School student left school during the day and returned with his grandfather’s 9mm semiautomatic handgun. He wounded two students.
  • October 12, 1995: Blackville, South Carolina: (Blackville-Hilda High School shooting) Anthony Sincino, 16, killed one teacher and wounded another before committing suicide.
  • November 15, 1995: Lynnville, Tennessee: (Richland High School shooting) James Rouse, 17, killed a student and teacher and seriously wounded another teacher with a .22-caliber rifle.
  • February 2, 1996: Moses Lake, Washington: (Frontier Middle School shooting) Barry Loukaitis, 14, killed a teacher and two students and wounded another student when he opened fire on his algebra class.
  • August 15, 1996: San Diego, California: (San Diego State University shooting) Frederick Martin Davidson, a 36-year-old graduate student killed three professors that he believed were involved in a conspiracy against him.
  • September 17, 1996: State College, Pennsylvania: (Hetzel Union Building shooting) Jillian Robbins, 19, shoots and kills one student and injures two outside.
  • February 19, 1997: Bethel, Alaska: Bethel Regional High School student Evan Ramsey, 16, shot and killed the school’s principal and one student, and wounded two other students.
  • October 1, 1997: Pearl, Mississippi: (Pearl High School shooting) Luke Woodham, 16, murdered his mother at home before killing his ex-girlfriend and another student and wounding seven others at Pearl High School. He and his friends were said to be outcasts who worshiped Satan.
  • November 27, 1997: West Palm Beach, Florida: Conniston Middle School student Tronneal Magnum, 14, fatally shot Johnpierre Kamel, 14, outside school after an argument over a wristwatch.
  • December 1, 1997: West Paducah, Kentucky: (Heath High School shooting) Three students were killed and five wounded by Michael Carneal, 14, as they participated in a prayer circle.
  • December 15, 1997: Stamps, Arkansas: Joseph “Colt” Todd, 14, concealed in a wooded area on school grounds, shoots and wounds two students as they were entering Stamps High School.
  • March 24, 1998: Craighead County, Arkansas: Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, killed four students and one teacher and wounded ten others as Westside Middle School emptied during a fire alarm intentionally set off by Golden.
  • April 24, 1998: Edinboro, Pennsylvania (Parker Middle School dance shooting) Andrew Wurst, 14, fatally shot teacher John Gillette, 48, and wounded two students and a teacher at an 8th grade graduation dance.
  • May 19, 1998: Fayetteville, Tennessee: Jacob Davis, 18, shoots Robert Creson, 18, in a dispute over a girl.
  • May 21, 1998: Springfield, Oregon: After killing his parents at home, Kip Kinkel, 15, drove to Thurston High School where he shot and killed two students and wounded 25 others.
  • June 15, 1998: Richmond, Virginia: A 14-year-old student of Armstrong High School wounds a teacher and a school volunteer.
  • December 10, 1998: Detroit, Michigan: Professor Andrzej Olbrot is killed by graduate student Wlodzimierz Dedecjus, 48.
  • April 20, 1999: Littleton, Colorado: (Columbine High School massacre) Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, killed 12 students and one teacher, and wounded 21 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School.
  • May 20, 1999: Conyers, Georgia: (Heritage High School shooting) Six students injured by Thomas Solomon Jr., 15.
  • November 19, 1999: Deming, New Mexico: A 13-year-old girl fatally shot at Deming Middle School by Victor Cordova Jr., 13. Cordova stated he had intended to commit suicide but was jostled by others and the gun moved.
  • February 29, 2000: Elementary School, Flint, Michigan: 6-year-old Dedrick Owens, youngest-ever school shooter. Kayla Rolland was the single fatality.
  • May 26, 2000: Lake Worth, Florida: Lake Worth Middle School Florida teacher Barry Grunow was fatally shot by his student, 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill, who had returned to school after being sent home at 1 p.m. by the assistant principal for throwing water balloons. Brazill returned to school on his bike with a 5-inch Raven and four bullets stolen from his grandfather the week before. Brazill was an honor student. Grunow was a popular teacher and Brazill’s favorite.
  • August 28, 2000: University of Arkansas shooting at Fayetteville, Arkansas: At approximately 12:14 pm, Dr. John R. Locke, 67, Director of the Comparative Literature Program was shot and killed in his office by James E. Kelly, 36, a Comparative Literature PhD candidate who had recently been dismissed from the program for lack of progress toward his degree. Kelly shot Dr. Locke three times before taking his own life in Dr. Locke’s office after it was cordoned off by campus police.
  • September 26, 2000: Darrel Johnson, 13, offender in Louisiana school shooting with 1 student fatality.
  • March 5, 2001: Charles Andrew William, age 15, offender in California school shooting at Santana High School, 15 wounded 2 of whom died.
  • March 30, 2001: Donald R. Burt Jr., age 18, offender in Indiana school shooting with 1 student fatality.
  • September 24, 2003: John Jason McLaughlin, age 15, offender in Minnesota school shooting with 2 student fatalities.
  • February 2, 2004: Unidentified offender in Washington, DC school shooting with 1 student fatality.
  • May 7, 2004: Unidentified 17-year-old offender in Maryland school shooting with 1 student fatality.

And that’s excluding the Fairchild Air Force Base Massacre in 1994; the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Massacre in 1995; the Caltrans Maintenance Yard Massacre in 1997; the Connecticut State Lottery Headquarters Massacre in 1998; the Wedgewood Baptist Church Massacre of 1999; the Xerox Office Building Massacre in 1999; the Edgewater Technology Office Massacre in 2000; and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people (in which the culprits used box cutters and airplanes to pull that one off). We should have had an Assault Box Cutter and Airplane Ban in place I guess.

Yep, excluding the aforementioned, the AWB that the Left put into practice nearly two decades ago really mitigated murderous schoolyard and workplace evil for its ten-year run, right?

Ah, who am I kidding? The Assault Weapons Ban didn’t work. School shootings shot through the roof, and lo and behold killers still found a way around the uber-strict regulations to carry out their death wishes with an assortment of weapons. Yep, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the biggest spike in school shootings in our nation’s short history occurred during the initial AWB. Google it and get back to me.

Oh, and another thing according to a comprehensive Congressional Research Service report on guns and gun control legislation: Less than 2% of 203,300 state and federal prisoners who were armed during the crime for which they were incarcerated “used, carried, or possessed a semiautomatic assault weapon.” If the hooligans did use a gun it was mostly your normal, non-funky firearm, i.e. mostly hunting guns and non-”assault” weapons. But we can rest assured that the Progressives would never come after our Remington 870s and our revolvers (because they promised). Never. Ever. Ever.

In addition to the AWB not really stemming the tide of gun violence in the public school systems, it sure didn’t calm things down in the “gun-free” Windy City, as Chi-town racked up a whopping 7,636 murders during the Clinton ban.

Speaking of Chicago, this year alone 446 kids have been shot where guns have been verboten, and just this week Chicago hit 500 murders that have now occurred in the “gun free” Toddlin’ Town for 2012.

It appears as if our former AWB and our current “gun free” zones don’t work.

 



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Gun Owners: Should We Listen to Bob Costas?

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Doug Giles
December 9, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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As most of you know, during a football game last week Bob Costas lectured us po’ goofy Americans about the evils of a “gun culture” and how we need to evolve away from being obsessed with firearms. As soon as I heard that drivel roll off Mr. C’s tongue I ordered another 30/06, a sweet Walther PPK and a custom .416 Rigby turnbolt. Cowabunga, Bob. Thanks for reminding me to buy more guns.

First off, let me help you, Robert: Guns do not kill people. Dads with daughters do. Oh, and BTW, Planned Parenthood kills a lot of people … like real innocent babies … like the most vulnerable form of all humanity. Why don’t you piss and moan about PP, Roberto? What’s that I hear? Crickets? Yep, crickets from Costas on the evils of the abortion mills. I would’ve thought that crime would have made Bobby incensed. Oh, well.

Another thing I thought was weird was Bob launching into an anti-gun diatribe during a football game. A football game, BC? Look, I know he was trying to be relevant in his commentary as it related to Belcher’s murder/suicide, but whizzing on guns to a football crowd is like pooh-poohing pasta and red wine to Italians. You should have saved that lecture for a figure skating event where the male contestants are sashaying to Spandau Ballet, doing pirouettes and floating around in unitards with glitter in their hair. You could have come on during a gentle moment and said, “Don’t you think we have too many guns? You do? Me too.”

When it comes to the topic of self-defense I couldn’t give a flibbertigibbet what the heavily guarded Bob Costas says about my right to keep and bear as many firearms as I want. On such a serious topic, I take my cue from a high power. No, I’m not talking about Chuck Norris. I’m talking about Jesus Christ. Yes, what saith the second person of the godhead is what I want to know.

Now, when discussing what Christ would green light in regard to defending one’s self, it’s usually good to actually go to the gospels, read them and then draw conclusions. Here’s what I’ve gotten after scouring Scripture a few times:

1. In His earthly ministry, Jesus didn’t carry a weapon except the time when He took a whip (a whip! You gotta love it!) and drove the TBN clowns out of the temple. He didn’t chide them or write them a strong but tasteful e-mail asking them to please not do that kind of stuff in church.

What did the meek and mild Messiah do? He whipped them. I wonder if the Christ-is-a-pacifist-wuss Christian can picture sweet Jesus laying the leather to the backs of the marketers who were making His Father’s house a place of merchandise.

If Christ were to do that today He’d be thrown in prison, and 99.9% of churches in the USA wouldn’t have Him speak at their annual Hallelujah Aren’t We Fabulous conference because Jesus wouldn’t be behaving very “Christ-like.”

2. It’s clear from Scripture that Jesus didn’t need weapons because He had at His disposal an angelic host that could flatten armies. I unfortunately don’t have that capability.

Christ had supernatural protection, and His disciples carried swords. I, too, believe that God supernaturally protects me, to some degree, because I should have been dead a long time ago. However, should my guardian angel be napping or busy doing something else other than trying to keep up with my dumb ass, I’ll be okay because Smith & Wesson art with me as well.

3. Lastly, in Luke 22:36-38 Christ told His disciples, even though He personally did not pack a weapon, that they, in light of His departure, should get a deadly weapon—namely a sword. Check it out …

And he [Jesus] said to them [His disciples], “But now, whoever has a money belt is to take it along, likewise also a bag, and whoever has no sword is to sell his coat and buy one. For I tell you that this which is written must be fulfilled in Me, ‘And he was numbered with transgressors’; for that which refers to Me has its fulfillment.” They said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” And He said to them, “It is enough.”

Jesus told them—didn’t ask or mildly suggest—but told His buddies to sell their leather jacket if need be and buy a sword. The sword that Christ told His compadres to purchase was not a QVC decorative Claymore to hang on their walls to commemorate the good times they had when Yeshua was around. The original word used for sword in this text was a large knife used for killing animals and cutting flesh. It was particularly fashioned for short, deadly thrusts in hand-to-hand combat.

Jesus didn’t tell them to carry a whistle, a shofar horn, or a bag of sand to blow in bad guys’ eyes, but a dagger-like sword—a vicious, nasty and deadly weapon not used for cutting vegetables, spreading butter or splitting a bagel but for violently tapping a lung or heart in case of an attack. Now, in a 21st century WWJD context, even though He didn’t personally carry a weapon, what do you think He thinks about His followers defending themselves with deadly force, huh, Mr. Costas?



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