Uncategorized

Uncategorized

They’ll Be Accused Of Indoctrinating The Youth For Sure

December 18, 2013 by 1 Comment

Any time that a gun rights organization holds training or educational events for youth they get accused of indoctrination by the gun prohibitionists. Well, the NRA Foundation and the Friends of the NRA are sponsoring 45 scholarships for the NRA Youth Education Summit in 2014.

Forty-five outstanding current high school sophomores and juniors from across the United States are chosen each year to travel to the nation’s capital, where they participate in the weeklong educational opportunity. The summit encourages young adults to become active and knowledgeable U.S. citizens by learning about the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the federal government, and the importance of being active in civic affairs. The 2014 summit will take place Monday, June 23 – Sunday, June 29. Click here to download the application to get started today!

Activities on the schedule include:

  • Guest speakers at NRA Headquarters and the National Firearms Museum


  • Competitive debates with other high school students from across the nation

  • Informative tours at historic sites and monuments in and around Washington, D.C.

  • Meeting national leaders from Capitol Hill and around Washington, D.C.

In addition to the week in Washington D.C., Y.E.S. participants compete for $30,000 in college scholarships. The first round of awards totals $15,000 and is given at the conclusion of the Y.E.S. program. A second round of scholarships is comprised of $15,000 and involves a second application, available to the participants after they go through the Y.E.S. program.

Since the program’s inception in 1996, more than 700 students have graduated from Y.E.S. and over $400,000 in scholarships has been awarded. Entry into the program requires submission of a completed application form, high school transcript, three-page essay on the Second Amendment, one-page personal statement, and three letters of recommendation.

This is enough to cause the Sarah Bradys and Shannon Watts of the gun prohibitionist world to have the vapors.

As if that was not reason enough not to encourage a high school sophomore or junior to apply, here are 10 more in Traditions magazine.

For additional information on the NRA Youth Education Summit please call 1-800-672-3888, ext. 1351 or email yes@nrahq.org

Uncategorized

Family Structure And School Shootings

December 18, 2013 by 4 Comments

Let me start this off by saying I was raised by a single mother. As I’ve alluded to many times, my father was an Army careerist. I am the unusual Army brat in that I didn’t move from base to base. My parents made the decision long before I was born that my dad would move base to base and on deployments while my mom maintained the family home in North Carolina. It don’t know why they came to this arrangement but it just was what they did. The result was that I saw my dad on occasional weekends and when he got leave. While my parents officially separated when I was nine, it really didn’t change the reality of things for me.

W. Bradford Wilcox of the American Enterprise Institute has a very interesting article in the National Review Online regarding what he calls “sons of divorce” and school shootings. He notes that most school shootings over the past year from Newtown to Arapahoe High School have involved young men whose parents were divorced or never married. Wilcox goes on to say that upheaval at home often finds its way to the world outside.

The social scientific evidence about the connection between violence and broken homes could not be clearer. My own research suggests that boys living in single mother homes are almost twice as likely to end up delinquent compared to boys who enjoy good relationships with their father. Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson has written that “Family structure is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, predictor of variations in urban violence across cities in the United States.” His views are echoed by the eminent criminologists Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, who have written that “such family measures as the percentage of the population divorced, the percentage of households headed by women, and the percentage of unattached individuals in the community are among the most powerful predictors of crime rates.”

Why is fatherlessness such a big deal for our boys (almost all of these incidents involve boys)? Putting the argument positively, sociologist David Popenoe notes that “fathers are important to their sons as role models. They are important for maintaining authority and discipline. And they are important in helping their sons to develop both self-control and feelings of empathy toward others, character traits that are found to be lacking in violent youth.” Boys, then, who did not grow up with an engaged, attentive, and firm father are more vulnerable to getting swept up in the Sturm und Drang of adolescence and young adulthood, and in the worst possible way.

I was lucky in that I had a strong (and strong willed) mother who had taught high school for many years and was used to dealing with adolescent boys. I also had many good male role models in my life including uncles and Scout leaders. My father, while absent from my life for long stretches of time, did his best to keep involved through letters and through making sure I got plenty of good attention when he was at home. I still remember some of the fishing trips we took.

I think it is harder for young men and boys nowadays. Divorce is more prevalent, the media and the entertainment industry have denigrated the role of fathers in the family, and bullying in schools is more insidious through the use of social media. Good male role models are fewer and farther between. I don’t want to even get started on the role of schools and their emasculating curricula. Supporting and promoting the family as well as activities such as Scouting and organized athletics would not cure the problem of these broken young men but it might be a good start.

Uncategorized

Off To Boiling Springs

December 16, 2013 by 1 Comment

We are taking off to Boiling Springs, North Carolina in a few minutes to attend commencement at Gardner-Webb University. My stepdaughter Laura is receiving her MA in Elementary Education this morning. She finished what is normally a two year program in a year and a half and she did it with distinction.

The Complementary Spouse and I are extremely proud of her accomplishment.

The mascot of Gardner-Webb is the Bulldog and the mascot of UNC-Greensboro where she received her undergraduate degree is the Spartan. I guess that makes her a Spartan Bulldog. Given the way she battles for her kids against the educational bureaucracy, I think that is appropriate.

Go Laura!

Uncategorized

No More Silence Except For Supporters Of Civil Rights

December 16, 2013 by 2 Comments

As I mentioned in my weekend roundup, Kaaren Haldeman, North Carolina state director of Moms Demand Action, refused to let Sean Sorrentino into their event at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Durham on Saturday. Sean says in his blog today that it was projection on her part. While she might have disrupted a pro-rights event, he would have never disrupted their event especially in a house of worship.

Moms Demand Action are trying to use their supposed moral superiority to stifle any discussion of their proposals for more gun control. In a republic, it doesn’t work that way. Both sides of a debate should and must be heard for us to survive as a free society.

The video from the event is below. Sean, who has been studying this for a long time, makes the excellent point that most violent crime is committed by those with a criminal past.

Uncategorized

A Weekend Roundup

December 16, 2013 by 1 Comment

The weekend started out with a shooting at Arapahoe High School in Colorado. That it just happened to be on the eve of the first anniversary of the Newtown shootings may be just a coincidence. But like Tam, I doubt it.

The shooter turned out to be a disgruntled student who had a beef with the debate coach. Like all rampage shooters, he intended to wound or kill as many as possible. Again, like many rampage shooters in the past, when confronted by an armed school resource officer, he killed himself after severely wounding Claire Davis.

And the shooter’s firearm of choice? A pump-action shotgun legally purchased on December 6th after the shooter went through a background check.

The media has stepped up and performed its usual role of publicizing everything about the shooter. The only thing that they scrubbed from their description of him was a classmate’s characterization of the shooter as “a very opinionated socialist.” It became just “very opinionated“.

With Saturday being the first anniversary of the Newtown shootings, the gun prohibitionists were out in force. It started at the top with President Obama’s weekly address calling for more gun control.


So-called stay-at-home mom Shannon Watts and her group of demanding moms were out in force with their No More Silence events. North Carolina wasn’t immune to their events. I know we had one in Asheville and one in Durham. At the latter event, Sean Sorrentino was denied entry to Holy Cross Catholic Church by their state director Kaaren Haldeman who didn’t want his sort at their event. As Miguel says, once again we are the new negroes.

One of the words we keep hearing is consensus. As in a national consensus for universal background checks or a national consensus to do more to prevent “gun violence” (sic).  The other words are “common ground”. This is the line that Richard Feldman of the Independent Firearm Owners Association and Arkadi Gerney of the Center for American Progress are pushing in an op-ed in today’s LA Times. In exchange for us giving up on universal background checks, we might get a national carry law – a carry law with nationally-mandated training, etc.

Michael Bane does an excellent job at taking apart this “grand bargain”.  As for me, I am immediately suspicious of anything coming from Gerney who is the former executive director of Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors. Mr. Feldman may have done things to advance gun rights in the past when he was a NRA lobbyist but now seems just to be clinging to anything that will give him relevance.

What Mike Bloomberg cannot achieve at the national level, he plans to try to do at the state level. We saw what he did in Colorado. Kurt Hofmann reports that Mark Glaze considers the $15 million spent previously just dipping a toe in the water and that we should watch what a whole foot will do. David Codrea expands on Kurt’s report to discuss efforts by Bloomberg in the states.

An off the wall article in Salon, accuses those of us who believe in gun rights of having a “sick gun fetish” and and “Tea Party fantasies”. The article also accuses us of misreading the Second Amendment. I guess the “bitter clinger” here is the author who clings to a definition of the Second Amendment that the Supreme Court said was erroneous in the Heller case.

With the recent death of Nelson Mandela, I guess it isn’t surprising that the gun prohibitionists are starting to wax nostalgic about the anti-apartheid divestiture movement and wondering if it could work again. They cite Cerberus and its goal of selling Remington Outdoor aka Freedom Group due to pressure from pension funds. In the meantime, Remington’s Ilion, New York plant can’t make guns fast enough because sales have surged.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is coming under fire from The ARC who works with intellectually and developmentally disabled people. This is due to the BATFE’s use of mentally challenged persons in their sting operations. The ARC is calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to stop this practice and to have the DOJ Inspector General to start an investigation into it.

And finally, NPR did a report on Thursday about the Maryland Tenth Cavalry Gun Club. They are an organization of African-American shooters who seek to introduce black youth to responsible gun use along with a dose of history. The club takes its name from the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments and the black cavalrymen known as the “Buffalo Soldiers”.

Uncategorized

Practice Tips From Jim “Long Hunter” Finch

December 12, 2013 by 3 Comments

In one of the latest videos from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Jim “Long Hunter” Finch talks about how he goes about practicing for a match. While not everything about Cowboy Action Shooting or, for that matter, competition is applicable to daily life, some of the practice tips he suggests are.

I really like his suggestion that you practice not what you are with comfortable with but what makes you uncomfortable. In his case, as a natural right-hander, he’s more comfortable drawing from his right side as well as with moving left to right. In his practice sessions, he reverses that so that he is practicing what doesn’t come natural to him.

Uncategorized

John Dodson On His New Book

December 12, 2013 by

BATFE Senior Agent John Dodson was interviewed about his new book and Operation Fast and Furious on Cam & Company on Monday. It is an interesting interview which touched upon not only Fast and Furious but the culture within BATFE that led to using developmentally disabled individuals as middlemen.

I just picked up a copy of his book The Unarmed Truth: My Fight to Blow the Whistle and Expose Fast and Furious at my local Sam’s Club. I am looking forward to reading it between now and the New Year.

I’m glad to see it on the shelves at Sam’s Club because this means both the book and the scandal will get more exposure. I spoke with one of the product demonstrators at Sam’s who noticed the book in my cart. She was shocked when I told her the story behind Fast and Furious as she had never heard anything about it in the news.

It is a good interview and it flows right along. I suggest listening to the whole thing.

Uncategorized

If It Is Gun Deer Season, Expect To See “Men With Guns”

December 12, 2013 by 1 Comment

Police in Ohio recently responded to two reports of “men with guns”. The first report resulted in a lockdown of a high school and a middle school while the second had a number of police cruisers converging upon the scene along Interstate 70.

What in the world is going on in Ohio to cause all these reports of “men with guns”?

Deer season. Or more appropriately, deer season mixed with a healthy dose of hoplophobia.

In the first case, Pickerington North High School and Lakeview Junior High were locked down for about 30 minutes when a student reported a man with a rifle near the schools, said Pickerington Superintendent Rob Walker.

Fairfield County deputies determined that the man was a hunter on his own property. The same thing happened seven or eight years ago, Walker said.

Still, he’s glad students are paying attention: “When in doubt, let’s err on the side of safety.”

In the second case, Columbus police cruisers converged on the Near East Side after reports of a man in camouflage with a gun near I-70 and Lilley Avenue.

Officers soon declared it a nonemergency, saying the man was a lost hunter.

As Miss Emily Litella would have said, never mind.

Uncategorized

“Carrying A Loaded Firearm Is The Gateway Crime To Committing A Murder”

December 12, 2013 by 16 Comments



Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said in an interview with Dean Reynolds of CBS News that “carrying a loaded firearm is the gateway crime to committing a murder.” He said this during the course of the interview discussing how the Chicago police seize 130 “illegal” guns a week.

I don’t know about you but I have a hard time wrapping my head around McCarthy’s statement. Much of what McCarthy considers “illegal” is perfectly legal in the rest of the country. That would include such things as concealed carry, open carry, and firearms with standard capacity magazines. I see millions of Americans legally carrying a loaded firearm daily and murder does not begin to cross their minds even once.

While the state of Illinois has passed their shall-issue concealed carry law, it still is in the process of being implemented and no Illinois CCWs have been issued yet.

McCarthy points to the seizure of firearms as being responsible for the reduction in murders in Chicago this year. However, correlation is not causation especially when the police have concurrently stepped up their presence in high crime areas and put more resources into street-level intelligence gathering. If perhaps McCarthy put as much emphasis into suppressing violent street gangs as into suppressing firearms, Chicago might really see a dramatic decline in its murder rate. That would unfortunately deprive many Chicago politicians of a constituency so I doubt we’ll be seeing that.

McCarthy is pushing for a New York City-style law which provides a three year mandatory sentence for the illegal possession of a firearm. His efforts to get such a law passed in Illinois have stalled in the General Assembly.

Uncategorized

Guns Save Lives Day Is Also Bill Of Rights Day

December 11, 2013 by

In a happy coincidence, Guns Save Lives Day is also Bill of Rights Day. Both take place on Sunday, December 15th. Given that the Second Amendment IS a part of the Bill of Rights perhaps it is more than a happy coincidence.

One of the suggestions that the Citizens Committee makes as a way to observe Guns Save Lives Day is to attend a gun show. That’s not a bad idea given all the hoopla that the gun prohibitionists will try and make the day before which is the anniversary of the Newtown shootings. I’m sure that the gun prohibitionist forces will try to gain publicity for some of their goals such as so-called universal background checks and closing the non-existent gun show loophole (sic).

Originally, Guns Save Lives Day was scheduled for December 14th and it caused a lot of angst and gnashing of teeth about the politicizing of that sad day. Alan Gottlieb said at the time it was a coincidence that the day was the same as Newtown. Maybe yes and maybe no but in the end it was a smart move. It put the mainstream media on record in opposition to the politicization of the anniversary of the Newtown shootings. After getting them on record, CCRKBA and Alan Gottlieb moved the day to Sunday so as not to conflict with the anniversary of the Newtown shootings.

Below is their release on Guns Save Lives Day:

BELLEVUE, WA – With dozens of gun shows scheduled around the country this weekend, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms suggests that one way a gun owner can observe Sunday’s “Guns Save Lives Day” is to attend a gun show, and network with other firearms enthusiasts to protect the Second Amendment.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Washington Arms Collectors – which is holding a gun show this weekend in Puyallup, Wash. – noted that gun shows are “great places to meet like-minded law-abiding citizens and discuss common concerns.”

Click here to see a list of gun shows. ( http://gunssavelivesday.com/about/gun-show-list)

“One reason why gun prohibitionists are so determined to shut down gun shows is because they provide a venue where tens of thousands of honest citizens regularly gather, share information, enjoy camaraderie and talk politics,” Gottlieb said. “After all, gun prohibitionists are shamelessly exploiting the first anniversary of the Newtown tragedy on Saturday to push their anti-gun rights agenda.

“Gun shows also frequently offer firearms safety classes for new and even seasoned firearms owners,” he added. “So, in addition to all the other good reasons, education stands out as a major benefit.”

If not a gun show, then visit a gun range and practice with your defensive firearm, he suggested. Guns are used in self-defense as many as 2.5 million times a year by some estimates, and in the overwhelming majority of those cases, a shot is never fired. Good marksmanship and firearm familiarity are two critical components to any personal protection strategy.

People can also combine this Sunday’s observance with some Christmas shopping. Buy a new holster for the family member who has a defensive firearm, or a new box of ammunition, spare magazines or speed loaders.

“Perhaps the most important consideration,” Gottlieb said,” is that ‘Guns Save Lives Day’ coincides with Bill of Rights Day. Without a strong Second Amendment all other civil rights are in jeopardy. It is important to keep that in perspective.

“As with all other rights,” he observed, “the Second Amendment carries with it some important responsibilities, not the least of which is to protect our rights from being incrementally eroded by misguided or misrepresented legislation fueled by half-truths and outright lies.

“We must never allow a civil right to become a casualty of political correctness,” Gottlieb concluded.