Month: March 2011

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Best Secretary Of State Ever Says Obama

March 19, 2011 by

As President Obama has now made the decision to send the U.S. armed forces to the shores of Tripoli again, I stumbled across this little tidbit.

Obama who made a rare appearance at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department to attend the holiday reception party hosted by the Washington’s vibrant diplomatic community by Clinton said, “I think there’s a consensus building that this may be one of the best Secretaries of State we’ve ever had in this country’s history.”

I guess that would be because Hillary isn’t a dead white guy like these other former Secretaries of State: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, Cordell Hull, George Marshall and Dean Acheson. Or even a living white guy like Henry Kissinger who wrote the book on foreign policy that I used in college.

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SAF Responds To NJ AG

March 17, 2011 by

The Second Amendment Foundation posted this response to the New Jersey Attorney General’s brief in Muller v. Maenza on their Facebook page.

NJ Attorney General Argues That The Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms Does Not Apply Outside the Home and

That the Public Needs to be Protected From Those Legally Carrying!

On March 16, the New Jersey Attorney General filed its final lower court response in the recently-filed lawsuit challenging New Jersey’s extreme and subjective handgun carry laws.

As in its previous papers, the Attorney General again trashed the Second Amendment, arguing that the right to bear arms does not apply outside the home, and that New Jersey’s carry laws are constitutional and necessary to protect the public from those who legally carry firearms.

The federal lawsuit, filed in November of last year by Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the Second Amendment Foundation, and six individual plaintiffs, challenges New Jersey’s unconstitutional “justifiable need” standard for issuance of handgun carry permits – a nearly impossible standard to meet that has all but eliminated the right to self defense with a firearm in the Garden State.

“It is now crystal clear that the State of New Jersey has no intention of ever respecting the right to defend yourself with a firearm outside the home, and will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into compliance with the Heller and McDonald decisions,” said ANJRPC President Scott Bach. “With this lawsuit, we intend to do just that, even if we have to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Bach.

SAF founder Alan Gottlieb added, “ With the help of our members and supporters we will fund this legal action all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court just like we did with McDonald vs. Chicago. This case will impact states all across the country.”

The case is now submitted for consideration by a U.S. District Court Judge, who could rule as early as September. Appeals are anticipated regardless of the decision.

SAF will keep you apprised of major case developments as they occur. Please watch for future alerts.

Join The Fight!

Support SAF Efforts to Restore The Second Amendment in every state.

Please donate to SAF’s Litigation Projects now!

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Gun Control ≠ Gun Safety

March 17, 2011 by 2 Comments

There seems to be an effort going on either in the media or within the gun prohibitionist camp to portray their efforts at gun control and gun banning as gun safety.

Case in point – Jackie Calmes of the New York Times. In her article published Tuesday noting that the NRA was declining to meet with President Obama for his so-called stakeholder’s meeting on gun issues, she referred to the gun control groups as either gun safety advocates or gun safety groups.

From the lead paragraph:

More than two months after the Tucson shootings, the administration is calling together both the gun lobby and gun safety groups to find common ground.

Later, speaking about Mayor Bloomberg and his group of Illegal Mayors, she said:

But gun safety advocates, including a group of mayors headed by Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, called on Mr. Obama to do more, including endorsing legislation to ban high-capacity magazines like those used in the Arizona attack.

I find calling a group like the Brady Campaign a “gun safety” group highly ironic given their rabid opposition to one of the best and tested gun safety programs around. That is, the Eddie Eagle program. Likewise, the Violence Policy Center has opposed the Eddie Eagle gun safety program likening it to “Joe Camel with Feathers”.

Gun control groups are not now nor have they ever been anything that could be remotely called a gun safety group. However, I think we will see them trying to reposition themselves as such in an effort to try and make up all their lost ground with the public. We need to call them and their media allies out on it every time we see or hear that claim.

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Plagiarism At The Washington Post

March 17, 2011 by 2 Comments

The Washington Post has a mini-scandal on its hands. It seems that they had to acknowledge that their Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sari Horwitz had lifted copy from the Arizona Republic without attribution. In order words, she plagiarized it.

Plagiarism is both cheating and cutting corners in your research. It should call into question the rest of the plagiarist’s work.

Sari Horwitz is the co-author with James Grimaldi of the Washington Post’s anti-gun screed (or investigation as they call it) The Hidden Life of Guns. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

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Get Your Eyes On Target Faster

March 17, 2011 by

The NSSF has been putting out a lot of instructional videos lately. One of the latest is how to get your eyes on target faster when wingshooting. After seeing the video the thought came to me that the techniques as well as the mechanics of how the eye works would apply for more than wingshooting. If the target – or bad guy – is moving, how the eye acquires the target is going to be the same whether you are using a shotgun, an AR-15, or a Glock.

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Bill To Repeal Pistol and Crossbow Permits Introduced In NC

March 17, 2011 by 3 Comments

A bill was introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly today that would repeal the requirement to get a permit from your local sheriff’s department in order to purchase a pistol or a crossbow. The bill, HB 390, is sponsored by Rep. Michael Wray (D-Northampton) and Rep. Mark Hilton (R-Catawba).

This is a change that is long overdue given the NICS system. I’m not sure how, why, or when a permit was required to purchase a crossbow. However, the requirement to obtain a permit from the local sheriff dates from 1919. Less than 20 years earlier, the Democrats had regained control of the North Carolina state government on a platform of strict segregation. Pistol permits were a way of ensuring only the “right people” were armed with sidearms and the thought was that the local sheriff would know who those people were. It goes without saying that an African-American was de facto not one of the “right people”.

It is past time for this vestige of the Jim Crow South to be gone.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF NORTH CAROLINA
SESSION 2011
H D
HOUSE DRH50130-LH-52B (01/19)
Short Title: Repeal Pistol/Crossbow Transfer Permit. (Public)
Sponsors: Representatives Wray and Hilton (Primary Sponsors).
Referred to:

*DRH50130-LH-52B*

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED

AN ACT TO REPEAL THE STATE LAW THAT REQUIRES A PERSON TO OBTAIN A LICENSE OR PERMIT TO PURCHASE, SELL, GIVE AWAY, RECEIVE, OR OTHERWISE TRANSFER A PISTOL OR CROSSBOW.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1. G.S. 14-402 is repealed.
SECTION 2. G.S. 14-403 is repealed.
SECTION 3. G.S. 14-404 is repealed.
SECTION 4. G.S. 14-405 is repealed.
SECTION 5. G.S. 14-406 is repealed.
SECTION 6. G.S. 14-406.1 is repealed.
SECTION 7. G.S. 14-407.1 is repealed.
SECTION 8. G.S. 14-408 is repealed.
SECTION 9. This act becomes effective December 1, 2011.

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Some Pictures From CCRKBA Rally In Los Angeles

March 16, 2011 by

The CalGuns Foundation, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, CalGuns.net, CCRKBA, and the Second Amendment Foundation sponsored a rally today in Los Angeles to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Illegal Mayor’s plans for more gun control. It also featured CCRKBA’s Guns Save Lives rolling billboard truck.

Below are some pictures from the event posted by Eugene Tan. I see a lot of great signs with a lot of great Oleg Volk photos in them.

Congratulations are due to Gene Hoffman and all the attendees at this event as well as to the sponsors.

Links to all the pictures from the event can be found here.

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College Planning Courtesy of CSGV

March 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is horrified at the thought that trained, state-certified, law-abiding adults should be allowed to carry concealed on the property of higher education institutions. To that end, they have established a new website called Armed Campuses. The website lists those schools where concealed carry on campus is permitted.

CSGV tries to equate gun-free zones as safe places.

The overwhelming majority of colleges and universities in the United States of America prohibit the carrying of firearms on their campuses. These gun-free policies have helped to make our postsecondary education institutions some of the safest places in the country.

To justify this position they use 1999 stats from the Department of Education that says that the criminal homicide rate on college campuses is lower than the criminal homicide rate for the United States as a whole. While their stats may be correct insofar as they go, no effort is made to compare rates for urban campuses versus rural campuses or anything in between. Moreover, using 1999 stats cuts out the murders that happened at gun-free Virginia Tech and gun-free Northern Illinois University.

The site tries to say that rapes and other violent crimes perpetrated against college students happens off campus 93% of the time. That is like saying that if a student at UNC-Chapel Hill is robbed on the north side of Franklin Street it is off-campus crime while if it happened on the south-side it may well have been on campus. It is still a violent crime.

When discussing so-called gun-free zones, I prefer to remember what Massad Ayoob said about them on Tom Gresham’s GunTalk radio program a few years ago. He said “so-called gun-free zones are nothing but hunting preserves for psychopaths.”

If I were a parent, I would use the Armed Campuses website as a place to look for a place to send my child and not as a place to avoid.