gun control

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Ben Carson Tells The Truth And The Media Doesn’t Like It

October 9, 2015 by 1 Comment

You know that a Republican candidate has hit a nerve when all the mainstream media try to gang up on him (or her). The latest case in point is the mainstream media’s breathless attacks on Dr. Ben Carson for daring to suggest that the disarming of the Jews by the Nazis helped facilitate the Holocaust.

Carson made the suggestion in his new book A Perfect Union.  From ABC which made the issue one of their lead stories on the ABC Evening News with (anti-gun) David Muir.

In Carson’s new book “A Perfect Union,” Carson writes that “through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.”

Wolf Blitzer got in on the breathless outrage with the interview below:

What I found particularly sad was this comment from a spokesperson for the Anti-Defamation League:

“Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the organization. “The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.”

 I might remind Mr. Greenblatt that a very small number of firearms allowed Jewish resistance fighters to keep the Waffen-SS at bay in the Warsaw ghetto from April 19, 1943 until well into May. The final resistance was crushed on June 5th.

As to the rest of the media, I think a simple picture will suffice to say that Ben Carson was correct in saying the lack of arms allowed the Nazis to perpetrate their crimes with relative impunity. If a picture won’t suffice for the mainstream media, here is a link to the book so they can read it.

UPDATE: Joel Pollak writing at Breitbart called Dr. Carson’s comments a matter of historical fact. He also discussed a shooting class he took sponsored by Jews That Shoot. On the Polite Society Podcast, we have interviewed its founder Doris Montrose about that organization a number of times. She has consistently made the point that Jews should not be complacent and that they should have firearms to prevent a future holocaust.

Dave Kopel discussed the Warsaw Uprising in an article published yesterday in the Washington Post. It was in the context of a forthcoming book, “The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action: The Judeo-Christian Tradition”, that will be published in 2016.

Another eyewitness described the confusion in the German ranks: “There runs a German soldier shrieking like an insane one, the helmet on his head on fire. Another one shouts madly ‘Juden…Waffen…Juden… Waffen!’” [“Jews…weapons!”]

I think that answers the question of what might have happened if the Jewish population of Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe had not been disarmed.

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Are We Supposed To Be Surprised?

September 11, 2015 by 4 Comments

Shannon Watts of Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors loves her corrupt politicians. At least the ones that are for more and more gun control while they have their own armed security details. She tweeted the pictures below of Hillary Clinton signing a “whatever it takes” poster yesterday.

Hillary probably thought she was signing a poster with her campaign motto.

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They Wouldn’t Stand For That – So Why Should Gun Owners In SF

September 3, 2015 by 1 Comment

Imagine, if you will, a proposed ordinance from a San Francisco supervisor stating the proprietors of medical marijuana dispensaries must have a multi-zone video system in place and then forward the video along with records of every purchaser to the San Francisco Police Department. Mind you, even though marijuana for medical purposes can be prescribed under California law, it is still a Federal crime.

Being that it is San Francisco, let’s imagine another scenario. Say it was 1981 and the AIDS epidemic was starting. Public health officials knew it was hitting gay men disproportionately and suspected it was related to having multiple sexual partners. So as a public health measure, a San Francisco supervisor proposed that a video system be put in place at the city’s bath houses which were known meeting places for sex used by gay men. All the video along with a record of everyone who entered these bath houses was to be sent the SF Department of Public Health.

Can you imagine the outrage that either of these scenarios would cause? Any supervisor who even made such a proposal like either of these would be run out of town and encouraged to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge will he was at it.

SF Supervisor Mark Farrell has made such a proposal. However, it isn’t aimed at marijuana users or gay men but rather legal purchasers of arms and ammunition. A purchase which is not only made in full compliance with Federal and state law but is part of an enumerated right under the Constitution.

The first portion of Supervisor Farrell’s gun control package would simply require the videotaping of all gun and ammunition sales within San Francisco. The videotaping would also apply to other critical areas of the business premises, including, but not limited to, all places where firearms or ammunition are stored, handled, sold, transferred, or carried, including, but not limited to, all counters, safes, vaults, cabinets, cases, entryways, and parking lots.

The second portion of Supervisor Farrell’s gun control package would require any permittee who has the proper documentation to sell or transfer ammunition to keep records of their ammunition sales and transfer data for up to five-years, and electronically transmit the ammunition sales data at least weekly to the SFPD. The SFPD would develop the forms and information that would need to be regularly transmitted to the department, and at a minimum will include:
(1) The date of the transaction;
(2) The name, address and date of birth of the transferee;
(3) The number of the transferee’s current driver’s license or other government issued identification card containing a photograph of the transferee, and the name of the governmental authority that issued it;
(4) The brand, type, caliber or gauge, and amount of ammunition transferred;
(5) The transferee’s signature; and
(6) The name of the permittee’s agent or employee who processed the transaction.

Farrell, a lawyer and venture capitalist, represents some of the most expensive neighborhoods in San Francisco. Places where guns are considered icky except when in the hands of private security guards. He first made the proposal in July and plans to introduce them when the Board of Supervisors comes back from recess this month.

The impact of Farrell’s ordinance would be to force High Bridge Arms, the only gun store in San Francisco, to close or move out of San Francisco. Owner Steve Alcairo said they have 17 surveillance cameras in the store and shares the video with police when requested by court orders. However, this ordinance goes much further and Alcairo said he’d probably close if it passes.

“What we don’t do is voluntarily give private information to the police department. Voluntarily, we just don’t do that. People are very private about their information,” Alcairo told KPIX 5.


He believes if the new law passes it will have a chilling effect on his business…


“The element we’re concerned with, they don’t shop here. They don’t,” Alcairo said. “I mean you’re going to get video surveillance of people who are coming in here legally buying stuff with their identification, criminals are not doing that.”

Mr. Alcairo is correct. Criminals in San Francisco don’t shop at High Bridge Arms. They get their guns from former Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) and his tong friend Shrimp Boy among other illegal places.

This measure has nothing to do with crime, preventing criminals from getting guns, or public safety. It is a feel good measure by Supv. Farrell to look good among his constituents as they go home to their Victorian and Edwardian mansions in his Jordan Park-Laurel Heights neighborhood and shop in its high priced boutiques.

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Virginia Delegate Doesn’t Let A Tragedy Go To Waste

August 27, 2015 by 5 Comments

I got an email sent at 9:36pm Wednesday by Virginia Delegate Patrick Hope (D-Arlington) asking me to sign a Change.org petition asking for universal background checks in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Not only does this come less than 15 hours after a TV reporter and cameraman were murdered in Virginia but it explicitly ties the appeal to that.

The crime scene is still fresh and this blood dancer is reveling in it. Because the killer doesn’t fit the usual constructs, instead of blaming the person or even a broken mental health system, Del. Hope blames the gun. That is, the totally inanimate object that the killer appears to have purchased at retail after a FBI background check. While neither the killer nor the method in which he purchased the gun fits the narrative, this doesn’t stop Del. Hope from conflating this tragedy into a call for universal background checks.

Mr. Hope seems to be a person willing to abandon principles for political gain. According to his biography, he grew up in San Antonio, Texas, attended a Baptist high school, attended Catholic-run St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, and then moved to the DC area seeking fame and fortune. Along the way, he picked up a Masters and law degree from Catholic University while working on Capitol Hill. In the latest news from his website, he is proudly proclaiming he was given a major award from the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Pardon me if I am suffering from a little bit of cognitive dissonance. Less surprising is that he is also an Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health where much of the so-called scientific gun control research originates.

Rather than blaming the object used, I humbly suggest that Del. Hope look at both the role that the media played in setting this man off and the broken mental health system. Either one or both of these are more at fault here than the inanimate object that seems to have been legally purchased.

John –

You probably woke up this morning and saw the news just like I did: another terrible shooting occurred – this time in my home state of Virginia. From Newtown to Aurora to Charleston and now Moneta, Virginia, horrific acts of gun violence are becoming the norm in local communities across the nation.

We lost Alison Parker and Adam Ward today – two young journalists who were gunned down on live television. Their heartbreaking story mirrors so many others nationwide, where people who’ve been going about their lives – attending church, going to school, watching a movie, or just doing their jobs – have lost their lives to senseless acts of gun violence.

The time for change in my state is now. That’s why I started a petition on Change.org to call for comprehensive background checks for all gun purchases in Virginia. Will you please sign it?

As a Virginia State Delegate, I’ve supported common sense gun safety measures like background checks in the legislature – only to see them stall because of political gridlock, undue influence from the gun lobby, or just sheer apathy. We’ve seen tragedy in our backyards before with shootings like in Virginia Tech, and now again today in Moneta, but haven’t acted. We can’t let another one pass without collective action.

Polling shows that more than 92 percent of voters in Virginia support background checks for all gun purchases. And in the wake of today’s shooting, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe reaffirmed his commitment to pass universal background checks because he knows how important it is for my colleagues and I to pass this measure if we are truly going to call ourselves “public servants.”

Many people feel powerless in these situations because of the political climate that holds us back from real change. I’m asking my colleagues to put people first to get this done once and for all. I know we can’t end all acts of gun violence, but that doesn’t need to stop us from advancing common sense solutions like background checks that can help keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.

Please, sign my petition, and let’s try to take a small but important step forward in addressing the epidemic of gun violence in our country.

Thank you,

Del. Patrick Hope
Arlington, VA
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Frustrated Is Good; Stymied Is Even Better

July 24, 2015 by 1 Comment

The BBC’s North America editor Jon Sopel was given an exclusive interview with President Obama. In that interview, Mr. Obama said:

“If you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which, we do not have sufficient common-sense gun safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings,” Obama said. “If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands.”

I am proud to say that I have supported organizations and legislators who have helped stymie his assault on the Second Amendment. I know Mr. Obama thinks nothing of abrogating the rights of Americans by using his “pen and a phone”. When he mentions in the video below that he has 18 months to work on “gun violence” (sic), I take him at his word and am willing to fight him every step of the way. Nothing he has proposed or will propose is “common sense”.

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Can You Say Ironic?

July 10, 2015 by 4 Comments

The Washington Post ran a story yesterday regarding Hillary Clinton’s new push for gun control. They note that this marks a shift in presidential politics and is an effort on her part to out-lefty Bernie Sanders who has actually been not (too) bad on gun issues.

Hillary thinks it is good politics to run on restricting gun rights. What struck me about the story is this photo by Jim Young of Reuters that is used to illustrate the story.

Hillary is standing in front of the Iowa state flag which contains the motto, “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.” If that isn’t irony, I don’t know what is!

I don’t know if the photographer is a gun guy but he, either consciously or unconsciously, just illustrated the conflict between supporting Clinton and supporting Constitutional rights. The two just don’t go together.

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What I Missed Last Week

July 1, 2015 by 5 Comments

Last week in St. Louis was spent at the hospital with my mother-in-law. As a result, I didn’t get to comment on some of the issues that came up last week. It is too late to comment on everything that happened but I’d like to mention a couple of things in the “Never Let A Tragedy Go To Waste” category.

First up is the abuse of the funeral of Rev. Clementa Pinckney by President Obama for political purposes. To me a eulogy should be a discussion of the deceased’s life. It should be used to let others know how much the deceased loved his or her family. It should be used to point out the deceased’s accomplishments in life. It should be used to discuss the goodness of the deceased.

By all accounts, Clementa Pinckney was a good and pious man who loved his family and his church community. He was also an accomplished man in that he was elected to the South Carolina State Senate at the young age of 23. While he might have been a politician, he didn’t deserve having the President of the United States turn his funeral into a political attack on guns and the Confederate flag.

For too long, we’ve been blind to the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation. (Applause.) Sporadically, our eyes are open: When eight of our brothers and sisters are cut down in a church basement, 12 in a movie theater, 26 in an elementary school. But I hope we also see the 30 precious lives cut short by gun violence in this country every single day; the countless more whose lives are forever changed — the survivors crippled, the children traumatized and fearful every day as they walk to school, the husband who will never feel his wife’s warm touch, the entire communities whose grief overflows every time they have to watch what happened to them happen to some other place.

The vast majority of Americans — the majority of gun owners — want to do something about this. We see that now. (Applause.) And I’m convinced that by acknowledging the pain and loss of others, even as we respect the traditions and ways of life that make up this beloved country — by making the moral choice to change, we express God’s grace. (Applause.)

The second broader issue is the Confederate flag or, more correctly, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. To some it is a symbol of slavery and racism. To others it is a symbol of their Southern heritage for which their forefathers fought and died.

My great-great-grandfather Alexander Clay “Sandy” Morgan was a private in Co. K, 34th North Carolina Infantry along with his brothers Anderson and Eli. They both grew up in the northern part of Montgomery County, North Carolina and had enlisted (or more likely were drafted) in March 1863. Their regiment was part of the second wave of troops involved in the ill-fate Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. Sandy and Anderson survived the war while their brother Eli is reported to have died as a prisoner of war at Point Lookout, Maryland.

My Grandfather Richardson’s biological father, William Thomas Brewer, reportedly served in the Confederate Navy according to my cousin and family historian Rev. Van Thomas. I am sure there are more relatives that served the Confederacy if I dig deeper.

I have never owned a Confederate flag of any sort. I just haven’t. My mom was a New Yorker whose ancestors didn’t even arrive to this country until after the Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression). As my influence on these things came from my mother, familial ties to the Confederacy were just not emphasized.

Just as important, even though I had ancestors who served in the Confederate Army, the section of North Carolina from which they came was highly anti-slavery and anti-secessionist. This section of the Piedmont is referred to as the Quaker Belt by historians and tended to have many Southern Unionists. My grandfather was a staunch Republican and I surmise his political beliefs were tied to this anti-slavery, Southern Unionist core of thought in southern Randolph and northern Montgomery Counties.

Should the Confederate flag fly over a statehouse? No, that should be the US flag and the state flag. However, should a Confederate flag fly over a Confederate war memorial or over a historic site? Absolutely, positively yes. It is a reminder of our history both good and bad. As the philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I am sick to death of political correctness, talk of micro-aggressions, and other such nonsense. I am at the point where I’d fly the Confederate flag just out of spite even though I’ve never even owned one in the past.

Perhaps it was just as well that my focus last week was on my mother-in-law and not this stuff.

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Jim Crow Law Lives Until 2021

June 3, 2015 by 2 Comments

According to WRAL Raleigh, HB 562 – the Second Amendment Affirmation Act – was postponed for consideration until Wednesday. The House Rules Committee will vote on a committee substitute at 9am tomorrow. A summary of the committee summary can be found here and the actual text here. It does include the elimination of the pistol purchase permit but not until 2021. Dealers, however, would be allowed to sell handguns without a pistol purchase permit if they ran a NICS check on the person.

Come 2021, North Carolina residents would no longer need a permit when buying handguns under a redrafted omnibus firearms bill that circulated among members of the General Assembly Tuesday night.

The House Rules Committee is scheduled to vet the new version of HB 562 at 9 a.m. Wednesday. According to a summary of the bill provided to committee members, the measure still contains measures related to how doctors ask patients about firearms in their homes, although the language is loser than earlier versions of the bill.

Advocates for and against the measure were at the state Capitol on Tuesday. The lobbying group Moms Demand Action pressured lawmakers to turn back the bill, focusing particularly on the pistol permit provision. Meanwhile, the pro-gun lobbying group Grass Roots North Carolina pressured lawmakers to pass the bill.

The most scrutiny has focused on a provision that would repeal North Carolina’s pistol purchase permit system. As originally drafted, the bill would have ended the state’s pistol permit system in 2018. The measure up for consideration Wednesday morning would extend the system’s life until 2021.

Sen. Furnifold Simmons and early N&O owner Josephus Daniels are probably laughing from the grave over this turn of events. They were the architects of the racist white supremacy policies of the North Carolina Democratic Party. The co-sponsor of the Senate bill that eventually became law was none other than Simmons’ former brother-in-law Sen. Earle A. Humphrey (D-Goldsboro).  Simmons’ dominance of North Carolina politics in that era was so far reaching that it was referred to as the Simmons Machine just like Richard Daley’s dominance of Chicago politics was called the Daley Machine.

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Dinner And Education Event On The Racist Roots Of Gun Control

March 19, 2015 by

Historian and blogger Clayton Cramer will be the featured speaker at an event co-sponsored by the CalGuns Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition on March 29th in Sacramento, California. He will be speaking on the racist roots of gun control. Other speakers include Second Amendment attorneys Don Kilmer, Bradley Benbrook, and Stephen Duvernay, CalGuns Foundation chairman Gene Hoffman, and Firearms Policy Coalition president Brandon Combs.

More info on the event is below. If you are in the Sacramento area on the 29th, this sounds like an interesting event. On a personal note, it is great to see Clayton doing a public event like this given his stroke about a year and a half ago. If you can’t make the event, Clayton has put together a YouTube video on the topic including PowerPoint slides.

Sacramento, CA – Firearms Policy Coalition and The Calguns Foundation have announced a special dinner and education event featuring noted Second Amendment historian Clayton E. Cramer, who will give his talk The Racist Roots of Gun Control.
Cramer will be joined at the March 29 event by firearms law and policy experts including noted civil rights attorneys Donald Kilmer and Bradley Benbrook, Calguns Foundation Chairman Gene Hoffman, and Firearms Policy Coalition President Brandon Combs. Speakers will be taking questions from the audience following the talks.
Tickets for the event, which can be purchased at FPC’s website, are $60 per person and include a filet of beef, chicken, or salmon dinner. College, university, and law school students can purchase tickets at a reduced rate of $30 per person.
Event: The Past, Present, and Future of Second Amendment Policy and Litigation — A Special Evening with Historian Clayton E. Cramer and Friends
Date: March 29, 2015
Time: 5:30 p.m. guest check-in & mixer; dinner 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. (or until Q&A concluded)
Location: Embassy Suites Sacramento – Riverfront Promenade (link to hotel website) (link to Google map)
Speakers and topics will include:
  • Historian Clayton E. Cramer: The Racist Roots of Gun Control
  • Attorney Donald Kilmer: Gun Violence Restraining Orders and the Growing Problem of Constitutional Conflicts in Public Policy
  • Attorney Bradley Benbrook: Firearms-area Litigation and Emerging Second Amendment Jurisprudence
  • Attorney Stephen Duvernay: Active litigation case updates
  • The Calguns Foundation Chairman Gene Hoffman: The Minimum Necessary Right to Keep and Bear Arms – What, Why, and How We’re Doing So Far
  • FPC President Brandon Combs: What to Expect In and From Firearms Policy and Litigation Going Forward
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In Seattle, The Rich Vote For Gun Control But Buy Their Own Cops

December 10, 2014 by 6 Comments

I get a lot of emails from the various financial planning publications. Sometimes they are touting a certain mutual fund company and sometimes they are little news stories about HNW individuals. Translating from finance-speak, that means high net worth individuals aka the wealthy.

A story in Financial Advisor about the Seattle wealthy caught my eye yesterday and spurred me to do some research. The gist of the story is that Seattle suffers the top property crime rate in the country and that certain wealthy neighborhoods have taken to hiring a force of off-duty police officers and private security guards to watch over their neighborhood.

After Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat wrote about how the police largely disregarded his family’s repeated calls about car thieves in his neighborhood, a resident of the city’s tony Laurelhurst section dropped him a note.

“I bet if you had been in Laurelhurst, somebody would have come,” the reader wrote. “Your mistake was being in a regular part of town.”

Turns out that Laurelhurst, the neighborhood where Bill Gates was born and lived until about 1994, isn’t completely satisfied with its police protection, either. In fact, it has hired its own security force.

Exasperated with a spate of car break-ins, the neighborhood adopted its strategy from Windermere, an even more exclusive neighborhood directly north, where homeowners pay an annual $575 fee that mostly goes toward having off-duty police and private security guards patrol year-round.

Seattle has the top property crime rate in the country, the Seattle Times reported recently. It’s more than double the Boston area’s rate and almost one-third higher than the rate for the Denver area.

Laurelhurst’s security force consists of off-duty policemen who keep the neighborhood under surveillance six nights per week in five-hour shifts, and also conduct foot patrols when residents are on vacation. One of the city’s off-duty bicycle cops also rides around the neighborhood during the day—something that helps with the now ubiquitous package theft that appears to be a result of faux dog walkers following UPS trucks to their delivery destinations.

Although the off-duty cops wear their official uniforms and carry police radios and firearms, they drive their personal—that is, unmarked—cars. They monitor incoming 911 calls and work with on-duty police officers if there’s an incident.

“We don’t expect them to catch people,” says Brian McMullen, who sits on the neighborhood council and helps oversee the crime program. “We view it as a deterrent.”

Knowing that Seattle and King County provided the base of supported for Washington State’s I-594 gun control initiative, I wondered how these areas voted. Did they jump on the gun control bandwagon along with the majority of Seattle residents? Moreover, how much money did residents of the area donate to the gun control front group Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility?

Let’s take the last question first. Residents in these neighborhoods live in the 98105 zip code. Donations to the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility totaled $179,305. Donors included Bill Gates, Sr. who gave $500. That $500 contribution by one individual was more than all the donations to the pro-gun group Protect Our Gun Rights combined. Those donations totaled a mere $335. Put in relative terms, pro-gun contributions totaled two-tenths of one percent of the amount donated to the anti-gun forces.

Overall, the vote for I-594 in King County was 74.99% in favor and 25.01% opposed. Statewide, the numbers were 59.27% in favor with 40.73 opposed to more gun control.

So how did the two neighborhoods, Laurelhurst and Windermere, vote? It took some doing but I was able to identify the relevant voting precincts from the election district maps and pull the data from eCanvass file.

Windermere’s eight precincts had a total of 2,101 people vote in I-594 contest. Of these, 1,856 voted yes on I-594. That 88.3% is significantly higher percentage than King County as a whole.

Laurelhurst’s 11 precincts went even higher in their support of I-594. 2,181 or 89.1% of the 2,448 votes cast on the initiative were in favor of it.

I guess if you are sitting in your (multi) million dollar home in Laurelhurst or Windermere with security provided by off-duty police, you don’t really worry how the riff-raff provides for their security. You are protected and they can pretty much go to hell for all you care. So what if it is harder for them to get the tools to protect themselves and their families. You got yours and that is all that matters.