The quote of the day comes from Emily Miller on her Facebook page regarding Mayor Bloomberg’s not-so-shocking endorsement of Barack Obama for reelection.
Of course Bloomberg endorsed Obama. It’s his one shot at getting more gun-control laws.
I hope he doesn’t get his one shot.
The media and the gun prohibitionists try to argue that President Obama supports the Second Amendment and has, in fact, been fairly pro-gun over the past four years. You have an expectation that they would overlook his “under the radar” efforts and his statements regarding firearms over time. However, you don’t expect to hear that line when you are in a store looking at guns.
Yesterday, I had some time to waste so I stopped into a pawn shop in Asheville (NC) to see what they might have in the way of interesting guns. Other than an overpriced Ruger Security Six .38 Special revolver in marginal condition, nothing else caught my eye. I asked the clerk about how often they take guns on pawn or in trade. He said it had been light recently due to the election – people are hanging on to their guns.
I made the comment that if Romney wins that would probably change. Another older clerk, presumably the manager, chimed in that it wouldn’t make any difference. He went on to say that “despite what the NRA says, Obama has been the most pro-gun President in the last 18 years.” He gave as his example Obama signing the credit card bill that had a rider that allowed for concealed carry in National Parks.
When I challenged him on Obama being pro-gun, he did acknowledge that the Obama Administration had implemented the reporting requirement for multiple sales of semi-auto rifles in the Southwest. I asked him about Fast and Furious but he blew it off. I left quickly after that as it wasn’t worth my time arguing with a fool.
I can understand why the gun prohibitionists and media distorts facts regarding Obama’s record on guns. I shake my head at Fudds who think their hunting rifles and shotguns are off-limits. However, I am just perplexed that someone who works in a place that deals in cold, hard reality could be so deeply into denial.
Maybe it is being in Asheville, maybe it is just willful ignorance. Either way, I know of many other places where I’d rather spend my money.
Normally, the only way the National Rifle Association can capture the attention of the Los Angeles Times is when there is a shooting. And then they are usually blamed for “pushing loose gun laws” or some such nonsense.
Fortunately, the NRA-PVF’s campaign ad strategy is what is attracting the attention of the LA Times. If you live in a battleground state like I do, you have been inundated with campaign ads around the clock. However, they really are most prevalent around the time of the local news broadcasts. The NRA-PVF is taking a different tack in an effort to have their message stand out.
But the NRA this year is spending a premium to place its spots lambasting President Obama during popular sports programs such ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” in key markets in battleground states.
The influential gun lobby is also buying time during late-night shows such as “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “The Late Show with David Letterman and “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.”
The
NRA is not the sole political advertiser in those time periods, but it
is one of the most prevalent, often running several spots in one
football game, said Republican media strategist Brad Todd, who is
crafting the group’s ad campaign.“We don’t have to compete with
18 other political ads,” said Todd, who said the group tested the
strategy during this year’s Wisconsin gubernatorial recall to reach
independent blue-collar voters.
The LA Times goes on to say that the demographic being targeted by the NRA is men under the age of 55. They also give attention to the NRA’s army of volunteers who will reach approximately 50 million voters before Election Day through calls, knocking on doors, and mail. Of course, this army of volunteers is something the gun prohibitionists and their top-down organizations can never hope to match.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued this statement after the announcement that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was “compromising” on her violence tax. As it stands now, the tax will only apply to firearm and not to ammunition. I like Alan Gottlieb’s comparison of this tax to the poll tax in the Jim Crow South.
BELLEVUE, WA – Wednesday’s partial retreat by Cook
County, Ill., board President Toni Preckwinkle on her proposed “violence
tax” is a good start, but the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and
Bear Arms said the entire idea should be scrapped.CCRKBA panned
the proposal more than a week ago, when Preckwinkle announced she was
mulling a 5-cent tax on every cartridge and a $25 tax on firearms to help
close a budget gap. Today she backed off on the “bullet tax” but still
wants the tax on firearms adopted.CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb
today was delighted with the partial victory, but said a “full retreat
from this proposed gun ownership penalty is necessary.”“Gun owners
have won a partial victory,” Gottlieb observed, “but Preckwinkle is still
trying to make them shoulder more than their fair share with this tax
proposal. Face it, illegally-armed criminals are not going to pay any tax,
so waging class warfare against legal firearms owners is way off target,
and we brought attention to it.“Besides,” he continued, “it’s not
gun owners but government that got Cook County into the budget mess. How
does a county government come up short by an estimated $3 billion,
anyway?“Experienced shooters and hunters know enough to conserve
their ammunition,” Gottlieb said. “Public officials like Preckwinkle
should take a lesson from that when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars.
Instead, she wants to just dig deeper in everyone’s pockets, whether they
are gun owners, smokers or gamblers.”Newspaper reports said the
county budget could run in the red next year because of the costs of
public health clinics, two hospitals and the criminal justice
system.“What Preckwinkle wants is to penalize gun owners for
exercising a constitutionally-protected civil right,” Gottlieb stated.
“The penalty should be on Preckwinkle and her political allies for
spending the county that far into the red.“This proposal smacks of
the same social bigotry that produced poll taxes on minority voters in the
South,” he concluded. “Preckwinkle should know you can’t tax the exercise
of a civil right.”
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has backed off of her idea to levy a 5 cents per cartridge “violence tax”. However, according to the Chicago Tribune, Preckwinkle still plans to go forward with her tax on firearms. This was part of a grand compromise with some Democrats on the County Board who were balking at the proposed Cook County Firearm and Firearm Ammunition Tax Ordinance.
The compromise was negotiated over several days with Commissioners John
Fritchey and Edwin Reyes, both Chicago Democrats, who had balked at the
guns and ammo taxes.In exchange for their support,
Preckwinkle agreed to create a $2 million fund to combat gun violence.
Fritchey had proposed dedicating $1.4 million to anti-gun violence
efforts. She also agreed to exempt law-enforcement officers from having
to pay the tax, which helped convince Reyes to support the plan.An
undetermined portion of the $2 million would be granted to “non-profits
with a track record of effective violence prevention and community
outreach.” About $100,000 would be used to crack down on illegal gun
purchases.
The budget director for the county estimates that the tax on firearms will raise $600,000. If she is correct, this works out to 120,000 firearms purchases annually in Cook County. Using my iPhone’s FFL Finder app, I count approximately 35 licensed firearms dealers within Cook County. This works out to sales of over 3,400 firearms per shop over the course of a year. Frankly, I think the budget director is dreaming if she thinks there will be this many sales in the county in a year.
As Sebastian noted back when this first came up, there is significant Supreme Court precedent saying that taxing a fundamental right in order to discourage its use is unconstitutional. Given the legislative history of this ordinance and the public pronouncements of Ms. Preckwinkle, I don’t think attorneys such as Alan Gura or David Sigale would have to go far to find sufficient cause to get an injunction. If I were a taxpayer in Cook County, I’d be pretty upset to see my tax dollars going to fund the court case that passage of this tax will undoubtedly engender.
Ralph Fascitelli, a member of the gun control group Washington Ceasefire, want Democrats to embrace gun control and make it an issue in this election. He says they are the party of “progressive stands on social issues”. He is upset that the Democrats aren’t saying more about gun control on the campaign trail and in their official platform.
Gun violence, which costs this country as much as a $100 billion annually and is perhaps along with obesity the number one public health issue of our time, was put on mute again.
He goes on to say that the Democrats have taken the wrong message from the 1994 elections which saw the Republicans win the House of Representatives as well as from Al Gore’s loss of his home state of Tennessee in 2000. Fascitelli says embracing gun control isn’t a lost cause. He compares it to Obama’s newly found appreciation for gay marriage as a way to “energize the base”.
Comparing guns to obesity and using specious statistics from the Brady Campaign is no way to make an effective argument. He may get the true believers to agree with him but your average Democratic politician who wants to get elected or re-elected will continue to mumble just enough platitudes to confuse the voters on both sides of the issue.
I think most of us would agree that zombies and zombie movies have pretty much jumped the shark. Now we see a British-made movie, Cockneys vs Zombies, has come out.
It features the residents of the Bow Bells Care Home and a few of their grandchildren fighting off a horde of hungry zombies with full-auto AKs and M-16s.
I’m sorry but this is just implausible premise. Not the zombies but ordinary Brits having access to anything stronger than harsh words with which to fight them.
That is just umpossible in Her Majesty’s gun-free paradise.
Perhaps not expectedly, the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday has endorsed Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY-4). They say she has a “mind meld with the middle class”. Whatever.
However, that is not what triggered my pet peeve. This is:
A registered nurse, she was catapulted into public life by tragedy: A
husband killed and a son grievously wounded in a mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993. McCarthy, 68, of Mineola, has grown beyond the gun control issue that prompted her first run for office in 1996, although it remains an important legislative passion.
While Carolyn McCarthy can be generically called a “nurse”, she is not now, nor has she ever been, a “registered nurse”. Rep. McCarthy trained as, and is, a Licensed Practical Nurse or LPN. She is a 1964 graduate of the Glen Cove Nursing School according to Congress.org.
A LPN is limited by the state-level Boards of Nursing in what she or he can do. While it will vary by state, a LPN has a limited number of tasks that can be delegated to them. For example, they are allowed to dispense medications in a long-term care facility. This is not to say LPNs cannot perform the tasks assigned to them well. They can.
However, LPNs are not trained to see the big picture. They cannot assess the patient, they cannot write a care plan, and are not trained to think critically. By contrast, a RN has more education, is trained to assess the patient, is trained to think critically, and can write a plan of care.
Why is this a pet peeve? Because the Complementary Spouse is a BSN-trained Registered Nurse with an advanced practice certificate. She also holds a Masters in Health Science.
If you think about it, Carolyn McCarthy’s views on gun control are, in many ways, a reflection of her training and experience. A gun was used in the murder of her husband so therefore guns must be restricted. She cannot see beyond this to realize that the disturbed individual could have used a knife, a container of gasoline, or a black-powder nail bomb to kill the six victims or that a legally armed individual could have limited the number of victims. She wasn’t trained to see the big picture or to think critically and it shows.
The Coalition To Stop Gun Violence (sic) does not oppose all violence. They are on record in support of state-sponsored violence.
Thus, given their recent jihad against blogger Kurt Hofmann which includes trying to get the FBI involved by saying Kurt is engaging in treason, sedition, and incitement to violence, I think this is the scenario that they’d like to see.
These guys would arrive:
Armed with this:
They would toss in one of these:
With this as the result:
Why? Because they feel threatened by ideas. Ideas that are different than their own collectivist ideas. Ideas that come from the grassroots and not from some top-down organization like CSGV. Ideas that promote freedom and self-responsibility.
If they had their way, America would have a People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (otherwise known as the NKVD which became the KGB) to seek out those of us who differ ideologically from them. When people called them out in defense of Kurt, they responded with this:
I love parody. I just love how it takes the pompous down a peg or two. Comedian Steven Crowder does parody really well. Just look at his parody of Lena Dunham and her “first time” ad for Obama.
UPDATE: Another parody of the Lena Dunham “first time” ad. This one comes from TokenLibertarianGirl who does a really good job of nailing Dunham’s insipidness.
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