Alan Gottlieb

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CCRKBA Reacts To Preckwinkle’s Partial Retreat On Violence Tax

November 1, 2012 by

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.”

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CBS This Morning Notices Rising Gun Sales

August 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

In a relatively balanced report, CBS’s Tammy Leitner discusses the rise in new gun sales in the United States for CBS This Morning. Interviewed for the story that aired yesterday are a Los Angeles mom who wants to protect herself and her kids and Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation.

CBS attributes the rise in gun sales to a bi-fold fear of rising crime and fear of the gun control measures a second Obama Administration might push. I don’t disagree fear is one of the driving factors behind rising gun sales. However, I don’t think it is the only factor in the growth of gun sales. Other factors that didn’t make the story is that shooting is fun as well as the desire by many to take responsibility for their own safety. Taking responsibility does not have to be driven by fear. It is more akin to buying property and casualty insurance. You hope that you never have to use it but it is smart risk management to protect against great loss.

Ruger’s suspension of new orders is referred to but erroneously states that they are still refusing the new orders.  They resumed taking new orders on May 29th.

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Bloomberg Declines An Invitation

August 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is almost as big a media whore as the senior senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. Given half a chance he’ll pontificate about salt and sugar and guns and breast milk ad nauseum.

That is why I agree with Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation and CCRKBA that it is strange that Bloomberg declined an invitation to speak at the 2012 Gun Rights Policy Conference. He would look brave for going before a group of gun rights activists and he’d get tons of publicity out of it. Moreover, while in Orlando, he could check on how his taxpayer paid MAIG regional coordinator is doing.

Alan sent out a notice about Bloomberg’s declining his invitation this afternoon.

BELLEVUE, WA – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been challenging President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to speak out about gun control, but Bloomberg declined a chance to do it himself at the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in September, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms noted.

According to CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, Bloomberg was invited to the 27th annual event, scheduled Sept. 28-30 in Orlando, Fla., but he turned it down.

“What does it say about someone who demands that others shill for his agenda, but when given the chance to take his fight to the gun rights community, he retreats,” Gottlieb wondered. “Mayor Bloomberg is always quick with his tongue in front of a friendly media audience, or in the confines of a broadcast studio, but when he has an opportunity to meet with people who have differing viewpoints about a fundamental civil right, he takes a powder.”

This will be the first time in its history that the GRPC is held in the Sunshine State. Among the anticipated speakers will be Mark O’Mara, defense attorney representing George Zimmerman, the man now charged in the death of Trayvon Martin. The announcement has stirred considerable media attention for the upcoming event.

“It seems odd for a guy like Michael Bloomberg, who rushes to every television news camera and microphone, to avoid what could be a major media event,” Gottlieb mused. “He’s been complaining about the ‘deafening silence’ from Romney and Obama, but when he is offered the chance to confront gun owners, whose rights he wants to see trampled, he voluntarily puts on a muzzle.

“Mayor Bloomberg has spent the past several months,” he said, “establishing himself as a Nanny State monarch, telling people give up their guns, to drink less soda, eat fewer fries and forego giving baby formula to newborns. He’s good at criticizing people he calls gun ‘nuts,’ but lately he seems a few cashews short of a full can, himself.

“Perhaps he’s worried that a trip to Orlando might end with a sunburn,” Gottlieb concluded. “From all indications, he’s had a little too much sun already.”

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Citizens Committee On HB 489

May 25, 2012 by

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms just released an alert on North Carolina’s HB 489 and the attempt to overturn the Bateman ruling.

The alert:

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is alerting North Carolina gun owners that state lawmakers are attempting to pass a new “emergency powers” law that may be more restrictive than the one a federal judge just struck down.

House Bill 489, according to Grass Roots North Carolina, would enable cities to restrict firearms rights in the home in emergencies, something they never had the authority to do. Attorney Alan Gura, who represented GRNC and the Second Amendment Foundation in the recently-won federal lawsuit striking down the state’s emergency power to regulate firearms in a declared emergency, says that anyone who tries to enforce a ban on guns under this new legislation would lose qualified immunity.

The legislation, now in the Senate Judiciary I committee, establishes “dangerous weapons restrictions in emergencies.”

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said the new proposal suggests that North Carolina lawmakers responsible for this bill “either simply don’t get it or they are determined to undermine a constitutionally-protected civil right no matter what a judge says.”

“The federal court ruled against this sort of emergency regulation, but the legislature is turning around and trying to pass an even more restrictive law,” he observed.

CCRKBA is urging firearms owners to contact their state senator to oppose the measure.

“Try to adopt bad legislation in an effort to replace a bad law that was struck down by a federal judge is not just bad policy,” Gottlieb said, “it is an egregious abuse of legislative power.”

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Alan Gottlieb Takes On Chris Matthews Over Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law

March 23, 2012 by 4 Comments

I don’t think MSNBC’s Chris Matthews felt any tingles up his leg in his exchanges with Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation today. Gottlieb and anti-gun Florida State Sen. Chris Smith (D-Broward/Palm Beach County) were guests today on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews. The topic of discussion as one might expect was the State of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

Gottlieb made a very good point early on when he said “indict the person, not the law”. He went to say that it didn’t appear to him that the law applied here as, in his opinion, Zimmerman didn’t stand his ground. Rather he pursued Trayvon Martin. This is the same point that Sebastian and others have made repeatedly.

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CCRKBA Says Holder Should Have Resigned Instead

August 30, 2011 by 2 Comments

Alan Gottlieb doesn’t mince words. He says that Eric Holder should have resigned instead of engaging in a “shell game” of reassignment.

HOLDER PLAYS ‘SHELL GAME’ AT JUSTICE, SHOULD RESIGN INSTEAD, SAYS CCRKBA

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

BELLEVUE, WA – Today’s replacement of Kenneth Melson as acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a political charade by the man who really ought to tender his resignation, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. That man is Attorney General Eric Holder.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb called for Holder’s resignation after this morning’s announcements that Melson was being “reassigned” and replaced. This action appears to be an attempt by Holder to convince people he is taking action in response to the Fast and Furious scandal, now being investigated by Congress.

“Holder is just moving deck chairs on the Titanic,” Gottlieb stated. “Today’s announcements will do nothing to restore America’s confidence in the BATF or the Justice Department so long as Eric Holder remains the Attorney General.

“The ultimate responsibility for Fast and Furious lies with Holder,” he continued. “Melson is just the latest player to be shifted around, rather than lose his job. Everyone directly involved in the Fast and Furious scandal has simply been moved to another position. There has been no discipline and no accountability, because the man who should be ultimately accountable is still running the Justice Department.”

Gottlieb called today’s announcement “self-serving” for Holder, who is “looking out for his own interests.”

“That’s the only thing that is really transparent about this entire administration,” Gottlieb observed. “They are looking out for themselves, and playing administrative games when they should step up to the plate and accept responsibility for this scandal. Several people have been moved from the ATF office in Phoenix to other jobs, especially in Washington, D.C. because of Fast and Furious.

“If there had not been significant wrong-doing,” he said, “none of these moves would have been made. This is an admission of guilt by the Obama administration without saying so. And where is the president in all of this? Maybe he’s hiding out on the ninth hole of a golf course.”