Author Archives: CMCooper

About CMCooper

What do you really need to know? I am a professional writer, editor, teacher, recent law school grad, occasional agent provocateur, and all-around literary troublemaker. If you want to know anything more, ask me.

Fox Reports Connecticut Shooter Suffered Mental Illness…What a Surprise!

According to Fox News, Connecticut kindergarten shooter, 20-year old Adam Lanza, “was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to discuss it. A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to it.” Lanza, described as “brilliant but remote” shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, who was a teacher at the school, and then drove her car to the school itself to carry out his attack. The guns, according to Fox, were legally owned and registered to his mother.

So, what do we take away from all that? The Leftist gun-grabbers and their lackeys in Hollywood call it proof that we need to disarm Americans, but for those who: A) Don’t follow Obama’s Leftist totalitarian agenda; and/or B) Are not craven “peace at any cost” cowards, the lessons are very different. They are:

  • Gun control does not protect anyone. Those intent on committing crimes of violence do not adhere to gun laws.
  • Gun free zones are really mass murder zones. All school shootings have one thing in common: the victims could not fight back. Had a teacher or two been armed, then maybe Lanza would have been killed before he shot so many kids.
  • No one can stop the unthinkable from happening. Those intent on mayhem and destruction will always find a way. Consider the knife-wielding Chinese man who attacked a school and seriously injured over 20 children. If a maniac has no gun, he will make do with a knife or some other weapon.

We cannot, must not, surrender our liberty because of a tragedy, even though the leftists in power–through their propagandists in the media and useful idiots in Hollywood–are demanding we do exactly that. We must educate the people around us, and demand proper and useful self-defense in all places and at all times.

The best way to stop a mass murderer like Adam Lanza in his tracks is to shoot back.

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The Kindergarten Massacre: Blame the Shooter, Not the Guns

The numbers in Connecticut are horrific: 27 dead, 20 of them children. The shooter is dead, so we will never really know why this happened. What we do know is this: he acquired several weapons, entered a place where he knew he would encounter no resistance, and began to shoot. He made the decision to attack these people, reinforced that decision with each every step he took on his way to that school, with each time he pressed the gas pedal on his car, with each time he pulled the trigger. He had ample time and opportunity to stop this horrible act before it happened; and he could have stopped at any time up to the point he was killed.

In short: Those deaths were entirely the fault of the murder.

That seems to be lost in the almost orgasmic cries for more gun control coming from leftist politicians and their stooges in the media. The likes of Patton Oswald, Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Mia Farrow, Piers Morgan (again!) and others are tweeting, commenting, pontificating, and otherwise spouting off about the need to get weapons off the street.

Never mind that guns are already under pretty strict control, and crooks and lunatics get them anyway. Never mind that the kind of gun bans they want have led to more violence and crime everywhere they have been instituted. Never mind that the one place in America with their ideal gun control laws, Chicago, Illinois, is the murder capital of the planet. In fact, Chicago gets the equivalent to the Connecticut massacre nearly every month, sometimes in a single weekend, and that is in spite of the fact that the private ownership of handguns is all but illegal.

None of that matters to these people. Why? Because they are, at heart, either leftist statists, using this tragedy to further the disarmament of the American People; or they are cowardly weaklings, willing to give up their liberty (yours, too!) in return for some state-sponsored illusion of safety. If the former, they are little more than craven opportunists seeking some political advantage. If the latter, they are banking on a governmental system that revels in the fact that it is not responsible for the safety of any person, and that it cannot be held responsible when it fails to protect the people.

The real lesson here, as it is with all of these tragedies, is that gun control does not keep anyone safe, and that “gun free” zones are really just standing invitations for mayhem and violence. Ask yourself how many lives could have been saved had one or two of those teachers been armed. It is time we recognize that people need the ability to defend themselves anywhere and everywhere they go. It is time we get rid of these free mass murder zones, get rid of onerous gun control, and accept what Jefferson said so long ago, that an “armed society is a polite society.”

I might add that it is also a safer society!

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Whether or not you believe that societal collapse is imminent, this article is a wake-up call for everyone who believes in gun rights, especially the right to carry and defend yourself your loved ones. The kind of mob violence we see in Washington D.C. is spreading throughout the nation, primarily in places where law-abiding people are refused the right to self-defense with arms. In Chicago, for example, similar mobs invaded the Michigan Avenue shopping district over the last summer, robbing stores and assaulting people. The response from the city’s leftist democrat leaders:very little. In fact, it was yet another demonstration that the government will not protect you. These, by the way, are the same “leaders” who are doing everything they can to keep you from defending yourself.

Assuming that the author of this article is right, we will see two trends: increasing gun ownership and carriage; and an ever-greater push by governments at various levels to disarm the people. After all, these politicians don’t care about protecting the people, all they care about is consolidating power. As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel said, “never let a crisis go to waste.”

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Illinois to Join the Ranks of Concealed Carry States…Like it or Not

The unthinkable has happened. In Illinois, a state dominated by Chicago’s leftist anti-gun culture, there is going to be legal concealed carry. In fact, it is going to happen within the next 180 days. That was the deadline given to the Illinois Legislature by Judge Posner, who wrote the opinion for the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago.

By stating that Illinois failed to meet its constitutional burden in the case, Posner handed Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan her worst personal courtroom defeat. In his Stevens Opinion, Posner wrote:

A blanket prohibition on carrying gun in public prevents a person from defending himself anywhere except inside his home; and so substantial a curtailment of the right of armed self-defense requires a greater showing of justification than merely that the public might benefit on balance from such a curtailment, though there is no proof it would. In contrast, when a state bans guns merely in particular places, such as public schools , a person can preserve an undiminished right of self-defense by not entering those places; since that’s a lesser burden, the state doesn’t need to prove so strong a need. Similarly, the state can prevail with less evidence when, as in Skoien, guns are forbidden to a class of persons who present a higher than average risk of misusing a gun. See also Ezell v. City of Chicago, supra, 651 F.3d at 708. And empirical evidence of a public safety concern can be dispensed with altogether when the ban is limited to obviously dangerous persons such as felons and the mentally ill. Heller v. District of Columbia, supra, 554 U.S. at 626. Illinois has lots of options for protecting its people from being shot without having to eliminate all possibility of armed self-defense in public.

In short, Illinois had to show that a substantial benefit to the people associated with disarming them in public. Madigan could not do that, there is no such substantial benefit, so she lost. Honest citizens, on the other hand, were the winners. “The debate is over,” said Todd Vandermyde, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. “We won. And there will be a statewide carry law in 2013.”

That is the good news…

Here is the bad news. The Illinois Legislature can still keep Illinois residents from carrying and yet fulfill Judge Posner’s order to the letter.

There are two types of concealed carry laws: May Issue and Must Issue. A May Issue state gives the local sheriff or other governing body the power to refuse to give a qualified applicant a concealed carry license, generally for any reason they like. The State of Maryland is currently defending its May Issue law in federal court, since they refuse almost everyone. Must Issue states require the licensing body to give the license if the applicant meets the legal requirements. The law gives the licensing body no discretion in the matter. Michigan is a Must Issue state.

My prediction is that Illinois, under the heavy boots of Chicago democrats, will adopt a May Issue law under which Cook County, where Chicago is located, will still be able to keep law abiding people from carrying pistols for self-defense. So will other anti-gun counties, while people living in downstate counties will enjoy their new freedom.

This order will not stop the legal and political fights over guns and self-defense in Illinois, but it is a great start.

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AutoZone decided to punish a hero, to fire a man who saved the life of a fellow employee because he broke their irrational anti-gun corporate rule. As a result, they have lost my business, and I ask anyone reading this to follow along with me.

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Blacks and Gun Control

Gun control is racist. There, I said it. Originally meant to keep blacks defenseless after the Civil War, I have to wonder why African Americans embrace it at all. After all, in our modern society, they are far more likely to face violent crime than any other demographic group. You would think they would want to be able to defend themselves.

Many do, and that is good. Like everyone else, they should. The problem is that so-called “black leaders” have jumped onto the gun-control bandwagon with such abandon that you have to ask whether they actually care about their fellow blacks, or just want to earn points from the leftist leaders running the Democrat Party.

In a recent article on World Net Daily, Erik Rush observed:

Liberal blacks who defend gun control on the basis of violent crime in the inner cities are also off base in overlooking that these urban areas have been under the complete political control of liberals for decades. It is the destructive social policies of the left that have precipitated the dysfunction that leads to violence in the black community. Indoctrinated blacks, of course, do not see the method behind the madness and thus eagerly embrace the simpleton’s impossible fix: Erase guns from the equation. Like so many other Americans, blacks also accept at face value politicians’ feigned concern for our safety.

Rush is right on target, pointing out the “feigned concern for our safety” of leftist politicians. To them, the idea of public safety generally equates to…actually I am not sure what it equates to. The reason being that nothing they do actually promotes public safety. Instead, they create an intrusive and oppressive government presence (TSA anyone?) and demand obedience to that intrusion in the name of “public safety.” This approach doesn’t actually stop any violence. Just look at Chicago, the murder capital of the nation and home to all sorts of leftist “anti-crime” programs under Rich Daley and now, Rahm Emmanuel, and also home to the most draconian gun control laws in the country.

Do you think the leftists controlling Chicago and Cook County give a damn about the fact that their programs not only don’t stop violence, but actually encourage it by keeping the poor and working classes disarmed? The constant bloodshed is an excuse for more and more government control, more and more intrusion into the privacy or ordinary citizens, more and more dependence, and that is how they use it.

Make no mistake, gun control is a lie; it is a tool of political manipulation and subjugation, and it is incumbent on all free people to fight it, because if you lose the right to keep and carry firearms, what will you lose next?

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Bob Costas, Gun Control, and the Death of the Free Press

In case you haven’t heard yet, a pro football player, the linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, Jovan Belcher, shot and killed his girlfriend and then thanked a few key members of his team management before killing himself. There is talk of Belcher having drug and relationship problems, or that traumatic head injuries incurred during his football career, played a part. I don’t know. It will be weeks before that is all sorted out. What I do know is this: As a gun owner, as an advocate of the Second Amendment, I am not responsible for either of those deaths.

That, of course, runs contrary to what Bob Costas, a long-time talking head for NBC Sports, believes and spewed out during the half-time of the NFL telecast he was working last Sunday night. In a move, matched for tacky political grasping only by Obama himself, Costas began to preach about how the Belcher killings demonstrate the need for more gun control, how terrible it is that we exercise our Second Amendment rights, and how none of this would have happened if on Belcher had not been allowed to have a gun.

Yeah, right.

The report is that he and his girlfriend had been fighting for hours before he shot her. The presence of a gun did not affect that. In fact, had there been no gun for Belcher to retrieve, he would have possibly gone for a knife, a baseball bat, a heavy ashtray, a frying pan, or even his own fists. What would Costas have said if the story was that Belcher beat his girlfriend to death with his fists before laying down in front of an approaching train to complete the atrocity? Perhaps he would have blamed the exercise machines for giving him the strength necessary to pommel the woman to death, and the railroad for being attractive to suicides. I can hear it now: We must have laws in place to keep large men from training to the point where they can kill with their hands; and we must have laws to keep reckless train operators from killing poor, innocently murderous pro football players!

That is absurd, right? So why is the same argument—Costas’ argument—when it focuses on guns, taken seriously? Because the leftist, anti-gun press, parroting anti-gun forces like the Brady Campaign, Obama, Bloomberg, Emmanuel, and their ilk insist upon it.

These forces march in lock-step together. They are interested in disarming the American People, forcing reliance on government by preventing the people from taking care of themselves, and making the U.S. finally safe for them. The mainstream media, with NBC in the forefront, is essentially their propaganda wing. I am not saying they take their stories from leftist sources; I am saying that with leftist control of the media, they are so ideologically driven that they say insane things naturally while doing their damnedest to silence dissenting voices and quell arguments against their assertions.

Yes, I said insane. Bob Costas, and the other useful idiots trying to use this tragic event to further their anti-gun agenda are, in fact, nuts. They ignore the simple fact that this tragedy was authored entirely by Jovan Belcher and that no one else, gun owner or not, has any responsibility to the situation. They ignore the fact that for every Jovan Belcher, there are hundreds of people who use their guns to defend themselves against violence every day. They ignore the fact that more guns equals less crime and violence. The leftist media ignores all of this in order to hang onto a narrative that has lost all credibility with the majority of Americans; that guns, and not the people who use them for evil purposes, are the problem.

If there was really a free press in this country, that narrative would be up for pretty severe argument. The fact that it isn’t, that only a handful of fringe media outlets call the leftists on their anti-gun fallacies, is proof that we no longer have a free press. Instead, we have a media culture that insists that you can say whatever you like as long as the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, the Democrat National Committee, and Barack Obama, approve of it.

The Belcher incident was tragic, no question of it, but so is every other instance of domestic violence; every car crash, plane crash, train crash; fire, flood, tornado; accidental electrocution; every instance of child abuse and molestation. We never speak of surrendering rights with any of those, and they are far more prevalent than what happened with Belcher. I put it to you that just because a gun is involved, that is no reason for the armed and the innocent to start surrendering anything.

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Gun Control Laws to Blame For California’s Rise in Crime

More support for the argument that an armed society is a polite society and proof that gun control does not protect the citizenry! As California’s leftist leaders take step after step to disarm the people of California, the people are paying the price in violence, crime and loss.

Gun Control Laws to Blame For California’s Rise in Crime.

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In San Jose, The Police Want You to Comply with Your Robbers

I am often dismayed by the vapid, flaccid attitude of police agencies after a private citizen defends themselves. That is, after all, what the whole concealed carry movement is about–self-defense. All too often, some mealy-mouthed toadie gets up in front of the media and goes on about the dangers of using a gun to defend yourself rather than congratulating the would-be victim for their courage and resolve in the face of danger. It is sad to see the depth to which we, as a society, have sunk.

Consider, for a moment, the incident that took place last Monday at a San Jose, California, jewelry store. Two armed robbers enter the store. When they commanded the lady who owns the store to produce the loot, she produced a pistol instead, firing a shot in the direction of the bandits and sending them running. She defended herself in a terrifying, highly-stressed situation and came out of it all unscathed. Now, what do you think the San Jose Police Department had to say about it?

Albert Morales, the San Jose Police spokesman, said, “We don’t recommend (drawing a gun or firing). We would have preferred that they just go ahead and comply with the request or demands of the robbers. Again they were after material items that could be replaced and again our biggest fear is that somebody would have gotten hurt, injured and possibly even died.”

How’s that for letting criminals know where they stand in San Jose? I can hear the collective sigh of relief coming from thieves, robbers, pickpockets, burglars and others who have made larceny their profession in and around San Jose. The police prefer compliance to self-defense, submission to standing your ground. No charges were filed, since the shop owner did not actually commit a crime, but Morales made it clear that the police, and presumably the City of San Jose, feel about her exercise of her right to defend herself.

That is the real crime in all of this. Morales is not scolding the thieves, he is scolding the victim. By doing that, he is telling the criminals of San Jose that they should not have to fear the people they prey upon; that the police feel their pain and would like to keep anything so untoward from happening to them ever again. Morales is worried that someone might have died. He’s right, the lady shop owner could have died. She could have been raped first and then killed. The possibilities of what they might have done to her are staggering. None of that happened, of course. She ensured that by drawing her weapon and pulling the trigger, a clear message to the robbers that their own lives were in peril. That was a message they heeded, running headlong out of the store and into a waiting SUV.

Law enforcement has to be made to understand that the armed citizen is not a threat or a problem for them to solve. Instead, they should appreciate such citizens for doing something that police have never actually been able to do: lower the crime rate. The rise in the number of armed citizens has lead to lower rates of violent crime across the board. Why? Because more often than not, the armed citizen actually shoots at their assailant. For any San Jose (or Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., etc.) cops who might be reading this, that means the would-be victim makes it dangerous to be a criminal. As a result of the increased danger, there is less crime. It is no more complicated than that.

Here is the video: Police Want Victims to Comply with Robbers

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Illinois Turning Even More Hostile to Gun Owners

I am not sure whether I should laugh or cry. Actually, laughter is winning out right now since I am also a believer in the adage that a people get the government they deserve. The City of Chicago, with its entrenched and horribly corrupt Democrat Machine, controls most of Illinois politics these days. So, while I do feel sorry for the Down-staters who can’t seem to free themselves from Chicago’s death grip, those in Chicago who dutifully and mindlessly vote for continued Democrat control deserve what they get in terms of taxes, crime, corruption, and violence.

Since the reign of Jane Byrne back in the 1980s, Chicago developed an increasing—and increasingly irrational—hatred of guns, gun owners, gun dealers, and the like. She instituted the City’s famous handgun ban, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in their McDonald decision. When Richard M. Daley later took over as Mayor, he ran the gun shops out of town and shut down the Lincoln Park Gun Club, which had offered skeet shooting on the shore of Lake Michigan since about 1900. During the same period, Chicago democrats spread into State government, bringing with them their corruption, Machiavellian attitudes, and hatred for guns and gun owners. Now, in addition to Illinois’ gun owner licensing and registration schemes, the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action reports that Illinois gun owners will now have to contend with this:

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn

This past summer, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (D) vetoed the NRA-backed ammunition purchase reform bill, Senate Bill 681, after this common sense legislation had passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Illinois General Assembly (previously reported on here).   In a crass attempt to exploit the tragedy in Colorado and seek media attention, Quinn used his Amendatory Veto powers in a brazen attempt to impose more draconian gun control in Illinois.  Quinn rewrote the entire bill as an amendment to the Illinois Criminal Code that includes an onerous ban on the manufacture, possession, delivery or sale of commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms (inaccurately referred to as “assault weapons”), .50 caliber rifles and cartridges and “high capacity” magazines in Illinois.  Quinn’s amendment additionally tramples on the rights of Illinois citizens by creating a de facto statewide registration scheme for firearms and magazines currently owned.

If this amendment is accepted by the state legislature, law-abiding citizens in Illinois will be subjected to restrictions far beyond the scope of even the misguided Clinton “Assault Weapons“ Ban that expired in 2004 and any other similar gun ban in existence today.  The repercussions of such a gun ban would be disastrous.   As demonstrated by the failure of the federal “assault weapons” ban of 1994-2004 to produce the crime reduction that its proponents claimed it would, Quinn’s ban would do nothing to increase safety in Illinois and would only further restrict the rights of already law-abiding citizens throughout the state.

Using the favorite anti-gun tactic of confusion, by conflating certain popular semi-automatic firearms with machine guns by using the term “assault weapon,” this legislation would now target many of the most popular guns used for hunting and competition, as well as many models and magazines (those that hold more than ten rounds) used for self-defense.  If enacted, banned items would include many familiar and popular firearms, such as:

· Turkey hunting shotguns with pistol grips, like the Benelli Super Black Eagle II;

· Plinking and target rifles with thumbhole stocks, as often seen on customized Ruger 10/22s;

· High-power target rifles — even including the 1994-2004 versions of rifles like the M1A and AR-15 that were made to comply with the now-expired federal ban — because all of those rifles had handguards that “encircle” the barrel;

· Any detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifle with even a partial handguard, potentially including common hunting rifles like the popular Remington 740/7400 series, Browning BAR, and many more like them.

The Quinn gun ban would even apply to the individual parts themselves (stocks, pistol grips, handguards, folding or telescoping stocks, etc.).  Possession, manufacture, delivery or sale of any of these items would be a felony.

This amended bill would impose a massive statewide gun registration scheme.  Anyone who already possesses one of the banned guns or parts would have to provide proof of ownership and register each one with the State Police within ninety days of the effective date after enactment.  This registration requirement spans from the firearm itself to individual parts and magazines that fall under the ban.

Governor Quinn and his band of anti-gun Chicago politicians would like to see their vicious attack on the Second Amendment play out across Illinois, even as Chicago—with the state’s most restrictive gun laws—is on track to tally more than 500 murders this year.

The repercussions of such a gun ban would actually be just the opposite of what proponents claim and the results would be disastrous.  Firearms manufacturing is estimated to be a $250 million dollar industry in Illinois.  Not only would this gun ban be devastating to law-abiding citizens in Illinois, it also would wreak havoc on an entire industry, killing jobs and driving a healthy contributor to the Illinois economy out of state.  This legislation in no way promotes the safety or well-being of Illinois citizens, but is merely another attempt by gun-hating Chicago politicians to use misinformation to push draconian gun bans that will only affect gun owners, sportsmen and law-abiding citizens concerned about self-defense.

If you live in Illinois, or you have family there, then I join the NRA is calling you to action. Contact your state Senator TODAY and demand that he or she vote to override the Governor’s amendatory veto and put a stop to this anti-gun madness! Contact information for all state legislators can be found by clicking here.


Good News! The Illinois Senate today voted to override Quinn’s amendatory veto. Now it goes to the Illinois House, which will, hopefully, kill it once and for all. We’ll keep you posted.

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