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?

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.

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.

Democrats Call for Ban on Assault Forks

NewsBusted does it again! Sure, it’s silly, but with the Leftist nanny-statists in Washington, you never know…

What a Shock! More Guns Equals Less Crime!

I have maintained for years, as have many others on this side of the gun control debate, that more guns equals less crime and violence. The reason for that is simple: If the target of the criminal is armed, they are dangerous to the criminal, who passes them up for someone else less likely to kill him. We see the reverse in Great Britain, where guns are banned and crimes of violence have shot through the roof. We see it America as well, in places like Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. where, apparently, only criminals and cops may be armed, with the predictably bloody results among those caught in the crossfire.

Now, the State of Virginia, has offered-up of statistics to go with the argument that more guns equals a safer society. Times-Dispatch.com reports the following:

The total number of firearms purchased in Virginia increased 73 percent from 2006 to 2011. When state population increases are factored in, gun purchases per 100,000 Virginians rose 63 percent.

But the total number of gun-related violent crimes fell 24 percent over that period, and when adjusted for population, gun-related offenses dropped more than 27 percent, from 79 crimes per 100,000 in 2006 to 57 crimes in 2011.

The numbers appear to contradict a long-running popular narrative that more guns cause more violent crime, said Virginia Commonwealth University professor Thomas R. Baker, who compared Virginia crime data for those years with gun-dealer sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

“While there is a wealth of academic literature attempting to demonstrate the relationship between guns and crime, a very simple and intuitive demonstration of the numbers seems to point away from the premise that more guns leads to more crime, at least in Virginia,” said Baker, who specializes in research methods and criminology theory and has an interest in gun issues.

So there you have a 63% increase in gun ownership, and a 27% decrease in gun-related crimes. This same dynamic is mirrored on the national level as well, with violent crime dropping 12% as gun ownership and concealed carry licensing shot up. Now, this is not a connection that the Left will ever admit, but if you add in the evidence coming out of Great Britain, Australia, Chicago, New York, Washington, California, and other places under the thumb of Leftist Nanny-statists that show fewer gun owners and higher crime; the correlation is impossible for all but the most ardent kool-aid drinkers to deny.

More Americans are buying guns than ever as the truth of this correlation between guns and violence sinks into the national psyche. The Leftist media, in answer, is ramping up the coverage of so-called gun crimes to try and make the public think that more guns equals more crime. It is a lie, they know it is a lie, but the American media is now driven by ideology rather than a sincerely desire for the truth. The same goes for the gun control movement, which shamelessly manipulates statistics to show how dangerous guns are. Their statistics on children killed by guns, for example, include gangbangers up to the age of 26. These are not children, but they are in there anyway. If their arguments had merit, if they were anything more than the knee-jerk reactions of Leftists and hopolophobes (a fear of weapons), these people would not have to lie.

But they do, and that is proof in and of itself that we are right about an armed society being a polite society; and regardless of the spurious arguments coming from the gun control crowd, it always has been, and it always will be.

The Lessons of Sandy for the Self-Reliant

It has been a few weeks since Hurricane Sandy hit the hopelessly, hilariously, unprepared East Coast of the United States. Remember, Sandy was a relatively mild Category 1 storm, not the monster that was Katrina or Hugo of evil memory, so the lessons learned from those storms should have meant that FEMA, as well as State and Local agencies, would be better prepared, right?

Of course not.

FEMA opened camps that are more POW camps than they are relief camps. Mayor Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, kept the National Guard out of the hardest-hit areas of New York City because he doesn’t trust our soldiers with guns, thus retarding rescue and relief efforts and making things all the easier for looters. Long Islanders are just being allowed to twist in the wind regarding their homes as utility and governmental authorities, the very picture of power-obsessed incompetence, move at a stately, glacial pace to determine which properties are safe to rebuild and which are not; a pace that, in and of itself, has ruined lives.

These are the same people that tell you to trust them when you have a crisis, that you don’t need a gun to defend yourself because you have the State, in the form of the police, to protect you. Really?

Never mind that the experience of Chicago, New York, Washington DC, Great Britain, Australia, and other places with gun bans has been that violent crime shoots through the roof. Never mind the fact that the Supreme Court has already said that the police are not there, nor are they obligated, to protect you. Never mind that when someone is breaking into your home, or shooting at you, the police can take as long as fifteen or twenty minutes to get to you, if they come to help you at all. Never mind any of that, these facts are merely collateral to the point, which is this: The government is utterly incompetent to protect you before or during a crisis. They are very good at cleaning up the mess afterward (which is why I believe most police agencies should forget about carrying guns and body armor, and wear trash collector uniforms), but that is about all.

The State, having shown its incompetence, should not be allowed to keep you from protecting yourself, your family, or your property. Obama and his Leftist cohorts, intent on expanding and imposing ever more governmental power, are going to spend the next four years attacking your Second Amendment rights, as well as your rights to carry your weapon and use it to defend yourself. They will claim it is for safety on the streets, but it is only another step toward consolidating power.

It is time to turn away from government–since it cannot help–and toward each other. It is time to take control and be responsible for our own safety and security. Get licensed and get armed today.

Support the Southwest Shooting Authority

The story on Dailycaller.com shows the right way to deal with Obama voters:

The owner of a gun shop and firearms training facility in small-town Arizona this week posted a sign telling patrons who voted for President Barack Obama to “turn around and leave” because they have proven they “are not responsible enough to own a firearm.”

The owner, Cope Reynolds, also took out a full-page ad in the local White Mountain Independent newspaper in an apparent effort to fully drive his point home.

“If you voted for Barack Obama your business is NOT WELCOME at Southwest Shooting Authority,” the ad states. “You have proven you are not responsible enough to own a firearm.”

Sure, it is more of a statement than an outright ban. After all, the Obama voter would have to actually confess it. However, it’s message of disdain for those who foolishly put their rights, and the rights of everyone else, at risk is loud and clear. If you know of another business, not just a gun shop, but any business making a point of telling Obama’s supporters where to go, we want to know about it.

Louisiana Gets it Right on Guns

While the Republicans were genially losing their bid for the presidency against a man with the worst presidential record in the history of the United States, the good people of Louisiana were quietly striking a blow for liberty within their own borders by passing the strongest pro-gun constitutional amendment we have seen yet.

Titled the “Louisiana Right To Bear Arms, Amendment 2 (2012),” the amendment passed 73.45 percent to 26.55. It bolsters the exercise of 2nd Amendment rights within the state by eliminating “language within the Louisiana Constitution that would allow passage of laws prohibiting concealed weapons.” — Conservativebyte.com

The idea of the drafters of the new amendment was to prevent liberal, activist judges from imposing restrictions on the gun rights, specifically the right to legally carry a concealed weapon, of Louisiana citizens. We know that concealed weapons, lawfully carried and used, lower violent crime by making it dangerous to be a criminal. From prison interviews conducted by the Justice Department some years ago, we know that burglars are less inclined to invade a home where the resident is armed; and criminals in general are less inclined to accost a person on the street if that person is armed. Therefore, crime in that jurisdiction, where the people are armed, goes down. On the other hand, when you look at places like Chicago, Washington DC, Great Britain–all of which have either banned the private ownership of guns, or restricted them in some draconian way–you see runaway violence. It is that simple: an armed society is a polite society.

Of course, there is more to it than merely a desire to lower the crime rates. After Hurricane Katrina, we saw what happens when Leftists (ie. the Louisiana governor at the time, and the New Orleans mayor) are in control when a crisis hits. One of the first things they did was disarm everyone they could, as fast as they could, and often at gunpoint. Under the excuse of “safety,” these authorities used the crisis to accomplish something they had wanted to do for a long time: Disarm their citizens.

Now, thanks to the drafters of that constitutional amendment, and the voters, the People of Louisiana don’t have to worry quite as much. Of course, there is still the federal government to worry about. Returning Obama and the democrats to power was more than a betrayal of everything America stands for, it was an invitation for the kinds of totalitarian, jackboot tactics we saw after Katrina, but without the hurricane as an excuse.

I guess that is why so many of them, as well as people from 21 other states, are clamoring for secession.

Is America Slipping into Fascism?

There is a new T-shirt out there. It asks everyone who is for gun control to raise their hand. The graphic is of Hitler giving the Nazi salute. I can see the Lefties out there gnashing their teeth at the very thought, but the reality of history is that gun control is linked to every instance of genocidal atrocity from the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks, to the Holocaust, to Stalin’s purges, to the killing fields of Pol Pot…the list goes on. Each was preceded by “sensible gun control” practiced on people who were brought up to trust in and rely upon their government. Once those trusting people were unarmed, their ever-so-trusted governments turned on them like rabid dogs in a preschool. Why? Sometimes it was a coldly calculated political decision to eliminate any possible threats to the state. Sometimes it was to set an example and put fear into the hearts of the people. Sometimes it was racism and hate. Does it matter why? For whatever reason, the 20th Century saw millions disarmed, and then killed, by their governments. Our Founding Fathers knew the powerlessness of unarmed subjects, hence the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights. They understood that the only way a people remains free is to be armed.

The Second Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The Left has argued for decades that the Militia clause referred to the National Guard, and not to individuals. The problem is that there was not a National Guard when Madison wrote that sentence. No, he understood the word militia to means something entirely different. As our Founders would have understood the word, militia referred to every able-bodied man who could pick up a rifle and defend his community. What does that mean for us today? It means that the militia, as envisioned by Madison, Jefferson, and our other Founders, is us. You are the militia. I am the militia. We are the militia, and that means that we are the last, best line of defense against tyranny.

Why is this important? Because like all democracies, we are losing our way. For years, the Left has been slowly, inexorably, subversively, chipping away at the liberty of the American People. A process that began with FDR in the 1930s, and really took off in the 1960s, put the Left firmly in control of education and media; allowing this erosion of liberty in return for the false security of ever-growing federal government to be made acceptable to enough people to allow them to openly take over. With the reelection of Obama, we have come to that point, where the Left comes out of the shadows and does its dirt right out in the open.

The first thing Obama did was sign on to the UN Small Arms Treaty, which forces restrictive gun control on Americans regardless of the will of the States or even the will of Congress. Then, as if to add insult to injury, Senator Dianne Feinstein began the process of reviving her useless and deeply reviled assault weapons ban. Now we see rules changes to make acquiring a Federal Firearms License (FFL) more daunting by reminding all concerned that denial hearings, while constituting due process, do not have to follow the rules of evidence and other legal niceties required in federal courts. In other words, they are setting the stage to increase the denials of FFLs. Throw in the economic, foreign policy, homeland security, healthcare, and other issues this government plans to “work on;” the openly socialist goals of the Democrat party and the left-of-center shift by the Republicans; and you will see that we are facing a major change in what America means as an ideal. In fact, after the government take-over of the auto industry, it became clear that this government is taking a fascist path reminiscent of Mussolini and Hitler, two totalitarian dictators who grew government for the good of the people, restricted their rights in the name of homeland security; disarmed their citizens, turning them into subjects; and then went homicidal.

But that can’t happen here, I hear you cry, because we are civilized and good!

When Hitler was elected Chancellor, Germany was the hub of European culture, an intellectual mecca with amazing universities, vibrant arts, and a free, cosmopolitan environment that was second to none. Italy was not terribly different, nor was Japan; yet between them, these three nations tore the world apart. America is no different, and it is naivety to suggest that the same atrocities cannot happen here. I am not saying it will, I am saying it can, and with the Obama reelection, I am saying it might. After all, the Left has been pushing us in this direction for decades.

Gun owners, dealers, manufacturers, are all going to face daunting new challenges as this government continues to erode liberty to consolidate power, but then again, so will everyone else; including those who voted this government back into power.

Keep your powder dry, folks. The Militia may yet be needed.

Is the NRA on the Ropes?

The left-wing mainstream media seems to think so. An article on Examiner.com says this:

The Washington Post editorial board yesterday used the sentencing of a shooting rampage maniac in Tucson to amplify a growing post-election theme that the National Rifle Association has lost political clout and is no longer an impediment to passing “gun control” legislation.

Using Brady Campaign election result and expenditure numbers, the Post concluded “This evidence that the association’s ability to influence elections may be exaggerated should stiffen the spines of Mr. Obama and congressional leaders to take on this important issue.”

I cannot say that the NRA is my favorite organization, but I will say they have staunchly fought the good fight for Second Amendment rights for decades. I will also say that Left have been itching for years to be able to write a headline like that, so we can’t blame them for jumping the gun a bit.

The gun issue was hardly mentioned in the Presidential election, which was a shame, but not unexpected. The Republicans conducted a single-issue campaign that left them unable to properly speak to pretty much anything else, such as gun rights. For Romney, everything he talked about was somehow linked to the economy. That, in and of itself, is not bad, as long as he also talked about other issues in their own right. Had the NRA been able to get him to discuss gun rights as well as the economy, it would have been good. More than that, it would have been a miracle.

Where you saw strength in the NRA was in the congressional and state-level races. There, where the candidates are closer to the people, the rights of the people are considerably more important to them. In that environment, the strength of the NRA and other gun rights organizations comes through. More than that, when specific pieces of legislation are up for votes, the NRA can bring great pressure to bear on sitting politicians in defense of our gun rights.

The editorial board of the Washington Post are every bit as wrong as the demagogues of the Brady Campaign if they think the NRA is down and out. It isn’t, and over the next four years, the NRA will prove that.