Anti-Gunner Attends NRA Conference
An anti-gun Brit journalist moves to America. Who better to attend the recent NRA convention in Houston and write about it?
Here, I’ll summarize his snobbery and condescension for you: He still doesn’t like guns.
There, I’ve saved you from reading a couple thousand words of self-righteous blather.
Suit Filed: Why NBC’s David Gregory Not Prosecuted For Gun Crime
Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and Office of the Attorney General (OAG) on behalf of the politics and law blog Legal Insurrection, run by law professor William A. Jacobson. The FOIA lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, seeking access to records concerning the decision by the District of Columbia not to prosecute David Gregory, the host of the NBC news show “Meet the Press,” after Gregory violated District of Columbia law by displaying a high-capacity ammunition magazine during a broadcast interview (Jacobson v. District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General, et al. (No. 13-0003283))….
According to Professor Jacobson: “The documents being withheld will help shed light on the details of this highly publicized non-prosecution, which raised issues as to whether well-connected and famous D.C. insiders were treated as any other citizen in a similar situation. I appreciate Judicial Watch assisting in this search for the truth.”
According to the post, he was even warned by the D.C. Police not to show the gun magazine on camera and did so anyway. But nothing happened to him because laws are only for the little people, not smarmy liberal jerks like Gregory.
Un-American Piers Morgan Badgers Law Abiding Gun Owner
Or is that “non-American?” Or both? CNN’s Dana Loesch took some friends to the range. CNN’s Piers Morgan took umbrage and started harassing her on Twitter.
I don’t know who John Presta is but here’s the first paragraph-and-a-half of an op-ed of his in the Examiner:
The vast majority of the American support common sense “gun control” laws, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) does not, the latest polling data released yesterday shows. The public sentiment toward the NRA has changed dramatically since the Sandy Hook scholl shooting in which 20 innocent children and 6 adults were gunned down in cold blood.
The recent United States Senate vote that knocked down common sense approaches to “background checks” and common sense approaches to “gun trafficking” may become the tipping point. The NRA, it appears, overplayed their hand, by blocking these common sense measures.
Let’s see, that’s four times he uses the phrase, “common sense” — in four sentences. He thinks the NRA is losing clout. Yeah, so much so that even a watered-down background check bill couldn’t make it through a Democrat-controlled Senate.
Why do I torture myself reading this drivel? And then, I inflict it on you! Shame on me.
A Liberal Reviews ‘America’s Gun’
Regarding ‘The Rise of the AR-15′, the NY Daily News TV critic reviews the show here. Actually, I’ve seen far more biased stuff from him than this.
Dueling headlines in Gun Control Debate
From CBS News: 2014: The Next frontier in the gun control battle?
From Real Clear Politics: Gun Control Vote Likely Won’t Affect Midterms.
Oooh, Newsflash: Gun Lobby Donates to Pro-Gun Senators!
Here’s the headline: Most Senators Who Voted Against Machin-Toomey Received Cash from Gun Lobby.
You’re shocked, shocked!
Did you know that most of the Senators who vote against tort-reform receive cash from Lawyer groups?
That politicians and Obama, who constantly pass legislation that favors unions, get lots of money from unions?
That the reason Democrats (many years ago) enacted laws that could fine someone $250,000 dollars and put them into jail for years — just for copying a movie — received big donations from Hollywood?
Thank God someone is finally exposing this mess!
Someone at NPR Understands The Constitution and the Gun Vote
He might be the only one at NPR who does, and while I’m guessing (but don’t know) that S.V. DÁTE isn’t happy with the outcome of the Senate vote yesterday over a gun control bill, he at least has the sense to try to explain it to the low-information voter:
If it seems perplexing why an idea that has broad support nationally could fail to pass the U.S. Senate, here’s an important reminder: The Senate is not a democratic institution.
It never has been, and it was never designed to be. Rather, it was structured to give small or sparsely populated states the ability to stop the majority’s will. And on Wednesday, that’s how it worked out, as the Senate failed to reach a 60-vote threshold to support new background checks on gun purchases.
More at the link.
The brilliance of our political system is that in the House, members have two-year terms and act accordingly, usually in volatile ways. And, they are apportioned in direct proportion to a state population.
The Senate is supposed to be where the long-term (well, six-year) deliberators think through important legislation. Of course, that hasn’t been the norm since Obama took office. As an example, you had that witch, Nancy Pelosi saying that — regarding Obamacare — that “we have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” And, that is what is now happening with the immigration bill.
What a lot of our uninformed populace seems to forget is that even senators are voted in by their constituents and represent them and their state. A senator from Montana or Alaska has absolutely no obligation to ignore his/her constituents and vote the wishes of a NY mayor. In fact, he/she would be betraying his state voters’ wishes by doing so.
Should the two senators from each state have such power? Yes. It prevents heavily populated states from pushing their agendas on lightly populated states. The counter-balance of that is what the House (the congress critters) are for. Two deliberative bodies that balance — or keep in check — each other.
Fortunately, Republicans currently control the House. Let us hope that stays so. We didn’t need that cushion this time — because of yesterday’s Senate vote, but, like a fire extinguisher, it’s nice to have it around. That could change should you readers not bother to vote in 2014. If more of us come out in the next election, we might even regain control of the Senate.
Remember, yesterday’s good vote there was only possible because a few Democrats from a few states remembered the reason they were there, and voted according to the wishes of the people who put them there.
Keep your powder dry!
Lawmakers to TV Nets: Why No Gosnell Trial Coverage?
That’s an easy one to answer. It doesn’t fit the liberal agenda. It shows the hideousness of late-term abortion. From the Daily Caller:
Seventy-two House lawmakers Wednesday sent letters to ABC, NBC, and CBS to express “how profoundly appalled” they are that the networks have “largely ignored” the gruesome trial of disgraced abortionist Kermit Gosnell, as well as Planned Parenthood’s apparent support of infanticide in testimony before the Florida legislature late last month.
Fortunately, it was only a letter expressing disgust at the lack of coverage. Anything beyond that, such as demanding coverage, or dragging them to Washington to explain the lack of coverage, would have been interfering with a free and open press.
Saturday Night Live made fun of the lack of any substantial progress in enacting gun control at the federal level. While there are a couple of ‘grins’ in the piece, it’s obvious that show’s writers wish that there had been greater infringements on our rights. Don’t look for them to do a skit that points out that banning so-called “assault weapons” or magazine capacities would do anything towards preventing shootings. Story and video at this NY Post link.
NY Times Calls GOA an “Upstart”
They might not have the large membership that the NRA does, but the Gun Owners of America have been influential in fighting for our gun rights. Apparently, though, that’s news to the NY Times.
Two Newtown Parents CBS Won’t Be Interviewing
CBS News (and 60 Minutes) will be shamelessly plugging for gun control by running an interview they did with parents of children slain in the Newtown elementary school shooting. Since they have an agenda, it’s a safe bet that two won’t be invited to the televised lynching of the Second Amendment.
Here are two posts of mine from a few months ago:
The father of a 6-year-old slain in the Newtown elementary school tragedy spoke before a hearing by a Connecticut legislative committee examining the state’s gun control laws. He said:
Mattioli says he believes in “simple, few gun laws” and that there are “more than enough on the books.”
But he said they’re not being properly enforced.
Mattioli received a standing ovation.
Another Newtown father rejects gun control:
“Charleton Heston made the phrase, ‘from my cold, dead hands’ famous, and I will tell you here today, you will take my ability to protect my Victoria from my cold, dead hands,” said Stevens, punctuating this final line of his testimony with a resounding pound of his fist on the desk before him, and drawing cheers from the chamber audience.
Video at the link.
Don’t look for either of them on 60 Minutes this Sunday.
See the kind of stuff you miss if you’re not visiting Alphecca (this blog) every day?
NY Times Touts Misleading Liberal Gun Violence Report
A “report” being issued today by a liberal group (from statistics collected by liberals at Harvard) says that states that have the weakest gun laws have the highest rates of gun violence. From the NY Times:
Many states with the weakest gun laws have the worst rates of gun violence, ranking high on numerous indicators, like gun homicides and suicides, firearm deaths of children, and killings of law enforcement officers, according to a report to be issued Wednesday by the liberal Center for American Progress.
That’s the lead paragraph and you can just see all the gun control advocates rushing to call their state representatives or congress critters and insisting on more gun laws. That certainly is the intention of the authors and touters of the report.
But, notice that once again the report relies upon suicides to reach its tenuous conclusions. Now, is a gun suicide a violent way to take your own life? Yes. But it isn’t a crime against another person (at least not in a legal sense) and none of the following gun control measures can prevent it:
An “assault weapons” ban won’t prevent gun suicides.
A “high capacity” magazine ban won’t prevent gun suicides.
Even “universal background checks” won’t prevent gun suicides except in very rare cases where the person has a record of commitment that was reported to the FBI NICS database.
Subtract suicides from the gun violence statistics and suddenly the chart is turned nearly upside down. Study the chart at the bottom of this Guardian article. Those are 2011 FBI crime statistics.
What stands out is that states with few gun control laws have some of the lowest gun murder rates (i.e. actual gun violence against victims) and, in fact, gun crimes in general. These states include Alaska, Montana, Vermont, N.H., Maine, Oregon, North and South Dakota, Utah, Iowa, etc.
So, how come the New York Times isn’t publishing an article that touts that states with the fewest gun control laws are the ones with the lowest rates of gun CRIME? Because it doesn’t fit their agenda.
Statistics only tell you so much if you only present them one way. Are there states with strict gun control that have low gun murder rates? Yes; Hawaii comes to mind. Are there states with few gun control laws and high gun crime? Yes; Louisiana for example.
Left out of these gun crime statistics are state demographics. I’m not saying that that is the real cause, but it is a contributing factor.
But, contrary to the misleading report being heralded by the Times, if I were choosing a place to live based solely upon how safe I would be from gun crime, I’d choose one with a pro-gun mentality.
They Say That Like It’s A Bad Thing. . . .
A headline this morning at Politico: Momentum Gone on Gun Control.
Unfortunately, that’s only at the federal level. Several states (NY, CO, etc.) are going ahead with all sorts of knee-jerk, feel-good legislation.
The New York Times claims that the number of homes with guns in them has fallen over the years and is at a near low:
The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.
In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday. Researchers said the difference compared with 2010, when the rate was 32 percent, was not statistically significant.
Maybe. Or maybe a lot of folks, have — over the years — realized that the day would come when the government might want to take those guns away from them, so they don’t admit to owning any. Even G.W, Bush endorsed renewing the AWB.
In a “random” poll, supposedly anonymous, your phone number is still recorded.
I can tell you that if some stranger called me on the phone and asked if I owned firearms, I’d deny it. Anyone can claim to be taking a poll: The government, a burglar (but I repeat myself), the local cops seeing if you own one and comparing that to their list of permit holders. . . .
If and what I own is my business, not some unknown person on the other end of the phone line.
Maine Newspaper Requests CCW Permit Records
The Bangor Daily News is requesting the names and addresses of every single CCW permit holder in Maine under the Freedom of Information Act. Legislation has been introduced to make those records secret. From Fox News:
Gov. Paul LePage released a statement saying, “If newspapers would like to know who has concealed weapons permits, then they should know the Governor has his.”
LePage said he’s concerned the Bangor newspaper’s request “will incite fear among gun owners and non-gun owners alike regarding their safety. There is no reason why these records should be public and I encourage the Legislature to act quickly to make this personal information confidential.”
For their part, the Bangor Daily News issued a statement saying that they have no intention of publishing those records. Rather, they are doing “long term reporting” regarding domestic violence, drug abuse, and sexual assault.
NY Times Anti-Gun Agenda Thwarted (A Bit)
A New York appellate court has ruled that the New York Times’s request for a list of gun owners in New York City, under the Freedom of Information Law, violates the state’s statute. The ruling overturns in part a lower court’s ruling.
Details at the link. Even after the bruhaha caused by an upstate NY newspaper that published a list of Westchester and Rockland County permit holders, I guess the tired, old, decayed, liberally biased NY Times decided they wanted to do the same for NYC permit holders.
Yeah, so?
Started in October of 2002, Alphecca is an occasional blog of OPINIONS by a conservative, gay gun nut living in Vermont. I write about politics, OTR, books, science, gun rights and the media bias against firearms, and anything else that strikes my fancy. Your opinions about my opinions are welcome in the comments and as I always say, thanks so much for stopping by.
Alphecca is a member of "the lunatic fringe of the US right"
--Guardian (UK) 6/26/06
Email me at:
gunnut -at-
alphecca -dot- com
