Playing Defense on the RKBA?: The culture wars are making a comeback, but this time around, social conservatives find themselves in an unfamiliar position: playing defense... And then there's gun control. The mass shootings in Binghamton, N.Y,. and Carthage, N.C., and the cop shootings in Pittsburgh have sparked new debate on gun control, yet Democrats are not willing to engage the National Rifle Association this time around, realizing this issue is a loser on the political front in many moderate states and districts around the country. When pressed on the issue in a Wednesday night interview with Katie Couric on CBS, Attorney General Eric Holder - who has a history of backing gun control - demurred. "No one's told me to back off," Holder told Couric. "I understand the Second Amendment. I respect the Second Amendment." ... (That's about it on the RKBA in this article - link furnished primarily for reference.) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21083.html --- Just a Matter of Timing: The California senator who authored the nation's now-lapsed 1994 ban on assault weapons says she will hold off trying to renew that ban. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.) tells 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl that the political timing isn't right and she will move to renew the ban at a future time of her own choosing. Feinstein appears in Stahl's report on the increase in gun sales taking place in America to be broadcast this Sunday, April 12, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Asked by Stahl if trying to renew the assault weapons ban would start a culture war and pose a distraction for an already overburdened Obama Administration, Feinstein replies, "I agree with you." "So you are going to hold off?" asks Stahl. "That's correct. I'll pick the time and the place, no question about it," Feinstein tells Stahl. But even if she pursued the renewal, the votes may not be there today in either the Senate or the House. Both Houses of Congress gained pro-gun Democrats this past election, some of whom won the support of the National Rifle Association. "I am not going to disagree with that at all," says Feinstein. "The National Rifle Association essentially has a stranglehold on the Congress." ... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/09/60minutes/main4931769.shtml Have you noticed this rash of recent shooting sprees across the country, from Oakland, CA, to Binghamton, NY? Fifty people have been gunned down in the last month alone. My story this Sunday on "60 Minutes" is about gun control. I have two interesting points for you about gun control: First, the number of people who are in favor of stricter gun-control laws is diminishing. The other is that, even during this recession, our fellow Americans are out on a gun-buying spree. I'll sit down with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who was the author and champion of the assault-weapons ban in 1994. Now, she wants to reinstate the ban, but what are the chances it will actually happen? And what about President Obama, who, according to his website, wants to make the ban permanent? The White House doesn't seem to be interested in bringing it up anytime soon, and Feinstein says she "wouldn't bring it up now" either. Watch "60 Minutes" this Sunday for the rest of our conversation and more... http://www.wowowow.com/entertainment/lesley-stahl-60-minutes-time-gun-control-264002 --- Follow the Money: Colleague Dave Workman noted yesterday that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants to implement firearms registration. A perusal of Open Secrets, which reports all campaign contributions, is in order before we conclude that Pelosi is merely a disinterested public servant wanting to make society safer. The law firm of Akin, Gump was Pelosi's 2nd biggest business donor during the 2008 election cycle, contributing $41,050. Thomas C. Goldstein, an attorney working for Akin Gump, represented Washington, DC in the Heller case, trying to save the DC gun ban... Regarding point 1 above, one of President Obama's biggest donors is the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Meagher and Flom, LLP, who contributed $510,274 to his presidential campaign. Skadden, Arps represents the inventors of a "firearm safety system," patent number 6499243, which adds a biometric activator that links a gun to one owner. The "Summary of the Invention" section of the patent application notes: is the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Meagher and Flom, LLP, who contributed $... http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d9-Nancy-Pelosi-Now-a-word-from-her-sponsors --- Don't Forget This Guy: While President Obama, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and Attorney General Eric Holder share an anti-gun ideology, they might not be the greatest threat to the Second Amendment among the current administration. Their gun control efforts could be vastly outdone by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's habit of equating gun bans with curing a "public health epidemic." ... According to the Progressive Review, fourth-grade tests improved by "less than three tenths of a percent" between 2003 and 2007 and eighth-grade math tests remained two points behind the national average for that same time period. Yet Duncan was lauded by his fellow leftists for his concern for the children, especially when he showed that concern through rallies against gun ownership, his heavy involvement with the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, and speech upon speech containing lines like: "I wish that our society valued children more than it values...traditions that might have been at home in a frontier society two centuries ago but make absolutely no sense today." ... http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31394 --- CNN vs. Fox News and the RKBA: I stopped watching "the news" on television around the beginning of 1997, when I discovered I could get and compare all the news I wanted from internet sources. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical when I received the link to this video from SAF. While lengthy, it's worth watching, to the end. I only wish that Gottlieb had clarified the true meaning of the militia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBIpfAl8cpI&feature=channel_page The Broader Picture: The current verbal slugfest over gun rights and responsibilities versus public safety has brought the Second Amendment squarely into the spotlight, but at the same time, many are wondering whether those who make their living courtesy of the First Amendment are not exploiting one constitutionally-protected right to crush another. The war against gun rights in the press is nothing new. The late Thomas Winship, former editor of the anti-gun Boston Globe and a columnist in Editor and Publisher, once authored a column in the latter publication that was headlined "Step up the war against guns." In his diatribe - for that is what it was - Winship encouraged his press colleagues to engage in "a sustained newspaper crusade." He called on editors to "Support all forms of gun licensing, in fact all causes the NRA opposes." ... http://www.examiner.com/x-4525-Seattle-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d9-Press-partisanship-gets-ugly-in-revived-gun-rights-debate?cid=exrss-Seattle-Gun-Rights-Examiner More of the Same Tonight: Tomorrow night, Friday, April 10, 2009, ABC's show 20/20 will air a report titled "If I Only Had A Gun." You can read their announcement here, but I worry how faithful the show will be to America by what questions it plans to explore and what it leaves out. What would you really like to know about the issue of gun control? it might be better to understand what one needs to know about Liberty. Liberty purists often say that if only one person were armed at such-and-such a mass shooting, the situation would have turned out much better. This observation is made because so many jurisdictions refuse honest citizens their carrying of their handguns wherever they have a right to be. Murderers know this, find the location to be as advertised - totally defenseless - and proceed unfettered. the result is completed acts of violence. Forces actively opposing this liberty purist statement betray their political agenda as clearly as being pro-abortion or being Green. They root for the murderer and not for the kids... http://www.examiner.com/x-2323-LA-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d9-If-I-only-had-a-gun-on-ABC-explores-the-wrong-issues?cid=examiner-email Despite the rash of high-profile shootings in recent years, a group of youths, given the opportunity to play with a gun, did it. That's one finding in a year-long investigation by ABC News' David Muir and Diane Sawyer in a special report, "If Only I Had a Gun," airing Friday at 10 p.m. For the piece, Muir set up a test in which college-age youths were invited to help pack up the contents of a garage for extra cash. "They come across a couple of guns and we're rolling," Muir told the Daily News. It recalled a test Sawyer did a decade ago when she interviewed families who owned guns and asked the kids if they knew where the firearms were... http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/04/09/2009-04-09_abc_news_gets_disturbing_results_with_.html --- The Beat Goes On: With firearm dealers struggling to keep ammunition on their shelves, it seems the gun and ammunition business has been stimulated in a way few people expected. The minute Barack Obama stepped into the White House, people scrambled to gun stores to buy as much ammunition as they could get their hands on. Now, there's a shortage of ammunition all over the country as demand is three times the supply. "It's been a huge topic since the election," said Mike Casey, vice president of Smith & Edwards in Farr West. "Ammunition is hard to come by, and the demand isn't getting smaller. Even with production increases, it is extremely difficult to get ammo." Casey has been out of several calibers of ammunition for more than six weeks now, with no expected date of delivery. He receives 20 calls for these items every day and continues to tell customers there's still nothing on the shelves... http://www.standard.net/live/news/169483/ --- Another Gun-Free Zone: Crews have held pirates off with Molotov cocktails, crates of rubbish and oil drums. They've electrified handrails, sprayed attackers with high-pressure fire hoses and simply kicked the pirates' rickety ladders overboard. But owners of ships plying the pirate-infested waters off Somalia's coast have balked at having firearms onboard, despite an increasing number of attacks where bullets pierced hulls or rocket propelled grenades whooshed overhead. The reason is twofold: Owners fear pirates would be more likely to continue shooting once on board if they confronted weapons, and the company might be held liable for deaths or injuries inflicted by someone on the vessel... http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/992708.html --- Brady Bunch Upset with Release of Gallup Poll: Today's Gallup news release, "Support for Gun-Control Laws at All-Time Lows", is one of the most misleading I've seen in a long time. Not only is the information old, but the main question asked and highlighted is not reflective of current efforts by activists around the country to reduce gun violence. This polling information was collected last October, which Gallup does mention in its third paragraph. Yet it certainly begs the question: Why publish a statement based on data that is almost six months old, in the wake of a string of mass shootings committed over the past month? The pressures of getting into the news cycle are powerful, but the important question is what Americans believe about gun violence prevention policy today. What's even more disturbing is for Gallup to ask Americans whether or not they support a total ban on handguns when that policy has not been pursued nationwide in years and totally ignores the current debate on gun violence prevention... (Polls are great for the left when they get the results they want. Otherwise they are flawed.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/after-mass-shootings-and_b_184832.html Related Commentary: http://www.examiner.com/x-2581-St-Louis-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d9-Brady-Campaign-upset-that-Gallup-failed-to-manipulate-data?cid=examiner-email --- The Origins of "Gun Control": A dirty little secret gun control advocates avoid mentioning is that many gun laws have racist origins. In southern states, some date to reconstruction and ensuing decades of racial unrest as whites passed "Jim Crow" laws to segregate southern states and limit the ability of blacks to vote and hold elected office. One example thoroughly documented by David Kopel in The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? were laws designed to disarm blacks "cloaked in neutral, non-racial terms," such as Tennessee, which adopted its "Army and Navy" law barring handguns except the "Army and Navy" revolvers commonly possessed by ex-confederate soldiers. Cheaper guns which cash-poor "freedmen" could afford were prohibited. Indeed, notes Kopel: "The very phrase 'Saturday Night Special' may derive from a combination of 'suicide special' and 'niggertown Saturday night.'" ... http://www.examiner.com/x-2698-Charlotte-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d9-Repealing-racist-gun-laws?cid=exrss-Charlotte-Gun-Rights-Examiner --- Firearm Legislation Stalled in Illinois: Lawmakers looking to expand or contract the rights of gun owners are having a tough time. Many downstate representatives want to allow the concealed carry of handguns, but those plans are stalled. Voters in two southern Illinois counties overwhelmingly said yes to an advisory question on concealed carry. So far 12 counties have voted yes. Four have said no. Illinois sheriffs also support the plan, but Chicago lawmakers are keeping it from going forward. In return, downstate House members are blocking plans from the city that could limit gun ownership... http://mystateline.com/content/fulltext/?cid=59102 --- California Women Take Up Shooting: The group of women from the Rancho Santa Fe Republican Women, in its third iteration, took their first outing last month - a trip to the American Shooting Range in Kearny Mesa. They plan monthly trips to the shooting range to learn how to use a firearms and support their Second Amendment right to bear arms, said Jody Bray, the trigger behind the group. A member of the National Rifle Association and the California Rifle and Pistol Association, Bray said she grew up with guns in her Texas childhood, first shooting a gun when she was 10... Bruce Ruff, a former sheriff's sergeant who is running for San Diego County Sheriff in 2010, came to the shooting range to give the ladies some tips... (It would be great for San Diego County to get a pro-RKBA sheriff again. John Duffy was hounded from office by the L.A. Times for his relatively liberal issue of CWP's.) http://www.delmartimes.net/news/255800-lady-shooters-embrace-the-second-amendment --- From JPFO - Open Letter to Michael Savage: Dear Michael, I was alarmed at the recent opinion brief you posted on your website advocating the outlawing of so-called "assault rifles". I doubt that I'm the only American who was perturbed by your point of view. While loudly decrying and condemning the political trickery of the insidious socialists and authoritarians in our midst, you have now written and published an influential piece to further their agenda. As an American Jew, and the founder of "Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership" (JPFO), I believe that I can offer a unique perspective on the dangerous fallacies of "gun control". I would hope that I might get you to reconsider your present stance. You seem to be, as are many well meaning Americans, ignorant of certain aspects of world and U.S. history. You are, as are many, also significantly misinformed of some critical facts of life within the present day U.S. law enforcement community... (Michael Savage is on the radio when I drive home from work. Perhaps the kindest thing I can say about him is that even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. Sometimes he makes some excellent points but at others he does stuff like this, revealing himself to be an incredible opportunist.) http://www.jpfo.org/articles-assd/zelman-open-letter-msavage.htm --- Conflicker Eye Chart: Related only in that we are all using computers on the internet, the linked "eye chart" will help determine whether your computer has been infected by the Conflicker worm. While much publicized as activating on April 1, Conflicker appears to be programmed to do its still unclear deed in more gradual steps. http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infection_test/cfeyechart.html -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .