Sarah Palin Saturday Double-Header

My Calguns friend and shooting buddy 7X57 wrote a great piece I though it is worth sharing with the readers of my blog. Enjoy!

Sarah Palin Saturday Double-Header

As some have probably noticed, watching the media wear themselves out barking and snapping at the end of their chain at Sarah Palin has become a rather good spectator sport. Sometimes I play sportscaster here, for the amusement of those who enjoy the sport. Palin has become something of a morality play about the downfall of the Left, and that's good clean fun.

So it is today. We had a double-header last Saturday, one a simple demonstration of character and the other a morality play about political deftness and stupidity, but both breathtaking in their own way. The latter is particularly interesting, juxtaposed as it is beside one particular political folly of the Obama administration. Or, maybe that one is about character too. Maybe they're both connected. You, sportsfans, will have to decide.

Act I: The Anti-Gillibrand

The warm-up game is simply told: Sarah Palin gave a speech on Second Amendment Rights at a meeting of the Alaska Gun Collectors Association. The dinosaur media was quiet as a grave about this, which is interesting--why not take the opportunity to underline the talking point that she's a gun-nut extremist? I mean--*collecting*?

What kept them too busy to take a swipe at their favorite victim? We'll see in Act II. But this particular episode of the ongoing national morality play appears to be about character--simple honesty and loyalty. It's best seen as the opposite of Freshman senator Gillibrand, who seems to have been extra busy shedding her gun-rights connections as fast as Carolyn McCarthy can tell her to. Why not? If you have to run over the whole state of NY, which in practice means anti-gun fortress New York City, it's the sensible thing to do.

Except--some people, non-politicians to be sure, might think that dishonest. In any rate, Sarah Palin having chosen to step onto the national stage from the Frozen wastelands of the North, seems to be choosing the opposite. I'm sure any political consultant would have told her to moderate her views, but perhaps this is simply an example of good political instincts: she could never shed the image of a gun-nut, not in the face of a homicidally insane dinosaur media. The Health Care bill is struggling over the problem of trying to please too many at one time--perhaps there is political wisdom in "dancing with the one that brung ya." It is certain that she could never earn the trust of anti-gun voters, so why risk losing the gunnies for nothing?

Or, it might not be political instincts. It might be that other thing, that outdated idea from Classical Ethics that you should be willing to suffer the consequences of being right and not be ashamed of what you believe and where you came from. Either way, it fairly takes the breath away: a politician deliberately and unabashedly going to a gun-collector function, speaking on Second Amendment rights, and accepting an NRA award. It is so flagrant a violation of the political rule of avoiding controversy and giving offense to anyone that it almost looks like a deliberate invitation to the media to attack.

But it most assuredly means this: Sarah Palin is not going to run away from gunnies for political purposes--she appears to be the anti-Gillibrand. Now, she cannot be the most pro-gun politician in American history; that history includes presidents like Jefferson, who told us that the great object is that every man be armed, Grant, a president of the NRA, and Kennedy, who said we should strive to again be a nation of riflemen. It would hardly be possible to be more pro-gun than the founding generation. But at this point, Sarah Palin may be the most pro-gun politician alive. At any rate, one would have to go outside the main party structure to the likes of Ron Paul to find a serious competitor.

But returning to the other suggestion: why would she invite the media to attack her? Why wave the red flag? Well, I don't really think she did--it would be consistent with her behavior to simply do what she likes and disregard the opinions of detractors. I think that's the real Sarah Palin, and a breathtaking level of disregard she has, too. But that very disregard seems to be at the heart of the Left's terminal case of Palin Derangement. They are the Philosopher Kings. She does not give deference. In Plato's Republic, that is a fatal error. They aren't that far yet, but their hatred of her shows how far they're willing to go in the name of hate and injured pride.

More than one ethical tradition names Pride as a particularly effective path to destruction. The Western tradition receives it from both parents--it is Homozygous for it, you might say. The Hebrews told us that Pride goes before a Fall. The Greeks said that those the Gods would destroy they first made proud. And the apostles told their Greek converts that Pride was the Original Sin. So Pride doesn't play well in that tradition. This first act in Saturday's Palin Play illustrates the source of the wounded pride of the Left; a Little Person, worse an *uneducated* person (which has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with ideological certification) refuses to genuflect, and so spectacularly that the Philosopher Kings must crush her not as an opponent, but as a traitor who commits lese majeste. Not for practical reasons, but furiously, incoherently. And, perhaps in the terror that makes men lash out at shadows.


That bring us to Act II, on the theme of Pride and Fall.

The feature game was a bit different; the blogosphere went looking for a lamb and got torn to shreds by a lion. And we can learn a few things by how that happened.

The anti-Palin bloggers seem to have felt a distinct lack of Palin news, and perhaps despairing for a reason to get out of bed in the morning decided to just make some up. OK, well, outright lying is a normal day in the blogosphere, but you'd think they'd have learned back when they lied about the parentage of her baby and all the rest. However, you'd be wrong. Rational people learn from experience, and on the subject of Sarah Palin they are not only not rational, they are stark-staring mad. So like moths to a candle, they returned to her family life, which seems to exercise an unholy power over them. The lie this time was that she and Todd were breaking up.

What's the origin of this dark obsession with family life, so strong that it makes them lack even the human decency that prompted Barak Obama to say that family is off-limits? I think it lies in the sexual mythology of the left. There are many influences there, of course, some contradictory. A powerful one is the Radical Feminist theory that all sex is an exploitative exercise of power over another. There are few traditionalists as prudish as a certain kind of Feminist, as Camille Paglia is not shy to point out. A more popular variant is that it is any vestige of traditional marriage that is exploitative. This is nearly universal; repeated over and over again until it is not even a conscious meme is that the Right has cold, passionless, sterile relationships.

Now, the problem with Sarah Palin is that she threatens that idea; pretty much nobody believes she's one of the asexual women the left has so often put up for election. Worse is the dirty little secret that most of the left's iconic women got where they are because of a man (Hillary is a public figure because of Bill, and the list is astonishingly long from there), while Sarah Palin is genuinely, unquestionably self-made; Todd Palin is not a politician and leans toward the Alaska independence party.

So the other meme is invoked, one that comes from a bizzarely Leftist version of the Victorian woman: a female Conservative who isn't frigid is a slut. This is the constant theme running throughout all of the unseemly coverage of Palin's family. But you might have thought it might them from walking into the trap that the Divorce Lie led them into.

Perhaps the problem is that the left's theory about asexual marriages is in fact true in their experience? Bill Clinton, at least, might agree. And so, somehow, they didn't anticipate the political masterstroke that came when someone finally ran down an apparently bemused Sarah Palin and asked her about the whole thing. Perhaps it's because they'd spent so much time lying about the Palins that they drank their own kool-aid. Or, perhaps it's because we don't ever seem to see public figures who really appear to like their spouses. Perhaps they expected yet another of those polite, ham-fisted denials that never, ever work. Perhaps they expected that they could keep this game going for weeks, enjoying the ever-more-strident and ever-less-believable public denials. Instead, what they got their heads handed to them on a platter:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah Palin Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I'm not blind!

That may be the most brilliant line we'll see for a long time. Denials never work; we've seen that time and time again that "I love my wife/husband" does nothing to stop the rumors. So what she said was different, something we simply have not heard from a politician and above all a female politician: she said, in essence, "I think my husband is hot."

And that brings us to one of the most interesting, politically incendary things about Sarah Palin: she likes men. Thanks to the Cultural Revolutionaries of the left, we now have a culture that hates men. Television is drowning in the dual image of men as either castrated or evil. Sarah Palin threatens that image, above all because she seems to genuinely like men as men. Being the husband of the governor is almost certain to be the most castrating job in Alaska--unless you happen to be a multiple Iron Dog champion and fishing-boat skipper. At that point, you can wear a unitard and still be manly. And that, it seems, is the kind of man Sarah Palin likes.

Name me *one* woman on the left happily, unapologetically married to a similar man.

I've said before that this is another aspect of Sarah Palin that is endlessly threatening to the left. It isn't primarily women that she attracts--its men. And not because of the left's smear that she looks like a "slutty flight attendent," a sexist pig attitude that they've spread as far as they can. It's because she likes them and doesn't tell them they should be castrated for the good of society.

My guess is that, push come to shove, quite a few of them would die for her. Nothing threatens the left as much as a woman who commands respect because she gives it. If that sort of thing became common, the left would have no gender-theory left. And that's my guess as to why they'll never be able to avoid walking into that kind of trap; because they simply can't imagine what a strong, self-made woman who likes men and chooses to surround herself with them and their environment instead of blaming them for her own shortcomings would think like.

They're right to fear her like the devil. Even moderate and left-leaning men tend to appreciate not being blamed for everything. She has to be stopped and neutralized lest too many of them start to like being treated like men instead of half-domesticated animals. They might enjoy an environment without hate.

And that's the bases-loaded home run that ended Saturday's double-header. Until next time, your humble sportscaster remains....

7x57

They Carry Guns

Here is a real Rara Avis: a liberal newspaper from San Diego publishing an impartial , unbiased and well researched article on California UOC (Unloaded Open Carry) movement.
Kudos to every participant in the interview and kudos to Miss Rosa Jurjevic, she proved herself to be is a great gal and an honest journalist.

Now, why don't we have the same honest and impartial type of journalism practiced at LA/NY Times, CNN, CBS and the rest of the major media outlets?
Is it that hard for the big name newspaper editorialists and TV anchors to do a little research on this issue, leave their fears and personal bias aside and write objective articles based on real information, not anti-gun propaganda?

Here an except of the article, please follow the link at the bottom to read it in its entirety:

They carry guns
By Rosa Jurjevics | Published Wednesday, July 15, 2009

It’s a beautiful day in Pacific Beach as Nate approaches the bronze pelican statue on the boardwalk. He’s slight and blond, spectacled and clad in jeans and an army-green T-shirt. He squints. The sun’s so bright overhead that he is prompted to spray a fine mist of sunblock over his fair skin to stave off a burn.

I’ve never met Nate before, but I know it’s him (a) because I’ve seen his picture and (b) due to the handgun that sits on a holster against his hip. I’m about to get up from where I’m sitting and introduce myself when someone else beats me to the punch. A scraggly-looking beachgoer, a man of indeterminable age because he is so weather-beaten, approaches.

“What’s that for, bro?” he asks, pointing in the direction of Nate’s gun, a Taurus Tracker .44 Magnum revolver.

Before Nate can answer, the man continues.

“There are surfers at the beach looking to party, and you show up with that? That’s not right. Love life! Be mellow!”

This is when I walk up and introduce myself. The beachgoer looks at me for a moment with wild blue eyes, then looks back at Nate, as Nate is beginning to explain what he will have to reiterate time and time again to concerned and/or interested parties: he is open carrying.

The term “open carrying” refers to one who is in possession of a holstered, unloaded firearm on his or her person, displayed in plain view. Nate begins to explain the legalities of this to the beachgoer when Sean approaches, video camera in tow. In shades, a green shirt with double-breast pockets, green cargo pants, and a Sig Sauer P229 holstered on his hip, Sean looks not unlike a police officer.

The beachgoer does a double take.

“Another one!” he exclaims, as Sean greets us warmly.

The beachgoer, incredulous, excuses himself — with one final stare — to go “get baked.”

To read the rest of the article go here: They Carry Guns

UPDATE!
Nate, the UOC guy featured in the Reader article will be interviewed tomorrow 07/21 on the local talk radio station starting around 8AM Pacific Time on AM 600 KOGO. This radio station is the home of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in San Diego. You can listen to the interview on the Internet live or podcast here

Hoover: Vacuum Cleaner For The Joyce Foundation Cash

From BFA here is another report about another "grassroots" anti Second Amendment organization - in reality just a gravy train for those who run it.

Exposed: Ohio anti-gunners' 2006 & 2007 IRS returns

Quote:

The Joyce Foundation's last grant to Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence occurred in 2004, in the amount of $200,000, and was earmarked as a two year grant "for continued support of its efforts as a statewide resource on gun violence prevention, and to build its organizational funding and membership base". Hoover paid nearly half of that to herself, and at the end of the two years, had nothing to show for herself as far as achieving either one of the goals the Joyce Foundation set out for her.

"If we have more use of guns, then we're going to have more people who are injured and die."
-- Toby Hoover, Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, when asked in April 2004 about her predictions about Ohio's newly-implemented concealed carry law

The rest here

Toby Hoover:what a predestined name! Somebody at the Joyce Foundation should have thought of that.

Oh No, So Sad! No More Money...Honey?

After the Heller decision some speculated the anti-Second Amendment groups will start to lose credibility and funding. This is the first confirmed victim and it has folded up based on losing funding from probably the primary source of anti-gun funding - The Joyce Foundation.
H/T Hoffmang

Gun control group disbands after losing funding
Monday, July 6, 2009, 8:50 AM
By Pat Curtis

An Iowa group once active in lobbying for gun control has disbanded after losing a major grant. The November 1st coalition began after the November 1, 1991 shootings on the University of Iowa campus and was later renamed Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence.

U-I professor Rex Honey served on the board of directors and hopes to revive the group. "I will try in autumn to get some students involved at the University of Iowa, given that the campus was what started our organization in the first place," Honey said. "So, it's not that we don't think there's an issue any longer."

No more money...Honey?

Honey says most recently the group has relied on volunteers to lobby the legislature. "There was a grant with the Joyce foundation for a period of close to a decade from the mid 90s well into this decade, and that funding did end," Honey said.

"That meant we could no longer hire staff, so everything was done on a volunteer basis." The organization recently helped stop a bill to loosen restrictions on county officials who issue gun permits.
-----------------------------

Lock'n Load

New reality series coming up on SHOWTIME.

On the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling on the 2nd Amendment which reinforces every American's right to bear arms, this show is a fly on the wall at "The Shootist" gun store in Englewood, Colorado, where salesman Josh Ryan is always in full-on pitch mode -- and the steady stream of customers never stops. And for every gun sold by this expert gunslinger at this family-owned store, there's a fascinating story and a fascinating buyer to tell it to him: the new parent who wants to protect his family; the teenager who's an expert hunter; the 30-something woman who feels a little more at ease with a revolver in her purse and the avid collector who simply has a fascination with guns of all kinds. There's even a shooting range in the basement to try out the merchandise before completing the sale. The show will debut in 2009.

Here are two trailers:

Undeniable Proof That Gun Control Works

Remember Great Britain? It's that civilized and enlightened liberal paradise where a decade ago and in the name of public safety people were asked to surrender their guns?
It was "for the children" of course. But how's the liberal anti-guntopia worked out so far for the Brits you may ask?

From UK's Telegraph:

The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.

Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it has been revealed.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa - widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.

The figures comes on the day new Home Secretary Alan Johnson makes his first major speech on crime, promising to be tough on loutish behaviour.

The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.

In the decade following the party's election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million - or more than two every minute.

The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:

The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.
It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.
It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.
But it is the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.



Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: 'This is a damning indictment of this government's comprehensive failure over more than a decade to tackle the deep rooted social problems in our society, and the knock on effect on crime and anti-social behaviour.

'We're now on our fourth Home Secretary this parliament, and all we are getting is a rehash of old initiatives that didn't work the first time round. More than ever Britain needs a change of direction.'

The figures, compiled by the Tories, are considered the most accurate and up-to-date available.

But criminologists say crime figures can be affected by many factors, including different criminal justice systems and differences in how crime is reported and measured.

In Britain, an affray is considered a violent crime, while in other countries it will only be logged if a person is physically injured.

There are also degrees of violence. While the UK ranks above South Africa for all violent crime, South Africans suffer more than 20,000 murders each year - compared with Britain's 921 in 2007.

Experts say there are a number of reasons why violence is soaring in the UK. These include Labour's decision to relax the licensing laws to allow round-the-clock opening, which has led to a rise in the number of serious assaults taking place in the early hours of the morning.

But Police Minister David Hanson said: 'These figures are misleading.
Levels of police recorded crime statistics from different countries are simply not comparable since they are affected by many factors, for example the recording of violent crime in other countries may not include behaviour that we would categorise as violent crime.

'Violent crime in England and Wales has fallen by almost a half a peak in 1995 but we are not complacent and know there is still work to do. That is why last year we published 'Saving lives. Reducing harm. Protecting the public. An Action Plan for Tackling Violence 2008-11'.'

The timing of the Europe-wide violence figures is a blow for Mr Johnson, who will today seek to reassert Labour's law and order credentials.

In his first major speech on crime since becoming Home Secretary, Mr Johnson is expected to promise a concerted crack down on antisocial behaviour.

He wants to set up a website to allow the public to see what is taking place in their neighbourhood, such as the number of louts who have been served with Asbos.

Mr Johnson is also known to support early intervention to stop children going off the rails.

American (Phony) Hunter and Shooters Association Endorses Sotomayor For SCOTUS

Washington, D.C. - Ray Schoenke, the President of the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA), expressed support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Court Nominee. Schoenke made the endorsement in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT).



After sending the letter, Schoenke stated, “As with most issues involving the Second Amendment, concerns about Sotomayor are being stoked by groups who benefit financially from the politics of fear.

Really? And what kind of group are you talking about when you say "benefiting from the politics of fear" Mr. Schoenke?
You mean like the group you donated $5,000?
What was the name of that organization...wait don't tell me, let me see if I can remember. Wasn't Handgun Control, Inc, known these days by the name of Brady Campaign, by any chance?

In my old country there is a saying, Mr Schoenke: lies have very short legs but they catch up with you really fast

This Is The Kind Of Story Brady Bunch Doesn't Want You To Learn About

Just another case that proves how armed law abiding citizens can stop criminals and how when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.

Punks Messing Up With The Wrong Guy Got What They Deserved

Meet Elliot Firby: working man, father of five and new gun owner.

Elliot Firby says he decided to get a gun as a way to protect himself and his family. He says law enforcement can't be there all the time. Turns out he wouldn't even have the gun a year before it would be used.

Liberals: Brain Dead Now, Just As Always

Just listen to these morons:



Are these the people that spawned the Obamatons of today?

Just imagine how the new Eastern Europe democracies would look right now if Carter would have been elected for the second term. If you can't visualize that, just take a look at Iran, one of Carter's most enduring legacies.

H/T IOwnTheWorld

No Guns For Negroes

Another exceptional pro-Second Amendment movie brought to you by JFPO.
Best 20 minutes I've spent watching a video in a very long time.

Part 1


Part 2

Armed Student Saves 10 Lives; Dyane Sawyer Weeps

From BFA here is a story that would make ABC's Dianne Sawyer look like the lying fool she is - if the story would ever made national news.
But since the story debunks one of the liberal media favorite lies "when attacked by thugs it's safer to be disarmed", don't put your hopes in seeing it making national news.
Truth be told, the liberals in the media would rather report about the lifeless bodies of rape victims lying down in pools of blood than telling a story about how a victim pulled a gun and in the process of defending his life put a hole or two in a scumbags head.

Georgia college student saves 10 lives with gun; Ohio's defenseless students targeted by criminals

One of the principle claims made in Diane Sawyer's rigged campus carry experiment, recently aired on ABC's 20/20, was that having a gun wouldn't protect a college student, that ordinary people like college students aren't trained to handle stress, that they might shoot innocent people, and that the bad guy might take their gun away.

Apparently someone forgot to tell a student in College Park, GA that they were better off without having a gun ready at hand...and at least ten college students say they are alive today because of it.

From Atlanta, Georgia's WSBTV:

A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they're thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

Channel 2 Action News reporter Tom Jones met with one of the students to talk about the incident.

"Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all," said student Charles Bailey.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

"They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, 'Give me your wallets and cell phones,'" said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. "The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough," said Bailey.

The story says that's when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

"Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window," said Bailey.

A neighbor heard the shots and heard someone running nearby.

"And I heard someone say, 'Someone help me. Call the police. Somebody call the police,'" said a neighbor.

The neighbor said she believes it was Lavant, who was found dead near his apartment, only one building away.

Bailey said he is just thankful one student risked his life to keep others alive.

"I think all of us are really cognizant of the fact that we could have all been killed," said Bailey.

One female student was shot several times, but is expected to make a full recovery.

Police told the media they are close to making the arrest of the second suspect.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, officials at The Ohio State University say that the increasingly high level of street-level crimes - thefts, robberies, assaults and break-ins - in the University District is no coincidence. In fact, criminals are targeting students specifically because they know they'll be defenseless.

Video here

From OSU's The Lantern:

"What we're seeing is a shift into the university area where [criminals] are finding that students are an easy target," said Tom Wildman, the Code Enforcement & Safety Committee chair of the University Area Commission.

In the past six months, 680 street-level crimes were committed in the district, according to a Lantern analysis of crime data from crimereports.com, which takes its information from the Columbus Division of Police. These statistics include only the off-campus areas of the district, and not the OSU campus itself.

These numbers dwarf the statistics for Columbus' less densely populated core downtown area, which tallied 301 street-level crimes over the past six months, according to crimereports.com data.

Ohio is one of at least eight states that have had bills pending in the current legislative session which are designed to restore students' self-defense rights on college campuses.

Campus carry legislation has already been signed into law during the current legislative session in North Dakota. In Missouri, the House of Representatives has already passed campus carry legislation, and hearings are now being held in the Senate. A campus carry bill is currently stalled in Indiana's Senate Judiciary Committee, and the Oklahoma legislature allowed that state's campus carry bill to die for this session. Things are going better in the Tennessee House House Judiciary subcommittee, where hearings have been held on a Vol State campus carry bill. Hearings on campus carry legislation are also being held in both chambers of the Texas legislature.

Back in the Buckeye State, Rep. John Adam's HB129 has yet to receive a hearing. And the students of Ohio's campuses continue to pay the price in the loss of blood and treasure.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman, and a NRA-certified firearms instructor.

Paintball Nazis

Imagine this: in Germany, a deeply deranged young man who is an amateur automobile race driver gets the keys of his father Mercedes Benz and plows the car at 70 miles/hour in a crowd celebrating Oktoberfest in a beer garden killing 15 people.

The reaction of the German government is swift and decisive: ban car racing, ban cars with 6 or more cylinders and ban Hot Wheels and any other automobile toys.

Think that can't happen? Wait until you read the following story:

The German government is planning to ban paintball and laser shooting games in reaction to the recent school massacre in which 15 people died.

Under legislation agreed by the ruling coalition of the chancellor, Angela *Merkel, using air rifles to shoot paint-filled pellets at opponents is likely to be made illegal, and would be punishable with fines of up to €5,000 (£4,480).

The decision, which is expected to be fast-tracked through the Bundestag before the summer recess, comes two months after 17-year-old Tim Kretschmar shot dead 15 people at his former school in Winnenden, south-west Germany, with a weapon he had taken from his father's bedroom. Kretschmar's love of paintball as well as violent video and computer games was widely publicised.

The government has found itself under pressure to tighten gun laws in Germany in what has become one of the main issues before a general election in September.

"This so-called game plays down violence, leading to the danger that people have fewer inhibitions about shooting each other," said Dieter Wiefelsputz, of the Social Democrats.

Owners of paintball arenas, which are already out of bounds for under-18s, said they felt they were easy targets in what opposition politicians have referred to as "populistic placebo politics".

Arne Petry, spokesman for the German Paintball League, said: "Paintball is not about simulating bloodbaths – the most you're going to end up with is a bruise or two."

The owner of one of Germany's largest paintball halls, north-west of Berlin, said he thought the ban ironic, not least because "many of my customers are government workers". He said he counted bank managers, firefighters, police and even security guards from Merkel's chancellery among his regular customers.

"They come here after their shifts to let off steam and stay for several hours at a time," he said, requesting anonymity.

The new law is also expected to forbid under-18s access to high-calibre guns and to make it easier for police to carry out random controls at the homes of registered gun owners.

Claudia Roth, head of the Green party, said that while she was no fan of paintball, the government's plan to ban it was hypocritical and amounted to a "cowardly concession to the gun lobby".

"They should instead be banning high-calibre weapons," she said.
Source

Next on the agenda of the antis: ban chess. It's an abstraction of warfare and may induce into the minds the players thoughts of machine gunning the pawns, bayoneting the Knights, blowing the Queen with a hand grenade and capturing the King.
Can't have that in a civilized country.

California "Shall Issue" Concealed Carry Weapon Permits, Here We Come!

About time that the corrupt, discretionary and idiotic issuing system for Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) permits we have here in California to be challenged and struck down in a court of law.

With the help of the Calguns Foundation and The Second Amendment Foundation, a lawsuit was filled on behalf o several California citizens that were arbitrarily denied the right of self defense. In the light of the Heller and Nordyke rulings, the prospects of a big win for the Second Amendment supporters in California are better than ever.

So how can you help win this fight? It's simple: open your wallet and DONATE TO CALGUNS FOUNDATION. No matter how much you can or cannot afford, just do it.
And as they say: "as California goes, so the rest of the country goes", the impact on the Second Amendment rights of the ruling in this lawsuit will not only be felt in the Golden State, but in the rest of country as well.

Lawsuit Seeks Stronger Gun Rights For California Citizens

(AP) In theory, law-abiding Californians who undergo a criminal background check and pass a government training course can receive a permit from their local sheriff to carry a concealed firearm.

But in practice, many California counties flatly deny permits to residents who meet the requirements for a concealed carry permit -- a situation that a lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento on Tuesday hopes to remedy.

The lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Calguns Foundation says the routine denials of concealed carry permits violate the right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

One of the plaintiffs is Deanna Sykes, a lesbian and a firearms instructor who says she believes her sexual orientation and small stature make her a target for criminals. Another is Andrew Witham, a private investigator and campus public safety officer, whose local sheriff denied his request to carry a handgun while away from work.

The case "presents a very simple legal issue: people have the right to bear arms," Alan Gura, a Virginia attorney representing the plaintiffs, told CBSNews.com on Wednesday. "The state is able to regulate that right, but it cannot arbitrarily deny the right to bear arms based on the whims of local officials. The current law has absolutely no standards to it, and some local officials regrettably abuse their discretion. They decide self-defense is not a valid reason to deny the gun carry permit."

Section 12050 of California law says that "the sheriff of a county, upon proof that the person applying is of good moral character" may issue a concealed carry permit. Californians who carry a concealed weapon without a license are subject to criminal penalties including fines and a one-year jail term. (Nearly every state has some form of concealed carry laws, with 36 states saying that sheriffs must issue them by default, and two states -- Alaska and Vermont -- require no advance permission.)

What the pro-gun rights groups that filed this lawsuit hope to do is apply the U.S. Supreme Court's reasoning in the landmark D.C. v. Heller case decided last year. Even though Heller focused on the firearm restrictions of the nation's capital, by recognizing a constitutional right protecting individual possession of firearms, the justices expressed a dim view of sweeping prohibitions on Americans' Second Amendment rights.

Gura said that he knew of no case filed since the Supreme Court's decision that has led to a definitive ruling about how Heller applies to concealed carry permits.

A map prepared by the CalCCW.com site shows that the more liberal counties around San Francisco and Los Angeles tend to be the ones that deny permits to regular citizens. A 2007 report from the state of California shows that the county of San Francisco, for instance, issued only six permits that year -- while the rural, wooded, and far less populous county of Shasta issued 2,306 permits.

A bill titled AB 357 introduced in the California legislature in February would remove some discretion from local officials if the applicant for a permit qualified for one. (The city of Davis, for instance, tells applicants: "An evaluation and comparison of our current services to available resources has forced us to discontinue processing and issuing CCW [Carry Concealed Weapon] licenses. I apologize for the inconvenience this action will cause you.")

Last month, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment -- which required states to offer freedoms found in the Bill of Rights such as a jury trial -- protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That decision is important because it means extreme state laws violate the Second Amendment as much as extreme federal laws would, and it is binding on the Sacramento court where the lawsuit was filed this week.

Representatives of the defendants in this case, Sacramento county and Yolo county, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Source

Wanna See How Reliably Pro-Gun A Pro-Gun Democrat Is?

You don't need to look further than the pro-gun Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, the staunch pro-Second Amendment supporter and politician who took over Hillary's Senatorial seat:

Quote:

NY Lawmakers Want Five Year Handgun Licenses At the federal level, U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are urging President Barack Obama to re-instate a 90 day retention period for background check records. Right now, those records are held only 24 hours. Source

Yup, the Democrats will never have enough votes to push of another AWB. And my name is Santa Claus.

Anti Gun Liberals, Owned!

About 100 supporters of a bill tightening Virginia gun control staged a lie-in on the Capitol lawn, but were outnumbered 3-1 yesterday by opponents who wielded signs declaring "Here Lie Disarmed Victims."

Source
H/T TheWarOnGuns

Video: I Decided Not To Be A Victim

A Justice Files episode about the right of self defense from an era when California wasn't a gun-hating liberal stronghold:



H/T The War On Guns

You Know What The Problem Is? There Is Too LITTLE Media Bias Against Guns

Eric Boehlert from Media Matters (liberal think-tank run by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and financed by former Nazi collaborator and Democrat Party mega-sugar-daddy George Soros) explains what's causing the latest mass shootings ocuring in America:
The press no longer cares about epic gun violence

Oh, Lord...

Before clicking the link to Mr. Boehler masterpiece of braindead journalism make sure you have one of these close at hand. Or a couple of them, just to be sure.

Shooting Back Works

So true...but the gun hating liberals will just ignore logical arguments like this until they're blue in the face

Shooting Back Works

By Jeff Knox

(March 11, 2008) The media and gun control advocates insist that the easy availability of firearms is a problem; that increased firepower equals increased death toll; that the key to stopping armed violence is restricting gun sales and prohibiting lawful firearm possession in certain public places. They’re wrong. They have always been wrong and their misguided tampering comes with a very high price – people’s lives.

In the past year there have been a number of very high profile cases of a lone lunatic walking into a public place and indiscriminately shooting people. Such incidents are aberrations, unpredictable, unstoppable, and relatively unusual. The best indicator that someone might attempt such an atrocity is not how available guns are or how efficiently background checks are conducted, but the level of news coverage generated by the last such tragedy because so many of these cowards are motivated by a desire for their own 15 minutes of fame. Since the media refuses to stop rewarding these murderers, the best that can be hoped for is to mitigate the damage when they strike. In the final analysis, the difference between a crazed bad guy killing several people and a crazed bad guy killing dozens of people is almost always the length of time it takes for good guys with guns to arrive on the scene. Three attacks in the past year offer graphic proof of this fact.

A lunatic armed with two pistols, a .22 and a 9mm, walks into a college class building and begins randomly shooting people as he goes from classroom to classroom. Months later and thousands of miles away, a lunatic armed with a semi-auto AK and a 9mm pistol begins randomly shooting people as he walks into a crowded church building. A few months later and halfway around the world, a lunatic armed with a full-auto AK-47 machinegun and plenty of extra ammunition walks into a college library and begins randomly shooting people.
Three similar scenarios with three strikingly, and unexpectedly different outcomes. None of the attacks could have been reasonably predicted or prevented. All three attacks were planned out well in advance. All three attackers were on suicide missions with the objective of killing as many people as possible before being killed themselves. All three murderers sought a twisted form of fame and glory and were willing to die to achieve it. All three also knew that the more people they killed, the more famous they would be. All three demonstrated basic proficiency with their weapons, but none of the three was known to have had any formal firearms training.

Most would expect that the biggest differences in the shootings would be related to the weapons used and the time it took for police to respond. In fact, police response in all of the attacks was relatively quick, but when the difference between life and death is mere seconds, even just one minute for police to arrive is too long to be of use. Weapon choice also appears to have made little difference since the attacker with the most firepower did not kill the most people. The murderer carrying the full-auto AK killed 8 and wounded another 10 or 11, while the attacker using the semi-auto AK and 9mm pistol managed to kill two and wound several more. The murderer using the 9mm and .22 pistols however killed 30 and wounded 29. (Both of the last two attackers killed two people at other locations prior to the major assaults being discussed here.)

In the most recent incident, a man armed with a full-auto AK attacked students in the crowded library of a religious school in Jerusalem. An adult student at the school, Yitzhak Dadon, who was carrying a pistol, returned fire, striking the attacker, stopping the attack, and ultimately killing the murderer with the assistance of an off-duty military officer who lived nearby.

Late last year, when a disturbed young man launched an assault on a Colorado church, he began shooting people in the parking lot as he approached the main entrance. A member of the church’s security committee, Jeanne Assam, heard the shooting and rushed toward the sound, drawing her own concealed handgun. Upon encountering the murderer, Ms. Assam ordered him to stop then shot him several times, ending the attack.

Unfortunately, at Virginia Tech last April, there was no Jeanne Assam or Yitzhak Dadon – Virginia Tech forbids students and faculty from possessing firearms on campus – leaving the murderer to casually wander from room to room executing people at will until he got tired of it and took his own life.

The weapon chosen can have a major impact on how many people a mass murderer is likely to kill; as proven by the fact that the worst mass murderers in U.S. history chose jet airplanes, fertilizer, gasoline, and dynamite, in that order. Against such attacks a personal firearm is probably not much help, but if the murderer’s weapon of choice is a firearm, one capable person with a gun can make a substantial difference in the final outcome.



Permission to reprint or post this article in its entirety is hereby granted provided this credit is included. Text is available at www.FirearmsCoalition.org. To receive The Firearms Coalition’s bi-monthly newsletter, The Hard Corps Report, write to PO Box 3313, Manassas, VA 20108.

The First Amendment As Understood By The Liberals In The Academia: Does Not Apply To The Second Amendment

From F.I.R.E - Foundation For Individual Rights In Education, a pro-free speech, Second Amendment rights article

Too Often, First Amendment Protections Denied to Second Amendment Speech

by William Creeley

March 10, 2009

The First Amendment protects core political speech - and, as should be obvious, that protection extends to speech regarding the Second Amendment. This means that students at public universities and private universities that promise the right to free expression on campus must be free to engage in unfettered discussion of the merits of federal, state and local gun policy in the same way that they are free to discuss, say, agricultural subsidies, diplomatic relations with Cuba, or last night's Daily Show.

But an unfortunate consequence of the tragedies at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University is that students are increasingly facing punishment or investigation for engaging in any kind of gun-related speech. While FIRE of course understands the paramount importance of protecting students on campus, we have too often seen abuses of speech rights justified by weak allusions to these tragedies, as if advocating for or against gun rights on campus was an inherently dangerous act worthy of official reprimand. This is an absurd and untenable outcome.

FIRE has explored just how deeply regrettable this gun-speech hysteria is in previous writings. For example, Greg wrote an article for The Huffington Post entitled "What Can The Virginia Tech Tragedy Do For Me?", in which he concluded that "the simple fact is that some administrators have been using the campus shootings of the past two years as an excuse to justify cracking down on speech they don't like." Similarly, here on The Torch, Adam discussed how a recent court order in student Hayden Barnes' ongoing federal civil rights lawsuit against Valdosta State University should remind colleges that "simply invoking Virginia Tech or other incidents of severe violence on college campuses does not mean that a school can get away with declaring the most minor (or in this case nonexistent) references to violence some kind of actionable threat to campus security." Torch readers will remember that VSU cited the tragedy at Virginia Tech to justify expelling Barnes for a "threatening" collage he posted on Facebook.com.

But in light of Robert's scheduled appearance tonight on CNN, it's useful to review just how many incidents of overreaction to gun-related speech we've seen on the part of school administrators in the past several years. It's a long and shameful list:

• At Central Connecticut State University, a student gave a presentation for his speech class about the safety value of concealed weapons on campus. His professor called the police, who subsequently interrogated him about where he was storing the guns that were registered under his name. This incident has already garnered national media attention—it was featured on the front page of FoxNews.com last week—and will be the focus of Robert's appearance on Lou Dobbs Tonight.

• At Tarrant County College in Texas, a student chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus was prohibited from wearing empty gun holsters to protest policies that forbid concealed carry on campus. In addition, the group was only allowed to protest (still without holsters) in the school's tiny and restrictive free speech zone. An administrator said that the empty holsters were too threatening for other students to see.

• At Colorado College, two male students were found responsible for sexually-related "violence" after they put up posters making fun of a feminist newsletter. Because the posters, which also parodied "guy stuff," made references to chainsaws and the range of a sniper rifle, administrators claimed that feminists on campus became afraid for their lives. The administrator who punished the students wrote, "I recognize that your intent in posting your publication was not to threaten but to parody. However, in the climate in which we find ourselves today, violence—or implied violence—of any kind cannot be tolerated on a college campus." Because of this miscarriage of justice, Colorado College is now on FIRE's Red Alert list, reserved for the worst-of-the-worst when it comes to liberty on campus.

• At Lone Star College near Houston, the Young Conservatives of Texas distributed a humorous flyer listing "Top Ten Gun Safety Tips" at the school's "club rush." They were threatened with probation and derecognition, and the flyer was censored. The school's general counsel invoked the specter of the Virginia Tech shootings, suggesting that even a "mention of firearms and weapons" is inherently a "material interference" with the school's operations.

• Arkansas Tech cancelled a student production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins "out of respect for the families of those victims of the tragedies at Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech, and from an abundance of caution." At the dress rehearsal, wooden stage guns were required to be cut in half prior to the event and not used. Eventually, after national media attention and campus protests, the production was allowed to continue, albeit with added security.

• Yale attempted a similar maneuver after the Virginia Tech shootings, banning the use of any realistic-looking weapons in theatrical productions at the school. Under public pressure, Yale backed away somewhat from its original overreaction but still required audiences to be "notified in advance of the use of fake guns, swords and knives."

• According to USA Today, a professor at Emmanuel College in Boston was fired "after leading a classroom discussion about the Virginia Tech shootings in which he pointed a marker at some students and said 'pow.'" According to the professor, the five-minute demonstration included a discussion of gun control, whether to respond to violence with violence, and the public's "celebration of victimhood."

As always, FIRE will continue to monitor this unfortunate trend and to defend the rights of students and faculty to engage in fully protected speech on campus—even if that speech involves fake guns, empty holsters, or advocating for the right to carry concealed weapons on campus.