NRA Examines Threat from UN, IANSA, Treaties: NRA News' investigative
reporter Ginny Simone takes a look at the global gun control goals of
the United Nations. By pushing for a binding international treaty aimed
at superseding the U.S. Constitution, the United Nations is committed to
rendering Americans' Second Amendment rights to own a firearm
meaningless. Simone interviews past and current U.N. officials and
politicians and examines the debates at the United Nations Small Arms
Summit to expose the international anti-gun agenda. (The primary content
of linked page is an intentionally frightening video of just over nine
minutes.)
http://www.ammoland.com/2009/12/14/iansa-plotting-to-tear-down-the-2nd-amendment/
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Attack from Another Quarter: A widely published Associated Press story
on the rise in police gun-related fatalities this year, along with a
now-questionable opinion poll that suggested National Rifle Association
members support some gun control measures has - perhaps unintentionally
- revealed how gun prohibitionists plan to attack gun rights in 2010.
Over the weekend, the Associated Press story ran in several
publications, including the Seattle Times, which added some of its own
material relating to recent police slayings in Seattle and Parkland. The
story noted that this year has seen a spike in shooting deaths of police
officers, with 47 so far this year as opposed to 38 for the same period
in 2008... Gun prohibitionists will exploit these deaths to demand
tougher gun laws, including a renewal of the ban on semiautomatic
rifles, and to crack down on gun shows, even though there is currently
no evidence that any of the firearms used in any of the police killings
came from gun shows...
http://www.examiner.com/x-4525-Seattle-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m12d14-Gun-prohibitionists-reveal-strategy-of-upcoming-attack
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Michigan Court Upholds Ban on Guns for Felons: ...But what about state
constitutions? Michigan's constitution appears unambiguous: It says that
"every person has a right to keep and bear arms for the defense of
himself and the state." As you can imagine, Baldwin raised that point in
his appeal after entering a conditional guilty plea to the offense of
possessing a firearm after previously being convicted of a felony. He
argued that the felony-possession state law violated the Michigan
constitution. If that argument succeeded, he'd still to go prison - but
would be able to shave as much as 7 years off of a sentence that would
otherwise run from 30 to 59 years... You can guess what happened in the
December 1 ruling from Michigan's court of appeals. The panel cited the
previous cases and concluded that the law in question in the case
against Baldwin was perfectly constitutional... Instead, the point is to
offer a glimpse of how the legal system works in practice. When faced
with a state constitution that says "every person has a right to keep
and bear arms," and a felon claiming that right to keep and bear arms,
do judges stick to the text, or try to strike a balance between it and
the state's power to regulate criminal behavior - even if it means
drawing lines on their own? Michigan's courts, like most others, have
repeatedly chosen the latter.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/14/taking_liberties/entry5979201.shtml
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A Court Victory in Pennsylvania: Last week, a Pennsylvania judge decided
to actually follow the law and find David Ross not guilty for the
alleged crime of possessing a weapon on airport property. You see,
Pennsylvania state law protects the right to open carry outside the
secured areas at the airport. So Mr. Ross was acting well within the law
when he removed his handgun from his luggage and began to holster it as
he walked out of the airport. But an officer of the Allegheny County
Police Department took issue with a civilian attempting to keep and bear
arms. The officer had such a problem with it that he illegally arrested
David Ross for violating a local county ordinance which the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court had invalidated a decade ago. State law trumps local
county ordinances and since Pennsylvania protects open carry, Allegheny
County cannot violate that right...
http://www.ammoland.com/2009/12/14/a-victory-for-gun-rights/
---
Injunction Sought against Seattle Gun Ban: The Kent man who took the
city of Seattle and its mayor to court over the city's gun ban has upped
the ante. Robert C. Warden filed a motion for a preliminary injunction
ordering the defendants to stop enforcing the ban until a final decision
is made in his civil suit. Last month Warden filed a complaint against
the Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and the city itself in U.S. District
Court, alleging the city's gun ban defies his constitutional right to
bear arms... Warden, 44, protested the city's new gun ban by walking
into the Southwest Community Center in West Seattle while carrying his
gun at high noon on a Saturday last month. He had forewarned parks
officials of his intent and, as a result, was asked to leave immediately
after entering the center. Warden complied... Warden, an attorney
licensed to practice in Washington, said the incident gives him legal
standing to file a lawsuit over the ban, which he believes is illegal.
"They know full well it's illegal, but they went ahead and did it
anyway," Warden said during an earlier interview, adding that he is not
a member of the National Rifle Association... (Warden also appears not
to be a member of the Second Amendment Foundation, which filed an
earlier suit; he has previously stated that he fears that the SAF suit
could be dismissed for lack of standing.)
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/79281787.html
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NRA Threatens Suit in California: Gun rights supporters want to shoot
down two proposed ordinances that would require gun owners in
unincorporated San Mateo County to report lost or missing guns and
further restrict firearms dealers. But Chuck Michel, an attorney for the
NRA and the California Rifle and Pistol Association, sent a 13-page
letter to supervisors Thursday saying many parts of the dealer ordinance
are illegal. He said the law would "unlawfully burden businesses, are
pre-empted by state law, and/or violate the constitutional right to keep
and bear arms." ...Much of the language for the ordinances was developed
for the Association of Bay Area Governments by the Legal Community
Against Violence, a San Francisco group that promotes gun control
legislation. Jacobs Gibson is president of the association. Asked if the
NRA would sue if supervisors pass the ordinance, Michel said "most
definitely." ... (Despite state preemption of the regulation of deadly
weapons, it is a standard practice in California for local governments
to pass additional infringements on the RKBA in attempts to prod the
state legislature to emulate them.)
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_13995125
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More Guns, Less Crime: ...The Georgia General Assembly passed HB 89 in
2008, which made criminal prohibitions on carrying firearms on public
transportation, in restaurants that serve alcohol, in state parks, and
in wildlife management areas inapplicable to Georgians possessing a
firearms license. HB 89 took effect on July 1, 2008, and many predicted
mass bloodshed as a result. Nowhere was the controversy so acute as the
city of Atlanta and its public transportation system... In 2007, MARTA
had two murders occur on its property. In 2008, the year the new law
took effect and peaceable citizens began lawfully carrying firearms on
MARTA trains and busses, the number of murders dropped to zero, and
there has not been a murder reported on the system since. The murder
rate was not the only category of violent crime to go down in the wake
of the new gun law. There were 94 robberies on the MARTA system in
2007. In 2008, the year the new law took effect, the number of
robberies dropped to 71, and in 2009, it has dropped again to 67
(although we still have two weeks to go)...
http://www.examiner.com/x-5619-Atlanta-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m12d14-Marta-crime-rate-falls-in-wake-of-gun-law
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Alaska Firearm Laws: For your convenience, we have compiled a tri-fold
brochure of the Alaska State gun laws. You can download it here. It's in
PDF format which you can print for your own use. (Produced by the
Anchorage Second Amendment Task Force.)
http://www.anchorage2atf.com/anc2atf/pdf/anc2atfAlaskaFirearmsLaw3fold.pdf
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The Decision to Carry: ...When you make the decision to carry a gun for
personal defense, you must also come to terms with this fact: Your
firearm may someday end the life of another person. Since receiving my
concealed carry permit, I have become acutely aware that I carry
something capable of forever changing not only someone else's life but
my own, and there are times when it is a burden that is tougher to carry
than the gun itself. Before you ever make that decision to carry a
weapon for self-defense, you must first make the commitment to use that
weapon -- with potentially deadly consequences -- if it ever becomes
necessary. If you cannot make the conscious decision to shoot one human
being in defense of another's life, if you aren't 100% sure you have the
will to use it if the time comes, then you should not be carrying a
weapon! ...
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34811
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West Virginia Rifle Team Profiled: ...The university's rifle prowess was
the main reason Eskew wanted to enroll at West Virginia. Wallizer says
it's the only reason he even considered going to college. So both were
stunned when they heard, while still in high school, that West Virginia
was dropping its team, along with four men's teams - tennis,
cross-country and indoor and outdoor track. It wasn't that WVU's
athletic department was running a deficit. Rather, university officials
concluded that the only way WVU could become more competitive in the
high-stakes world of college sports was to cut five teams and spend the
savings (roughly $600,000 in what was then a $27 million budget) on
better facilities and more scholarships... The backlash was immediate.
Students fired off e-mails. Alumni collected 9,000 signatures on a
petition demanding the team's return. The National Rifle Association
wrote letters disputing the university's claim that the sport was too
costly. (The team's $163,000 budget accounted for less than 1 percent of
the athletic department budget.) And most team members refused to stop
practicing and formed a club instead, with Beasley, who was kept on the
payroll until she found another job, serving as the club's adviser...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121401462.html?hpid=topnews
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There's a Reason God Put Those People on an Island: A millionaire
businessman has been jailed for two and a half years for taking on a
knife-wielding burglar who held him and his family hostage in their
home. Munir Hussain, 52, was told he was wrong to take the law into his
hands and attack Walid Salem, 56, after the masked intruder threatened
to kill him. Salem, who forced Hussain's wife and three children to lie
on the floor, was given a two-year supervision order. He has 54 previous
convictions. Hussain and his younger brother Tokeer, who lived a few
doors away, chased the 56-year-old out of the home in High Wycombe,
Buckinghamshire, in September last year. Witnesses said they saw the
burglar being beaten while he lay on the ground, with weapons including
a cricket bat, a pole and a hockey stick...
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23783729-millionaire-who-attacked-burglar-with-bat-is-jailed.do
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6956044.ece
---
And Now, a Bit of Humor: Glock firearms introduced their new GLOCK IL
9mm handgun last week, the first one that's compliant with new
government regulations requiring user-interlock technology to inhibit
intoxicated individuals from getting behind the trigger. "Sobering
firepower" is how Deutsch-Wagram, the Austrian-based company, described
the weapon in full-page ads in Guns & Ammo and Alternative Lifestyles
magazines. The new pistol has a safety device that requires the user to
blow in the barrel. If the user is legally sober, the safety is released
after 10 seconds. Dubbed the "blow gun" by law enforcement officials,
the new breathalyzer handgun technology is expected to dramatically drop
domestic abuse shooting deaths in the U.S. along with bar and parking
lot fatalities, since potential victims would have 10 seconds to "get
the hell out of Dodge," as one law enforcement official put it... (Glock
GmbH is headquartered in Deutsh-Wagram, Lower Austria.)
http://elpasoinc.com/readArticle.aspx?issueid=263&xrec=4761
---
Tangentially Related: ...During this first decade of the 21st Century,
many people, with good reason, have become less trusting in general,
given increased media exposure of new kinds of scams, and a wide range
of ways in which innocent people have been criminally victimized.
Threats of violence, local, domestic and international, wars around the
world, unstable and oppressive governments, and the use of terror also
have contributed to instability. This has been reflected in a major
change in the stability of the world economy. In addition, technology is
changing at a pace that can be described conservatively as "warp speed."
All of this change, instability, and uncertainty have made people feel
more vulnerable... (List member Bruce Eimer co-authored one of the
briefs on our side of District of Columbia v. Heller and is a firearms
instructor as well as a psychologist. It was difficult selecting a
sample paragraph to introduce this article, which relates more to
long-term survival than to dealing with a specific incident.)
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34816
--
Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
The tactics and skills to use a firearm
in self-defense don't come naturally
with the right to keep and bear arms.
http://www.spw-duf.info
