Gun Rights News Roundup

Articles, news stories, and op-eds of interest to gun owners:

[D.C.] Op-ed points out the futility of registration in solving crimes, but the usefulness of registration in gun confiscation:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, announced last week that she wants to register guns. Her next move will be to try to confiscate them.

The speaker picked a television show with a viewership of 4.6 million to float the Democrats' coming gun-control push. Questioned on ABC's "Good Morning America" about the prospect of new gun-control laws now that "it's a Democratic president, a Democratic House," she responded, "We don't want to take their guns away. We want them registered."

Politicians and bureaucrats routinely claim that registration helps solve crimes. If a registered gun is used in a crime and left at the crime scene, registration supposedly lets the police trace the gun back to the criminal. Though this turn of events might work on fictional TV crime shows, it virtually never occurs in real life. Criminals' guns are rarely left at crime scenes. When guns are left behind, it usually is because a crook has been seriously injured or killed and the police are poised to catch him anyway.

The few guns left at crime scenes rarely - if ever - are registered to the perpetrator. If they are registered at all, it is to someone else, whose piece was stolen. Despite what Mrs. Pelosi might think, those who use guns to commit major crimes such as robbing and killing are unlikely to respect her request to file paperwork so the government can catalog the tools of their trade.

Numerous examples disprove gun-control propaganda. Hawaii has had licensing and registration of guns for about 50 years. After all of the administrative expenses and inconvenience imposed on gun owners, police there cannot point to a single crime that has been solved as a result of those programs. Given Hawaii's remote island geography, this should be an ideal place to keep track of guns because movement in and out of the state is limited and legal importation is controlled. If registration is going to work anywhere, it should work there. Unfortunately, criminals seem to be able to get their hands on guns virtually anyplace in the world.
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Because registration doesn't help solve crime, it is important to ask why government wants to register the people's firearms. History provides the answer. In countries from Australia to England, registration has been used to create lists of guns that later were confiscated by their governments. Despite Mrs. Pelosi's assurances to the contrary, Americans' fear that registration will lead to confiscation is well-founded. Indeed, Mrs. Pelosi's own state of California already has used existing registration lists to confiscate so-called assault weapons just a half-dozen years ago. [emphasis added] ...

NewsBusters: CNN anchor suggests U.S. adopt European gun controls:

During the 7:00 p.m. hour of Saturday’s CNN Newsroom, anchor Don Lemon pushed the view that Barack Obama should try to emulate European gun laws as a way of reducing gun violence in America as he discussed the subject with four guests. During an interview with former FBI agent Gregg McCrary, who expressed support for an assault weapons ban, Lemon suggested Obama learn from the Europeans: "The one person who can probably weigh on this and may have the most influence is the President. Since he's over there in Europe now, and they're, you know, they're not perfect, but it seems that their gun laws seem to be at least working in a way that ours are not." ...

Mexico keeps lying about source of guns:

Stopping the flow of money and weapons from the United States into Mexico is critical to dealing with the violent drug cartels creating havoc on the border, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday.

Mexican officials think that 90 percent of the weapons seized in their country can be traced to the U.S., Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan said.

“The key issue right now is how can the United States help to shut down those guns and shut down that bulk cash that is providing the drug syndicates in Mexico with the wherewithal to corrupt, to bribe, to kill,” Mr. Sarukhan said on CBS' “Face the Nation.”
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Although Mr. Sarukhan contended that the cartels' use of assault weapons rose dramatically after the U.S. ended its ban on the firearms in 2004, he stopped short of advocating that Congress reinstate the ban.

“What we will say is ... by reinstating the ban, that could have a profound impact on the number and the caliber of weapons going down to Mexico,” he said. ...

Another debunking of Mexico's 90% lie:

It’s been confidently reported, as of late, that the United States is the source of 90% of all the weapons utilized in Mexican crime. This has become a dogma, repeated by no less than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others. It’s an impressive-sounding statistic – but is it true?

In a word, no.

It’s not correct. The 90% figure was originally based upon a misunderstanding, and thereafter it has been constantly repeated in the media and political world.
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So where do all the non-US weapons in Mexico come from?

They come from all over. They are brought by sea by the boatload. They are brought overland from Central America (where weaponry galore is left over from the civil wars there).

There are weapons in Mexico from South Korea (fragmentation grenades) and China (AK-47s). There are rocket launchers that came from Israel, Spain and the former Soviet Union.

There are Russian Mafia groups in Mexico which are sources of weapons. The Tijuana Cartel has an alliance with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), which is another source of weapons.

A lot of weaponry comes up through Guatemala. A recent bust on that border, reported in the Guatemalan press in late March, confiscated grenades and AK-47s.

Many Mexican army deserters, of whom there have been a staggering 150,000 in the past six years, have brought their weapons with them (including M-16s). ...

David Codrea takes on the reliability of ATF records:

Gun owners who are active in protecting their rights may know of this--a lot of you may not.

The following transcript is from Oct. 1995. The speaker was Thomas Busey, then chief of ATF's National Firearms Act Branch. The subject was the NFRTR, the National Firearms Registry and Transfer Record. It's the official record the government keeps on all National Firearms Act-registered weapons, such as machine guns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, suppressors, destructive devices and AOWs, or "Any Other Weapons" the agency deems taxable/requiring registration. Here's what Mr. Busey said about it:

Let me say that when we testify in court, we testify that the data base is 100 percent accurate. That's what we testify to, and we will always testify to that. As you probably well know, that may not be 100 percent true.

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Howard Nemerov points out Brady Campaign bias and inaccurate research:

In May of 2007, the Brady Center, research arm of the Brady Campaign, published a report entitled No Gun Left Behind: The Gun Lobby’s Campaign to Push Guns Into Colleges and Schools. Though nearly two years have passed, numerous inaccuracies remain which, having persisted this long in a publicly-accessible document, call into question the Brady Campaign’s ability to publish credible reports and/or their capacity for telling the truth.

The topic here is theirallegation that getting a concealed carry license is too easy and therefore a threat to public safety:

Over the last decade, the gun lobby has pushed hard in all 50 states to permit the carrying of concealed weapons by nearly everyone except convicted felons. These “shall-issue” carrying concealed weapons (CCW) laws require state authorities to issue CCW licenses to virtually anyone who applies, regardless of whether the applicant can demonstrate a need to carry a gun. As a result, millions of Americans are now licensed to carry concealed handguns in public.

To bolster their claims, Brady’s report contains an appendix of stories where alleged CCW licensees broke the law. Two of these incidents have proven to be self-defense, while Brady maintains both cases were murder. ...

John Longenecker takes aim at 20/20 story's media bias against guns:

... At the very end of the program, Ms. Sawyer said that they could not find any studies supporting the numbers of self-defense shootings which seem to have inspired this entire report — the idea that an armed citizen can blunt or even stop a killing. The exact quote is: "And by the way, if you're wondering where all the studies about the effectiveness of guns used by ordinary Americans for self defense are, well, keep searching. we could not find one reliable study and the ones we found were contradictory."

This statement is perhaps the most outrageous of the entire report. It could be her misguided opinion, perhaps her staff misled her, but the statement is entirely untrue. She just misled the American Public, intentionally or not. That ABC News could not find what Professor John Lott, Gary Kleck et al, our own Department Of Justice, beat police officers and researchers could find from professional experience and from FBI crime data does not pass the test of reasonable expectation. We found it. So can ABC News. Ms. Sawyer's closing line is the exquisite example of the kind of movement blatantly opposing liberty in discouraging the armed citizen by way of hiding facts, values and discouraging the American spirit of Independence from our servants. The thing that gets tens of millions of gun owners is that these people are fighting us instead of fighting crime. ...

[Ohio] Gun, ammo sales booming:

Ralph Scott has an easy explanation for why sales at his gun shop — the Lock, Stock and Barrel — have been booming since Barack Obama’s election last November.

“Here’s the sad fact of the matter — our business thrives on bad news,” he says.

Scott’s firearms store in Portsmouth, Ohio, an economically stressed river town on the edge of Appalachia, has seen a 40 to 50 per cent spike in sales over the past five months, reflecting a national surge in demand for personal-use weapons that dates to just before the Nov. 4 election.

Across the United States, firearms buyers have reported difficulty finding ammunition at major retailers like Walmart, while manufacturers like Winchester and Remington Arms say they are running at full capacity.

The evidence of a sustained run on guns isn’t just anecdotal. ...

[New York] Gun, ammo sales booming:

If the rash of mass shootings nationwide is leaving you thinking that there are too many guns in Buffalo and in America, just wait.

Gun sales are booming nationwide — and in Erie County, applications for pistol permits are rolling in at nearly three times last year’s rate, the county clerk’s office reports.

Meanwhile, in the nation’s capital, gun control has become, in essence, dead on arrival.

Chalk it all up to the election of a Democratic president with a long record of supporting gun restrictions and a Congress that includes a surprising number of pro-gun Democrats from rural areas.

The election of Barack Obama as president is sparking a run on firearms and ammunition in both Buffalo and nationwide, according to gun dealers and experts on the issue.

“Am I getting calls like crazy? You bet,” said Wilson H. Curry, who runs Williston Auctions in Wales Center, which also does business under the name Aurora Shooting Supplies. ...

[Missouri] University president comes out against self-defense, prefers unarmed victims for mass murderers:

University of Missouri system President Gary Forsee has denounced legislation approved by the state House that would allow concealed weapons to be brought onto college campuses.

Forsee said in a written statement Friday that the legislation "increases the risk that our university family could be put in harm's way."

He added: "Missouri's college students should be allowed to learn and exchange ideas in an environment free from the threat of concealed guns."

Forsee, who was hired December 2007, leads a four-campus university system that governs public institutions in Columbia, Kansas City, Rolla and St. Louis.

A 2003 state law allows Missouri residents to obtain permits to carry concealed weapons if they are at least 23 years old, have no felony convictions and pass a firearms training course and background check. That law also bars concealed weapons in certain places, such as schools, public hospitals and stadiums with at least 5,000 seats.

Legislation, which received initial House approval Wednesday, would lower the minimum age for obtaining a concealed-carry permit to 21 and lift the ban on concealed weapons at public colleges and universities. The bill needs another House vote to move to the Senate. ...

Mike Adams proposes a solution to Somali pirates:

There are a couple of rules anyone must follow when venturing into potentially dangerous waters – and by “potentially dangerous waters” I mean anything but a small lake or pond. First, it is a good idea to bring a few friends. Second, it is a good idea to require every adult on board to remain sober and bring a firearm.

I don’t fish as often as I did in the Texas Gulf Coast in the 1970s. But I do get an occasional invite to go deep sea fishing off the Carolina coast with three good friends. Two of these friends work in a national security capacity for the federal government (please pardon the pseudonyms). So it should go without saying that we have the hardware and skills to defeat a small (or large) band of pirates whenever we venture into the Atlantic Ocean. We don’t have any evidence of piracy off the Carolina coast. But we all subscribe to the belief that it is better to have a gun and not need one than to need a gun and not have one.
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I understand quite well that there are ports that will not allow entry to boats that are carrying firearms. And I understand that they are in places where we would like to deliver humanitarian aid. But the solution is not to go into these areas unarmed. The solution is to tell the nations in which these ports are located that they must change their laws or forfeit charitable goods coming from our generous Christian nation.