Nope, Not Just Me.

In a post last week, I'ld mentioned that I've seen a significant uptick in 'Rightwing Extremist Militia' type stories on TV shows and 9badly) made for TV movies. Kaveman then crawled out from under the trailer w/ a copy of the Jan. '04 edition of America's 1st Freedom that had an article, Advise and Decieve, about the Joyce Foundation funding a group whose purpose was to push for guns to be shown in a bad light in the media.

Let's take a look at some of the EIC's 'recomendations' on how they do this and some of the examples the article highlighted:

Recommendation: consider exploring a gun dealer's or gun supplier's remorse about the harm done by someone to whom he or she funished a firearm.

Example: In the movie Liberty Stands Still, a character played by Wesley Snipes threatens to murder a woman named Liberty Wallace, whose company manufactured the firearm used to kill Snipes' daughter. Snipes tells Liberty she can die a hero by revealing her company's dubious business practices and political affiliations; threatened w/ death, liberty attempts to reconcile her past "misdeeds".

Recommendation: Consider giving an account of a family's lawsuit against a gun dealer or manufacturer for supplying a gun that a criminal used to murder their loved one.

Example: Though John Grisham's book was about a juror attempting to barter a decision for cash in a tobacco lawsuit, the movie Runaway Jury is an anti-gun fairy tale focusing on a lawsuit brought by a widow against a gun manufacturer.

I've actually had a person cite that movie as factual in a debate.

Recommendation: Consider using gun safety posters in the background on appropriate sets.

Example: Though the Lethal Weapon series could rightly be described as the pinnacle of shoot-em-up cinema, Lethal Weapon 4 featured anti-NRA posters crowding the background in a scene inside a police station.

Recommendation: Demonstrate parents making gun safety inquiries of other households where their children visit, asking about storage, accessibility and so on.

The article does not list an example but I caught an episode of the short lived series "The Education of Max Bickford" where the main character, played by Richard Dreyfuss, forbade his son to play w/ a neighbor who lets the boys plink at cans.

There are multiple other 'Tips' made including showing 'cool' kids make negative remarks about guns, regurgitate Joyce Foundation provided statistics in scripts, etc.

Then there's also classic examples of movies and the media blatantly fabricating information about guns like the Glock 17 in Die Hard 2 being able to defeat airport screeners and a 'Teflon Bullet" in Lethal Weapon 3 (that series again) penetrating several inches of steel plating. All legal for sale to those accident prone civilians.

I bring this up again since the other night the wife turned on one of those truly awful ghost finding shows and the thing was set in an abandoned WWII era Remington Arms factory where a few people died in accidents (7 people were an 'epic' number of deaths) . The hosts kept going on and on about the 'hundreds of thousands of people' who died because of the products designed for death and all the 'negative' energy of the place. A question during an interview of a former employee.... "Was it like being in Hell working here?"

It didn't stay on long.

VPC Proving a Negative

The Violence Policy Center has released a ground breaking study that proves that there are no deaths by licensed Concealed Carry holders where there is no licensed concealed carry.

Another Joyce Foundation puppet group agrees:

“You really don’t hear about people using weapons on the streets to protect themselves from violent incidents."

Well, not in Illinois or Wisconsin you don't. It's different in the other 48 states.

Nevermind that Chicago the city that has a ban on handguns (unless you're a connected official), ban on 'assault weapons and full registration, has 5x the murder rate of the rest of the state.

I'm so glad that the Joyce Foundation continues to dump money into these groups. It keeps them from spending it with those that might actually have some effect.

H/T to Huffpo poster MolonLabe

Compare and Contrast: Kelo / Heller

Two relatively recent court cases, Kelo v New London and Heller v DC were both basically about the rights of the individual vs the rights/powers of the state.

The Kelo case basically ruled that the state can confiscate your property w/o compensation for whatever reason they see fit.

Heller ruled that the right of the individual to own firearms is not dependent on membership in a state militia.

Looking at the justices for the cases makes a stark contrast. All four judges who ruled against Heller also voted FOR state confiscation in Kelo. These would be Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer.

Two of the justices, Scalia and Thomas, voted for the rights of the individual in both cases. The other two dissenting Kelo justices, Rehnquist and O'connor, were replaced by Roberts and Alito for Heller and both supported the right of the individual.

The final vote? Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. He voted FOR the state in Kelo and against the state in Heller.

Since then, with McDonald v Chicago on the horizon, Souter has been replaced by another Statist, Sotomayor. No others are 'expected' to retire before the case and groups like the Brady Campaign are already conducting damage control in an expected loss.

What a difference 1 vote makes.

AG Holder: Due Process Not Necessary

In my previous posts of gun control advocates, legislators and administrators who think that due process is a thing of the past, I neglected to include one very important one.

Attorney General Holder:

Yes, we will support that legislation. It sems incongruous to me that we would bar certain people from flying on airplanes because they are on a terrorist watch list and yet we would still allow them to possess weapons. I think that the legislation that was initially proposed by the Bush administration was well concieved and we will continue to support that.

Still feel that "Hope and Change"?

Gun Control Groups Helping Catch Terrorists

With their attempts to ban semi-autos by deliberately confusing them w/ machine guns and the reports that you can buy high explosives at gun shows, they've inadvertently gotten the terrorists confused as well:

According to court documents, the chief suspect in that case — who was arrested Saturday — paid $20,000 cash to an undercover operative in July as a deposit on machine guns and shoulder-fired Stinger missiles, and traveled to Philadelphia last week to inspect the merchandise.

Dumb@sses.

"Suspected Terrorists" by the Numbers

With all the support by people perfectly willing to dump due process and deny rights to 'suspected' Terrorists, one only has to take a look at the wonderful history of the "No-Fly List" and the FBI Terrorist Watch List.

As of Nov. 2009, there are well over 1.3 million names on the list covering an alleged 400,000 unique individuals. 5% of those are US citizens or residents and 9% are on both lists according to the FBI.

There are 1,600 names suggested to it daily with over 20,000 added per month.

The qualifications to be put on the list? Classified. (Yet Hasan didn't)

An audit by the DoJ found a 35% error rate based on spot checks of names on the list.

A check on 216 known terrorists found 35 who were NOT on the lists.

A bill (H.R. 559) to create an Office of Appeals and Redress passed the house but has sat idle in the Senate since February (so it's dead).

Countless people, including Legislators, military personal, political activists and even Air Marshals and small children have been harassed, detained and/or had their lives disrupted due to being inaccurately associated with these lists.

Yet gun control activists like John Rosenthal, Rahm Emanual, AG Holder, MAIG Mayors (along with all the sheeple that think the line "Do you want Osama Bin Laden buying a gun?" is a quality argument) think we should put even more power behind these secret, error-laden lists.

Doesn't that make you just all warm and fuzzy inside?

What we're up against....

How do groups like the Brady Campaign manage to survive without Joyce Foundation Funding?
Why are there mayors that still think MAIG actually cares about 'illegal' guns?

Because of people like this:

Many people were worried about the Ft. Hood killer before the rampage, but because of knee-jerk laws passed with the support of the NRA, there was no legal way to stop him from buying a special cop-killer gun, bullets, and high-capacity magazines from Guns Galore in KILLeen, Texas. There was no "political correctness" here, just powerlessness under the law.

So I asked him what specific 'knee-jerk laws' he was talking about. The rambling response was thus:

Knee-jerk NRA weenie laws such as no sane background check for the purchase of weapons, as well as the deletion of records. Check out Ashcroft's record as AG.

He continued to repeat himself several times and threw in the the tried and true gun banner talking points:

As far as gun laws not being able to keep killers from getting guns that is also not true. If we had sane gun laws, instead of the current NRA-written system, we could keep at least legally-procured handguns out of the paws of people that shouldn't have guns.

Gun laws, lax enforcement of them, and lack of sane gun laws have everything to do with this killer getting a special cop-killer gun with cop-killer bullets and high-volume magazines.

And these people vote, write their congress-critters and letters to the editor based off of their ignorance.

Brady Bunch all but admits defeat

My my, this rhetoric is a bit toned down from pre-Heller days.



"The Supreme Court's opinion in Heller does not conflict with allowing states and localities to enact and enforce sensible gun laws that protect the public," said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Center. "On the contrary, the Court spelled out that such laws are presumptively legal. The police groups and the Brady Center agree that the Court should maintain that position in McDonald."

When the Brady Bunch announced that they would be filing a Friend of the Court brief in the McDonald case "for neither side" we all knew that was a steaming pile of crap.
But the antis are telegraphing that they've already lost and are trying to salvage the shattering pieces of their existence any way they can.

I'd feel sorry for them if they weren't curb sucking maggots.

At least real maggots serve a usefull purpose in the grand scheme of things.

John Rosenthal and MAIG: Due Process Not Necessary

"The Second Amendment should NOT extend to convicted criminals and terrorists, suspected or otherwise. "

So he's officially on the record stating that Fundamental Civil Rights shouldn't apply to people the Gov't chooses to put on secret lists based off of suspicion alone.

According to him, even being under investigation is cause to have your rights removed.

Good thing he's on 'our side' as a gun owner and trap shooter.

He is, however in good company as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual (among others in the Hope and Change administration ) feels the same way.



Not to mention the Bloomberg Coalition.



( I wonder how many of those names are accurate)

And we should trust these people why exactly?

Magic Numbers 251 58 38 891

251 Representatives
58 Senators
38 State Attorney Generals
891 State Legislators and elected officials

Those are the ones who have filed Amicus Briefs (so far) in McDonald v Chicago in support of getting rid of the handgun ban.

How many have or will filed in support of Chicago? Will the gun banners have to (falsely) claim 'more diversity' this time as well?

So how do you think employees of the Brady Campaign and VPC are feeling right now?

It comes as no surprise that neither the AG nor the Senators from IL signed on. A big thanks to those Legislators that did:

Representative Peter J. Roskam (IL-6, R)
Representative Deborah L. Halvorson (IL-11, D)
Representative Jerry F. Costello (IL-12, D)
Representative Judith B. Biggert (IL-13, R)
Representative Timothy V. Johnson (IL-15, R)
Representative Donald A. Manzullo (IL-16, R)
Representative Aaron J. Schock (IL-18, R)
Representative John M. Shimkus (IL-19, R)

Pamela Althoff, State Senate
Brad Burzynski, State Senate
Dan Cronin, State Senate
Kirk Dillard, State Senate
Dan Duffy, State Senate
Paul Froehlich, State Representative
William Haine, State Senate
Randall Hultgren, State Senate
Mike Jacobs, State Senate
John Jones, State Senate
David Kochler, State Senate
Chris Lauzen, State Senate
Kyle McCarter, State Senate
Bill Mitchell, State Representative
Brandon Phelphs, State Representative
Robert W. Pritchard, State Representative
David Reis, State Representative
Jim Sacia, State Representative
Ron Stephens, State Representative
Patrick Verschoore, State Representative

Ironic Ad Placement

Is It Just Me?

Besides the nonsense news articles on CNN et al about the supposed 'increase' in 'Militia's' and 'extremists', I've been noticing a number of similar storied movies and show episodes on TV.

One was a really bad direct to video (but I repeat myself) movie from 2000 called, in all its originality, "Militia" that's been played on cable several times over the last month or so. Lots of stereotypes, catch-phrases, and stock footage about rural white guys wanting to eliminate the US Gov't.

Last night I caught a 2008 episode of the show 'Criminal Minds' that portrayed a Waco-esque scenario complete with child molestation, dozens of AK's and explosives. A key line from the show:

"However his predecessor, Leo Cane, is doing a 17-year prison sentence. Apparently Libertarians do not like paying taxes."

No bias there, right?

It reminds me of the old Tom Hanks film "Mazes and Monsters" that was produced back in the early 80's when the media was telling everyone that D&D made you crazy and go kill yourself while worshiping da debbil. We all know how accurate those reports were.

Update: A commenter on FB said this weeks NCIS LA also had a 'Militia' episode and Kaveman notes in comments that the NRA did an article a while back on the Joyces funding a group the encourages the media to show guns in a bad light.

Rosenthal + Sugarmann = Henigan ?

What do you get when gun banners mix a steaming pile of Horse manure with a giant mound Bullcr@p?

Why a whole cave full of Bat Sh!t Crazy.

Dennis "Of the People" Henigan has decided that combine the absolute most inane aspects of the various hoplophobe tirades on Ft. Hood and thrown in a few half-truths and inaccurate innuendos of his own.

The result is .... well.... read it for yourself. That's all I can say.

A Real Sentence for Violent Crime

Man sentenced to 85 years for shootings

URBANA — A Champaign man who took the life of another and tried to kill a second will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Champaign County Judge John Kennedy on Friday sentenced Granville Johnson, 29, to 85 years in prison for the July 30, 2008, murder of Gregory Moore, 28, and the attempted murder of Mr. Moore’s cousin, Isaac Moore, 22.

No plea bargains. No serving only a few years w/ parole. This blatant Goblin is going to jail for a long time and is going to stay there.

John Rosenthal Making Crap Up

John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Ownership and former founder/board member of the AHSA decides to fabricate 'facts' to blame the NRA for Ft. Hood. Not that this is really a surprise.

Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, was on a suspected terrorist watch list, and even the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force was prevented from knowing that Hasan had purchased his deadly arsenal from the Guns Galore gun store in Killeen, Texas.

Sounds reasonable right? The problem? It's not true.

Three senior investigative officials, who insisted they not be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing federal investigation, told reporters in Washington that Hasan was never nominated to be on a watch list. He was able to purchase weapons legally and had done nothing to justify even a preliminary investigation, they said.

In addition, Hasan had a security clearance at the "secret" level and received good performance reviews, they said....

the JTTF concluded that Maj. Hasan was not involved in terrorist activities or terrorist planning," it said.

So Hasan got a gun because the NRA forced Congress to allow firearm purchases by people on a list Hasan wasn't even on?

That's the logic of gun control in a nutshell.

Le jeu de blâme

Police in France averted a potential school shooter armed with a stolen shotgun.

Soon, I'm sure, to be followed by calls for more gun control, the French authorities are blaming the same things that the clueless do here. Video Games.

Christian Sadowski, the Mayor of Allonne, said that he knew the family well and that the boy was a fan of computer games. “Many young people end up finding it difficult to tell the difference between dream and reality,” he told The Times.

Yep. The kid played WoW so that made him into a sociopath.

Morons.

Still Really Busy

Enjoy some more 'Best Of":

Gun Control and Racism (not the Clayton Cramer article)

Gun Control and Racism II

The Myth of the Decreasing Gun Owners

Josh Sugarmann Loves Google

In his continued efforts to smear firearm owners as extremists just waiting for their opportunity to shoot at the nearest minority or police officer, he once again sends his staff of thousands to search the web for information which he can compile into definitive data.

Failing that, he blames the NRA and links a few anecdotes all the while fervently praying that the numbers are higher.

Nevermind the fact that he has to go through years of articles to even get into double digits while there are millions of CCW holders across the US.

Nevermind the fact the last time he did this in July, he got his @ss handed to him when people started looking into the details of his anecdotes.

The Joyce Foundation is really getting their money's worth, aren't they?

Not Getting the Message

Chinese censors block Obama's call to free the Web

BEIJING – President Barack Obama prodded China about Internet censorship and free speech, but the message was not widely heard in China where his words were blocked online and shown on only one regional television channel.

Heh heh.

Petitioners Brief Filed in Chicago Gun Ban Case

Via Chicago Gun Case. Com:

The Second Amendment Foundation today filed its much-anticipated brief to the United States Supreme Court in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, which challenges the constitutionality of that city’s ban on handguns.

SAF is joined in the lawsuit by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) and four individual plaintiffs. They are represented by attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued the landmark Heller case before the high court in 2008, leading to a ruling that the Second Amendment affirms and protects an individual right to keep and bear arms beyond the scope of serving in a militia.

Brief available here.