Guest Post by Matt Vespa at Townhall
Well, it seems the media’s horrific campaign of inaccuracy hasn’t stopped. According to Reuters, for the first time in nearly a century, The New York Times editorial board took their plea for gun bans to the front page on Saturday, calling our nation’s inaction on gun control a “moral outrage and a national disgrace.” No, we shouldn’t be surprised that they decided to follow the likes of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times with their own inane call to arms for gun control. And we shouldn’t be shocked that they want policies that employ confiscatory measures, while also banning an entire class of firearms, specifically assault rifles and certain types of ammunition [emphasis mine]:
It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.[…]
It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.
Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.
First, let’s give it up for the New York Times, and their like-minded colleagues in the media–and in politics–for driving up gun sales. Undoubtedly, after all of this nonsensical discussion about gun control, gun and ammo sales will go up (that’s a good thing). The irony never ceases to amaze me how the very faction of this country what wants to deploy unconstitutional gun control measures, only end up becoming better gun salespersons.
Moreover, every mass shooting is an act of terror? They’re not. Mass shootings can be part of a terrorist’s arsenal of carnage to push whatever agenda they have in mind, but not every mass shooting is terrorism. The same logic is applied to defining genocide. Genocide is mass killing, but not all mass killings are genocides. What happened in Paris was a horrific terrorist attack perpetrated by ISIS. They had an agenda. They deployed suicide bombers and shooters to target scores of innocent Parisians, which they thought could influence the nation’s policy in the Middle East. The Islamic State attacked France for insulting the prophet Muhammad; they called Paris “the capital of abomination and perversion;” and–perhaps the most important part–the French were attacked due to their intervention in Syria. There are multiple definitions of terrorism; almost every singe one includes some form of political goal. There was no such goal when Adam Lanza senselessly murdered 20 schoolchildren in Newtown in 2012, hence why it was called a mass shooting, and not an act of terrorism. Concerning the San Bernardino shooting, it’s now a federal terrorism investigation. We’ll know in due time the motives and aims behind this attack.
The Times says that it’s easy to define “combat rifles,” though they apparently didn’t know the definition of terrorism–and the left has tried to do this back in the early 1990s with the Assault Weapons Ban. It was a laughable piece of comedy that was attached to the overall Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, that was partially responsible for historic Democratic losses in the midterm elections. When it expired in 2004, the data showed that these weapons are a) rarely used in crimes, which remains so to this day and b) did next to nothing to reduce violent crime. Oddly enough, the New York Times ran a piece in September of 2014 highlighting that fact:
…[I]n the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do[*].
In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.
[…]
The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.
The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.
“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.
Lastly, the “it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens” part. Why? The vast majority of gun owners–99.9 percent according to Sen. Bernie Sanders–are law-abiding. They have to turn them over because the liberal political class is egregiously ignorant on this issue? They have to turn them over because while they aren’t used often in gun crimes, liberals are afraid of them? The Times has shown that the left is getting closer to outright saying having assault rifles in one’s home warrants the National Guard, FBI, ATF, and local law enforcement busting down your door, terrifying your family, and confiscating constitutionally protected items.
Any rational person should balks at this proposal. Any Second Amendment supporter would, as in other counties, should (and probably would) completely ignore the call to hand over their firearms. But if you’re a liberal–in keeping with their principle that government power should be controlled by the few in order to be dictated to the rest of us–you must believe this is a good policy. If ending gun violence enhances the public good, then by all means strip law-abiding Americans of their rights; the end result will pay off. It’s a perverse notion.
This is where this debate is heading–and it’s getting messier with each horrific mass shooting. The left is now mixing terrorism and mass shootings to push a narrative to eviscerate the Second Amendment. We once again have rehashed stories about the AR-15 rifle, which isn’t as powerful as a hunting rifle and rarely used in crimes. And we have the media endorsing gun control policies that would require gun bans and confiscation. They’re insinuating parts of it, but the brash call to ban guns entirely is coming.
Yes, not every right is absolute. There are restrictions, but government and active citizenry should work to maximize these rights to their fullest extent. The pre-existing laws on guns are fine. We need to have a debate on how to revamp our mental health system, and integrate it into our background check system. The problem is that it doesn’t accomplish the left’s goal of destroying gun rights, so they’ll do everything in their power to prevent that debate.
*Support for a handgun ban is insanely low.
New York Daily News Column Likens San Bernardino Attack Victim to Terrorists
Christine Rousselle
Man, is the New York Daily News on a roll these days or what?
First, their response to the shooting in San Bernardino (which we now know was a terrorist attack) was to put “God Isn’t Fixing This” on the cover of the paper. The next day, they doubled down on the gun control rhetoric–not only did they admit that the shooter in the San Bernardino attack was a terrorist, they also called the president of the NRA one as well. (Even some on the left thought this went a bit too far.) And last night, a column by NYDN columnist Linda Stasi hit the internet, where she laid out the case that one of the victims of the attack, Nicholas Thalasinos, was as hate-filled and bigoted as the man who killed him.
Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that. But in the U.S., we don’t die for speaking our minds. Or we’re not supposed to anyway.
Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security. He asked, “IS 1. EVERY POLITICIAN IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR? 2. EVERY POLITICIAN IS A MORON? 3. EVERY POLITICIAN IS RACIST AGAINST JEWS?” He also posted screeds like, “You can stick your Muslim Million Man march up your asses,” and how “Hashem” should blow up Iran.
His Facebook page warns that “Without HEALTHY PREGNANT WOMAN (Democrats) would have NO SOURCE of BABIES to SACRIFICE and SELL!”
We have freedom of speech but even so, a city worker should refrain from such public bigotry. Municipal workers have been fired for spewing and posting racial and sexual slurs.
Now, to be fair, Stasi hasn’t exactly been known for subtlety or delicacy in writing. But seriously? While she stopped short of saying that Thalasinos straight-up deserved to be shot dead by a terrorist for the *serious* crime of an all-caps angry Facebook rant, she did however neglect to include his death as one of the “innocent” victims of the attack. While there were 14 people killed in the attack, only 13 of those were “innocent” according to Stasi.
It’s a sad world we live in when a person who posts angry Facebook rants can be equated with a straight face in a major publication to someone who stockpiled guns and explosives and massacred 14 people. This is the United States–a person should be able to post something on Facebook without fear that one of their coworkers will burst into a holiday party with his wife (after apparently casing it, no less) and open fire. This kind of rhetoric is disgusting, and to attempt to equate them is nothing short of mind-boggling.
I read that yesterday.
Beyond outrageous. I sense that they feel a change in the air and that their time is running out.
And if hilory wins the pressure will not stop. It makes me wonder, out of all the things wrong in the country, somehow private citizens owning firearms is the priority?
And the liberal/progressives? They have no problem whatsoever demanding a armed government take those firearms, so they can fell safe because only the government will have guns?
Wake me up please.
I carry and have an AR and trying to talk the wife out of an M1. With 3 kids hopefully after Christmas. I have the right to defend myself my 20 acres most of all my Family against any comer. God created us gave us rules to follow. Break the rules come after us. I will defend the good Lords creation. Jihadists including the one in the White House are the true enemy of the American people. Not the Russians. They are more help to the American people than the current pres…. Presi…. It’s hard to put that title in front of that name.
PLEASE!!! …do it for the minnies.[img
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“I’m a big believer in the second amendment”
Donal Trump
Got my vote right there.
Several years ago one of my mom’s cousins in CT found the remains of a Revolutionary War era musket that had been hidden in a stone wall on her property. New England is covered with glacial rock and early European settlers built stone walls everywhere, enclosing pastures and fields. One story I heard as a kid was that in some places a new settler could claim as much land as he and his family could enclose in a year’s time. Many walls, like those on my parents’ place were rudimentary and, by mid 20th Century, little more than low-lying linear rock piles. Well constructed and maintained walls survived, as attested by the found musket. Today a gun owner can purchase sturdy waterproof plastic containers for storing weapons and ammo. You can be certain that many have already been put to use and that there will be a run on them if TPTB decide to confiscate assault rifles, many of which are traded informally without any records.
“vetting” the next 100,000 refugees ,that were financed and trained in Syria by CIA and O makes more sense.
OES!
There Are People Walking The Streets That Want To Kill You, And Obama Wants To Take Your Guns?!
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/there-are-people-walking-the-streets-that-want-to-kill-you-and-obama-wants-to-take-our-guns
Gryffyn says-Today a gun owner can purchase sturdy waterproof plastic containers for storing weapons and ammo.
WTF good is that going to do? a damn weapon is of no use buried and little use if wielded by an individual against an armed force of any size. Better to arm and Tribe Up…there is no place left to hide..
If you buy a gun the government has (or can obtain) a record of it – a simple Executive Order could transfer possession of all those 4473’s to the government.
If you live in a State where background checks are required for all transfers you will be identified as the current owner of it, or whomever you transferred to wil be known, If you don’t have it expect some big trouble.
Of course, you could always report it lost or stolen, but if you’re ever found with it afterwards (unless you have reported it recovered) will probably result in serious charges (ones that will disallow you future firearms ownership).
Unless, of course, you’re a Black, an Illegal, or a Muslim. You’re free to go if you are one of those.
My firearms fell off my boat last summer.
curious, are there any statistics on how many crimes are committed where the criminal used his own legally purchased gun-I will bet not many–
flash,
Something to consider.
If you watch the old video’s of the Romanians revolting against Ceaușescu you will notice lots of civilian Romanians fighting his elite forces using Mauser rifles.
Now those rifles certainly weren’t something available to the Romanians at the local gun shop, I imagine they were left over battlefield pickups from when the Nazi’s were defeated that had been squirreled away in basements and cellars for two generations just waiting for the right time to bring them out and put them to use.
Armed people eventually become free people even if it sometimes takes a while.
elevenquatloos,
Depends on how you analyze the statistics.
A legal gun owner that is charged with, say, having his gun with him at an airport or school would be considered using a legally owned gun during a crime. Or a self defensive case in States that don’t recognize your right to defend yourself with your guns.
If you’re talking about serious street type of violence, I think it is less than 10 percent (again it’s hard to determine because of the way statistics are kept) since tha majority of those crimes are in big cities and done by particular minorities who are usually not legal gun purchasers in the first place.
The ATF recently opened a full disclosure searchable database of all its gun information to make access to its records free and easily accessed by the public, you might look there (if it works, I tried using it when it was first announced and it didn’t. Sort of like Obamacare’s website or something.)
I remember reading something about prying, and cold dead hands.
@flash… we will probably vote Trump too, but the problem is that without accountability, there is no way to hold elected officials to what they say. “If you like your doctor, keep your doctor.”
@anon….here’s something else to fucking think about.Never put down your gun, because the opportunity to pick another back up may never come again…see how that works?
This Ain’t No Disco
December 4, 2015 – 10:29 pm
In a recent post I remarked that, with bitterly opposing forces tearing at our rotting social framework, every public shock — in this case, the San Bernardino jihad assault — is a hammer-blow that “strains the joints and widens the cracks”. “Each time,” I remarked in a subsequent comment, “we split apart a little more.”
Commenter “pangur” asked:
Why is this bad? Why is it that we should make common cause with our enemies? A longing for an America that no longer exists is at best sentimental, and at worst destructively futile. Time to move forward, and apart.
The point is a good one. If, as I believe, the rot is already too deep, the disease too advanced, the rifts too wide, the enmity too bitter for the nation to recover, then the only hope for the restoration of something built on the old foundations of Western greatness will require, first, that this tottering edifice — this walking corpse — collapse. Indeed I think this is already underway.
Where I think I part company with many on the dissident Right — in particular, those who call themselves “neoreactionaries”, most of whom are, I think, several decades younger than I — is that so many of them seem to have a kind of breathless excitement about all of this; it seems they just can’t wait for all the fun they are going to have watching the apocalypse, and then rolling up their sleeves to show everyone how it ought to have been done. This seems to me profoundly, childishly, foolishly, heart-breakingly naïve.
When this Fall happens — slowly at first, probably, and then quite suddenly — it will not be fun, and it will not be exciting. It will be awful. There will almost certainly be terrible suffering and dislocation; chaos, violence, plunder, terror, and despair. A great many irreplaceable treasures — our children’s ancient birthright and heritage, that we have so shamefully squandered in little more than a generation — will be forever lost.
Whether we will be able to build something worthwhile upon this rubble is doubtful at best, and even if we manage it, it may take a very long time. High civilizations, and in particular high-trust societies, do not grow upon trees, and they are by no means the default human condition. Whatever follows a general collapse, or a civil war, in the West will not be a swashbuckling plot from a Robert Heinlein novel; it is far more likely to be a time of brutality, poverty, suffering, uncertainty, and fear.
Others may snap their fingers at the noble experiment now coming apart in America, and may imagine, on no practical experience, that they will know how to do it better. Not I. I will mourn and grieve for the great Republic we have, in our great unwisdom, so recklessly destroyed. Perhaps, as is received doctrine amongst neoreactionary sorts, the American system was doomed ab ovo; it carried in its very democracy the disease that would kill it. I have often said the same myself. But the men who framed this system knew this all too well themselves, and they knew and named the essential qualities and principles that might have inoculated us: qualities that we not only have failed to cherish, but now actively despise.
What makes us think we will get it right next time?
The communists goal is total tyranny.”One man with a gun can control one hundred without.”
Maggie, what else is there?
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put the tools in tall containers and lean them toward the corner.
That way the cat can’t knock them over. And you won’t trip over them
either.
From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia
Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real
figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own
government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.
The first year results are now in:
Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,
Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent;
Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
In the state of Victoria…..alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent.(Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)
While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady
decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.
Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in ‘successfully ridding Australian society of guns….’
You won’t see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the State Assembly disseminating this information.
The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.
Take note Americans, before it’s too late!
FORWARD TO EVERYONE ON YOUR EMAIL LIST.
DON’T BE A MEMBER OF THE SILENT MAJORITY.
BE ONE OF THE VOCAL MINORITY WHO WON ‘T STAND FOR NONSENSE
AUSTRALIA: MORE VIOLENT CRIME DESPITE GUN BAN
@KaD… is there any way to determine if that email is valid?
@Maggie…FWIW……http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
@flash… me neither.
Snopes could explain away the ocean and shore being different things by claiming when the tide comes in there is a grey area where the water covers the land and it’s all so iffy, that imaginary border between dry and wet that there’s no way to define ‘land’ or ‘water’.
Like Wikipedia it’s painful to read if you know a little something about whatever it is they’re trying to explain.
@HF…totally agree on Snopes which is why I prefaced it with FWIW. I have found Snopes to be a left-leaning organization much like Politifact is. If they are correct in their analysis of this particular four year old e-mail, they at least made some points about the Australian confiscation and its particulars. Like Maggie, I had my doubts especially after the ending telling everyone to send it to “everyone on your e-mail list.” And lastly, if you read their analysis they did pretty much what you accused them of.
Thalasinos sounds like a dude I could enjoy having a cold one wif. RIP. Lynch apparently repealed the First Amendment all by herself. Another Magic Negro.
If its time to hide them, its time to use them
3blindmice wrote-
“If its time to hide them, its time to use them”
That should be a t-shirt.
Is this what 3blindmice was referring to?
admin, I’m sorry, did you just write something?
I decided this was the best way to lure SSS into the discussion.
“No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.” like the vaunted Freedom of the Press. These guys have so “regulated” the Press that it no longer serves it’s original purpose and instead has become the propaganda arm of TPTB.
“Snopes is run by a man and a woman with no background in investigation using Google.
Snopes.com has been considered the ‘tell-all final word’ on any comment, claim and email. Once negative article by them and people point and say, “See, I told you it wasn’t true!” But what is Snopes? What are their methods and training that gives them the authority to decide what is true and what is not? For several years people have tried to find out who exactly was behind the website Snopes.com. Only recently did they get to the bottom of it. Are you ready for this? It is run by a husband and wife team – that’s right, no big office of investigators scouring public records in Washington, no researchers studying historical stacks in libraries, no team of lawyers reaching a consensus on current case law. No, Snopes.com is just a mom-and-pop operation that was started by two people who have absolutely no formal background or experience in investigative research.”
Link to article: http://accuracyinpolitics.blogspot.com/2013/05/snopes-got-snoped.html
This is the Snopes team:
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SNIP………..
What is behind Snopes’ selfish motivation? A simple review of their “fact-checking” reveals a strong tendency to explain away criticisms towards liberal politicians and public figures while giving conservatives the hatchet job. Religious stories and issues are similarly shown no mercy. With the “main-stream” media quickly losing all credibility with their fawning treatment of President Obama, Snopes is being singled out, along with MSNBC and others, as being particularly biased and agenda-modivated.
So if you really want to know the truth about a story or a rumor you have heard, by all means do not go to Snopes.com! You could do just as well if you were a liberal with an internet connection. Don’t go to wikipedia.com either as their team of amateur editors have also been caught in a number of bold-faced liberal-biased untruths. (Such as Wikigate and their religious treatment of Obama.) Take anything these sites say with a grain of salt and an understanding that they are written by people with a motive to criticize all things conservative. Use them only to lead you to solid references where you can read their sources for yourself.
Plus, you can always Google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that’s all the Mikkelson’s do.
Got to Admin’s comment and forgot what the post was about…. had to scroll back to the top. Then back down again. What was the topic again???