Tag: gun control

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initiative, referendum, and recall links Second Amendment rights

Townhall: Plumber Wrench into the Gears of Gun Control

The First and Second Amendment are very good friends. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re close, one always protecting the other, as we witnessed again last week in Colorado. 

For more on the big Rocky Mountain State recall vote, click on over to Townhall.com. And then come back here for a few more links.

Categories
national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Guns Grabbed in New York

Many folks are scared of “mentally unstable folks” with guns. Me too.

However, being scared doesn’t mean that we get to take the rights away from people we’re uncomfortable around – or whose demographic group might be found to be statistically more “dangerous” than another.

“Mental illness” is itself an unstable concept — Asperger’s Syndrome has been listed as a separate disorder in the e Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but it looks like it will be collapsed into the spectrum of autism-related disorders in the DSM-5. Indeed, the more you learn about the history of the DSM, the less it looks like a scientific document and more the product of a congress, with “diseases” voted in and out because of ideological pressure and fashion and whim. Homosexuality? Used to be a disease. Now it isn’t. Progress, I think, but the actual process was no more scientific than changing the recipe for hot dogs, the manufacture of which we are warned not to inquire about.

Ask David Lewis, a 35-year-old gentleman from Amherst, New York. His guns were confiscated by the state. Why? He was once prescribed an anti-anxiety medicine, and that flagged him as unstable under New York’s new gun law.

A judge just ruled that the state has to give him his guns back.

Talk about slippery slopes. Were it not for one commonsense judge, New Yorkers who’ve experienced some social anxiety would have been lumped in with utter crazies, and had their rights simply stripped.

Indeed, they already have. Lewis is almost certainly not the only perfectly sensible citizen to have had his guns grabbed.

Thus it begins.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

It’s Not About Responsibility

“It’s not about me,” insisted the President of these United States, before crowds in Hartford, Connecticut.

Barack Obama, in expert oratorical mode, elaborated: “Some in the Washington press suggest that what happens to gun violence legislation in Congress this week will either be a political victory or defeat for me.” After a long and impressive facial pause, he went on. “Connecticut, this is not about me; it’s not about politics. This is about doing the right thing. . . .” but he didn’t stop there. He listed the beneficiaries of “gun violence legislation”:

  • “for all the families who are here who have been torn apart by gun violence”;
  • “and all the families going forward . . . so we can prevent this from happening again”;
  • “it’s about the law enforcement professionals putting their lives at risk. . . .”

Not about politics? Sounds exactly like politics.

No discussion of the efficacy or practicality of what’s on the line, universal background checks on all gun sales. (Private trades in legal armaments now constitute a “loophole,” you see.)  What evidence is there that universal background checks would have stopped the murderous Adam Lanza — or most such hard-to-predict murderers?

The Orator-in-Chief’s earlier emphasis on the ostensible fact of 90 percent American support for this rule is also political. You can bet that the pollsters did not probe very deeply into the nitty gritty of the issue by asking about increases in bureaucracy, paperwork, the regulation of law-abiding folk.

Or how to get criminals to comply.

None of that.

It is all politics. The feel-good politics of politicians claiming they are “doing something.”

That is not principle. Not philosophy. And certainly not responsible policy making.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Bloomberg’s Megaphone

When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not breaking his term limits pledge like a dictator, he’s outlawing soft drinks like a nanny.

Now he’s trying to undermine our Second Amendment rights, spending $12 million of his reported $27 billion net worth to run television spots in 13 states. Those advertisements aim to rile up the public and encourage folks to pressure their U.S. Senators into supporting gun control legislation.

Hey, da mayor’s just not my kind of guy. Except in one respect: His spending of $12 million . . . of his own money.

I admire that.

And, even with his $27 billion set against my . . . well, er . . . I’m not scared of his wealth advantage. I welcome his speech. Because my best chance to prevail politically is for all voices to be free to speak.

Plus, as National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre ably put it last Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Bloomberg “can’t buy America.”

In fact, I don’t think the mayor harbors any such illusions. Bloomberg’s savvy enough to know that his rented megaphone won’t necessarily convince Americans . . . who are not mindless automatons programmed by 30-second television ads.

We make up our own minds.

Too bad he doesn’t extend this notion across the board. You know, to soda drinks and such.

So, regardless of Bloomberg’s inconsistencies and indecencies, let’s welcome folks like him who finance causes they believe in. They provide the venture capital for informed citizen decision-making.

We could use a few more billionaires giving on the side of freedom and responsibility, though. Any takers? I mean, givers?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Sheriff Control

If you’re going to advocate gun-backed force to violate the individual’s right to bear arms — the form of people control also known as “gun control” — why not also try to strong-arm opponents of gun control into silence?

Sheriff Terry Maketa of El Paso County, Colorado, went on the Jeff Crank Show, a radio program, to report that Colorado Democrats are using their power to try to silence sheriffs.

Maketa and a few dozen other sheriffs in Colorado had made the trip to the state legislature to publicly testify against a gun control bill. In his view, the legislation “is emotionally driven and has no backing.”

At least two aspects of lawmakers’ conduct in the debate bother him. One is that, contrary to past procedure, only one sheriff was allowed to speak on the bill. Maketa could testify “but [many] who made the trip . . . never had their voice heard.”

After the sheriffs appeared against the bill, the Colorado association representing county sheriffs (CSOC) alerted members that angry senate Democrats were indicating that they wouldn’t act favorably on proposed increases in sheriff salaries unless the sheriffs “reconsider our positions.” The CSOC’s email went on to say that they didn’t believe that supporting Senate Bill 197 would violate the sheriffs’ principles.

Sheriff Maketa finds both the threat and the advice to submit outrageous. Who can disagree, except persons who think we should give up our rights without a peep of protest?

Or give up our protest if the money is right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Ugly in New York

Part of New York State’s emotionally motivated, hastily concocted new gun control law requires persons owning ugly-looking guns—semi-automatic rifles—to register them with the government.

Officials may protest that they don’t intend to go rounding up the ugly-looking guns. They may also insist that the new law makes it harder for a newsroom to publicize the names and addresses of gun owners (as the Journal News of White Plains, New York recently did).

But a registry that exists is a registry that can be accessed, and abused, despite any official’s alleged good intentions. Many advocates of gun control, including the Senate’s chief sponsor of a new assault weapons ban, admit that if they had their druthers, they’d outlaw all privately held guns. How would the registry be used then?

Many New York owners of ugly guns are up in arms, so to speak. Why? Because they don’t see themselves as criminal suspects properly tracked for exercising constitutional rights. There are good reasons why good people might refuse to voluntarily add their names and addresses to a list of targets.

Brian Olesen, president of one of New York State’s largest gun dealers, says he’s heard “from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes.”

It’s not just some guns that look ugly. Turning peaceful people into criminals by a mere act of legislation is ugly in the extreme.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.