Archive for December, 2014

New Jersey Man Gets Gun License After Three Years

From NJ.com:

McGovern initially applied for a permit to purchase a handgun in 2011. The city denied his application, saying McGovern refused to fill out special forms that the city includes with its application. The city also cited three times McGovern was arrested for misdemeanor offenses in Florida about a decade before (McGovern said he was not convicted; the city asked for proof).

In October 2012, a trial court ruled in Jersey City’s favor. In April 2014, an appellate court reversed that decision, ruling that Jersey City veered outside of its authority by demanding “substantially more” information on its gun-permit application than state law allows.

 

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Wisconsin Newspaper Calls For Repeal of Second Amendment

From The Wisconsin Gazette:

The fate of the Second Amendment should have been sealed when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that past rulings by their predecessors were wrong, that in fact the amendment that provided for a “well regulated militia” really guaranteed every individual the right to own a gun. Wow. That is an interesting reading of the English language. What the Supremes have done is to not only warp the meaning and make it into twisted law, but to further prohibit states and local governments from declaring their places free of legal guns. The conservative court once again rules against the power of states, a principle that used to be associated with darn liberals who wanted to make sure everyone had the right to vote, for example, even though they weren’t properly white enough. Now when a city or state wants to outlaw firearms, too bad. The conservatives took away their powers and rights in favor of Big Brother.

It boggles the mind that so many people choose to mis-read the second amendment while being perfectly able to read and interpret all the others.

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Fast and Furious Used as Excuse for More Gun Control

From Sharyl Attkisson:

Justification for New Gun Control Regulations

  • ATF’s internal Public Affairs Talking Points show the agency was using Fast and Furious to help justify new gun control regulations–without telling the public that ATF was actually facilitating the delivery of weapons to Mexican drug cartels.
  • The talking points (p. 15) state:

“These cases demonstrate the ongoing trafficking of firearms by Mexican DTO’s and other associated groups operating in Arizona and the need for reporting of multiple sales for certain types of rifles in order to ferret out those intent on providing firearms to these criminal groups.”

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Australians Have the Right to Self Defense in Name Only

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Legally, Australians have a right to self-defence.

What we don’t have is the practical ability to exercise that right. Owning any object for the purpose of self-defence, lethal or non-lethal, is a criminal offence. Those trapped within the Lindt cafe were left helpless, as carrying items for self-defence is not allowed under State law. What’s worse, the offender possibly knew it.

Prohibited self-defence items include pepper sprays, mace, clubs and personal Tasers. In some states, carrying a pocket-knife is illegal and even wearing a bullet-proof vest is banned.

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Gun Smuggling Ring That Used Airliners Busted

From NBC:

Four men in the group were charged in two separate indictments for allegedly conspiring to sell 153 firearms that were mostly bought in Georgia and destined for the streets of Brooklyn, from May to December 2014, the King’s County District Attorney’s office said in a statement.

One of the men in the group was employed as a Delta bag handler who smuggled weapons — some loaded —into the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta, where he handed them off to an accomplice, Mark Quentin Henry, who flew to New York, federal law enforcement officials said.

After the Patriot Act and TSA making everyone go through naked body scanners, guns still got on planes. This same technique could be used by terrorists to smuggle bombs on airplanes. The government was too concerned with passengers and not focused on security in general.

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Court Rules in Favor of Gun Owner Who Was Committed 28 Years Ago

From The Wall Street Journal:

In the first legal ruling of its type, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati on Thursday deemed unconstitutional a federal law that kept a Michigan man who was briefly committed to a mental institution decades ago from owning a gun.

A three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the federal ban on gun ownership for anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution” violated the Second Amendment rights of Clifford Charles Tyler, a 73-year-old Hillsdale County man.

 

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DC Circuit Court Votes Against EPA Regulating Lead Ammo

From the NSSF:

he U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today upheld the dismissal of the latest lawsuit brought by anti-hunting groups petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to issue regulations banning traditional ammunition with lead components. The refusal by the EPA to consider the petition was challenged by the anti-hunting petitioners in federal court in 2013.

Traditional ammunition represents 95 percent of the U.S. market and is the staple ammunition for target shooters, hunters and law enforcement, with more than 14 billion rounds sold annually.

You can read the full decision here.

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New Gun Control Group Made Up of State Legislators Won’t Release Membership List

From NSSF:

A handful of state legislators from across the country gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to announce the creation of “American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention” or ASLGVP.  The new group, which claims to be non-partisan, will work to push new gun restrictions at the state level.  But the coalition has one major problem – they will not let anyone know who they are.

ASLGVP boasts having 200 members from all 50 states but the group will not release a list of their membership, due to a fear of “political backlash.”  So, outside of the eight members that participated in the inaugural press conference, no one knows who is or is not a member of this group. We are not witnessing a “Profiles in Courage” moment here.

Citizens across the country have a right to know whether or not their respective elected official is a member of this group. Considering that ASLGVP intends to potentially tamper with our Constitutional rights, it is unethical and secretive for members to keep their constituents in the dark about their participation in the group.  If a state legislator is too scared to reveal his or her affiliation with this group, shouldn’t that say something about the agenda that ASLGVP may be trying to move forward?

Perhaps members of this group have opted to keep their participation in ASLGVP a secret because they do not want people to know how out of touch they really are — with their constituents but also the country as a whole.  Last week, the Pew Research Center released the results from its newest poll which found that public support for gun rights has never been higher. The survey showed that 52 percent of Americans believe it is important to protect our Second Amendment rights, a figure that increased seven points over the past year. Since public opinion is not in their favor, ASLGVP members, once they reveal their identities, should indeed be fearful of “political backlash” – a vote out of office in the next election.

ASLGVP said it would meet this week in Washington, DC for the first time.  NSSF would like to attend and hear more about the group’s agenda, but the meeting time and location is secret. Of course it is.  We assume disguises are optional?  How about secret handshakes or de-coder rings?

How about this? Any elected public official who believes they must conduct themselves in such cartoonish secrecy is certainly raising questions about their fitness for their office.  As for transparency, well they clearly don’t see any need for that quaint notion of representative government. They’ll tell us what they want to tell us when they’re ready.  In the meantime, mum’s the word.

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After Hostage Incident Australia Senator Says It’s a “Nation of Victims”

From Australia Broadcasting Company:

“What happened in that cafe would have been most unlikely to have occurred in Florida, Texas, or Vermont, or Alaska in America, or perhaps even Switzerland as well,” Senator Leyonhjelm told the ABC’s AM program.

“That nutcase who held them all hostage wouldn’t have known they were armed and bad guys don’t like to be shot back at,” Senator Leyonhjelm said.

 

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Civil Disobedience in Olympia Over I-594

From Townhall.com:

As the RSVPs in advance of the rally grew to over 6,000, the police – most who probably detest I-594 – decided not to enforce the law. The Washington State Patrol announced there would be no arrests for exchanging guns – not even for selling guns. Seim refused to obtain a permit to hold the rally, citing the right of people to peaceably assemble.

If you can choose when to enforce or not enforce laws then what is the point of having laws in the first place?

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Viewing Russia From the Inside

Viewing Russia From the Inside is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

By George Friedman

Last week I flew into Moscow, arriving at 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 8. It gets dark in Moscow around that time, and the sun doesn’t rise until about 10 a.m. at this time of the year — the so-called Black Days versus White Nights. For anyone used to life closer to the equator, this is unsettling. It is the first sign that you are not only in a foreign country, which I am used to, but also in a foreign environment. Yet as we drove toward downtown Moscow, well over an hour away, the traffic, the road work, were all commonplace. Moscow has three airports, and we flew into the farthest one from downtown, Domodedovo — the primary international airport. There is endless renovation going on in Moscow, and while it holds up traffic, it indicates that prosperity continues, at least in the capital. Read the rest of this entry »

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Freedoms Die When Public Health is Invoked

Newsweek wants to turn the gun issue into a public health issue because they know the argument is lost when it is framed as a gun issue.

…if we remove the debate from a gun context, if we approach our epidemic of gun violence from the point of view of a doctor serving the health and welfare of all Americans—well, that changes things. Or could if Murthy is given a chance.

 

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Intelligence Authorization Act of 2015

EFF’s Statement on the Act:

On Wednesday of last week, the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2015 passed in the US House of Representatives. The bill, H.R. 4681, contains Section 309, which imposes guidelines for when the intelligence community can keep some communications collected under Executive Order 12333 (EO 12333). President Reagan wrote the policy document in the 1980s to provide the framework for intelligence agency conduct. Today, it is used to justify mass surveillance of communications.

Congress showed that it is willing to tackle the mass spying conducted under EO 12333 by inserting Section 309 into the bill. It’s one of the first times Congress has publicly stood up to spying covered by the Executive Order. It’s a good sign, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. The bill must usher in more vigilant—and public—Congressional oversight of EO 12333 and other NSA spying activities.

Unfortunately, the procedures in Section 309 reflect the current status quo: the over-collection, over-retention, and over-sharing of innocent users’ communications. The procedures in Section 309 try to protect the communications of non-targets, but include massive loopholes. These loopholes do not grant any new authority, but they do allow the President to continue the egregious retention and sharing of innocent users’ communication, which is a practice that must be stopped.

While the language in Section 309 was taken from the Senate Intelligence Authorization bill(.pdf), the House did not take time to debate it. We’ve learned over the past year that, at a minimum, both Congress and the public need time to read these intelligence bills and understand their implications. Yet again, this didn’t happen. And yet again, the American public is left without a voice on the surveillance laws used to collect their communications.

GovTrack page

Congress.gov page

Wikipedia page

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GoPro is Official Sponsor of SHOT Show Industry Day at the Range 2015

NSSF Press Release:

SAN MATEO, CALIF., (DEC. 4, 2014) – GoPro, Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRO), enabler of some of today’s most
immersive and engaging content, has signed on as the Official Camera Sponsor of SHOT Show® Industry
Day at the RangeTM. Industry Day at the Range will be held on Monday, January 19, 2015, at the Boulder
Pistol & Rifle Range, Boulder City, Nevada.

The event will provide media and buyers an opportunity to preview and test the industry’s exciting new
line of hunting and shooting products for 2015, displayed by more than 150 exhibitors.

“The new HERO4 Black and Silver Edition cameras and recently-introduced Sportsman Mount and
Blackout Housing, along with the more than fifty other mounts and accessories GoPro offers, deliver
even more exciting ways create incredible content in the field and on the range,” said Paul Crandell, VP
of Marketing at GoPro. “Industry Day at the Range is the perfect opportunity to guide media and
industry influencers through a hands-on experience using our products and introduce them to what
GoPro can bring to this vertical.”

“We could not be more pleased with the commitment that GoPro is making to this event,” said Cathy
Williams, co-owner of Industry Days at the Range. “This agreement shows GoPro’s commitment to
entering into this industry and Industry Day allows them the opportunity to showcase their products to
more than 1,500 attendees.”

Industry Day at the Range attendees will have the opportunity to experience the newest GoPro cameras
and gear at the Browning/Winchester shotgun range. Products available for use on the range will
include the new GoPro HERO4 Black and Silver editions, the Sportsman Mount, Blackout Housing, Jaws:
FlexClamp and HeadStrap + QuickClip.

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R.I.P. Ammo Recall For .45 Glocks

G2 Research which makes the ammo released a statement on their Facebook page telling customers not to use the ammo in Glock pistols.

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