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Why have we not heard of the San Antonio deputy sheriff who shot the knuckle-dragging idiot who had just shot and killed his ex-girlfriend? Because it does not meet with their view of guns and gun violence! Someone preventing crime by the use of a gun is a crime in the eyes of the biased media. It denies them the blood and gore they need for ratings. Also, It does not meet with their definition of guns which is they are all bad and should all be banned. So they leave out the good news and only focus on the bad. Today there was another shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the same city as the theater shooting some six months ago. The San Jose Mercury news covered it as did most other news outlets. Their article: (http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_22317237/four-dead-inside-aurora-colorado-home-including-gunman) can be read if you want. However, if you check, there is no mention of the San Antonio shooting at all. Why would a killing get top billing and someone who saves lives not get mentioned at all? It goes back to the news media mantra, if it bleeds, it leads. However, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, all we heard about was how bad guns were. Yet, here and in innumerable other cases, someone with a gun has saved many lives. Why are we not hearing a balanced approach? Isn't that what the news is supposed to present? This is just another nail in the coffin of the freedom of the press. They are no longer news organizations, they are political organs which report only the items that meet the approval of the Democratic party and its supporters. They are like Pravda in the old Soviet Union. Yes, this country as we have known it is on its last legs. Soon the press will only be able to report on news that the White House approves. Oops--that already has happened. Maybe we are further down the road than we thought! Your comments are welcome. Be scared, be very scared. Conservative Tom P.S. Thanks to one of my high school friends mom who sent me the following article!
On Sunday Dec. 16 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It's like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant! Now aren't you wondering why this isn't a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting? There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened. Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week. Just thought you'd like to know.
Unfortunately the person that shot this shooter wasn't a average civilian or better yet a 65 year old retired veteran.
Why have we not heard of the San Antonio deputy sheriff who shot the knuckle-dragging idiot who had just shot and killed his ex-girlfriend? Because it does not meet with their view of guns and gun violence! Someone preventing crime by the use of a gun is a crime in the eyes of the biased media. It denies them the blood and gore they need for ratings. Also, It does not meet with their definition of guns which is they are all bad and should all be banned. So they leave out the good news and only focus on the bad. Today there was another shooting in Aurora, Colorado, the same city as the theater shooting some six months ago. The San Jose Mercury news covered it as did most other news outlets. Their article: (http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_22317237/four-dead-inside-aurora-colorado-home-including-gunman) can be read if you want. However, if you check, there is no mention of the San Antonio shooting at all. Why would a killing get top billing and someone who saves lives not get mentioned at all? It goes back to the news media mantra, if it bleeds, it leads. However, after the Sandy Hook tragedy, all we heard about was how bad guns were. Yet, here and in innumerable other cases, someone with a gun has saved many lives. Why are we not hearing a balanced approach? Isn't that what the news is supposed to present? This is just another nail in the coffin of the freedom of the press. They are no longer news organizations, they are political organs which report only the items that meet the approval of the Democratic party and its supporters. They are like Pravda in the old Soviet Union. Yes, this country as we have known it is on its last legs. Soon the press will only be able to report on news that the White House approves. Oops--that already has happened. Maybe we are further down the road than we thought! Your comments are welcome. Be scared, be very scared. Conservative Tom P.S. Thanks to one of my high school friends mom who sent me the following article!
On Sunday Dec. 16 2012, 2 days after the CT shooting, a man went to a restaurant in San Antonio to kill his X-girlfriend. After he shot her, most of the people in the restaurant fled next door to a theater. The gunman followed them and entered the theater so he could shoot more people. He started shooting and people in the theater started running and screaming. It's like the Aurora, CO theater story plus a restaurant! Now aren't you wondering why this isn't a lead story in the national media along with the school shooting? There was an off duty county deputy at the theater. SHE pulled out her gun and shot the man 4 times before he had a chance to kill anyone. So since this story makes the point that the best thing to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun, the media is treating it like it never happened. Only the local media covered it. The city is giving her a medal next week. Just thought you'd like to know.
Unfortunately the person that shot this shooter wasn't a average civilian or better yet a 65 year old retired veteran.
The "mouth" better known as the Vice President has "guaranteed the Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, that gun control legislation will be passed by the end of January. We believe it.
We have learned that when the Veep talks, we listen. He has no censor on his mouth and therefore, whatever the Administration is thinking can be learned when he speaks.
So for those gun owners who thought that the current efforts toward gun control would soon pass away as past ones had, you would be mistaken. This will not be the same.
We have a President who will do whatever he wants. He does not care for the rule of law, the legislative process or playing by the rules. He will get it done, so you best be prepared.
We would never suggest that you violate any laws as this will be one of the ways they will get you. However, you must take every legal action that you can and do it now. If you wait, it will be too late!
Be scared, be very scared. Change is coming to America and it is not your father's change.
Conservative Tom
Menino: Veep promised him fast action on gun control
Mayor Thomas M. Menino — a leading national gun control advocate — that President Obama will pass sweeping firearms reforms by the end of the month, the mayor said today.
“He said, ‘Tommy, I guarantee you, we’ll get it done by the end of January,’” Menino said at City Hall today. “They’re going to get it done.”
The mayor, who has been recovering from a host of ailments for the past two months, said Biden called him several times while he was in the hospital, including a call after the Newtown school massacre to discuss gun control.
Menino and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg co-chair the 500-mayor-strong Mayors Against Illegal Guns and have called for national gun reform in the wake of last month’s Sandy Hook school killings.
“I understand the second amendment, the right to bear arms. But I don’t understand how young kids should be able to get guns,” he said, referring to the plague of urban gang violence largely involving young males.
Menino added that the president has “no excuse not to pass strong (gun reform) legislation,” since he is in his last term and doesn’t have to worry about angering pro-gun voters or the National Rifle Association.
“It’s time to get this moving and moving quickly,” Menino said. “Let’s do it now.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Menino also said he’s “feeling better than I have in nine months” and hinted he could seek an unprecedented sixth term.
“I still have the energy,” he said. “I still have a lot more things I want to accomplish . . . If I believe I can make a difference in this city and move this city forward, that’s my future.”
Menino was hospitalized in October and spent nearly two months in the hospital and a rehabilitation clinic. He’s still having difficulty walking but is in daily physical therapy.
He’s staying at the Parkman House, because it has elevators, but said he “can’t wait” to get back to living at his Hyde Park home. He said he’s also looking forward to getting back to a regular schedule, but may scale back his public appearances slightly.
“You can’t stop being who you are,” he said. “Once you stop being who you are, that’s when you get in trouble. I’m not going to stop being Tom Menino.”
This is an older post that we have purposely withheld to see where the fiscal cliff negotiations would end. As suspected, there was no cut in spending, just increased taxes for EVERYONE that works. Those who do not work, will not see their taxes go up, however, we are sure their benefits will! So the workers of this country get to pay more in taxes to support an ever growing underclass. This is not the America into which we were born! In contrast to the title of this article, we are not glad that Obama won. If he only is President for another four years (we think he will be there for another 24), the damage done to the viability of this country will be so great, that it probably will never recover. One only has to look at the data in the article below to see that 75% of the employees hired since June 1 are government employees. Government employees contribute nothing to the economy, it is total drag. However, we expect that this will be the way of the future in the Obama Administration. We are not glad. Conservative Tom
I’m beginning to think it doesn’t much matter whether this country plunges over the so-called fiscal cliff in two weeks. Regardless of whether Congress and the President reach some sort of accommodation over how much the “rich” will be taxed, a financial train wreck looks almost unavoidable.
Consider a few of the warning indicators that are flashing.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported that 847,000 new jobs were created in the United States in the past six months. While that’s not enough to make a meaningful dent in the unemployment numbers, it’s at least a step in the right direction, right?
Not when you read the fine print in the BLS report. When you do, you’ll discover that73.3 percent of those new jobs are in government. That’s right; of all the new jobs created in the United States since June 1, the Labor Department says only one in four were in private enterprise. All of the rest are new government employees. No wonder government spending is going through the roof.
Speaking of government spending, in the first two months of Fiscal 2013 (which began Oct. 1), the Federal government spent $638 billion. But it collected only $346 billion in revenue. This means that it borrowed 46 cents for every dollar it disbursed.
Some of that money went to all the people who have been added to the food stamp rolls —more than 1 million in August and September alone. I haven’t seen the numbers for November yet, but I doubt if they’ll be much better. The Labor Department reports that some 350,000 people left the workforce last month — nearly three times the number who actually got jobs.
The short-term picture doesn’t look very good, does it? Well, I’m sorry to tell you that the longer-term picture is even more alarming.
The latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office are that Federal deficit spending will surpass 100 percent of the gross domestic product of this country by 2025. And that it willdouble from there after another 12 years, reaching almost 200 percent of GDP by 2037.
But don’t worry about these astronomical levels of government spending. We’ll never reach them. Long before that can happen, the economy is going to crash. As former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money.”
The Federal behemoth will run out of “other people’s money” long before it is gobbling up 200 percent of our GDP.
So what happens when the feathers hit the fan? What happens when unemployment soars and tax revenues fall? What happens when it becomes obvious to everyone and his brother that our massive entitlement programs can’t be sustained?
The Federal government won’t be able to borrow its way out of the mess it’s created. And it won’t be able to print its way out, either.
Oh, sure, for a while it will try to do both. That’s why I’m so certain that the dollar will continue to decline in value, while tangible assets (with gold and silver leading the list) will continue to climb.
But sooner or later, things are going to get really messy. And when they do, I hope there will be a massive repudiation of the tax-and-tax, spend-and-spend policies that brought us there.
Sadly, that’s not what happened during our last economic catastrophe. The Great Depression got blamed on capitalism. As a result, the country took a massive turn to the left under Franklin Roosevelt and his comrades.
But even the talking heads on MSNBC will have a hard time blaming the coming crisis on the right. When that day comes, conservatives should be very glad that Barrack Hussein Obama won re-election in November.
That’s why it’s so vital that we conservatives hold our ground, that we continue to defend and promote the principles we know are true and that we do everything in our power to explain the economic facts of life to our families, friends and neighbors.
At a time when the future looked even bleaker than it does today, George Washington said: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.”
That’s the best advice I can offer today to help sustain you in the difficult days that lay ahead.
Oh, and one more thing. Until next time, keep some powder dry.
What is your breaking point? Would you leave the US if taxes went to 65% or 75%? You should be thinking about it, especially if you are now one of those nasty big earners. If you have been successful by working hard and maybe you had a bit of luck, you now are the new despised minority.
If you could jump into your "way back" machine and ask the Founders the following question: should those who were successful would be despised or honored? They would have thought you lost your mind. It would be the latter. Hating success was never the plan, however, in the past four years, demonetization of those successful people has gone on unabated.
Even the last election was all about the 1% as if they had stolen all their wealth. The irony is that only a small fraction of the truly wealthy did not earn their way with their smarts. Warren Buffet's dad was a teacher and did not earn a lot of money, whereas his son has done spectacularly. He invested well and yes, made lots of money.
Bill Gates did not inherit his wealth either. He came up with an idea and was able to sell it better than his competitors. He has been one of the most wealthy people in the world due to his skill and abilities.
Why should we punish either Buffet or Gates or for that matter anyone who came up with an idea, perfected it and prospered. Isn't that what the US is all about? Until Obama that might have been true.
With the "fiscal cliff" deal done and most Americans getting a nasty increase in their taxes (by some calculations 6-7% on everyone) and NO reduction in spending, one has to wonder where taxes will be in a year or five. In the accompanying article, we see that French leaders are trying to pass a 75% income tax along with an assortment of other taxes. Folks, we are not far from there.
Would you accept a 75% income tax? Most of us would not. Can you imagine having to work until September 30 just to pay the taxes? Most would not.
We see what is occurring in France, the wealthy are leaving and instead of getting their pound of flesh, the country gets nothing. We think that is a reasonable approach and would encourage the producers in this country to start looking elsewhere.
The debt that this country has accumulated will have a devastating effect when interest rates rise. For example, the average rate of interest that the government is paying on our debt in November 2012 is 2.534% (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/rates/pd/avg/2012/2012_11.htm). What happens when interest rates go up and now the rate that needs to be paid is 3% or 4% or doubles to 5% (all still historically low rates)? Taxes will have to rise significantly so as to pay the interest. All one has to do is to look to Greece and see the destruction that higher interest rates do. If you are happy with tax rates as they are now, don't do anything. We need as many slugs as we can get to work in the mines. Rates are going up and going up fast and it will effect everyone and not only the highly compensated, even the janitor was hit with the "cliff" and he will be paying 1% type rates in the next few years. However, if you are not interested in giving all your money to the government, prepare to move elsewhere. We are looking into alternatives, you should also. Conservative Tom
When It's Time to Give Up On Your Country
By Dr. Steve Sjuggerud
Thursday, January 3, 2013
France's leaders are calling actor Gerard Depardieu "unpatriotic" and "pathetic."
You see, Depardieu is leaving France. He's leaving because of the new French tax laws.
French President François Hollande is trying to push through a 75% income tax, plus a higher "wealth" tax, higher capital gains taxes, higher inheritance taxes, and a tax on selling your business, among other taxes.
Depardieu has had enough…
He said he paid 85% of his income in taxes last year. He says he's paid 145 million euros in taxes to France over his career (roughly $190 million).
So he's moving to Belgium to avoid taxes.
France's Prime Minister called this move "pathetic really." He continued: "Paying taxes is an act of patriotism and we're asking the rich to make a special effort here for the country."
At what level is tax no longer an "act of patriotism"? This question doesn't just apply to France… European countries are just a few years ahead of the U.S. in terms of becoming more socialist, with an insatiable demand for more of your income to pay for ever-growing government programs.
Depardieu took offense at being called "pathetic." Based on that, he offered to surrender his French passport. Belgium's finance minister said he welcomes Depardieu and "any other French citizens." And Russia's President Vladimir Putin offered Depardieu citizenship.
Other successful French citizens are leaving, too. For example, the founder of Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton is also applying for citizenship in Belgium.
Even worse, not only are talented people leaving France, but you can't get talented people into France to work. "We can't bring high-level managers to France," Eric Chaney, an economist at French insurer AXA, told Bloomberg news. "They work in an international market. And the market price for those salaries is well above 1 million euros."
So major French companies are looking to hire senior managers in London or Amsterdam instead of Paris, Chaney explained. France will miss out on all their taxes. By raising tax rates so high, instead of getting more in taxes, France will get no taxes from these guys.
Again, at what level is tax no longer an "act of patriotism?" At what level does it become an "act of confiscation" by the government? And when that point is reached, when is it time to give up on your country?
I don't know what the right level is. It appears that Depardieu has found the level for himself… and that's 85% of his income.
What do you think is the right level? How much of your income should the government be allowed to take? Is Depardieu a traitor? Or is he courageous?
With ever-increasing budget deficits in the U.S., and no real political will (on either side of the aisle) to dramatically cut entitlements, it's a safe bet that higher and higher tax rates are coming in the U.S.
It's time to start thinking about how "patriotic" you want to be.
We always enjoy Wayne Allyn Root's pieces and today's is especially good. In it, he takes a humorous look at what it means to be a Socialist. It is meant to be funny, however, it is especially poignant. Tell us what you think. Conservative Tom
Hello, I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. Happy New Year 2013. With a new year comes fresh thinking and creativity. I’ve had a chance to think about our President and all he’s doing to America and our economy.
And guess what conclusion I’ve come to? Barack Obama is a socialist.
That should be pretty clear to anyone with a brain — at least anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed… I mean educated… in public schools by socialist teachers’ union members.
Liberals and the media (I know, I repeat myself) constantly insinuate that anyone who says “Obama is a socialist” is crazy, ignorant, racist or extreme. Funny, a national poll shows that a 55 percent of Americans associate the word “socialist” with Obama. Another poll shows that a majority of Democratic Party members support socialism. A third poll shows that young people (among Obama’s most loyal supporters) now feel more favorably toward socialism than capitalism.
So if the shoe fits, wear it! It’s time for Obama and his supporters to come out of the closet.
But sometimes, you need a little humor to prove your point. So let’s look at the facts up close and personal, Jeff Foxworthy style. The comedian has proven with his humor — and without a doubt — who qualifies as a redneck. I’ve put together a list that leaves no doubt that Obama is a socialist, and we are all in big trouble.
So here goes. Obama might be a socialist if:
If you don’t understand that the reason babies scream hysterically the moment they are born is because they instantly realize they are facing a future of $100 trillion in debt, hyperinflation, 80 percent tax rates and no jobs, you might be a socialist.
If you think it’s a good idea to run America based on big government, big unions, big taxes, big spending and “social justice” — even though Detroit is a one-party Democratic town run with those exact same policies for decades that is now a bankrupt, empty city that leads the Nation in poverty, food stamps, murder, abandoned buildings and broken street lamps, you might be a socialist.
If the only thing you, your cabinet members and czars know about business is from books you read at Harvard or Columbia (all of which were written by Karl Marx), you might be a socialist.
If you want to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service to go after tax cheats — even though your Administration is filled with tax cheats, including the guy in charge of America’s taxes (Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner), you might be a socialist.
If you created the name “Cash for Clunkers” yet you don’t realize all the bribes you’ve given to your most loyal Democratic voters should be called “Cash for Flunkers,” you might be a socialist.
If you think food stamps, disability, aid to dependent children and unemployment checks are “economic stimulus,” you might be a socialist.
If you believe it’s greedy for taxpayers to want to keep more of their own money that they earned but it’s not greedy to demand government confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it to those who didn’t earn it (i.e., your voters), you might be a socialist.
If your tax policies are so onerous that even Denise Rich, one of the leading Democrat contributors in America for the past three decades, renounces her U.S. citizenship to move to Austria, you might be a socialist.
If you think George W. Bush adding $4 trillion to the National debt in eight years was an embarrassment, a travesty and a disgrace but you have no problem adding $6 trillion to the National debt in only four years, you might be a socialist — and a world-class hypocrite, too.
If you actually said “You didn’t build that” to business owners because you think bridges, roads, highways, airports, schools and hospitals led to their success but you don’t understand that business owners and taxpayers paid all the taxes that paid for government to build all those things in the first place and government ought to be thanking us, you might be a socialist.
If you call yourself a “champion of small business” while you demonize small-business owners in every speech and media interview, try desperately to raise their taxes and eliminate their tax deductions, and in just your first four years as President passed more than 60,000 new rules, regulations and mandates that make it impossible to run a lemonade stand in America anymore, you might be a socialist.
If you think the “White House party crashers” are terrible people because they crashed your White House state dinner without an invitation but you want to give instant citizenship to millions of uninvited “illegal immigrants” who crashed our border, you might be a socialist.
If you think it’s terrible that a college or law student has to pay $9 per month for her own contraception but you see no problem with colleges and law schools — run by your most loyal leftist intellectual supporters — charging that same student $50,000 per year to attend that school so ultra-liberal professors can be paid $250,000 per year for teaching one course per week, you might be a socialist.
If you think anyone who doesn’t read The New York Times is dumb and ignorant but think it’s OK that the Democratic-controlled Congress passed a 2,000-page healthcare bill without reading it, you might be a socialist.
If you think New York Times columnist Paul Krugman deserves a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and you deserve a Nobel Peace Prize even though neither of you ever created a job or did anything to produce one minute of peace in the world, you might be a socialist —and an egomaniac, too.
If you think it’s OK to meet with dictators, bullies, tyrants, communists, American-haters and terrorist sympathizers without preconditions but have no interest in meeting with Republican leaders in Congress, you might be a socialist.
If you think it’s OK to give Constitutional rights to terrorists but not to the bondholders, shareholders and secured creditors of GM and Chrysler when you stole the company from them and awarded it to your biggest contributors (the same unions that bankrupted them),you might be a socialist.
If you think it was a good idea to steal $26 billion from U.S. taxpayers to save the $100,000 pensions of union members at GM and Chrysler but it was just fine to allow all the non-union autoworkers to lose their pensions, you might be a socialist.
If you think the “fiscal cliff” is about actually being forced to actually cut some government spending when the real “fiscal cliff” is the $6 trillion you added to the National debt in your first term, you might be a socialist.
If you think things are “moving in the right direction” when food stamp rolls are growing 75 times faster than job rolls, you might be a socialist.
If you think Raul Castro, the leader of communist Cuba, firing 1 million government employees by telling them “government can no longer employ or take care of everyone” and promising to fire another million this year isn’t a hint that perhaps America needs to reduce our workforce of 22 million government employees, you might be a socialist.
If you think it was OK for Nancy Pelosi to pass Obamacare so she could benefit from the special clause on page 1,890 that gives free facelifts to public officials, you might be a socialist. (Just kidding!)
If you want to convert America to a “green economy” to create millions of “new jobs” (even though Spain has proven the green economy destroys three times as many jobs as it creates and leads to 25 percent unemployment — 50 percent unemployment among young adults),you might be a socialist — and an idiot, too.
If you claim to have “saved” millions of jobs with your stimulus package but the labor participation rate is the lowest since 1982 (and for men, it’s the lowest since 1948), you might be a socialist — and it’s obvious you learned math from a teachers’ union member in a failing public school.
If you claim you are a fan of oil drilling and you have “dramatically increased” oil drilling during your first term as President while oil drilling permits are actually down more than 60 percent,you might be a socialist– and a liar, too.
If you think denying an American a job, government contract or entry to college because of the color of his skin is immoral and criminal but that giving someone a job, government contract or college admission because of the different color of his skin is “social justice,” you might be a socialist — and a racist, too.
If you want to abandon capitalism and put the economy under the control of government bureaucrats even though virtually every city, county, State and Federal department run by these same bureaucrats is heavily in debt, you might be a socialist.
If you favor taxpayer bailouts of companies who give you campaign contributions and hand out almost $1 trillion in “stimulus” to unions and leading Democratic bundlers and contributors and hide it by refusing to disclose who got the money or how much, you might be a socialist— and a fascist, too.
If you think putting the same government that brought us Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service in charge of our healthcare will save us money, you might be a socialist.
If your solution to Medicare eating up almost the entire budget and driving the country into bankruptcy within 20 years is passing Obamacare so we can expand Medicare to everyone,you might be a socialist — and I’m betting you flunked out of public school math.
If you claim you can’t find anything to cut in your budget yet you just gave $1 billion dollars to the radical, American-hating, Muslim Brotherhood leadership of Egypt, you might be a socialist.
If you want to take guns away from law-abiding Americans because a mentally ill nutcase went on a killing rampage at a school designated as a “gun-free zone” (which advertised to that same nutcase that he would face absolutely no opposition because everyone inside was a helpless, defenseless sitting duck), you might be a socialist.
If you blame guns for killing children in Newtown, Conn., but it doesn’t occur to you that you sold guns to Mexican drug lords in the “Fast and Furious” scandal that resulted in 300 murders, including a U.S. border agent, you might be a socialist – and a fraud, too.
If want to lower the cost of healthcare but purposely left “tort reform” out of your signature healthcare reform because you, your wife and virtually every member of your Administration are lawyers, you might be a socialist lawyer.
If you think Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar of ABC’s “The View” represent the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, you might be a socialist.
If you’re a Columbia University professor and you ever gave a student named Barack Obama an “A” in economics, you might be a socialist — and you shouldn’t be teaching economics.
And finally, in the 8th year of the Obama Presidency, if Bangladesh is hosting “Aid America” concerts, we definitely have a socialist President.
Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s safe to say America now has a socialist President.
I’m Wayne Allyn Root for PersonalLiberty.com. See you next week. Same time, same place. God Bless America. We are going to need it!
If you are interested in the facts behind guns, their use and the "Assault Weapons Ban", the following article is a good starting point. We have always found that when debating with fools it is best to embarrass them with facts as they emotionally go over the edge. This article will give you some of that necessary ammo! If you have other sources, please let us know. Conservative Tom
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has announced that she will be introducing legislation to reenact the ban on so-called assault weapons that she authored in 1994. The evidence is in on the effect of her previous assault weapons ban: zero, zilch, nada, as the saying goes. The ban made no perceptible difference in the gun violence statistics when it went into effect, and no perceptible difference when it was allowed to expire 10 years later, in 2003.
That is because the term “assault weapon” is just a PR stunt that fools the gullible and easily deluded. It is defined in legislation by cosmetic features that frighten white bread suburbanites, but do not involve any functionality of any gun. We tried it, conservatives said it wouldn’t work, and it didn’t work. Yet, it is the liberal answer to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn.
Why do the hard work of actually making a difference, when with no work at all you can perform a meaningless and irrelevant gesture that won’t make any difference? A Connecticut state law already banned assault weapons. The difference that made in stopping the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary: zero, zilch, nada, as the saying goes.
The sharpest analyst in America, and probably the whole world, on the issue of guns and crime is economist John Lott, the author of the classic book,More Guns, Less Crime. Early in his career, Lott served as an economist for the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which adopted uniform, mandatory, criminal sentencing guidelines for the federal courts. That led to his subsequent career as the world’s foremost expert on statistics relating to violent crime and guns.
Now in its Third Edition, Lott’s book is neither an opinion piece nor a lawyer’s brief. What it does is present highly sophisticated regression analysis of copious data relating to violent crime and guns city by city, county by county, and state by state, for several recent decades. Lott’s regression equations,
“account for not only all the law enforcement variables (arrest, execution, and imprisonment rates), income and poverty measures, (poverty and unemployment rates, per capita real income, as well as income maintenance, retirement and unemployment payments), the thirty-six measures of demographic changes, and the national average changes in crime rates from year-to-year and average differences across states …. In addition, the [regressions] account for the difference in various concealed handgun laws and other types of gun control laws.”
In short, this is the most sophisticated and comprehensive presentation of the data relating to violent crime and guns in the world.
This and similar work relating to other countries worldwide shows that where the local population owns more guns, there is less crime. That it is because criminals avoid victims who are or might be armed, and prefer to prey on the defenseless and unarmed, such as in “gun-free” zones. And because the presence of guns that can be used in self defense stops the commission of the more violent crimes, such as murder.
This unparalleled scholarship has swept the states with newly enacted “concealed carry” laws. These laws require local authorities to issue permits to carry concealed handguns to those who meet the specified qualifications, known as “shall issue” laws. Alternative state laws authorize local authorities with the discretion to issue such concealed carry permits, known as “may issue’ laws. In the early 1980s, just 8 states had any such right to carry laws. Today, 39 states have shall issue laws and 9 more have may issue laws. That leaves just two states, Illinois andWisconsin, that completely ban citizens from carrying concealed handguns, and the Seventh Circuit just ruled the Illinois ban to be unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
As a result, by 2007 about 5 million Americans held permits to carry concealed handguns. Lott’ s Third Edition published in 2010 includes regressions that show these concealed carry laws result in:
“large drops in overall violent crime, murder, rape, and aggravated assault that begin right after the right to carry laws have gone into effect. In all those crime categories, the crime rates consistently stay much lower than they were before the law. The murder rate for these right to carry states fell consistently every year relative to non-right-to-carry states.”
Lott summarizes,
“All the results indicate that violent crime falls after right-to-carry laws are passed …. There is a large, statistically significant drop in murder rates across all specifications. The before-and-after average comparison implies that right-to-carry laws reduce murder by roughly 20 percent. In all cases, right-to-carry laws cause the trends in murder, rape, and robbery rates to fall.”
As David Kopel explained in the Wall Street Journal on December 17, armed permit holders often serve as the first line of defense against mass murderers:
“The media rarely mentions the mass murders that were thwarted by armed citizens at the Shoney Restaurant in Anniston, Ala (1991 ), the high school in Pearl, Miss. ( 1997), the middle school dance in Edinboro, Penn. ( 1998), and the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. (2007), among others. At the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week, an active shooter murdered two people and then saw that a shopper, who had a handgun carry permit, had drawn a gun and was aiming at him. The murderer’s next shot was to kill himself.”
Israel, which can’t afford the weak minded irrationality of American liberals, has learned from all this and its own experience to stop terrorist attacks in its schools by arming its teachers. That has worked spectacularly to shut down terrorist attacks in Isreali schools, without a single accident or misuse of guns.
But CNN anchor Piers Morgan showed recently that he does not learn from experience when he unprofessionally attacked Gun Owners of America President Larry Pratt on the air as “an incredibly stupid man” because Pratt was aware of the above evidence, while Morgan was not. Morgan, who demonstrates on air every day why people have said that America and Britain are two nations separated by a common language, ignorantly insisted that America adopt the benighted gun control laws of his formerly great country of Britain.
George Mason Law School Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Harvard, 2002), explained why Morgan’s position was so silly in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. In March, 1996, Thomas Hamilton, known to suffer mental illness, shot and killed 16 young children and their teacher in a primary school in the Scottish town of Dumb lane, wounding 10 other children and 3 more teachers before killing himself. That resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, “which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.”
The results of that law, which would be unconstitutional in the U.S. no matter how many guests Piers Morgan calls stupid on his show, were:
“Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time.”
Lott adds, “The evidence should make gun control advocates pause, as all the gun bans that I have studied show that murder rates increase after the ban is enacted.”
The draconian British law nullifying self defense in that country did not end mass shootings there. In June 2010, “Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.”
Based on all the evidence and experience above, what would work to stop tragedies like Sandy Hook Elementary is to offer a bonus of $2,500 a year to all teachers who obtain a conceal and carry permit, which requires training in every state, and who bring their gun to school every day, where it would be available in case of emergency. That would deter even mentally ill people from even trying mass murders at schools.
Lott explains that mass murderers choose so-called gun free zones such as schools or movie theaters or shopping malls where guns are prohibited because they know they can carry out their plan for mass murder there without being stopped. All gun free zone signs should be required to include a skull and crossbones with the admonition to the innocent “Enter at your own risk.”
Lott adds that these mass murderers are consciously choosing to commit suicide in carrying out their crimes. But they don’t want to go out quietly. They want to go out with a big bang to draw national and even worldwide attention to their pain and their plight. This is all a reflection of their mental illness.
Only the above policy of arming the teachers can stop such crazed madmen. The government does not even have the power to take away guns from dangerous criminals and insane mass murderers. We can’t even stop drugs and illegal aliens from crossing the border, and drugs and illegal guns even show up in prisons. Guns will always be available to those who want to obtain them. Legally mandated helplessness by the victims and those who could protect them only results in maximum vulnerability, as at Sandy Hook Elementary.
Moreover, Kopel also reports in Monday’s Journal, “A 2011 paper by Steven P. Segal at the University of California, Berkeley, Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates, ‘found that a third of the state-to-state variation in homicide rates was attributable to the strength or weakness of involuntary civil commitment laws.” Wednesday’s Journal notes that a Hartford, Connecticut Judge Robert K. Killian, Jr. has been arguing for Connecticut to adopt stronger civil commitment laws, based on his own experience with repeat offenders. But the ACLU
was focused on protecting Adam Lanza’s civil liberties to mow down kindergarten students at Sandy Hook Elementary, so the Connecticut legislature never acted.
The same paper editorializes that a better solution would be mandatory outpatient treatment laws for the mentally ill who are a danger to others without taking their medication, which has “shown results in limiting violence among the mentally ill.”
These policies would constitute a complete and effective program to prevent the next Sandy Hook Elementary atrocity. But they are based on evidence and reason, not mindless emotion, so don’t expect any “liberal” support.
