Violent crime declines as American gun ownership rises

For the third consecutive year, violent crime has declined in the United States during the same period when gun and ammunition purchases have increased dramatically, something that should not be happening, if one were to believe the gun prohibition lobby. The FBI on Monday released preliminary uniform crime data showing that the four major violent crime categories are all slipping. Overall, 2009 experienced a 7.2 percent drop in murders, an 8.1 percent decrease in robbery, a 4.2 percent decline in aggravated assault and 3.1 percent reduction in forcible rape. Yet, according to data from the FBI’s National Instant Check System and – from all places – the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, gun and ammunition sales are up dramatically. NICS background checks are up this year, and the excise tax apportionments to the states from the sale of firearms and ammunition have climbed from $336,474,545 in Fiscal Year 2009 to a whopping $472,719,710 for FY 2010. Do any kind of math you like, that still translates to more than $136 million in additional excise tax revenues over 2009, which further translates to a lot more guns and ammunition, and hunting/shooting-related gear changing hands at the retail counter.

Read The Rest At Orwell's Dreams

Kentucky Joins Movement to Resist Abuses of Commerce Clause, 2nd Amendment

In states around the country, there's a growing movement to address and resist two of the most abused parts of the Constitution -- the Commerce Clause and the 2nd Amendment. Already being considered in a number of state legislatures, and passed as law in Montana and Tennessee this year, the Firearms Freedom Act (FFA) is a state law that seeks to do just that.

The latest to join the FFA movement? Kentucky. Pre-filed for the 2010 legislative session, HB87 seeks to "Create new sections of KRS Chapter 237, relating to firearms, firearm accessories and ammunition that are made in Kentucky, marked made in Kentucky, and used in Kentucky, to specify that these items are exempt from federal law"

While the FFA's title focuses on federal gun regulations, it has far more to do with the 10th Amendment's limit on the power of the federal government. The bills in state houses contain language such as the following:

"federal laws and regulations do not apply to personal firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition that is manufactured in [this state] and remains in [state]. The limitation on federal law and regulation stated in this bill applies to a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured using basic materials and that can be manufactured without the inclusion of any significant parts imported into this state."

NULLIFICATION

Some supporters of the legislation say that a successful application of such a state-law would set a strong precedent and open the door for states to take their own positions on a wide range of activities that they see as not being authorized to the Federal Government by the Constitution.

The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state ‘nullifies' a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,' within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010. Fourteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws - in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances. And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law nearly void.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Supporters say the growth of such a movement is long overdue.

"For far too long elected officials and unelected bureaucrats at the federal level have passively forgotten or actively neglected the Tenth Amendment that guarantees rights not enumerated in the Constitution be left to the individual states," said Minnesota State Rep. Tom Emmer, who introduced an FFA in his state. "The willful disregard of the Tenth Amendment in relation to a citizen's right to bear arms isn't the only constitutional infringement that we should be worried about, but it is one that has been singled out by the new administration."

"Enough is enough," urged Tennessee State Senator Mae Beavers. "Our founders fought too hard to ensure states' sovereignty and I am sick and tired of activist federal officials and judges sticking their noses where they don't belong."

LITIGATION

In October, the Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA) and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed a lawsuit in federal court in Missoula, MT to validate the principles and terms of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act (MFFA).

"We feel very strongly that the federal government has gone way too far in attempting to regulate a lot of activity that occurs only in-state," explained MSSA President Gary Marbut. "The Montana Legislature and governor agreed with us by enacting the MFFA. It's time for Montana and her sister states to take a stand against the bullying federal government, which the Legislature and Governor have done and we are doing with this lawsuit. We welcome the support of many other states that are stepping up to the plate with their own firearms freedom acts."

Even the most ardent supporters suggest that the real test will come if the federal courts rule against the FFA. Will they give up at that point, or will they follow in the footsteps of medical marijuana activists around the country?

The latter faced down nearly the entire federal apparatus -- federal agencies who didn't recognize state law, countless federal raids and arrests, and a Supreme Court that ruled against their cause in 2005. Even with such stacked odds, they persisted in their state-level efforts, and today, enough states have medical marijuana laws that the federal government is unable (or unwilling) to oppose them.

Only time will tell if gun rights activists have the same courage.

Source: Campaign For Liberty

Where does YOUR attorney general stand on the Second Amendment?

We spoke on Tuesday about California Attorney General Jerry Brown petitioning the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to Chicago's gun ban. 33 other state AGs have also lent their names to the effort.

From NRA-ILA:

Two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense, disagreeing with the decision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

You can read their brief here.

One of the AGs, Mike Cox of Michigan, addressed criticism of his signing the brief in The Detroit Free Press. He does a good job and I encourage you to read his rebuttal.

I like his ending the best:

I make no apologies for my support of the Constitution and the Second Amendment.

Amen. None of us should.

Here are the states that joined in the amicus brief. As mentioned, California acted on its own:

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

If your state is not listed, contact your attorney general and give him an earful. Here's a resource to help you do that, or to thank yours for doing the right thing.

Source: The Examiner

New Orleans still illegally confiscating guns

The ACLU, not exactly known for being sympathetic to the right to keep and bear arms, is going to bat for a New Orleans man who had his gun confiscated. From the Associated Press:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana filed the federal lawsuit Thursday on behalf of Errol Houston Jr., who was arrested last year following a traffic stop. The lawsuit says the district attorney's office declined to prosecute Houston but has refused to return his .40-caliber firearm.

Why? After all:

"Mr. Houston has done nothing wrong. There are no criminal charges against him. His firearm, which he is and was entitled to carry, has been confiscated for no reason..."

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro is not pleased:

Cannizzaro said he doesn't know why one of his predecessors refused to prosecute Houston, whom he said had a gun under the floor board of his car when police stopped him.

"I have a serious question as to why this charge was refused in the first place," he said.

With all due respect, Mr. DA, and it appears very little is due, that's not your call. As an officer of the court, sworn to uphold the law, you don't get to disregard it, or to make up edicts of your own.

This is the kind of authoritarian mentality that leads to "terror watch list" gun bans, to prior restraints, and to "no rights" lists where suspicion trumps all.

This is supposed to be America, Mr. Cannizzaro. If Mr. Houston is a menace to society, he needs to be charged, convicted and segregated from it. If you can't do that, our criminal justice system presumes his innocence.

Perhaps we ought to be assessing the danger of having a DA who ignores that, and who presumes to be a law unto himself.

Source: The Examiner

Lawful gun owners don't shoot up bars

The anti-gun crowd has their propaganda machine in full gear in Arizona and Tennessee. Tennessee recently overrode their governor's veto of a bill allowing concealed carry license holders to carry their defensive firearms into restaurants that serve alcohol (provided they do not drink themselves) and Arizona is currently considering similar legislation.

"When you're in a bar, you're supposed to be out having fun, so leave the gun at home," said Eileen Conners of Larry's Cocktails, expressing her opposition to the Arizona bill.

I'm going to guess her agenda is not only that she doesn't like guns, but also that since this bill prohibits drinking alcohol while armed that it would therefore cut into profits if they only had non-alcoholic beverages to drink. Of course, a customer killed by a robber will probably affect sales as well.

In Tennessee, where the new law is being challenged in court, they've taken to outright lying to the public while levying hideous insults against gun owners.

"We apparently are going to have 225,000 vigilantes shooting in bars," said David Smith, one of the attorneys for the opposition.

Calling gun owners vigilantes is a common tactic by anti-gun pundits. Attack the reputation of gun owners and try to turn the public against them. Defending your life isn't taking the law into your own hands regardless of whether you're at home in bed or out with friends. This statement is also supposing that all 225,000 permit holders in Tennessee regularly visit bars, though the reality is that this kind of legislation most commonly affects patrons at ordinary restaurants that happen to include alcoholic beverages on the menu.

The biggest lie of all, though, is that these ccw holders are going to be shooting up bars and restaurants. What the anti-gunners won't tell you is that 39 other states have some provision in their laws for citizens to be allowed to carry firearms into places that serve alcohol, and in not one of these states is it a problem. Lawfully armed citizens aren't the ones breaking the laws, it is the criminals who do so.

Some states even allow permit holders to consume alcohol while they're carrying and yet still there are no problems. Lawful gun owners are responsible, trustworthy, and law abiding. It is the armed robbers, muggers, rapists, gang members, and killers that are the problem. The very people that armed citizens are wanting to defend themselves against.

They can go on telling their lies, but they can't change the facts. Lawfully armed citizens, whether in their homes, businesses, parks, restaurants, or bars, are not now and never have been the problem. That is the uncomfortable truth the gun grabbers don't want you to hear.

Source: The Examiner

Favoring gun rights isn't subversion

by Daniel White

Last night on the NRA News program "Cam & Company," we were talking about the tactic of the anti-gun crowd to apply negative labels to gun owners. They're losing the fight in the legislature and in the courts, and public opinion has turned against them as well. The only trick these ponies have left is to try to change that public sentiment with insults, stereotypes, and lies.

So now, in addition to saying guns are bad, they say gun owners are bad people; paranoid, redneck, cowboy wanna-be... those are all terms that have been used regularly in recent years. They are now being supplemented with stronger terms, like terrorist and subversive.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and they are losing the battle of public opinion so badly that they need to conjure up images of terrorism and imply that gun owners are amassing to overthrow the government to counteract the truth the general public is waking up to, that gun owners are really no different than they are.

They can't fight the idea without undermining the reputation and character of the people on the other side of the issue. Take, for instance, a recent second amendment rally held in the form of a picnic.

Michigan Open Carry Inc., a group that promotes the open carry of firearms, held a cookout in Sunset Park off the West Arm of Grand Traverse Bay, that was attended by over 50 people. In attendance was Skip Coryell of the Second Amendment March. The Michigan Messenger, which claims to be "a center for independent media" wrote an article about the picnic full of negative undertone.

It didn't take long for them to point out that there were "signs of tension" present, as if these lawful gun owners might suddenly go on a shooting spree. They attribute the recent spike in sales of guns and ammunition not as a precaution against confiscation by rational people, but as being driven by "anger and fear by white conservatives." They ended the article with quotes from local anti gun resident Leo Gabier and his belief that “these people are hateful and they want to divide the county.”

The truth is far more mundane. The vast majority of gun owners simply want to live their lives in peace. Don't pass useless gun bans, enact strict ownership controls, levy heavy taxes on guns & ammunition, and don't try to rob, murder, or otherwise physically attack them and you'll never even know who most gun owners are.

Contrary to the mad ravings of the anti gun media, nearly all gun owners are peaceful, hard working people who love their country and have great respect for the law. It always amazes me that the same people the anti-gunners accuse of being lawless malcontents just looking for an excuse to storm City Hall spend hours a day discussing the details of gun laws on the Ohioans For Concealed Carry forums to be sure they don't commit the smallest infraction. Lawful gun owners are not the problem.

If the Michigan Messenger didn't like the Sunset Park picnic then they really will not like the OFCC Party in the Park being held in less than two weeks. Instead of 50 people, this one will have well over one hundred and almost all of them will be armed or be gun owners. I guarantee, though, that contrary to the dire warnings of the anti-gun crowd, on Saturday, July 11, Liberty Park will be the safest park in Ohio.

That's why these anti-gun extremists continue to lose over and over in the battle over gun rights. They make their predictions of blood running in the streets, yet it never happens. They say crime will increase if more law abiding citizens carry guns as part of their daily lives, yet it doesn't happen. They try to label gun owners are terrorists and subversives, yet they go about their lives in a safe, well-protected, and law abiding manner. The public notices, and the lies are losing their power.

Source: The Examiner

Totalitarianism In One City: Shreveport's Gun-Grabbing Mayor

Shreveport's Big Boss Man, Cedric Glover, and unidentified flunky: According to Glover, an advocate of civilian disarmament, his police have the power to "suspend" the rights of any motorist they stop, and can seize a civilian's firearms at will. Not that long ago, bigoted white southern mayors could be heard making the same assertions about black people.



Any time a motorist is stopped by a police officer, insists Shreveport, Louisiana Mayor Cedric Glover, "Your rights ... have been suspended." This includes not only the freedom of movement, but also, in the event the officer inquires as to whether the driver is carrying a weapon, "Your right to be able to hold on to your weapon and say whether [you] have a weapon or not" -- as well as the right to retain possession of that weapon, should the officer decide to confiscate it from you.


Should you choose not to answer the question, or answer it in the negative, the officer could still choose, "in the interest of officer safety, to secure you in a safe position" -- this most likely means outside the car with your hands cuffed behind your back -- "and then do an appropriate inspection of your vehicle."


The phrase "appropriate inspection" is more honestly rendered "Unconstitutional warrantless search."


Should the police officer then turn up a firearm or other weapon in the car, the driver "would be guilty or potentially guilty of even a more severe offense" than whatever he had allegedly done to precipitate the traffic stop, according to Mayor Glover. Police officers, according to Glover, are invested with "a power that the President of the United States does not have ... and that is the ability to be able to suspend your rights."


This is "one of the things that I say to each and every one of the police officers who graduates from the Shreveport Police Academy since I've been mayor." Fortunately for the public, one supposes, Mr. Glover remembers the lesson that Peter Parker learned from his kindly and sagacious uncle Ben -- that is, with great power comes great responsibility. "You have to understand there is a great deal of power that is vested within ... the law enforcement personnel of this country," Glover insists. "It's why there is a great deal of responsibility that has to go along with it."


Glover offered those remarkable observations, and many others like them, in a recorded phone call with Shreveport resident Robert Baillio.



Mr. Baillio had called to complain about a recent traffic stop in which an SPD officer, who-- before dealing with any other matter of business -- asked if Baillio had a firearm, then temporarily seized it from him.


Louisiana law recognizes the right of the state's residents to carry loaded weapons in their vehicles, and Baillio has a state-issued concealed carry permit -- that is, a piece of paper in which the state generously recognizes one facet of Baillio's innate right to bear arms.


According to Baillio's account, he was cordial and polite when he was stopped after supposedly neglecting to use a turn signal. That this was almost certainly a pretext stop is illustrated by the fact that Baillio never received a ticket. Supplemental evidence is offered by the fact that the conversation between the officer and Baillio focused entirely on the issue of gun ownership, including a question about Baillio's membership in the National Rifle Association.















This would be a heart-warming picture if it didn't feature a gun-grabber: Cedric Glover is consoled by one of his sweeter constituents after failing to win a role in "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps."


Baillio doesn't conceal his NRA membership; it's advertised by a sticker on the rear windshield of his truck, as are his very passionate views of the right to armed self-defense. "Armed We Are Citizens! Un-Armed We Are Subjects!" exclaims another bumper sticker, expressing a core truth of our republican heritage. Yet another sticker displays various kinds and grades of ammunition captioned by the directive, "Celebrate Diversity."


It's the safest of bets that what triggered the stop, as it were, was not a traffic infraction by Baillio, but rather the police officer's conditioned reflex to treat the public expression of pro-gun ownership sentiments as innately suspicious.


In brief, Baillio was a victim of political profiling of the sort being encouraged by the Department of Homeland Security and the totalitarian "watchdog" groups who have spent decades indoctrinating the police.


In his telephone chat with Glover, Baillio -- who was persistent but unfailingly polite -- pointed out that he "answered the [officer's] question honestly and he disarmed me."


"Which would be appropriate and proper action, sir," replied Glover. "The fact that you gave the correct answer -- it simply means that you did what you were supposed to do and that is to give that weapon to the police officer so he could appropriately place it in a place where it would be no threat to you, to him, or to anyone in the general public."



"Well, you know, he still had a gun," observed Baillio, hoping to underscore the fact that guns -- as objects, rather than actors -- do not pose a "threat" in and of themselves. "How is he --"



"Because he's a police officer," interjected Glover before he could finish the question. "As I've just related to you, that police officer has powers, sir, that you do not have."


Let's unpack that reply, shall we?


From Glover's perspective, it is only when firearms are in the hands of people other than the state's uniformed enforcers/oppressors that they constitute a threat, not only to the public and those in charge of exercising official violence but also to the private gun owner himself.


Glover, a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, clearly believes that any firearms in civilian hands should be considered illicit. This is, in both a cultural and constitutional sense, entirely un-American.


Interestingly, it is in harmony with the UN's position, however, as summarized in the world body's 2000 agitprop film Armed to the Teeth: The World-Wide Plague of Small Arms. That film insists that the only "legal" weapons are those "used by armies and police forces to protect us" -- as if the word "protection" describes the uses to which weapons are put by the enforcement organs of the criminal states that compose the UN.


It is his attitudes toward civilian firearms ownership and the plenary power of police, not his ethnicity or any similar accident of birth, that would make Glover a very suitable ruler of any of the scores of squalid Third World thugocracies represented in the UN.


According to Glover, a police officer may properly disarm any civilian at any time, and the civilian's duty is to surrender his gun -- willingly, readily, cheerfully, without cavil or question. This is because police officers, as numinous beings anointed by the Holy State, exude the essence of pure goodness and would never commit acts of criminal violence against disarmed civilians.


Tell that to Angela Garbarino, a woman who was arrested by the SPD last year for DWI and wound up lying in a pool of her own blood after being "subdued" in a police holding cell.

***

***

Gaps in the security camera record of the incident occur at convenient intervals, so it's not clear exactly how Garbarino wound up bloodied on the floor. In a photograph taken later Angela displays the marks of a severe beating, including two black eyes, a broken nose, and a cut on the forehead that required stitches.


Wylie Willis, the hired thug who administered the beating, can be observed in the video checking his hands to see if there is blood on them. He was dismissed after the incident for "violating departmental policy," but faced no other sanctions.


Like any other pseudo-male who beats a defenseless woman, Willis lied that his victim "slipped and fell."


Like any other police officer who loses his job after a criminal assault on a "civilian," Willis insists that his firing was unjustified.


And like any other police union anywhere in our once-free country, the Shreveport Police Union(led by Michael Carter -- see the photo above and to the right) insists that the abusive cop should get his job back.

She was protected and served: Angela Garbarino displays the results of a beating she received while handcuffed in the custody of Shreveport police.




Obviously, Willis should at the very least be prosecuted for felonious battery. Or, better yet, he should be put into a room, unarmed, with several of Angela's male relatives and given an opportunity to demonstrate the unalloyed martial prowess that enabled him to beat an intoxicated woman half his size whose hands were cuffed behind her back. Willis appears to have been a serial abuser of women, as do several others among Shreveport's ahem, finest. \


In April, Jasmine M. Winston filed a civil rights suit against the City of Shreveport. A couple of years ago she was beaten by a baton-wielding Officer Willis outside a nightclub and then slammed face-first into the concrete by fellow SPD thug Daniel Sawyer. Oh, the undaunted courage these two armed "men" displayed in double-teaming a solitary woman.



A lawsuit filed by Darlene Atkins in 2006 claims that Willis put a gun to the head of her son Dillion Freeman following a brief pursuit and threatened to shoot Dillion if any of his family approached him. Another suit filed that year by resident Tomeka Bush claimed that after she filed a complaint in the Atkins incident, Willis retaliated by seizing her car. As in the subsequent beating of Angela Garbarino, there were anomalies in the official video record of the Atkins incident; in this case, the entire video was missing. The SPD "investigated" the matter just long enough to satisfy itself that Willis (let's say it all together, shall we?) acted in accordance with department policy. He always did -- until his officially sanctioned criminal violence was documented beyond dispute.


Loathsome as he is, Willis is not exceptional.


In 2007, eight SPD officers were arrested for various offenses, including perjury, falsification of official reports, falsifying tickets, DWI, drug charges, and maintaining an "inappropriate" on-line relationship with an underage girl.


Of those offenses, the most striking are those committed in an official capacity. Given the latitude offered to Willis, it's difficult to imagine how blatantly an SPD officer would have to perjure himself before facing punishment.



Oddly enough, Cedric Glover didn't mention the corruption roiling in the SPD when, roughly a year ago, he vetoed a police retention plan that included a pay raise. And now that the "stimulus" spigots have been thrown open, Glover is eager to build his police department into a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude.



"We're asking for 90 additional police officers ... with this stimulus package [because] there is a portion that is available for cop spending and we want to go out there and capture as much of it as we can," oinked Cerdo, er, Cedric last February as the Holy One, His Munificence Barrack the Blessed (peace be upon him) hoisted the slop bucket over the national trough.



Along with expanding the local "infrastructure," Big Cerdo's chief priority for the stimulus is to use federal funds to expand his own herd of gun-grabbing Cerditos.* The same is probably true of dozens of other mayors across the country, some of which may boast police departments even more corrupt than the one afflicting Shreveport.



Shreveport resident Ken Krefft, president of a neighborhood association, is understandably worried that the SPD's corruption could damage the city's tourism industry: "This is not a good thing for the city [to tell tourists] -- `Come to Shreveport, we've got crooked cops.'" It used to be that Americans would have visit such destinations as Cuba to experience what it's like to deal with corrupt police who can disarm, beat, and presumably kill innocent people with impunity. Cedric Glover has thoughtfully turned his city into a totalitarian theme park we can visit without leaving the United States -- in a geographic sense, in any case.


(My emphatic thanks to "Liberranter" for tipping me to this story.)


Don't Forget ...

... to tune in to Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network from 6:00-7:00 Central Time.

___
*"Cerdo" is Spanish for "pig."



On sale now.










Dum spiro, pugno!

Source: Pro Libertate