But this hasn’t left the Left at a loss to explain Nidal Malik Hasan’s horrific killing spree. It was caused by all the things liberals don’t like — guns, for example. To quote Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, whose corrupt machine politics helped produce our Community Organizer in Chief:

Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don’t blame a group.

Likewise, it was America’s unfortunate love of air travel that caused Hasan’s colleagues to fly passenger airliners into buildings full of innocent people on September 11. You don’t blame a group, unless that group is normal Americans.

If anything good can come of the Islamic atrocity at Fort Hood, it is that liberals in both the government and the media have now squandered the absolute last of their credibility. It simply isn’t possible for them to deny any longer that their depraved ideology puts them on the side of the savages who are trying to destroy us.

On a tip from Charlie G. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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If this isn’t the perfect evidence of why any freedom loving western citizen should be against gun registries, then you can’t make the case at all. Over the last few weeks the police in Toronto, Canada have been stormtrooping through the homes of average, everyday Torontonians that have had the misfortune to have appeared on the area’s gun registry and confiscating their legally owned guns.

What has been the pretext for this massive gun confiscation program? Unfortunately, the restrictive gun laws in Canada allow authorities to stomp through any citizen’s home and demand to see where that citizen stores his legally owned firearm. At that point, if this brownshirted police thug decides that the citizen is not storing the firearm to the law’s liking, then that citizen may have his firearm immediately stolen by the state.

Toronto’s jackbooted cops have confiscated nearly 400 firearms from basically law abiding citizens claiming that they are making the city safer. How? Why, because now criminals won’t be able to steal these guns from the public, naturally. So, because a few criminals might steal a gun here and there, these government tyrants feel that they should take everyone’s rights from them.

Catch this pretzel logic from one of Toronto’s top tyrants.

“Legal handgun owners are not dangerous individuals,” Blair told reporters at a Tuesday news conference. “But we know from experience that their firearms can become extremely dangerous when they get into the hands of criminals. And so we have undertaken a number of initiatives to reduce the availability of those handguns.”

Legal owners are not dangerous… so let’s put them at the mercy of criminals. Isn’t that a great idea?

Gosh. Seems to me a car gets stolen every once in a while, even in Toronto. Shouldn’t we have the cops forcefully steal every car from Toronto’s citizenry to prevent this crime?

But here is the real lesson. If the government has your name on a list of gun owners you WILL lose your rights eventually. The state WILL invade your home and take away your right to self-protection at some point. That is the sole reason to have a state gun registry, so that the state can kick down your door and take your firearms from you.

Toronto’s toadie cops have proven this singular truth.

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A blogger for the Roanoke Times wrote a recent blog post breathlessly informing his readers that contrary to “false claims” concealed carry permit holders have, indeed, been responsible for acts of murder and mayhem. Dan Casey presents the report issued by what he claims is the “nonpartisan” Violence Policy Center.

That report finds that seven policemen and forty-three civilians have been killed by concealed carry license holders. This is a horrible body count and no one can say otherwise.

Casey, for his part, is crowing about the “lies” of the “gun zealots” and seems quite pleased to find proof of this body count, however.

It’s gripping reading for anyone who cares about the truth. And it proves the falsity of gun zealots’ claim that nobody, nowhere, can ever point to an unjustified killing by a permit holder. It also undermines the notion that every CC permit holder is responsible and law-abiding.

So, let us review.

Casey presents us with the statistic of 50 deaths at the hands of CCL holders over the last two years. In those same two years there were about 60,000 some deaths using guns. That’s right, 50 versus 60,000. That is .08% of the total murders committed by CCL holders.

Considering how many CCL holders there are in the United States, is this a meaningful statistic? Each U.S. state that has concealed carry laws have thousands of such license holders, some several hundred thousand. That’s several million concealed carry permit holders across the country.

Again, out of those several millions of CCL holders, fifty have turned criminal with their guns. Fifty.

So, yes, it is wrong to say that no CCL holders have turned criminal with their firearms. OK. On that point Casey is right, there is no denying it.

But is it meaningful? Does this statistic somehow make all CCL holders dangerous? Is a .08 percent criminal rate among CCL holders meaningful as a point in favor of anti-gun advocates?

That is for you to decide.

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New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg has repeatedly proven that he hates the U.S. Constitution and that he feels that he a right to harass any citizen he pleases — even ones that have broken no laws. But now he has also shown his lack of manhood because it has been revealed that Bloomberg is afraid of a 200-year-old style of rifle called a flintlock, the style that helped the founders defeat Mad King George in the Revolutionary War. The ancient shooter has Bloomie hiding under his sheets at night.

Mad King Bloomie has initiated a harassment campaign against Michael Littlejohn, a city inhabitant that commissioned a handmade replica of a flintlock musket, the kind just like those the Continental Army used in the 1770s. Littlejohn apparently scared Bloomie when he brought the ancient model firearm to his Brooklyn Apartment. The quaking Bloomie has apparently directed that NYC police attempt to strong arm the history enthusiast to apply for a gun license even though the law says that flintlocks do not need to be registered or a license obtained to own one.

I can happily report that Littlejohn is refusing to bow to the un-Constitutional pressure of thug Bloomberg and his jackbooted coppers.

So what about this rifle, anyway? Is it prone to attacking passers-by all by itself? Is it the favored gun of drive by shooters and gang bangers? How dangerous is the thing, anyway?

Let me describe how this weapon is loaded and fired and you be the judge of how dangerous the ancient piece is:

First, one must have a container of loose gun powder, a little lead ball about the size of the end of your thumb, and a long stick called a ramrod. Your musket must also have a piece of rock called a flint attached to the hammer.

You take the loose powder and dump it down the front of the barrel. This thing loads from the front and is called a muzzle loader. Then you put a little piece of paper or cloth down the barrel, then the little round ball of lead.

Next you take the ramrod which is as long as the gun barrel and shove everything to the bottom of the barrel. Tamp it down nice and tight.

OK, next you cock the hammer and put a little more loose powder in the little pan at the base of the breech. All set.

Now you are ready to fire. Pulling the trigger will release the hammer. Remember your hammer has that piece of rock called a flint in it? Well, that flint strikes the metal and causes a spark. The loose powder in the little pan will ignite and the fire will travel down a little hole in the back of the barrel. That fire will ignite the powder that you put inside the barrel with the ramrod.

BOOM, the gun fires.

And now… it’s empty and has to be reloaded. That’s right after taking the minute or two to load and fire it the thing is then empty. And then you have to go through the process all over again.

This is what Mad King Bloomie is afraid of?

Idiot.

Here is a nice video to show those of you that need a visual.

See. It’s no WONDER the gang bangers are lining up to get one of these babies!

(By the way, this guy on the video is not loading his musket in a proper, military manner, but what he is doing there is what has to be done to load the thing.)

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The San Francisco Chronicle is proving the old bromide true. That’s the one that goes: “a lie can be half way ’round the world before the truth can pull its boots on” (often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain). Then there is another one Twain didn’t originate but aptly fits here, “there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics.” The subject of this scoffing is that factoid the Old Media has been promulgating like gospel where “90% of Mexico’s confiscated guns are from the U.S.”

The problem with this “90%” refrain is that it just isn’t true. There is no truth in the claim that 90% of the guns Mexican officials confiscate from drug dealers in Mexico are from the U.S.A. But, true or not, the Old Media use this line as if it were received truth. Suspicions are easily raised that they do so because it fits their ideological matrix perfectly and the truth of the matter does not fit the approved story line.

This 90% line appeared in The New York Times and many other sources earlier this year and still crops up even after William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott proved the claim to be fraudulent.

And now the SFChron can add its name to the list of fraudulent reporters using this discredited claim. In a story about how BATF and ICE officials are making plans to team up to more easily coordinate investigations of cross-border gun trafficking, the SFChron slipped in this paragraph:

Last year, Mexican authorities seized more than 12,000 weapons that were submitted to ATF for tracing. That compares with about 2,900 such weapons in 2007 and about 2,650 in 2006. Ninety percent of those weapons could be traced back to the United States, ATF spokesman Drew Wade said.

The SFChron simply got it wrong. The 90% is true, of course, but affixed to the 12,000 guns it is not. As La Jeunesse and Lott discovered back in April, the 90% number pertains to those guns that are “tracable” and that is not 12,000 guns but more like 6,000. You see, of the 12,000 guns given to the BATF, only 6,000 proved tracable and of that 6,000 5,114 were found to come from the U.S.A.

But the bigger fact is that of all the guns collected by the Mexican government, only 17% were traced to the U.S.A. According to La Jeunesse and Lott between 2007 and 2008, Mexico took in over 29,000 illegal guns and of that number only 5,114 proved to be from the U.S.

These facts make the bald 90% claim seem far less shocking. So why use the false numbers when the truth is easily known? Why do the denizens of the Old Media continue to use these discredited claims? That would be a good question, wouldn’t it?

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Gun sales surge after Obama’s election

Chávez gift to Obama shoots book to No. 2 on Amazon.com

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Some gun owners say a fear of tighter gun control has caused a recent surge of gun and ammunition sales.

“People have been stockpiling, buying it by the case instead of the box, so it’s not available,” gun owner Richard Poole said.

The demand for ammunition is so high that Mace Sports in Mebane (North Carolina) has 2 million rounds on back-order, store owners said. The store has limited the number of boxes of ammunition a person can buy based on caliber and supply.

Mace Sports reported a 100 percent increase in gun sales from this time last year.

There have been lots of first time gun buyers (I was one back in November), and people are very worried over the rumors of a 500% tax rate on ammunition. Good thing they haven’t seen the report that the military is now banned from selling expended brass to re-manufacturers, eh? And we are still waiting to see what happens with H.R. 45, which is still (fortunately) languishing in committee with no cosponsors.

Gun sales have been skyrocketing since the day after the election, and continue to go up. It’s no wonder that Obama was named Gun Salesman of the Year by The Outdoor Wire.

As a U.S. Senator, Obama voted to leave gunmakers and dealers open to lawsuits, and as an Illinois state legislator, he supported a ban on certain weapons and tighter restrictions on all firearms.

Quite frankly, I am shocked by that paragraph appearing in a story at a traditionally liberal news organization, as well as “While gun-rights supporters hold a narrow edge on the court, Obama could appoint justices who would swing it the other way.”

And if you want to know the real Obama on guns, not the left wing spin, go here.

In related news, I ran across a bill, H.R. 17, by Rep Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) regarding: To protect the right to obtain firearms for security, and to use firearms in defense of self, family, or home, and to provide for the enforcement of such right. Disappointingly, only 15 Representatives (all Republicans) have signed on to protect the rights of people to protect themselves from crime with a gun.

And The Gun Toting Liberal points out that the 9th District Court in California has ruled that States and municipalities have no right to interfere with our 2nd Amendment Rights.

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Seven Republican Senators have this week signed a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking for the proof upon which the Department of Homeland Security based its outrageously accusatory report on so-called rightwing extremism in the Untied States.

The seven scold the DHS and the Obama administration for its over-broad generalizations that seem to assume that nearly half the electorate is prone to becoming terrorists merely because they hold right of center political views.

The letter alludes to the central point in this whole episode: that the U.S. government has now determined that the traditional American beliefs of small government and adherence to the Constitution is now suddenly a determinant in forming citizens into homegrown terrorist groups. After 200 years, all of a sudden believing in run-of-the-mill American beliefs makes you a terrorist! These seven Senators want to know why.

Text of the Letter:

Dear Secretary Napolitano,

We write today regarding the release of the Department of homeland Security (DHS) report entitled “Rightwing Extremism Current Economic and Policial Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” and prepared by the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division.

While we agree that extremists of all varieties represent a potential threat to the United States, we are troubled by some of the statements included as fact in the report titled above.

First, your report states that “rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat.” Using the DHS rationale, do you also believe that weapons familiarity and tactical training means local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel, and members of the National Guard, are also being recruited? To suggest that a soldier returning from a combat tour is more prone to join an extremist group is unconscionable and insulting to our brave men and women who risk their lives protecting our freedom.

Second, the report states that the millions of Americans who believe in the Second Amendment are a potential threat to our national security. Why? Do you have statistics to prove that the law-abiding Americans who purchase a legal product are being recruited by so-called hate groups? If so, please present us with DHS’s independent data.

Third, the report identifies those individuals who believe in such issues as pro-life legislation, limited government, legal versus illegal immigration and limited federal government as potential terrorist threats. We can assure you that these beliefs are held by citizens of all races, party affiliations and sex, and should not be listed as a factor in determining potential terror threats. A better way to describe them is as citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Also, you listed those who bemoan the decline of U.S. stature and the loss of U.S. manufacturing capability to China and India as being potential rightwing extremists. We would suggest that the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs in the manufacturing industry to foreign countries are no potential terror threats, but rather, honest Americans worried about feeding their families and earning a paycheck. Once again, to classify Americans who have lost their jobs as potential terror threats does a disservice to millions of Americans.

In closing, we support the mission of the DHS in protecting our country from terror attacks and are proud of the many DHS employees who make it possible, in conjunction with our state and local law enforcement. We ask that DHS not use this report as a basis to unfairly target millions of Americans because of their beliefs and the rights afforded to them in the Constitution, and that you provide us with the data that supports the claims listed in the report titled above.

Sincerely,

David Vitter (R, Louis.)
Sam Brownback (R, Kansas)
Jim Demint (R, So Car.)
Tom Cobrun (R, Oklahoma)
Richard Burr (R, No. Car.)
Lisa Murkowski (R, Alaska)
James Inhofe (R, Oklahoma)

Let’s hope that far more than a mere seven Senators find this “report” more than a little distasteful.

(A pdf file of the letter can be downloaded here)

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Once again The New York Times unleashes a not-so-hidden agenda on its reading public. Here the Times is regurgitating the debunked claim that “90%” of Mexico’s recovered guns used in crime south of the border are from U.S. gun dealers. There is a lot of misdirection in this piece against gun dealers and gun shows, as well. Contradictory claims are made with no proof offered but the say so of The Times.

The Times begins its tall tale by talking about Mexican gun smugglers that find it easy to buy “military style” weapons at U.S. gun shops to be smuggled into Mexico. The story talks of these “lightly regulated” gun dealers and blames them for the smuggling apparently because no records are kept or buyer’s identities ascertained. And near the top half of the story is the debunked “90%” claim.

Federal agents say about 90 percent of the 12,000 pistols and rifles the Mexican authorities recovered from drug dealers last year and asked to be traced came from dealers in the United States, most of them in Texas and Arizona.

This false claim was debunked weeks ago by William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott in a piece titled, “The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.“

Lott and La Jeuesse gave us the facts of this false stat:

In fact, it’s not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

In truth most of the guns that the billionaires in the drug cartels import into Mexico come through Mexico’s southern border and are from China and Russia. I emphasize the simple fact that these drug dealers have billions of dollars at their disposal. They don’t need to hire little folks here and there to sneak across the U.S. border and spend months buying single guns from hundreds of different American gun dealers. These drug cartels have the money to go directly to international arms dealers and buy all they want. And they do so.

The Times piece also claims that Mexican drug cartels are buying “military style” guns in the U.S. then sneaking them across the border to “convert” them to fully automatic machine guns. This is also an absurd claim leading people to imagine that this is going on routinely. Again, these drug cartels have more money than the Catholic Church. They can buy guns already made fully automatic from the manufacturer when they buy them from Russia and China. They do not need to waste the time and effort to buy semi-auto guns, then buy parts, and finally spend the man hours to convert these semi-auto guns to fully automatic machine guns.

Then the Times turns to a quote from National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre and presents his quote without context, an effort that makes his quote seem a bit of a non sequitur.

With billions in profits from illegal drugs, the cartels can easily obtain weapons on the black market in other countries, Mr. LaPierre and many gun dealers argue. “The cartels have the money to get guns wherever they want,” said Charles Fredien, the owner of Chuck’s Gun in Brownsville, Tex., on the border “They have grenades, don’t they? They don’t buy grenades here.” No one knows how large the cross-border trade in arms is. In 2008, the Mexican government seized more than 20,000 weapons from suspected drug dealers.

What the Times neglects to mention is that Mexican drug cartels have been using rocket propelled grenades and other heavy ordnance all of which have come from overseas and NONE of it from the U.S. But, with that fact left out of this Times story, LaPierre’s grenade comment seems odd and off-topic.

And then comes the first contradictory part of the Times’ story. After spending over half the story making American gun shop owners out to be the bad guy, the Times suddenly says that the A.T.F.’s best source of tips and intel actually comes from U.S. gun dealers.

“The dealers are an important source of information to them and very cooperative with the A.T.F.,” Mr. Keane said.

So, which is it, New York Times? Are U.S. gun dealers scofflaws that form a major part of the problem or are they helping law enforcement agencies deal with this mess?

Then the Times gets to “scare” tactics by using a straw man argument to claim that anyone can buy “military style” guns by the dozens without any legal requirements.

At a recent show in Pharr, Tex., another border town, a college freshman with a wispy beard arrived with two AR-15 rifles strapped to his body, spidery black guns designed for combat, tricked out with features that soldiers prize: collapsible stocks, pistol grips, extra long magazines.

The student, who asked to be identified only as Shane, was asking $1,900 for one of his rifles. As for paper work, he wanted only a handwritten receipt with the buyer’s name and address. He was not worried, he said, about the gun’s falling into the hands of drug cartels in Mexico.

This is certainly a straw man that the Times points to as a grave warning of a source for illegal guns in Mexico. Sure there are always a few guys walking around at gun shows trying to sell off parts of their private collections. Sure the paper trail for such sales might be sparse or non-existent. But, so what? These drug cartels are buying weapons by the truck load. Taking the time and personnel to attend random gun shows in the U.S. in the hopes that some guy with a “wispy beard” is going to be walking around selling his privately owned guns is NO reliable source of guns to supply gun hungry drug cartels with!

In the final analysis, this New York Times piece is filled with misconceptions based on misleading, shadowy claims as well as outright lies about what is going on in both Mexico and U.S. gun culture. And it’s all for the singular purpose of denigrating Second Amendment rights in the U.S. and not in informing the public of a real problem in Mexico or any real part the U.S. might play in that problem.

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Wait a minute Mom. Don’t let little Johnny go to his buddy Tommy’s house. Tommy’s parents are psychos that own — **gasp** — GUNS! This is the message that ABC is telling parents in an April 10 piece headlined, “Before Arranging Playdates, Ask About Guns.”

Here ABC attempts to make every gun owner seem like a lunatic just ready to blow and encourages parents to be deathly afraid of anyone that owns a gun. It encourages parents to pry into the lives of family members of their kid’s friends and bases it all on the lies passed off as scary gun violence statistics.

Naturally, ABC’s back up for this anti-gun screed is by a supposedly “non partisan” anti-gun group called PAX USA, an organization with board and advisory councils filled with left-wing Hollywood actors such as Richard Belzer, Tim Robbins, and Rob Reiner among many others.

ABC gives us the startled tale of some “unnamed” parents who were shaken that the father of their child’s friend owned a gun.

But after months of visits, it did come as a surprise to Stephen’s mom, Carol, that Robbie’s dad, Jan, kept handguns in his home for protection. The families asked that their last names not be used to protect their privacy.

This very sentence seems to scream urbanite, maybe even suburbanite. Apparently ABC looked for and found some inexperienced, white bread, city folk that have never met anyone in their lives that owns a gun. Obviously these city slickers are unfamiliar with anyone living in the farm belt or “the country.” Just as obvious, ABC itself identifies with such naive folks because their astonished and silly overreaction proves that they have never been to a rural area in their lives much less have become aware that many kids in this country grow up with guns all around them and that parents wouldn’t be surprised at all that their children’s friends might have them in their homes. This report shows the wide divide between the pampered city folk that ABC seems to think represent the average American and the rest of the country.

ABC then introduces us to this PAX USA organization, the aforementioned “non-partisan” group that seems to serve as a left-wing Hollywood actor’s resume plumper. And this group unleashes some obviously false statistics about guns.

The ABC screed quotes PAX USA co-founder Daniel Gross.

“Nearly 1.7 million children live in homes with firearms that are loaded and unlocked, and every day eight children die from guns.”

Um, no. That would be what the boys at the FBI call a lie. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2005 652 kids between ages 1 and 15 were killed by gunfire. These are the ages that most people consider “children.” After 15 we are beginning to get past calling them children and into the “young adult” phase. So, if we stick with what most people think of as children we do not get the nearly 3,000 deaths that Gross claims is occurring.

Now, between the ages of 15 and 18 there were 1,554 gun related deaths in 2005. And why so many between the ages of 15 and 18? The long and short answer is gangs. Unless most parents are sending their middle and late teenaged kids into gang infested areas to “play,” it doesn’t seem that they have much to worry about statistically

But, logic and sense aren’t ABC’s goal, here. Alarmism and anti-Second Amendment rights is.

Naturally, every parent should know what sort of family they are sending their own children to play among. That is only good parenting. But to use fake statistics and anti-gun scare tactics like this is merely a mask for a political agenda.

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