Thread: Summer gun wars: Jesse Jackson leads the way

The LA Times says the NRA won, and it might as well disband

Don’t do it! It’s a trap!


The article delivers a few examples of points on which Obama is weak on guns, and they admit that guns may have decided the 2000 election.

Yet somehow they don’t think it will matter in this one.

Good; let them keep thinking that. I think once word of BO’s anti-gun agenda gets around, it will decide the election.


NRA's political clout is waning
With 2nd Amendment rights expanded and Democrats reluctant to tackle the issue, gun control isn't the GOP weapon it used to be. The rifle group, in essence, is a victim of its own success.
By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 14, 2008


WASHINGTON -- Eight years after a national debate over gun control helped keep Democrat Al Gore out of the White House, the National Rifle Assn. and its Republican allies are launching a new campaign to defeat Barack Obama. But this time, the issue that GOP strategists once relied on to provide crucial votes in close elections has lost much of its political punch.

Congress hasn't passed major legislation to restrict gun use in 14 years. Democrats -- scarred by past NRA campaigns -- almost never talk about the issue anymore.

And Americans now show little interest in gun control. Just half want tougher rules for gun sales, compared with nearly two-thirds in 2000.

"The issue has been essentially removed from the political agenda," said Robert Spitzer, a political scientist at the State University of New York in Cortland who has written extensively about the politics of gun control.

This marks a major victory for gun rights groups, which less than a decade ago were fending off demands from both Democrats and Republicans for strict new limits on gun ownership after the 1999 Columbine school shootings.

Yet that very triumph may prove politically perilous for Republicans hoping to put John McCain in the White House. Two years ago, GOP candidates backed by the NRA lost in a number of swing states, including Virginia, Missouri and Wisconsin, that could play pivotal roles this fall.

NRA leaders, who plan to spend millions on the presidential campaign, said they would be able to mobilize their members and bring key states into the GOP column Nov. 4.

"Voters have proven election after election that this issue is one of their first freedoms," NRA Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said in a recent interview. "When people feel uncertain, when people feel unsafe, they run right back to the 2nd Amendment."

In 2000, the gun group converted that emotion into results. Tony Coelho, a former California congressman who managed Gore's presidential campaign, is among many analysts who think the NRA delivered the election for George W. Bush by highlighting Gore's endorsement of tougher gun laws. "It was critical," he said.

Coelho noted that had more gun owners voted for Gore in West Virginia, Tennessee or Arkansas -- all states targeted by the NRA -- he would have been president.

This year, gun rights groups see Obama's past positions on gun control as an equally inviting target.

When Obama was running for the Illinois state Senate in 1996, he appeared to endorse a ban on handguns. (He has since said that campaign aides incorrectly indicated that position on a candidate questionnaire and that he has never favored a ban.)

Obama voted against state legislation in 2001 and 2004 to ease restrictions on gun use. And in Washington, the senator opposed a 2005 bill to give gun manufacturers new protections from lawsuits.

He provided further ammunition for his critics in April with comments about "bitter" voters who "cling to guns or religion." Three weeks later in the Pennsylvania primary, Obama lost nearly two-thirds of voters from gun-owning households, according to exit polls.

The NRA has already begun attacking Obama in its magazines, a key medium for communicating with members. The group claims a membership of 4 million; critics say it is less.

"Right now, one of the most anti-gun politicians ever to set foot in Washington, D.C., may be just one election away from the Oval Office," NRA President John C. Sigler warned in the June issue of America's 1st Freedom, which also labeled Obama a "gun-ban elitist."

At the NRA's annual convention last month, Republican Party leaders, including McCain and former Bush strategist Karl Rove, echoed the NRA rhetoric, drawn from its well-thumbed political playbook that casts Democrats as foes of sportsmen and other gun owners.

But the new battle cries come at a time when the NRA has largely won the war.

At the state level, the NRA and its allies have significantly expanded the rights of gun owners. Forty states now meet the NRA's "right to carry" standard because they either don't require a concealed-weapon permit or allow people who meet minimal standards to carry a weapon. Two decades ago, there were just 10 such states, according to the group.

In Washington, the last major gun control bill passed in 1994, when lawmakers banned assault weapons and required background checks for handgun purchases.

Since then, gun rights groups helped block a renewal of the assault weapons ban. They successfully championed legislation to protect the gun industry from many product liability lawsuits. And they have consistently beaten back efforts to close the "gun show loophole," which allows those who buy guns from unlicensed dealers at gun shows to avoid the normally required criminal background checks.

This summer, the Supreme Court is widely expected to hand gun rights advocates another victory by striking down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns.

Meanwhile, Democrats have largely removed gun control from their political agenda. Many of the party's candidates now explicitly reject new gun restrictions and go out of their way to express support for gun rights.

Obama's campaign website notes that he "will protect the right of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns." It adds: "He also believes that the right is subject to reasonable and common-sense regulation."

When asked about gun control while campaigning in South Dakota recently, Obama replied: "What I believe is that there is a 2nd Amendment right. I think it is an individual right. I think people have the right to lawfully bear arms."

Obama's formulation is a marked contrast to Gore's campaign in 2000, when the vice president frequently boasted of having strengthened gun laws.

Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, his Democratic primary opponent, frequently clashed over the issue in high-profile debates, each claiming to be more committed to cracking down on guns.

The NRA and its GOP allies have responded to Obama's defense of the 2nd Amendment with increasingly insistent warnings that it is a ruse. "Liberals in Washington often keep their real opinions to themselves," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told NRA members at their convention. "Don't be fooled."

If these cautions could once tip elections, recent history is not encouraging. NRA-backed U.S. Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, Montana, Missouri, Minnesota and Virginia all lost in 2006, even though the gun group spent more than $1 million on their races, according to federal election data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.

In Wisconsin, another key swing state, the group spent nearly $700,000 to unseat the Democratic governor, who had twice vetoed legislation allowing state residents to carry concealed weapons. Gov. James E. Doyle cruised to reelection by 8 percentage points, and the leading champion of the pro-gun legislation in the state Senate lost his seat.

Even in the West, where guns have loomed mythically large on the political landscape, there are signs that the issue may be losing its potency.

Four years ago, in a race for Colorado's open U.S. Senate seat, Democrat Ken Salazar, who as state attorney general was a frequent advocate for tougher gun regulation, defeated a Republican who sat on the NRA board and benefited from more than $430,000 in independent expenditures by the group.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...6.story?page=1

...a few examples of points on which Obama is weak on guns ...

Curiously, they missed this one http://www.volokh.com/posts/1203389334.shtml and this one http://www.townhall.com/columnists/A...oncealed_carry

High court affirms gun rights in historic decision
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Silent on central questions of gun control for two centuries, the Supreme Court found its voice Thursday in a decision affirming the right to have guns for self-defense in the home and addressing a constitutional riddle almost as old as the republic over what it means to say the people may keep and bear arms.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and imperiled similar prohibitions in other cities, Chicago and San Francisco among them. Federal gun restrictions, however, were expected to remain largely intact.

The court's historic awakening on the meaning of the Second Amendment brought a curiously mixed response, muted in some unexpected places.

The reaction broke less along party lines than along the divide between cities wracked with gun violence and rural areas where gun ownership is embedded in daily life. Democrats have all but abandoned their long push for stricter gun laws at the national level after deciding it's a losing issue for them. Republicans welcomed what they called a powerful precedent.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, straddling both sides of the issue, said merely that the court did not find an unfettered right to bear arms and that the ruling "will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country." But another Chicagoan, Democratic Mayor Richard Daley, called the ruling "very frightening" and predicted more violence and higher taxes to pay for extra police if his city's gun restrictions are lost.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain welcomed the ruling as "a landmark victory for Second Amendment freedom."

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia, a once-vital, now-archaic grouping of citizens. That's been the heart of the gun control debate for decades.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said an individual right to bear arms exists and is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

President Bush said: "I applaud the Supreme Court's historic decision today confirming what has always been clear in the Constitution: the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear firearms."

The full implications of the decision, however, are not sorted out. Still to be seen, for example, is the extent to which the right to have a gun for protection in the home may extend outside the home.

Scalia said the Constitution does not permit "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home." The court also struck down D.C. requirements that firearms be equipped with trigger locks or kept disassembled, but left intact the licensing of guns. The district allows shotguns and rifles to be kept in homes if they are registered, kept unloaded and taken apart or equipped with trigger locks.

Scalia noted that the handgun is Americans' preferred weapon of self-defense in part because "it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police."

But he said nothing in the ruling should "cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons or the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

In a concluding paragraph to the 64-page opinion, Scalia said the justices in the majority "are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country" and believe the Constitution "leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns."

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents to register their handguns. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Fenty said.

In a dissent he summarized from the bench, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority "would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

He said such evidence "is nowhere to be found."

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a separate dissent in which he said, "In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas."

Joining Scalia were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas. The other dissenters were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter.

Gun rights advocates praised the decision. "I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived of this freedom," said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association.

The NRA will file lawsuits in San Francisco, Chicago and several Chicago suburbs challenging handgun restrictions there based on Thursday's outcome.

Some Democrats also welcomed the ruling.

"This opinion should usher in a new era in which the constitutionality of government regulations of firearms are reviewed against the backdrop of this important right," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

The capital's gun law was among the nation's strictest.

Dick Anthony Heller, 66, an armed security guard, sued the district after it rejected his application to keep a handgun at his Capitol Hill home a short distance from the Supreme Court.

"I'm thrilled I am now able to defend myself and my household in my home," Heller said shortly after the opinion was announced.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Heller's favor and struck down the district's handgun ban, saying the Constitution guarantees Americans the right to own guns and a total prohibition on handguns is not compatible with that right.

The issue caused a split within the Bush administration. Vice President Dick Cheney supported the appeals court ruling, but others in the administration feared it could lead to the undoing of other gun regulations, including a federal law restricting sales of machine guns. Other laws keep felons from buying guns and provide for an instant background check.

The last Supreme Court ruling on the matter came in 1939 in U.S. v. Miller, which involved a sawed-off shotgun. Constitutional scholars agree it did not squarely answer the question of individual versus collective rights.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080627/...m7MmoKetus0NUE

Our view on the Second Amendment:
Ruling reflects America's ambivalence on guns
Fri Jun 27, 12:22 AM ET

On hot-button cultural issues, the Supreme Court typically doesn't stray far from public opinion. So that's where the court found itself Thursday with its landmark Second Amendment ruling, right where the majority of Americans are on the issue: for gun ownership, but with limits.

The court straddled that line. It said for the first time that the Constitution bars "the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home." At the same time, it left plenty of room for authorities to restrict how handguns are sold, who can buy them and where they can be carried.


Fortunately, the 5-4 decision to strike down the District of Columbia's tough ban on handgun possession didn't go as far as gun-control advocates had feared or the gun lobby had hoped. The justices agreed that a right to individual ownership doesn't mean that anyone can own any weapon. That leaves in place reasonable restrictions or outright bans on firearms such as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns, and exotic weapons such as surface-to-air missiles.


Thank goodness.


The court also specified that felons and the mentally ill could continue to be barred from buying guns, that gun owners could be prohibited from carrying them in places such as schools and government buildings, and that authorities could restrict how guns are sold — presumably meaning mandatory background checks are OK. And it said those limits shouldn't be interpreted as the only ones that would pass constitutional muster.


That's all sensible in the never-ending effort to limit gun deaths, and especially so is the court's implication that licensing and registration are permissible, as long as they're not so harsh or capricious they interfere with legitimate ownership.


As sweeping as the court's ruling was, it's far from the final word on the subject. If anything, it's more the beginning than the end of Second Amendment jurisprudence. The National Rifle Association already plans lawsuits to overturn gun restrictions in at least six cities, including Chicago and San Francisco.


At the same time, nothing the court said should stop the push for limits that will still be legal under the new framework. Among the common-sense proposals designed to keep the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous people:


•


Closing the "gun-show loophole," which can allow gun purchasers to skirt mandatory background checks by dealing with unlicensed sellers at gun shows.


•


Cracking down on rogue dealers who ignore the law to provide guns to criminals who can't buy them legally.


•


Renewing the assault weapons ban to take some of the most dangerous legal weapons off the streets.


Perhaps the most regrettable aspect of the court's decision is its rejection of Washington's trigger-lock law. About 1,000 children and teenagers die every year from gun suicides or accidental shootings. That problem will now be harder to address.


The endless argument over whether handgun bans such as Washington's reduce crime and violence is over, made moot by the court's decision. What remains is a cultural divide, largely between rural and urban areas, over gun control. The most useful thing to do now is decide what limits can cut the carnage while still comporting with the Constitution.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...GMb4ebx7Ks0NUE


Opposing view:
'We're not done, yet'
Fri Jun 27, 12:21 AM ET
By Wayne LaPierre


The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm for any lawful purpose. Period.


The Founding Fathers meant it, 4 million NRA members defend it, and the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed it.


For three decades, lawful residents of the District of Columbia had no right to possess a handgun in their own homes. Today, they do. That's a good thing, because good people should be able to protect themselves, especially at home.


The court firmly, and rightly, upheld that basic right to self-defense and declared the gun ban unconstitutional. This historic decision cements the individual right to bear arms as a cornerstone of American constitutional law. "We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans," the court ruled.


This case was, simply, about the basic human right to a firearm for personal protection. The right to bear arms — an individual right — just like the basic human rights to free speech, to worship and to vote.


Basic, human freedom for all law-abiding Americans. That's worth fighting for — and we're not done, yet.


This monumental decision is just the opening salvo. The court declared the individual right to own a firearm, but not every American can exercise that right. While Washington, D.C., residents can now possess a handgun, lawful residents of San Francisco and Chicago cannot.


Would we stand idly by if Washington residents could vote, but not those of Chicago? Or if Georgians could freely practice their faiths, while Californians had no freedom to worship? There would be outrage — and there is, from 80 million gun owners and every American who values freedom.


The NRA is filing lawsuits against cities in which gun ownership is banned, to restore individual freedom for the lawful Americans who live there. Because freedom for some Americans, and not for all, isn't freedom — it's discrimination. And it's wrong.


The freedom to bear arms belongs, individually, to every law-abiding American. It always has, and the NRA will keep fighting to preserve that fundamental right.


Wayne LaPierre is executive vice president of the National Rifle Association of America.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...czUlBpjpn8B2YD

DC Ban on Semiauto Handguns Stands
Josh Sugarmann
Fri Jun 27, 12:57 PM ET

Even though the U.S. Supreme Court found that Washington, DC's more than 30-year-old handgun ban violated the Second Amendment, that doesn't mean our nation's capital will soon turn into the handgun Valhalla envisioned by pro-gun advocates.

Is it bad for DC residents?

Yes.

Is it as bad as it could be?

No.

The reason for this is that the Court's ruling does not affect the District's ban on "machine guns," which under DC law includes any gun "which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot semiautomatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading." This definition includes virtually all semiautomatic handguns. As a result, the District's ban can remain in force for those types of handguns. In essence, the Court's ruling for the most part will only affect revolvers and derringers.

Semiautomatic guns are the weapon of choice in mass shootings -- including Virginia Tech -- and police killings. Firing one shot per trigger pull, they have greater ammunition capacity and can be quickly and easily reloaded. Semiautomatic handguns, also known as pistols, are the most common type of handgun manufactured in America, representing 73 percent of the 1,403,329 handguns manufactured in the United States in 2006 (the last year for which figures are available). In contrast, revolvers hold only five to six ammunition rounds, fire more slowly, take time to reload, and represent only 27 percent of the handguns manufactured in 2006.

Yesterday's decision flips legal logic and common sense on its head. As measured in gun death and injury, handguns are our nation's most lethal category of firearm: accounting for the vast majority of the 30,000 Americans who die from guns each year. They are also our nation's leading murder and suicide tool. Yet the majority opinion offers the greatest offender the strongest legal protection. It's analogous to the Court carving out special constitutional protection for child pornography in a First Amendment case.

In its ruling, the Court brushed away our nation's history of mass shootings, assassinations, and unparalleled gun violence. It has instead accepted an abstract academic argument with dangerous real-world results for residents of the District of Columbia.

It's now up to the District of Columbia's leadership to make sure that, by limiting the types of handguns that can be registered in DC, that they do their best to lessen the inevitable damage that will come from this ruling.

And to fight off the next legal attack from the gun lobby when they do so.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/200...1VimVVEfD8B2YD

Florida gun law crosses line of common sense
Tue Jul 15, 12:15 AM ET
By DeWayne Wickham

Edwin Sotomayor is the crash- test dummy in an upcoming legal collision between the National Rifle Association and Disney World. The 36-year-old was fired last week from his job as an unarmed security guard at the Orlando theme park after he took his .45-caliber handgun to work, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Under a new Florida law, people in the Sunshine State can carry their "legally owned firearms" to work as long as they leave them locked inside their vehicle. Exceptions include schools, correctional facilities, nuclear power plants and businesses with a federal permit to use, store or transport combustible or explosive materials. Disney, central Florida's largest employer, has such a permit for its fireworks shows.

The NRA said Disney is stretching the intent of this exception. But a federal judge who is hearing a challenge to the law called it "stupid" and poorly written, according to The Florida Times-Union.

High court ruling

This comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people in Washington, D.C., have a constitutional right to keep handguns in their homes, overturning a 32-year-old ban. The decision makes sense but left unanswered the question of whether that right extends to the workplace. "Since this case represents this court's first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in the 5-4 decision.

That's encouraging because while I agree people should be able to possess a gun for protection of their home, it is a troubling exaggeration to give them legal permission to take a gun onto the property of others.

That's exactly what Florida's law does. It gives workers — shoppers and visitors to workplaces — the right to do so, as long as they leave their gun inside a locked car. People can take guns into the parking lots of shopping malls, churches, hospitals, sports arenas and restaurants.

British view of rules

Not surprisingly, Britain's Guardian newspaper warned tourists headed to Florida to be concerned about run-ins with waiters or store employees who go outside to "cool off."

Opponents of the law argue that it violates the Fifth Amendment, which protects a person's property rights. Forcing business owners to allow people to bring guns onto their property, they contend, tramples upon this constitutional protection.

It's a good bet that — like Washington's gun ban — the Florida fight will end up in the Supreme Court, with Sotomayor as the stalking horse for a legal showdown between Disney and the NRA. Last week, he filed a lawsuit in state court challenging Disney's ban. Sotomayor has a constitutional right to own a handgun. But just as he can't carry it onto commercial airline flights or into congressional office buildings or the Supreme Court, he shouldn't be allowed to take his gun to Disney World.

How can it make sense to exempt a public school property from Florida's gun-toting law, but not an amusement park where far more children can be found on any given day? Where is the reason in letting people take guns to the parking lots of unprotected restaurants, while restricting them from heavily guarded nuclear power plants? Is it really rational to enact a law that prevents a person from taking a gun into the parking lot of a military base, but allows him to secretly possess one in the parking areas of hospitals and nightclubs?

I don't think so.


DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/200...vorUOdDYz8B2YD

Gun control groups fear top activist was NRA spy
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 11 minutes ago

PHILADELPHIA - A gun-control activist who championed the cause for more than a decade and served on the boards of two anti-violence groups is suspected of working as a paid spy for the National Rifle Association, and now those organizations are expelling her and sweeping their offices for bugs.

The suggestion that Mary Lou McFate was a double agent is contained in a deposition filed as part of a contract dispute involving a security firm. The muckraking magazine Mother Jones, in a story last week, was the first to report on McFate's alleged dual identity.

The NRA refused to comment to the magazine and did not respond to calls Tuesday from The Associated Press. Nor did McFate.

The 62-year-old former flight attendant and sex counselor from Sarasota, Fla., is not new to the world of informants.

She infiltrated an animal-rights group in the late 1980s at the request of U.S. Surgical, and befriended an activist who was later convicted in a pipe bomb attack against the medical-supply business, U.S. Surgical acknowledged in news reports at the time. U.S. Surgical had come under fire for using dogs for research and training.

McFate resurfaced in Pennsylvania and has since spent years as an unpaid board member of CeaseFirePA and an organization called States United to Prevent Gun Violence. She also twice pushed unsuccessfully to join the board of the nation's largest gun-control group, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"It raises some real concerns with the tactics of the NRA. If they've got one person, maybe they have more. If they've done this dirty trick, what else have they done?" said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, which planned to search its offices for listening devices and computer spyware.

The Brady Campaign and other groups said they are also researching whether McFate's alleged spying constituted a crime.

"Under some circumstances, it could be trespass," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a former prosecutor. But "if they're open meetings, it may be underhanded and sneaky; it may not be illegal."

At States United, McFate served as federal legislation director, meeting with members of Congress on Capitol Hill and writing letters. Over the years, she also stuffed envelopes, attended rallies and took part in conference calls and strategy sessions.

In retrospect, Helmke said, he now realizes McFate stopped by the Washington office for meetings and conference calls that could have been handled by phone, and perhaps pushed too hard to join the board or lobby Congress.

But as for any secrets she might have been privy to, the gun-control groups said they have little to hide, since they put their message and information about their budgets on the Web.

The allegations against McFate stem from a lawsuit brought against officials with Beckett Brown International, a now-defunct security firm based in Maryland. A former beer distributor who bankrolled the firm accused them of defrauding him.

Boxes of documents filed in the dispute reveal that McFate worked as a subcontractor for Beckett Brown and that the firm's clients included the NRA. And they show that McFate billed the firm for unspecified intelligence-gathering services, submitting among other things a request for a $4,500-a-month retainer in 1999.

The documents also reveal that McFate — that is her maiden name; her married name is Mary Lou Sapone — tried to get daughter-in-law Montgomery Sapone hired by Beckett Brown. Montgomery Sapone worked as an intern at Brady Campaign headquarters in 2003, the gun-control group said.

John Dodd III, the Maryland beer distributor who bankrolled Beckett Brown, told the AP that he did not condone the infiltration of activist groups.

Bryan Miller, executive director of Ceasefire NJ, said he feels betrayed by McFate. Miller's brother, an FBI agent, was shot to death in 1994.

"To have somebody that I consider a friend, have been with dozens of times, shared meals with, treated as a friend, to have her be an employee, a subcontracted spy for the NRA, is just mind-boggling. It's so venal," Miller said. "In the battle of ideas with the gun lobby, we're at a constant disadvantage because we're honest."

Timothy Ward, a former Beckett Brown principal who said in a sworn statement that McFate worked for the firm, declined comment Tuesday through a person who answered the phone at his new company, Chesapeake Strategies Group. The NRA now uses that firm for intelligence-gathering, another Chesapeake official said in a deposition.

The CeaseFirePA leadership plans a vote Friday on whether to expel McFate, a board member for seven years.

"I feel flattered that the NRA would feel that they would have to infiltrate Ceasefire of PA. Obviously, they're hearing our footsteps," said Phil Goldsmith, the group's president. "Frankly, I think it's a waste of their money. We don't deal in state secrets."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080806/...QqhPbwWB1H2ocA

July 28, 2012 byTad Cronn

Gun Control Misfires: A Tale of Four CitiesGun control is on every liberal’s lips thanks to the shootings in Aurora, Colo., by an insane gunman wielding an AR-15 rifle, shotgun and a pistol.
(Update: I had originally written AK-47 instead of AR-15 based on news sources that reported it that way and the president’s speech about AK-47s. Thanks to you sharp readers who know the difference!)

New York Mayor and Soda Nazi Michael Bloomberg has urged police officers to go on strike until all privately held handguns are turned in, which sounds like an exceptionally good idea in New York, which has been experiencing a summer rash of shootings. I’m sure the criminals could use the stress reduction, and residents will feel much safer knowing they won’t have to worry about shooting themselves in the foot while waiting for the police to come deal with a robber in the living room.

Gun control doesn’t work for a lot of reasons that are clear to anybody who is susceptible to logic.

Rather than confuse liberals by resorting to common sense, maybe just examining the cases of four different cities will help clarify things.

First, there’s Anaheim, Calif., home of Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Medieval Times and a whole slew of other family-oriented destinations.

During the past week, residents of Anaheim have been rioting and protesting following the fatal police shootings of two men. They were probably criminals and probably brought it on themselves by doing stupid things like being in gangs and shooting at police.

But apparently at street level it doesn’t look that way. Residents have been slinging phrases like “cop murder” or “assassination.” Accusations of opening fire on crowds and siccing police dogs on children are flying “fast and furious.”

This is in California, a state that is just chock full of gun control laws. There are a lot of factors involved (like illegal immigration — thanks, King Obama), but two points can be gleaned from this series of events: Gun control didn’t stop at least one known gang member from obtaining a weapon to fire at police (wonder if it came from Eric Holder?); and the residents of Anaheim will not (and possibly should not) ever trust the police to protect them.

Second case to consider: Chicago. Run by the liberal machine under Obama henchman Rahm Emanuel, the town of Chicago has been turned into a shooting gallery.

With gun control laws up the wazoo, Chicago has seen multiple shootings on many days this year, including even when Obama was visiting.

Despite being “outraged” and cooking up various strategies, Emanuel and the Chicago police haven’t been able to stop the bleeding. Just this past Tuesday, six people were shot in the space of an hour. There have been weekends where three dozen or more have been wounded.

Back to California. The city of Simi Valley, which isn’t that far from Anaheim, is consistently ranked as one of the safest large cities in America.

Being in California, the residents of Simi Valley are subject to the exact same state gun control laws as the residents of Anaheim, BUT … the city is known locally to be home to an abnormally large number of resident police officers from a number of local communities.

It’s not the magical badges that keep crime under control. It’s the fact that those off-duty police officer homeowners, along with a lot of non-police residents of the town, are believed by criminals to keep guns in their homes and not be afraid to use them.

Then there’s the case of Kennesaw, Georgia, a city with about one fourth the population of Simi Valley and selected by Family Circle as one of America’s 10 Best Towns for Families. Back in 1982, Kennesaw did the opposite of what most cities do. Not only did it not outlaw or restrict guns, but it passed a law requiring that every head of household in town own a handgun, with exceptions for criminal record, religious objection, handicap, etc.

Contrary to predictions, the town did not see a rise in violence. Crime plunged and has stayed low ever since.

It’s intuitive and obvious. When people are allowed to own guns to defend themselves, crime is low because criminals for some reason don’t like to be shot.

Even “gangster” rapper Ice T gets it. In an interview on the day of the Colorado shootings, he defended the right to own a gun, pointing out that it’s for self-defense, including if necessary, the last line of defense against an out-of-control government.

Liberals operate from fear, and they’ve got an entire routine about people supposedly shooting family members and not being able to stop criminals, ad infinitum.

But people who want to take away your rights under the pretense of safety and security are really just laying the groundwork for tyranny.

In the end, the only form of gun control that works is taking aim before pulling the trigger.

http://politicaloutcast.com/2012/07/...#ixzz2235ia3dU

comments

Mayor Bloomberg is out of his mind ! Send him down to Mexico where people aren't allowed to have guns, the drug cartel is armed and has killed over 60,000 innocent women and children just over the past few years with AK-47s, criminals rule in an unarmed society when they know you have no protection !

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Why I Carry a Gun!

My old grandpa said to me 'Son, there comes a time in every
man's life when he stops bustin' knuckles and starts bustin' caps and
usually it's when he becomes too old to take an butt whoopin.'

I don't carry a gun to kill people.
I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don't carry a gun to scare people.
I carry a gun because sometimes this
world can be a scary place.

I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid.
I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I'm evil.
I carry a gun because I have lived long enough
to see the evil in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I hate the government.
I carry a gun because I understand the limitations
of government.

I don't carry a gun because I'm angry.
I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the
rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.
I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in
my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man.
I carry a gun because men know how to take care of
themselves and the ones they love.

I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate.
I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three
armed thugs, I am inadequate.

I don't carry a gun because I love it.
I carry a gun because I love life and the
people who make it meaningful to me.

Police protection is an oxymoron.
Free citizens must protect themselves.
Police do not protect you from crime,
they usually just investigate the crime after
it happens and then call someone in to clean
up the mess.

Personally, I carry a gun because I'm too young
to die and too old to take a whoopin'...

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I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.

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The average response time for law enforcement to respond to an EMERGENCY call in the US is five minutes. Some rural areas it is much much longer. Personally I have no intention of waiting long enough for some psycho or criminal to pull a trigger. That is why I own several guns. I am a retired law enforcement officer.