The Real Gun Guys

Quote of the day…

First there was: “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” “Ignorance is Strength.”

Now we have:

“We felt that, for a variety of reasons, the collective rights model was under represented in the debate, and wanted to give scholars an opportunity to enhance or further illuminate the collective rights position. Sometimes a more balanced debate is best served by an unbalanced symposium. I did not, therefore, invite anyone who I knew subscribed to the individual rights model.”

-Carl Bogus, June 12, 2001

Erm, what was that again? I’m beginning to think that George Orwell was right, he was just off by a few decades…

Read the post at Joe’s blog (link above) and then the linked article by David Hardy.

Share/Save

Anti-Obama Baby

My small contribution to gun rights during this election year. I hope you like it.

Share/Save

Unrest in the Magic Kingdom

Disney claims they are exempt from the Florida law allowing employees to keep a gun in their car on company property. Now a security guard is willing to risk his 13 year career at the Happiest Place On Earth to challenge this claim.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — A Disney security guard told Eyewitness News he’s okay with being fired rather than go to work unprotected. Disney claims it’s exempt from a new state law that allows employees to keep handguns in their cars.

The employee Eyewitness News talked with is not concerned about safety at the park. He’s concerned about a rise in crime everywhere else.

As a security guard, Edwin Sotomayer works strange hours and says he has a right to feel safe when he is commuting to and from the theme parks. He has been a Disney security guard for more than 13 years, but he’s willing to lose his job to stand up for his right to bring a gun to work.

Share/Save

Plaintiff in San Francisco Gun Lawsuit is Gay

In an interesting, and I think appropriate move, the man at the center of the new lawsuit targeting San Francisco’s gun ban law is gay. As a group, this minority is beset by violence from without and definitely need a means to protect themselves. It’s not an orientation issue, it’s a human rights issue. I wonder how the left is going to react to this one?

SAN FRANCISCO — Using the new judicial muscle provided by the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the right to bear arms, the National Rifle Association and another pro-gun group sued San Francisco and its housing authority on Friday to invalidate a ban on handguns in public housing. The lawsuit said the ban violated the Second Amendment and “renders responsible, law-abiding adult public housing residents especially vulnerable.”

…

In an interesting turn in a city known for its embrace of gay rights, the chief plaintiff in the suit against the city is a gay man living in a public housing development, owned by the federal government, who wants to have a gun to protect himself from potential hate crimes.

…

A city of about 725,000, San Francisco has 12,000 residents living in public housing, all of whom are required to sign a lease that forbids a broad variety of weapons, including pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, automatic rifles, BB guns, as well as nunchucks, brass knuckles and stun guns. This blanket ban was begun in 2006, and the penalty for violation of the lease is eviction.

In the case filed on Friday, an anonymous gay man said that stipulation had deprived him of “any effective means of self-defense.”

The story goes on the describe the horrors of living in the “gun plagued” projects. They quote a guy who says it’s not hard to get a gun there. If so, it makes me wonder why they haven’t been evicted if this is the case.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Share/Save

Utah man harassed by cops for open carrying

It would seem that some cops in Utah aren’t up on the legality of open carry. From the article here:

Deveraux said he was walking around his neighborhood to exercise last December, when he was stopped by a Granite School District officer and “was informed that if I touched my gun, I would be killed.” The officer called the West Valley City Police Department, Deveraux continued, three squad cars arrived, and he was detained and his gun taken from him - then, after a few minutes, he was released.

Those were violations of his federal and state constitutional rights, said the Swede who became an American citizen this January. And they are civil rights abuses that he has only encountered in West Valley City, Deveraux said.

“I don’t blame them for being a little bit extra careful,” he said, noting that the crime rate is high in Utah’s second largest city, “but there’s a line they crossed between being a little bit careful and a little bit too careful.”

Share/Save

Well thought out commentary from the Brady blog!

Okay, okay…you can stop laughing now. Seriously though, according to the Brady Bunch, legally open carrying a gun on your hip is “suspicious” behavior. Never mind that the man was breaking no law and was merely exercising his constitutionally guaranteed rights.

As many of you know, there was an incident in Wilkes-Barre, PA recently where an openly carrying man was stopped by police and his gun confiscated pursuant to establishing ownership. He was then free to go since he had broken no laws.

Why the police felt it necessary to confiscate his gun when he wasn’t breaking any laws is a subject open to debate. Perhaps they were concerned the gun had merely gotten lost and are scouring the neighborhood looking for “lost gun” signs. Perhaps they’re holding out for a reward? Or maybe this is just another attempt at intimidating law abiding gun owners under color of law. The kind of thing the mayor of Seattle is trying to do right now, even though this would violate state preemption.

We can no longer comment on their blog since they established “Reasoned Discourse” so I’ll do my commenting here.

Here are the parts of the news article the Brady’s decided were most important:

Police stopped a New Jersey man with a gun in a holster on his hip around 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Sherman and South streets.
…
Officers took the gun because initial reports were the man had the gun in his hand and “proper ownership of the weapon could not be established,” the city said in a press release Tuesday.
…
There is no more reason to establish ownership of a handgun than it is for your cell phone,” said Mike Stollenwerk, co-founder of OpenCarry.org.
…
Wilkes-Barre police say they were called to investigate the incident on Saturday when neighbors made a complaint of a man standing at East Northampton and Sherman streets with a gun in his hand.

Here’s their comments:

Really?

“There is no more reason to establish ownership of a handgun than it is for your cell phone”? Apparently, people living by the corner of East Hampton and Sherman streets think there is.

Probably because you can’t shoot and kill someone with a cell phone.

That, and somebody not from the neighborhood carrying a gun on his hip, and who isn’t in uniform, probably falls under the common definition of “suspicious.”

Let’s see… So the cops get a call about a guy with a gun. Instead of asking whether he was shooting or killing anyone, they jump into their squad cars and take off. They arrive and find a man with a sidearm holstered on his hip, in full compliance with the law. They proceed to confiscate his gun and then let him go. Now they are trying to make the man prove the gun is his before they’ll give it back. I don’t know about you, but where I live, there is no registry and many of my guns are private sales. If I had to prove ownership of many of them, I’d be screwed. The police confiscated this mans private property without a lawful reason, period.

But yet, this is considered reasonable action on the part of the police by the Brady Bunch. I’ve got news for them, in the hands of a law abiding, legal gun owner (the vast majority), a gun is no more deadly than a cell phone. The Brady Bunch would do well to knock off the hysteria and deal in logic and facts for a change, but of course, when you’re led around by your emotions and financial donations, this will never happen. Pity.

As a public service, here’s a Constitutional law refresher for the police in Wilkes-Barre and the Brady Bunch.

First the Second amendment:

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.

And the Fifth amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Share/Save

Could I make it any clearer?

Update: let me be perfectly clear as to the intent of this image. Gun owners are the only group now days of which it is considered “Okay” to discriminate against. My intent is/was to demonstrate this point. No other meaning is meant or should be inferred by it. If it makes you angry, good, discrimination of any kind should make you angry. The second amendment is a civil right, just as much as any of the others, and without it the others are meaningless. What good is the right to free speech or freedom of the press if you have no means of defending that right?

Share/Save

The Best States for Gun Owners

Here is a listing of the best states for gun owners to live in, ranked in order of best to worst (as in golf, a smaller score is better). The list is based on the total score only. I stole this data from the Brady Bunch and it reflects the inverse of their rankings (PDF) for 2007. Hey, who’d have thunk it? It turns out they’re good for something after all.

With the exception of Wyoming and Montana not being on the top of the list, there’s no real surprises here. And as I expected, California is dead last.

State          Score

Kentucky        2
Oklahoma        2
Alaska          4
Louisiana       4
Missouri        4
North Dakota    4
Utah            4
Mississippi     5
Arizona         6
Arkansas        6
Idaho           6
New Mexico      6
South Dakota    6
West Virginia   6
Kansas          7
Tennessee       7
Florida         8
Indiana         8
Montana         8
Georgia         9
Texas           9
Vermont         9
Nebraska       10
Minnesota      11
Nevada         11
New Hampshire  11
South Carolina 11
Wyoming        11
Maine          12
Wisconsin      12
Ohio           13
Alabama        15
Connecticut    15
Colorado       16
Iowa           16
Oregon         18
Virginia       18
Washington     18
North Carolina 20
Deleware       22
Michigan       22
Pennsylvania   26
Illinois       28
Hawaii         43
Rhode Island   47
New York       51
Maryland       53
Massachusetts  54
New Jersey     63
California     79

Share/Save

Anti-Rights Bigot Caught Lyon

Anti-rights bigot Cliff Lyon attempts to take Alan Korwin to task for his statement: “Guns save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.” The title of his post being “Gun Advocates Lie While People Die.”

To save you the trouble, here’s what he has to say:

Hi Alan,I just saw you on C-Span giving a talk on April 8th 2008.You said, “Guns save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.”

You said this after describing a situation in which a women killed her intruder.

I think this claim needs to be fully explored for veracity because if it is true, we gun control advocates will need to take pause.

If on the other hand, this statement is off by say 99.9%, then it is arguably a lie. As a non-fiction writer, your moral and ethical integrity are in question.

I’ve posted this e-mail on our blog so that you may defend your statement publicly. Please go there to respond.

Thanks
Cliff

This is the beauty of the internet. Unsupportable public comments and the people who make them can be taken to task and a permanent record established.

Fortunately, because of OneUtah’s very high search engine ranking, this post will soon be returned on the first page of a search on Alan Korwin.

I hope he will address our concerns responsibly.

This is indeed the beauty of the internet Cliff, so people can not only see your pathetic attempt to smear a good man, but see him respond, and you get totally pwned in the process by people who rely on facts and statistics instead of blind emotion.

Way to go Cliff, you jackass, let us know when you want another spanking.

(h/t) Of Arms and the Law

Share/Save