Gun Control

The second clip is particularly noteworthy, highlighting how quickly the GOP's slathering worship of the Constitution when it comes to gun rights does a complete 180 when it interferes with their rabid fear of Islam.

Common sense.
How refreshing.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/us/sheriffs-refuse-to-enforce-laws-on-gun-control.html?hp&_r=0

Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control

By ERICA GOODE
Published: December 15, 2013 16 Comments

GREELEY, Colo. — When Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County explains in speeches why he is not enforcing the state’s new gun laws, he holds up two 30-round magazines. One, he says, he had before July 1, when the law banning the possession, sale or transfer of the large-capacity magazines went into effect. The other, he “maybe” obtained afterward.
He shuffles the magazines, which look identical, and then challenges the audience to tell the difference.
“How is a deputy or an officer supposed to know which is which?” he asks.
Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.
Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.
The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.
In New York State, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed one of the toughest gun law packages in the nation last January, two sheriffs have said publicly they would not enforce the laws — inaction that Mr. Cuomo said would set “a dangerous and frightening precedent.” The sheriffs’ refusal is unlikely to have much effect in the state: According to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, since 2010 sheriffs have filed less than 2 percent of the two most common felony gun charges. The vast majority of charges are filed by the state or local police.
In Liberty County, Fla., a jury in October acquitted a sheriff who had been suspended and charged with misconduct after he released a man arrested by a deputy on charges of carrying a concealed firearm. The sheriff, who was immediately reinstated by the governor, said he was protecting the man’s Second Amendment rights.
And in California, a delegation of sheriffs met with Gov. Jerry Brown this fall to try to persuade him to veto gun bills passed by the Legislature, including measures banning semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines and lead ammunition for hunting (Mr. Brown signed the ammunition bill but vetoed the bill outlawing the rifles).
“Our way of life means nothing to these politicians, and our interests are not being promoted in the legislative halls of Sacramento or Washington, D.C.,” said Jon E. Lopey, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, Calif., one of those who met with Governor Brown. He said enforcing gun laws was not a priority for him, and he added that residents of his rural region near the Oregon border are equally frustrated by regulations imposed by the federal Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.
This year, the new gun laws in Colorado have become political flash points. Two state senators who supported the legislation were recalled in elections in September; a third resigned last month rather than face a recall. Efforts to repeal the statutes are already in the works.
Countering the elected sheriffs are some police chiefs, especially in urban areas, and state officials who say that the laws are not only enforceable but that they are already having an effect. Most gun stores have stopped selling the high-capacity magazines for personal use, although one sheriff acknowledged that some stores continued to sell them illegally. Some people who are selling or otherwise transferring guns privately are seeking background checks.
Eric Brown, a spokesman for Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, said, “Particularly on background checks, the numbers show the law is working.” The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has run 3,445 checks on private sales since the law went into effect, he said, and has denied gun sales to 70 people.
A Federal District Court judge last month ruled against a claim in the sheriffs’ lawsuit that one part of the magazine law was unconstitutionally vague. The judge also ruled that while the sheriffs could sue as individuals, they had no standing to sue in their official capacity.
Still, the state’s top law enforcement officials acknowledged that sheriffs had wide discretion in enforcing state laws.
“We’re not in the position of telling sheriffs and chiefs what to do or not to do,” said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety. “We have people calling us all the time, thinking they’ve got an issue with their sheriff, and we tell them we don’t have the authority to intervene.”
Sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws around the country are in the minority, though no statistics exist. In Colorado, though, sheriffs like Joe Pelle of Boulder County, who support the laws and have more liberal constituencies that back them, are outnumbered.
“A lot of sheriffs are claiming the Constitution, saying that they’re not going to enforce this because they personally believe it violates the Second Amendment,” Sheriff Pelle said. “But that stance in and of itself violates the Constitution.”
Even Sheriff W. Pete Palmer of Chaffee County, one of the seven sheriffs who declined to join the federal lawsuit because he felt duty-bound to carry out the laws, said he was unlikely to aggressively enforce them. He said enforcement poses “huge practical difficulties,” and besides, he has neither the resources nor the pressure from his constituents to make active enforcement a high priority. Violations of the laws are misdemeanors.
“All law enforcement agencies consider the community standards — what is it that our community wishes us to focus on — and I can tell you our community is not worried one whit about background checks or high-capacity magazines,” he said.
At their extreme, the views of sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws echo the stand of Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and the author of “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope.” Mr. Mack has argued that county sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of what is constitutional and what is not. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded by Mr. Mack, is an organization of sheriffs and other officers who support his views.
“The Supreme Court does not run my office,” Mr. Mack said in an interview. “Just because they allow something doesn’t mean that a good constitutional sheriff is going to do it.” He said that 250 sheriffs from around the country attended the association’s recent convention.
Matthew J. Parlow, a law professor at Marquette University, said that some states, including New York, had laws that allowed the governor in some circumstances to investigate and remove public officials who engaged in egregious misconduct — laws that in theory might allow the removal of sheriffs who failed to enforce state statutes.
But, he said, many governors could be reluctant to use such powers. And in most cases, any penalty for a sheriff who chose not to enforce state law would have to come from voters.
Sheriff Cooke, for his part, said that he was entitled to use discretion in enforcement, especially when he believed the laws were wrong or unenforceable.
“In my oath it says I’ll uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Colorado,” he said, as he posed for campaign photos in his office — he is running for the State Senate in 2014. “It doesn’t say I have to uphold every law passed by the Legislature.”

happy jack wrote:

Common sense.
How refreshing.

I agree...

Quote :

Eric Brown, a spokesman for Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, said, “Particularly on background checks, the numbers show the law is working.” The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has run 3,445 checks on private sales since the law went into effect, he said, and has denied gun sales to 70 people.

happy jack wrote:

Common sense.

How so?

happy jack wrote:

...the boots on the ground, those who actually know what they are talking about in regard to crime...

Please.  I've already cited multiple law enforcement officials, organizations, etc. saying the exact opposite of what you're trying to sell in addition to actually having statistics to back up their case.  Cite all the redneck sheriffs you want, but doing so will a) never fit the definition of "common sense", b) never be any more impressive than the Discovery Institutes' list of "scientists who don't believe in evolution", c) not change the fact that there are effective and working models of gun control found throughout the globe, and d) not change the fact that you're obstinately and demonstrably wrong on gun control.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367813/gun-victories-midwest-charles-c-w-cooke



JANUARY 8, 2014 4:00 AM

Gun Victories in the Midwest

From Detroit to Chicago, the Second Amendment wins.

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Conservatives in the frigid Midwest could be forgiven for wondering whether the last week’s cold has been a sign that hell has finally frozen over, for, within a single week they have won big in a pair of cities that had all but been written off. Last Thursday, Detroit’s chief of police, James Craig, discussed openly his conversion on the question of concealed carry, contending happily that “good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction” and expressing his hope that private gun owners would help to stem the tide of violence. Monday, across Lake Michigan, a judge struck down Chicago’s ban on gun sales, slamming progressive lawmakers into the bargain. Is Christmas really over?
“When we look at the good community members who have concealed-weapons permits,” Craig explained, “the likelihood they’ll shoot is based on a lack of confidence in this police department.” As a convert, Craig gave testimony that was of particular interest. “Coming from California, where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed-weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs,” he admitted, “and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation. I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.” To hear this from the police chief of the third most murderous city in the country is progress indeed.
All in all, it has been an unhappy few years for the gun-controllers of America’s more dangerous metropoleis. The Supreme Court’s 2008 D.C. v. Hellerdecision struck down the total ban on handgun ownership in the nation’s capital and established for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individualright to keep and bear arms. McDonald v. Chicago, a 2010 follow-up case, appliedHeller to the rest of the country and nixed Chicago’s gun ban, too.
Since McDonald, Chicago has done rather poorly in court. In 2010, the city’s government sneakily attempted to re-impose its ban by the backdoor, first requiring that permits be awarded only to applicants who had undergone live-fire training, and then banning all the firing ranges at which such training could take place. Within a year, a circuit court killed the measure in Ezell v. Chicago, savagely admonishing the city for its defense; recording for posterity that the claim that firing ranges would do “harm to the public interest is based entirely on speculation” (“a gun range becomes unusually dangerous if one runs into the line of fire but that is also true of vehicular traffic,” the judge wrote, drily); and reiterating Heller’s direct line of equivalence between the First and Second Amendments — a finding that the gun-control movement, which has long insisted that no such line exists, is possibly going to regret having invited. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s case, that citizens were not being denied their rights because they could go elsewhere to train, was shredded by the judge.
Emanuel’s losing streak continues. In Monday’s district-court ruling, the bench patiently explained to authorities that citizens cannot enjoy their Second Amendment rights if they are prohibited from performing auxiliary behaviors such as buying a firearm and training with it. This principle, first formally established byEzell, is important. After Heller — which didn’t require courts to apply a specific standard of review when evaluating challenges to gun control — gun advocates wondered aloud whether cities would simply be able to institute de facto gun bans via more narrowly tailored measures. Nationally, the question remains open. D.C., after all, has done precisely that, and with the support of a federal judge. But Chicago has gone the other way — twice.
Signs of hope abound — not only in the decisions themselves but also in the manner in which they have been delivered. The justice who authored Monday’s decision — an Obama appointee, amusingly enough — pretty much eviscerated the city’s case, observing that the “transaction costs” of the sales ban were “borne by law-abiding residents” of the city; that it was “doubtful that keeping criminal users away from legitimate retail stores will choke the supply of guns to those users” because, by the testimony of the city’s own survey, “legitimate firearms dealers play a minor and unimportant role as direct sources of the criminal handgun supply”; and that the city had so many other means of trying to reduce crime that its decision to ban sales bordered on the inexplicable. Presumably, Detroit’s new chief of police would agree.



………

happy jack wrote:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367813/gun-victories-midwest-charles-c-w-cooke



JANUARY 8, 2014 4:00 AM

Gun Victories in the Midwest

From Detroit to Chicago, the Second Amendment wins.

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Conservatives in the frigid Midwest could be forgiven for wondering whether the last week’s cold has been a sign that hell has finally frozen over, for, within a single week they have won big in a pair of cities that had all but been written off. Last Thursday, Detroit’s chief of police, James Craig, discussed openly his conversion on the question of concealed carry, contending happily that “good Americans with CPLs translates into crime reduction” and expressing his hope that private gun owners would help to stem the tide of violence. Monday, across Lake Michigan, a judge struck down Chicago’s ban on gun sales, slamming progressive lawmakers into the bargain. Is Christmas really over?
“When we look at the good community members who have concealed-weapons permits,” Craig explained, “the likelihood they’ll shoot is based on a lack of confidence in this police department.” As a convert, Craig gave testimony that was of particular interest. “Coming from California, where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed-weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs,” he admitted, “and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation. I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.” To hear this from the police chief of the third most murderous city in the country is progress indeed.
All in all, it has been an unhappy few years for the gun-controllers of America’s more dangerous metropoleis. The Supreme Court’s 2008 D.C. v. Hellerdecision struck down the total ban on handgun ownership in the nation’s capital and established for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individualright to keep and bear arms. McDonald v. Chicago, a 2010 follow-up case, appliedHeller to the rest of the country and nixed Chicago’s gun ban, too.
Since McDonald, Chicago has done rather poorly in court. In 2010, the city’s government sneakily attempted to re-impose its ban by the backdoor, first requiring that permits be awarded only to applicants who had undergone live-fire training, and then banning all the firing ranges at which such training could take place. Within a year, a circuit court killed the measure in Ezell v. Chicago, savagely admonishing the city for its defense; recording for posterity that the claim that firing ranges would do “harm to the public interest is based entirely on speculation” (“a gun range becomes unusually dangerous if one runs into the line of fire but that is also true of vehicular traffic,” the judge wrote, drily); and reiterating Heller’s direct line of equivalence between the First and Second Amendments — a finding that the gun-control movement, which has long insisted that no such line exists, is possibly going to regret having invited. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s case, that citizens were not being denied their rights because they could go elsewhere to train, was shredded by the judge.
Emanuel’s losing streak continues. In Monday’s district-court ruling, the bench patiently explained to authorities that citizens cannot enjoy their Second Amendment rights if they are prohibited from performing auxiliary behaviors such as buying a firearm and training with it. This principle, first formally established byEzell, is important. After Heller — which didn’t require courts to apply a specific standard of review when evaluating challenges to gun control — gun advocates wondered aloud whether cities would simply be able to institute de facto gun bans via more narrowly tailored measures. Nationally, the question remains open. D.C., after all, has done precisely that, and with the support of a federal judge. But Chicago has gone the other way — twice.
Signs of hope abound — not only in the decisions themselves but also in the manner in which they have been delivered. The justice who authored Monday’s decision — an Obama appointee, amusingly enough — pretty much eviscerated the city’s case, observing that the “transaction costs” of the sales ban were “borne by law-abiding residents” of the city; that it was “doubtful that keeping criminal users away from legitimate retail stores will choke the supply of guns to those users” because, by the testimony of the city’s own survey, “legitimate firearms dealers play a minor and unimportant role as direct sources of the criminal handgun supply”; and that the city had so many other means of trying to reduce crime that its decision to ban sales bordered on the inexplicable. Presumably, Detroit’s new chief of police would agree.



………

I can't help but wonder who these are "victories" for? Do the parents of these children view changes that loosen restrictions on gun ownership a "victory"?
http://samuel-warde.com/2013/06/indisputable-proof-that-stricter-gun-laws-save-childrens-lives/
87 percent of child gun fatalities throughout 23 industrialized nations happen in the U.S

sparks wrote:

I can't help but wonder who these are "victories" for?

The billion dollar gun industry and their pimp, the NRA.

Dad's texting to daughter sparks argument, fatal shooting in movie theater

Quote :

(CNN) -- It started with a father sending text messages to his daughter during the previews of a movie.

It ended with the 43-year-old man shot dead amid the theater seats, and a 71-year-old retired police officer in custody.

The shooting Monday during a 1:20 p.m. showing of "Lone Survivor" at a Wesley Chapel, Florida, movie theater escalated from an objection to cell phone use, to a series of arguments, to the sudden and deadly shooting, according to police and witnesses.

As a male moviegoer texted, the man seated behind him objected, and asked the texter to put his phone away.

They argued several times, according to police and witnesses, and the man who was texting watched as the other man walked out of the theater. Curtis Reeves, a retired police officer, apparently went seeking a theater employee to complain about the texting, police said.

Two seats away Charles Cummings and his son watched the squabbling.

When Reeves returned, he was without a manager.

"He came back very irritated," Cummings said.

The man who had been texting, Chad Oulson, got up and turned to Reeves to ask him if he had gone to tell on him for his texting. Oulson reportedly said, in effect: I was just sending a message to my young daughter.

Voices were raised. Popcorn was thrown. And then came something unimaginable -- except maybe in a movie. A gun shot.

Oulson was fatally wounded. His wife was hit, too, through the hand as she raised her hand in front of her husband as the shooter drew a handgun.

Oulson staggered toward the Cummings and fell on them, Charles Cummings said.

The shooter sat down and put the gun in his lap.

A "good guy with a gun" strikes again! Thanks Florida and NRA   

And perfectly legal if Reeves was at all scared (or merely claims to be since we lack the subsequent psychics necessary to prove it) during the altercation.

The best part thanks to the Stand Your Ground laws, had he killed a dozen or so bystanders "defending" himself, there's obviously no criminal liability but no civil liability either. 'Cause... you know. Freedom.

Heretic wrote:

And perfectly legal if Reeves was at all scared (or merely claims to be since we lack the subsequent psychics necessary to prove it) during the altercation.

Unfortunately for your argument, the Stand Your Ground law does not apply in this case.

Heretic wrote:

The best part thanks to the Stand Your Ground laws, had he killed a dozen or so bystanders "defending" himself, there's obviously no criminal liability but no civil liability either.  'Cause... you know.  Freedom.

See above.



http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/368391/florida-movie-theater-shooting-and-stand-your-ground-charles-c-w-cooke

The Florida Movie Theater Shooting and Stand Your Ground


By Charles C. W. Cooke

January 14, 2014 10:10 AM




Sadly, along with the rightful expressions of horror and surprise, I have started to see the usual murmurs about the supposed evils of both Stand Your Ground and of concealed carry — neither of which have anything to do with this case. For a start, whatever the merits and demerits of the Stand Your Ground provision – and I’m reasonably strongly in favor – what it absolutely does not do is allow one to start a fight and then to use deadly force in one’s defense. As I found last year when looking into the Trayvon Martin case:

In almost every state, if and when an individual enters into an altercation with the deliberate intention of provoking the other party into threatening him with death or injury, they lose the right to claim that they were acting in self-defense. Pretty much every Stand Your Ground system thus takes into account the motivations of someone who might look for an excuse to start a potentially lethal fight, or even of someone who is likely to provoke another as the byproduct of latent racial animosity.
This includes Florida, which per the Huffington Post’s Professor Alafair Burke,
follows traditional self-defense limitations by

prohibiting “initial aggressors” from using force provoked by their own conduct. A defendant in Florida cannot claim self-defense if he “initially provokes the use of force” against himself . . .


Indeed, even if one could do this, the question of who was the initial aggressor doesn’t even need to be considered in this case. Why? Well, because authorities quite rightly decided that the perpetrator couldn’t claim to have felt threatened and thus that Stand Your Ground was an irrelevance. As Fox reported:
Nocco said his detectives considered if the case qualified under the state’s controversial “stand your ground law,” which permits residents to employ deadly force if they fear imminent danger, but decided the criteria did not apply, MyFoxTampaBay.com reported.
Despite the tendency of media outlets faithfully to append the word to all such discussions, the law isn’t quite as “controversial” as we are led to believe. It was the norm for most of American history, and, after a brief hiatus in which crime spiked to terrifying levels, it returned to the vast majority of the states without much fanfare. It enjoys strong support today. I suspect that one of the reasons that Stand Your Ground has come under fire in recent years is that it is inextricable from the changed attitudes that have led to the liberalization of gun laws over the last 25 years. Critics know that they have lost the argument that an armed population will lead to more gun violence and they know that Americans no longer feel that it is in their interests to be disarmed, so they’re going after this instead.

edge540 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Unfortunately for your argument, the Stand Your Ground law does not apply in this case.

Why not?

From your link...

Quote :

Jeff Brown, a criminal defense attorney and legal analyst, predicts that Curtis Reeves will use Stand Your Ground as a defense, and this case will be a major test of the law.

Quote :

"This isn't just a guy who goes into a movie theater and shoots someone. He is a retired cop, and I guarantee you there is going to be a defense that he felt he was in fear of his life, that there was great bodily harm that he felt was coming toward him, and he's going to say he can stand his ground and use a firearm."

"You can bring a firearm to a popcorn fight now, because that's what Stand Your Ground is all about," Brown said. "If you are lawfully there, and you feel your life is in jeopardy or that you are threatened, you can defend yourself with deadly force. And that's what this issue is going to be."

Paging John Stewart & Steven Colbert 

edge540 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Unfortunately for your argument, the Stand Your Ground law does not apply in this case.

Why not?

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.041.html

The 2013 Florida Statutes

Title XLVI
CRIMES Chapter 776
JUSTIFIABLE USE OF FORCE View Entire Chapter


776.041 Use of force by aggressor.—The justification described in the preceding sections of this chapter is not available to a person who:
(1) Is attempting to commit, committing, or escaping after the commission of, a forcible felony; or
(2) Initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless:
(a) Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant; or
(b) In good faith, the person withdraws from physical contact with the assailant and indicates clearly to the assailant that he or she desires to withdraw and terminate the use of force, but the assailant continues or resumes the use of force.

As predictable as the low information internet trolls that repeat them...
Fox Attacks Harvey Weinstein's NRA Film With Barrage Of Falsehoods

Quote :

Fox News' defense of the gun lobby passed into the realm of fiction when host Martha MacCallum told viewers that what usually thwarts school shootings is "when there's a gun introduced into the situation." She followed up this myth with the long-debunked claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if Hitler hadn't confiscated citizens' firearms.

On the January 16 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, MacCallum moderated a discussion between radio host Mike Slater and Fox contributor Jehmu Greene about a new anti-NRA film being produced by Harvey Weinstein.

During the segment, MacCallum broke into the debate to declare that "in most cases" the harm from mass shootings has been mitigated by adding more guns into the fray, saying the shootings generally end "when there's a gun introduced into the situation that stops [the shooters] from what they're doing."

MacCallum -- echoing a Washington Times column by senior opinion editor and pro-NRA activist Emily Miller -- later intimated that the Holocaust could have been prevented if the citizenry were armed, but "their guns were all confiscated under German law at the time."

Though MacCallum's statistic is clad as a statement of fact, it is anything but -- a study completed by Mother Jones found that "not one of 62 mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years has been stopped" by an armed civilian.

On the subject of the Holocaust, Alex Seitz-Wald put the Hitler gun confiscation myth to bed in a 2013 Salon post, writing that "the notion...is mostly bogus":

   Unfortunately for LaPierre et al., the notion that Hitler confiscated everyone's guns is mostly bogus. And the ancillary claim that Jews could have stopped the Holocaust with more guns doesn't make any sense at all if you think about it for more than a minute.

   

Quote :

University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explored this myth in depth in a 2004 article published in the Fordham Law Review. As it turns out, the Weimar Republic, the German government that immediately preceded Hitler's, actually had tougher gun laws than the Nazi regime. After its defeat in World War I, and agreeing to the harsh surrender terms laid out in the Treaty of Versailles, the German legislature in 1919 passed a law that effectively banned all private firearm possession, leading the government to confiscate guns already in circulation. In 1928, the Reichstag relaxed the regulation a bit, but put in place a strict registration regime that required citizens to acquire separate permits to own guns, sell them or carry them.

   The 1938 law signed by Hitler that LaPierre mentions in his book basically does the opposite of what he says it did. "The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition," Harcourt wrote. Meanwhile, many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years.

   The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general. Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning? Should we eliminate all police officers because the Nazis used police officers to oppress and kill the Jews? What about public works -- Hitler loved public works projects? Of course not. These are merely implements that can be used for good or ill, much as gun advocates like to argue about guns themselves. If guns don't kill people, then neither does gun control cause genocide (genocidal regimes cause genocide).

That a Fox anchor would mislead the public on the subject of guns is not novel. Last month, Fox's Sean Hannity lied about the prevalence of background checks during a segment about the anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

I'm betting that Harvey Weinstein is popping the champagne right about now and forever thankful to the wingnut kooks that will be creating the free buzz and publicity for his film.  

happy jack wrote:

It doesn't seem as if Mr. Weinstein has thought his stance on firearms all the way through, which I guess makes him the best person to produce a film about them.

It also obvious the author of the article, Emily Miller knows shit about history. Of course that's nothing new for a conservative, par for the course.

Did Gun Control Prevent Jews From Stopping The Holocaust?

Quote :

The Anti-Defamation League "has always strenuously objected to the use of Nazi analogies to advance any kind of political debate, including the gun control debate," said Deborah Lauter, the group's civil rights director. "We believe it's historically inaccurate and incredibly insensitive, particularly to Holocaust survivors and their families."

Beyond that, she said, it's just a false comparison.

Quote :

"In no way could armed people have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi state," she said, noting that some European Jews had access to a small number of firearms. "There could be symbolic resistance, as we saw in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but it would not have stopped the Nazis."

The invocation of the Holocaust to argue against gun control is an abuse of history, said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Quote :

"When it doesn't hold up to any kind of serious historical argument, then it feels manipulative in terms of using the death of our 6 million (Jews) and the 5 million others who were butchered by the Nazis,"

said Saperstein, a vocal proponent of strengthening U.S. gun laws.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/370733/manufacturers-change-look-ar-15-rifle-now-legal-new-york-state-charles-c-w-cooke

Manufacturers Change Look of AR-15; Rifle Is Now Legal in New York State

By Charles C. W. Cooke
February 10, 2014 11:50 AM

Pass a stupid law, get a stupid result. This, Clash Daily reports, is a remodeled AR-15, and it is legal in New York despite the state’s “assault weapons” ban:
When the opponents of “assault weapon” bans argue that it is preposterous for the state to ban firearms based on the way they look, they really mean it. It is. The rifle in the photograph above is no more or less powerful than the one that has been banned; it just looks different. And, because the SAFE Act was, typically, interested only in cosmetic questions, a simple change to its aesthetic rendered the rifle legal once more. As Clash Daily’s Jonathan S. explains:


Prototypes for the newly designed AR-15 are hitting gun shops across New York, as gun shops and machinists have designed a rifle that complies with the anti-gun law. At least one gun shop has received a letter from state police saying that the new AR-15 style rifles should be legal in the state as long as they don’t have some of the features that the law prohibits.
The new gun law bans all kinds of semi-automatic rifles that have been labeled with the “assault” term even though these are very common rifles and are no more powerful than the average hunting rifle.
Features like adjustable stocks, pistols grips, and flash suppressors has been deemed to be unlawful on these rifles, mainly because it makes them LOOK mean.  And we all know how little these anti-gun lawmakers really know about guns, as the “Ghost gun” video illustrated.
The new AR-15 design did away with the pistol grip which gives the gun an odd paintball gun look.  The stock is fixed as well, but at least New Yorkers now have a legal way to own an AR-15, a fact which is still driving some gun control activists mad.


Reading this story, one would almost conclude that legislation that deals only with the superficial and the irrelevant is inherently silly. Curious.
Fewer people are killed with all rifles each year (323 in 2011) than with shotguns (356), hammers and clubs (496), and hands and feet (728).



Dumbasses.