Op-Ed By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
Adhering to a pattern of behavior that has developed over the years, a tiny contingent of gun prohibitionists paraded outside of the Charlotte Convention Center while the National Rifle Association was hosting its record-breaking members’ meeting, but they remained only long enough to get some camera time with local news crews.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, came to that North Carolina city in order to grab some face time and get his name in the local newspapers. Where the NRA can pull more than 70,000 members, the Brady bunch could barely muster two dozen protesters to parade around for perhaps an hour, probably less, and then leave satisfied that the 5 o’clock news would carry their images.

For several years, right up to the devastating 1994 mid-term elections that turned dozens of Congressional anti-gunners out of office, the Brady Campaign and other gun control groups enjoyed media and public support. But when gun rights organizations began fighting back with facts, and developed a strategy of education through legal journals, their influence began to wane. That influence continued to erode as time tested their rhetoric and found it not simply wanting, but totally preposterous.

Their dire predictions in state after state that concealed carry reform and state preemption statutes would spawn Wild West gunfights at fender benders, bloody shootouts in restaurants and cocktail lounges, and skyrocketing murder rates in which perpetrators would be citizens who were licensed to carry all were false. Influential people, including prosecutors and county sheriffs, recognized this and went on the record to say so.

These days, Brady’s Helmke is reduced to spouting platitudes on the steps of the Supreme Court, verbally bashing important civil rights cases like District of Columbia v. Heller and the Second Amendment Foundation’s pending McDonald v. City of Chicago.

His organization has desperately resorted to attacking Starbucks Coffee to gin up support while pandering paranoia; an effort that anti-gunners have developed into an art form, albeit a lousy one.

They have attacked the most anti-gun president in the nation’s history, giving Barack Obama an “F” grade because he is not anti-gun enough to suit their extremist philosophy.

The Brady Campaign has not managed to push through a single piece of federal legislation in more than 15 years. Their attempt to sue the gun industry into bankruptcy using anti-gun mayors as their puppet proxies failed on legal merit and in the court of public opinion.

If it weren’t for the fact that pro-gun rights groups are so active, the Brady bunch would not even have events to attend. In short, gun prohibitionists have become irrelevant, and in their desperation for attention, they appear to be in a state of denial, reaching out to a shrinking audience that still believes in public safety through demagoguery and surrender to the criminal element.

Just like some politicians, Helmke and the Brady Campaign do not know when it is time to retire.

Alan Gottlieb is the Founder of Second Amendment Foundation. Dave Workman is senior editor of Gun Week. They are co-authors of Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns.

News Video
Paul Meincke

May 19, 2010 (CHICAGO) (WLS) — Within the next five weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a challenge to Chicago’s 28-year-old ban on handguns.

It’s believed the court will rule that the law is unconstitutional. ABC 7’s Paul Meincke talked with Mayor Richard Daley about what the city might do next.

Conventional wisdom is that the handgun ban will not pass constitutional muster. Mindful of that, the city has been — for some time now — formulating plans on what it does next. The mayor says there are plans in place still being refined. But a strong hint of what Chicago will do requires only a look at the nation’s capital.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court declared Washington DC’s handgun ban unconstitutional, saying that residents have a 2nd Amendment right to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. But the court also said that right is not unlimited and local governments are free to enact reasonable gun regulation.

“We’ll be looking at local ordinances. We’ll have to wait for the decision to come down and what they will say in the decision,” said Mayor Daley.

What Chicago does may be patterned after what Washington DC has already done. Its new gun control laws — now a year old — say that prospective handgun owners must register their guns after undergoing more extensive background checks, including giving fingerprints and photographs.

The gun they buy must first be given to police for ballistics identification. An owner must complete a training course — four hours in the classroom, one on a gun range. And, among other restrictions, you can register no more than one gun a month, and you must undergo background checks every six years.

“You have to have some familiarity with the law with regard to the use of guns. Those are all important safety requirements. We require similar things when we give a driver’s license,” said Paul Helmke, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun violence.

ABC 7’s Paul Meincke asked the mayor if the city is looking into a package of laws that would deal with many of those things Washington DC is now doing.

“Yes, we’re looking at that and maybe looking at expanding that for the protection of first responders, and neighbors as well as liability,” Daley said.

On that score, the city is considering requiring gun owners to carry a level of liability insurance.

“You’ll have to show that you have insurance before you can purchase and register a gun, somewhat similar to what you do before you buy a car,” said Prof. Harold Krent, Kent College of Law dean.

Much of what the city is working on is still on the drawing board, subject to the specifics of the high court’s opinion. Whatever Chicago enacts will be challenged in court by opponents who argue that local government is just trying to subvert the Constitution with ineffective hoops and hurdles.

“Why should I be fingerprinted simply to exercise a constitutional right? It just seems like they want to treat us more like sex offenders rather than they do law-abiding citizens,” said Todd Vandermyde, National Rifle Association.

The one-gun-a-month provision would require state legislative approval for it to occur in Chicago, and the votes have never been there for that. Washington is a bit different in that it’s a federal enclave. Its new gun regulations have already been challenged in federal court, and the district court in DC has ruled that they do satisfy the Constitution.
(Copyright ©2010 WLS-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “relaxation” of gun regulations to make them more streamlined in the city is “a lot of flash and very little substance,” the Second Amendment Foundation said today, after carefully studying the new guidelines.

“It is clear to us,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to make it appear that his gun regulations are more user-friendly to deflect a potential lawsuit once the Supreme Court rules on our legal action to overturn the handgun ban in Chicago. This tells us that Bloomberg and his legal advisors are convinced the high court will hand down a favorable ruling in the McDonald case, striking down Chicago’s ban and incorporating the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment.’

Under Bloomberg’s program, licensing requirements will be allegedly streamlined, renewal fees will go down and the application process will be speedier.

“This sounds good on the surface,” Gottlieb observed, “but a little digging reveals that there is only one handgun licensing office in the entire city, in Manhattan. There is only one office for registering and licensing rifles and shotguns in the entire city, and that office is in Queens. The handgun application fee is $340, and there is a $94.25 fingerprinting fee on top of that. This fee structure screams ‘for elites only’ because those fees are outrageously expensive for average citizens.

“Adding insult to injury,” he continued, “this is only to keep a handgun in your home or business. To get a carry permit, you still have to prove a ‘need.’ Mayor Bloomberg, it’s not the Bill of Needs, it’s the Bill of Rights.”

Even Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told the New York Times that Bloomberg is relaxing the rules because the current regulations will not be defensible under an affirmative ruling in the McDonald case, Gottlieb noted.

“Mayor Bloomberg is right to think he needs to relax gun regulations in New York City,” Gottlieb said. “He is also right to think that SAF just might come knocking with a lawsuit after our case against Chicago is decided. But he is wrong to think these sham rules are going to mollify gun owners, or fool us into giving him a pass.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.

SOURCE Second Amendment Foundation
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RELATED LINKS
http://www.saf.org

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org
Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The next justice of the Supreme Court could well cast the deciding vote on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. And that justice will almost certainly preside, during the next thirty years, over dozens of cases which could very well chip away at the DC v. Heller decision, telling us which gun laws the court views as “constitutional” and which “unconstitutional.”

So it is more than a little interesting that Barack Qbama has reached into his closet of political leftists to bring out Elena Kagan — a woman whose legal views have been shaped by the most extreme socialist voices in Washington.

Kagan doesn’t have a record of judicial opinions. She hasn’t been a judge. So the crafty Obama figures that, without a paper trail, we won’t know of the ways she is moving American jurisprudence to the left until it’s too late.

But Kagan’s views on the Second Amendment are no mystery. According to columnist James Oliphant, Kagan was part of “a small group of staffers work[ing] behind the scenes to pursue an aggressive policy agenda” during President Bill Clinton’s second term.

Oliphant writes: “According to records at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., [Kagan] drafted an executive order restricting the importation of certain semiautomatic assault rifles. She also helped prepare a question-and-answer document advocating the campaign-reform legislation then proposed by Sens. Russ Feingold and John McCain.”

Kagan was also part of the Clinton team that pushed the firearms industry to include gun locks with all gun purchases and was in the Clinton administration when the president pushed legislation that would close down gun shows.

President Obama has made it very clear that he expects Kagan’s “powers of persuasion” to make her and Justice Anthony Kennedy the swing votes to uphold his anti-gun ObamaCare legislation.

Kagan’s opinion of the “greatest lawyer” of her lifetime was her former boss — the consistently left-wing Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Bloomberg News reported on May 13 that while working for Justice Marshall, Kagan urged him to vote against hearing a gun owner’s claim that his constitutional rights were violated.

Kagan wrote that she was “not sympathetic” toward the gun rights claim that was made in Sandidge v. United States — an amazing statement for a woman who is being heralded for supposedly showing a “special solicitude” for the interests of certain groups.

Alas, it seems that gun owners are not a part of those groups for whom she would like to show special concern.

After the Heller case was handed down, Kagan did concede that the Second Amendment was an “individual right.” But that makes her no different than the talking heads at the Brady Campaign.

Kagan, like the President who nominated her, is an extreme leftist. According to WeeklyStandard.com (May 6, 2009), she is so far to the left she has lamented that socialism has “never attained the status of a major political force” in our country.

And according to Politico.com (March 20, 2009), she says that foreign law can be used to interpret the U.S. Constitution in “some circumstances.” Considering that most of the world does not respect the freedoms that are protected in our Second Amendment, this is a bad sign.

While every Senator needs to hear from us, there are seven Republican Senators in particular who need to hear from their constituents. These seven Republicans voted for Elena Kagan last year when she was confirmed as Obama’s Solicitor General:

* Coburn (R-OK)
* Collins (R-ME)
* Gregg (R-NH)
* Hatch (R-UT)
* Kyl (R-AZ)
* Lugar (R-IN)
* Snowe (R-ME)

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to vote NO on Elena Kagan — and tell him or her that you want Kagan’s nomination filibustered and defeated. As Kagan could be the deciding vote on the constitutionality of ObamaCare and many other gun cases, it is imperative that Republicans stick together and filibuster every anti-gun nomination from the President.

You can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your legislators the pre-written e-mail message below.

—– Pre-written letter —–

Dear Senator:

Please vote NO on the nomination of Elena Kagan. The next justice of the Supreme Court will almost certainly preside, during the next thirty years, over dozens of cases which could very well chip away at the DC v. Heller decision, telling us which gun laws the court views as “constitutional” and which “unconstitutional.”

But Kagan’s views on the Second Amendment are no mystery. Columnist James Oliphant writes: “According to records at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., [Kagan] drafted an executive order restricting the importation of certain semiautomatic assault rifles.”

She was also part of the Clinton team that pushed the firearms industry to include gun locks with all gun purchases and was in the Clinton administration when the president pushed legislation that would close down gun shows.

Bloomberg News reported on May 13 that while working for Justice Thurgood Marshall, Kagan urged him to vote against hearing a gun owner’s claim that his constitutional rights were violated. Kagan wrote that she was “not sympathetic” toward the gun owner’s claim.

Sure, after the Heller case was handed down, Kagan did concede that the Second Amendment was an “individual right.” But that makes her no different than the talking heads at the Brady Campaign.

According to WeeklyStandard.com (May 6, 2009), she is so far to the left she has lamented that socialism has “never attained the status of a major political force” in our country.

And according to Politico.com (March 20, 2009), she says that foreign law can be used to interpret the U.S. Constitution in “some circumstances.” Considering that most of the world does not respect the freedoms that are protected in our Second Amendment, this is a bad sign.

Please vote NO on Elena Kagan and support any filibuster attempt against her.

Sincerely,
________________________________________

GOF Brief in McDonald v Chicago

Speaking of the Supreme Court, the next high-court judicial battle regarding gun rights will be an attempt to rule Chicago’s notorious gun ban as unconstitutional as the one struck down in Washington DC in the landmark Heller case. In essence, will the “individual right” affirmed in Heller apply to every state or just DC?

To view what Gun Owners Foundation is doing to influence this upcoming Supreme Court decision, and/or to make a tax-deductible contribution to further these legal efforts, please see:
http://www.gunowners.com/mcdonald.htm

Pine Ridge Sporting Clays
Opening Date Set for May 20th

Pine Ridge Sporting Clays was recently approved for the special use permit required to open for business! We have set a tenative “open for business” date of next Thursday, May 20th, 2010. Come out and visit us! Just a refresher…we are located at:

464 South 152nd Ave
Shelby, MI 49455
Directions to the club:

1. US 31 North to M20 East
2. Go to 132nd Ave and turn left
3. Go North to East Pierce Rd. and turn right
4. Go to 144th Ave. and turn left
5. Go North to Buchannon and turn right
6. Go East to 152nd Ave. and turn left
7. Go North 0.6 miles and the course is on your right

By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman

OMAHA, NE – The Nebraska Firearms Owners Association (NFOA) today called on the city of Omaha to end its practice of registering firearms, in the wake of a case involving a private citizen who fatally shot an armed robber, and who continues to be denied the ability to register a new firearm by the Omaha Police Department, which took his defensive sidearm used in the shooting into evidence.

NFOA President Andreas Allen said that the hero in this incident, Harry (James) McCullough, now faces gang reprisal because the armed robber man he fatally shot was a documented gang member. Mr. McCullough has “great concern for his personal safety.”

“He is living on the road, sleeping at a different house every night and not working,” Allen said.

“We arranged for Mr. McCullough to get a new replacement handgun from a federally licensed firearms dealer,” he continued. “Mr. McCullough completed the paperwork on his new handgun and took a receipt down to OPD to register the handgun before taking possession of it, to make sure he was in complete compliance with city ordinances. OPD denied his registration because of a past citation for carrying a concealed weapon. After the City Prosecutor publicly stated he did not have grounds to charge Mr. McCullough, he again contacted the police to register his new firearm and was turned away.”

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, called this situation “unconscionable.” NFOA is a Citizens Committee affiliate.

“Mister McCullough has been cleared of any wrongdoing in this case,” Gottlieb observed, “yet the police are retaining his firearm, and will not allow him to register a replacement gun. He intervened in a dangerous situation, at great personal risk, and now he is being put at continued risk by a police department policy that is both arbitrary and capricious.”

Mr. McCullough has a right to protect himself, and his rights are being denied right now, Allen said.

When NFOA asked the Chief of Police to assist with this issue, he responded: “This is Omaha, and we ask you to respect the challenges of our city.”

“The city’s handgun registration ordinance has been nothing more than a tool used against average citizens to prevent gun ownership,” Allen said. “The Omaha Police Department has blatantly ignored state law over the past year, even as we tried to work with the police and prosecutor’s office to correct this violation. After conversations with both offices they refused to adjust their policies. They continue to make excuses even after a deputy chief was chastised by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, and even after the State Attorney General released an opinion that they are in violation of the law.

“This is very disappointing,” he said. “I thought it was the job of the police department to enforce the laws, not ignore them.”

Allen said there are many other cases of individuals being denied registration unfairly. The Omaha Police claim registration is a tool to track guns, he added, but he asserted that that this tool is used more often to prevent gun ownership than to track down stolen guns.

“I think it is time the City of Omaha take a step back and reevaluate this whole handgun registration issue. It is time the city council eliminate this ordinance,” he said.

The Nebraska Firearms Owners Association (www.NebraskaFirearms.org) is the largest firearms rights organization in the state of Nebraska. NFOA was organized to represent its membership at the Nebraska Legislature and other law making bodies within the state as well as at the federal level. Membership is free for all Nebraskans concerned with their right to keep and bear arms. NFOA members will also make it a priority to educate residents on firearms related issues. Email: nefirearms@gmail.com for more information.

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the Internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to InformationRequest@ccrkba.org.

May 2, 2010
Hotshot sniper in one-and-a-half mile double kill
Michael Smith

A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than 1 miles away.

Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.

“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.”

The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.

In a remarkable tour of duty, Harrison cheated death a few weeks later when a Taliban bullet pierced his helmet but was deflected away from his skull. He later broke both arms when his army vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

Harrison was sent back to the UK for treatment, but insisted on returning to the front line after making a full recovery.

“I was lucky that my physical fitness levels were very high before my arms were fractured and after six weeks in plaster I was still in pretty good shape,” he said. “It hasn’t affected my ability as a sniper.”

Harrison, from Gloucestershire, was reunited in Britain with his wife Tanya and daughter Dani, 16, last month. Recalling his shooting prowess in Helmand province, he said: “It was just unlucky for the Taliban that conditions were so good and we could see them so clearly.”

Harrison and his colleagues were in open-topped Jackal 4×4 vehicles providing cover for an Afghan national army patrol south of Musa Qala in November last year. When the Afghan soldiers and Harrison’s troop commander came under enemy fire, the sniper, whose vehicle was further back on a ridge, trained his sights on a Taliban compound in the distance. His L115A3 long-range rifle, the army’s most powerful sniper weapon, is designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft and supposedly capable of only “harassing fire” beyond that range.

“We saw two insurgents running through its courtyard, one in a black dishdasha, one in green,” he said. “They came forward carrying a PKM machinegun, set it up and opened fire on the commander’s wagon.

“Conditions were perfect, no wind, mild weather, clear visibility. I rested the bipod of my weapon on a compound wall and aimed for the gunner firing the machinegun.

“The driver of my Jackal, Trooper Cliff O’Farrell, spotted for me, providing all the information needed for the shot, which was at the extreme range of the weapon.”

Harrison killed one machinegunner with his first attempt and felled the other with his next shot. He then let off a final round to knock the enemy weapon out of action.

Harrison discovered that he had set a new record only on his return to UK barracks nine days ago. The previous record was held by Corporal Rob Furlong, of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who was using a 12.7mm McMillan TAC-50 rifle.

Tom Irwin, a director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said: “It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”

News of Harrison’s success comes amid concern over a rival insurgent sharpshooter who in a five-month spree has killed up to seven British soldiers, including a sniper, in and around the Taliban stronghold of Sangin.

In a later incident during the tour, Harrison’s patrol vehicle was hit 36 times during a Taliban ambush. “One round hit my helmet behind the right ear and came out of the top,” he said. “Two more rounds went through the strap across my chest. We were all very, very lucky not to get hurt.”