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.”

Coming up soon, this hearing aught to be interesting.

Hearings
Terrorists and Guns: The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
10:00 AM
Dirksen Senate Office Building, room 342

Witnesses
Panel 1

* The Honorable Frank R. Lautenberg
U.S. Senate
* The Honorable Peter T. King
U.S. House of Representatives
* The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor
City of New York

Panel 2

* Daniel D. Roberts
Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Department of Justice
* Eileen R. Larence
Director, Homeland Security and Justice
U.S. Government Accountability Office
* Sandy Jo MacArthur
Assistant Chief, Office of Administrative Services
Los Angeles Police Department

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

Friday, April 30, 2010

The Democrat-controlled Congress and the White House are pulling out all the stops to offset the oncoming tidal wave that is threatening to throw them out of power this November.

With their polls sagging badly, the liberal Democrats rammed through a Puerto Rican statehood resolution yesterday which many consider the first step towards making Puerto Rico the 51st state — a move that would give liberal progressives in the Congress six more Representatives and two new Senators.

Making Puerto Rico a state would bring another gun control bastion into our nation and bring almost ten anti-gun congressmen and senators into the Congress.

This is disgraceful! With her party’s polls plummeting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to get as many additional progressives into Congress as possible so that she can continue advancing her liberal, anti-American agenda.

Regarding the statehood resolution, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) says it “is the Puerto Rico statehood bill which is being pushed by the new progressive party in Puerto Rico trying to create a federally [sanctioned] vote that they say is nonbinding but would give them the legitimacy to then come back and try to seat people in the United States Congress.”

To see how your congressman voted on the Puerto Rican statehood resolution, go to:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll242.xml

GOA will keep you updated as to when a vote is scheduled in the U.S. Senate.

GOA helps kill Pelosi’s attempt to give DC a vote in Congress

Not to be satisfied with merely eight new liberal votes from Puerto Rico, liberal Democrats want to give statehood to Washington, DC. S. 160 would take a major step in that direction by giving this federal enclave a vote in the House of Representatives.

The bill is the DC Voting Rights Act, otherwise known as the DC Vote Grab Act. It would make Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton a legitimate voting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

If you know anything about Del. Norton, you know that she is one of the most liberal, anti-gun legislators in the country — one who completely supports Nancy Pelosi’s agenda. Of course, Democrats are not just going to settle for a mere Representative in Congress… they want statehood for the District of Columbia in order to get two anti-gun Senators, as well.

It seems that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi strategy is to continue screwing the country — even if it hurts them in the polls — because then they will work to get as many “new” votes as possible through Puerto Rican statehood… DC statehood… and even things like amnesty for illegal aliens.

But if Pelosi were to succeed in making DC a state, there will be two more liberal votes in the Senate — a situation that would allow them to break any Republican filibuster that would stymie their anti-gun agenda.

The Senate passed S. 160 last year, and if it were not for Gun Owners of America and Senator John Ensign, it would have been signed into law last spring.

Pro-gun Senator John Ensign and Gun Owners of America worked together to attach an amendment to the DC Vote Grab Act. The amendment would repeal all the restrictive gun control laws still on the books in DC after the landmark D.C. v. Heller Supreme Court decision. The vote margin was an amazing 62-36 in the Senate!

Wiping out DC’s still very restrictive anti-gun laws was not what Speaker Pelosi and other rabid anti-Second Amendment members of the House wanted to see.

Because of this GOA-supported amendment, the House has been unable to take any action on the Senate measure. While Speaker Pelosi has no desire to see a pro-gun provision within the DC bill, many House members are afraid to vote for any such bill that doesn’t contain the pro-gun Ensign amendment. In short, this has been a real Mexican standoff that has lasted for nearly a year.

In fact, when Pelosi tried to bring up the bill last week, she could not muster enough votes to secure passage. S. 160 might now be dead for the year, but GOA will continue watching this and alert you to any attempts to bring up the bill again.

Senate “disses” America’s veterans

For several years, GOA has been alerting gun owners to the travesty of justice that has been perpetrated on our veterans.

After the Brady law went into effect, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) began sending the names of many of its beneficiaries to the FBI so they could be added to the NICS list, denying these individuals their right to purchase a firearm. To date, more than 150,000 military veterans have been denied.

However, none of these veterans were ever convicted of a crime; none were found to be a danger to anyone; and none were afforded any meaningful due process of law. Under the semblance of being “mental defectives,” these veterans were added to the list strictly because a doctor or a bureaucrat in the VA appointed someone to manage their finances.

The al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo have been given more due process than the American soldiers who fought them!

To combat this outrage, pro-gun Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) authored S. 669, the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act, that will safeguard for veterans two of the most fundamental Constitutional rights enjoyed by Americans: due process of law and the right to keep and bear arms.

The Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act merely stipulates that a veteran cannot lose his or her gun rights “without the order or finding of a judge, magistrate, or other judicial authority of competent jurisdiction that such person is a danger to himself or herself or others.”

This very reasonable bill passed out of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last June, having been approved unanimously.

Burr’s language was offered on the floor of the Senate during the health care debate, but unfortunately, it was defeated 53-45. To see how your Senator voted, go to:
http://tinyurl.com/2ufvgu4

GOA will continue fighting for the passage of this very important legislation.

Where we are at

As you know, elections have consequences. GOA is fighting in the trenches to protect/regain our rights. And, thankfully, we have won a couple of major battles at the federal level — like securing the ability to transport firearms on Amtrak trains and carry loaded guns in National Parks.

In the states, GOA has been successfully pushing Firearms Freedom Acts around the country — laws which allow guns that are made in their home states, and stay in those states, to be free of federal regulation. (Currently, there are seven states that have enacted such laws; several others are still in the process.)

GOA also worked in Arizona to pass a new Alaska-style carry law which allows citizens to carry concealed firearms without first getting permission from the government.

We have also lost some battles, as would be expected in a climate that is overwhelmingly controlled by liberals in Washington.

So we need your help. We can win the battles that are facing us, but only if we each give our maximum effort. Thank you for your continued support for our work. Even if you can only a give a couple of dollars, every little bit counts.

To make a contribution to Gun Owners of America, please visit: http://gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm

IAPCAR Ambassadors Julianne Versnel (SAF), Alan Gottlieb (CCRKBA) and Simone Ciucchi and Silvia Gentile (FISAT) attended EXA 2010, the 29th International Sporting Arms, Security, Outdoor Show in Brescia, Italy where they launched an IAPCAR supported class action lawsuit to protect the rights of Italian firearms owners.

At the EXA Show over 1200 gun owners signed up as co-plaintiffs for the first ever gun owner class action lawsuit filed in Europe. IAPCAR owes a very big thank you to the Italian gun magazine, ARMIeTiro who provided the exhibit space for the effort.

So far this year, IAPCAR has held meetings and events at SHOT in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA) IWA in Nuremberg, Germany and at EXA in Brescia, Italy.

IAPCAR now has 14 member organizations from 7 countries on three continents. Several more national organizations are in the process of joining.

IAPCAR Managing Director Mark Barnes will hold an Executive Committee meeting on May 1 in Phoenix, Arizona (USA) where plans for additional meetings, events and activities will be developed. Events, meetings and activities on the executive meeting agenda will include:

NRA Convention and Annual Meeting: (May 14-16) A number of IAPCAR Ambassadors and member organizations will be attending and will have an opportunity to get together and network. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) will have an exhibit booth at the Charlotte, North Carolina (USA) event.

UN Programme of Action (POA) on Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW): BMS4 will be held the week of June 14-18, 2010, in New York. Several IAPCAR Ambassadors and member organizations will attend this important United Nations meeting.

The UN General Assembly has also authorized an Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) to meet in 2011 to review the POA and make recommendations to a major conference on SALW in 2012. The POA OEWG will meet during the week of January 10, 2011. There are plans for will regional meetings in support of the POA in 2011. UNIDIR will be coordinating these meetings. Dates and locations have not been decided but the meeting for the Americas will probably be held in South America (Argentina or Chile).

UN Arms Trade Treaty: The ATT Preparatory Committee (Prep. Com.) meeting will be held from July 12-23, 2010, in New York. As currently planned, there will be further ATT Preparatory Committee meetings in 2011, a short procedural meeting in 2012 followed by a four-week conference in later in the year.

Gun Rights Policy Conference: The event will take place September 24-26, 2010 in San Francisco, California (USA) and include a panel made up of IAPCAR Ambassadors and member organizations as well as a strategy meeting to combat the global threat to civilian arms rights.

United Nations Firearms Protocol: Work continues for the Expert Working Group for the Development of a Model Law on Firearms. There is a tentative meeting set for the first week of July in Vienna. The Protocol will be on the agenda for the Conference of Parties to the Trans-national Organized Crime Convention that meets in Vienna Oct. 18-22, 2010.

International Small Arms Control Standards (ISACS): Reports are due. Please check www.un-casa.org for updates.

International Ammunition Regulations: The UN is circulating draft proposals for stockpile guidelines. This continues to be an area of grave concern as it appears to be a closed.

UN Register of Conventional Arms: There will be a major effort by the international anti-gun rights lobby to expand the UN Register of Conventional Arms to include “small arms and light weapons.” Handguns, rifles and shotguns would fall into this definition and therefore be included in plans for registration and control proposals and treaties. This effort should conclude in 2012.

Future Meetings Calendar
UN POA – Biennial Meeting of States, June 14-18, 2010.
UN ATT Preparatory Committee – July 12-16, 2010, New York.
UN Firearms Protocol – Conference of Parties to the Trans-national Organized Crime Convention that meets in Vienna, Oct. 18-22, 2010.
UN General Assembly First Committee – October/November, 2010 (exact dates to be announced).
UN POA OEWG – January 10-14, 2011.
UN ATT Preparatory Committee – February 28 to March 4, 2011, New York.
IAPCAR IWA 2011 Meetings – March 11-12, 2011, Nuremberg, Germany.
UN ATT Preparatory Committee – July 11-15, 2011, New York.

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today said a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Jon Tester and John McCain that would repeal most gun laws in the District of Columbia “would not be necessary if District officials had lived up to the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case.”

Tester (D-MT) and McCain (R-AZ) unveiled the Second Amendment Enforcement Act Tuesday. It would overrule the District’s deliberately complicated registration requirements and would also prevent enactment of regulations that prohibit the carrying of firearms in public places. The bill would further reign in the police chief’s discretionary power to deny carry licenses to law-abiding citizens. Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Reps. Travis Childers (D-MS) and Mark Souder (R-IN).

“District officials have stubbornly refused to adopt rational gun regulations that include the right-to-carry for self-defense, even after they were essentially told to do so by the Supreme Court,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The city’s resistance to change has been both obstructive and childish, and it is time for grown-ups in Congress to stop this nonsense.

“Mayor Adrian Fenty, the District Council and Police Chief Cathy Lanier have deliberately, and I believe maliciously placed one roadblock after another in the paths of District citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights,” he continued. “These officials have hardly dealt with this issue in good faith. Instead they have mired the process in needless bureaucracy with no other apparent purpose than to simply discourage District residents from legally obtaining and keeping firearms for personal protection, as the Heller ruling clearly mandated.

“Just the other day,” he noted, “they willingly sacrificed full congressional voting rights because the measure also included full gun rights provisions.

“We will encourage our members to support the Second Amendment Enforcement Act,” Gottlieb stated. “The District government’s arrogant obstinacy has grown intolerable. Congress must pass this legislation and force the District’s juvenile city government to behave.”

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.