More misinformation from Shannon Watts, founder of Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, and Bloomberg shill.

This is in reference to the heroic action taken by Elisjsha Dicken to stop a mass shooting:

“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but when a 22-year-old illegally brings a loaded gun into a mall and kills a mass shooter armed with an AR-15 after he already killed three people and wounded others is not a ringing endorsement of our implementation of the Second Amendment,”

First, think about that statement.  Gun controller Watts would rather have seen the mass shooter given free rein to kill more people rather than be stopped by a good guy with a gun.  How messed up is that?!

But here is the misinformation that so many will unquestioningly accept as fact: she states that Dicken “illegally” brought a loaded gun into the mall.  To say this is a massive lie is an understatement.  Unless the law designates a location as a “gun free” zone, IT ISN’T ILLEGAL TO CARRY A FIREARM THERE.

Some locations have declared themselves “gun free”; they have posted signs indicating this.  But in Indiana, as is true for the vast majority of states, such signs DO NOT HAVE THE FORCE IF LAW; they are essentially house rules.  The same is true of Michigan.  Now, if you happen to get caught carrying your firearm in these places, you can be trespassed, asked to leave the premises and not return.  If you refuse to leave, police can be called and you can be charged with misdemeanor trespassing.  If you return after being asked to leave you can be charged.   But carrying a firearm  in violation of what is essentially a house rule IS NOT ILLEGAL.

Shannon Watts is hoping that people won’t question her, will take her at face value when she says Dicken committed a crime when he stopped the mass shooter.

But her accusation actually goes farther than that.

You see, a claim of self defense under a stand your ground defense assumes that the defender isn’t committing a crime himself when he uses deadly force.  While Watts doesn’t actually say the words, that is the true gist of her statement: she wants him to be prosecuted for stopping a mass shooting, for saving lives.  Watts would rather see innocent people die while waiting for police to respond than to see an obviously prepared and well-trained lawful firearms carrier come to the rescue.Just how messed up is THAT?!

And Now, Aurora, IL....

"Wife Of Aurora Shooting Victim Reveals Husband's Final Text Message"

"I love You.  I've been shot at work."

The headline and last text message as given in the HuffPo article regarding this latest mass shooting.

I am sickened by these events and the usual anti-firearms sniping that follows them.  I am a former federal officer.  I have nothing but the highest respect for police officers.  They have an incredibly difficult, and ofter thankless, job.  So I'm not taking pot shots at them; their hands are tied by department policies.  

At the same time, I am reminded that the supreme court has, on more than TEN different occasions, ruled that law enforcement has ABSOLUTELY NO DUTY TO PROTECT INDIVIDUALS; their responsibility is to society as a whole.  Whether  - or IF - police respond to any given call for help, according to these rulings, is left ENTIRELY up to the policies of the individual department.  And we have seen, time after time, the results of these policies.  

In this instance, law enforcement was made aware that the shooter had a criminal history.  Evidently, they sent him a letter requiring him to surrender his weapons - and then they never followed up to ensure that he actually did.  Before Parkland, law enforcement met with the shooter on more than THIRTY occasions, KNEW that he had a propensity toward violence, yet he was left free to carry out his attack.  Situation after situation like this exists, and in fact is quite normal proceeding mass shooting events.  

Yet all those who oppose firearms ownership can tell us is, "Trust the police to protect you.  You don't need a firearms to protect you and your family, that's why we have police."  And then, to make matters worse, they go on to intimate that the millions of lawful firearms owners and carriers, the vast majority of whom have never been involved in any crime of any sort, are somehow to blame for these events.  

Illinois has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, yet they have stopped nothing.  The factory where the shooting was carried out was a posted "gun free" zone, yet those signs - the SAME signs that are supposed to protect children in schools across this nation - did absolutely NOTHING to prevent this shooting.  In fact, the shooter knew he had ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD to shoot as many people as possible before the police world arrive in sufficient numbers to come after him.

Nationally, per the National Sheriffs' Association, the average police response time to a 911 call is 18 minutes, a relative eternity; such events are usually over in under thirteen minutes.  Yet the best advice the government will give us - and it is now parroted by employers as well - is run if you can, hide if you can't, and as a last resort, throw things at the attacker and HOPE you will dissuade him.  

Thomas Paine, in his essay, Thoughts on Defensive War, made these observations:

"[...] Whoever considers the unprincipled enemy we have to cope with, will not hesitate to declare that nothing but arms or miracles can reduce them to reason and moderation... These people [the victims - added] are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them... Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves."  

Paine was a Quaker and a pacifist, but he still recognized the reality that we have the right and obligation to defend ourselves; failure to do so only emboldens bad guys - whether the bad guy is a co-worker, or an attacking nation.  We will never be able to completely prevent such events.  If it isn't guns, it will be knives (look at the mass knife attacks that have taken place in China and Britain), bombs, chemicals, or some other form of weapon.  But we CAN give people the means to defend themselves and those around them as best they can.  Calling 911 and waiting for the cavalry just isn't cutting it.

One final thought: as far as I am concerned, any organization that prohibits people to exercise their God-given right to self defense is both implicit in, and responsible for, any injuries and deaths that occur as a result of their policy.

Enough Is Enough….

Tom Brokaw, professing "firearms owner," said in an interview after the Orlando night club shooting that "it's time for people to come together and say 'enough.'"

He is absolutely right - although not in the way he intended.

It is time for the American people to come together and say, enough gun control. Enough apologizing to those who hold an ideology that has declared war on us. Enough shifting blame from terrorists to the US for their attacks on us and our allies. Enough "gun free" zones. Enough surveillance and security procedures that criminalize innocent citizens while allowing potential enemies to slip through in order to say we don't profile. It is time to begin acting once again like we are the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. It is time to protect our citizens, secure our borders, and defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

It's time. 

Enough is enough.

Pres. Obama Praises Australian Gun Confiscation Program: An Open Letter...

June 11, 2014

Pres. Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Mr. President,

While you have praised the Australians for ridding their society of firearms, you obviously haven’t looked to see just what effect such measures actually had:

Some scholars even credit the 1996 gun law with causing the decrease in deaths from firearms, though they are still debating that point. A 2003 study from AIC, which looked at rates between 1991 and 2001, found that some of the decline in firearm-related homicides (and suicides as well) began before the reform was enacted. On the other hand, a 2006 analysis by scholars at the University of Sydney concluded that gun fatalities decreased more quickly after the reform. Yet another analysis, from 2008, from the University of Melbourne, concluded that the buyback had no significant effect on firearm suicide or homicide rates.
So there’s no consensus about whether the changes decreased gun violence or had little to no effect. But the only argument we’ve seen arguing that it caused an increase in murder comes from our anonymous e-mail author.

The claims about Australian gun control were circulating as far back as 2001, when Snopes.com went over them and concluded that they were a "small, mixed grab bag of short-term statistics" signifying little, Gun Control in Australia.

Britain, another country in which firearms are essentially banned, has similarly seen increases in the use of firearms in crimes:

The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.
Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.

It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.

Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.
Unadjusted figures showed overall recorded crime in the 12 months to last September rose 9.3%, but the Home Office stressed that new procedures had skewed the figures.

Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin said: "These figures are truly terrible.

"Despite the street crime initiative, robbery is massively up. So are gun-related crimes, domestic burglary, retail burglary, and drug offenses.

"The only word for this is failure: the Government's response of knee-jerk reactions, gimmicks and initiatives is not working and confused signals on sentences for burglary will not help either.

"The figures will continue to be dreadful until the Government produces a coherent long term strategy to attack crime at its roots and get police visibly back on our streets."

Gun crime would not be cracked until gangs were broken up and the streets "reclaimed for the honest citizen by proper neighborhood policing", he added,” Gun Crime Soars in England Where Guns Are Banned, Katie Pavlich.

In fact, in the years that have passed since the Aussie government confiscated hundreds of thousands of legally owned firearms, they have been replaced by hundreds of thousands of other firearms that were brought into the country illegally, essentially nullifying the original confiscation, the net result being that the bad guys have the guns, while the law abiding do not.  Additionally, in terms of overall violent crime, Britain's rate of violent crime is FIVE TIMES that of the US - 400 per 100,000 population in the US vs. nearly 2100 per 100,000 in Britain - and in Britain and Canada, nearly half of all burglaries are committed while the residents are in the home, vs only 13% here in the US.

Yeah, Mr. President - those gun control provisions have been real game changers - for the criminals.

The reality is,

those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.
The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer.

Society moves on, he says, because of our ability to distance ourselves from the horror of the day, and because people believe that these tragedies are "one of the unfortunate prices we pay for our freedoms."

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

Chances of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being struck by lightning.
Still, he understands the public perception — and extensive media coverage — when mass shootings occur in places like malls and schools. "There is this feeling that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening," Mass shootings are not growing in frequency, experts say, Associated Press.

In other words, media coverage gives the perception that such events are on the rise, when, in fact, the long term trend indicates otherwise.

Mr. President, the fact is that such measures will stop nothing.  Even in countries in which access to firearms is banned or heavily regulated, those determined to obtain them find ways to do so.

If you are truly as concerned about this issue as you claim to be, then begin addressing the problems that lead to such events that were outlined in the study YOU commissioned.