By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times -
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Guns are becoming the prop of choice in campaign ads around the
country this midterm year.
Take it as another sign that the Obama administration’s gun control
push is running aground: Firearms have become this year’s go-to accessory
for candidates of both parties seeking to advertise their toughness
and willingness to fight.
Republicans, and even some Democrats, in a dozen states are
showing off their shooting skills in videos and television ads or posing
with firearms in mailers, underscoring the backlash against federal
and state proposals to restrict access to guns and ammunition.
This year’s tone was set by Republican Joni Ernst, who won the Iowa
Senate primary in June after running a television ad that shows her
firing at a bull’s-eye at a shooting range while promising to “unload”
on Obamacare. She now faces Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley.
“Give me a shot,” quips Ms. Ernst in the ad.
The Iowan is by no mean the only one locked, loaded and ready for her close-up.
PHOTOS: Armed and liberal:
Left-leaning celebrities who are pro-gun
Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan, who’s running for Senate, kicked off
his campaign after the August primary with a memorable ad in which
he shoots a television set in response to negative campaign advertising.
Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association announced Wednesday the
launch of an $11.4 million national ad campaign, starting with
Republican Senate contests in Arkansas, Colorado and North Carolina.
“Our Second Amendment rights are under attack by the Obama
administration and Sen. Mark Udall,” says one 30-second ad unveiled
on the Politico website to be aired in Colorado. “That’s why we need
leaders like Cory Gardner in the U.S. Senate to fight back for us.”
The next round of ads, a mix of TV, radio and digital spots, will
promote Republican Senate candidates in Georgia, Kentucky, Iowa
and Louisiana, according to an NRA press release.
Chuck Michel, the NRA’s attorney in California, said the gun rights
base is primed to turn out at the polls this year after witnessing
the recent spate of “counterproductive legislation that restricts their rights.”
“What’s new this election cycle is that some politicians have realized
that folks who choose to own a gun for sport or to defend their
families are now truly motivated — and even mad,” said Mr. Michel.
The phenomenon has become so widespread that it prompted liberal
TV network MSNBC to post Monday an online poll asking,
“Are candidates acting insensitively firing guns in their campaign ads?”
Republicans aren’t the only ones picking up their shotguns. In fact,
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia is widely credited
with popularizing the strategy when he won election in 2010 after a
television ad showed him loading a rifle and shooting a copy of the
cap-and-trade bill.
Washington Democrat Estakio Beltran released a campaign video in July
showing him taking aim at a pinata elephant. He hit the pinata but
narrowly missed qualifying for the November ballot, placing third
in the 12-candidate blanket House primary.
By VIK KHANNA
I am a public health professional, educated at the vaunted Johns Hopkins
University Bloomberg School of Hygiene and Public Health.
I like guns, and I believe the Second Amendment clearly secures
the rights of individuals to own firearms.
You read that correctly. I am a public health professional.
And I like guns.
This make me a heretic in American public health, where embracing
firearms and the rights of gun owners is a gross violation of orthodoxy.
As a society, our focus on guns and not gun users derives from
the shock of mass killings, such as those in Newtown, CT, Aurora, CO,
Virginia Tech, and Norway, which has some of the severest gun control
laws on the planet. Mass killings, however tragic, get distorted by
saturation media hysterics and 24-hour political grandstanding.
What gun opponents refuse to discuss is the precipitous fall in violent
crime and deaths by firearms over the past 20 years, and how it coincides
with an equally dramatic increase of guns in circulation in the US.
While that isn’t cause and effect, the association is certainly curious.
In 2013, the Institute of Medicine, at the behest of the Centers for
Disease Control, produced a report on firearms violence that has been
ignored by the mainstream media. The upshot: defensive use of firearms
occurs much more frequently than is recognized, “can be an important
crime deterrent,” and unauthorized possession (read: by someone
other than the lawful owner) of a firearm is a crucial driver of
firearms violence.
That report went away for political reasons. Translation. Nobody
wanted to talk about it because it raised more questions than it answered.
The tragic mass murders in Virginia, Colorado, Norway, Connecticut,
and most recently California, showcase the failure of the healthcare system,
including potential abuse of prescription drugs, and families where
parents either checked out or were willfully oblivious to what their
children are doing. They are also outcomes of popular, feel-good
movements, such as deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill,
colliding with communities that had no means to deal with the consequences.
Adam Lanza, Anders Breivik, Seung Hui Cho, James Holmes, and Elliot Rodger
all needed treatment, and, if necessary, involuntary commitment,
with due process for both admission to a facility and subsequent release.
My public health approach to the problem of gun violence starts with
the assumption that every gun owner is not a raving, irresponsible nut,
but in fact a person of some seriousness who has a legal right
to choose to own a firearm.
My next assumption is that the most egregious gun violence happens
in communities that are broken, such as inner city Baltimore and St. Louis.
Again, a topic that is not to be spoken.
Gun control will not fix schools, restore neighborhoods, stabilize
disintegrating (wealthy or poor) families, employ people, heal mental illness,
rejuvenate local economies, or help create self respect. I support gun
courts and mandatory, no-parole sentencing for people who commit
gun crimes, with a massive public education campaign to back it up.
Public education works and is central to many public health issues,
from highway safety to tobacco use reduction, but for some reason,
when it comes to guns, the public health establishment’s histrionic
reflex is not to educate but to control and confiscate. According to the FBI,
in 2012 there were 8,855 firearms homicides, down 7% since 2008.
By contrast, 33,516 people died on the nation’s highways in 2012,
and alcohol abuse claimed 88,000 lives.
Where’s the clamor to control and confiscate cars, cellphones
(deadly when used while driving), and booze?
Before buying a firearm, I took a gun safety class and got advice
from experienced friends. I choose to store my guns in accordance
with commonly promoted safety guidelines. My son (10) can pick up
each shotgun and ensure that both the magazine and chamber are empty.
He can check the safety, point it correctly, and place it safely in a case.
He also knows how to hold and hand it to an adult. In a state where
guns are ubiquitous, this is an essential skill in case he is ever in the
presence of child who thinks that his family’s carelessly unsecured
guns are toys, not lethal weapons. Of course, he also knows to exit
that room and get an adult.
Gun owners should not, however, get their hopes up that the public
health community will ever take them seriously. Public
health students are taught early on that guns are evil,
that the people who think otherwise are an ignorant,
backward, Jerry Springer watching lot and that there are
some questions you don’t ask: at least not if you want to pass the class.
This says more about the public health community than it does anything else.
More about that one in a future essay. I think you’ll enjoy it.
Ironically, public health academics happily assert that there is a clear
Constitutional right to privacy, even as they vilify a right that is
actually expressed in the document, and they merrily condescend to
its adherents, whom they regard as pathetic rubes. Here is how gun
owners can thwart the push to have doctors ask about the presence
of guns in a home during a routine history and physical: refuse to
answer on the grounds of the much heralded penumbra-emanating
right to privacy.
As for the claim that gun rights proponents oppose the conduct of
legitimate research, consider this. Many years ago, I asked a very
powerful anti-gun academic the following questions: What proportion
of gun crimes are committed by the lawful owner of a legally purchased
firearm, and what percentage of lawful gun owners use their firearm
in commission of a crime? He said that he did not know, and that
he would oppose conduct of the research to answer both questions.
[All emfasis has been added by David.]
Mr. Parados:
By your active (cyber) opposition to exercise of the 2nd Amendment right to KABA,
u seek to concede a MONOPOLY OF POWER to predators, be thay man or beast,
at the expense of their victims, whom u 'd leave helpless, helpless, while obaying gun control laws.
U are complicit with the violent predators, Mr. Parados,
be thay criminals or loose dogs.
I wonder if the future holds any fallen citizen of A2K,
as he is rendered apart by dogs, crying out his last words: "Mr. Parados got me!
I dub these: 'the Parados Dogs' for his perpetuating them
by my helpless and most bloody ruin."
It's a good thing he had a gun in his car.
Quote:LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Police say a large bar fight spilled into the street early Sunday morning, resulting in an accidental shooting which sent a man to the hospital.
Alicia Smiley, a spokeswoman for the Louisville Metro Police Department, said a man was thrown through a window during a brawl at Happy Endings bar on 4th Street. He went to his car to get a gun, Smiley said, which went off accidentally when he was hit in the head.
The bullet struck a man in a nearby car, who was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.
http://www.wave3.com/story/26589714/bar-fight-leads-to-accidental-shooting-police-say
@parados,
parados wrote:
It's a good thing he had a gun in his car.
Quote:LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Police say a large bar fight spilled into the street early Sunday morning, resulting in an accidental shooting which sent a man to the hospital.
Alicia Smiley, a spokeswoman for the Louisville Metro Police Department, said a man was thrown through a window during a brawl at Happy Endings bar on 4th Street. He went to his car to get a gun, Smiley said, which went off accidentally when he was hit in the head.
The bullet struck a man in a nearby car, who was treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.
http://www.wave3.com/story/26589714/bar-fight-leads-to-accidental-shooting-police-say
Its ofen safer to keep it on u
n avoid brawls.
A man armed with a gun entered Burt’s Meat Market in Houston, Texas
and demanded money from the teenage clerk on duty. When the clerk
didn’t produce the money fast enough, the criminal fired a shot.
Store manager J.L. Nickel, who was in a nearby office, became aware
of the robbery, retrieved a gun and fired at the robber.
One of Nickel’s shots struck the robber, prompting him to flee.
(KPRC, Houston, Texas, 09/20/14)
Robbery can bring bad luck,
IF THE VICTIM IS WELL ARMED.
Mr. Parados woud confine power within the purview of predatory evil.
STUPID ROBBER KILLS HIMSELF DURING ROBBERY:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOQj5GYDxzU
Mr. Parados (probably) very disappointed that evil failed.
Poor Mr. Parados !
Debate on ABC-TV NEWS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKv2TNdDc4E
Former Texas State Senator Dr. Suzanna Gratia Hupp
argues in support of
liberty of personal defense
Leland Yee former California Democratic State Senator argues
for suppression of freedom of personal defense with guns.
He has been a vocal advocate of severe gun control.
From Wikipedia:
Mr. Yee was named to the Gun Violence Prevention
Honor Roll
by the Brady Campaign.
Mr. Yee is quoted as saying:
"It is extremely important that individuals in the state of California
do not own assault weapons. I mean that is just so crystal clear,
there is no debate, no discussion." He does not think much
of the First Amendment, in addition to the Second Amendment.
( Note that
Senator Yee has been ARRESTED by the FBI for feloniously
attempting to sell fully automatic weapons [machineguns] in California.)
Senator Yee is an
impassioned and
very articulate advocate of gun control.
He commands our attention. Mr. Parados will find the Senator's thoughts
INSPIRATIONAL.
@OmSigDAVID,
I'm not the one proposing that criminals should have training in gun safety. That would be you.
@parados,
parados wrote:I'm not the one proposing that criminals
should have training in gun safety. That would be you.
Do u want them to be shooting up the town?
or maybe u can
convince them to walk around
un-armed
the same as thay shun marijuana, heroin & beer, right ?
