Guns And The Laws That Govern Them

Do you accept all decisions that are made by SCOTUS? You think Citizens United was a good decision and is Constitutional? Do you agree with them declaring DOMA unconstitutional? How about Heller vs DC?

Yes. I do not agree with all of them...but I accept them...like I accept gravity.


I think that decision sucks...but if the court says that is the law...that is the law.

We have to work that way.




As I said...I disagree with many decisions. Obviously almost every decision of the court has almost as many detractors as supporters.

What is your point?

8-Year-Old Boy Shot in the Face in Texas by a pit bull.
http://momsdemandaction.org/in-the-news/moms-across-country-want-justice-8-year-old-boy-shot-face-texas/
sry for the sarcastic title.

Since you accept the decisions, does that mean you are not going to work to change them? Do you want a law passed which reverses Citizens United, and would you support any candidate that wanted it changed?

Mom's demand action for what? More gun grabbing laws?

The article says: “The fact that he was able to obtain a gun is exactly why gun reform is so desperately needed. Until we fix this, our children will continue to pay the highest price.”

Do they know where he got the gun? Do they know how long he has had the gun? That fact that they claim he was able to obtain a gun with no evidence of how or where the gun was obtained is asking for more gun restrictions.

It is cases like this where we should have an automatic 10 year sentence when a crime is committed with a gun.

I might "work" to change things...but I might just sit back and let whatever happens happen. I used to be a firebrand...but I've gotten old.

Change Obamacare if you can. It definitely needs lots of changing.

But it is a start on something we Americans have disregarded for way too long.

Everyone who can should participate in the costs of our collective medical care.

I'd like to see lots of changes.

But the Republicans only want to destroy it...not repair it.

Rex, I dont believe that the game shud have been cancelled,
tho personally, I dont believe in pistols; thay are un-reliable.
Thay jam too much; fail to fire. I believe that everyone
shud have arrived with holstered revolvers, tho
that is a matter of personal taste.

It might be wise to dis-arm, if thay are going to be running around
in the dirt, raising dust clouds that cud infect the working parts,
or just fall in the dirt from their respective holsters.

I make an effort to buy heavy-weight, compact revolvers,
the better to absorb .44 caliber recoil. Their weight might
interfere with their ball game. The winners' celebratory gunfire
shud be confined to the gunnery range and liberals be convinced to hold the targets.

Gary Spencer was waiting in his truck in the parking lot of a bank,
as his wife deposited a check, when he spotted two men just outside
the bank struggling over a money bag. One of the men had waited while
the other withdrew $5,000 from the bank, and was now using a stun gun
to incapacitate his victim and steal the money. Spencer, who along
with his wife, are Right-to-Carry license holders, drew a .380 pistol
from his wife’s purse, ran to the site of the attack and confronted
the robber. Upon seeing Spencer’s gun, the criminal fled without the cash.

Following the incident, Spencer said to a local media outlet of his actions,
“Do you want to help somebody if they’re in need of help, or are you
going to turn your head… and act like it’s not going on? I don’t see it
as a hero thing. I just see it as me stepping up for somebody who needed a hand.”
(The Independent Tribune, Concord, N.C. 10/09/13)

By my last post, I don't mean to encourage carrying caliber .380 pistols,
nor ANY pistols, in that .380 does not have sufficient stopping power
and pistols are un-reliable, for too many jams, failing to fire.

Instead, I encourage carrying .44 caliber revolvers
loaded with hollow pointed slugs, for optimal energy-dump and to avoid overpenetration.





David

AGREED! I wanna destroy obamacare; annihilate it
as an abomination -- off topic, tho.





David

Thank you for helping make my case, David.

You often say things about people like yourself that I prefer not to say.

And you do it with such eloquence.

Thank u, but its off-topic.





David

So is calling attention to the fact that it is off topic.

On the early morning of Monday, October 14th, 29-year-old Shannon
"Bear" Cothran was working his shift at a gas station convenience
store in Nashua, N.H., when a man armed with a knife attempted
to rob the establishment. Cothran, who has held a license to carry
a
firearm since the age of 21, responded to the aggressor by stepping back,
drawing a .380-caliber pistol, pointing it at the robber, and telling him
that his robbery was a "bad idea and he didn't want to do it."

Fortunately, the robber agreed and fled the scene, and the incident
resulted in no injuries. Surveillance footage of the incident makes
clear the level of danger Cothran found himself in, however, as the
knife-wielding robber was within easy striking distance of the clerk
at the time Cothran took action.

Since Monday, Cothran has received near universal praise for his
responsible exercise of the right to self-defense, with his story having
appeared on several television stations, in print, and online.
Unfortunately, one of the few voices of opposition is that of Cothran's
employer, Nouria Energy, based in Worcester, Mass. Despite Cothran's
10 years of service and the pleas of his store and district managers,
the company fired Cothran only a few hours after the incident, citing
a violation of the company's weapons policy.

In a news release responding to public backlash over the firing, Nouria
Energy defended its decision to fire Cothran. In addition to a passage
explaining its zero-tolerance policy for guns in the workplace, the
statement notes, "We specifically train our employees on how to react
during a robbery attempt to prevent the situation from escalating.
Cashiers are instructed to give the intruder what they ask for in an
attempt to resolve the conflict peacefully and as soon as possible."

A blanket policy such as Nouria Energy's might be easy to endorse
from an office building in Massachusetts, but it neglects to take into
account the realities on the ground that Cothran and other workers
across the country face every day. This stance on self-defense
effectively subjects employees to the control, and thus the mercy,
of violent criminals. The robber who accosted Cothran early Monday
morning showed an obvious willingness to back up his demands
with violent force. While Nouria Energy may have been willing
to bet Cothran's life on a bare hope the criminal could be appeased,
from their standpoint, they can always hire another employee.
For Cothran himself, however, the stakes were considerably higher.

Nouria's policy, moreover, relies on a false premise. The 1988 study,
Crime Control Through the Private use of Armed Force, authored by
Florida State University Professor Gary Kleck, dispelled the notion
that unarmed compliance increases the likelihood of a favorable
outcome for a victim of violent crime. Kleck found, "victim
resistance with guns is associated with lower rates of both victim
injury and crime completion for robberies and assaults than any other
victim action, including nonresistance."

Cothran's experience highlights the untenable situation that some
employers have foisted on their employees who work in potentially
dangerous environments, and he is not the first to in lose his job over
such policies. In November 2012, Devin McLean was fired from his job
at an Autozone in York County, Va., after he retrieved a gun from his
vehicle and stopped an armed robbery by a man police believe was
responsible for over 30 robberies dating back to 2010. In 2004 and
in 2008, Pizza Hut fired delivery drivers who defended themselves
from criminal attack. Delivery drivers face particular danger, as
armed robbers often target these workers by luring them to an
ambush site of their choosing; the annals of the Armed Citizen
column are replete with such cases.

Similar to the calm demeanor he showed in thwarting the armed robber,
Cothran appears to be taking his firing in stride, choosing not to dwell
on the fact that he lost his job, but instead on the fact that he may
have saved his own life. In an interview following the incident,
Cothran told a reporter, "I can find another job… A paycheck's a
paycheck. I don't really care where it comes from. I cannot justify in
my mind trying to save my job at the risk of not ever seeing my family
and friends again."

On a positive note, Cothran has been met with an outpouring of support
from his community. One of Cothran's friends has organized a protest
outside Cothran's former workplace, located at 301 Main St. Nashua, N.H.,
set for Saturday, October 19th at 2p.m, and others have set up a
fundraising effort to help get him through any financial difficulties
while he is between jobs.

As for those in the Northeast seeking to avoid Nouria Energy owned
establishments in the future, the company's website offers a convenient
store locator tool with which to do so. It may well be that the knife-
wielding individual Cothran encountered, and others like him, are also
choosy about the establishments at which they ply their "trade."
If so, policies like the one that cost Cothran his job can only help
them with theirs. [All emfasis has been added by David.]

Pastor Carl Sanders walked into a Dollar General store in Evansville, Ind.
in order to purchase a Gatorade, but ended up stumbling upon an
armed robbery in progress. Shortly after Sanders entered the store,
the robber turned his attention to the pastor, ordering him to the floor.
Sanders responded by drawing a firearm and telling the armed robber
to get on the floor. The robber complied and Sanders held the man
until police arrived.

Sanders took no pleasure in the actions some have called heroic.
When forcing the armed man to the floor, Sanders told the man that
his actions were “out of love.” Sanders later said of the criminal,
“He didn’t deserve to be hurt… I wanted him to know you can’t do this.”
(WFIE, Evansville, Ind. 10/20/13)

If I 'd been in the Pastor 's position,
I 'd have been likely to apply a different filosofy to the robber,
when he turned his attention to me.





David

By John Kennedy
Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
TALLAHASSEE — A House panel overwhelmingly rejected an attempt
Thursday to repeal Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law,
with supporters saying it’s a needed self-defense measure and critics
condemning it as a Wild West throwback.
The House Criminal Justice subcommittee heard more than three hours
of testimony before voting 11-2 to kill the bid by Rep. Alan Williams,
D-Tallahassee, to erase the 2005 law.

People often do stupid things...and then do things even more stupid in order to try to make their original instance of stupidity seem reasonable.

People have indeed done stupid things.
One stupid thing wud have been to subvert the right to self defense,
as thay did NOT.

Stand Your Ground is a very popular law here in Florida.





David

This week marks the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, the Nazi pogrom against Germany’s Jews on Nov. 9-10, 1938. Historians have documented most everything about it except what made it so easy to attack the defenseless Jews without fear of resistance. Their guns were registered and thus easily confiscated.

To illustrate, turn the clock back further and focus on just one victim, a renowned German athlete. Alfred Flatow won first place in gymnastics at the 1896 Olympics. In 1932, he dutifully registered three handguns, as required by a decree of the liberal Weimar Republic. The decree also provided that in times of unrest, the guns could be confiscated. The government gullibly neglected to consider that only law-abiding citizens would register, while political extremists and criminals would not. However, it did warn that the gun-registration records must be carefully stored so they would not fall into the hands of extremists.

The ultimate extremist group, led by Adolf Hitler, seized power just a year later, in 1933. The Nazis immediately used the firearms-registration records to identify, disarm and attack “enemies of the state,” a euphemism for Social Democrats and other political opponents of all types. Police conducted search-and-seizure operations for guns and “subversive” literature in Jewish communities and working-class neighborhoods.

Jews were increasingly deprived of more and more rights of citizenship in the coming years. The Gestapo cautioned the police that it would endanger public safety to issue gun permits to Jews. Hitler faked a show of tolerance for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but Flatow refused to attend the reunion there of former champions. He was Jewish and would not endorse the farce.

By fall of 1938, the Nazis were ratcheting up measures to expropriate the assets of Jews. To ensure that they had no means of resistance, the Jews were ordered to surrender their firearms.

Flatow walked into a Berlin police station to comply with the command and was arrested on the spot, as were other Jews standing in line. The arrest report confirmed that his pistols were duly registered, which was obviously how the police knew he had them. While no law prohibited a Jew from owning guns, the report recited the Nazi mantra: “Jews in possession of weapons are a danger to the German people.” Despite his compliance, Flatow was turned over to the Gestapo.

This scenario took place all over Germany — firearms were confiscated from all Jews registered as gun owners. As this was occurring, a wholly irrelevant event provided just the excuse needed to launch a violent attack on the Jewish community: A Polish teenager who was Jewish shot a German diplomat in Paris. The stage was set to instigate Kristallnacht, a carefully orchestrated Nazi onslaught against the entire Jewish community in Germany that horrified the world and even the German public.

Under the pretense of searching for weapons, Jewish homes were vandalized, businesses ransacked and synagogues burned. Jews were terrorized, beaten and killed. Orders were sent to shoot anyone who resisted.

SS head Heinrich Himmler decreed that possession of a gun by a Jew was punishable by 20 years in a concentration camp. An estimated 20,000 Jewish men were thrown into such camps for this reason or just for being Jewish. The Jewish community was then held at ransom to pay for the damage done by the Nazis.

These horrific events were widely reported in the American media, such as The New York Times. After Hitler launched World War II, the United States made preparations in case it was dragged into the conflict. Just before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress passed a law noting the Gestapo methods and declaring that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms may not be infringed by such measures as registration of firearms.

Kristallnacht has been called “the day the Holocaust began.” Flatow’s footsteps can be followed to see why. He would be required to wear the Star of David. In 1942, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he starved to death.

One wonders what thoughts may have occurred to Flatow in his last days. Perhaps memories of the Olympics and of a better Germany flashed before his eyes. Did he have second thoughts about whether he should have registered his guns in 1932? Or whether he should have obediently surrendered his firearms at a Berlin police station in 1938 as ordered by Nazi decree, only to be taken into Gestapo custody? Did he fantasize about shooting Nazis? We will never know, but it is difficult to imagine that he had no regrets over his act of compliance.

Today, gun control, registration and prohibition are depicted as benign and progressive. Government should register gun owners and ban any guns it wishes, Americans are told, because government is inherently good and trustworthy. The experiences of Hitler’s Germany and, for that matter, Stalin’s Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, are beneath the realm of possibility in exceptional America. Let’s hope so.

Still, be careful what you wish for.

Stephen Halbrook is research fellow with the Independent Institute and author “Gun Control in the Third Reich: Disarming the Jews and ‘Enemies of the State’” (Independent Institute, 2013).