What is better, no guns, or more guns?

[Deranged Rhino]

 

Is this just the bill to block people on the terrorist watch list? They wish to set a precedent that they can restrict constitutional right with little or no evidence. It would only be a matter of time until they created a no-gun list.

 

That precedent has already been set. Read: The Patriot Act.

[dpberr]

Obama has been a boon for the gun market in the United States. Record sales. Record permits. He's done more to arm American than any one person in American history.

 

He's been able to achieve that on two fronts. One, the desire to ban certain firearms. Creates demand. Two, when Americans don't feel safe, they start arming themselves and this administration does very little to reassure the public they are on the case.

[Azalin]

Obama has been a boon for the gun market in the United States. Record sales. Record permits. He's done more to arm American than any one person in American history.

 

He's been able to achieve that on two fronts. One, the desire to ban certain firearms. Creates demand. Two, when Americans don't feel safe, they start arming themselves and this administration does very little to reassure the public they are on the case.

 

I have several friends who have bought firearms for those very reasons.

[GG]

 

I have several friends who have bought firearms for those very reasons.

 

Good luck getting ammo too.

[B-Man]

U.S. murder rate is also at a 51-year low. Violence is not spinning “out of control” in America, and that’s good.

Slate Goes All In On Second Amendment Trutherism

by Charles C W Cooke

 

In the past four days, no fewer than three of that site’s main writers have offered up a bizarre, revisionist version of the Second Amendment, and done so with all the nonchalance of a man who is proposing that two plus two is four.

On Monday, Mark Joseph Stern informed his readers that “he disagree that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.” A few hours later, Dahlia Lithwick presented for public consumption one of the most historically illiterate essays that I have ever read, the gist of which was that the “Standard Model” interpretation of the provision was a “hoax” that has little purchase “outside of the GOP”; ”for most of U.S. history,” Lithwick claims, “the freedom guaranteed by the Second Amendment was . . . the right of the people of each state to maintain a well-regulated militia.” And yesterday, citing Lithwick, Jamelle Bouie ruined what was otherwise an excellent and insightful piece by proposing that the recent D.C. v. Heller ruling represented the transmutation of “a fringe right-wing vision of the Second Amendment — an individual right to bear arms” into “the dominant one.”

 

Such claims, to put it impolitely, represent the legal equivalent of Moon landing trutherism

{snip}

Among those professors are “Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard,” who “said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right”; Adam Winkler, a professor at UCLA; and “several other leading liberal constitutional scholars, notably Akhil Reed Amar at Yale and Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas,” who “are in broad agreement favoring an individual rights interpretation.”

That a whole host of writers at Slate and elsewhere are still trying to read the right out of existence is outrageous. Indeed, as Fordham’s Nicholas Johnson has observed, the “collective rights” theory advanced as by Stern, Lithwick, Bouie and co. is so wholly incoherent — and so utterly discredited — that “not even the dissenters in Heller tried to keep [it] afloat.”

 

We talk a great deal about “bubbles” in politics, and even more about the problem of the manner in which the Internet can be used to spread heinous ignorance within self-selecting groups. I can think of no better example in contemporary American life than the progressive media’s continuing interest in peddling this line.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

Edited June 16, 2016 by B-Man

[B-Man]

One thing that you can always count on from the Left......................consistent hypocrisy.

 

 

 

[/dev/null]

http://www.dailywire.com/news/6612/west-hollywood-inundated-poster-rainbow-gadsen-hank-berrien

#ShootBack

[VinceFerragamo]

guns.

 

God made man and gave him free choice.

Man chose to make guns.

 

I dont think God wanted man to make guns but forgives him for doing it.

 

its too late for no guns. To get that would be a police state and another civil war.

 

now govt can use the gun debate as well as all other debates as a pointless thing to make people pick sides and waste time talking about what they will never have control over because the govt

 

does what ever it wants. Your vote stopped counting in the early 1900s

[IDBillzFan]

This just in...while all the fear-mongering leftists are yelling that we need to ban guns...the LGBT community gets smart and starts buying them.

 

Good for them. Because an armed lesbian is a safe lesbian.

[/dev/null]

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/06/16/gun-shop-owners-declined-sell-orlando-jihadi-reported-authorities/

[Nanker]

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/06/16/gun-shop-owners-declined-sell-orlando-jihadi-reported-authorities/

I don't know how they were able to do that without getting sued or protested.

Won't bake a cake for someone - you get sued.

Won't cater a wedding for someone - you get sued.

Don't open your establishment on Sunday to serve the public - you get protested.

 

It's all about freedom of choice - except when it isn't.

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-the-irs-need-guns-1466117176

 

Why Does the IRS Need Guns?

After grabbing legal power, bureaucrats are amassing firepower. It’s time to scale back the federal arsenal.

By TOM COBURN and ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI

June 16, 2016 6:46 p.m. ET

Special agents at the IRS equipped with AR-15 military-style rifles? Health and Human Services “Special Office of Inspector General Agents” being trained by the Army’s Special Forces contractors? The Department of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees?

The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). In its escalating arms and ammo stockpiling, this federal arms race is unlike anything in history. Over the last 20 years, the number of these federal officers with arrest-and-firearm authority has nearly tripled to over 200,000 today, from 74,500 in 1996.

What exactly is the Obama administration up to?

On Friday, June 17, our organization, American Transparency, is releasing its OpenTheBooks.com oversight report on the militarization of America. The report catalogs federal purchases of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment by seemingly bureaucratic federal agencies. During a nine-year period through 2014, we found, 67 agencies unaffiliated with the Department of Defense spent $1.48 billion on guns and ammo. Of that total, $335.1 million was spent by agencies traditionally viewed as regulatory or administrative, such as the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Mint.

Some examples of spending from 2005 through 2014 raise the question: Who are they preparing to battle?

• The Internal Revenue Service, which has 2,316 special agents, spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. That’s nearly $5,000 in gear for each agent.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs, which has 3,700 law-enforcement officers guarding and securing VA medical centers, spent $11.66 million. It spent more than $200,000 on night-vision equipment, $2.3 million for body armor, more than $2 million on guns, and $3.6 million for ammunition. The VA employed no officers with firearm authorization as recently as 1995.

• The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308 caliber rifles, night-vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote-control helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes and more.

• The Environmental Protection Agency spent $3.1 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. The EPA has put nearly $800 million since 2005 into its “Criminal Enforcement Division.”

• The Food and Drug Administration employs 183 heavily armed “special agents.”

• The University of California, Berkeley acquired 14 5.56mm assault rifles and Yale University police accepted 20 5.56mm assault rifles from the Defense Department. Texas Southern University and Saddleback College police even acquired Mine Resistant Vehicles (MRVs).

Other paper-pushing federal agencies with firearm-and-arrest authority that have expanded their arsenals since 2006 include the Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, National Institute of Standards and Technology and many others.

People from both ends of the political spectrum have expressed alarm at this trend. Conservatives argue that it is hypocritical, unconstitutional and costly for political leaders to undermine the Second Amendment while simultaneously equipping nonmilitary agencies with heavy weapons, hollow-point bullets and military-style equipment. Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders have raised civil liberties concerns about the militarization of local police with vehicles built for war and other heavy weaponry.

Meanwhile, federal authorities are silent on the growing arsenal at federal agencies. In fact, we asked the IRS for an asset accounting of their gun locker—their guns and ammunition asset inventory by location. Their response? “We don’t have one [an inventory], but could create one for you, if important.”

Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds.

[DC Tom]

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-the-irs-need-guns-1466117176

 

Why Does the IRS Need Guns?

After grabbing legal power, bureaucrats are amassing firepower. It’s time to scale back the federal arsenal.

By TOM COBURN and ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI

June 16, 2016 6:46 p.m. ET

Special agents at the IRS equipped with AR-15 military-style rifles? Health and Human Services “Special Office of Inspector General Agents” being trained by the Army’s Special Forces contractors? The Department of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees?

The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). In its escalating arms and ammo stockpiling, this federal arms race is unlike anything in history. Over the last 20 years, the number of these federal officers with arrest-and-firearm authority has nearly tripled to over 200,000 today, from 74,500 in 1996.

What exactly is the Obama administration up to?

On Friday, June 17, our organization, American Transparency, is releasing its OpenTheBooks.com oversight report on the militarization of America. The report catalogs federal purchases of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment by seemingly bureaucratic federal agencies. During a nine-year period through 2014, we found, 67 agencies unaffiliated with the Department of Defense spent $1.48 billion on guns and ammo. Of that total, $335.1 million was spent by agencies traditionally viewed as regulatory or administrative, such as the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Mint.

Some examples of spending from 2005 through 2014 raise the question: Who are they preparing to battle?

• The Internal Revenue Service, which has 2,316 special agents, spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. That’s nearly $5,000 in gear for each agent.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs, which has 3,700 law-enforcement officers guarding and securing VA medical centers, spent $11.66 million. It spent more than $200,000 on night-vision equipment, $2.3 million for body armor, more than $2 million on guns, and $3.6 million for ammunition. The VA employed no officers with firearm authorization as recently as 1995.

• The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308 caliber rifles, night-vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote-control helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes and more.

• The Environmental Protection Agency spent $3.1 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. The EPA has put nearly $800 million since 2005 into its “Criminal Enforcement Division.”

• The Food and Drug Administration employs 183 heavily armed “special agents.”

• The University of California, Berkeley acquired 14 5.56mm assault rifles and Yale University police accepted 20 5.56mm assault rifles from the Defense Department. Texas Southern University and Saddleback College police even acquired Mine Resistant Vehicles (MRVs).

Other paper-pushing federal agencies with firearm-and-arrest authority that have expanded their arsenals since 2006 include the Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, National Institute of Standards and Technology and many others.

People from both ends of the political spectrum have expressed alarm at this trend. Conservatives argue that it is hypocritical, unconstitutional and costly for political leaders to undermine the Second Amendment while simultaneously equipping nonmilitary agencies with heavy weapons, hollow-point bullets and military-style equipment. Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders have raised civil liberties concerns about the militarization of local police with vehicles built for war and other heavy weaponry.

Meanwhile, federal authorities are silent on the growing arsenal at federal agencies. In fact, we asked the IRS for an asset accounting of their gun locker—their guns and ammunition asset inventory by location. Their response? “We don’t have one [an inventory], but could create one for you, if important.”

Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds.

 

 

Some of those - APHIS and DoE, for example - I can understand. And UC Berkeley, Yale, etc...it's part in response to demands that schools be prepared for "active shooter incidents" (because nowadays, people expect schools to be law enforcement bodies as well ), and part because it's simply cheaper to be used Defense items (if you need a tactical vehicle as part of the outfit for your "active shooter response team," may as well buy a used MRAP rather than a new and modified SUV.)

 

Meanwhile, federal authorities are silent on the growing arsenal at federal agencies. In fact, we asked the IRS for an asset accounting of their gun locker—their guns and ammunition asset inventory by location. Their response? “We don’t have one [an inventory], but could create one for you, if important.”

 

 

 

That's just bull ****, though. Ever federal office I've ever been in has a closely monitored inventory of the most trivial things. They'll keep an accurate inventory of post-it notes. They'll spend more money keeping that accurate inventory and controlling access to post-it notes than they'll spend on buying the post-it notes themselves. If the IRS doesn't have an inventory of weapons, someone needs to be fired post-haste.

[B-Man]

 

 

If the IRS doesn't have an inventory of weapons, someone needs to be fired post-haste.

 

Joking right ?.....................The IRS discipline someone ?

 

 

 

The Real Gun-Control Story

by Kevin D Williamson

It’s not about stopping shooters, it’s about identity politics.

In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, the actor Samuel L. Jackson said that he hoped it would turn out that the killer was a white man. David Sirota wrote the same thing after the Boston marathon bombing, in an article headlined “Let’s hope the Boston marathon bomber is a white American.” Jackson and Sirota were disappointed: Both atrocities were carried out by Muslims of Middle Eastern origin as expressions of solidarity with the worldwide Islamist enterprise. The massacre in Orlando was perpetrated by a Muslim, the son of an Afghan immigrant, a man of the sort we have been taught to call a “person of color,” I suppose. (Do Afghans count? This is never made clear.) He may or may not have been suffering from some sort of crisis of sexuality: It isn’t clear whether his earlier presence in the Florida gay club was cruising or casing.

But as a son of immigrants and a member of at least one minority group, Omar Mateen makes a poor poster-boy for the Left, which prefers that its enemies be white, male, Christian, and, if possible, middle-aged, middle-American, and overweight. Remember how, during the Tea Party rallies, so much attention was paid to the fact that some participants were obese and using mobility scooters? That wasn’t an accident. It’s loathing substituting for analysis.

For much the same reason, cartoons purporting to depict gun-rights supporters after Orlando almost invariably depicted obese, aging, white, and downscale (rumpled, ill-kempt) subjects. That is whom the Left believes to be the problem when it comes to violence in these United States — and most other problems, too. The relevant psychology here is that of intellectual development arrested in adolescence. If you’ve ever heard a 50-year-old lefty raging about Middle America and thought that it sounded a lot like a 14-year-old raging about his stick-in-the-mud father, you’re not the first to whom that has occurred.

 

You’ll notice that we generally have these national crises about gun control when there’s a Newtown or an Aurora, not after a typical weekend in Chicago, during the course of which several dozen people will be shot, and many killed. Part of this is because we have a tendency to worry more about shark attacks (which almost never happen) rather than lethal bee stings (which happen all the time), but part of it is that the Left is not culturally inclined to organize one of these pageants of exhibitionistic grief over the low-level criminal escapades of young black men in Chicago or Philadelphia. For the same reason, almost all of the gun-control measures that excite our progressive friends — bans on so-called assault weapons, restrictions on gun shows — are aimed at the hobbies of middle-aged white guys, rural types, Second Amendment devotees who mistrust the federal government, etc.: the enemy, in other words. These proposals have little or nothing to do with the vast majority of crime.

{snip}

Yes, sometimes we get an Oklahoma City bombing. Sometimes, a shark does attack. But the reality of violence in the United States is practically unspeakable. And because this is fundamentally a question of social-status-jockeying rather than one of effective public policy, gun-control policies that might actually reduce crime are overlooked or opposed because they do not annoy the NRA. Indeed, gun control that doesn’t annoy the NRA isn’t considered proper gun control at all. We could be putting violent criminals away for gun-related crimes for longer terms and monitoring them more aggressively through an improved parole system. We could do that before they graduate to murder — remember how many of those charged with possession offenses have prior arrests and convictions. But this isn’t on any gun-control agenda.

Why?

For one thing, it probably would mean locking up a lot of young black men in Chicago rather than hassling a lot of old white guys living out weekend-warrior Rambo fantasies in Tulsa. And for the Democrats, that isn’t an option. The enemy is the enemy, and, guilty or not guilty, he must be punished.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436739/orlando-shooting-gun-control-left-wing-identity-politics

.

[B-Man]

We don’t punish people who are merely under suspicion.

 

The dems "chanting" “common sense” doesn’t change that.

 

 

 

New RepublicVerified account ‏@NewRepublic 3h3 hours ago

No, gun control won't prevent terrorism. But that's not the point. http://bit.ly/1YxaZ2x

 

The point is sticking it to those flyover rubes and showing them who's boss.

[/dev/null]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/06/17/gun-store-sells-30000-ar-15s-since-orlando-shooting.html

[B-Man]

The (misnamed) Daily News continues it's slander

 

 

Follow

New York Daily NewsVerified account‏@NYDailyNews

A look at tomorrow's front page... MADMEN WITH GUNS: @NRA threatens pols who vote for a ban http://nydn.us/1UiPBOP

 

 

[What a Tuel]

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/06/17/gun-store-sells-30000-ar-15s-since-orlando-shooting.html

 

Not to mention the millions of AR-15's out there, and what 6 have been used in mass shootings of that scale in the last 5 years? Not so sure accessibility is the problem, and something tells me the government won't effectively control the millions of weapons out there.

[B-Man]

All hail the Narrative !

 

 

CBS’S JOHN DICKERSON TRIES TO LINK OMAR MATEEN TO GUN SHOWS.

 

 

 

Related: CBS News Political Director John Dickerson: ‘Our Job’ to Steer Away from the Clintons’ Past — “Elections are supposed to be about the future.”

 

Flashback: New Host of Face the Nation John Dickerson Advised Obama in 2013 to ‘Destroy the GOP.’

 

Democrats with bylines.

 

 

 

.

 

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATS SAID THIS:

 

“We don’t deprive a person of rights in this country simply because the executive branch put that person on a secret list.”

 

 

.

Edited June 20, 2016 by B-Man

[ALF]

Supreme Court lets stand law banning some semi-automatic assault weapons

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/20/politics/supreme-court-declines-consideration-of-law-banning-some-semi-automatic-assault-weapons/index.html?adkey=bn