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Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html
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1. Volunteers needed for next weekend’s Dale City gun show!
2. Any interest in pink VCDL ball caps?
3. FBI decides on 9mm for its handguns
4. Guntry clubs target a new breed of shooter [VIDEO]
5. Washington Post slants story on CDC gun research
6. Public health gun control: A brief history part 3
7. Bloomberg gun control group sponsors course on gun violence
8. [AL] School requests students be armed with canned food items
9. Liam Neeson: US gun ownership 'a [bleeping] disgrace'
10. Coordinated terror attacks have Americans reconsidering options
11. Europe's leading rabbi: Jews must begin carrying guns
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1. Volunteers needed for next weekend’s Dale City gun show!
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Volunteers are needed for the Dale City gun show next weekend (April 18-19). We only have one person for Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Help us get VCDL's message out by having a fully staffed booth!
DALE CITY -- April 18 - 19 -- Dale City VFW Post 1503
http://www.olddominionshows.com
Saturday, April 18: 9:00am - 1:00pm; 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Sunday, April 19: 9:00am - 12:30pm; 12:30pm - 4:00pm
Please contact Richard Kroh at gunshows.dalecity@vcdl.org to help in Dale City.
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2. Any interest in pink VCDL ball caps?
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If you have any interest in getting a VCDL hat in pink, send me an email at president@vcdl.org. We are trying to find out if there is enough interest in that color to justify placing an order and offering them at gun shows.
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3. FBI decides on 9mm for its handguns
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Kind of long to post the text here, but an interesting read.
http://concealednation.org/2014/10/fbi- ... -decision/
or
http://tinyurl.com/lojepor
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4. Guntry clubs target a new breed of shooter [VIDEO]
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EM Dave Hicks emailed me this:
From washingtonpost.com: http://tinyurl.com/nneco6w
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/gun ... nes&wpmm=1
Guntry clubs target a new breed of shooter: younger, more affluent and female
By Michael S. Rosenwald
January 13, 2015
Blake Vaught and Alex Williamson, buddies in their late 20s, were having a cognitive dissonance moment.
“This place is like a country club,” Vaught said, looking at a concierge desk, granite countertops and sleek black couches.
“Or like a really nice steakhouse,” Williamson said.
They were not at a country club. They were not at a steakhouse. They were at Elite Shooting Sports, a new gun range in Manassas, Va., that, like a wave of other new ranges around the country, is targeting a new breed of shooter — younger, more affluent, style-focused, increasingly female and even environmentally conscious.
The gun industry’s term for these shooting retreats: Guntry Clubs.
In Miami’s arts district, a new high-end club attracts celebrities such as LeBron James who shoot fully automatic machine guns, then chill in VIP lounges. A Texas range features gun valets. A Colorado club offers custom-fitted earplugs, apps to reserve shooting lanes and chess sets. Membership fees at these new ranges are sometimes hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Cigar lounges — yes. WiFi — of course. There is lots of leather.
The high-end ranges come as the $15 billion gun industry’s sales have more than doubled since 2005. Fears of regulations with a Democrat in the Oval Office have juiced much of that growth, which is now leveling out. But experts also say an industry shift away from hunting culture has helped spawn a new generation of firearms enthusiasts buying up sleekly designed handguns and AR-15 rifles for tactical shooting practice.
The average age of new target shooters is 33, while 47 percent live in urban or suburban areas, and 37 percent are female, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms industry. Shooters spend $10 billion a year on target shooting, including the cost of firearms, ammunition and range fees.
Those demographics and economics are attracting investors without firearms industry backgrounds; they see ranges as a new place to employ their cash. Elite Shooting Sports, a nearly $14 million project, has investors from the electronics industry. Real estate, finance, hotel and auto industry executives have backed other new ranges.
“A lot of savvy investors have seen the surge in sales within the firearms industry, see that it’s a quality industry to invest in and are smartly doing so,” said Zach Snow, a range expert at the sports foundation. “These ranges are trying to project a comfortable image to the largest contingent of people possible.”
Gone are the folding chairs, stale coffee and drab settings of some old mom-and-pop gun ranges. The idea now is to compete for entertainment dollars with golf and country clubs, nightclubs and movie theaters, which have also gone high-end with leather chairs and mixed drinks. Miami’s Lock & Load, which offers themed machine gun packages, including one with Israeli special forces weapons, is the No. 1-ranked activity in the city on TripAdvisor. Ranges are even becoming a new place to take clients for lunch — and squeeze off a few rounds.
Standing in the lobby of Elite Shooting Sports, near the concierge desk where shooters check in and sign forms on iPads, Greg Wodack, the range’s founder and managing partner, said: “We wanted to be more open and inviting for families, to appeal to everyone. This is not your stereotypical range. ”
Wodack, a former professional shooter, used to run the National Rifle Association’s shooting range and consult on other ranges around the country. Seeing where the business was going, he went off on his own but differentiated by putting a more utilitarian spin on the trend — creating a shooter’s version of affordable luxury. Membership fees are just $34.95 a month; hourly rates start at $20.
The range is colossal — more than 65,000 square feet, with 42 shooting lanes featuring booths wider than industry standards. A local millworker made the counters and dark wooden sales kiosks. Shooting booth tables have oak frames. In the 100-yard range, shooters can monitor where their rounds hit on an overhead screen.
There is a cafe serving pastries. Local restaurants cater lunches. There are enormous flat-screen TVs in the mammoth lounge area. And then there is the air. It is always a crisp 71 degrees. A special filtering system pushes gun smoke away from the shooter, cleaning the air so expertly that Wodack said it leaves the building cleaner than it came in.
Since opening in November, the club is averaging 1,000 new customers a week.
“This is absolutely beautiful,” said Cheryl Serrano, 39, who lives in Bristow, Va. “It’s amazing.”
Wearing a hot pink vest, Serrano stopped in this month with her family — her husband and sons, decked out head-to-toe in Under Armour gear, and her sister visiting from California. Serrano was there to shoot her Christmas present and a couple other guns. She had previously shot at an outdoor gun club where her father was a member.
“This is nice, and now we can establish ourselves here,” she said.
They all took turns shooting. Serrano and her sister commemorated the moment with a selfie.
Owners of older local gun ranges said they aren’t concerned about Elite Shooting Sports or other high-end ranges, but they do grumble a bit about them in class-like tones.
“It’s for the people who have money that the rest of us don’t have,” said Carl Roy, the president of the Maryland Small Arms Range in Prince George’s County. “Is it bad? Is a country club bad for golf? You might not be able to afford to golf there, but it doesn’t hurt the game.”
Wodack and other high-end gun range owners think their efforts are good for the industry, attracting people who might be hesitant to try shooting at an old-school club, fearing they’ll use the wrong lingo or be privately mocked because they’re newbies. Everyone who comes to Elite Shooting Sports — expert or novice — has to watch an orientation video about range etiquette and rules. Wodack preaches exceptional customer service to his staff.
In Houston, the Athena Gun Club — its amenities page on its Web site has a picture of a Starbucks-like takeout cup surrounded by coffee beans — promotes a surround-sound simulator for “first time shooters apprehensive of handling a live firearm.” In its retail store, firearms are displayed not in glass cases but on tables like iPhones at an Apple Store. (The guns are disabled.)
“We wanted to build a business so people right off the bat would feel comfortable and not like they are doing something wrong,” said Steve Bishop, Athena’s marketing manager. “None of us started as an expert shooter.”
Shooters won’t find much political talk at these new ranges, either.
“We are not going to push super pro-gun ideologies in people’s faces,” said Javier Lopez, a partner at Miami’s Lock & Load. “We avoid that stuff at all costs. Our staff will not initiate any political discussions with any of our guests.”
Which is not to say that these ranges are trying to avoid old-school shooters. Not at all. But, as Wodack put it, “with the Tactical Teddy group, if you go too far off in that direction, you’re not appealing to everyone.”
There has been debate about the new ranges in online forums.
In a discussion of Guntry Clubs on a Glock forum last year, a commenter wrote, “I couldn’t help but feel something amiss whenever you go to a boutique, fancy gun store versus a hole-in-the-wall store.” But the thought of being able to “smoke a nice cigar after some blasting does sound deliciously inviting.”
Already, shooters who used to shoot at the NRA range and other old-school ranges are showing up at Elite Shooting Sports.
“So far, I love it,” said John Lehman, 48, who was getting ready to shoot for the first time at the new range. “This is state of the art. This is awesome.”
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5. Washington Post slants story on CDC gun research
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From drgo.us: http://www.drgo.us/?p=549
Washington Post Slants Story on CDC Gun Research
By Timothy Wheeler, MD
January 15, 2015
In this story in today’s Washington Post, reporter Todd Frankel continues a long tradition of media cheerleading for gun control passed off as straight reporting. Frankel did go through the motions of seeking the opposing view in this running controversy by interviewing me. But his story fits the long-accepted major media template for reporting any story on federally funded gun research. That template goes something like this—valiant public health researchers seek a cure for “gun violence” but retrograde gun lobby shills in Congress cruelly and inexplicably cut off research funding for the poor doctors, who after all only want to prevent more “gun violence” deaths. And that’s exactly what Frankel did with this story. Uninformed readers understandably choose sides against the gun lobby in favor of the heroic public health researchers. Which is, of course, what the Washington Post wants you to do.
Reporter Todd Frankel quotes six researchers and politicians on the anti-gun side but only one doctor—yours truly—on the pro-gun rights side. Frankel knew I was intimately involved in the events around Congress’s defunding of the CDC’s gun research back in 1996, because I told him I was and backed it up with proof. And after our interview I sent him links to my thoroughly documented three-part series “Public Health Gun Control: A Brief History”. Here are some of the specific events I told Frankel about, and he ultimately ignored, that prompted Congress to take away the CDC’s gun research funding. All events are thoroughly documented in the series:
What the Washington Post Reporter Didn’t Tell You:
1) In 1995 the CDC funded a newsletter put out by the Trauma Foundation, a San Francisco gun control lobby. The newsletter called for readers to “organize a picket at gun manufacturing sites” and to “work for campaign finance reform to weaken the gun lobby’s political clout.” This was a blatant abuse of taxpayer money.
2) In 1989 top CDC official Dr. P. W. O’Carroll said, on record, “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths. We’re doing the most we can do, given the political realities.” Scientific research should be dedicated to learning the truth, not pushing a political agenda.
3) In a Winter 1993 publication Public Health Policy for Preventing Violence, CDC officials recommend two strategies for preventing firearm injuries: allowing only police, guards, and the military to have guns, or the outright prohibition of gun ownership.
4) In a 1994 Washington Post article, which was slanted in much the same way today’s article is, CDC official Dr. Mark Rosenberg was quoted as wanting his agency to create a public perception of firearms as “dirty, deadly—and banned.”
These are all significant historical events that influenced Congress back in the mid-1990s. They go a long way in explaining why Congress cut off the CDC’s gun research funding. It is unfortunate that the Washington Post editors and reporters prefer you didn’t know about them. After all, they have an obligation not to suppress facts that they consider embarrassing or that weigh against their own avowed dedication to ever more gun control. But now you know the whole story, including the parts that the Washington Post doesn’t want you to know.
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6. Public health gun control: A brief history part 3
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From drgo.us: http://www.drgo.us/?p=314
Public Health Gun Control: A Brief History—Part III
by Timothy Wheeler, MD
February 8, 2013
In Part I and Part II of this three-part series we described the political movement of organized medicine and public health activists to advance gun control during the 1990s and into the 2000s. During the first decade of the new century public reaction blunted the public health gun control push. In this part we will show that the medical gun prohibitionists are enjoying a resurgence of publicity provided by a sympathetic and generally anti-gun media. This is largely the result of high-profile mass shootings in 2012, pent-up motivation of frustrated gun control activists, and a president with a long record of working against gun owners’ rights.
Gun control advocates finally see an opportunity, denied them during the last decade, to once again push for gun control in government and in the public arena. Very few of their methods are new. Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced a bill to once again outlaw modern sporting rifles, a repeat of the 1994 ban on so-called “assault weapons.” That law expired in 2004, never having been shown to reduce crime. California Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) this week introduced legislation to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, enacted in 2005 to stop abusive litigation against gun manufacturers and dealers (see my 2003 National Review Online article about this). These are efforts to turn back the calendar, to repeal advances in the civil right of firearm ownership over the last decade.
Similarly, the public health gun prohibitionists are using the same arguments, almost word for word, that they advanced in the 1990s to try to convince the public that gun safety, and not gun prohibition, is their goal. After the December 14, 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut a flood of opinion articles appeared in large and small media outlets across the country. They all parroted the talking points of the 1990s public health gun controllers, urging policy makers to view “gun violence” as a public health problem rather than as a gun control debate. (Note: the term “gun violence” is itself a conscious effort at diverting the public from dealing with crime and instead scrutinizing law-abiding gun owners). This public relations scheme had its origins in 1990s activists who saw that they were beginning to lose the political debate over gun rights. They sought to redefine the terms of discussion, or to “reframe the debate,” to use their favorite term of obfuscation.
The flurry of articles from gun control activists advocating a public health view of “gun violence” are a step back in time. None of the authors bother to tell their readers that the “public health” approach was tried and failed miserably. And although these authors complain bitterly about Congress taking away federal funding of gun research at the Centers for Disease Control in 1997, none of them bother to tell their readers why Congress did it (see Part II of this series). These journalists apparently see no obligation to report the embarrassing truth, that the CDC was using that tax money to lobby for gun control.
Running through most of these articles is a common thread that because of Congress’s mandate that federal tax money not be used to fund gun control advocacy, there is a shortage of research on ways to reduce “gun violence.” They routinely demonize the National Rifle Association, accusing them of suppressing research that would help us find a solution to misuse of firearms. Former CDC official Dr. Mark Rosenberg even accused the NRA in a supposedly straight news piece of “terrorizing the CDC and the research community.” These biased journalists ignore the fact that the NRA spends millions of dollars and many hours of volunteers’ time in educating the public about firearm safety and legal use.
But more to the point, this complaint is just another deception from gun prohibitionists and their sympathizers in the media. Criminologists, not medical doctors, are the real experts on gun crime. And the body of scholarly firearm research done by criminologists dwarfs the research done by medical anti-gun advocacy researchers. Here is a short list of major firearm research projects from the criminology literature:
1) Wright, James D. and Rossi, Peter H. Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne NY 1986. This 247-page hardbound book was the analysis of extensive data collected from over 2,000 convicted felons in American state prisons. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, this massive and comprehensive study found numerous truths about violent criminals that fly in the face of gun control advocates:
a) Felons prefer large, well-made handguns as tools of their trade, not “Saturday Night Specials” or rifles of any kind. (page 180)
b) The people most likely to be deterred from getting a handgun by gun bans are not criminals, but poor people who have decided they need a gun to protect themselves against the criminals. (page 238)
2) Lizotte, Alan A. “The Costs of Using Gun Control to Reduce Homicide,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, vol. 62 no. 5 (June 1986), pp. 539-49. Criminologist Dr. Lizotte, now the dean of the School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany (SUNY), brings before a scientific panel the novel idea that, like any policy, gun control has costs.
3) Kleck, Gary Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Aldine de Gruyter, Hawthorne NY 1991. This 512-page book won the 1993 Michael J. Hindelang award of the American Society of Criminology. It offers analysis of the relationships between gun ownership, violent crime, and self-defense. His findings show that the average killer has a long history of criminal conduct, contrary to fashionable public health notions that anyone with a gun is a potential killer. He further found that most successful defensive gun uses are never reported to the police, the so-called “police chief’s fallacy.”
4) Kates, Don B., Schaffer, Henry E., Lattimer, John K., Murray, George B., and Cassem, Edwin W. “Guns and Public Health: Epidemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda?” Tennessee Law Review vol. 62 no. 3 (Spring 1995). A criminologist, a genetics and biomathematics professor, a Columbia Medical School professor, and two Harvard Medical School professors of psychiatry analyze the public health literature on firearms. They find numerous examples of bias, prejudice against gun owners, and just plain ignorance among prominent public health gun researchers.
4) Kleck, Gary and Gertz, Marc “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology vol. 86 no. 1 (Fall 1995). These two authors report the results of their large national telephone survey investigating defensive use of firearms. They found that “each year in the U.S. there are about 2.2 to 2.5 million DGUs [defensive gun uses] of all types by civilians against humans, with about 1.5 to 1.9 million of the incidents involving use of handguns.” (page 164)
5) Lott, John R. and Mustard, David B. “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” Journal of Legal Studies vol. XXVI no. 1 (January 1997), University of Chicago Press. These authors studied violent crime trends over 15 years using county-level data from all 3,054 counties in the United States. They found that when state concealed handgun laws went into effect, murders, rapes, and aggravated assaults subsequently decreased.
6) Lott, John R. More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998. This landmark book, based on Lott’s research referenced in the 1997 Journal of Legal Studies article, is now in its third edition, with analysis of new data.
7) Wellford, Charles F., Pepper, John V., and Petrie, Carol V., editors. Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review, Committee to Improve Research Information and Data on Firearms, Committee on Law and Justice, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC (2005). This National Academies of Science committee of leading scholars in criminology reviewed all the existing research on homicide, suicide, and firearms. They found that the existing research studies “do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence or suicide.” I sat on guest panel as a discussant of the findings. Their review was published in this 328-page book.
Mauser, Gary A., “Evaluating Canada’s 1995 Firearm Legislation,” Journal on Firearms and Public Policy vol. 17 (Fall 2005), Center for the Study of Firearms and Public Policy of the Second Amendment Foundation, Bellevue, Washington. Professor Mauser (Institute for Urban Canadian Research Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia) examines Canada’s controversial and costly 1995 Firearms Act. This unpopular law vastly exceeded initial dollar cost estimates and has never been definitively shown to have reduced crime. The part of the law requiring registration of long guns (rifles and shotguns) encountered such widespread resistance that it was finally repealed in 2012.These examples are a short list of the more comprehensive works of criminology research on firearms. They all cite page upon page of references from other criminologists in a well-established body of publications on a thoroughly studied subject going back several decades. It is remarkable, then, that today’s public health gun advocacy researchers and their media supporters behave as though they don’t exist.
Of course, the public health researchers are aware of the criminology research on guns. There is only one reason they do not acknowledge it and sometimes even try to suppress it—in most cases the criminology research disproves every gun control talking point the public health gun control advocacy researchers promote to us. Instead of violent crime being potentially committed by anyone who owns a gun, it is the work of a very small, very abnormal subset of the population. Instead of guns in citizens’ hands causing more crime, they prevent crime because of their deterrent effect on criminals. And fatal firearm accidents are not increasing; they are steadily decreasing despite great increases in the population and in the number of gun owners.
But the public health gun control advocates have done worse than just willfully ignoring the truth. Dr. John Lott, whose works are referenced above, was the target of unbelievable prejudice and hostility when he published his groundbreaking book “More Guns, Less Crime.” Susan Glick of the gun confiscation advocacy group the Violence Policy Center at first refused his request for review of the study, saying she didn’t want to give it more publicity. But when the big story broke anyway, Ms. Glick attacked the study in an ABC News interview as “flawed,” even though she had not read the study.
The Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Policy and Research wrote critical letters to the editors of dozens of newspapers around the country. Hopkins researchers were unable to challenge Lott on the scientific merits, but that didn’t stop them from smearing him.
A book review published in the famously anti-gun New England Journal of Medicine compared Dr. Lott to Archie Bunker, the archetypal TV-land bigot.
The California Medical Association, long a supporter of gun control (see UCLA symposium brochure), has a large body of policy supporting various gun control measures. They insist their anti-gun rights policy is science-based, but in policy sessions they refused to even consider Dr. Lott’s book or any of the other major works cited above. They have an anti-gun rights agenda, and they are not going to allow real science to interfere with it.
And so it continues. We can expect more of the same denial and suppression of debate from the public health gun controllers, because that is what they have done in the past. Our job is to break through their stone wall of suppression and to liberate the truth. And the truth is that the science proves responsible gun owners are not the cause of violent crime. They are the solution.
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7. Bloomberg gun control group sponsors course on gun violence
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Some years ago, VCDL did a course on firearms for reporters. It gave reporters who knew little or nothing about guns, a chance to get up close and personal with them. It was a success and I think it is probably time to do another one.
In the story below, there is no doubt that Bloomberg is teaching the press how to misreport gun stories. Actually, with so many in the press being unfamiliar with guns, they can misreport stories quite well without Bloomberg’s help.
Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/o7tfeve
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism ... -violence/
BLOOMBERG GUN CONTROL GROUP SPONSORS ‘JOURNALISM’ COURSE ON GUN VIOLENCE
by AWR Hawkins
January 13, 2015
On April 17 and 18 Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety will help fund a two day workshop to “enhance the practical ability of journalists to report on guns and gun violence knowledgeably, ethically, and effectively.”
Neither the NRA or Gun Owners of America will be there to help instruct “journalists,” but there will be “national public health and policy experts; researchers and clinicians; award-winning journalists, and prevention advocates and survivors.”
The crash-course on “gun violence” is being held under the auspices of Columbia Journalism School’s Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma (Dart).According to Dart, “the workshop will cover such topics as state and federal gun laws; patterns of gun sales and gun trafficking; national trends and polling; education and prevention initiatives; social, economic, and public health impacts; and special populations (e.g., children and youth, women and returning veterans).”
One of Dart’s goals is to “provide practical tools to enable journalists to successfully produce meaningful stories on guns and gun violence.”
It’s a safe bet Dart will not be covering the “2,082” instances of defensive gun uses that occur in the United States each day. That’s 2,082 times a gun is used to defend life and property everyday in this country. It seems journalists are largely failing to report on that.
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8. [AL] School requests students be armed with canned food items
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Gives a whole new meaning to “getting canned.”
Board Member Dale Welch emailed me this:
An elementary school principal has sent a letter requesting that students bring a can of food to school to throw at someone attempting to harm them. No one is detailing whether training will be required, if they can conceal the cans or have multiple cans. Will an extra large can be an **assault can**? So many questions and we need to know - it is about the children.
[PVC: All kidding aside, allowing CHP holders to carry in schools is, and will continue to be, a high priority for VCDL.]
From buzzpo.com: https://tinyurl.com/nax2ngs
http://buzzpo.com/school-requests-stude ... -shooting/
School Requests Students be Armed with Canned Food Items to Thwart a Possible School Shooting
by Eric Reed
January 9, 2015
Valley, AL - The W.F. Burns Middle School has just taken one gigantic leap into the realm of brain death. They’ve actually sent out letters to parents requesting canned food items be sent to the school with students to be used as potential weapons, in the event of a possible school shooting.
The letter reads:
Dear Parents and Guardians,
We are dedicated to educating and keeping our children safe at school. As a result of school shootings throughout the United States and discussing with law enforcement on the best procedure to follow to keep our students safe, we are enhancing our procedure for intruders.
The procedure will be the same as we have done in the past with the addition of arming our students with a canned food item. We realize at first this may seem odd; however, it is a practice that would catch an intruder off-guard. The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters their classroom.
This procedure is being used in other schools in our area and in the United States. Please view the following websites listed below for more information on this procedure.
http://www.cchsvoice.org/equipped-with- ... ice-drill/
http://www.lakegenevanews.net/Articles- ... uders.html
We are asking each student to bring an 8 oz. canned food item (corn, beans, peas, etc.) to use in case an intruder enters their classroom. We hope the canned food items will never be used or needed, but it is best to be prepared. At the end of the school year, the cans will be donated to the food closet.
Thank you for your support in helping us keep our children safe at school.
Sincerely,
Priscella P. Holley, Principal
Donna M. Bell, Assistant Principal”
So let’s get this straight. The school is asking parents to arm their children at school with CANNED FOOD ITEMS, in the hopes that a 13 year-old child can accurately chuck it at a shooters head.
I’ve seen a lot of stupidity in my life, but this one’s the icing on the cake. Nolan Ryan would’ve struggled to knock out an attacker from a seated position with a soup can, let alone our young children being able to do it. The only thing a flying soup can is going to do is piss the shooter off, and make your child the next target.
Plus this procedure raises many questions. What if the parents don’t have an 8 oz. can? If they send a 12 oz. can, is that an assault can? Should it be registered first? Will the students be required to keep their cans safely locked up until needed? And most importantly, before the cans are donated to the food closet at the end of the year, will they be properly disarmed first?
This school district should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves. They need to issue an immediate retraction to their soup can request complete with an apology to the parents within the district, and explore avenues that will actually protect our children. Campbell’s Soup may be good food, but it’s a horrible weapon.
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9. Liam Neeson: US gun ownership 'a [bleeping] disgrace'
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Yet another example of an actor who needs to listen to these words of wisdom: “better to be quiet and let people think you are stupid, than to open your mouth and confirm it.”
Neeson has made a lot of money playing the part of someone misusing guns to harm others.
From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/nl6hjc4
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/ ... -disgrace/
ACTION HERO LIAM NEESON ON PARIS ATTACK: US GUN OWNERSHIP ‘A [BLEEPING] DISGRACE’
by AWR Hawkins
January 12, 2015
Standing in front of a poster of himself holding a handgun in Taken 3, the latest installment in a film series that relies on gunplay to heighten action sequences, Liam Neeson spoke to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo by offering condolences, then saying: “There are too many [bleeping] guns out there, especially in America.”
He said the level of private gun ownership in the US is “a [bleeping] disgrace.”
According to Gulfnews.com, Neeson stuck with the American rant, saying: “I think the population is like, 320 million? There’s over 300 million guns, privately owned, in America. I think it’s a [bleeping] disgrace. Every week now we are picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.'”
Lost in the tirade was the fact that the discussion began with a focus on the attacks on Charlie Hebdo–attacks which took place in France, a country rich in gun control, yet one in which gun laws were impotent to spoil the plans of dedicated and well-trained attackers.
Asked if he saw duplicity in fervently pushing gun control while making a living with a gun in his hand, Neeson said:
A character like Bryan Mills going out with guns and taking revenge: it’s fantasy. It’s in the movies, you know? I think it can give people a great release from stresses in life and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? It doesn’t mean [the viewers] are all going to go out and go, “Yeah, let’s get a gun!” [PVC: Interesting rationalization for his hypocrisy.]
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10. Coordinated terror attacks have Americans reconsidering options
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:
From gunssavelife.com: http://tinyurl.com/pt4wsvh
http://www.gunssavelife.com/?p=15258&ut ... ve-options
THE NEW NORM: Coordinated terror attacks in France have prudent Americans reconsidering defensive options
by John Boch
January 12, 2015
The horrendous, coordinated terror attacks in France last week brought personal security to the forefront of a lot of people’s minds.
The Muslim radicals that carried out France’s version of 9/11 reportedly acknowledged their status as sleeper cells, having at least some training prior to carrying out their attacks upon innocent civilians.
Rabidly anti-gun Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, a woman we hold in particular high disdain, acknowledged Sunday that she believes there are Islamic sleeper cells in America. With her access to classified intelligence briefs, we’re reading between the lines here to mean that America has known cells in our nation and probably plenty more have skulked across the southern border undetected since the September 11th attacks.
What’s that mean for you?
1. It means (more) terror attacks in America are coming. Yeah, our intelligence and law enforcement people are pretty good and catching these scumbags and interrupting their plans to die in a vain attempt to meet virgins and little boys ripe for perverted sexual enjoyment in the afterlife. The only problem is, once the good guys miss one or two of these schemes and America suffers a couple of French-style terror attacks, the bad guys will likely grow bolder. What’s worse, home-grown hardcore Muslims may develop “Sudden Jihadi Syndrome” on their own, leading to still more terror attacks.
2. The attackers are there to rack up a body count in the most horrific way possible. They will slit the throats of victims and throw them out of windows for the cameras. They will rape teen and pre-teen girls, in view of media cameras where possible, and then slit their throats – or worse. They will use children as human shields and they will maim, mutilate and defile anything and everything they can. They aren’t going to negotiate, unless it’s to buy time to continue to victimize their captives. They aren’t like American spree killers who off themselves when faced with the first sign of armed resistance. These savages are there to take as many innocents with them, as horrifically as possible, before they are killed.
3. YOU are the first responder. What’s worse, especially in Illinois and in other anti-gun states, you’re probably going to be running solo. These guys aren’t stupid. They will pick targets of religious or social significance, be they religious institutions, Jewish-owned businesses, or public facilities such as schools, day cares or even hospitals. They will be drawn to locations where gun possession for law-abiding civilians is generally prohibited. If I were Jewish, I’d carry my gun anytime I was within a mile of my temple and I’d carry two if I went inside, irrespective of any “no guns” signage. Even as a gentile, I carry my gun everyday. You should too. Especially in Illinois and any other state where there is a paucity of concealed carry licensees.
4. Islamic jihadists are likely to be well-armed, plentiful, and they may be trained as well. More bad news, Kemosabe. Islamic jihadists aren’t like your local street thug who has a gun that might not shoot or won’t shoot more than a shot or two before malfunctioning. Islamic killers are going to be bringing long guns to the party and probably whack-job friends with long guns as well. They may also have the benefit of explosives and formal terror training as well. You’re going to be carrying your everyday carry gun.
You ARE carrying your gun today, right? The one you practice with from time to time. You’re not? Well, sorry. Sucks to be you.
Even if you’re carrying your sidearm, you’re behind the eight-ball because the bad guys are probably going to have long guns. Why would they bring handguns if they’re looking at running up the body counts? They may be wearing body armor they’ve purchased in anticipation of this day. They may well have had training overseas or even domestically from Muslim-run facilities.
They aren’t going to be like your average hoodlum from Chicago’s south side who will go big potty in his shorts and run out of his shoes like his hair is on fire at the sight of a victim pulling a pistola. These guys are going to be true believers, dedicated to meeting their virgin girls and young boys in the afterlife.
What should you do as a reasonable and prudent person?
You can practice denial, but that wouldn’t be reasonable or prudent. Denial, of course, has no survival value.
Instead, think and act proactively.
1. Be aware of your surroundings. Pay attention to those around you and what they are doing. Know where your exits are and where cover and/or concealment is when you’re in public. Situational awareness is the single best thing you can do to keep yourself safe, be it from domestic hoodlums or foreign Muslims looking to kill in the name of their “Allah”.
Some people will tell you that you can’t profile potential attackers. Horse dung. That 70-year-old, blue-haired woman with the walker isn’t going to go all Sudden Jihadi on you, and neither is that teenager glued to his smart phone or the Amish family in the passenger van at the local Walmart.
2. Carry your damn gun. If you want to carry a .380 pocket pistol, fine. Carry it as a backup to a more substantial gun. Pistol rounds suck at stopping bad guys. They suck worse if the bad guy is wearing armor and you have to score head shots to take them out – or shots to the groin to slow them down. Which brings us to…
3. Carry extra ammunition and a flashlight. This should go without saying.
4. Consider carrying a “trunk gun”. If you’re invited to a gun fight and you can’t decline the invitation, bring a long gun. Bring friends with long guns. Unfortunately, you may be short of friends with long guns, so make the best of what you’ve got. It’s far better to shoot some armed Muslim barbarian intent on terrorizing the innocent with a high-power rifle than your cell phone camera.
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11. Europe's leading rabbi: Jews must begin carrying guns
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A day late and a dollar short.
Member Mark Shinn emailed me this:
From freebeacon.com: http://tinyurl.com/mxgw8k4
http://freebeacon.com/national-security ... ying-guns/
Europe’s Leading Rabbi: Jews Must Begin Carrying Guns
Top Jewish org petitions EU to permit Jews to carry guns
by Adam Kredo
January 15, 2015
One of Europe’s most prominent Jewish organizations is petitioning the European Union to pass new legislation that would permit Jewish community members to carry guns “for the essential protection of their communities,” according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The European Jewish Association (EJA), which represents Jewish communities across Europe, says that gun license laws must be altered following a string of deadly attacks on Jews in France and other European countries, where anti-Semitism has been growing at an alarming rate.
The recent attacks, including one on a Kosher market that killed four, “have revealed the urgent need to stop talking and start acting” in a way that empowers Europe’s Jews, according to a letter sent Tuesday by EJA General Director Rabbi Menachem Margolin to EU leaders.
The EU, which has enacted very stringent gun control laws, should empower and train Jews to be proficient with guns in order to maintain their safety, according to Margolin.
“The Paris attacks, as well as the many challenges and threats which have been presented to the European Jewish community in recent years, have revealed the urgent need to stop talking and start acting,” Margolin writes.
“We hereby ask that gun licensing laws are reviewed with immediate effect to allow designated people in the Jewish communities and institutions to own weapons for the essential protection of their communities, as well as receiving the necessary training to protect their members from potential terror attacks.”
Margolin told the Free Beacon that he and the EJA have been warning for “a very long time” that anti-Semitism is growing in Europe and that it poses a direct threat to the continent’s Jewish population.
There has been a “dramatic increase of anti-Semitism in Europe,” Margolin said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “We demanded from the European governments some time ago that action should be taken [and] were not surprised to see the results in Paris.”
Many Jews are living in fear and have shunned popular community outposts such as synagogues and kosher markets out of fear of an attack like that in Paris.
“Many people today are not coming to synagogue because of the issue and they’d be more comfortable if they knew people were trained to react in an emergency,” Margolin said.
Attacks against Jews have been on the rise, as neo-Nazi parties and other anti-Semitic organizations gain a foothold in some European nations. However, the growth of anti-Semitism has not always been acknowledged by leaders.
“We need to recognize the warning signs of anti-Semitism, racism, and intolerance that once again threaten Europe and our European ideals,” Margolin wrote in his letter to the EU.
The situation cannot continue as it is, Margolin insisted.
Jewish community representatives should be armed and on guard at Kosher markets and synagogues, he said.
“We realize that we also have to do something to take responsibility in case it takes too long” for authorities to put the proper defenses into place, Margolin explained.
This would include stationing armed Jewish community members at popular hubs.
Meanwhile, extremists who have travelled to countries such as Syria, where they train alongside the Islamic State and other terror groups, are now returning home to Europe, where they pose a direct threat to Jews, according to the letter
“The European Jewish Association has long and publicly warned European governments of the need to clamp down firmly on any and all acts of terror wherever and whenever they arise,” the letter says. “As you know, the danger is that much greater as many Europeans travel abroad to be indoctrinated into radical Islam, before returning to their European homelands to use their militant training to devastating effect.”
Any changes to the gun laws can be made in a safe and effective way, Margolin argues.
“Let there be no doubt, we are asking that all weapons will be issued for self-protection only, and to designated personnel that will undergo thorough investigation and training by local authorities,” he wrote.
Margolin said that he is currently in negotiations with EU leaders to relax certain gun restrictions, though some remain hesitant to do so.
“Some people are afraid it might bring the situation to be uncontrolled,” he said, noting that negotiations on the matter would include ways to ensure Jewish community members are properly trained to use weapons.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that while guns could help Jews defend themselves against an individual attack, only authorities can protect them against a mass attack like those carried out in France.
“As to personally being armed, such a move could help when a Jewish person is threatened by thugs, but won’t help if G-d forbid, Charlie-type terror attacks are launched,” Cooper said.
“Bottom line: Only the Police and intelligence can protect France’s Jews from terrorism,” Cooper said, noting that it is expected French authorities will continue boosting defenses. “If the government doesn’t, then there is no long range future for Jews there.”
“In the meantime, additional steps by the community to train and defend Jews from hate attacks are appropriate, necessary, and prudent,” Cooper said. “I pray that all these steps will help.”
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(VCDL). VCDL is an all-volunteer, non-partisan grassroots organization
dedicated to defending the human rights of all Virginians. The Right to
Keep and Bear Arms is a fundamental human right.
VCDL web page: http://www.vcdl.org [http://www.vcdl.org/]