VA-ALERT: VCDL Update 7/29/15

Post by **OakRidgeStars** » Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:45:35

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Not yet a VCDL member? Join VCDL at: http://www.vcdl.org/join
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VCDL's meeting schedule: http://www.vcdl.org/meetings
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Abbreviations used in VA-ALERT: http://www.vcdl.org/help/abbr.html
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** Thanks to EM Brandy Polanowski and member Charles Young for saving me hours of work by compiling this update **

1. HELP: Dale City gun show needs more volunteers!
2. LAST CHANCE: Voting to get Lucky Gunner donation ends Friday night
3. Fairfax CHP holder successfully thwarts armed robbers
4. Obama targets Social Security recipients
5. Lafayette movie theater was, you guessed it, a “gun free zone”
6. Delegate Scott Taylor pushing to arm service members
7. WUSA piece filmed at Chantilly Gun Show
8. Stories on the battle to protect our service men and women, armed citizens not welcome says brass
9. CHP holder in Ohio stops man shooting at people, including a one-year-old child
10. U.S. military makes monumental shift to hollowpoint pistol ammunition
11. [TX] One dead after machine gun salesman opens fire on alleged robbers
12. [TX] Shootout in Palestine, this is how fast it happens [VIDEO]
13. U.S. high schools embrace shooting as hot new sport.
14. Donald Trump: Abolish gun free zones on military bases
15. Hillary Clinton's push on gun control marks a shift in presidential politics
16. Several big U.S. cities see homicide rates surge
17. Fast food chain asks customers not to open carry
18. Here's what liberal site learned after investigating 'Mother's Packing Heat'
19. A word to President Obama about "Gun Violence"
20. [AU] Shooters want say on planned firearms law changes

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1. HELP: Dale City gun show needs more volunteers!
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We need TWO volunteers for this Saturday afternoon (August 1st) at the Dale City Gun show.

If you can help, please contact the Dale City Gun Show Coordinator, Richard Kroh, at: gunshows.dalecity@vcdl.org

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2. LAST CHANCE: Voting to get Lucky Gunner donation ends Friday night
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Time is running out to vote VCDL some free funding from the Lucky Gunner care of the Brady Campaign! The voting ends Friday night. We are currently in fifth place. First and second place are national groups, so no surprise there.

Here is the current breakdown:

National Rifle Association - ILA 12453
Gun Owners of America (GOA) 12145
Illinois State Rifle Association 7689
Connecticut Citizens Defense League 6693
Virginia Citizens Defense League 5675
Arizona Citizens Defense League 4463
Maryland Shall Issue 4020
Buckeye Firearms Association 3703
Second Amendment Foundation 3104
Grass Roots North Carolina 3082

If you have not yet voted or know someone else who hasn’t voted, just click here and select VCDL:

http://www.luckygunner.com/brady-v-lucky-gunner

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3. Fairfax CHP holder successfully thwarts armed robbers
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Another CHP holder stopping criminals dead in their tracks. In this case a food delivery driver. And no one was shot, either.

Thanks to member Jim Graf for the link!

https://fcpdnews.wordpress.com/2015/07/ ... y-22-2015/

MASON DISTRICT STATION

ATTEMPTED ROBBERY: 6000 block of Vista Drive, 07/19/15, at about 12:10 a.m. A food delivery driver was walking and was approached by two men. One of the suspects displayed a knife and demanded money. The victim, who had a legally concealed firearm, persuaded the suspects to leave. The suspects fled in a white sedan and were described as Hispanic males. The victim did not require medical attention.

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4. Obama targets Social Security recipients
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If you are having someone else handling your Social Security payments, Obama wants your guns. A nibble at a time, from veterans to Social Security recipients to anyone diagnosed with any kind of mental disorder, Obama wants your guns.

http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/07/confi ... e-gun-ban/

or

http://tinyurl.com/pxyd5c9

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5. Lafayette movie theater was, you guessed it, a “gun free zone”
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One tweet mentioned in the article is from a peace-loving gun-grabber saying it would be funning if all gun owners were shot dead. Like I keep saying, most of the antis are people with really bad tempers.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/24/sur ... free-zone/

or

http://tinyurl.com/qb9h64o

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6. Delegate Scott Taylor pushing to arm service members
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http://wtkr.com/2015/07/23/del-scott-ta ... cemembers/

or

http://tinyurl.com/o6e3bbs

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7. WUSA piece filmed at Chantilly Gun Show
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“Are attitudes towards gun control changing?” is the title. If you interview enough gun owners, you’ll find some who support gun control. In this case it was a hunter, which I have found to be far too common with that subset of gun owners.

But not everyone agreed with gun control in the story.

I am NOT seeing ANY support for gun control from the vast majority of gun owners or even most politicians here in Virginia, so I think this story is giving a false sense of the popularity of gun control.

http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/2015/07 ... /30680893/

or

http://tinyurl.com/nj6b7xv

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8. Stories on the battle to protect our service men and women, armed citizens not welcome says brass
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The military brass, probably embarrassed that citizens are having to protect soldiers instead of the other way around, are telling their recruitment centers to treat armed citizens outside their locations as a security threat and to call the police!

You can’t make this stuff up.

Regardless of what the “brass" are saying, there’s no doubt in my mind that the rank-and-file appreciate the support they are getting from gun owners.

Thanks to member Brian Sheaffer for the link:

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/army-to- ... t-1.359134

or

http://tinyurl.com/nht54ns

———

Another story on the current situation of gun owners protecting military recruiting centers:

http://personalliberty.com/military-say ... tagon-act/

or

http://tinyurl.com/q85txys

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9. CHP holder in Ohio stops man shooting at people, including a one-year-old child
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Gun owner saves lives by wounding a man who was shooting wildly at people, including a young child. Another example of a CHP holder responsibly saving lives.

Thanks to member Clayton Rhodes for the link:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/07/27/ci ... tcmp=hpbt4

or

http://tinyurl.com/q9xjlk2

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10. U.S. military makes monumental shift to hollowpoint pistol ammunition
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I never thought I’d see the day this would happen.

Member James Durso emailed me this:

From bearingarms.com: http://tinyurl.com/oxg9ng9
http://bearingarms.com/u-s-military-mak ... mmunition/

U.S. military makes monumental shift to hollowpoint pistol ammunition
by Bob Owens
July 8, 2015

In a significant doctrinal shift, the U.S. military is relegating full metal jacketed (FMJ) pistol bullets to a training role, and will be adopting modern hollowpoint designs similar to those used by most domestic law enforcement agencies and citizens who carry handguns for self-defense.

The stunning announcement was made at the U.S Army’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey yesterday during the military’s two-day “industry day” for the Modular Handgun System (MHS), which will conclude today.

A military lawyer who made a presentation during the Industry Day noted that the United States is not a signatory to the Hague Conventions which outlawed the use of “dum-dum” and expanding bullets more than a century ago. It is the military’s position that the shift to jacketed hollowpoint (JHP) ammunition, which more efficiently transfers energy to the target and which presents much less of a risk of over-penetration, is more humane and less of a risk to innocent civilians downrange in modern combat where there are often no clear front lines.

The MHS contract is still caliber agnostic, with the primary requirement being that the adopted cartridge must perform 10% better than currently issued M882 (9mm NATO, 124-grain FMJ) with both the FMJ training ammunition and the hollowpoint ammunition issued for deployment.

Both the FMJ and JHP must perform similarly so that the training and combat ammunition has the same recoil impulses and performance parameters.

A lot of conventional wisdom suggests that the 9MM and .45 ACP are the top two contenders for the MHS contract.

The big selling point for .45 ACP in the past century was always that it was a slightly larger bullet than the 9mm, and that it performed somewhat better when both calibers were using FMJ bullets. In addition, the military has also already used .45 ACP hollowpoints in combat handguns in Afghanistan and Iraq among special operations units fighting unlawful combatants. It has not (officially) used them against other nation-states in military-on-military combat.

Now that JHPs are going to be used as general issue, the playing field tilts back strongly in favor of 9mm.

I strongly suspect that the Army has already taken a long and hard look at the data produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation when they recently investigated switching handgun calibers, an investigation that led the agency to abandon the .40 S&W in favor of the 9mm. The FBI discovered that 9mm outperforms both .40 S&W and .45 ACP when using premium hollowpoints, while having less perceived recoil and much greater ammunition capacity.

I would not be surprised at all if the full-size variant of the pistol that eventually wins the contract has a magazine capacity of 17-20 rounds.

During testing, MHS candidate pistols will feed at least 35,000 rounds of JHP to ensure reliable feeding.

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11. [TX] One dead after machine gun salesman opens fire on alleged robbers
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Instant Karma.

Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:

From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/p6vlb2y
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... d-robbers/

One dead after machine gun salesman opens fire on alleged robbers
by AWR Hawkins
July 8, 2013

On July 7 two men allegedly tried to break into a machine gun store and did not realize the owner was inside until it was too late.

According to ABC 13, the two suspects allegedly tried to rob Class 3 Weapons around 1:45 am. The Houston Police Department (HPD) said the owner opened fire on the men with a shotgun, killing one and sending the second suspect fleeing.

HPD said the suspects had no idea the store owner was present when they allegedly began trying to enter the store.

KHOU reports that the deceased suspect was a 23-year-old male. They indicate there is some question as to whether he died at the scene or at the hospital.

The Houston Chronicle reports that burglaries of gun stores are on the rise, and many gun store owners say they sleep in their stores in order to ward off burglary attempts like the one against Class 3 Weapons.

Former gun store owner Jim Pruett told the Chronicle, “Every gun store owner probably needs to live in their gun store to protect it. It is not if they are going to burglarize you, it is when. These punks out there… they think it is easy money.”

Class 3 Weapons sells guns covered by the National Firearms Act. These include fully automatic weapons (machine gun), short barreled rifles, shotguns, and silencers.

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12. [TX] Shootout in Palestine, this is how fast it happens [VIDEO]
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Member Dean V. Jacobson emailed me this:

From fishgame.com: http://tinyurl.com/no33l6h
http://fishgame.com/2015/07/shootout-in-palestine/

Shootout in Palestine, this is how fast it happens
by Dustin Ellermann
July 1, 2015

Intense police bodycam footage of a suspect drawing down on 2 police officers in Palestine, TX on May 31, 2015. (details here)

This is how quick a life threatening altercation can happen (viewer discretion is advised): [PVC: link is in the online version]

And the partner’s view: [PVC: link is in the online version]

I’m impressed how fast the officer drew his sidearm, activated his light and laser, and made his shots count.

Are you aware and fast enough to respond efficiently to a threat like this?

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13. U.S. high schools embrace shooting as hot new sport.
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Bad news for gun-grabbers.

Member Montford Oakes emailed me this:

From bloomberg.com: http://tinyurl.com/pyxffjm
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... -new-sport

U.S. high schools embrace shooting as hot new sport.
by Esme E Deprez
July 9, 2015

The giddy 13-year-old boys oohed and aahed as they stared down the black shotgun barrels and aimed at clay targets they imagined whizzing through the air.

“You guys are welcome to test any of these out,” said Dusty Minke, a sales agent for Browning, as the teens elbowed each other for spots at his kiosk. “We’ve actually had a couple of kids who did so good on the test range that they were like, ‘Can I use this for my rounds?’ We let ‘em, and their scores went up -- and they’ll hopefully go and buy one.”

It was day six of the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League championship, the world’s biggest shooting-sport event. Minke could see potential customers in every direction, kids as young as 11 who’d tumbled out of their parents’ cars in camouflage T-shirts beginning at 7 a.m.

In 2009, the contest’s first year, it drew 30 shooters. In June there were 5,134, more than 20,000 spectators and sponsors including Benelli Armi SpA and SKB Shotguns. Trap shooting is the fastest-growing sport in Minnesota high schools, and was recently introduced in neighboring Wisconsin and North Dakota. While it may make anti-gun activists uneasy, it’s a boon for manufacturers and retailers that have stoked its growth.

Trap shooting is the fastest-growing sport in Minnesota high schools

“This is the best thing to happen to the shooting sports in 50 years,” said Dennis Knudson, a 74-year-old lifelong trap shooter, after watching his grandson compete. “It’s so fun to see the youngsters stepping up. It will preserve the sport, and they’ll do it for the rest of their lives.”

Therein lies the appeal for the industry. The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates the average 16-year-old competitor will spend $75,000 over his or her lifetime.

‘Just Cool’

U.S. gun sales have begun to level after a spike caused by fears that mass shootings, including the 2012 elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, would lead to restrictions. High-school trap offers a wholesome marketing opportunity for gunmakers and retailers like Cabela’s Inc., which underwrite events and donate to teams. Manufacturers tailor products for smaller bodies and budgets, such as the lightweight $480 SXP Trap by Winchester Repeating Arms. The league estimates teams’ spending will top $5 million this year.

Competitive musketry dates to 16th century England and has been an Olympic sport since 1896. Today trap, a cousin of skeet and sporting clays, is as popular with Minnesota’s urban boys and girls as it is with their counterparts in rural areas, where hunting’s in the DNA. “It’s just cool, because I get to use a gun,” said Stephanie Petsilis, 17, who shoots for Wayzata High School outside Minneapolis with a $1,430 Browning BT-99 Micro.

Happy Kid

At the championship, held at a range 130 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, contestants fired 12-gauge shotguns at inverted orange saucers flying 42 miles per hour. The five-person squads that came closest to exploding 100 targets in 100 tries advanced to the state tournament.

Zac Olson, 15, used a SKB Century III 12-gauge as a member of the Lakeville South High School team, which he joined after an injury ended a budding gymnastics career. “All you need to do is practice,” he said, wearing the team’s black-and-khaki vest. “You don’t have to be super fast or super strong.”

His mother, Courtney Olson, went from being repulsed at the thought of guns in their house near Minneapolis to buying Zac the $1,400 shotgun and a $600 Glock 17 to nurture his newfound interest in becoming a police officer. “To see your kid this happy is incredible,” she said.

Lakeville South’s top shooter, 16-year-old Andy Krebs, wore a T-shirt with a quote wrongly ascribed to Thomas Jefferson: “Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.”

Dying Sport

The sport turned him into an ardent gun-rights supporter, Andy said. “I don’t know if I really would have been exposed to that had the team not come to the school.”

For the National Rifle Association, which lobbies against firearm restrictions, youngsters like him represent an important new constituency. “These kids are going to be future legislators, and they’re going to get in there and know the truth about weapons,” said Dennis Taylor, an NRA member and an operations manager at the Wisconsin Trapshooting Association.

The gun-rights debate, reignited by the June 17 shooting deaths of nine parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina, church, isn’t what motivated Minneapolis advertising executive Jim Sable in 2001 to start what would would become the USA State High School Clay Target League. He said he belongs to the NRA, which doesn’t fund the league but donates to individual teams, just to get a discount on insurance for his gun collection.

The trap enthusiast feared the sport was dying. Clubs have youth programs, but Sable, 76, decided the growth potential was in competitive shooting as an extracurricular activity.

No Backlash

To wary educators, Sable stressed his motto -- “Safety, fun and marksmanship, in that order” -- and strict rules: no firearms allowed on campus. Team members must have state-issued safety certificates, which in Minnesota can be earned at age 11. The league record is clean, with no reported injuries.

John Nelson, the league vice president, said that while some schools don’t permit yearbook photos of team members posing with firearms, there’s been no backlash. Gun-control advocates, in fact, haven’t opposed trap as a school sport. But they disagree with boosters’ contention that its spread will reduce accidents by teaching children how to safely handle the weapons, citing data showing gun-owning households are at higher risk of homicide and suicide by firearm.

A nonprofit supported by fees, donations and sponsorships, the league marketed itself aggressively and developed proprietary score-tracking software. The sport took off.

This year, 9,245 schoolchildren in Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota participated; trap’s so popular in Minnesota that the legislature appropriated $2 million for the expansion of gun ranges, where the kids compete. Next year, schools in Arizona, South Dakota, Illinois and Kansas will host teams. Middle-schoolers can also join high-school squads.

In June, Zac Olson and Andy Krebs of Lakeville South shot so well they advanced to the state tournament at the Minneapolis Gun Club. Their crew hit 464 targets out of a possible 500, claiming the first-place trophy as Minnesota champions.

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14. Donald Trump: Abolish gun free zones on military bases
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Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:

From breitbart.com: http://tinyurl.com/o4k5uxe
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... ary-bases/

Donald Trump: Abolish gun free zones on military bases
by AWR Hawkins
July 9, 2015

Donald Trump says that if elected president, he will abolish the gun free zones currently imposed on U.S. troops by “[mandating] that soldiers remain armed and on alert at our military bases.”

In an interview with Ammoland he said: “President Clinton never should have passed a ban on soldiers being able to protect themselves on bases. America’s Armed Forces will be armed.”

Trump went on to decry gun free zones on military bases as a product of “political correctness” and said removing those zones “will… [enable soldiers] to defend themselves against terrorists.” He added, “Our brave soldiers should not be at risk because of policy created by civilian leadership.”

Trump’s opposition to military gun free zones is in line with his opposition to other gun control measures currently being pushed by gun control proponents like President Obama, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Gabby Giffords, and Sandy Hook Promise. Chief among these is his opposition to expanding background checks.

Trump explicitly stated that he does “not support expanding background checks” because our current background check system proves such checks do not work.

He added:

They make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to acquire firearms while consistently failing to stop criminals from getting guns. We should re-examine our policy to make sure that these prohibitions do not impede law abiding citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights

Breitbart News has previously reported that the most prominent of public attackers over the last 15 years all passed background checks to acquire the guns they used to commit their crimes. These attackers include Dylann Roof (Charleston), Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi (Garland), Jared and Amanda Miller (Las Vegas), Elliot Rodger (Santa Barabara), Ivan Lopez (Fort Hood 2014), Darion Marcus Aguilar (Maryland mall), Karl Halverson Pierson (Arapahoe High School), Paul Ciancia (LAX), Andrew John Engeldinger (Minneapolis), Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard), Tennis Melvin Maynard (West Virginia), Wade Michael Page (Sinkh Temple), James Holmes (Aurora theater), Jared Loughner (Tucson), Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009), Jiverly Wong (Binghamton), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Naveed Haq (Seattle), and Mark Barton (Atlanta).

Background checks proved impotent to prevent any of these attackers from carrying out their heinous deeds but served well to make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to get the guns they need for self-defense.

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15. Hillary Clinton's push on gun control marks a shift in presidential politics
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Hillary Clinton isn’t a fan of a transparent government and she isn’t a fan of gun rights, either. That’s a really bad combination and more of what we’ve been seeing for the last six long years.

Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:

From washingtonpost.com: http://tinyurl.com/plvcvqf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html

Hillary Clinton's push on gun control marks a shift in presidential politics
by Philip Rucker
July 9, 2015

In her standard stump speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton talks about fighting income inequality, celebrating court rulings on gay marriage and health care, and, since the Emanuel AME Church massacre, toughening the nation’s gun laws.

That last component marks an important evolution in presidential politics. For at least the past several decades, Democrats seeking national office have often been timid on the issue of guns for fear of alienating firearms owners. In 2008, after Barack Obama took heat for his gaffe about people who “cling to guns or religion,” he rarely mentioned guns again — neither that year nor in his 2012 reelection campaign.

But in a sign that the political environment on guns has shifted in the wake of recent mass shootings — and of Clinton’s determination to stake out liberal ground in her primary race against insurgent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — Clinton is not only initiating a debate about gun control but also vowing to fight the National Rifle Association.

“I’m going to speak out against the uncontrollable use of guns in our country because I believe we can do better,” Clinton said Tuesday in Iowa City.

A few days earlier, she said in Hanover, N.H.: “We have to take on the gun lobby. .?.?. This is a controversial issue. I am well aware of that. But I think it is the height of irresponsibility not to talk about it.”

Clinton’s comments could stoke millions of politically active gun owners, and Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, argued that the move was fraught with peril for her.

“We’ve been down this road before with the Clintons,” LaPierre said through a spokesman. “She needs to read her husband’s book.”

In his memoir, “My Life,” former president Bill Clinton suggested that his vice president, Al Gore, lost the 2000 presidential election in part because of backlash in states such as Arkansas and Tennessee over the Clinton administration’s 1995 ban on assault weapons, which has since expired. Many Democratic lawmakers also lost their elections after gun-control votes.

The Republican 2016 presidential candidates, in keeping with GOP orthodoxy, have spoken out loudly against gun control. Many gave speeches at the NRA’s spring convention and tout their high ratings from the group.

Mark Glaze, a longtime gun-control advocate who until recently oversaw former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s gun-control efforts, argued that Hillary Clinton should embrace her husband’s record.

“The Clintons pulled off the almost-impossible by giving us the background-check system and banning assault weapons,” Glaze said. “That’s something President Obama wasn’t able to do. Their political interest lies in owning, rather than obscuring, that accomplishment.”

Many Democratic strategists said campaigning on guns is smart politics for Hillary Clinton both in the primary and, should she become the nominee, in the general election.

Gun control is one of the few issues on which Clinton has a more left-leaning record than Sanders, who represents a rural, pro-gun-rights state and has voted in the past for legislation to protect the firearms industry. Although Clinton has not attacked Sanders by name, by invoking guns she makes an unspoken contrast.

The issue also fits neatly into the overall narrative Clinton is trying to present. She can stake out a bold stance on an issue that plays well with the liberal base while arguing that she would break through the partisan stalemate in Washington.

There are few issues more intractable than guns. In 2013, after the massacre of 20 young children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., a bipartisan compromise to expand background checks for firearm purchases failed to pass the Senate despite overwhelming popular support and President Obama’s backing.

Clinton began talking about gun control in the days following last month’s church shooting in Charleston, S.C., and aides said she plans to keep it in her stump speech, although she has no immediate plans to unveil a detailed gun policy.

“This is an important issue, and she believes that we cannot let partisan gridlock prevent us from continuing to seek common-sense safety measures,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon.

Despite his mixed voting record, Sanders did support the 2013 background-check bill and assault-weapons ban. And on the stump, he is trying to sound more forceful. He notes that “guns in Chicago and Los Angeles mean a very different thing than guns in Vermont and New Hampshire” but says — as he did two weeks ago in Bow, N.H. — that the next president must “come forward with a common-sense proposal on guns.”

In the Democratic field, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley has the strongest record in favor of gun control. He supported an assault-weapons ban as mayor of Baltimore in the early 2000s and then signed one into law as governor in 2013, along with a suite of gun restrictions that stand as among the nation’s toughest.

“He’s the only person in the race who’s led on this issue,” said O’Malley spokeswoman Haley Morris.

Looking to the general election, some gun-control measures are popular, especially with the coalition of swing-state Latinos, African Americans, and young and suburban women the Democratic nominee would need to win the White House.

“There is no more powerful force in an election than the suburban mother, and you don’t find a lot of suburban mothers that are against some sort of common-sense gun control,” said Mo Elleithee, a former Clinton adviser and Democratic strategist who now directs the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service.

Other Democrats argue that Clinton has nothing to lose. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D-Va.) said the NRA has become a “paper tiger,” noting the elections he’s won despite the NRA’s vocal opposition.

“I think she has no illusion that even if she didn’t say a word about guns, the NRA would be out there blasting her to say she had a conspiratorial plan to work with the U.N. to take everybody’s guns away, so why not go head-on on an issue that will improve safety,” Kaine said.

A survey this year by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research found that 89 percent favor requiring background checks for all gun sales, including 85 percent of gun owners. But polling is much more closely divided on other gun restrictions and does not account for the high intensity among gun-control opponents.

David “Mudcat” Saunders, a Democratic strategist based in conservative rural Virginia, warned that Clinton’s focus on guns could taint the entire Democratic ticket, including candidates for state and local offices.

“Never in the history of the Democratic Party have they started a gun debate that didn’t cost them numbers in the general election,” said Saunders, who supports the candidacy of former senator Jim Webb (D-Va.). “She’s trying to get to the left of Bernie, obviously, but I think it’ll hurt her in the long run — and it’ll cost anybody on the down ticket in the South and in rural America.”

In her 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton stayed nearly silent on guns. An exception was after Obama’s “cling to guns” comment surfaced, when she attacked him as being “elitist” and fondly recalled her father teaching her to shoot as a little girl at her grandfather’s Pennsylvania lake house.

Howard Wolfson, for many years a top Clinton aide before going to work for Bloomberg, said Clinton’s avoidance of guns in 2008 should not be mistaken for a lack of interest in gun control.

“I started working for her back in 1999 and she talked about it back then,” Wolfson said. “As a senator from New York, it was something that was important to her. I think in the wake of Newtown and Charleston, it’s more resonant in our political culture.”

In recent months, Clinton’s speechwriters and policy staff have sought counsel from Bloomberg’s group, Everytown for Gun Safety. Erika Soto Lamb, Everytown’s spokeswoman, said Clinton’s focus on the issue is “striking.”

“Knowing how hard we tried in 2012 to get [Republican nominee Mitt] Romney or Obama to say something about guns,” she said, “it is a changed world now when Hillary and other candidates are making it a part of their stump. This is the first presidential election when we’ve seen proactive statements.”

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16. Several big U.S. cities see homicide rates surge
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Well, what do you expect? Our country’s leadership has been undermining police, while sympathizing with and supporting violent criminals.

Member Walter Jackson emailed me this:

From usatoday.com: http://tinyurl.com/p3m6vbv
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015 ... Le7Ac.qpSQ

Several big U.S. cities see homicide rates surge
by Aamer Madhani
July 10, 2015

After years of declining violent crime, several major American cities experienced a dramatic surge in homicides during the first half of this year.

Milwaukee, which last year had one of its lowest annual homicide totals in city history, recorded 84 murders so far this year, more than double the 41 it tallied at the same point last year.

Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said the mounting homicide toll in his city of 600,000 is driven by Wisconsin's "absurdly weak" gun laws – carrying a concealed weapon without a state-issued concealed carry is a misdemeanor in the Badger State – as well a subculture within the city that affirms the use of deadly violence to achieve status and growing distrust of police in some parts of the city.

Milwaukee is not alone.

The number of murders in 2015 jumped by 33% or more in Baltimore, New Orleans and St. Louis. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the nation's third-largest city, the homicide toll climbed 19% and the number of shooting incidents increased by 21% during the first half of the year.

In all the cities, the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods. In parts of Milwaukee, the sound of gunfire is so commonplace that about 80% of gunshots detected by ShotSpotter sensors aren't even called into police by residents, Flynn said.

"We've got folks out there living in neighborhoods, where . . . it's just part of the background noise," Flynn told USA TODAY. "That's what we're up against."

Criminologists note that the surge in murders in many big American cities came after years of declines in violent crime in major metros throughout the United States. Big cities saw homicides peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s as crack-cocaine wreaked havoc on many urban areas.

The homicide toll across the country — which reached a grim nadir in 1993 when more than 2,200 murders were counted in New York City — has declined in ebbs and flows for much of the last 20 years, noted Alfred Blumstein, a professor of urban systems and operations research at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Several U.S. cities – including Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego and Indianapolis – have experienced a decrease in the number of murders so far this year.

Blumstein said the current surge in murders in some big cities could amount to no more than a blip.

"It could be 2015 represents us hitting a plateau, and by the end of the year, nationally, we'll see that murder rates are flat or there is a slight bump up," Blumstein said.

But other experts say the surge in killings suggests that the United States may be nearing a floor in reducing its murder rate as the federal, state and local governments increasingly grapple with tighter budgets.

"Why is there a synchronicity among these cities?" said Peter Scharf, an assistant professor at the LSU School of Public Health whose research focuses on crime. "One reason may be President Obama is broke. Governors like Bobby Jindal are broke, and mayors like (New Orleans' Mitch) Landrieu are broke. You don't have the resources at any level of government to fund a proactive law enforcement."

Baltimore and Ferguson effect

So far this year, Baltimore recorded 155 homicides, including three people who were killed late Tuesday evening near the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus. The 2015 homicide toll is 50 people higher than it was at the same point last year.

On Wednesday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake fired Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, citing the spike in murders in the city.

The firing also came as the police union was set to release a report hammering the department's response to the unrest in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, who died one week after sustaining a severe spinal cord injury while in Baltimore police custody. Gray's treatment was held up by protesters as an example of the endemic problem of police brutality in the city and beyond.

"We cannot grow Baltimore without making our city a safer place to live," Rawlings-Blake said. "We need a change. This was not an easy decision, but it is one that is in the best interest of the people of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore deserve better."

The Charm City, which is seeing some of the worst violence since the 1990s when it routinely tallied 300 murders annually, recorded 42 killings in May alone.

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17. Fast food chain asks customers not to open carry
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The antis continue to be a source of amusement and don’t seem shy about hiding their shallowness. So, in Texas the antis don’t want people openly carrying at a hamburger chain, but seem to be just fine with those very same gun owners, carrying the exact same guns, in the exact same hamburger chain, but only hidden from plain sight.

Am I the only one picturing an ostrich?

From guns.com: http://tinyurl.com/prtkx3p
http://www.guns.com/2015/07/07/fast-foo ... pen-carry/

Fast food chain asks customers not to open carry
by Chris Eger
July 7, 2015

Texas-based Whataburger clarified last week it would prefer their customers not openly carry firearms, much to the delight of gun control advocates.

Founded in Corpus Christi in 1950, the regional fast food company has some 780 locations across the South from Arizona to Florida. In a statement released July 2, Whataburger President and CEO Preston Atkinson said the privately-owned chain long ago established a policy against open carry but chose to explain the reasons behind its decision.

“We’ve had many customers and employees tell us they’re uncomfortable being around someone with a visible firearm who is not a member of law enforcement, and as a business, we have to listen and value that feedback in the same way we value yours,” said Atkinson, who is an avowed hunter and concealed carry permit holder. “We have a responsibility to make sure everyone who walks into our restaurants feels comfortable. For that reason, we don’t restrict licensed concealed carry but do ask customers not to open carry in our restaurants.”

With Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent signature on legislation to bring the open carry of modern handguns to the Lone Star state, businesses across Texas have found themselves having to explain their stand on the subject.

Gun rights advocates argue the policy is misguided and the company is acting out of response to fear mongering.

“This statement by Whataburger is extremely premature and ignores reality all across the United States that open carry is not an issue,” CJ Grisham, president of Open Carry Texas, told Guns.com.

Whataburger’s announcement confirming its policy prohibiting open carry follows an armed robbery last month of a Houston area location by three gunmen who forced a manager to empty the store’s safe.

Although Atkinson advised repeatedly in the statement of his own personal feelings on gun rights and contends the chain supports the Second Amendment, Grisham is calling foul.

“When a business subscribes to this idea that open carry is somehow less acceptable than any other carry, they are not a pro-2A business,” Grisham said. “When they treat some gun owners different than others, they are not a pro-2A business. When they restrict my rights as a peaceful, law-abiding citizen, but allow cops to do it, they are not a pro-2A business. In fact, these policies go completely against the purpose of the 2A.”

Grisham contends the company has not listened to their customer base and instead buckled under pressure from gun control groups.

“They haven’t taken a stand for their customers; they’ve instead caved to the anti-gun crowd that wants nothing more than to achieve their aims by bullying corporate America,” Grisham said.

Taking credit for the move by Whataburger is Moms Demand Action, part of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown gun control organization.

In a statement emailed to Guns.com, representatives for the group advised the burger chain established their ban on open carry last June after the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action repeatedly urged the company to change its policy through social media and by making numerous calls to the corporate headquarters.

“Last year Whataburger answered the call of moms across Texas and throughout the country who urged the company to stand up for the safety of its loyal customers and dedicated employees by prohibiting the open carry of firearms in its restaurants—and today the company is standing strong in its commitment to public safety,” said Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts.

“Parents should be able to go to family-oriented restaurants like Whataburger with their children and not have to wonder whether the person openly carrying at the table next to us is a good guy with a gun or a bad guy with a gun. Whataburger’s policy ensures that no employee or customer is forced to make that judgment call,” contends Watts.

Moms Demand Action previously launched campaigns asking Kroger, Target, Chipotle, Sonic, Chili’s, Jack in the Box and Starbucks, to reform the companies’ gun policies on open carry, with mixed results.

“Businesses have a responsibility to protect their employees and patrons – especially in states with weak gun laws. Whataburger is a Texas institution and its home state allows the open carry of firearms,” Watts said.

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18. Here's what liberal site learned after investigating 'Mother's Packing Heat'
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From theblaze.com: http://tinyurl.com/oukxs2p
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/07 ... king-heat/

Here's what liberal site learned after investigating 'Mother's Packing Heat'
by Jason Howerton
July 6, 2015

Liberal website Jezebel published an “investigation of mothers packing heat” on Monday and seemingly discovered that women gun owners “defy stereotypes of age, geographical location, race and, yes, even political affiliation.”

The “investigation” focused mostly on the Facebook group Sheepdog Mama, a community for pro-gun moms that currently has nearly 5,000 members. Instead of explosive debate on the divisive issue of guns, the page features thousands of mothers who are concerned with mostly one thing: protecting their families.

Here are just a few of the personal stories cited:

Andrea Forte was at work when she received the call that her child’s school was on lockdown. Someone had threatened to “kill all of the children” in her four-year-old daughter’s classroom.

“I couldn’t protect my child… I was powerless and had to let it play out however it happened,” said Forte, a 31-year-old mother of two. The threat was unrealized, but Forte decided then to carry a firearm whenever she could. On school grounds, where firearms are prohibited, she carries a stun gun and pepper spray.

Amber Haggard, on the other hand, was prepared when one day, after leaving a restaurant with her two young children, a disheveled man approached her asking for money.

The 26-year-old didn’t lose her cool, but when the man refused to leave after she politely told him she didn’t have anything to give, Haggard sensed the situation was escalating. The third time she asked him to step away, she brandished her weapon, a Smith and Wesson Shield 9mm pistol, and warned him she would protect herself and her kids if she had to.

Like all responsible gun owners, Haggard, one of the women referenced above, said she hopes she “never” has to pull the trigger on her defense weapon — but is prepared to do so if the situation calls for it.

The Jezebel report also notes that women tend to be “more cautious” than men in regards to firearms and the rate of gun ownership among women hit 23 percent in 2011, a 77 percent jump from 2004.

However, the article also cites a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who claimed there is “no good evidence that having a gun is going to make you any safer.” In fact, citing a study regularly used by anti-gun advocates, he claimed owning a gun makes households more unsafe.

“That’s why pediatricians tell parents to get rid of their guns,” David Hemenway said.

However, freelance writer Louisa Fitzgerald circled back to point out that a firearm also can serve an as equalizer for a woman facing a much larger and stronger attacker.

That’s why Melody Lauer, moderator of the Sheepdog Mama Facebook group and mother to three children, told Jezebel that it’s still important for a mother to be prepared to protect herself and her kids in the event of an attack, even if it’s unlikely.

The mother put it like this: “People commonly ask me what I’m afraid of in that I carry a gun, and my response is always, ‘I’m not afraid of anything.’ And most of these [moms], I don’t think that they are afraid, I don’t think that’s the driving force.”

She added, “It’s more along the lines of it’s a logical step of preparation, like, I’m not afraid that my house is going to set on fire, but I’m going to go out and get a fire extinguisher, just in case.”

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19. A word to President Obama about "Gun Violence"
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Member D J Amoldo emailed me this:

From bearingarms.com: http://tinyurl.com/o6waks9
http://bearingarms.com/word-liar-chief-gun-violence/

A word to President Obama about "Gun Violence"
by Bob Owens
July 5, 2015

I can easily forgive President Barack Obama for not understanding American culture, especially gun culture.

Growing up in the exclusive Menteng district of Jakarta, Indonesia, before moving to Honolulu, Hawaii to attend a private school, Obama knew nothing of the continental United States until he moved to California as a young adult to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, Obama moved to New York City to attend Columbia. He then moved to Chicago and his first job as a community organizer, before going to Harvard. After Harvard, he returned to Chicago, and lived there until he moved to Washington, DC, as President.

His exposure to firearms has been seeing them in the arms of Indonesian soldiers, on the hips of Hawaiian, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago police officers, and of course, in the crime news of the urban areas in which he has always lived in Asia and in “blue state” metropolises.

Obama views firearms as tools that he can used to enforce the laws that he passes and the executive orders he proclaims. He views them as something useful to provide to allies and drug cartels and foreign terrorists to shape domestic and international politics. He views them as a threat to his one true faith, an all-powerful federal government. And of course, he views them as a vessel for crime and murder among criminals.

Put bluntly, he views firearms as nothing more or less something to be exploited… for good or ill.

The idea of a firearm as a tool ensuring personal liberty is as foreign to him as a life in an Indonesian private school is to patriotic Americans. The concept of being responsible for your own personal safety, and that of your family, is as alien to him as the concept of personal responsibility itself. Barack Hussein Obama is an American President without an appreciation for the essential nature of firearms as part of the American heritage and the American spirit.

But while we can forgive the President’s shortcomings, we cannot allow him to continue spreading the fiction that the United States has a “gun violence” problem, that the existence of firearms in the United States forces people to become violent.

That is, quiet simply, a lie.

Worse still, this liberal “gun violence” lie is based in the racist belief that people of minority cultures are inherently violent, echoing a disgusting piece called “The Black Dilemma” which seems to have originated on a site called American Renaissance. It should hardly be surprising. Billionaire gun control supporter Michael Bloomberg, who fuels the “gun violence” studies at Harvard, and who is the money behind Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a new anti-gun propaganda site called The Trace, was very blunt in his beliefs that minority males are inherently violent.

Once you listen to audio of his statements, you’ll understand why.

“It’s controversial, but first thing is all of your — 95 percent of your murders, and murderers, and murder victims fit one [unintelligible]. You can just take the description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all of the cops. They are male, minorities, 15 to 25. That’s true in New York, it’s true in virtually every city in America,” said Bloomberg.

“You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people getting killed,” he continued. “First thing you can do to help that group is to keep them alive.”

It is quite stunning that the media and activists have not challenged the former Mayor’s comments asserting that young minority males should be disarmed.

The racists at American Renaissance and the racists on the progressive left want to scapegoat firearms because it is politically advantageous, but what they really believe is that minority males are inherently violent.

They use the phrase “gun violence” as a code word and as an excuse for many things.

-When Obama wants to attack the rights of 100 million law-abiding citizens because of the vile actions of someone who is mentally ill or racist or terrorist, he blames “gun violence,” attributing the actions of a single homicidal madman to the tool he used, smearing 1/3 of the nation.
-When anti-liberty Democrats want to create a scapegoat for the unending crime problems in Democrat-controlled cities, they blame “gun violence,” instead of the cycle of poverty and despair that resulted from 50+ years of failure in action that are the results of their social engineering experiments.
-When white, wealthy progressives lament “gun violence,” they do so with the specter of carjackings and home invasions in there minds, fearing that the minority “other” will intrude upon their suburban golf course homes, their penthouse views, and their trendy urban lofts.

The politicians blame “gun violence” as an excuse to attempt to seize more liberty from law-abiding citizens. Progressives use this same “gun violence” argument as code to disguise their deep-seated fear that black people are inherently violent. They feel if they take away the tool that the violence will stop (which shows again how little progressives know about the root causes of violence, but that’s another discussion entirely).

But as we’ve noted previously, firearms are not the problem. “Gun violence” is a myth, an excuse, a multi-purpose strawman.

Nor are minorities a problem. Billionaire totalitarian Michael Bloomberg almost understood the problem, but he seems to view violence as a genetic trait. It’s a bitter irony, considering how many of his own people have been sent to gulags and gas chambers for the same sort of bigotry.

Writing this morning at the Denver Post, Kirk Mitchell and Noelle Phillips almost get it as well.

They lament the “no snitching” culture, the infantile nature of the slights that lead to murders and tit-for-tat retaliation killings, and the police response of disruption tactics to try to temporarily stem the attacks, but they simply refuse to address the problem of a specific minority culture.

We don’t have a “gun violence” problem as liberty-hating opportunistic politicians pretend.

We don’t have a “black male, 15-25? problem, as the wealthy, paranoid, and prejudiced proclaim.

What we have is an amoral, gang-celebrating, “thug life” culture that embraces criminality as not just acceptable behavior, but as a preferred way of life.

If we could magically strip away every firearm from this same violent subculture, they’d simply find other ways to carry out the violence and intimidation tactics that are at the core of this system. Perhaps they’d “only” revert to knives and bats and clubs. Or perhaps they’d advance to bombs and arson, and importing fully-automatic weapons from the same overseas markets that supply the narcotic poison that sustains them, and we’d end up with “little Mexicos” in gang neighborhoods, where even the most heavily armed and armored police units would fear to tread.

Anyone attempting to sell you on “gun violence” is attempting to sell you on a lie. Period.

We have a violent “thug culture” problem, a problem that can be addressed by changing cultural norms and vilifying certain cultural mores, instead of celebrating and perpetuating them. You should question why they are lying to you, and why they refuse to address an addressable problem within a specific subculture that can be changed just as easily as views on smoking or drunk driving.

Subcultures come and go, and destructive subcultures can be marginalized and minimized until they simply cease to have any appeal, and are abandoned.

It would be nice to have a President who still retains so much popularity among certain groups attempt to use that influence to reduce crime.

Unfortunately, he’s clearly more interested in stoking the fears and prejudices of this same thuggish subculture, inspiring hatred, supporting lawlessness, and offering subtle supports for thug-culture based rioting.

Hopefully, the next President won’t be so interested in exploiting those he should instead be helping, to undermine the liberty of all.

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20. [AU] Shooters want say on planned firearms law changes
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Member George Overstreet emailed me this:

This is our future if the anti crowd ever gets even a toe hold.

From weeklytimesnow.com: http://tinyurl.com//qj9vl2l
http://m.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/nat ... 7432609551

Shooters want say on planned firearms law changes
By Chris McLennan
July 8, 2015

VICTORIA’S hunting community met at Parliament House in Melbourne on Monday in a bid to head off mooted changes to firearms laws.

Federal and state governments have said they will look at reclassifying lever-action guns following reports in The Weekly Times of a new Adler seven-shot lever-action shotgun due to enter the Australian market next month. A senior government official said the planned change might be made retrospective, which could lead to a buyback of the thousands of lever-action shotguns and possibly even rifles already legally owned by Australian shooters.

Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan has confirmed a review “is currently underway” into the National Firearms Agreement.

The issue was sparked by the huge popularity of the Category A Turkish-made Adler A110 seven-shot lever-action shotgun, which senior Victorian police have labelled “rapid fire”. Police are encouraging the national Firearms Police Working Group to “re-categorise” lever-action guns into the restricted Category C class and away from the general Category A non semiautomatic class.

Victorian Training and Skills Minister Steve Herbert told State Parliament recently that technological advances in firearms manufacture, such as those with the Adler, had sparked the review. “Clearly this is a matter of community concern and community safety,” Mr Herbert said.

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VA-ALERT is a project of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
(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/]