VCDL Update 07 May 09 Pt. 2

[allingeneral]

**************************************************
11. The real lesson of Columbine
**************************************************

http://tinyurl.com/c2429w

examiner.com
The real lesson of Columbine
April 20, 9:12 AM . 3 comments

Several of my colleagues are today observing the tenth anniversary of
the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado.

As we look back on that terrible day, many Americans try to sort out
what led to the event, and what might be done in the future to prevent
another such tragedy.

The answer is alarmingly simple, and nobody is going to like it.

We cannot prevent more Columbines. There it is. If we could, there
would have been no Virginia Tech. The shooting at Red Lake High School
in Minnesota would not have happened. We would never have read about
the shooting at Northern Illinois University.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its state-level
colleagues at various "CeaseFire" groups argue that "closing the gun
show loophole" will help. That's preposterous and they know it. While
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris obtained at least a couple of guns from
an adult friend who legally bought them at a gun show, in the years
since, none of the gunmen who shot up any school or shopping mall has
gotten his guns from a gun show.

People call Columbine the worst school massacre in the country's
history, but that's also a lie. Nobody remembers the Bath School
bombing in May 1927 in which a disgruntled school board member named
Andrew Kehoe blew up the Bath Consolidated School and killed 45
people, most of them elementary school-age children. He used dynamite,
and he didn't get it at a gun show.

The perpetrator was school board member Andrew Kehoe, who was upset by
a property tax that had been levied to fund the construction of the
school building.

Can we take steps to minimize the likelihood of future Columbines? Sure.

Step One: Abolish gun-free school zones and those insidious "zero
tolerance" rules that victimize and demonize students who are now
afraid to talk about hunting, target shooting or competition; rules
that prevent teachers or administrators from having a firearm. Instead
of firing those teachers, fire the Chicken Little administrators and
replace the school board members - and their attorneys - who cling to
zero tolerance and gun free zone mandates as substitutes for common
sense and courage. (I wrote about this with co-author Alan Gottlieb in
our book America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age)

Assistant Principal Joel Myrick stopped a school gunman at Pearl, MS
on Oct. 1, 1997 - 19 months before Columbine - by rushing to his car,
grabbing a pistol he had there, and confronting gunman Luke Woodham,
who quickly surrendered rather than get shot. Myrick hardly gets
mentioned these days because he used a handgun to stop a killer, much
the same as the armed students who interceded at the Apalachian Law
School shooting are essentially ignored.

Step Two: Schools should pin medals on students like Jacob Ryker, the
hero teen of Thurston High School in Springfield, OR in May 1998 - 11
months before Columbine - who understood quickly "from his own
experience with guns" that teen gunman Kip Kinkel had run out of
ammunition and tackled him. Ryker was shot in the melee, but he got in
some good licks on the little scumbag before the authorities arrived
and took Kinkel into custody. Schools should encourage other teens
like Ryker, they should offer classes in firearm safety and hunter
education as part of the curriculum.

When his rifle ran out of ammunition and Kinkel began to reload,
wounded student Jacob Ryker--recognizing from his own experience with
guns that Kinkel was out of ammunition (and understood that this was
the best chance to stop Kinkel)--tackled him, and was soon assisted by
several other students.

Step Three: Instead of marginalizing gun owners and groups like the
NRA, the news media needs a philosophical overhaul, after which it
should marginalize gun prohibitionists and groups like the Brady
Campaign. For decades, we've tried it their way with increasingly
strict and intolerant rules that border on the insane, and all we have
to show for it is a list of tragedies and a body count.

It should be noted for the record that, like school board member
Andrew Kehoe, who murdered his wife before committing his atrocity,
Woodham killed his mother and Kinkel murdered both of his parents.

What we learn from Columbine and other shootings is that gun control
groups exploit such tragedies for their own political ends. They
pretty much dance in the blood of the victims to push an agenda that
may, but usually does not, have anything remotely to do with the crime
they are condemning. Their goal is disarmament -- victim disarmament,
if you will -- and they don't seem to grasp the fact that if people
are caught in imminent life-threatening situations and cannot fight
back, they frequently die.

The "real lesson of Columbine," if there must be one is that we should
have taken a lesson from Pearl High School and Thurston High School.

Alas, gun-phobic school administrators and teachers, and gun-hating
politicians, continue with their heads in the sand, and other dark
places, enforce a philosophy and defend laws that haven't worked, and
that will only give us more of the same.

**************************************************
12. Armed self-defense & 'The Stopwatch of Death'
**************************************************

Thanks to PM Henick for the link:

http://tinyurl.com/c7qcq2

examiner.com
Armed self-defense & 'The Stopwatch of Death'
April 15, 5:35 AM .

"Time is our worst adversary in dealing with active killers. We're
racing what I call 'the Stopwatch of Death.' Victims are often added
to the toll every several seconds."

-- Ron Borsch, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who manages the South
East Area Law Enforcement Regional Training Academy in Bedford, Ohio.

"If I only had a gun," ABC's recent segment of "20/20," treated
viewers to a biased and deeply flawed "study" promoting the opinion
that armed citizens are incapable of stopping active killers in mass
homicides. On Monday, "Myths of Armed Self-Defense" exposed "20/20's"
fallacy of the omnipotent killer, noting that personality
characteristics of such killers actually make them more, not less,
vulnerable to armed defense. Today, we discuss the advice "20/20" gave
viewers unfortunate enough to find themselves in active killer
scenarios.

This is what "20/20's" "experts" advise you to do if confronted by an
active killer:

Try to run: Maybe he won't shoot you, advises JJ Bittenbinder, ABC's
professed expert: "Only 12 times out of a hundred" would you be
killed. (I would include the link for this "security expert's"
website ... if Google hadn't flagged it for "malicious software.")

Play dead: "Remember that receptionist who played dead after being
shot crawling under a desk and dialing 9-1-1- for help," admonishes
host Diane Sawyer. This, of course, required being shot first.

Dial 9-1-1: This is liberalism's best hope for self-defense; have
someone else do it for you, albeit 10 or so minutes later, when people
are already dead.

Clearly, absent other options one should try any or all of the above.
But as a first line of defense, I for one am not entirely satisfied
taking a 1 in 8 chance that an active shooter won't hit me when he
fires; and playing dead while he circles back around, looks down and
says "You don't look so bad: Here, have another" is not a strategy.

THE 'STOPWATCH OF DEATH'

Read it again:

"Time is our worst adversary in dealing with active killers. We're
racing what I call 'the Stopwatch of Death.' Victims are often added
to the toll every several seconds."

This is spoken by a 30-year law enforcement veteran and 17-year SWAT
veteran who advises police departments not to wait for SWAT in active
shooter scenarios, but instead for single law enforcement officers to
go in and confront the gunman. Why?

"Where times have been reliably documented, the average post-Columbine
'rapid mass murder episode' lasts just 8 minutes, according to
Borsch's calculations."

And how long does SWAT take to arrive?

"Since the Columbine massacre 9 years ago, few if any trainers any
longer advocate delaying for a formal SWAT call-out, which can take 30
minutes or more in some areas."

So let's make this perfectly clear: Law enforcement experts tell us
seconds count; they tell us that active killers:

"...choose unarmed, defenseless innocents for a reason: They have no
wish to encounter someone who can hurt them. They are personally risk-
and pain-avoidant... If pressed, they are more likely to kill
themselves";

"...typically fold quickly upon armed confrontation" and last but not
least;

"...the typical active killer would be a no-contest against anyone
reasonably capable of defending themselves."

And ABC's best advice for you is to get shot, hide under a desk, play
dead, and hope for the best?

ARMED CITIZENS ALREADY STOP CRIMINALS

In truth, armed defense by citizens is commonplace: The classic tome
on defensive gun use, "Armed Resistance to Crime:

"The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck
and Marc Gertz, affirms approximately 2.1 to 2.5 million civilian
defensive gun uses in the U.S. each year.

As for the effectiveness of concealed handgun permit-holders in
shooting perpetrators, recent police survival research conducted by
the Force Science Research Center found even inexperienced shooters
had high hit probabilities at the 5-7 yard ranges typical of gun
fights. The study concluded:

"--even 'naive shooters,' untrained and unpracticed with handguns, are
amazingly accurate in making head shots at close range, and tend to
shoot for the head instinctively;

"--the speed with which an officer can be put behind the reactionary
curve, even by assailants who have no expertise with firearms, is
startling."

ARMED CITIZENS HAVE ALREADY STOPPED MASS MURDERS

In Pearl, Mississippi, assistant principal Joel Myrick stopped triple
murderer Luke Woodham using a handgun retrieved from his car;

In Edinboro, Pennsylvania, the 14-year-old who killed a teacher at an
off-campus dance was captured by shotgun-wielding James Strand;

At Virginia's own Appalachian School of Law, student Tracy Bridges
used his pistol to detain murderer Peter Odighizuwa; and

In Colorado Springs, Colorado, concealed handgun permit-holder Jeanne
Assam, who volunteered to provide security for her church (she was
later wrongly described by the media as a "security guard") shot
Matthew Murray when he invaded the New Life Church firing a weapon.

THE VALUE OF DETERRENCE

And none of this even considers that the high probability of
encountering armed victims deters active shooters. Notes author and
scholar John R. Lott in a Wall Street Journal article entitled, "The
Real Lesson of the School Shootings":

"In a controlled study covering 19 years, the number of multiple-
victim public shootings in states which adopted concealed handgun laws
declined by 84%. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by
90%, injuries by 82%. Higher arrest rates and increased use of the
death penalty slightly reduced the incidence of these events, but the
effects were never statistically significant."

THE CHOICE IS OURS

I have seen plenty of logical-sounding criticisms of arming citizens
against active killers: ABC says you wouldn't be effective; readers
worry that two concealed handgun permit-holders might incorrectly
identify the active shooter and engage each other; and of course, the
most ridiculous of all: That prohibiting firearms on campuses, in
malls and in churches might actually influence the decision-making of
someone so sociopathic that he has decided to kill people.

But lest you still consider flaws in the idea of armed citizen defense
against active killers, consider too the reality that the choice
is ... nothing.

Cops can't protect your every activity; and when seconds count, help
is only minutes away. So take Diane Sawyer's advice, if you like, and
play dead under a desk, hoping the madman who wants you dead will just
go away.

I prefer the philosophy of Clint Smith, founder of Thunder Ranch and
one of the world's foremost authorities on armed self-defense:

"I may get killed with my own gun, but he's gonna have to beat me to
death with it, 'cause it's going to be empty."

**************************************************
13. As multiple-death shootings surge, Congress looks away
**************************************************

Pennsylvania Governor Rendell knows nothing about Homeland Defense
rifles that he wants to ban. They are used for target shooting,
competition, and hunting. They are excellent for self-defense and
they are also clearly protected by the Second Amendment:

http://tinyurl.com/c3ykdq

truthout.org
As Multiple-Death Shootings Surge, Congress Looks Away
Monday 20 April 2009
by: Mike Lillis | Visit article original @ The Washington Independent
Politics, money stymie gun control supporters' efforts.

Last month in Southern Alabama, an unemployed twenty-something sheet-
metal worker armed himself with two semi-automatic rifles, a shotgun
and a pistol. He shot his mother and the four family dogs, and then
drove to a neighboring town where he killed four more relatives, four
passersby, and then himself. All in all, he sprayed more than 200
bullets across two Alabama counties. The ages of the victims ranged
from 74 years to 18 months. It was the worst killing spree in state
history.

Since then other parts of the country have suffered similar
nightmares. Indeed, in recent weeks more than 60 people - including
seven police officers - have been killed in multiple-death shootings
from coast to coast. It's just the type of headline-grabbing trend
that might usually get congressional lawmakers screaming from the
rafters for policy reforms, like banning military-style assault
weapons and forcing gun-show vendors to do background checks on
prospective buyers. Gun control advocates argue that such steps would
help stem the more than 30,000 gun deaths that plague the United
States each year.

But that hasn't been the case. Instead, the reaction from
congressional leaders - even the most vocal gun-reform proponents -
has been a long, strange silence.

It wasn't always this way. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was the
author of the successful 1994 effort to install an assault weapons
ban, which expired five years ago. Yet last week, less than a month
after four police officers were killed in a shooting spree in Oakland,
Feinstein told "60 Minutes" that, while she hopes to reintroduce the
measure, "I wouldn't bring it up now."

Similarly, President Obama - who campaigned on a platform of renewing
the assault weapons ban - reiterated his support for that prohibition
during a visit to Mexico last week, but added that that he's not
"under any illusions that reinstating that ban would be easy."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is another long-time advocate
for tightening gun laws. Yet pressed this month about the absence of
any gun reform push in Congress, she offered only a vague explanation
about the need "to find some level of compromise."

Spokespersons for both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-
Nev.) said there's no plan on the horizon for gun reform legislation
this year.

The reason is no mystery. Although Democrats expanded their majorities
in both chambers of Congress last year, they owe those gains largely
to more moderate members, who picked up seats in a number of
conservative-leaning states that have historically gone Republican.
Indeed, when Attorney General Eric Holder in February announced his
support for renewal of the assault weapons ban, 65 House Democrats
wrote to the White House attacking the proposal.

"Law-abiding Americans use these guns for all the same reasons they
use any other kind of gun - competitive shooting, hunting and
defending their homes and families," the Democrats wrote.

Not only do those members not want to be seen threatening their
constituents' Second Amendment rights, but Pelosi and other Democratic
leaders are bending over backwards to ensure that those seats remain
Democratic in elections to come. In this political environment,
congressional aids say, even a gun reform push from liberal Democrats
would only divide the party and undermine other legislative priorities.

"What's the sense in expending a good amount of political capital?"
asked a House Democratic aide, who asked to remain anonymous due to
the political nature of the topic. "You know you're going to lose. You
know you don't have the votes ... It's never good when leadership
loses a vote, and this is a vote they'll lose."

Then there's the issue of lobbying. The pro-gun National Rifle
Association is among the most powerful forces in all of Washington. In
the 2008 election cycle alone, the NRA's political action committee
spent $15.6 million on campaign activities, according to the Center
for Responsive Politics. And the group keeps tabs on every vote even
remotely related to gun reform, threatening lawmakers with poor NRA
rankings if they vote against the lobby's agenda.

The NRA did not reply to a call requesting comment, but the prowess of
the gun lobby was in full display earlier this year during
congressional debate on legislation to grant a voting representative
to the residents of Washington, DC. That bill passed the Senate in
February, but not before the NRA swayed lawmakers to attach language
all but scrapping Washington's gun control laws, which are among the
strictest in the nation. Faced with the gun-policy wildcard, stymied
House Democrats have refused to bring the bill to the floor.

The reason is simple. The combination of support from Republicans and
moderate Democrats all but ensures that the bill would pass. "On this
issue, the NRA controls the House," said the Democratic aide. "It's
that simple. We're in a political environment in which not much can be
done because of the levels of power."

That's bad news for gun control advocates, who are pushing a series of
reforms to tighten the nation's gun laws. Aside from reinstating the
assault weapons ban, advocates want to force all gun-show vendors,
even those unlicensed, to conduct background checks on potential
customers to prevent felons and other violent criminals from obtaining
weapons - the same requirements currently in place for licensed gun
sellers. A Senate bill, sponsored in the last Congress by Sens. Frank
Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Jack Reed (D-Del.), would do just that, but it
hasn't resurfaced this year.

Another proposed reform would force gun makers to adopt a new
technology that engraves weapons microscopically with their make,
model and serial number - information that would be left imprinted on
the bullet casing after the gun is fired. Such a proposal was pushed
by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) in
the last Congress, but it as well has yet to appear this year. All
three reforms are supported by public service groups, like the
International Association of Chiefs of Police, but have been assailed
by the gun lobby as initial steps toward an all-out gun ban.

Lawmakers are insisting that gun reform hasn't fallen off their radar,
but some gun control advocates are growing impatient. "There are a lot
of politicians," said Doug Pennington, spokesman for the Brady
Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, "even in the face of the mass
shootings over the past six weeks, who aren't exactly sure how stiff
their backbones are."

The debate arrives as a wave of high-profile gun violence has swept
across the country in recent weeks. On March 29, a heavily armed
gunman killed eight in a North Carolina nursing home. A day later, an
IT professional opened fire on his family in Santa Clara, killing six
people, including himself. In Binghampton, N.Y., on April 3, a gunman
walked into a community center and killed 13 immigrants before turning
a gun on himself. A day later, a 22-year-old Pittsburgh man barricaded
himself in his home with a stash of assault weapons, killing three
police officers in the stand-off. The list goes on.

Michael Bailey, political science professor at Georgetown University,
pointed out that, despite the gruesome trend, there simply isn't the
public outcry to inspire Congress to stick their necks out for
something as controversial as gun reform. "As terrible as these
tragedies were," Bailey wrote in an email, "there doesn't seem to be
any appetite for thinking about them."

Even without the recent spate of gun deaths, the debate would be
timely. Last Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the shootings
at Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead, including the gunman. And
Monday marks the 10-year anniversary of Colorado's Columbine High
School massacre, in which two seniors killed 12 students and a teacher
before turning the guns on themselves.

In the absence of any federal movement, some state and local lawmakers
have emerged in an effort to fill the void. Last week, New York City
Mayor Mike Bloomberg visited Virginia to urge state lawmakers to pass
a bill closing the so-called "gun-show loophole."

"Criminals do not have the right to own guns, and the gun shows make
it far too easy for them to acquire guns," Bloomberg said. "In fact,
it's easier for a criminal to buy a gun at a gun show than it is for a
20-year-old to buy a beer or for anyone to rent a car."

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) has thrust himself into the
debate as well, pushing last week for lawmakers to take up the assault
weapons ban - a prickly topic in a blue-collar state where unlimited
gun rights are deemed by many to be sacrosanct.

"They're made for only one purpose," Rendell said of assault weapons.
"Not for sport, not for hunting, nobody uses them in a duck blind,
nobody uses them at the Olympics. They are used to kill and maim."

Advocates for gun reforms are quick to concede that the proposed
reforms wouldn't prevent many of the gun-related deaths that torment
the United States. Only one of the guns used by the Alabama shooter,
for example, would have been prohibited under the 1994 assault weapons
ban. Still, they maintain, taking some steps to keep military-grade
weapons off the streets - and all weapons out of the hands of violent
criminals - would go a long way toward improving safety in a country
where firearms kill more than 80 people every day.

"That's not normal," Pennington said of the enormous number of
domestic gun deaths. "We shouldn't treat that as just the cost of
living in America."

**************************************************
14. Assault weapons ban - in the Violence Policy Center's own words
**************************************************

A lesson from the past. Notice how the Violence Police Center
gleefully discusses how good it is that the American public is
confused about whether military look-alike rifles are machine guns or
not.

For them, the end (civilian disarmament) justifies the means:

http://tinyurl.com/cwxbdv

Assault Weapons Bans, in the Violence Policy Center's own words (from
1988) (emphasis added):

[A]ssault weapons are quickly becoming the leading topic of America's
gun control debate and will most likely remain the leading gun control
issue for the near future. Such a shift will not only damage America's
gun lobby, but strengthen the handgun restriction lobby for the
following reasons:

* It will be a new topic in what has become to the press and public an
"old" debate.

Although handguns claim more than 20,000 lives a year, the issue of
handgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast
majority of legislators, the press, and public. The reasons for this
vary: the power of the gun lobby; the tendency of both sides of the
issue to resort to sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments when
discussing the issue; the fact that until an individual is affected by
handgun violence he or she is unlikely to work for handgun
restrictions; the view that handgun violence is an "unsolvable"
problem; the inability of the handgun restriction movement to organize
itself into an effective electoral threat; and the fact that until
someone famous is shot, or something truly horrible happens, handgun
restriction is simply not viewed as a priority.

Assault weapons -- just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and
plastic firearms -- are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks,
coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns
versus semi-automatic assault weapons -- anything that looks like a
machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun -- can only increase the
chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. In
addition, few people can envision a practical use for these weapons....

So when gun rights supporters worry that "assault weapons" bans are
(1) attempts to grease the slope to restrictions on handguns and other
guns, and (2) attempts to capitalize on public confusion about what
assault weapons really are, they are really only saying what the
Violence Policy Center has itself already said.

**************************************************
15. NPR admits error on guns in Mexico
**************************************************

VA-ALERT reader Roy Scherer writes:

This evening, "All Things Considered" (National Public Radio's
premiere news
show) actually admitted that they had been spreading bad information
about guns!

They admitted that the "90% of Mexican crime guns come from the US"
statistic is actually wrong, and discussed it at some length. They did
not go nearly
far enough, in my estimation, but at least they had the grace to admit
being wrong.

I can only think it's a good thing when the very exemplar of "mainstream
liberal media" admits an error. Who knows? It may start a trend!

You may read the summary, listen to the 4-minute story, and post
comments at the link below.

http://tinyurl.com/c7z5re

npr.org
Where Does Mexico Get Its Guns?

All Things Considered, April 17, 2009 . President Obama is one of many
people quoting an estimate that 90 percent of the guns used in Mexican
drug crime come from the United States. The statistic has been called
a myth by gun supporters. Robert Farley of Politifact.com reviews the
figures.

**************************************************
16. WT: Obama's gun lies
**************************************************

Thanks to Chuck Nesby for the link:

http://tinyurl.com/cweeto

washingtontimes.com
Monday, April 20, 2009
EDITORIAL: Obama's gun lies

The "liar, liar pants on fire" argument usually isn't the most
effective. But when it comes to guns, President Obama is lying through
his teeth.

On Thursday, while on a visit to Mexico, the president continued his
Blame America First tour. "This war is being waged with guns purchased
not here but in the United States," he said, referring to the drug
wars that are tearing apart our neighbor to the south. "More than 90
percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States,
many from gun shops that lay in our shared border."

It is completely untrue that 90 percent of guns recovered in Mexico
are from America. The Mexican government separates guns it confiscates
that were made in the United States and sends them here to be traced.
U.S. weapons are easy to identify because of clear markings.

Of the ones sent here to be traced, 90 percent turn out to be from
America, but most guns recovered in Mexico are not sent here so are
not included in the count. Fox News reported that 17 percent is a more
accurate number.

Democrats aren't alone in repeating phony gun statistics. The New York
Times, CNN and numerous networks continue to repeat the 90 percent
figure with no reporting to back it up. The hysteria is used to create
the notion that a major problem exists with American guns - and Mr.
Obama is anxious to step in to solve that problem with a $400 million
program to stop U.S. guns from going to Mexico. That initiative would
include clampdowns on U.S. gun shops.

It is ridiculous for Mr. Obama to blame Mexico's lawlessness on
Americans as if the longstanding corruption of Mexican elected
officials, judges and law-enforcement officers has nothing to do with
it.

One of the root causes of corruption is low pay. Mexican police earn
$460 a month, sometimes less, which makes bribes hard to resist. There
are about 350,000 policemen in Mexico. The $400 million Mr. Obama has
promised for his anti-gun program could raise the annual salary of
every Mexican cop by $1,143, a 21 percent increase. But the president
wouldn't be interested in that because his real agenda is to pursue
gun control here at home.

**************************************************
17. Paranoia not fueling gun sales; it's the other way around
**************************************************

http://tinyurl.com/cfmryx

examiner.com
Paranoia not fueling gun sales; it's the other way around
April 17, 8:30 AM

To hear the partisan press, gun prohibitionists and even some in law
enforcement tell it, rightwing paranoia about the economy, a Democrat-
controlled Congress and an Obama White House is fueling the proverbial
land office business in guns and ammunition.

Two fairly well-balanced pieces in the Seattle Times and the on-line
Seattle Post-Intelligencer provide good contrast to some of the other
screed that has substituted lately for journalism - the greatest
offender being that ABC 20/20 hit piece by Diane Sawyer on April 10 -
and both local stories have been revealing.

Combined with coverage of State Sen. Tim Sheldon's on-point
observations several days ago about citizens taking care of themselves
in an environment of law enforcement cutbacks, instead of questioning
why so many people are buying guns, the more logical query would be,
"Why aren't more people arming themselves?"

Despite Barack Obama's half-hearted assurance the other day in Mexico
City that he will not seek renewal of the ban on so-called "assault
weapons," his track record and the people surrounding him send a
different message to American citizens. It did not help when Sen.
Dianne Feinstein told CBS' Lesley Stahl on the 60 Minutes broadcast of
April 12 that she would pick the time and the place to reintroduce
that piece of trophy legislation for the gun prohibition lobby.

I have not backed off at all from my belief that the gun -- the
assault weapons ban made sense. -- Barack Obama

Let us be honest. There is a concerted - and some believe coordinated
- campaign in progress to push for more gun laws, primarily a renewal
of the semi-auto ban and a crackdown on gun shows. Can increased press
attention to the subject of guns be coincidental? A lot of gun rights
activists suggest it is anything but coincidental. (Hey, I'm just the
messenger here.) We had the ABC hit piece, Stahl's far more balanced
piece on 60 Minutes, a big piece in Newsweek, stories on KING and in
the Times and on-line P-I.

Guns are a hot issue, and a great diversion from the economic disaster
that is being created by Congress and the White House in the form of
the "Obama Stimulus Package." What better way to keep people's minds
off the fact that they may lose their jobs, their homes, and their
kids' future than by worrying them about all the other people who are
buying guns?

I'll pick the time and the place, no question about that. -- Dianne
Feinstein

Kristen Comer of Washington CeaseFire, Snohomish County Sheriff's
spokeswoman Rebecca Hover and Mason County Sheriff Casey Salisbury and
Chief Deputy Dean Byrd have contributed to this air of "paranoia."
Comer and Hover are worried about more suicides and gun accidents,
while Salisbury and Byrd pretty much predicted a wave of vigilantism.
All of these issues are red herrings.

Comer, who seems like a nice lady, should check with Michigan, where
six years of concealed carry reform have correlated with a reduction
in violent crime and suicide. Hover knows that the case in Marysville
involving a drunken fool who shot his 6-year-old daughter last year
will be handled by the courts. Salisbury and Byrd are essentially
trying to protect their turf during a budget crisis while at the same
time suggesting that self-defense is somehow outside the parameters of
existing state statute. That is nonsense and they know it.

But all of this gun-buying has the Left alarmed, and the gun
prohibitionists are not happy because it shows that years of rhetoric
cannot overcome the survival instinct. When people think rough times
are coming, whether socially, economically or politically -- or all
three at once -- they're going to fall back on self-reliance, and
they're going to arm themselves.

The attack on gun shows currently being waged in the press by New York
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is built on a false premise. The other day in
Virginia, Bloomberg launched an advertising campaign to close the so-
called "gun show loophole" while accompanied by survivors and victims
of the Virginia Tech massacre two years ago.

There's just one fly in that ointment. Sueng-Hui Cho didn't get his
guns at a gun show. Neither did Steven Kazmierczak, the Northern
Illinois University killer, who bought his guns from a licensed dealer
at a gun store. Nor did Matthew Murray, the New Life Center gunman in
Colorado Springs, who was shot by an armed private citizen before he
could open fire in the church sanctuary. Likewise, Trolley Square
gunman Sulejman Talovic in Salt Lake City two years ago didn't get his
guns from a gun show, either.

But a crackdown on gun shows would be another piece of trophy
legislation for a special interest lobby, part of a gun prohibition
movement whose only real claim to fame is that the policies of citizen
disarmament it has promoted over the past 40 years have given us
nothing but a body count.

If anyone wants to point a finger of blame for the rise in gun sales,
point it at Feinstein, point it at Obama for his decidedly anti-gun
voting record, point it at a Democrat Congress that has presided over
a meltdown of the economy, point it at local governments that are
cutting police and sheriffs department budgets.

But don't accuse Americans of paranoia. They are merely doing the
prudent thing: Preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. They
are exercising their constitutionally-protected individual right to
keep and bear arms. They are not vigilantes. Nor are they "rightwing
extremists." They are your neighbors, friends and maybe even family
members.

**************************************************
18. A look at the Nordyke ruling (2A Incorporation)
**************************************************

http://tinyurl.com/dccsxs

examiner.com
Nordyke case: Plaintiff's lose, but Second Amendment wins...again

April 21, 8:07 AM

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday handed down a long-
awaited ruling in the epic case of Nordyke v. King, which started as a
lawsuit by gun show operators Russell and Sallie Nordyke against
California's Alameda County, and became something considerably larger.

The court panel, with Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain writing the
opinion and Judge Ronald M. Gould offering a concurring opinion, rule
that the Second Amendment is incorporated to the states; that is, the
right to keep and bear arms that is affirmed by the Amendment now
becomes a limit on state and local governments, same as it is a limit
on the federal government.

The right to bear arms is a bulwark against external invasion. We
should not be overconfident that oceans on our east and west coasts
alone can preserve security. We recently saw in the case of the
terrorist attack on Mumbai that terrorists may enter a country
covertly by ocean routes, landing in small craft and then assembling
to wreak havoc. That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure
of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of
terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before
more professional forces arrived.

While some in the gun rights community - including my colleague, Ed
Stone - contend that because the Nordyke's lost, this ruling is not a
victory. I disagree, and so do a lot of other people, including Prof.
Joe Olson, who teaches law at Minnesota's Hamline University, and Alan
Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation and my co-author
on a couple of books, including one now in production. David Codrea
also writes about Nordyke here. Eugene Volokh's popular Second
Amendment forum discusses the case here, here and here.

Ed writes, "The Nordyke decision is not friendly to the right to keep
and bear arms. Indeed, it would purport to erase the right to 'bear'
arms altogether, in favor of a tepid right to 'keep' them, and then
only if they are government-approved arms."

Alameda County passed an ordinance ten years ago prohibiting the
carrying of firearms on county property following a shooting at the
county fair in 1998 and that included the fairgrounds where the
Nordykes had conducted gun shows. The shooting had nothing at all to
do with the Nordykes' gun shows, but at the time Supervisor Mary King,
according to court documents, acknowledged that she had been trying to
"get rid of gun shows on county property" for about three years. King
had used the excuse so many anti-gunners rely upon when trying to
nullify the right to bear arms: It was because of a "rash of gun-
related violence," again not connected with the Nordyke gun show.

Second, the right to bear arms is a protection against the possibility
that even our own government could degenerate into tyranny, and though
this may seem unlikely, this possibility should be guarded against
with individual diligence.

While the Nordykes were primarily protecting their own commercial
enterprise, they raised important constitutional issues. Their case
has caused the Ninth Circuit to reverse itself, a rare event in the
federal courts.

Ed's not looking at the "big picture." The Ninth Circuit reversed
itself on its earlier holding that the Second Amendment only protected
some "collective right" of the states to form militias in the case of
Hickman v. Block. The court admitted that its position in Hickman was
"squarely overruled" by the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in June
2008 that the Second Amendment does, indeed, protect an individual
civil right to keep and bear arms in the case of District of Columbia
v. Dick Anthony Heller.

Yes, the Ninth Circuit ruling does allow counties to prohibit guns on
county property, and that is not a good thing. However, by declaring
that the Second Amendment is incorporated to the states, it opens the
door to future challenges of unfair gun laws, including the ordinance
in question.

This ruling sets the stage for a Supreme Court confrontation, because
the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in a New York
case (Maloney v. Rice) that the Second Amendment is not incorporated
to the states in a case involving a weapon other than a firearm.

The Nordyke ruling has some remarkable language from both Judges
O'Scannlain and Gould, particularly the latter. His view of the Second
Amendment is probably causing group headaches at every gun
prohibitionist organization headquarters in the country.

And, as those gun control groups had feared from the Heller case, the
Nordyke case could well lead to an expansion of the Second Amendment.

Gun rights activists must understand that they have lost gun rights
through the process of erosion over the course of several years. They
can only regain lost ground by the gradual process of restoring the
ground that has been lost. Each victory, either legislatively or in
the courts, is a stepping stone in that direction.

**************************************************
19. Study: 'Green' ammo carries cancer risk
**************************************************

http://tinyurl.com/ddnh8j

blog.wired.com
Study: 'Green' Training Ammo Carries Cancer Risk
By David Hambling April 20, 2009 | 8:59:00 AmCategories: Ammo And
Munitions, Science!

In the 1990's the U.S. Army introduced a new set of "green" training
ammunition designed to be less toxic and more environmentally friendly
than the lead-filled rounds used before. But these new bullets may
have left firing ranges contaminated and exposed soldiers to a new
health hazard. Soon-to-be-released research suggests that a key
element in the new ammo, once thought to be safe, may in fact be
carcinogenic. The Army has stopped production of the bullets.

More than 90 million rounds of the "green" training ammunition has
been used in the United States, since its introduction. It relies on a
blend of tungsten and nylon, or tungsten and tin. That gives the
bullets the same density and firing properties as the original, but
without using lead. Tungsten was considered non-toxic. And it was
thought to be "non-mobile," unlikely to dissolve and travel, so it
wouldn't get into the groundwater.

But new research by University of Arizona Research Professor of
Pediatrics Mark Witten points to a different conclusion: Tungsten may
elevate the risk for cancer.

His study -- to be presented later this month at the 2009 Experimental
Biology Meeting in New Orleans -- is sponsored by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. The agency wanted to take a fresh
look at leukemia clusters in Fallon, Nevada, and Sierra Vista,
Arizona. Nearby tungsten mining appears to have raised tungsten levels
in the towns.

In his research, Witten exposed mouse embryos to both airborne and
waterborne tungsten, followed by a common respiratory virus. This was
an attempt to replicate events preceding the Fallon leukemia cluster.
Four of the six mouse pups showed abnormal leukocytes, a precursor to
leukemia.

It's a small sample size, to be sure. But Dr. Witten is in no doubt
that tungsten is dangerous.

"I do believe that tungsten has deleterious health effects, and that
further work is needed to understand and quantify the cancer risk," he
says.

Previous research has shown that embedded tungsten alloy shrapnel is
carcinogenic. This is the first time, however, that the element has
been implicated. Witten's paper does not prove that tungsten is
carcinogenic. But it certainly points to the need for further research.

The Army is concerned enough about possible risks that it has stopped
making the tungsten ammo. "The U.S. Army developed a lead-free 5.56mm
round during the mid 1990s with a tungsten-nylon alternate slug
materiel. Environmental studies later determined that the tungsten-
nylon combo had a possible environmental impact. The Army stopped
production of its tungsten-nylon 5.56mm [rounds]," Tonya Townsell, a
spokesperson for the Army's Armament Research, Development and
Engineering Center, tells Danger Room. "The residual inventory of
5.56mm Tungsten-Nylon rounds is still available for use in training at
lead-restricted sites as it is deemed safer than lead."

In the meantime, several facilities are cutting back their use of
tungsten-based training ammo. The rounds are no longer used at
Massachusetts Military Reservation after the governor issued a "cease
and desist" order. Last September, the Army Ammunition Plant in
Missouri reportedly sold 190,000 pounds of tungsten including "bullets
in various stages of production" in what one commentator described as
"a fire sale".

There have been growing concerns about tungsten for some years. An
October 2008 Issues Paper from the state and federal waste managers'
group says that the "original position of the scientific community
with regard to fate and transport, analytical testing and toxicology"
of tungsten has "drastically changed."

The report further warns: "Over the past years, soil and groundwater
samples collected at certain small arms ranges have demonstrated that
tungsten is very mobile and soluble once it is released into the
environment. In addition, limited yet important health studies have
also revealed that tungsten may pose risks to humans and ecological
receptors."

The paper notes that many training sites are still using tungsten
munitions. Given that airborne tungsten is a potential hazard, anyone
using a firing range with the "green" ammunition may have been exposed
to a cancer risk.

There are also other ways in which military tungsten gets into the
environment. The only documented case of acute tungsten poisoning in
medical literature comes from a French artilleryman who drank wine
that had been poured down a gun barrel as part of an initiation
ritual. The barrel was a new type incorporating tungsten alloy, and
particles were picked up by the wine. The soldier suffered from
seizures and kidney failure, but recovered after five months. (His
comrades threw up the mixture before they could suffer toxic effects.)

Cleaning up the firing ranges and checking the possible health effects
of the tungsten training rounds will be a big task. Dr. Witten, for
one, has no doubt that the tungsten rounds should not be used until
further work is carried out: "Maybe lead is not as dangerous as
tungsten."

But there's also a bigger task ahead. As well as training rounds,
tungsten is used in a huge variety of combat munitions from bombs to
missiles to tank shells, and replacing these will be a huge challenge.


-------------------------------------------
***************************************************************************
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