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When Seconds Count, the Police Are Minutes Away

In a June 27 editorial at www.BigGovernment.com, Robert Allen Bonelli asked, “Do We Have the Right to Life Without the Right to Self-Defense?” Bonelli highlighted a tragic incident that occurred in Medford, New York, where on Father’s Day, Sunday, June 19, four innocent people were murdered in cold blood during a robbery of a pharmacy. As Bonelli pointed out, gun-control advocates argue that citizens should wait for the police to deal with criminals, but since the robber killed the people within seconds and even with the fastest response time the police would not make it to the scene until minutes later, the victims couldn’t afford to wait for the police. Bonelli places the blame for such a tragedy squarely on the onerous anti-gun legislation in New York State:

The legal environment makes it difficult, if not impossible, to purchase a weapon, train to use it properly or have it available and use it for self defense without first exhausting a checklist of what must be done so that the victim does not end up criminally charged. This is an impossible situation when under attack.... The right to self-defense should not be impaired by government in any way. Robbers and attackers bent on assault would think twice before approaching a home, place of business or a person if they thought that their potential victims would be armed. Recent FBI statistics show that while gun sales were surging from 2008 through 2009, the rate of violent crime fell dramatically. Think about it. Have you ever heard of a gunman shooting up a gun show? … Gun control legislation and other laws restricting the purchase and possession of a weapon of any kind are supposed to prevent those weapons from getting into the hands of criminals. Unfortunately, all these laws are doing is making honest citizens vulnerable to those who have no intention of following any law.... Without the right to self-defense, our guarantee of the right to life is meaningless.

Defense of Property: How Far Can You Go?

A recent shooting in Chicago has stirred up controversy once again over the delicate question of how far you can go with the use of deadly force to defend yourself or your property. A 57-year-old man, Donald Rattanavong, fatally shot an 18-yearold man who, he believed, was trying to break into his car. The District Attorney’s office later charged the 57-year-old man with involuntary manslaughter. In an interview with the Courier News (a Chicago Sun-Times publication) legal experts and criminal defense attorneys cautioned readers against going too far in “counterattacking” criminals outside of the victim’s home. John Paul Carroll started out as a homicide detective with the Chicago Police Department before he eventually became a criminal defense attorney. “The rule of thumb is that you can only use force likely to cause bodily harm if you believe that a person is about to commit a forcible felony on you.... If someone pulls a knife on you, it’s okay to come back at them with a gun.... But if they’re 18 feet away from you with that knife and you shoot them, you might be in trouble.

Were you really in imminent danger? And even if a guy has just shot your mother, if he then starts running away from you, you have no right to shoot him.” The turning point is that the violent force used against the criminal must be used only in the limited circumstances of keeping yourself from being hurt and not to simply to protect property or to get revenge. The bar rises even higher if the incident occurs outdoors. In the present case, Donald Rattanavong saw three or four teenagers trying to break into his car. Rattanavong emerged from his house and fired at the teens fatally hitting one in the head. The charges against Rattanavong are involuntary manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm, rather than murder or voluntary manslaughter. Attorney Carroll added, “If it’s just property at stake, let it go.... I don’t care if your car cost $200,000. It’s not worth taking a human life and the law doesn’t think so, either. Don’t shoot. Call 911.”

The Gun Controller’s Dialectic

A July 1 posting at Ammoland.com by Kirby Ferris, the public affairs director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership, took aim squarely at the effort by gun controllers to create words to advance their agenda. In a piece entitled “The Insidious Semantics of Gun Control,” Ferris said that advocates of gun control fall into two categories: the liars and the ignorant. “The Liars invent the lies. The Ignorant believe the lies and repeat them.... The main thing that the Liars and the Ignorant share in common is a corruption of the linguistic meaning of firearms related words.

They, because they also control the mainstream media to a huge extent, have been able to actually invent terminology, or in many cases change the everyday meaning of words!” One example he mentions of word smithing is using “gun control” instead of “gun owner registration” or gun taxation or revocable permission. Another example is the creation of the word “assault weapon,” which was a “truly sleazy piece of semantic sedition [that] can be laid right at the feet of Josh Sugarmann, Minister of Propaganda for the Violence Policy Center, and also an apparently compulsive liar. Sugarmann INVENTED the phrase, with the help of the liberal anti-gun mainstream media shills. An ‘assault weapon’ is now any semi automatic rifle greater than .22 caliber....

Sugarmann has truly earned ‘The Joseph Goebells of Gun Control Award.’ He’s one of a kind. A naked, and unashamed, manipulative liar.” Other invented words include “personal arsenal” (which refers to anything over two guns), a “weapons cache” (three or more guns), a “stockpile of ammunition,” (anything over 20 rounds), and “highcapacity magazines” (the same type of magazine used by nearly every cop in America). Hopefully, those who argue for the right to armed self-defense will refuse to play that game and not use the words invented by anti-gun activists. n — Patrick Krey

Sarah Palin, Paul Revere, & Guns

Former Governor of Alaska and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin once again caused a media frenzy — this time over some comments she made in early June on her “One Nation” bus tour. Palin was quoted as retelling the story of Paul Revere with a pro-gun slant. Palin said that Revere “warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”

The mainstream media was all too quick to pile on that comment and repeat the narrative of a dumb-woman-inover-her-head they have been trumpeting since Palin first became a national figure in 2008, but it appears that Palin actually might have been right. On Fox News Sunday, Palin insisted that she was right. “Part of his ride was to warn the British that were already there. That, hey, you’re not going to succeed. You’re not going to take American arms.” A 1798 letter written by Paul Revere himself appears to back up Palin’s claim.

After Revere was captured by the British, he warned them “there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.” Brendan McConville, a history professor from Boston University, also supported Palin’s comments. “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.” Other academics jumped to Palin’s defense. Cornell law professor William Jacobson also argued that Palin was indeed correct, and said that it was Palin’s critics who are the ones most in need of a history lesson.

Professor Robert Allison, chair of the history department at Suffolk University, said that Sarah Palin’s interpretation of Revere’s ride has some merit and that while Revere did not personally ring bells himself, he told people along the way to Lexington, and they rang church bells to raise the alert. In a blog post dated June 17 on Forbes. com excerpted below, Bill Flax did an excellent job explaining the important issue forgotten in the mainstream media consumed with gotcha-styled news bytes covering the Palin-Revere comment:

The latest Sarah Palin controversy over Paul Revere distracts from the essential lesson of this pivotal slice of American lore.... It matters greatly though why the British marched and how the Colonists responded. Dissension had been brewing between the colonies and London for some time, but it only cascaded into violent revolution when the British sought to seize the colonial magazine at Concord.

The minutemen understood something lost on most Americans today, that disarming the people is always the necessary precursor to tyranny. When the British disembarked to seize the Colonists’ stores of powder and ammunition, the militia resisted. Americans in 1775 wanted government to leave them be. Many Americans today want the state to care for us.... Sadly, the perception of the very nature of rights has been slowly shifting as America slides into a socialist cesspool. No longer are rights considered protections for our persons and property against government.

Now “rights” have become entitlements dispensed from government. Freedoms to pursue healthcare, housing and sustenance are being transformed into collective obligations that the state offer subsidies.... An armed populace represents the ultimate check and balance preventing federal encroachment. As self reliant individuals, we owe it to our neighbors to remain vigilant in defense of liberty. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, should the unthinkable occur, private gun ownership ensures it is the blood of tyrants watering the tree of liberty and not the bones of martyrs broken under the boot of oppression. Arm thyself.

Background Check Errors Are Common

Gun-rights enthusiast John Lott recently explained that the Brady Law background check process is filled with holes. Lott explained that “the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) … accidentally flags many law-abiding people, stopping those who simply have the same name as a prohibited individual from buying a gun.” Lott also noted that, after reviewing the numbers for 2009, 93 percent of the initial 71,010 denials were found to be okay to purchase a gun. Of the seven percent that went on for a deeper review involving being referred out to other agencies (i.e., FBI, BATF, etc.), over 51 percent resulted in cases where the check wasn’t even completed.

Ultimately, Lott calculated an “initial false positive rate of roughly 94.2%,” and this “still doesn’t mean that the government hasn’t made a mistake on the remaining cases.” Lott calculated another higher error rate, based on those cases where the denied party was actually proven to be unable to purchase a gun in a court of law, of 99.98 percent, which might be higher than the actual rate since an assumption can be made that some banned parties did not pursue their case to trial. Still, with numbers like this (a false-positive rate somewhere between 95 percent and 99 percent), it’s no wonder that, as Lott puts it,

no study by criminologists or economists has found that the Federal Brady Law has reduced national crime rates.

Lott continued on to explain that the delays involved for those who trigger false positives add up. Those unfortunate people have to wait long periods of time for their case to be resolved even though they ultimately do get their gun. With results like this, it’s no wonder that gun-controllers view the NICS as a move in the right direction. It’s a logical step on their path to total civilian disarmament. — Pat rick Krey

Law Enforcement Profiling Gun-rights Supporters?

Ammoland.com reported on June 6 that the Baltimore Police Criminal Intelligence Section issued an “Intelligence Bulletin” warning fellow officers about persons displaying a pro-Second Amendment decal. The decal advertises “Associated Gun Clubs of Baltimore” and depicts three individuals shooting firearms, a target, and the state of Maryland. Specifically, the bulletin warned officers in bold red letters that “while the individual who is displaying the symbol may not be armed, the presence of the symbol provides an early warning indicator that you MAY be about to encounter an armed individual.” Critics of this law-enforcement alert were concerned that such a notice might lead officers to profile gun owners and gun-rights supporters. The association featured in the decal contacted the police to ask them about their warning, and James H. Green of the Baltimore City Police Department responded with the following statement:

I have spoken with our Criminal Intelligence Section and the bulletin was created in response to a number of recent inquiries asking about the decal and its meaning and information generally provided to law enforcement about officer safety. All law enforcement agencies attempt to inform our officers or citizens as appropriate when inquiries such as this arise. I certainly disagree with your characterization of “profiling.” Clearly the bulletin is informational and does not remotely suggest a suppression of Constitutional rights. In fact, as you are aware, many law enforcement personnel are members of the NRA or affiliated organizations.

As you are also aware, traffic stops are the single most dangerous encounter for law enforcement. It certainly is practice for law enforcement to ask operators about weapons for safety reasons only. The presence of a decal is NOT justification in itself for a traffic stop. I hope that this addresses your inquiry and clears up any confusion about the bulletin. The response didn’t satisfy the pro-Second Amendment organization, which is in the process of submitting a freedom of information request regarding any similar bulletins warning about people who show support for their constitutionally protected rights.

Self-defense or Execution?

A trial based out of Oklahoma City sparked a national outcry after the defendant was found guilty of first-degree murder stemming from a May 19, 2009 shooting during a robbery in a pharmacy. The defendant was 59-year-old pharmacist Jerome Ersland, who found himself in harm’s way when two men barged into the drugstore hoping to get away with money and drugs to use for sale on the street. The 911 calls from the night of the robbery tell the story of frightened employees being threatened by armed robbers. In one 911 call, Ersland told the operator, “Emergency. People down.... Hurry. One of them crooks got away. I got one. He’s dead.”

After the shooting, the local District Attorney’s office filed charges of first-degree murder against Ersland, and the jury found him guilty and recommended a life sentence. (Formal sentencing is not scheduled until July 11.) The actual details of the incident were disputed between accounts by the pharmacy workers and what the prosecutors said occurred. Ersland contends that the robbers fired at him and both were armed, but the D.A. contends that the only robber who was armed was the one who fled the scene, and that only Ersland fired any shots. The verdict has received national attention owing to the fact that Ersland was the victim of a robbery, and it has stirred a new public debate over the fine line between self-defense and excessive deadly force.

There are numerous supporters of Ersland who say his conviction is a travesty of justice where the system is being used to punish a hero. The most damning evidence against Ersland was a silent security video that the jurors reviewed. The first part of the video shows Ersland shoot one robber in the head and then chase a second robber outside. It was the second part that damaged Ersland in the eyes of the jurors. The video shows Ersland return to the store, retrieve a second gun, and then shoot the fallen robber five more times. That robber was 16-year-old Antwun “Speedy” Parker of Oklahoma City, who died at the scene.

This was the moment where the prosecutors contend Ersland’s actions moved from justified self-defense to a ganglandstyle execution. The prosecutors told jurors that Ersland was wrong to shoot “Speedy” again because the boy was unconscious and not moving on the pharmacy floor. Defense attorneys argued that Ersland, who retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2000 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, courageously defended himself and two female employees with his actions. Supporters set up a website, www.jeromeersland.org, hoping to raise both money and public support for a full pardon. The following was featured on the main page.

Lt. Col. (Dr.) Jerome Ersland is a disabled veteran who retired from the United States Air Force. Jerome joined the military and became a pharmacist because he wanted to serve our Country and help his fellow Americans. Due to inoperable broken back / spinal cord injury Jerome is forced to wear a back brace at all times that severely restricts his movement. In spite of this, Jerome still works full time and continues to serve his community. He belongs to the DAV, the American Legion, the VFW, serves as Vice President of his Church and as an advisor for the Boy Scouts.... Jerome is now bankrupt, having spent his whole retirement and all of his current salary goes to lawyer fees. He pays 100k in bond every year (twice so far) and even though he hasn’t been convicted, he is on house arrest. Jerome wears a GPS ankle tracking device that also cost around $480 a month!

Gun Training for Safety

The Denver Post reported on April 24 that a company started by former Navy SEALs is teaching personal security tactics to individual customers, training that used to be reserved for high-end bodyguards. The company is called BluCore and was launched in 2009 by Eric Frohardt and Sean Haberberger. The Post reports that with “a host of offerings from weapons training, hand-to-hand combat, tactical driving, property security evaluations and self-defense classes, BluCore is enabling people … to defend themselves simply by expecting trouble.”

Co-founder and 10-year Navy SEAL sniper Eric Frohardt told the news that “we originally started to help professional athletes, but we saw the need not just for them but for everyone.” Frohardt also had a lot of advice about using a gun for selfdefense. “Having personally been in a lot of gunfights, you always shoot more ammo than you plan.... A lot of training really goes out the window when you find yourself in a two-way gun range.... It’s better to be moving while you are shooting. That’s saved my life more than once.” BluCore now also has its own high-tech shooting center featuring 12 shooting lanes, a training center, a retail outlet, and classrooms, which will soon offer a series of unorthodox shooting classes designed to attract veteran shooters as well as first-timers.

Gun-control False Flag?

Wikipedia defines “false flag operations” as “covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and can be used in peace-time.” Such operations have been used by governmental intelligence services throughout the years to support their policy.

As previously reported in this column, some critics of the federal government are openly criticizing covert efforts to arm Mexican outlaws with U.S. weaponry as the latest false-flag operation. Vocal critics and defenders of gun rights claim that this is an intentional effort to mislead the public and advocate for stricter gun control here at home in the United States. When faced with these accusations, leaders of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) feign incompetence and hide behind plausible deniability, but the facts tell a much different story.

Now, owing to a WikiLeak release of diplomatic cables, details are emerging that paint an even more damning picture of U.S. government policy, policy done out in the open that has had the same deadly effect as the covert one previously criticized in this column. On April 28, Fox News reported that even more heavy-duty armament is making its way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. According to leaked diplomatic cables, weaponry that is not available at U.S. gun stores is making its way into the hands of the drug cartels via three sources:

“U.S. Defense Department shipments to Latin America, known and tracked by the U.S. State Department as ‘foreign military sales,’ weapons ordered by the Mexican government, tracked by the State Department as ‘direct commercial sales’ and aging, but plentiful arsenals of military weapon stores in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.” What is most shocking is not that these guns ended up in the hands of the drug cartels and other violent criminals south of the border, but rather the reaction by high-ranking members of the Obama administration when the bad guys did obtain the guns.

Knowing full well that the source of the weapons was none other than the U.S. government itself, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and President Barack Obama used it as a pretext to argue for stricter domestic gun-control laws! In a February 2009 speech, President Obama blamed the violence on private U.S. gun dealers. “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that line our border,” said the President. Lynn Kartchner, owner of Allsafe Security, a gun shop in Douglas, Arizona, told Fox News, “We in the gun industry knew from day one the allegations that the preponderance of sales came from gun stores like this one was totally not true.... Most of the M16s were sold legally to the Mexican government and disappeared.”

The cold truth of the matter was that many of these weapons were and still are getting to Mexico via the U.S. government, not “mom and pop” gun shops. Fox News explained: “Tens of thousands of firearms and explosives are sold legally through the U.S. State Department to the Mexican government. These weapons are then funneled to the traffickers and cartels by corrupt officials within the Mexico Ministry of Defense and local and state police departments. According to State Department documents, in 2009 Mexico bought nearly $177 million worth of American-made weapons, exceeding sales to Iraq and Afghanistan. That number includes $20 million in semi-and-fully automatic weapons.”

A confidential informant who has worked for federal agencies such as the FBI, ATF, and DEA told Fox News that these “are weapons that have been stockpiled either through U.S. aid programs or currently being shipped there under the guise of military support.... The governments and military in those countries realize that the economy is such that they are far better off to push these weapons north and sell them than they are to keep them in their own arsenals and reserves.”

Demanding Holder Resign

The fallout continues to get greater as more and more information is released regarding the gun-running operations to Latin America by U.S. law enforcement. On Saturday, April 30, the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) CEO, Wayne LaPierre, called for Eric Holder to step down for allowing an operation by the ATF to occur on his watch that involved the sale of guns to Mexican drug cartels. LaPierre said, “Operation Fast and Furious [the code name for the ATF’s covert operation] may have gotten one or perhaps two federal agents killed, and countless other innocent victims have been murdered with the illegal guns that our own government allowed into Mexico all to advance a political agenda.”

New Children’s Book on Open-carry

Michigan-based Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew are the gun-enthusiast co-founders of Michigan Open Carry Inc., a gun-rights group that challenges unlawful gun-control laws. Jeffs and Nephew decided that they needed to broaden their message and recently authored a book on the subject of open carry for children. The soft-cover book is published by White Feather Press of Hamilton, near Grand Rapids. The book’s description is as follows:

Come join 13-year-old Brenna Strong along with her mom, Bea, and her dad, Richard, as they spend a typical Saturday running errands and having fun together. What’s not so typical is that Brenna’s parents lawfully open carry handguns for self-defense. The Strongs join a growing number of families that are standing up for their Second Amendment rights by open carrying and bringing gun ownership out of the closet and into the mainstream.

Besides explaining the reasons for gun ownership as well as open carry, the book also includes lessons on safety for children. In a phone interview with the Lansing State Journal, co-author Jeffs explained that the book’s main message is that you “can’t rely on others to protect you. You have a natural right to self-defense. The cops do the best they can, but can’t be there all the time.” My Parents Open Carry can be ordered through www.myparentsopencarry.com

“I Shot a Man in Reno… ”

The Reno Gazette Journal reported on April 7 that a “32-year-old homeowner … shot and killed a 19-year-old man who drove up to his home [in Northwest Reno] and confronted him with a gun while demanding his property.” Local police lieutenant Mohammad Rafaqat told the media that the homeowner had just arrived home when he noticed a dark-colored pickup drive past his house several times. It finally parked with its headlights shut off. The homeowner was immediately suspicious and ran inside his home to write down the license plate. The homeowner also tucked his 9mm gun inside his sweatshirt pocket and approached the truck to determine what was going on. At that moment, a man hopped out of the truck, pointed a firearm at the homeowner, and demanded his property. With no time to lose, the homeowner fired several shots at the man who fled the scene with his accomplices. The would-be robber was later dropped off at a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. The authorities are saying that the shooting appears to be a case of justified self-defense.

Wisconsin Concealed Carry Ban Ruled Unconstitutional

The Wisconsin Radio Network reported on October 14 that a Clark County judge ruled that a state ban on carrying concealed weapons is unconstitutional. The defendant in the case was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, after he admitted he had a knife in his waistband but had never actually threatened anyone. Citing the landmark Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago, defense attorney William Poss filed a motion to dismiss the case on constitutional grounds. Judge Jon Counsell agreed and granted the motion. Counsell ruled that the law is overly broad and violates both the Second and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. In his decision, Counsell wrote that the law forces citizens to “go unarmed (thus not able to act in self defense), violate the law or carry openly.”

The ruling’s precedence is limited only to Clark County and will likely get appealed to a higher court by the District Attorney’s office. Defense attorney Poss told the news that there’s “a lot of interest in this obviously.... It’s not a left or right type of thing quite frankly. It’s a liberty thing.... Like many of my counterparts, I believe strongly in the Constitution.... As Ronald Reagan once said, ‘It’s not a buffet.’ The Bill of Rights is not a buffet where you can pick and choose, where some people say they want the First Amendment applied to everyone, but somehow they jump over the Second Amendment.” Wisconsin is one of only two states that completely ban carrying concealed weapons. Perhaps this ruling is just the beginning of lower court rulings throughout the nation that will protect the individual right to armed self-defense. Readers of this column can only hope that more judges like the Honorable Jon Counsell take a stand for the Second Amendment.

Flint, Michigan, Felons

The Flint Journal out of Flint, Michigan, reported on August 5 that Sheldon Golden, 54, was standing in the driveway of his home around 11 p.m. when he was approached by a group of five young adults. The gang had a gun in their possession and tried to rob Golden. In response, Golden opened fire and killed one of the suspects and wounded two others. The other suspects ran off before the authorities arrived. Neighbors spoke approvingly of Golden’s actions. Forty-year-old neighbor Melissa Taylor told the news, “He has to do what he has to do to protect himself.... I would have probably done the same thing. I have two kids.” Even a spokesman for a Washington, D.C.-based gun-control advocacy group reluctantly agreed that Golden had a right to protect himself. Peter Hamm, communications director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told the news through grinding teeth, “We’ve never taken issue with law abiding citizens who have a weapon legally.... They have the right to defend themselves when in danger.” The authorities have charges pending against the two wounded suspects, said assistant Genesee County prosecutor Randall Petrides. Petrides would not address the specifics of the Golden case, but did tell the news, “In general, if a person feels if his life is in danger, he can protect himself.”

Delivering Lead

On Friday, March 11, a Kentucky “Wing Zone delivery driver” pulled up to the curb behind an apartment complex, expecting to deliver pizza to customers within. Unbeknownst to him, four men were waiting behind a nearby dumpster and sprang up as he exited his vehicle. Two of the men cornered the driver, and one was armed. The armed assailant pointed his gun at the hard-working victim and demanded all his cash. The driver, aware that similar robberies of pizza delivery men had occurred in the area, was prepared. He dashed back into his car and retrieved his pistol, which was “legally stored” inside. He fired at the would-be robbers as he tried to make his escape. Everything that occurred is not clear, but authorities suspect the robber fired back — a total of six shell casings were recovered at the scene. The driver escaped from the scene in his car and alerted the police. One of the four conspirators suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and collapsed. The other three fled in fear of their lives. The suspected robber who was shot was taken to a nearby hospital, and his condition was not immediately available.

ATF “Anti-gun Zealot”

When President Obama nominated Andrew Traver, who is currently the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) Chicago Field Division, to be the new Director of the ATF, a firestorm was touched off among gun-rights activists, who described Traver as an “anti-gun zealot.” On the other hand, gun-controllers like the Brady Campaign were enthused when Traver was nominated by President Obama to be the head of the ATF. Those looking to preserve Americans’ God-given right to armed self-defense have much to be concerned about. Dave Kopel of the Colorado-based Independence Institute told the Christian Science Monitor, “This is a demonstration that Obama has … the same attitudes about Second Amendment rights now as he did [when he was an Illinois state Senator], which is quite hostile....

He’s picked a strong anti-Second Amendment person for an administrative job that has far more influence over the practical exercise of Second Amendment rights than any other job in the country.” Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin wrote that “Traver allied with the progressive Joyce Foundation to lobby for tighter federal restrictions of Second Amendment freedoms. He ... opposes privacy protections for gun owners. He has also compared automatic black-market weapons to legal semiautomatic assault weapons.” Such criticisms have stalled Traver’s nomination and, at the time of this writing, it hasn’t yet come up to a vote by the U.S. Senate.

Operation Gunrunner

On the topic of the ATF, a new controversy has stirred up that might permanently damage the unconstitutional organization if fully exposed. The latest claims involve ATF operations that “allegedly have helped to supply Mexican drug cartels with weapons, as part of a ‘controlled trafficking of arms’ to Mexican authorities.” The allegations come from ATF whistle-blowers who allege the poorly run operation may have resulted in weapons that were used in the murder of federal law-enforcement agents. Now there is pressure mounting among Mexico City lawmakers for an investigation into this U.S. law-enforcement operation that may have allowed hundreds of weapons to flow into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. A ranking Mexican legislator claims that at least 150 Mexicans have been killed or wounded by guns trafficked by smugglers under the watch of U.S. agents in what many are criticizing as an ATF coverup.

A Washington Post article entitled “ATF’s tactics to end gun trafficking face a federal review” reports that a “controversy over tactics … has prompted federal officials to reevaluate an aggressive law enforcement strategy to stop firearms trafficking. The new scrutiny comes after two separate shootings in the past three months in which federal agents were killed and guns recovered by investigators were later traced back to people already under investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” But were these tactics really about stopping firearms trafficking, or were they instead an attempt to bolster the gun-controllers’ argument that it is U.S. guns being used by Mexican drug cartels? Katie Pvalich, writing for Townhall.com, believes that the plot is only thickening:

It is important to remember that the Obama Administation and the Department of Homeland Security have implied that much of the violence in Mexico is to blame on law abiding gun shop owners who “sell to cartel members” and the Second Amendment, yet continued exposure of Operation Gun Runner shows the government approving the sales reported by shop owners to ATF, giving the green light for weapons to flow freely across the border into dangerous hands, resulting in thousands of innocent deaths in Mexico and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona earlier this year. ATF sat by and watched as known criminals purchased the weapons they needed to carry out lethal operations with no take downs of cartels as a result, all while using law abiding gun shop owners as a cover.”

More and more gun-rights enthusiasts are arguing that these operations are part of a larger overall effort by the federal government to bolster the contention that lax U.S. gun-control laws are behind the increasing violence on the border with Mexico. An April 3 blog post at www.LubbockOnline.com entitled “Did the Obama White House Authorize Gun Smuggling into Mexico?”

observed:

The corruption and criminal activity apparently sanctioned by the Obama White House is staggering. The apparent fact that White House ATF agents have been smuggling guns into Mexico and the Department of Justice and politicians are using thissmuggling as an excuse to place more restrictions on the ability of law abiding citizens to own guns is both appalling and criminal.

X-ray Vision

A February 23 news report from KRQE out of Hobbs, New Mexico, reported that 70-year-old Watson Greene frantically called 911 to report someone breaking into his home. Not content to simply wait until the authorities arrived, Greene grabbed his handgun and pointed it at the back door where he could hear a would-be intruder struggling to enter his home. Greene steadied his weapon on where he envisioned the thug was standing and fired a single shot through the back door. The shot hit the would-be robber, mortally injuring him, and sending the gravely injured criminal fleeing the scene. Paramedics later found him bleeding in a nearby alley, and he eventually died from his injuries. It turned out that the dead suspect had just been arrested two weeks prior to the incident for burglary, and also had prior convictions for aggravated assault and battery dating back four years.

Officer Mike Stone told the media that the Hobbs area had recently experienced “a lot of break-ins … and we’ve had even a few home invasions.... It appears that the residents of the home were probably scared.” Chief Deputy District Attorney Dianna Luce also told the news that if the investigation shows there is sufficient evidence to prove the dead suspect was trying break into Greene’s house, it would give him the right to defend his property and the shooting would likely be ruled as justified.

Double Standard

A January 26 press release from the group GrassRoots GunRights of South Carolina, on www.Ammoland.com, supporters about a new proposed state law. It explained that a proposed bill in South Carolina would “let any elected or appointed public official — that means politicians — to carry a self-defense firearm anywhere in the state.” Why is this newsworthy? It would appear that some politicians have realized that the prohibitive carry restrictions required by the concealed weapon permit laws are unreasonable and detrimental to personal safety.

The annoying part is that they only want to exclude themselves from the requirement, whereas were taxpayers must continue to follow the onerous state regulations necessary to become fully licensed. As Bill Rentiers, executive officer of GrassRoots GunRights of South Carolina, put it, the proposed law “is nothing more than a self serving bill that proves that politicians think their lives are more important than your life or the lives of your family! … [The law] is another example of how politicians seem to forget the fact that they are public servants, not our lords and masters.” Invoking a literary giant, Rentiers told readers that “some politicians think like the pigs from George Orwell’s book Animal Farm where the ruling pigs said ‘All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.’”

This law is not unique, as there is a similar proposal out West. A March 15 Washington Times editorial reported that the California state Senate is considering a similar bill that would “grant legislators permission to carry concealed firearms. The measure highlights the growing rift between the bureaucratic class and taxpayers who don’t have the luxury of exempting themselves from bad laws.... In practice — outside of conservative, rural counties — only celebrities and the well-connected end up obtaining the coveted document. In a state of nearly 37 million, about 40,000 permits were issued in 2007.”

The law currently under consideration would automatically define politicians at the federal, state, and local levels as eligible for a permit. The editorial bemoaned the fact that coddled “lawmakers living in gated communities may think they face heightened risk, but it’s unlikely poor residents in sketchy urban neighborhoods have any less of a need.... The motivation of lawmakers in layering restriction on top of restriction hasn’t been to stop bad guys. Criminals, by definition, don’t abide by the law.

Rather, the primary purpose is to harass gun owners who do try to do what’s right.... Forcing legislators to live under the same crazy laws they expect everyone else to follow may help a few to appreciate the need for true reform.” Defenders of the proposed law would probably be confused by the criticism of this obvious double-standard. Public officials in ivory towers grow out of touch with us “common folk.” That’s partly why they see nothing wrong with exempting themselves from bad laws they create. They live by the motto of “gun control for thee but not for me.” Hopefully these laws will never see the light of day, but at least the proposed legislation reveals the true nature of the gun-controlling political class.

Jewel Heist Goes Bad — for Robbers

WABC out of New York City reported on February 23 that a Bronx jewelry store owner exercised his God-given right to self-defense and averted an attempted robbery of his store. Days after the incident, 49-year-old Anthony Spinelli was still visibly shaken when he was interviewed by the press. “I’m fine and I can’t wait to get home,” Spinelli told the news.

It is a nightmare scenario to most jewelry store owners that most hope they never have to deal with. The two well-dressed suspects, one man and one woman, came into his store in a very casual, everyday manner. Hoping to use the element of surprise to their advantage, they dressed up like a couple shopping for jewelry. Spinelli was showing them selections from the jewel case when one of the suspects held a gun to his head and demanded that he open his safe. Fearing for his life, Spinelli acted on instinct and grabbed his own handgun and immediately opened fire.

The suspects fled from the store with Spinelli behind them. A third man alleged to be involved with the crime was waiting outside as a lookout when the two would-be robbers ran from the store to escape Spinelli’s bullets. Before he could react, the lookout was shot in the leg by Spinelli and later taken into custody. People from the neighborhood hailed Spinelli as a hero for standing up to the would-be robbers. An eyewitness told the news, “Self defense, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, I would do the same thing.” Spinelli’s gun was licensed and he is not expected to be charged.