50 Jesus shouted again with a loud voice and gave up His spirit. 51 Suddenly, the curtain of the sanctuary was split in two from top to bottom; the earth quaked and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs also were opened and many bodies of the saints who had gone to their rest were raised. 53 And they came out of the tombs after His resurrection, entered the holy city, and appeared to many.
March 24th, 2010
San Francisco, CA – An Army veteran and Dean’s List student who was prosecuted over a legally-registered, unloaded gun was found not guilty by a San Francisco jury Wednesday.
Jury members deliberated just 45 minutes before acquitting San Francisco resident Wayne Lee Banks Jr., 26, of carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle. The misdemeanor charge carries up to a year in jail.
Banks, who has no criminal convictions, was arrested Oct. 9, 2009 following a contested traffic stop at Kearny and Clay streets. Officers stated in the police report that they immediately saw a handgun in a belt holster propped up against the center console.
“Despite officers describing the gun as immediately visible to justify the detention, Mr. Banks was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. You can’t have it both ways. It’s not a magic gun,” said his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Maria Lopez.
During the two day trial, Banks testified that he felt comfortable carrying a handgun for protection because of his Army training and understanding of gun laws. Even though firearms carried openly in belt holsters are not considered concealed according to California Penal Code, Banks testified that he took the already visible belt holster off his hip and placed it further up on the driver’s seat against the armrest to ensure his unloaded gun was completely visible as he drove.
A sergeant and two officers from the San Francisco Police Department testified at the trial. Police also submitted photographs of Banks’ gun partially wedged into the corner of his seat. During cross examination by Lopez, however, the sergeant admitted that the photographs were taken after he had handled the gun and placed it in that position.
“The testimony and photographs were not consistent with the initial police report and there was tampering with the evidence,” Lopez said. “The jury couldn’t understand why this went to trial. Either a gun is concealed or it is not, and this gun clearly was not.”
Banks, a 4.0 student and track team member at San Francisco City College, plans to transfer to Morehouse College and feared a conviction could ruin his chances for financial aid and scholarships, Lopez said.
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi called the trial a waste of resources.
“Mr. Banks was extremely conscientious about following the laws surrounding gun ownership,” Adachi said. “Considering all the cases involving illegal weapons and gun violence, it’s difficult to understand why time and money was spent prosecuting Mr. Banks.”
President Obama and congressional Democrats face an uphill climb to reclaim the support of independent voters who vaulted them to the White House and huge majorities in Congress in 2008.
At the end of the bitter, intensely partisan battle to pass Mr. Obama's health care overhaul plan, independent voters, once captivated by hopeful campaign promises, are feeling burned and appear eager to oust Democrats in November's midterm elections.
"There is an overall sense of frustration that no one is listening," pollster Scott Rasmussen said about a problem that has plagued the political party in power for decades.
Mr. Rasmussen said the more pressing issue for Democrats is that swing voters are not just anxious about health care; they're also angry about the stimulus package and auto industry bailouts.
"It is gathering steam in the sense that the longer the frustration goes unanswered, the more it grows," said the founder and president of Rasmussen Reports.
In 2008, Mr. Obama's hope and change messages seemed to win over independents, and he captured about 52 percent of the independent vote in the election that year.
Self-identified independents continued to back Mr. Obama through June, with about 60 percent saying they approved of his job performance. But as the year wore on and the health care battle gained steam, their approval of the president plummeted and hardened in the low 40s, according to Quinnipiac University polls.
The president's approval ratings have not rebounded since the health care vote, but the latest Quinnipiac poll shows some positive movement for Mr. Obama. The percentage of independents who disapprove of Mr. Obama's job performance has dropped nine points, from 53 percent to 44 percent.
"It may be that passage of health care eventually helps President Barack Obama's approval ratings, but at this point there's no sign of that," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
"The White House believes that now that the legislation has been signed into law they can sell it to the American people. Approval of health care reform is growing - or disapproval is shrinking - but the president still has his work cut out for him."
Independents make for fickle voters. Two former political strategists for Bill Clinton said they've already seen independents begin to recoil from Republicans.
In February, Republicans held a 22-percentage-point advantage over Democrats among independents, according to the strategists' polling, but that had slid to just five percentage points by last month. The drop was attributed almost entirely to female independents, who went from favoring the GOP to favoring Democrats.
The strategists, James Carville and Stan Greenberg, who had front-row seats for Republicans' congressional victories in 1994 when Mr. Clinton was president, said they don't see a repeat this November - mainly because the GOP's high point has come and gone. That apex was in January, when Republican Scott Brown won the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
"When we look back on this, we're going to say Massachusetts is when 1994 happened," Mr. Greenberg said.
In state after state, unaffiliated voters now hold the key to elections. Mr. Brown capitalized on that momentum in Massachusetts by telling voters he would be an independent voice in the Senate.
Seeking to boost the numbers, Mr. Obama is traveling across the country to trumpet the short-term benefits of the new health care law.
On Thursday, he was in Portland, Maine, where he predicted voters will start to support health care reform, and ridiculed early polls suggesting that voters continue to be unimpressed with the changes.
"It's been a week, folks," Mr. Obama said. "Before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought."
For now, the health care debate's political effect on Republicans and Democrats is easy to spot: Both sides are more energized.
A CNN poll released Tuesday found that 56 percent of Republicans said they're extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in November, a six-point jump since January, while 36 percent of Democrats said they're similarly enthused, which marks a five-point increase.
That enthusiasm gap bodes well for Republicans heading into the elections, but Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Carville said the GOP's brand image is likely too tarnished for them to retake the House and Senate.
They said in 1994, Republicans emerged from every policy fight with a strengthened image, but this year the GOP is suffering from each policy fight.
Mr. Carville predicted that Republicans will net about 25 House seats and six or seven Senate seats - not enough to give them control of either chamber, but enough to drop Democrats' margins dramatically.
He said, though, that this will be the third election in a row in which a party has scored those big congressional wins, after Democrats' double-dip successes of 2006 and 2008, and said voters are profoundly unhappy.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
M Allen Fritsch
There is a fundamental right being denied 55% of all Americans. This denial costs over 16,000 lives per year, meaning more than 44 of our fellow Americans will die every day that we delay. What should be done in light of these shocking figures?
Using the example set by President Obama and the Congressional Democrats, there is only one answer: Universal Gun Care for every American. Surely a right outlined in the Bill of Rights (2d Amendment) is just as important as a right NOT found the Constitution (Health Care).
Bonus, it should be easier to implement. After all, gun dealers and manufacturers are ready and willing to help solve the problem. Unlike the evil insurance companies, gun dealers don't want to take your weapon away from you when you most need it. Nor will they deny selling you a weapon simply because you haven't purchased one in the past (i.e. a pre-existing condition).
• Conventional estimates state that 45% of all US households own a firearm. This leaves at least 55% of all Americans "uncovered."
• In 2008 there were 16,272 murders in the USA. How many of those could have been prevented if the victims had been able to protect themselves?
My proposal is a modest one:
• Mandate for every American to purchase a gun or be provided one by their employer (children under the age of 26 can share a weapon with their parents)
• Tax credits to offset the cost of purchase (for those making less than $250,000 per year and everyone in Nebraska)
• For those that can't afford it, a grant or subsidy to purchase a weapon (union members can get two weapons subsidized before 2018)
• Funding for a series of community based gun dealers/clinics and firing ranges (especially in under-served urban and rural areas)
• Monthly ammunition benefit so that no one has to choose between feeding their kids, paying the rent, or buying a box of .38 special cartridges
Contact your representative today. The time to act is now.
M Allen Fritsch is an entrepreneur and business owner. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and a former Army officer. His household is one of the 45%.
In case there are any residual doubts of how bad the tea partiers have been treated, here are the Top 5 ways the left and the media have abused a grassroots movement. The coverage has been so hateful and so biased, it was almost impossible to narrow the list.
5) Protesters are Anti-Government
The media and the left portray tea parties as “anti-government” because it undermines a patriotic grassroots movement. Tea partiers aren’t anti-government, they are anti-big government. That’s just not the story journalists tell. The “anti-government” theme is strong, cropping up in more than two dozen stories in The Washington Post and New York Times combined. Very few of them mentioned the word “big” in reference to government.
Instead, it’s NPR’s Liz Halloran claiming tea parties have been boosted by “restive Republicans who have found refuge in the year-old anti-tax, anti-government uprising.” Frank Rich of The New York Times compared tea partiers with Andrew Joseph Stack, the man who flew a plane into an IRS building. “Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a ‘Tea Party terrorist.’ But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner.”
Then there’s former CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen, who became the story when she reported from the Chicago Tea Party on April 15 last year. Roesgen rudely interrupted one of the protesters and slammed the event for being “anti-government.” After she bullied her interview subject, Roesgen concluded that “you get the general tenor of this” tea party. “Anti-government, anti-CNN since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox and since I can't really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing.”
CNN is more family friendly now. Roesgen no longer works at the network.
4) Tea Partiers Are Stupid
Calling conservatives stupid is typical left-wing strategy. The left labeled Reagan stupid or senile. George W. Bush was consistently portrayed as stupid by detractors in the left and the media. It only makes sense that tea partiers get the same treatment.
In the case of the tea parties, some of the biggest offenders were also some of the biggest mouths on the left. Last August, former Air America host MSNBC regular Janeane Garofalo let the venom fly during an appearance at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 21. Garofalo called tea partiers “functionally retarded adults.”
Bill Maher deployed the same strategy in February of this year during HBO's “Real Time” calling tea partiers “cultists. “The teabaggers, they're not a movement. They're a cult, and I'm going to prove it. You know someone has fallen into a cult if you see these signs: One. Cults have their own vocabulary. Now, I don't speak sh**kicker, but I know that in their world, freedom means guns, diplomacy means weakness, elitist means reader, and socialist means black.” In Maher’s world, stupid means anyone who is conservative.
3) Protesters are Nazis
Nazis are the ultimate villains both for the horror they brought to the world through conquest and their use of industrialized genocide. But while the left went crazy when Lyndon LaRouche fans carried Obama/Hitler posters to protests, they were quick to use the slander for their own devices.
Take MSNBC’s relatively obscure host Dylan Ratigan. In February, the host of “The Dylan Ratigan Show” began the program by doing what his network always does – attacking conservatives. “The Tea Party has a bit of an integrity problem, as everybody from birthers, to open racists, to outright Nazis are actually on the team. And no one involved, including its leadership, seems to mind that fact.”
Ratigan learned from the best, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who called the tea parties “Astroturf” before she went on to link them to Nazis. “They're carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.” Later she backed off her complete attack and tried to latch onto tea party popularity claiming, “but, you know, we share some of the views of the Tea Partiers.” Sure…
2) Homophobic Slurs
To most ordinary Americans in early 2009, the term “teabagging” meant using a tea bag to make actual tea. Then entire world learned the term had an overt, oral sex connotation, thanks to the media and left-wing pundits.
Nowhere was the use of the term more pronounced than MSNBC. The day before the big tea party event last April, MSNBC's David Shuster made numerous sexual puns during a “Countdown” appearance. “It's going to be teabagging day for the right-wing and they're going nuts for it. Thousands of them whipped out the festivities early this past weekend, and while the parties are officially toothless, the teabaggers are full-throated about their goals,” he told viewers. He later used his Twitter account to attack “teabaggers” and their “teabag leader.”
Shuster lost out to fellow MSNBC host Rachel Maddow for most adolescent behavior. Maddow’s and then Air America radio contributor Ana Marie Cox used the word “teabag” at least 51 times in a in a 13-minute long segment of bad “teabag” puns.
It wasn’t just MSNBC. Journalists at numerous outlets used the derisive term. But CNN anchor Anderson Cooper went even farther during the April 15 “Anderson Cooper 360” program. CNN’s senior political analyst David Gergen said Republicans were “searching for their voice” after two electoral losses, Cooper followed up by saying, “It’s hard to talk when you’re tea-bagging.” The irony of this attack is that it allows lefties and the media to feel smart and act juvenile at the same time.
1) Calling them “racist”
Playing the race card has become the left’s favorite move. It trumps everything else and is virtually impossible to defend against. Naturally, with an African-American president, crying “racism” has become a routine occurrence. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is just one of the milder examples of someone who injects race into everything except commercials.
Whether it’s Colbert King of The Washington Post or loose cannon former comedienne Garofalo, racism is the left’s preference in attempts to undermine the tea parties.
Former funny lady Garofalo bashed the attendees at last year’s tax day tea parties by using several different attacks. The “Countdown” guest called party-goers “a bunch of teabagging rednecks,” adding “this is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”
At least she didn’t invoke the KKK, or talk about tea partiers wearing sheets. But she didn’t have to because Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., did it for her. Clyburn showed up in a column by The Post’s Colbert King that claimed “Today's Tea Party adherents are George Wallace legacies.” “It reminds me of that period in our history right after Reconstruction,” Clyburn said, “when South Carolina had a black governor and the political gains were lost because of vigilantism, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.”
He wasn’t alone. In February, “Countdown” host Keith Olbermann focused on suggestions there should be civics literacy testing for registered voters made at the recent Tea Party convention, which Olbermann referred to as the “Tea Klux Klan.”
Maddow had her own Klan spin. “And as you could hear, the tea party convention crowd erupted in cheers at the suggestion, although, to be fair, it was sort of hard to tell exactly what the sounds coming from the crowd meant. They were sort of a little bit muffled by, you know, the white hoods,” she mocked.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture. His column appears each week on The Fox Forum. He can also be contacted on Facebook and Twitter as dangainor.
Why don't the politicians want us to own weapons? What are the politicians afraid of? That we're all going to kill each other? I don't think so. The politicians are afraid of an armed populace. And they're supposed to be. The tension created by an armed populace is a method of keeping the politicians honest. Some people theorize that in an age of nuclear weapons and technological warfare, an armed citizenry poses no threat to the force of the military. This is an erroneous conclusion. The purpose of any military takeover would be to takeover what makes America America. The infrastructure and at least some of the people must survive. And the military, with as much high tech weaponry as it has, could not win a street fight with millions of armed Americans. That's pretty powerful stuff.
The sick proponents of gun control want each of us to turn our lives over to an all-knowing government that will protect us and provide for all of our needs. But what is the cost of relinquishing the control of our lives over to that government. We have to bow to its demands. We have to allow whatever demoralizing and social mandates it offers. We will have succumbed to that disgusting intellectual elite that wants to rule us all. These are the people of the world that know what's best for us. These are the Feinsteins, the Clintons, the Boxers and the Kofi Annans. These are the Rockefellers and the Ted Turners. These are the smug professors at the elite schools. These are the feminists, the technologists and the sociologists. Each of these groups thinks they know more about what we want in life that we do ourselves. THEY know what's best for us. Are we really sheep?
If you are a woman or a minority I find it impossible to fathom how you could be for gun control. The only thing that equalizes a fight between a man and a woman is a firearm. You can learn all of the defensive techniques you want but if an assailant has their own gun, you lose. Even if the assailant does not have a gun, most women can't successfully fight a 200-pound man in reasonably good shape. You put your life in the hands of chance, the chance that someone will hear you screaming (if you can) or that a police officer just happens to be passing by.
Face the facts: Police cannot protect everyone. If they could arrive at the scene of each crime in 30 seconds, maybe they could. And courts have determined many times that police are not liable in cases where they have unable to provide protection to citizens. Suppose you are an older black woman or black man living in a bad part of town. How can you protect yourself against an attack? The only (somewhat) sure way is to brandish a gun. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of a sick person that has no mercy. The thought that you, the minority or the woman, would give up your right to protect yourself is one of the most disconcerting things I have ever conceived.
Recently I was reporting on a story in a particularly bad part of town. Many of you have probably seen places like this, at least on TV- burned out cars, closed stores, trash everywhere, and bars on the windows. A woman had been strangled in her apartment. I arrived on a sunny day with police cars and the media everywhere to be seen. I watched the residents of the federal project watching the police. Many stood near their doors with their kids. I thought to myself - what if you could arm these people, at least the law abiding ones? What would happen the next time someone is attacked and a whole community responds brandishing guns? Would the hoods and thugs look for a "safer" place to hit? That is power!
This country was founded on violence. I would never wish the conflict of any of our wars on this country but it is important that each and every law-abiding citizen owns a weapon and is trained in its use. It is important that each of you teach your children a rudimentary knowledge of firearms. For those of you who don't own weapons, ask a gun owning friend to teach you. Give yourself a chance to get used to the idea of a firearm.
Like anything empowering in our lives, the power of a weapon and the responsibility of owning one are something to get used to. But a gun is something to be respected but not something to be afraid of (unless you're on the wrong side of one). Let's remember that most of our forefathers owned guns, many for hunting. Guns were a part of most rural families. I remember going to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving each year. My uncle had a case of guns in the den area where we all congregated. The case was never locked. But believe me, I would never have touched it and none of us youngins ever did.
The closest many Americans have come to a firearm is on a passing police officer. For most people, guns are only a part of the violence they see on television each day. If you grew up and have spent your entire life in a big city, as a growing number of Americans unfortunately have, this is the most likely scenario. How are you ever to have an understanding of firearms if you have never been around them? You can't. All you know is what the media is feeding you — that kids are shooting up schools, citizens of the middle east are killing each other, drug dealers are shooting up the ghettos and an occasional police officer is shot. This is a distorted picture of the life we live that is being perpetuated by forces that want to ultimately control our destiny. Read the facts about gun rights and gun control. Run a search on the topic. Investigate the sites. Educate yourself. Learn beyond the established media. Then make your call.
I will buy guns. I will encourage my friends to buy guns and learn to use them responsibly. And let's not forget about loading up on the ammo.
I will never, never let the politicians take away my right for self-determination. I will never let them take away my right to defend my family, my friends, and myself. I now know that I am one of millions that feel this way. We're not just military, ex-military or hunters. We are simply Americans; Americans like the family down the street or the guy who owns the hardware store or the woman who's a teller at the local bank. We must let our voices be proudly heard throughout America again and again and again. We must never stop defending our rights. Never.
The phrase "power to the people' conjures up thoughts of hippies protesting the Vietnam War or Black Panthers holding a fist to the sky. I hope the phrase can now be repurposed as our call for Second Amendment Rights.
"The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible."
— Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minnesota)
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
— John Stewart Mills
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."
— Mahatma Ghandi
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? ... If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?"
— Patrick Henry
Twice in just the past few days, seemingly bad guys were shot while allegedly attempting to rob Toledo stores. Although we're glad the robberies were thwarted and thankful no innocents were injured, we're not sure that store owners and employees defending themselves with deadly force is an absolute good.
Gary M. Galles
Minutes after President Obama signed the health care bill, constitutional challenges were filed.
Their key is the Commerce Clause, which, judicially redefined, is the sole constitutional rationale justifying many federal regulatory powers (which is why in law schools it is often called "the everything clause").
Under the Articles of Confederation, states were imposing duties on other states' goods. The Commerce Clause was designed to take that abusive power from the states by giving Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce; "regulate" meant "to make regular or normal" or "to remove impediments," but not to authorize federal control following the far different current meaning of "telling others what to do."
Federalist 11 indicates the Commerce Clause's intent as a limitation on states rather than federal carte blanche, "prohibitory regulations, extending... throughout the states," without which "this intercourse would be fettered, interrupted and narrowed by a multiplicity of causes."
Federalist 42 describes the main purpose as "the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter." Rather than authorizing federal dictation of anything remotely related to commerce, it provides "restraints imposed on the authority of the States," citing Switzerland, where "each Canton is obliged to allow to merchandises a passage through its jurisdiction... without an augmentation of the tolls," as its main illustration.
The Commerce Clause's narrow intended scope was cemented in Federalist 45: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and prosperities of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State." It was this stringent constraint on federal power that made the Commerce Clause one "few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained."
Following our Founders' intent, until 1887, the Commerce Clause was used only to overturn state restrictions on interstate commerce. But then the courts began reinterpreting its ban of state-imposed restrictions into an open invitation to federal dictates, particularly in Wickard v. Filburn, in 1942.
Justice Robert H. Jackson's opinion eliminated virtually all Commerce Clause bounds on federal powers: "[E]ven if appellee's activities be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce." In other words, the federal power to regulate interstate commerce extended to banning (far from "removing impediments" to trade) production (not commerce) occurring in a single state (not among states). Anything judged to have a substantial effect, including any "practices affecting prices" - that is, any business practice - became fair game for federal regulation. We see the results in the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies now engulfing us.
However, since 1995, the Supreme Court has rediscovered the Commerce Clause's restrictions on federal authority. It found neither gun possession near schools nor violence against women sufficiently related to commerce to authorize federal legislation.
If the Supreme Court follows the Constitution as written, federal health "reform" will be rejected. If Wickard's almost unlimited discretion is maintained as a valid precedent, it will be accepted. If more recent precedents are followed, it will depend on what the justices deem sufficiently connected to commerce. In particular, does Congress have the power to force people to buy health insurance - to override non-commerce (choosing not to buy) in the name of regulating commerce?
Health care reform offers hope that an important constitutional restriction will be taken seriously again. It also offers risk that it will be further gutted. That alternative is chilling for those without total faith in the federal government. As Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote in the 1995 Lopez ruling: "If we were to accept the government's arguments, we are hard-pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate."
Gary M. Galles is professor of economics at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.
FRANKFORT, Ky. -- Gun rights supporters unabashedly toted weapons at a rally outside Kentucky's Capitol on Saturday in a show of political muscle aimed at sending a message to policymakers to protect the Second Amendment.
Speakers stressed the importance of guns for self-defense, drawing cheers from about 300 people at the rally where American flags were plentiful.
Many in the crowd had weapons holstered at their sides or strapped to their backs while attending the Kentucky Second Amendment March. The event is part of a national, grass-roots campaign culminating with a planned rally next month in Washington.
Rex Bartley, state coordinator for the march, said bearing arms is a "God-given right," and said gun rights supporters are a "silent majority" who need to speak out.
Bartley said gun ownership is the "one right that protects all others," and said it's invaluable for self-protection.
"A well-trained man or woman with a firearm in their hand, when they encounter a criminal, it makes a difference between going home to your family ... or going to the morgue," he said.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul said he would never waiver in his support of the Second Amendment, pledging that if elected he would oppose any federal regulation of firearms.
Paul called guns a "great defense," telling the crowd that "had we had one armed teacher or student at Virginia Tech, we might not have had a massacre." He was referring to the 2007 shooting rampage that left 33 people dead, including the student gunman.
Nikki Goeser, whose husband was fatally gunned down at a Tennessee restaurant in 2009, told the crowd that police have a difficult job and cannot be everywhere. "No one can take care of you like you can," Goeser said.
She urged people to be equipped to defend themselves if ever confronted by an assailant.
"If you don't have a handgun carry permit, get one," said Goeser, of Nashville, Tenn. "If you don't have a firearm for self-defense, get one."
In the crowd, Rob Lotz III of Georgetown said he worries about efforts to chip away at the Second Amendment. He said the rally sent a strong message to politicians to preserve gun rights.
Eric Nichols of Berea said he values the Second Amendment, even though he's never owned or fired a gun. The closest he's come is firing a paintball gun.
"Every person should have the right to defend themselves," he said. "We don't have one police officer for every citizen in this country."
In Kentucky, the gun rights lobby has been a powerful force in a state where hunting is a cherished tradition.
Recently, Kentucky House leaders balked at a proposed rule change that would have barred visitors from carrying guns in the Capitol. Some House lawmakers pressed for such a ban after a man wore a holstered gun into the House chamber and sat through an afternoon session.
March 17, 2012
The primary goal of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus is to allow the carry of concealed handguns by licensed adults on college campuses. One of our main ways to gain public awareness is through our signature “Empty Holster Protest” event in which students wear empty holsters all week to show that laws and policies against lawful carry of firearms leaves them defenseless, with nothing but “Empty Holsters” to defend themselves should their life or safety be threatened.
In the past, thousands of students at more than 600 campuses have participated in the events. The past protests have generated an enormous amount of media coverage and attention for our cause. However, some colleges weren’t content to restrict the right to keep and bear arms; they also sought to limit the freedom of speech by prohibiting our members from participating. Among them was Tarrant County College (TCC) in Texas.
In the Spring of 2008 TCC prevented SCCC campus leader and future national board member Brett Poulos from wearing a holster anywhere on campus. They further restricted any other activity such as speeches or handing out fliers, to a 12 foot concrete platform, their so-called “free speech zone”. While TCC received a great deal of controversy from the decision, including winning some dubious “worst of free speech” awards, they were unrelenting.
In the Spring of 2009, SCCC’s new campus leader Clayton Smith attempted to participate in the Empty Holster protest at TCC. When Smith sent an informative letter to campus administration to let them know about the upcoming protest, he was warned that empty holsters would not be permitted anywhere on campus. If he wanted to pass out fliers or discuss the campus ban on firearms, he would have to restrict such actions to a similar “free speech zone.”
Clayton contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and began exploring his options. When TCC repeated their refusal to allow the Empty Holster Protest in the fall of 2009, Clayton and fellow SCCC member John Schwertz filed suit against the college with the assistance of the Texas ACLU. A temporary restraining order was then issued that allowed Clayton and John to participate in the fall protest.
On March 15, after months of trial hearings and legal paperwork, a final ruling came down. Federal judge Terry Means permanently banned TCC from preventing any empty holster protests throughout campus, stating in part that
“[T]he disruptive activities provision, as applied to student SCCC members to prevent them from wearing empty holsters on campus or in the classroom, violates such students’ First Amendment right to free speech. … Tarrant County College District, its officials, employees, and agents, be and they are hereby PERMANENTLY ENJOINED from prohibiting Clayton Smith, John Schwertz Jr., and any other Tarrant County College District student from wearing empty holsters in TCC’s classrooms, on the TCC campuses’ streets and sidewalks, and in the TCC campuses’ outdoor common areas, such as lawns and plazas.”
The ruling also struck down parts of the TCC student handbook dealing with sponsorship of campus protests
Friday, March 19, 2010
The notion that lemmings deliberately hasten their demise by rushing into the sea may be a myth, but the anti-Second Amendment group and its spokesmen really are scurrying through a series of blunders that may hasten their steady march to irrelevancy.
In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the group's two theories about the Second Amendment were rejected by the Supreme Court, one of them by five justices and the other by all nine. In 2009, they tried, with no success, to frighten America about tourists carrying guns for protection in national parks.
This year, they've insulted their most powerful ally, President Obama, for not setting aside the economy, the war, and his social agenda to push for gun control legislation Congress does not support. They've given the states their worst "Brady grades" ever, even though violent crime continues to decrease. And, they've badgered the Starbucks coffee company for allowing customers to legally carry firearms in its stores.
This week, though, Brady lawyer Dennis Henigan—the world's most prolific advocate of the legal theories the Supreme Court sent to the shredder two years ago—further diminished the group's credibility by claiming "The evidence is overwhelming that the 'shall-issue' concealed carry laws have been a disaster for public safety. . . . [T]he scholarly research shows that the laws generally have been 'associated with uniform increases in crime.'"
If he had just pushed himself away from the computer after his first four words, he would have been much better off. There's "evidence," all right, and it's certainly "overwhelming." Today, there are 36 states with "shall issue" laws—an all-time high. Sixty-three percent of Americans live in "shall issue" states, five million Americans have carry permits, and two states don't even require a permit to carry concealed.
"Uniform increases in crime"? The nation's violent crime rate is at a 35-year low.
Since adopting "shall issue" laws, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia have had decreases in violent crime ranging from 26 to 53 percent.
Henigan also claimed to have 33,000 signatures on his anti-Starbucks online petition, which can be signed by anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. But in a country of five million carry permit holders, up to 80 million gun owners, and 300 million people, Brady's petition and $1.70 will get you …
Over the past few months, more and more gun owners have been gathering at restaurants and coffee shops like Starbucks with guns strapped to their hips, intimidating fellow patrons.
So far, Peet's Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen have heeded customer concerns and barred the open carrying of guns.
We have sent a letter to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz asking him to do the same. But Starbucks is refusing to prohibit the open carrying of firearms in its stores.
It's everyone's right to sit in a restaurant or coffee shop with their families without intimidation or fear of guns, either concealed or openly carried.
Under the law, Starbucks has the right to adopt a gun-free policy, with an exception for uniformed police officers. Such a policy can easily be implemented in most cases by putting up signs at store entrances.
The practice of packing heat in places like Starbucks is intimidating and could be potentially dangerous to our families and communities – and it must be stopped.
We have teamed up with CREDO Action to send petitions to Starbucks to keep guns out of its stores.
The government takeover of health care will go down in history as the worst piece of legislation to emerge from a Congress held in general disdain by the American people. The only bipartisanship on the health bill was in the opposition.
Usually autopsies are reserved for after the patient has died, but in this case it is useful to get ahead of the matter. The malformed health legislation is not the only reason Democrats are facing political extinction in November, but it is one of the most dramatic. The legislative process in this country has never been so unseemly. Arm twisting, backroom deals, special privileges and potentially criminal "government jobs for votes" agreements became a normal way of doing business. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fixated on the mantra that the Democrats' health plan is "historic," but so was the Black Plague.
President Obama went to Capitol Hill on Saturday to give a final pep talk to Democrats, where he absurdly called his socialist health care measure "one of the biggest deficit reduction measures in history." This contradicts the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who says his staff currently has no idea what the impact of the plan is "due to the complexity of the legislation." Democrats have been hoodwinked into believing they won't pay a political price for their actions, but they will soon discover they miscalculated.
The new system will suffer a tsunami of bad publicity when states sue the federal government over unfunded mandates, when the IRS begins enforcing the aspects of the bill that voters never knew existed, when small businesses start firing employees because they cannot afford the higher costs of the new system, when new and unforeseen costs blow out the already record federal budget deficit, and when seniors begin to feel the impact of Medicare cuts. All of this is what Mr. Obama euphemistically calls "bending the curve" but which seniors will find out is better termed "denial of care." Whether the formal "death panels" will convene before the November elections is still to be determined.
Many members of Congress probably don't know exactly what is in the bill. The 2,300 pages of "fixes" to the Senate bill presented last week were only a draft, and no member can be certain what has been slipped in. A frantic Democratic Party memo sent out Thursday instructed members -- twice, in italics -- not to "get into a discussion of details of the [Congressional Budget Office] scores and the textual narrative" with the bill's opponents. But the devil was in those details. Mrs. Pelosi's offhand statement that members would learn what was in the bill after it was passed should have been a warning.
The majority party was even having problems over the weekend determining if they could vote to amend a law before it was signed by the president. It is a sad day for America when senior members of Congress either dont understand the Constitution or no longer think it applies.
Democrats in Congress refuse to believe the contempt with which the American people hold them. Gallup shows congressional approval ratings in the teens and headed downward. Gallup also found that "more Americans believe the new legislation will make things worse rather than better for the U.S. as a whole, as well as for them personally."
Democrats are in much worse shape than in 1994 when they lost power, and the opposition is far more energized. Once voters have a chance to tell the most irresponsible government in American history that enough is enough, the Democrats' brief reign will expire, and be deemed death by suicide.
