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VT: Vermont Gun Store Blames Layoff on Obama, Reminds Us of Gun Reform Failures
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A gun importer in Vermont that blames President Barack Obama for the recent layoff of 41 employees, actually makes a decent argument for why the White House is responsible for the cutbacks. It also shows how short the government has fallen when it comes to delivering on the gun control reforms promised after the tragic Sandy Hook shooting.
According to the Associated Press, Fairfax's Century International Arms was unable to import close to $30 million worth of vintage rifles from South Korea because of a an executive action signed by the president last summer. |
NV: Police Killed In Las Vegas Pizza Shop Shooting
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Three people, including two police officers, have been shot dead by attackers who turned their guns on themselves in a Las Vegas supermarket.
Police said the officers, named as Alyn Beck, 42, and Igor Soldo, 32, were ambushed and shot at point-blank range as they ate lunch at CiCi's Pizza restaurant.
The two suspects, a man and a woman, then fled to a Walmart across the street where they killed a third person before taking their own lives. |
FL: 'Voluntary' gun control is just coercion
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No clear-thinking county official would believe they can violate the law by establishing gun control criteria and then escape punishment by calling it "sales and marketing safeguards."
Previous reports have revealed that gun and ammunition vendors who sell to law enforcement agencies would lose that business if they refuse to "voluntarily" adhere to gun control standards imposed by the county.
That's not voluntary compliance, that's coercion, and the loss of business is punitive. |
NH: Weapon regulation will not invoke a police state
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The Second Amendment argument has been grotesquely morphed by the National Rifle Association, firearm manufacturers and their servile political minions. Democrats are not trying to "pry your guns from your cold, dead hands." That is an NRA fairy tale. Prudent, sensible regulation is necessary and will not invoke a police state confiscation of personal weaponry. Those delusional threats are designed to feed mass paranoia, all the while stuffing the pockets of those institutional fear-mongers. |
California Rep Co-Sponsored Mental Health and Gun Control Bill
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California Congresswoman Lois Capps, along with 22 other Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives co-sponsored, on May 30, a bill aimed at promoting mental health and community safety through gun-control. Dubbed the “Promoting Healthy Minds for Safer Communities Act of 2014,” the bill lays a foundation for stricter background checks for at-risk individuals, and earmarks grant money to be used for research into the relationship between gun violence and mental illness. |
Is There Really an Epidemic of Mass Shootings?
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The truth, simply put, is that mass shootings —as horrible and nightmarish as they are — are very rare, constitute a tiny sliver of homicides, and are not becoming more frequent. The debate over how to respond to gun violence is controversial and unlikely to yield solutions that will satisfy everyone. That said, any efforts that intend to strike a balance between safety, self-defense, and civil liberties must take account of these inconvenient truths.
Homicide in America is far more common than it ought to be. But mass shootings — defined as four or more murders in the same incident — constitute a minuscule share of the total, as I discuss in “The Shooting Cycle” in the most recent edition of the Connecticut Law Review |
Big danger: Gun-free zones
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He may have been outgunned, but he certainly wasn’t ungunned, and his actions, the experts agree, probably saved hundreds, maybe even a thousand lives.
Now St. James Massacre hero Charl van Wyk is reaffirming his belief that there is a biblical obligation for self-defense with a warning to Americans of the perils of gun control.
In a newly released video interview with WND, he recounted the horrific consequences of gun-free zones on his continent. |
CO: Boulder group seeks ballot initiative to ban concealed guns on campus
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The founder of a group committed to putting an initiative on this fall's ballot that would ban concealed weapons on college campuses says they've gathered more than 50 percent of the necessary signatures, far ahead of the June 30 deadline.
"We've gotten responses from 44 of the state's 64 counties so far, and frankly, it's been a very easy signature to get," said Ken Poltz of the Boulder-based Safe Campus Colorado.
The group has to submit 86,105 signatures by June 30 to the secretary of state's office, which approved the initiative proposal this year. Poltz said Safe Campus Colorado's goal is to "get far more" than the minimum number of signatures. |
WA: NRA exploits culture of fear
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One obvious question worth asking is why would a civilized industrial nation that prides itself on both democratic principles and reasoned government allow all reason and sanity to be hijacked by the NRA and a gun lobby cartel whose sole objective and reason for existence is to introduce an ever greater number of increasingly lethal weapons into the domestic population? The answer I believe can be found in our ever growing culture of fear. The NRA and the gun cartel in the United States use as their bedrock and foundation a culture of fear that permeates virtually every aspect of American life. |
WA: State leads nation, can do more
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We can do it again. In November, Washington will decide on Initiative 594, which closes the loophole that allows guns to be bought without a background check. Legislators failed to pass this commonsense measure, so now it's up to us - the people - to make our voices heard.
No one should accept “inaction” on gun violence anymore. As a mom to young kids, I know we can't live like this. To make our state safer, I urge you to vote yes on 594 and continue Washington's steady progress forward. |
TN: Gun permits in TN nearly doubles in one year
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The number of gun permits issued in Tennessee has nearly doubled between 2012 and 2013.
According to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, the state issued 192,613 handgun carry permits in 2013. Of that 58,833 were given to women and 133,780 were given to men. Compare that to 2012. That year the state issued a total of 114,031 permits. 32,354 were given to women and 81,677 were given to men.
Ed.: It was only a 60% increase, which makes for an extremely liberal definition of 'nearly doubled'. |
MA: Deadly spin on Second Amendment
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I tired long ago listening to gun lovers spouting their Second Amendment rights as if they were a birthright bequeathed by the gods (or in some cases, God Himself). In reality, they were bestowed by a highly questionable vote by the rogue 5-4 right-wing majority on the Supreme Court, who once again, ignored precedent, historical context and any sense of jurisprudence in rendering its decision in 2008. These are the same guys who brought us Bush v. Gore, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and a slew of other highly dubious decisions based not upon any insightful interpretation of the Constitution but upon their right-wing political agenda. |
Justices may examine threats on Internet
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Messages posted on Facebook and Twitter or sent in emails can be tasteless, vulgar and even disturbing.
But just when do they cross the line from free speech to threats that can be punished as a crime?
As the Internet and social networks allow people to vent their frustrations with the click of a mouse, the Supreme Court is being asked to clarify the First Amendment rights of people who use violent or threatening language on electronic media where the speaker's intent is not always clear. |
MO: Man's killing of threatening sibling ruled self-defense
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While holding his baby daughter, Ryan Storey killed his aggressive, drunken, threatening brother with a pocketknife in a homicide that was justifiable, authorities have ruled.
Ryan Storey, 31, of St. James will not be charged after his actions were deemed self-defense.
He stabbed Curtis Storey, 29, of Springfield in the chest at their mother's South New Avenue home on April 17, 2013, police said. |
MT: Column writer has bad grasp of history, right of self-defense
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It is clear to any student of our country’s Constitution, that its creators would be vehemently opposed to what Mr. Livingstone infers as the right of citizens to rise up against a democratically and justly elected government and a majority of citizens. If we follow his logic, maybe the progressive, Democratic party majority should take arms against the very unrepresentative U.S. Congress (majority vote for the House went to the Democratic Party by almost a million votes and the obstructionist 45 Republican senators represent only 28 percent of the U.S. population, according to a George Mason University political study). |
TX: Texas officials vow to take away abusers’ guns
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Dallas County officials are pledging to take action to keep guns away from certain domestic abusers.
The commitment comes after the Dallas Morning News reported last week that lax enforcement left a gun in the hands of a man who shot a police officer and killed an ex-girlfriend last year while he had a protective order against him in a domestic abuse case. |
WA: Don’t blame guns
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The shooting in California is unfortunate, but it is a mental health issue. The parents of the murderer called police on their son. Deputies interviewed him and found him fit and didn’t order a mental health hold and apparently missed the video he uploaded.
So, I ask, why do they keep blaming a tool that we use to protect ourselves and our families? Even if guns vanished overnight there would still be evil in this world. |
Gun-mounted flashlights linked to accidental shootings
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Ronny Flanagan took pride in his record as a police officer in Plano, Texas. He had an incident-free career. He took safety training regularly. He was known at the range as a very good shot.
Yet he killed a man when he was simply trying to press a flashlight switch mounted beneath the trigger on his pistol.
In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.
"I don't want anyone to ever sit in a chair I'm in right now," he said. "Think about the officers that aren't as well trained, officers that don't take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will." |
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