Tuesday, March 24, 2009

03-23-09

Stephen P. Wenger  http://www.spw-duf.info
comments in () by Stephen P. Wenger

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A Milestone, of Sorts: With the mailing list having hit 594, I spent some time yesterday rebuilding it in seven sections, to ensure that none of the subsections exceed my ISP's limit of 100 recipients. If you fail to receive a mailing in the coming days, let me know - I am pretty well accustomed to sending only six sets each morning.
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Senators Debate Mexican Impact of US Gun Laws:
Two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week clashed over whether the lack of gun-control laws in the United States is responsible for violence in Mexico. At  a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Crime and Drugs and the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, conservative Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama said just because Mexican drug traffickers are smuggling U.S. guns into Mexico to wreak bloody havoc, doesn't mean that U.S. gun laws are somehow responsible… But liberal Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the current majority whip, directly blamed American laws and policies for facilitating the influx of weapons into Mexico…

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=45452
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The Beat Goes On: There are a number of reasons but the most prevalent are people are afraid the Obama administration, sooner or later, will get around to creating more-restrictive gun ownership laws and taxes. And those are not unfounded fears. So gun owners are stocking up on ammunition, handguns and semiautomatic rifles. Sales are up 50 percent since Barack Obama was elected. And gun-control advocates have taken notice. In a story in Seacoast Sunday last week, Peter Hamm of the Washington-D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence used words like "lunacy" to describe people who are buying guns…

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20090322-OPINION-903220321

Gun sales are up significantly across the nation the past few months. Some point to a significant change in the White House, Congress and the economy as the reason for the rapid rise. The Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club is open to its members, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And more people are coming than ever before. But why? Is economic turmoil leading to a predicted rise in break-ins and the increased need for protection? Or is the belief that the Obama Administration will renew the ban on assault weapons leading to a spike in the sale of guns and ammunition? In the days following the election in November, sales were brisk at Northeast Trading Company in North Attleboro, Mass. Now more than four months later, gun dealers continue to be busy and new members are coming to shoot in record numbers at the Braintree Rifle and Pistol Club…

http://www.necn.com/Boston/New-England/2009/03/22/Gun-sales-on-the-rise-but/1237772495.html

The popular handguns are on back order. Some kinds of semiautomatic rifles are even harder to get. Ammo, too, is at a premium. In short, the gun industry is weathering the recession just fine. In Massachusetts and across America, the recent surge in gun buying has been fueled by fears that President Obama will restrict gun rights, and by creeping anxiety about crime and the economy. "It's a tug-of-war between the anxiety of the general public and their lack of money," said Andrew Molchan, president of the Professional Gun Retailers Association. "Right now, anxiety seems to be winning out." At M&M Plimoth Bay Outfitters in Plymouth, AR-15s and other military-pattern semiautomatic rifles, once heavily restricted as so-called assault weapons, have been quickest to sell…

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/business_market/x2087806903/Fears-about-crime-and-economy-trigger-higher-gun-sales
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Full-Auto Fib: When General Wesley Clark was recently on Geraldo Rivera's Fox News show, he said that the United States needs to impose a new "assault weapons ban," and said that if Americans want machine guns, they should join the military.  I don't know how many times it has to be said, but the so-called "assault weapons" that Attorney General Holder wants to ban aren't machine guns. They're the same semi-automatic firearms that have been around for more than 100 years. General Clark is deliberately misleading the American people. Clark also said that the problem we have isn't sealing the border from south to north, but from north to south. The Los Angeles Times recently reported the opposite. The paper says military weapons, including machine guns, anti-tank rockets, RPGs, grenade launchers and grenades are the new weapons of choice for the drug cartels. Sorry, General, but they're not getting that kind of weaponry at a gun show in Arizona…

http://www.nranews.com/blogarticle.aspx?blogPostId=508
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F Troop in Iraq: Amid the orderly transfer of power, our new Chief Executive has issued a call for responsibility. As is the case with most of his public statements, his meaning is not clear. However, if he means holding government officials accountable for their actions, a novel and great idea, it is something that we can all embrace. It is particularly true of those officials within agencies with a long and well documented history of abuses of entrusted powers. Somehow, ATFE comes to mind as the poster boy for irresponsibility and unaccountability… ATFE Special Agents were deployed in Iraq on 90-day TDY assignments between 2003 and 2008. During that time, they were paid $4,175,731.00 in unauthorized and unlawful overtime pay. They filed fraudulent claims for the overtime and ATFE senior officials did nothing to monitor the claims or review them for conformity with federal law and regulations. In other words, the ATFE Special Agents, law enforcement officers who are sworn to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, filed false time and attendance reports claiming pay for overtime which was not worked and for which payment was not authorized under federal law…

http://www.sofmag.com/wp/2009/02/18/sof-exposes-batf-corruption-in-iraq/
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A Matter of Perspective:
A black woman from the District of Columbia who lost children to "gun violence" and who advocates for the victims of unsolved murders is calling on liberal Democrats to come to grips with the Second Amendment and vote for a bill before Congress that would give D.C. a vote in the House of Representatives at the cost of rescinding the city's stringent gun control laws. "I want my vote to be counted. I want representation in Congress. And I also want the right to bear arms," Valencia Mohammed, director of Mothers of Unsolved Murders, is quoted in the March 21 Washington Post. Mohammed went on to note the racist history of gun control against slaves and former slaves during Reconstruction before asserting she wants "all of those rights that they were denied." But while it's great that the Post actually printed Mohammed's views, they were buried in paragraphs 24-27 of a 35-paragraph story on how a "Gun Law Compromise May Be Unavoidable to Pass Bill." …

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/ken-shepherd/2009/03/21/powerful-pro-gun-argument-buried-post-article-d-c-vote
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The Armed Lifestyle: When I worked for the police department my partner and I would go to the range at least twice per month, although we weren't required to qualify with our firearms but twice per year. We enjoyed shooting but our main concern was maintaining our shooting skills. Besides, we could shoot as much as we desired as the department provided all the ammo, at least for department approved service weapons. Further, we attended every training class that was scheduled by our department… I can't say enough about maintaining one's shooting skills. Many of the officers with my department balked about having to qualify on the range twice per year. I probably did some shooting every weekend. I still hit the range frequently thirty some years later. I figure since I carry a concealed firearm every day every place I go (and I don't go places my firearm is not allowed if I can help it) I must continually maintain my shooting skills, especially since I am getting older and my eyesight is a bit weaker, not to mention a somewhat slower response time…

http://daveinvegasguntalk.blogtownhall.com/
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Indiana Could See Campus Carry: Imagine life at PUC with no gun ban. Picture a campus on where students, faculty, and visitors could all carry a concealed weapon, whether in the parking lot or the classroom. This scenario could soon be reality should State Senator Johnny Nugent of Lawrenceburg find three times a charm in a possible January, 2010 revival of his controversial gun legislation. Having failed in the Indiana Senate during the 2008 session and again last week for 2009, Nugent's bill would prohibit public colleges and universities in Indiana, which rely heavily on taxpayer funds, from establishing any regulation of firearms or ammunition. Co-author of the bill Senator Sue Landske of Cedar Lake, who has before carried a gun for self-defense, feels the gun ban leaves students vulnerable. I may not carry a gun [for protection] anymore...but maybe somebody else will," Landska said…

http://media.www.pucchronicle.com/media/storage/paper1082/news/2009/03/23/News/Puc-Could.See.A.New.Gun.Law-3678462.shtml




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