Branco: Obama and Hillary’s Sweet Dreams
Obama and Hillary Asleep at the Gate while barbaric radical Islamic terrorists slip by to kill our people.
So What DID the Nation’s Founders Think About Individual Gun Rights?
There has always been much debate and rhetoric about the true meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and what it’s guarantee of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms really means. From consternation over the placement of a comma to knee-jerk reactions to discourse over who, exactly, comprises the militia and what well regulated means, it seems like some are having a problem – perhaps deliberately, sometimes – grasping what the intention of our nation’s charter was.
Since we are celebrating the birth and early shaping of the United States of America this week, let’s take a look at what some of America’s architects had to say about gun rights and the necessity of individual firearm ownership.
As you read through these quotes and discussion, do so through the lens of current gun control laws and regulations, as well as those that have been proposed with various levels of success throughout history, and reflect on how you think the Founding Fathers may have felt about them. Continue reading
29th Gun Rights Policy Conference Kicks Off Next Week
Gun Rights Leaders to Speak at Event
WHO: National gun rights leaders
WHAT: Speaking at the 29th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference
WHEN: September 26-28, 2014
WHERE: Chicago O’Hare Airport Hyatt Regency, 9300 Bryn Mawr Ave, Rosemont, IL 60018
For more information and discussion, visit the GRPC discussion thread on the Events board of the GunLink Forums. Read the event press release here.
BELLEVUE, WA – Virginia attorney Alan Gura, who won both the 2008 Heller case and the 2010 case of McDonald v. City of Chicago before the U.S. Supreme Court, and also won Moore v. Madigan before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, forcing the state of Illinois to adopt a concealed carry statute, will be one of the highlight speakers later this month at the 2014 Gun Rights Policy Conference at the Chicago O’Hare Airport Hyatt Regency, an event that will also feature several national gun rights leaders.
Also on the schedule are attorney and Second Amendment scholar Stephen Halbrook; Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), John Fund, national affairs columnist at National Review Online and senior editor at The American Spectator, and John Lott, author of More Guns = Less Crime and a Fox News.com contributor. Continue reading
Pinch Yourself… Firearm Carry in DC?
UPDATE (7/29/2014) Motion to stay decision pending appeal granted. While this is in place, you cannot legally carry in DC.
If you follow GunLink on social media like Twitter or Facebook, peruse the GunLink forums or listen to the “gun buzz,” you may have already heard the big news coming out of DC. Over this past weekend, a major decision and order was handed down from the US District Court in the District of Columbia in Palmer et al. vs DC.
In case you haven’t been paying, this is the case where plaintiffs Palmer, Lyon, Raymond, McVey and the Second Amendment Foundation claim that “[b]y requiring a permit to carry a handgun in public, yet refusing to issue such permits and refusing to allow the possession of any handgun that would be carried in public, Defendants [the District of Columbia] maintain a complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public by almost all individuals” and that “banning the carrying of handguns in public violate[s] the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, facially and as applied against the individual plaintiffs in this action, damaging plaintiffs in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983.”
In a landmark win for rights in our nation’s capital, after the District Court heard arguments from Alan Gura – whose name you probably remember from such notable cases as McDonald V Chicago, DC v Heller, Moore v Madigan and others – Senior US District Court Judge Frederick Scullin Jr handed down his opinion (full text of opinion): Continue reading
Tell Businesses Not to Disarm Customers
Project #EatSafe and Project #ShopSafe: Using Social Media to Urge Businesses to Exercise Real Common Sense
Despite being irrational, fear mongering, hoplophobic bigots, gun control zealots do get one thing right: PR campaigns. They simply do not have the facts on their side, so they try to use emotions to garner support for their misguided ideology and, often, they succeed. Between desperate hand-wringing, fabricated “facts,” and effective use of astroturf social media movements, the vocal minority of the anti-constitution crowd knows how to get what they want (or at least give the impression that they did).
Take, for instance, recent social media campaigns to bully, er… boycott, businesses that weren’t taking an anti-gun position. The #BurritosNotBullets hashtag campaign enlisted social media users to harass Chipotle until they asked customers not to bring firearms into their restaurants. Before that, anti-rights groups and their supporters organized #SkipStarbucks Saturday (it must have been oh-so-difficult for morning commuters and 9-to-5-ers to give up the coffee shop on the weekend) before Starbucks reversed their firearms policy. Whether the online campaigns had anything to do with the decisions or the companies simply made a business decision based on the action of a few demonstrators, the gun control groups immediately began crowing loudly and taking credit for each “victory.” Continue reading
To Keep and Bear Arms – An Official Report For the Armed Forces and the American People
These days, getting a positive message on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms from anyone at the federal government level is a difficult task. It wasn’t always that way, though.
The Big Picture video below, presented by the US Army and featuring a second video produced by the National Rifle Association, preaches the virtues of focusing efforts on promoting safety training and emphasizing adherence to basic firearms safety rules.
The idea that gun control laws do not have an impact on law abiding citizens – as they would obey the law and criminals, by their very nature, would not – is not a new one. The history of the fight to preserve our constitutionally protected individual right to keep and bear arms has not changed much over the years.
Nor is the idea that the concept of regulating an item because an individual misuses it is absurd. As the video’s narrator says: “To legislate firearms because they are occasionally misused is like outlawing automobiles for the same reason. It’s not this car, it’s this careless driver whose foot presses the pedal. That is the object of legislation which tells him not to speed.”
The narrator goes on to say that “a program that emphasizes safety procedures rather than firearms control makes it possible for a growing number of sportsmen and women to enjoy the recreation and healthful benefits of good sports and good shooting.” Developing rifle marksmanship skills through participation in shooting events such as the National Matches at Camp Perry is an endeavor that “helps develop healthy minds, self discipline, initiative and team spirit” – according to the government-endorsed video.
This is a far cry from the anti-gun banner carried by many at all levels of the anti-rights movement, including those involved in our government at the federal level. Have a look at the video below and see the message on firearms that our government used to send. Continue reading
