The mayor’s answer is an elitist national campaign on the backs of law-abiding gun owners. Believe me, the rest of the country does not want Mayor Bloomberg’s elitist gun policies, because they don’t work.
Chris Cox
NRA-ILA
April 26, 2006
CBS News: Big City Mayors Huddle On Gun Control
Every time they cry wolf, they lose a little more credibility and support. Their ideas on gun control were tried, and failed. The social experiment is over. It is time to stop denying our rights and heritage based on a pack of lies.
Dan White
21 April 2006
Protestors Cry Wolf Again
Ohioans for Concealed Carry
[Lies and bigotry.–Joe]
What do people even need handguns for? Protection, right? However, if no one could buy or carry a handgun legally, no one would need a handgun to protect themselves.
The Minnesota Daily
Editorial April 25, 2006
[I’m thinking 6th grade. Maybe as high as the 8th grade. The thinking can’t be attributed to someone beyond that level. What about people that don’t need a weapon because of their size, or other weapons such as knives, clubs, or illegally obtained firearms? Whoever wrote this needs to grow up and answer Just One Question.–Joe]
The pistol ban was one of those knee-jerk things. I think people realize now that the pistol ban hasn’t done anything to reduce gun crime.
Kate Hoey
Labor Party lawmaker
London
From UK Competitive Shooters Can’t Train at Home
[Perhaps there is a tiny spark of hope for the people of the U.K.–Joe]
This kind of fuzzy thinking is typical of anti-gun lobbyists, who never let facts get in the way of a good story or tarnish their dream of a world without guns.
Michael S. Brown
Friday, April 21, 2006
Local View: Gun-control activists ignore facts
The Columbian
After the big collection and destruction of firearms in Australia we have some more numbers:
Tasmanian Auditor-General Mike Blake produced a $63,000 report on the impact of the reforms last year.
It showed that in 1994, of 2364 crimes against the person, firearms were used in just 69 cases. In 2004, the level of crime against the person had soared 90 per cent to 4492, and just 56 of those instances involved firearms.
I have Just One Question.
Further nasty news from the nasty United Nations Organization:
One Eric Kibuka, who delights in the title of “Director of the United Nations African Institute for the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders,” has gone on record to the effect that “The international community (sic) has decided that firearms regulation is at the core of democracy and good government.” The connection between firearms regulation and democracy is about as obvious as the connection between traffic regulation and quail hunting, but that is not likely to trouble a U.N. official. As we have all noticed, the cry of the modern left seems to be “To hell with the facts. It’s the gut reaction that matters.”
Jeff Cooper
From Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries
Vol. 6, No. 1
January 1998
Compare the mindset of these Jersey City professional victims (emphasis added):
(CBS) JERSEY CITY Jersey City Police today released surveillance videotape of a known Bloods gang member running away after shooting a man twice in broad daylight on Easter Sunday near Grant Avenue and Martin Luther King Blvd.
He’s identified as Jamal Ebron and he’s still on the loose considered armed and dangerous.
“The individual who he shot refuses to cooperate with the police,” Jersey City Police Chief Robert Troy said.
Investigators say this video shows how important it is to enact tough Federal gun legislation.
Just last night, police confiscated the guns and a thousand dollars in cash.
Four suspects have been charged with bringing the guns here from Georgia, where police say gun laws are laxed and where gun owners aren’t required to report stolen weapons.
“This gun here is marked a hundred and ninety-nine dollars, this gun sold in Jersey City last night for five-hundred dollars.”
Investigators say the weapons were found in a car that had a secret compartment, where the trunk can be accessed quickly.
With the mindset of a gun owner:
I have been completely baffled by the content of many letters to the Cape Argus and other newspapers in response to the antics of “killer cops” in the past week or so.
Some call for the police to be given higher salaries. Others call for the police to be provided with better working conditions.
Even more call for civilians to be more sympathetic towards “overworked, underpaid cops”.
Sympathetic? Higher salaries? Better working conditions? Surely when somebody goes on a killing spree, society should call for the trial, conviction and imprisonment of such criminals instead of increased perks and sympathy?
It did not make any sense until I discovered the definition of Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome can be described as “bonding to one’s hostage-taker as a survival strategy or mechanism”. The term was coined after the world witnessed the bizarre behaviour of several hostages in a botched 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden.
While the hostages were held, they bonded with their captors to a point where they actually defended their captors and resisted attempts by the police to rescue them, despite the fact that they were strapped with explosives and victimised.
In a hostage situation, the hostage instinctively understands that any harm to the captor could cause the captor to harm or even kill the hostages. The hostage hopes that as long as the hostage taker is alive and his demands are met, he will see no need to harm the hostages. Hostages’ survival strategy is to persuade the hostage taker to have as many reasons as possible to keep his hostages alive.
The relationship between killer police and sympathetic citizens could be described as some sort of variation of this syndrome.
The police are seen by many helpless and defenceless citizens as the only barrier between themselves and violent criminals.As with the Stockholm hostages who overlooked the fact that they had explosives strapped to their bodies, it would seem that unarmed and helpless South Africans are prepared to tolerate immense abuse from the police for the mere promise of survival and protection.
This may also explain why several firearm owners, who have made successful use of their personal firearms in defence of life and limb, refuse to adopt similar soft-hearted approaches towards killer cops. Such firearm owners will simply call for the immediate dismissal of such rogue cops.
This could be further explained by the fact that the traditional barrier – police – between gun owners and the criminal thugs has been replaced with, in their own opinion, a stronger and more reliable barrier in the form of a shotgun or two.
Hence the popular saying among gun owners that “a gun in the hand is worth 10 cops on the phone”.
The people of Jersey City are mentally ill and need to be asked Just One Question again and again until they figure it out.
It seems to me that the anti-gun crowd are all mentally ill hostages, who are under siege from criminals and who suffer from a variation of Stockholm Syndrome in their pathetic desire to protect the honour of this violent standing army known as the police, simply because they are their only means of survival from something worse.
On the other hand the pro-gun crowd are a healthy bunch who see reality as it is: killer cops deserve jail time, not sympathy. Gun owners have control over their guns and do not need to live in fear of an inanimate firearm. This results in firearm owners adopting a more balanced perspective.
Emilio Halepopoulos
Sandton, Gauteng
April 19, 2006
Letter to the editor titled Gun owners show way to true freedom in SA
As Stephanie has explained to me if you want the media to cover your event you need to write the story for them. Compare this article to our news release.
Keep this in mind when you are complaining about the bias against guns in the media. Don’t hide in the closet. Give the media something positive to say about gun owners and make it really easy for them. Then you can gloat as the anti-gun people whine about the bias in the media.
I don’t recall being asked for permission but in this case I don’t mind. Gun Owners of America published my Just One Question post in their Opinions And Editorials section. It’s in the “Various Authors” section.
I can understand someone having this sort of dream. But after waking up you would think they would recognize the difference between reality and a dream. This guy apparently doesn’t and then in some sort of embarrassing public confession he tells everyone of his delusion. And the worst part? He’s the mayor of Toronto. The men in white coats should just quietly take him away and the people of Toronto could just pretend he never represented them. Here are the details of his delusions. The overview follows:
I see a yellowing front page of the Toronto Star shouting “Gun violence ends!” There are no guns on the street any more because a Toronto-led coalition of mayors from both sides of the 49th parallel stood strong against the American government on gun control.
So persuasive were Toronto’s arguments that the U.S. finally enacted common-sense gun control and repealed legislation that prevented lawsuits from being launched against firearms manufacturers.
…
This helps explain why gangs aren’t a problem any more. No one’s drawn to the gangster life because of all the services the city can provide to all of its residents. There are childcare spaces for all parents who need them so they can work and make the money needed to nurture their children. And parks and recreation programs are available free for every child in every city neighbourhood.
Training and jobs have been made available through partnerships established among City Hall, the Toronto Board of Trade and organized labour. Youth from neighbourhoods that were once Toronto’s poorest get proper training and gain the self-respect needed to move forward in life. They become carpenters. And bankers. Even journalists. Whatever they aspire to be.
No one in Toronto lives in isolation. Or on the street. Not the young. And certainly not their elders. Homelessness is a thing of the past. Because of the compassion and commitment of Torontonians, all orders of government came together as partners to provide affordable housing to anyone who needs it. There’s an incredible array of services for seniors who want to remain engaged in the communities where they live and share their wisdom with other generations.
It’s the kind of wisdom that has led Toronto to be recognized as a world leader in promoting peace and harmony. The city will forever be a microcosm of the world’s people living together with respect and not a hint of intolerance. Our Canadian Council for Christians, Jews and Muslims is cited around the globe as an example of how to build bridges among people of different faiths. Every man woman and child can walk down every street in this city and know they are recognized as Torontonians regardless of race, colour or religion.
…
Our subway stations are astonishing. As many people enjoy the exhibits at the TTC’s Museum station as visit the ROM. They come for an enlightening look at the exhibits before moving on to their chosen destinations. There’s a network of streetcars crossing this city on reserved rights-of-way. The Finch Hydro Corridor is now a conduit for light rail transit. People can get from eastern Scarborough to western Etobicoke quickly and at reasonable cost. Every neighbourhood has access to rapid transit, and every able-bodied Torontonian is within a five-minute walk of a bus stop and is one bus journey away from the subway or a light rail connection. For the disabled, every bus, streetcar and subway stop is accessible.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Nearly all anti-gun people have mental problems. Mix those problems with the obvious failings of socialism and the all the conditions decribed in When Prophecy Fails and you end up with what you see above–increased proselyting of a failed belief system.
A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s “big Lie”; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you.
Darrell Huff
How to Lie with Statistics
Copyright 1954
[I was reminded of this book when reading this from the Violence Policy Center. The VPC ignores all the murders in Washington D.C. due to the repressive gun laws and focuses on a subset of the suicides.–Joe]
I hope this goes well:
A scholar known for his work on guns and crime filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-seller “Freakonomics.” John Lott Jr. of Virginia, a former U. of C. visiting professor, alleges that Levitt defamed him in the book by claiming that other scholars had tried and failed to confirm Lott’s conclusion that allowing people to carry concealed weapons reduces crime.
…
The lawsuit alleges that Levitt and his publisher, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., made the statements with reckless disregard for whether they were true and that the book damaged Lott’s reputation.
I don’t know about the details of Lott’s lawsuit but in some states there are a lot of exceptions for this sort of thing. You can knowingly lie about someone, cause them great damage, and be untouchable by a lawsuit. I was told by a Hindu friend those sort of people will be reincarnated as a lower life form–perhaps as manure eating flies. I confess to having urges to accelerate certain slime-balls toward their destiny.
Whenever there’s a shooting, there’s almost always two people who are responsible, the one with the gun and the one who sold him the gun.
David Yassky
New York City Council Member
City Gun Control Bill Would Punish Dealers
April 12, 2006
Epoch Times
[Is the same true when there is a stabbing? Or a hit and run? How about in a beating with a baseball bat? David Yassky has mental problems.–Joe]
Another victim of a repressive government:
…
On Monday, L/Cpl James Piotrowski was jailed by a court martial for handling a stolen SA80.
He pleaded guilty to possessing and handling it after another soldier stole it from Wellington barracks in London in 2004.
He didn’t steal it. He didn’t fire it. He only handled it. I can’t image why the politicians that create such laws are still allowed to see the sun and breath fresh air.
In the 20th Century “gun control” is an essential pre-condition for genocide. Until and unless a hate-driven group gets control of the government mechanism and disarms its intended targets, genocide simply cannot and does not occur.
Lethal Laws — “Gun Control” is the Key To Genocide
Page 12
by Jay Simkin, Aaron Zelman, and Alan M. Rice
Copyright 1994
ISBN 0-96442304-0-2
Background:
I got a phone call from a friend of Michael Charles Williams last night. He was sentenced yesterday. 25 to 30 years with no possibility of parole for voluntary manslaughter. As Ry said when I told him, “There must be something else going on.”
I asked the friend if he was going to appeal but she didn’t know. When I get some time I’m going to see if I can get some more information on the case.
Laws against guns on school campuses have not prevented a single school shooting. Laws against murder have not stopped murders. Laws restricting the firearm rights of law-abiding citizens have penalized the wrong people, while criminals intent on breaking the law and harming others keep doing it.
Stop trying to hoodwink the public into believing that one more restriction on law-abiding gun owners is going to stop the Kyle Huffs of the world, because it isn’t, and the gun-control extremists know it.
Alan Gottlieb & Joe Waldron
Don’t let gun-control extremists exploit Capitol Hill tragedy
Seattle Times April 7, 2006
[It’s giving the the gun-control extremists too much credit to think they “know it”. They shun factual knowledge and confuse deeply felt beliefs for knowledge. They then wallow in their emotions and the emotions of others to reinforce their beliefs. I have Just One Question for these gun-control nut cases.–Joe]
Very nice of the VPC to point this out to us:
State Number of Gun Dealers Number of Gas Stations State Number of Gun Dealers Number of Gas Stations Alaska 844 229 Oregon 1,479 1,146 Idaho 682 663 Wyoming 550 401 Montana 1,017 597 U.S. Total 54,902 121,363
This isn’t so cool. It’s just ignorance and bigotry:
The 1992 VPC publication More Gun Dealers Than Gas Stations first focused national attention on abuses by FFL holders and revealed that at the time of its release the number of Americans who possessed the Type 1 FFL outnumbered gas stations 245,000 to 210,000. The bulk of the licenses were held by illegitimate “kitchen-table” dealers who operated out of their homes or offices, an unknown percentage of which were actively involved in criminal gun trafficking. As the result of policy recommendations contained in the study that were implemented under the Clinton Administration, today only five states have more gun dealers than gas stations (see chart below). The full study contains information for all 50 states as well as policy recommendations.
“Illegitimate kitchen-table dealers”? “Unknown percentage of which were actively involved in criminal gun trafficking”? Are “kitchen-table” cosmetic dealers illegitmate? I’m sure an “unknown percentage” of them are engaged criminal activities too. By saying “unknown percentage” they only admit their ignorance and their open disregard for knowledge. As far as the number of dealers goes, most gun owners have far more guns than cars so it’s to be expected there are more gun dealers than gas stations. At least I live in one of the states where the gun dealers still outnumber the gas stations. And remember the gasoline is more effective in mass murders than guns. But the “Violence Policy Center” isn’t really interested in reducing violence, just the availability of guns.