newsalarmonline.com

There’s still hope for California…barely:

The California Senate rejected a bill Monday that would have made it illegal to carry unloaded guns in public, but lawmakers will give the vote one more try.

Monday’s 20-16 vote fell one short of the majority needed, but the Senate will reconsider the measure Tuesday.

The bill, AB1934, was introduced after a series of demonstrations by gun-rights organizations during which they encouraged participants to openly carry unloaded weapons. California law lets gun owners carry a rifle or handgun in a holster if it is not loaded.

The legislation would make it a misdemeanor to openly carry a handgun in any public place.

Democratic Sen. Mark DeSaulnier of Concord, who carried the bill in the Senate, said people often call police when they see weapons in public, not knowing whether they are loaded.

“I do not want to take weapons away from law-abiding citizens,” he said. “The Supreme Court has said we can put reasonable controls over handguns, and that’s what this is.”

Opponents said the restriction is just the latest attempt to discourage firearms.

“We have something called the Second Amendment, and I believe this bill is unconstitutional,” said Sen. Tom Harman, R-Huntington Beach.

Lawmakers also defeated a bill by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, that would have required owners of rifles and shotguns to register those weapons, similar to the requirement already in place for handguns.

I’m sure all the gangbangers in Feuer’s district were gonna run right out and register their weapons if his bill passed.

These measures serve only to make it more difficult for the good guys to own guns.  They do nothing to reduce crime or make the streets safer.

A little public outrage goes a long way:

Responding to a grassroots outcry from gun owners, the Environmental Protection Agency today announced that it has denied a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity and other radical groups that had sought to ban the use of lead in ammunition.

Agreeing with the position of the NRA and the firearms industry, the agency explained in a news release that it “does not have the legal authority to regulate this type of product under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).” Further crushing the hopes of anti-gun and anti-hunting activists, the release added: “nor is the agency seeking such authority.”

“It’s outrageous that this petition even went this far,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Executive Director. “We applaud the EPA for its understanding of the law and its common sense in this situation — both of which were totally missing in the petition filed by these extreme anti-gun and anti-hunting groups.”

Because the EPA has no power to regulate ammunition, it will not move ahead with a public comment period on the petition. However, a comment period will remain open until September 15 on the other part of the petition, which asks EPA to ban the use of lead in fishing sinkers.

I wonder if a few of the nearly 1/2 million that showed up in Washington today decided to stop by the EPA and leave a comment?

Not because they can kill you, but because they’re made of lead:

Several environmentalist groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are petitioning the EPA to ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Although EPA is barred by statute from controlling ammunition, CBD is seeking to work farther back along the manufacturing chain and have EPA ban the use of lead in bullets and shot because non-lead alternatives are available. But here’s the catch: the alternatives to lead bullets are more expensive. A ban on the sale of lead ammunition would force hunters and sport shooters to buy non-lead ammunition that is often double the cost of traditional lead ammunition. A box of deer hunting bullets in a popular caliber could be upwards of $55.

This should also be known as the “let’s finish off the Dem’s hopes of winning anything in November” measure because about the only thing the Democrats haven’t yet done to tick off voters is go after guns and sportsmen.  Taking lead away from ammunition and fishing equipment would guarantee that those people who make up the sportsman class in this country would take their frustration out in the ballot box.

Big Government has a good piece by John Lott Jr, the author of More Guns, Less Crime, on how gun control advocates like the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center make up their own facts to support their radical gun control agenda.

Take Florida, which currently has the most concealed handgun permit holders in the country and is one of the two most populous states with right-to-carry laws. Between Oct. 1, 1987, and May 31 this year, permits had been issued to 1.8 million people. On average, the permits had been held for quite a long time, well over 10 years. For all those individuals across the more than 22 years of legal carry, there were only 167 cases where the permit was revoked for a firearms related violation, or about 0.01 percent of permit holders. While the state doesn’t provide a precise breakdown of the reason for those revocations, the vast majority were apparently for people who accidentally carried their concealed handgun into a gun-free zone, such as an airport or school.

Throughout the past 30 months, beginning January 2008, only three additional permit holders have had their permit revoked for a firearms-related violation. With more than 739,000 active permit holders, that is an annual revocation rate of 0.00017 percent.

In sharp contrast, the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center portray Florida as Ground Zero for problems with concealed handgun permit holders. They boldly assert that 17 Florida permit holders have “killed” people with their guns over the past three years and that this one state by itself accounts for 17 of the 96 “killer” permit holders nationwide. The other 79 cases are scattered across 26 other states, with no other state accounting for more than 10 cases. Florida is also said to account for 2 of the 7 cases where permit holders are said to have killed law enforcement officers.

So what is the evidence? The gun control groups don’t actually point to actual court cases. They look at news stories and selectively report what is reported in those stories. For Florida, there are eleven “pending cases.” The gun control groups assume that anyone involved in a shooting will be convicted. Indeed, in 7 of the 11 cases no one was even charged with a crime. Three cases involved suicides, and three had convictions for some type of offense. (See this link for a detailed presentation of sources.)

But there is something that the gun control advocates conveniently omit: When a permit holder uses a gun defensively and kills an attacker in a public place, the police often arrest them. Typically, he will later be released, but the police must first investigate what happened. The police can’t just take the shooter’s word for it that they used the gun defensively.

Read the whole thing. Lott gives several examples of how these gun control nuts have distorted events to fit their agenda.

Frank J. Fleming at Pajamas Media has a good piece on gun control and how facts are completely irrelevant to those who continue to insist that taking guns away from good citizens makes our communities safer:

They say there are still people who believe the earth is flat. Despite all the evidence, despite the logic of the earth being a sphere, despite the pictures from space, despite the fact you can fly over the poles — there are some people who still cling to their silly, completely disproved notion of a flat earth. It’s like for some completely unfathomable reason they made the choice to be stupid and will not be moved from that position. It seemed like an urban legend to me — that there were some people out there perhaps pretending to believe in a flat earth, only as a gag — until I saw there were some people with just as stupid and illogical beliefs who I know aren’t part of a hoax: the few people left in the U.S. who still support increasing gun control.

Yes, they are a dwindling few and have been for some time, but they are still out there, and it’s completely inexplicable. And we’re not just talking weirdos on some obscure board on the internet; these are actual public officeholders working on laws. And they are completely unmovable by even the most basic logic and facts.

When states first started passing right-to-carry laws, the gun control people warned of a return to the Wild West where people would shoot each other at the drop of the hat and criminals would become more violent in retaliation. Now, decades later, there are shall-issue laws in at least forty states, where anyone who is not a felon can carry a handgun. Crime has gone down. None of the gun control proponents’ wild-eyed fantasies have come true. The rare outbreak of random violence — the shooting spree — happens almost exclusively in “gun-free” zones. So what are the arguments of pro-gun control people now when there is a proposal to relax gun laws? They use the exact same arguments they used twenty-five years ago as if nothing has changed!

Just look at the cavemen in Chicago panicking that thundersticks are now legal for honest citizens to own. They’re freaking out that now there will be unspeakable violence in their streets. Worse than they have already made things with their gun prohibition laws? Is that even possible? It’s as if they think they are the first city ever in which handguns have been made legal.

Again, decades of data of people being able to carry guns don’t even inform them in the slightest. Facts bounce off their thick heads like pebbles off a tank. If there was even a modicum of truth to their insane, illogical beliefs on gun ownership, wouldn’t they have numerous examples of violent outbreaks to point to in all the states that allow people to carry concealed handguns? But none exist, because all those fantasies were cooked up by morons who don’t understand human behavior or liberty. Most have realized this by now, but there are a few holdouts still clamping their hands over their ears trying to block out reality and reason. I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but being for gun control has gone from a legitimate political viewpoint to mental illness.

There’s more – read it all.

Unfortunately, like most of liberalism, gun control advocates are driven by emotions and fears and not facts. They are unable to separate the tool from the act and thus guns become evil because they are sometimes used as the tools of violence. And yet you never hear them talk about knife control or ice pick control or chain saw control.  I guess death and violence that occur close up are acceptable, but death caused by a small lead pellet fired from a distance is too horrible to think about.

You can see how irrational the whole argument has become.

I believe that any good citizen who wants to possess a weapon and has passed the appropriate background and safety checks, whether kept at home or carried on their person, should be allowed…and even encouraged…to do so.  If there are fewer “gun free zones” there will be fewer opportunities for nuts to take out whole groups of unarmed defenseless people.  One good person with a gun could be the difference between a random act of violence and a massacre.

The dimwits in Chicago government must love defending constitutional challenges to their gun laws:

The Chicago government is taking another shot at enforcing sweeping handgun restrictions, bringing a new law into effect Monday meant to comply with the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last month while still regulating firearms purchases.

The new ordinance was drafted in response to the Supreme Court ruling that extended gun rights across all 50 states and effectively struck down the city’s decades-old handgun ban. City leaders described the ordinance as necessary to prevent gun violence from breaking out across Chicago.

It’s hard to type when you’re laughing so hard.  During a recent weekend 10 people were killed and 42 others were shot, all of which occurred under Chicago’s current gun laws.  Do they really believe allowing law-abiding citizens to own guns for self-protection is going to make that worse?  Well, yes they do.  They are a confused bunch.

Let’s go on:

Though the new law has already been challenged in two federal lawsuits, it imposes a number of tough restrictions on gun ownership.

Among them, the policy would:

– Limit each person in each home to one “assembled and operable” firearm.

– Restrict residents from having firearms outside their home, even on their porch or in their backyard.

– Mandate training program attendance.

– Prohibit the sale of firearms inside city limits.

Mayor Richard Daley called the measure a “reasonable and responsible ordinance” in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

“When the wrong people have access to guns — whoever they are — whether they’re gang bangers and drug dealers or abusive parents or sons or daughters, needless violence is more likely to happen, whether it’s on our streets or in our homes,” he said in a written statement.

The Chicago gun laws, some of the most restrictive in the country, clearly did not stop the violence. Bad people that wanted guns were still able to get them. It’s the bad people with guns that are causing the problems, not the people who seek to live within the law.

Daley is one of these anti-gun nuts (except for the guns carried by his bodyguards) who believes that guns are inherently evil. The very presence of a gun means someone’s gonna die.

I saw a quote by Ted Nugent that I liked:

If guns kill people then all mine must be defective.

Until Chicago learns the difference between bad people and the tools they use to commit their acts of violence, they’ll never get that city under control.

And speaking of the Motor City Madman, Nugent has an op-ed on the issue of guns and freedom here.

Our justice system is so screwed up (h/t Reader Marilyn):

WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. – Admitted thieves are going free, while an elderly Wheat Ridge man is facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars, all, he says, for trying to defend his property and his life.

82-year-old Robert Wallace said in February that he looked out his window and saw two men hooking his flatbed trailer up to their pickup. He yelled at them to stop, but they sped away, stealing his trailer. He told police he fired two shots at the pickup.

Minutes later, police say 32-year-old Damacio Torres dropped 28-year-old Alvaro Cardona off at a hospital emergency room with a gunshot wound to the face.

Torres did not stay to talk with police, but they caught up with him later. According to court documents, he admitted he and Cardona stole the trailer.

Wallace did not want to talk on camera, but when we asked him if the two men threatened him he said, “They almost ran me over.”

The Jefferson County DA’s office said that neither Torres nor Cardona have been charged with anything at this point, even though Torres confessed to the crime. However, the homeowner, Wallace is facing twelve felony counts, including four counts of attempted first degree murder. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Sources say Torres and Cardona are believed to be in the country illegally and both have an arrest record.

I hope Mr. Wallace has a good, aggressive lawyer because this is a case I would gladly put before a jury. There’s no way a jury convicts this guy of anything.

Whatever you do, Mr. Wallace, don’t take a plea deal. You can win this thing.

From Wisconsin, one of those liberal heartland states (h/t Don Surber):

MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin prosecutor said he won’t enforce a host of state weapons laws after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week Americans have a right to own a gun for self-defense.

Jackson County District Attorney Gerald R. Fox said in a statement he will no longer prosecute Wisconsin’s prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons, transporting uncased or loaded guns in vehicles, carrying guns in public buildings and taverns and carrying switchblades and butterfly knives. He said the Supreme Court’s ruling renders those statutes unconstitutional.

“These so-called ‘public safety’ laws only put decent law-abiding citizens at a dangerous disadvantage when it comes to their personal safety, and I for one am glad that this decades-long era of defective thinking on gun issues is over,” Fox wrote in the statement, released this week.

He ended the statement with “Let Freedom Ring.”

Exactly.

And Chicago’s going to have problems of their own making after their gun law was essentially invalidated. They came up with a hasty new law which even bans legal gun owners from carrying a gun into their own garage or backyard, and someone has now filed a suit against that law. They may unwittingly be writing the demise of gun laws all across the country.

People are dying in droves in Chicago and the morons that run the place just don’t get it:

Grumbling about a U.S. Supreme Court they say is out of touch with America’s cities, Chicago aldermen voted 45-0 today to approve a rushed-through compromise gun ban.

The law, weaker than the gun ban tossed out Monday but with some even stronger new provisions, allows adults in Chicago to buy one gun a month, 12 a year, but they must pay registration and permit fees and take five hours of training.

Within 100 days, anyone who wants to keep a gun in the city will have to register, get their training and pay the fees. Also within 100 days, any of the estimated 10,000 Chicagoans convicted of a gun offense will have to register at their local police station like sex offenders.

Police Supt. Jody Weis said that new list of where criminals live in Chicago will help police do their jobs: “Armed with knowledge is our greatest asset,” Weis said.

Chicago’s ban was the nation’s strictest. While New York City, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and other cities have adopted some of the provisions Chicago enacted today, Mayor Daley and his city attorney Mara Georges did not dispute that these gun restrictions are probably the nation’s “most comprehensive.”

The aldermen did not hold back their contempt for the five members of the U.S. Supreme Court who threw out the city’s gun ban Monday.

“No Supreme Court judge could live in my community and come to the same conclusion they did a couple days ago,” Ald. Sharon Denise Dixon (24th) said.

“I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court justices that voted to strike our handgun laws have spent any time in the communities that many of us represent,” Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said.

“There’s no way if they knew the violence our young people face every day that they could decide this was a reasonable course of action.”

It’s never even occurred to these dummies that the people who are doing the shooting are already violating their laws, and won’t comply with any new ones. The only thing restrictive gun laws do is keep honest good citizens from owning weapons that could be used for self-defense.

Chicagoans need to just start ignoring these people. Get a gun, keep it where you can get to it if you need it, and if the city wants to charge you with a crime for shooting the burglar to threatened to kill you, plan on having a pretty fun time explaining it all to a jury. You can’t lose.

UPDATE:  More info on the new law:

CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago City Council on Friday approved what city officials say is the strictest handgun ordinance in the nation, but not before lashing out at the Supreme Court ruling they contend makes the city more dangerous because it will put more guns in people’s hands.

The new ordinance bans gun shops in Chicago and prohibits gun owners from stepping outside their homes, even onto their porches or in their garages, with a handgun. It becomes law in 10 days, Corporation Counsel Mara Georges said.

The vote comes just four days after the high court ruled Americans have the right to have handguns anywhere for self-defense – a ruling that makes the city’s 28-year-old ban on such weapons unenforceable.

So, if you plug a burglar while he’s going through your stuff in the garage, be sure to drag his lifeless body into the house before you call 9/11.

Orange County, and for that matter all of California, is still one of those few places that does not have “shall issue” concealed carry laws.  It’s darn near impossible to get a concealed carry permit in this state, but at least we don’t have the same onerous and unconstitutional laws about keeping guns in the home that they used to have in Chicago and Washington D.C.  Both cops and private citizens can possess firearms in their own homes for self defense, and a local resident and off-duty cop put his to good use (from the Mission Viejo Dispatch):

An attempted truck theft was thwarted by the vehicle’s owner around 3:30 Sunday morning. The resident, an off-duty L.A. deputy sheriff, heard noises outside his home on Platino, near Los Alisos and Vista del Lago in North Mission Viejo. He fired a shot when he discovered his truck had been started in his driveway. The bullet hit the truck causing the three suspects to abandon their attempt and flee. None were apprehended.

You might be able to find these guys by checking out sales of new pants in the area. I think they’ll be needing to replace the ones they were wearing.