12/22/2009

Without bullets, a gun is no more useful as a weapon than a rock or a hammer. Although an unloaded gun could be thrown at an intruder or a tyrant, the lack of ammunition ultimately reduces it to the status of a glorified paperweight.

And this is not lost on the nearly 100 million gun owners in America, a number of which are asking if the current shortage of bullets is the result of backdoor efforts at gun control (via ammunition control) by the Obama Administration?

The quick answer to that question is — not exactly.

In other words, the reasons behind the current shortage, as the well as the price increases on what little ammunition is available, are both governmental and nongovernmental in nature.

As for the government’s role, a prime example arose in March 2009 when the Department of Defense (DOD) suddenly changed its policy about selling old brass from spent military rounds to Georgia Arms, an ammunition manufacturer located in Winston, Georgia.

According to Curtis Shipley, President of Georgia Arms, on March 12, 2009, the DOD, which had been a longstanding source of cheap brass for the ammo manufacturer, decided that brass could only be purchased from the military if it was “mutilated.” In other words, it would not longer be possible to buy empty brass casings that Georgia Arms could then clean, quickly reload, and sell to the public at a low price.

When I spoke to Shipley, who had been accustomed to buying spent brass in increments of fifteen tons from the DOD, he said, “This portended higher prices because it required us to either mutilate perfectly good brass when we picked it up from a military base or have a DOD employee travel with us (and the brass) to verify that we did indeed mutilate it at a another site.”

Once mutilated, Georgia Arms would have had to melt the brass down, re-alloy it (casings for each caliber require a specific alloy blend that can sustain the pressures for that caliber), and then re-shape it into the proper casing for whichever caliber they were manufacturing. Said Shipley: “Such a process would add approximately $90 to the cost of one thousand rounds of 9mm ammunition right off the bat.”

Fortunately, the public outcry against this DOD maneuver was so great that the order to mutilate all brass was rescinded after just five days. However, those five days were enough to contribute to another problem the government had been causing since November 2008 – namely, fear of an all out Obama-led assault on guns and ammo.

Speaking to this fear, Larry Pratt, Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, said: “You can go to gun stores all over the country and many of them will have a picture of President Obama hanging on the wall. However, when you get up close to the picture and look at the caption on the bottom, instead of saying ‘President’ it says ‘Gun Salesman of the Year.’”

Pratt said gun owners are rightly leery of this administration. Obama supports the new California law that will require every semi-automatic pistol sold in that state to come equipped with a special firing mechanism that makes a distinctive mark – a “fingerprint” – on every bullet casing it fires. And currently, some Democrats in the House of Representatives want to take that law a step further and enact legislation that would force ammunition companies to place serial numbers on every shell casing they manufacture.

Let me just say that if you think ammunition is scarce and expensive now, wait till manufacturers have to put a serial number on every casing and maintain records containing the names, addresses, etc., of everyone who purchases such casings.

No wonder Pratt said: “None of this is about safety. Rather, it’s about finding ways to create an ammo and gun registry that will allow the government to finally figure out which son got daddy’s gun when daddy passed away.”

And while the government is doing its part to make ammunition harder to find, either directly, via episodes like the one between Georgia Arms and the DOD, or indirectly, by scaring citizens to death through anti-gun posturing that has caused a run on ammo sales, the market plays a role as well. With demand outpacing supply the market sustains higher prices for ammo under Obama than it was able to sustain for that same ammo during the presidency of a pro-gun politician like George W. Bush.

Add to this the fact that we’re now sending the majority of the lead from our recycled car batteries to China, instead of selling that lead to ammunition manufacturers who can cheaply reclaim it to make affordable bullets for their casings, and it’s no wonder consumers are scrambling to find ammunition and then paying a fortune for it when they do.

Did I fail to mention that millions upon millions of rounds of ammunition are currently being diverted to our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere right now as well? While this is understandable, it further highlights the fact that we gun owners are in a tight spot, as far as getting ammunition for our guns is concerned.

With all these variables affecting the availability of ammunition, this would be a great time to join a group like Gun Owners of America. By so doing we would assure the politicians in D.C. that if they use their offices to further deny us bullets for our guns, we will use the voting booth to deny them the very offices they now hold.

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HUMAN EVENTS columnist A.W.R. Hawkins holds a Ph.D. in U.S. Military History from Texas Tech University. He will be a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal during the summer of 2010.

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Video on Swiss & Firearms

The following article is from the D.C. Gun Rights Examiner. I found it on the National Gun Rights (nationalgunrights.org) site.

Alaska resident David Ross’ flight into Pittsburgh Airport for a short visit to the Keystone State last July 1st was uneventful – until, that is, he was arrested for retrieving his sidearm from checked baggage and holstering up on the way out of the airport.

Mr. Ross told the Examiner.com that he tried to explain to Magistrate Judge Anthony Saveikis that Allegheny County’s ordinance banning gun carry at the airport was “preempted by Section 6120 of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act,” but Saveikis found him guilty anyway.  Ross then hired Pennsylvania attorney J. Michael McCormick to appeal his conviction to the court of common pleas.

After Mr. McCormick filed this briefing with the court, the District Attorney’s office for Allegheny County conceded that the County’s ordinance was not legally enforceable.  As a result, Judge Robert C. Gallo entered a judgment of “not guilty” in the case according to court records.

John Pierce, co-founder of OpenCarry.org maintains a map of state by state airport gun carry laws and says that Pennsylvania is “just like most states” which allow gun carry in the non-sterile areas of airports just like they do in shopping malls, parks, and most other public venues.  But what irks gun rights organizers the most about this case is that public officials should already know that state law preempts local gun bans because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court settled that issue a decade ago in Ortiz v. Commonwealth.

“This should never have been an issue to begin with,” said Rich Banks, founder of PAOpenCarry.org, a Pennsylvania gun rights group, referring to open carry at the airport which requires no license in Pennsylvania and most states.  Banks contends that Pennsylvania public officials too often “treat guns like they are an ‘exception’ to the rule of law” and that the Allegheny County Council should now move quickly to repeal what Banks said is “an illegal gun ban ordinance.”

In a blog yesterday, Scott McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy shrugged off suggestions that his candidate was masquerading as having won support from tea party groups — but he added that McInnis was actively courting members of such organizations.

That wasn’t always true, says Lesley Hollywood, a spokeswoman for the Tea Party of Northern Colorado. Back in November, her outfit sponsored a well-attended political forum in Loveland. Plenty of candidates showed up to speak, but not McInnis, who didn’t even respond to her invitation to participate until afterward, “when he found out what a success it was.”

Hollywood, a mother of two daughters age ten and under, hesitates to call herself the leader of the Northern Colorado tea party. “That’s not the way our tea party is set up,” she says. “We don’t have an actual board of directors. We have a core group that comes together and acts like a think tank. We all work together to provide one strong voice.”

In the past, Hollywood hadn’t been deeply involved in politics. But in recent years, she says, “I’ve become increasingly more alarmed about what’s happening in this country. I feel like progressives have taken over much of our government — and much of the Republican party. I’m concerned for the future of our country. I don’t want that for my children. I feel they deserve to grow up with this country supporting the values of when it was founded.”

She found a way to channel these feelings when she attended “a tax-day tea party in Denver,” she says. “I was a little unsure of what I was going to find down there. I’ve never really been an activist, so I was a little out of my element. But when I started talking to people, I realized that this was something really big we need to continue.”

In the months since then, the size of the Northern Colorado tea party has grown considerably. “We have over a thousand members right now, and we’re growing by about five members a day,” Hollywood says. “It’s really beginning to pick up speed, and we haven’t actually started recruiting yet. That’s happening after the first of the year.”

An indication of the tea party’s increasing clout was the aforementioned forum, dubbed Candidate Search 2010. Hollywood was in charge of contacting the various office hopefuls. “We invited both Democrats and Republicans,” she says. “It wasn’t a debate, just a forum where we could ask some tough questions and get some answers — and ten candidates showed up.”

The Democrats were all no-shows for the event — and so were McInnis and Senate candidate Jane Norton. But while Norton reps confirmed that their candidate wouldn’t be attending, no one from McInnis’ camp did likewise.

No wonder a Fox News interview in which host Neil Cavuto characterized McInnis as the tea party candidate of choice stuck in Hollywood’s craw.

“He hadn’t done anything to reach out to these groups, or allow us to reach out to him,” she says. “I know, because I contacted everyone multiple times. So seeing that, it was a little bit personal for me.”

At this point, ignoring the tea party is easier said than done for McInnis or any other Republican. Hollywood estimates that 600 people came to the forum, and various events targeting Representative Betsy Markey have drawn impressive throngs. She feels the size of these protests had a lot to do with Markey’s decision to vote “no” on the House’s healthcare bill.

“She had a choice,” Hollywood said. “She could outrage her base or outrage us — and she chose to outrage her base. That in itself is the beginning of a victory. It shows that we’re starting to have some pull.”

Dan Maes, who portrays himself as the only conservative left in the gubernatorial race, would love for the tea party to put its people-power at his disposal. But he doesn’t have the group’s official backing quite yet.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve endorsed Dan Maes, but we’ve come out in support of him for one reason — to keep him in the race until we caucus in March,” Hollywood explains. “That’s when the people will truly endorse a candidate — and if Scott McInnis is the only candidate, then we don’t have a choice.”

She adds that if the situation was reversed, “we would do the same thing for Scott McInnis.”

That means the window of opportunity for McInnis isn’t closed yet. But neither is it wide open. He’s got some making up to do.

by Michael Roberts in Follow That Story, Politics, Wed., Dec. 9 2009 @ 1:21PM, Denver WestWord News Blog

http://www.candidatesearch2010.com/

“The truth to a liberal is like a cross to a vampire. And the only thing liberals hate more than the truth is a black man telling the truth.” -Mark R. Anderson

I was in Texas performing at a tea party rally (singer/songwriter of the American Tea Party Anthem). While waiting for my wife, I wandered into the hotel pub. It was Lady’s Night. A cowboy practically had a line of women waiting to dance with him. He held them firm, but gentle. He confidently lead and they gleefully followed. Each knowing she was in good hands. I, along with others, by the looks on their faces, thoroughly enjoyed watching him dance with the women. Why did we enjoy it? It represented the way men should be and how women want them to be. Despite what the radical feminists say, women want men to be strong and confident without being jerks. It is called Biology.

Is chivalry dead? Have we conservative men allowed political correctness to prevent us from treating women the way we instinctively know we should? When my three brothers and I started dating, my dad instructed us. “You take good care and return her home the way you found her”. Following dad’s instruction made us feel good about ourselves. We felt like men.

It is time we conservative guys start acting like men and defend our women folk (a little cowboy lingo). Since her acceptance speech as McCain’s VP nominee, attacks on Sarah Palin have been vile, extremely vicious and beyond the pale. Even Palin’s family including her 14 year old daughter were targeted for destruction by an, dare I use the “E” word, evil media. The Left’s hatred of Sarah Palin is good vs evil. Palin’s book tour is pouring gasoline on the Left’s “destroy Palin at any cost” fire. Governor Palin positively represents motherhood, marriage and traditional Christian values. The Left appears to despise any and all things wholesome.

Unfortunately, it appears even some on our side (conservatives) have bought into the media’s “she is not too bright” portrayal of Palin. When Obama says we have 57 states and other faux pas, his sycophant media circle the wagons around him by saying he is tired or simply misspoke. Meanwhile, every word out of Palin’s mouth is viewed from the template that she is stupid. Who amongst us could withstand such harsh scrutiny.

Well, I am standing up for my awesome conservative sister, Gov. Palin. She has the right stuff to get our country back on track. I love how Palin boldly, without apology, challenges the concept of government run health care, the global warming/climate change scam and her desire to drill for oil to make us energy independent. Talk about backbone. Could Sarah Palin be the reincarnation of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan? No, I do not believe in reincarnation; just having a little fun. My point is despite what the snobby elites, conservative and liberal, think, Sarah Palin is a powerful force to be reckoned with and is great for America.

We the people are so sick of mamby pamsy “middle of the road speak” focus group tested candidates. “Don’t say this because you will offend this crowd and don’t say that because you will offend the other.” For crying out loud, just say what you mean and mean what you say. Show us voters who you are. These are the kind of candidates we voters are longing and tea partying for. And this is why Sarah “what you see is what you get” Palin is a rock star!

I believe strong women inspire men to be strong. They are not offended when we open the door for them, carry their heavy packages and mind our conversation around them. Or has such behavior from men become too “Andy and Mayberry” for our secular progressive crude culture? Trust me, I am not a prude, but radial feminists have diminished women’s power in our society. I was raised a real man treats women with a level of respect. Nobody is allowed to “dis” your momma, wife or your sister.

Sarah Palin is a breath of fresh air; a woman using the God given power of her femininity to be a mom, a wife and govern a state. Awesome. I would be honored to say, “Yes, Madam President”.

Not only is the Left committed to keeping women in their place, but blacks as well; all the while claiming to desire progress and liberation for both. Blacks who achieve success without liberal programs and intervention are beaten down and dragged back to the Left’s government dependency plantation. Such uppity independent blacks are strapped in a chair, deprived bathroom privileges and shown videos 24/7 of Sharpton, Jackson and hypocritical rich America hating rappers. The deprogramming message, “America sucks! Racist! Sexist! Homophobic! Liberal democrats are your saviors!”

The Left is equally intolerant of independent thought coming from women. The Left deceptively call their pro abortion a pro choice movement. If choice is their issue, why are radical feminists so offended when a woman chooses not to have an abortion? They have a weird anti male (particularly white male) and family agenda. Outrageously, a feminist leader said “all sex is rape”. These angry bitter women have a distorted view of the world.

Then along comes Sarah Palin; happily married, a happy mom and effective governor. Feminists should regard Sarah Palin as their hero; a shining example of women’s liberation enjoying success in both words, family and career. But instead, the Left seeks to destroy her. Palin is too happy, too good, too pretty, too effective, and most intolerable, too powerful.

I wish to encourage my fellow conservative men to display a little John Wayne type testosterone and defend our feisty conservative women folks. As I am a conservative singer/songwriter, I have penned, performed and recorded a song honoring conservative women titled, “Our Girls“. Along with nationally known women like Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingram, Michelle Malkin, my song is a tribute to all my patriot sisters that are fighting for the cause of freedom, liberty and conservative principles. Please give “Our Girls“ a listen. I promise, it will make you smile.

Listen to “Our Girls”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFb3zW7-tU4

Reprinted with permission from Lloyd Marcus.

It’s a sure sign that Republicans are winning a debate on issues when Democrats, aided by well-meaning civility police pundits and activists, demand that Republicans stop showing their passion and “be civil”.

I am still waiting for those with such a keen sense of civility to demand that Democrats cease their unrelenting and uncivil, even racist, attacks on black Republicans. I won’t hold my breath.

High on the Democrats’ list of those to be denigrated are accomplished black Republicans who do not toe the Democrats’ liberal agenda line. Shamefully, Democrats do not want poor black children to have as role models any black person who does not engage in victim mongering and works hard to become prosperous rather than become dependent on government handouts.

The message that Democrats gives to poor blacks is despicable. If you remain poor, uneducated and vote for Democrats, we will celebrate your victimhood. If you get a good education, get a good job and vote for Republicans, we will denigrate you as “acting white”, a “sellout”, an “Uncle Tom”, a “House Negro”, a “House N-word”, a “Lawn Jockey”, and worse..

Brazenly, on the left-wing Internet website called “The News Blog,” Democrats posted a doctored photograph of then Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele (now chairman of the RNC) when he was running for a Senate seat, depicting Steele as a “Simple Sambo” with a blackened minstrel-style face, nappy hair and big, think red lips. The cartoon caption read: “Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house”. This contemptible racist stereotype is the same one Democrats used to demean black men during the era of slavery and segregation.

In addition to other outrageous racist images of Dr. Condoleezza Rice produced by several Democrats, cartoonist Jeff Danziger depicted Dr. Rice as an ignorant, barefoot “mammy”, reminiscent of the stereotyped black woman in the movie “Gone with the Wind” about the slave era black woman who remarked: “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ no babies”. This is the type of racist stereotype Democrats used to demean black women during the era of slavery and segregation.

Democrats now love Gen. Colin Powell, but spewed out racist attacks on Powell before he endorsed Obama and embraced the liberal agenda of higher taxes and a bigger government to provide poverty producing handouts to blacks.

A video was shot by WKRN Video Journalist Beau Fleenor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee that shows Al Sharpton demeaning Gen. Powell and Dr. Rice, when Sharpton was asked to give his opinions about whether Powell and Rice were “House Negroes”. That video can be found on the Internet.

An article that appeared in a Portland, Oregon paper was one of many exposing how hardly a ripple of protest was made by black Democrats when Harry Belafonte publicly denounced Gen. Powell as a “House Negro”.

With impunity, the late Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy called black judicial nominees, including Judge Janice Rogers Brown, “Neanderthals”. Democrat Senator Harry Reid slurred Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as an incompetent Negro who could not write good English. “Slap at Thomas stinks of racism,” was the headline of the New York Daily News’ December 7, 2004 editorial.

Even black Democrats will be maligned if they dare step off of the Democratic Party’s political plantation. When black Democrat Juan Williams wrote his book entitled “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-end Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America” that exposed the deplorable conditions in black communities caused by the Democrats running those communities, Williams was denounced on national TV by another black Democrat as a “Happy Negro”.

For details about how Democrats during the 1960’s even smeared Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was a Republican, see the article posted on the NBRA website.

“Civility, Ours and Theirs” is an article that provides more details about how Democrats vilify black Republicans while wagging their finger at Republicans about being civil.

Our political discourse can be elevated to the high standards demanded by the civility police only when Democrats are also required to play by the rules of civility.

Frances Rice, a retired lawyer and US Army Lieutenant Colonel, is chairman of the National Black Republican Association and may be contacted at: www.NBRA.info

Below is a blog from the Tea Party Patriots.org. It’s great and very important for us to understand as we form our strategies for reclaiming the Republican Party in 2010.

Tea Parties across the country are emphatic about being non-partisan. No one is interested in being beholden to a political party; however, the radical left is. The Cloward and Piven strategy to implement fascist change through intentional overloading of the system has been successful every time it’s been tried. The radical left is using the Democrat Party to succeed this time. ACORN is the new front for this old battle plan; their specialty is voter registration/fraud.

ACORN’s voter rights tactics follow the Cloward-Piven Strategy:

1. Register as many Democrat voters as possible, legal or otherwise and help them vote, multiple times if possible.
2. Overwhelm the system with fraudulent registrations using multiple entries of the same name, names of deceased, random names from the phone book, even contrived names.
3. Make the system difficult to police by lobbying for minimal identification standards. 1
Notice that they specifically say “Democrat” voters. ACORN has also been caught destroying Republican registration cards. The radical left has made their stronghold in the Democrat Party and the elite power concentration of the radical left holds the entire party under its boot. The fact of the matter is that freedom loving people do not have time to organize a new political party; if we try we will waste what precious time remains for our constitution building political infrastructure. When we are finally ready to go there will be nothing left to defend.

Because the enemies of freedom are married to the Democratic Party and we don’t have the time to create a conservative party from scratch, we must use our efforts to take back the existing Republican Party. This does not mean that we are forced to take what they offer us; on the contrary, it is us who can change them. We have over 800 tea party groups nationwide connected through teapartypatriots.org alone; that network can be a powerful tool in coordinated grassroots action. By increasing conservative control of the Republican Party at the county, then state level, we can have more of a choice in Republican national choice, strategy and candidates.

The current Republican leadership is what gave us John McCain, Scozzafave in New York and the freakish smear campaign against Sarah Palin. The GOP national site is useless in locating state websites; it has state groups on that site, but no actual links to state websites. In fact, the whole website seems little more than elite RINO’s shaking their cup for your money so they can blow $900,000 on a backstabbing liberal from New York. If they were going to espouse conservative values, they would have already. It’s not like we need their training and expertise, they are proven losers who can’t play offense to save their political lives. Through control of local-to-state-to-national election, we can choose conservative candidates, not republican ones.

Find your Tea Party group and open a dialogue on investing your time and opinions in the local republican leadership. A county chairperson is much easier to unseat than a senator; we have people who are willing and capable of taking their jobs should they not support conservative candidates. Below is a list of state republican websites since the national site couldn’t stop playing its violin for your money long enough to make a list.

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia , Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

If you live in an area that has an entrenched conservative, consider devoting your time and resources to a neighboring district or state that has a liberal or fascist “representative”. For example, in Washington State, Seattle contains the mass of voters that elect Patty Murray. Eastern Washington is pretty secure with mostly conservative representatives. If those in eastern Washington would assist those groups in Seattle fighting an uphill battle, a vital power base of Senator Patty Murray would be shaken.

Remember, we surround them. We have the numbers we need to take back our country if we can direct our talents, efforts, time and money to the most effective avenue we can make.

http://www.teapartypatriots.org/BlogPostView.aspx?id=62dd608f-465c-4806-92fe-e9c3ae6bfb98

Posted 12/4/2009