Love the title!
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World Affairs Brief, February 8, 2013 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:
Drone Memo: Obama as Judge, Jury and Executioner
President Takes up Shooting to Boost Gun Control
Alabama Siege Ends
North Koreans Among 40 Dead at Iran Nuke Plant Explosion
Media Fudging Unemployment Numbers
Price of Obama’s Royalty
Geithner to Join CFR
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PRESIDENT TAKES UP SHOOTING TO BOOST GUN CONTROL
As the gun control agenda moves into high gear—mostly in the media, the White House dirty tricks gang came up with a new propaganda stunt to make it look like the president is an avid hunter and aficionado of shotguns by taking pictures of Obama at a Camp David range shooting skeet.
Obama immediately got panned for the stunt. As one experienced skeet shooter wrote, “I know a thing or two about skeet shooting. In this sport you have beginner shooters who don’t really know what they are doing, you have amateurs that are ‘regular’ shooters who take it seriously, and you have guys and gals that shoot 25 out of 25, again and again. The following is a picture of a person who has not shot skeet before. [Widely published picture of Obama shooting a shotgun from the news] This person doesn’t know how to hold the gun properly. This person is going to get a big recoil in the arm that will hurt.
“No one has bothered to show this person how to hold a gun. This person has not been taught how to position the body to make a successful shot. This person has no chance of hitting a moving target. This person is not wearing the proper clothing for a skeet range (padded vest that has pockets for 25 shells). This person is pretending to shoot skeet.”
Yes, Obama is the pretend president in a lot of ways, but that does not stop the PTB from planning his (and his family’s) day around lots of propaganda stunts and photo shoots.
The media is really putting the pressure on to disallow future gun sales in private. NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre warned on Fox News that “‘Closing the federal loophole that allows Americans to buy guns in private transactions without having gone through a background check would be a slippery slope,’ …and suggested that President Obama and his administration would insist on taking it a step further with a so-called ‘universal background check.’ LaPierre said on Fox News Sunday, ‘I think [what] they’ll do is they’ll turn this universal check on the law-abiding into a universal registry on law-abiding people. ‘Obamacare’ , for example, ‘wasn’t a tax until they needed it to be a tax. I don’t think you can trust these people.’” Indeed.
To illustrate the untrustworthy nature of what the gun grabbers have in mind, Tad Cronn noted in Godfather Politics that “The list of specific firearms that would be banned by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s gun-control bill is a smokescreen for a trick of language that could result in a ban on nearly all semiautomatic guns, according to a gun law expert who has reviewed the proposed legislation. Most media reports have focused on the already lengthy list of specific firearms the bill would ban, but Alan Korwin, who has written 10 books on gun laws, says the real meaning of the bill is hidden in the list of banned gun components.”
Components like a “sear” which catches the hammer in the rearward position, ready to fire again is found in virtually every semi-automatic weapon, not just assault weapons — bringing them all under the aegis of the ban.
You can bet Sen. Feinstein didn’t have anything to do with the writing of this kind of technical trap. –Approve, maybe, if she were capable of understanding what we are talking about, but the key point is that there is a dedicated team of lawyers working for the dark side of government that writes all these anti-liberty poison pills like the PATRIOT ACT, the NDAA provision on indefinite detention and this gun grabbing law—and it is done months and perhaps years before a 9/11 or a Sandy Hook style terror event is pulled off as a trigger to introduce these bills and get them passed into law.
In the current battle for gun control, the most powerful lie in the arsenal of the gun grabbers is that “they don’t intend to violate” the Second Amendment. They claim to recognize the right of self-defense with a handgun, but see no reason why someone needs an “assault rifle.”
So everyone has to be prepared to counter this argument. The first crucial argument to counter is the assertion that civilian versions of the AR-15 are assault rifles. They are not—even though they look similar. To qualify as an assault rifle, the weapon must have both either full-auto or 3-round burst capability and high-capacity, quick-change magazines. Civilian versions have the high-capacity magazines, but are not fully automatic. It’s a big difference.
So now the larger argument comes to bear: Why do civilians need military-style, semi-automatic rifles with high-capacity magazines? Certainly, not for hunting, and there are arguably better weapons for close quarters self defense. But that was never the purpose of the Second Amendment, which was written to make sure citizens had military capable weapons so they could act as a militia to deter or directly counter government tyranny.
Despite liberal commentators like Piers Morgan who refuse to admit to any dangerous or tyrannical tendency by government, that is what this fight for assault-style weapons is all about. The Armed Citizen Network provided perhaps the most complete essay on this argument, and I will include here the significant parts on “Why American Citizens Need Assault Weapons” by Mark Hayes, J.D.
“There are two main reasons and many ancillary ones why a ban on high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons is uncalled for, unnecessary and also unwise. First, we must consider the historical perspective of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Second Amendment was added to the Constitution as an assurance that Americans will never lack the weaponry to fight against their own government, if that government becomes tyrannical.
“Remember, in the late 1780s the newly formed United States of America had just fought a bloody war against England and King George III’s tyrannical government. In order to gain support for the formation of a central government, the individual states required that the language of the Second Amendment be included in the Constitution, or they would not ratify the Constitution. Of course, the citizens of the day needed to arm themselves against tyrants with the very same weaponry used by the tyrants.
“Now, fast forward from 1780 to present day. Our current military and law enforcement agencies employ high-capacity semi-automatic handguns and AR-15 style rifles that are the very same weapons as are being targeted for a ban, if the Obama Administration has its way. In fact, most military firearms also have select fire: full auto, three-shot burst or semi-auto. This is how the M-4 rifle, which American citizens cannot own unless first paying a high tax, and in some states citizens cannot own M4s at all.
“Nevertheless, the current semi-auto weaponry is similar enough for the arming of the Militia, of which each and every able-bodied armed American is still a part (read the Heller case). We, the citizens of America, need to retain the same weaponry as our military and police to even the playing field, so that in the event of an attempt to enslave the American people, we can resist equally.
“Revolting against tyranny is the first reason Americans must retain our rights to own high capacity semi-automatic firearms. The counter-argument goes, ‘Come on, this is the year 2013. It’s not 1776.’ To which I say, ‘So what? Tyranny is not a thing of the past.’ No one will ever convince me that current day humans do not have the ability to enslave, torture and murder large groups of other humans….
“The second reason Americans need high capacity semi-automatic firearms has a more practical, immediate application in our modern society. Citizens must not be stripped of the ability to effectively counter criminal violence.
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