Keep and Bear Arms - Gun Owners Home Page

IN: How Does Indiana Law Define "Self-Defense" During Shootings?
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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If you shoot someone in self defense, how do police and prosecutors determine not to file criminal charges against you?

Guy Relford, the host of "The Gun Guy Show" on 93 WIBC in Indianapolis says, "it depends upon the totality of the circumstances. So the question becomes do I reasonably believe that deadly force is necessary to prevent serious bodily injury to me or a third person. If the answer is yes, then I can use deadly force."

DC: Congressman Massie introduces D.C Personal Protection Reciprocity Act
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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After the horrific shooting at the Republican congressional baseball practice, there will likely be calls for special privileges to protect politicians. Our reaction should instead be to protect the right of all citizens guaranteed in the Constitution: The right to self-defense.

I do not want to extend a special privilege to politicians, because the right to keep and bear arms is not a privilege, it is a God-given right protected by our Constitution.

If not for the heroic efforts of the United States Capitol Police at the ball field last month, things could have been much worse. What�s always evident in these situations is this: The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

OR: Anti-Gun Bill Headed to Governor
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Yesterday, Senate Bill 719A passed the Oregon House with a 31-28 vote. SB 719A will now go to Governor Kate Brown for her consideration. Please contact Governor Brown and urge her to veto SB 719A! Click the �Take Action� button below to contact Governor Brown!

Your NRA-ILA would like to thank all the members and Second Amendment supporters who contacted their legislators in opposition to SB 719A. Your NRA-ILA would also like to thank all the legislators who stood strong for your rights and voted against this bill.

TX: UT profs outgunned in effort to holster campus carry law
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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A federal judge has dismissed a longshot lawsuit filed by three University of Texas at Austin professors seeking to overturn the state's 2015 campus carry law, which allows people to carry concealed handguns inside most public university buildings.

District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote in his decision that the professors � Jennifer Lynn Glass, Lisa Moore and Mia Carter � couldn't present any "concrete evidence to substantiate their fears" that campus carry would have a chilling effect on free speech.

Soros-Funded Women�s March Organize Unhinged Protest Against NRA
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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It looks like the liberal minds behind the Women�s March know how to stay triggered by constitutional rights.

Tamika Mallory, the co-president of the Women�s March Inc., announced that the movement was going to to host a protest in front of the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA, on July 14th. They will march 17 miles from the NRA to the Department of Justice.

That�s an awful long way to march just because some liberals got teed off. The announcement, shared by the Women�s March Facebook page, started with this charming statement: �We know that we are not safe. But we will not be intimidated into silence.�

CA: Taking Guns Off the Streets, $100 at a Time
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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James Ronald Lee III pulled his cherry red Volkswagen up to a pair of detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department in a parking lot in South Los Angeles. The detectives pulled a handgun, a rifle and a sock stuffed with ammunition from the trunk.

Mr. Lee had kept the guns in a liquor store he once owned and did not have a use for them anymore. �I don�t want them around my house, because anything could happen,� he said. Mr. Lee received a $100 Target gift card for each weapon.

FL: What Future Impacts Could Judge�s Ruling Have On Stand Your Ground Changes Statewide?
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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When Miami Dade Judge Milton Hirsch ruled the Florida legislature overstepped its authority in making revisions to the 2005 Stand Your Ground law, Lucia McBath couldn�t be happier.

She�s the mother of Jordan Davis, who was fatally shot during a dispute over loud music at a Jacksonville gas station in 2012. While he was later convicted, Michael Dunn, who killed Davis, initially claimed self-defense.

WV: Multiple Pro-Gun Bills go into Effect Today
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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This week, multiple pro-gun and pro-hunting bills that were signed into law by Governor Jim Justice take effect. Those bills include:

Senate Bill 575, sponsored by state Senator Charles Trump (R-15), protects sport shooting ranges from frivolous lawsuits and noise complaints. This measure will shield sport shooting ranges from legal actions which aim to restrict or prohibit range usage. In the past, anti-gun activists have used frivolous lawsuits and noise complaints to put legally operating sport shooting ranges out of business. If a range is in full compliance with the law, it should not be subjected to unreasonable court fees, hiatus or closure. (Effective July 3)

UK: Thought Police Target Free-Thinking UK Police Commissioner
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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The city council in the United Kingdom port city of Plymouth gave their finest impression of George Orwell�s Thinkpol this week, when the council formally admonished Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Commissioner Alison Hernandez for her off-the cuff comments to a BBC Radio program following the recent terrorist attacks in Manchester and London. According to reports, Hernandez�s mere suggestion that an armed citizenry might be capable of providing some protection against terrorist violence proved too much for the council to tolerate.

IL: Leave concealed carry laws to the states
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Supporters say that just as a driver's license issued in one state is valid everywhere, a weapons permit should be. But states honor driver's licenses voluntarily, not by federal mandate, a custom that makes sense because the requirements to get one don't differ much from one place to another. Concealed carry permit standards vary greatly. Lax rules create a danger to public safety by allowing people without basic skills to carry guns.

This legislation would trample on the principle of federalism by denying states the right to decide for themselves what to require of those who want to carry loaded guns in public. If states want to honor permits from other states, they're free to do so, and some do.

CO: Meet the Colorado Woman Training Teachers to Use Guns to Stop School Violence
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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This fall, some Colorado teachers will return to school armed with knowledge�and guns.

Laura Carno, author of �Government Ruins Nearly Everything: Reclaiming Social Issues from Uncivil Servants,� is bringing advanced firearms training to school teachers.

�Can government stop school shooting[s]? The answer is no � How do we as a community keep our kids safer if we say government is not the right place to fix that problem?� Carno told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

Her answer is a training program called the Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response, or FASTER. Carno�s nonprofit Second Amendment advocacy group, Coloradans for Civil Liberties, planned to bring the program to Colorado teachers this summer.

TX: Coffee Shop That Lets Customers Pack Heat Opening In The Woodlands
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Texans who are licensed to carry a handgun are used to seeing the signs prohibiting them at area businesses, but one coffee shop that plans to open its doors in 2018, won�t mind if their customers are legally packing heat.

Operator Coffee Co., a veteran-owned company geared toward military veterans, gun enthusiasts and supporters of the Second Amendment, is zeroed in on opening in The Woodlands in Spring 2018, and is looking for locations along FM 1488, between Interstate 45 and FM 2978.

What You Need To Know About Medical Marijuana And Gun Ownership
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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For patients like Nick Yarberry, who has suffered from glaucoma for nearly two decades, the conflict between state and federal law will bring about a difficult decision. The Arkansas resident says he wants to participate in the state�s newfound medical marijuana program, but he does not want to give up his freedom to pack heat.

�I can either keep my safety of having my concealed or lose my eye sight and what good is my concealed carry anyway because I won�t be able to use it,� he told CBS-affiliate THV11.

NY: Civil conversations about guns are possible and a relief
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Last month in this space I posed questions about the appeal of guns in an America that has long been grappling with violence. The response from readers and neighbors was enlightening and heartening.

Some reactions were initially angry, as we live in a time when we expect to be shouted down or ignored if we disagree. There�s also a reflexive distrust of media. As a journalist of 30 years, I can say that media is a business full of fallible humans of varying perspectives and intentions working under the pressures of �get it done yesterday� deadlines, limited manpower, and bottom line economics. Sensationalism surely sells.

NJ: Anti-drug activist to seek pardon from Christie in gun case
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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A Pennsylvania man charged with trying to drive through the Holland Tunnel with a cache of weapons on his way to rescue a teenager from a drug den will ask New Jersey's governor for a pardon after a judge denied his request to enter a pretrial intervention program.

Attorney James Lisa told a judge Thursday that he will seek a pardon after the judge denied allowing John Cramsey, of East Greenville, to enter the program after he earlier rejected a plea.

Cramsey, an anti-drug activist whose daughter died of a drug overdose last year, and three others were stopped as they approached the Holland Tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York.

Remarkable Finding from Pew Survey
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Pew�s recent survey on firearm-related attitudes and experiences of U.S. adults found � based on the percentage saying �yes� to the question about whether they are NRA members � that more than 14 million Americans consider themselves NRA members. The real NRA membership of about 5 million falls well short of this measure, even accounting for any statistical error the survey produced.

What this means in terms of polling, and one thing that Pew and others simply do not make clear to the public when reporting on the survey results, is that Pew did not actually survey NRA members. Any views, beliefs, or opinions they ascribe to �NRA members� is a simple guess on their part.

TX: Home invasion makes me think about my own safety
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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Let me say up front I have never felt afraid or unsafe where I live in Gun Barrel City. I don't put myself in dangerous situations, or hang out with those who would be considered dangerous. I have no fear.

I know all the facts about drugs and crime in my city. I just don't happen to see it in my neighborhood.

A brazen home invasion Sunday afternoon (story in Thursday�s Athens Daily Review) has left me to think more about my safety, and caused me to be on edge in my quiet little neighborhood.

This incident happened in Gun Barrel City four miles from where I have lived for almost 25 years.

RI: Domestic violence gun bill passes Senate
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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With the end of the 2017 legislative season, local leaders geared up for a final push of proposed legislation last week. For Dist. 34 (South Kingstown, Narragansett) Representative Teresa Tanzi, this meant a focus on three bills she was sponsoring in the Rhode Island House of Representatives: gun prohibitions for those convicted of domestic abuse, the Senate equivalent of which passed Friday, the banning of e-cigarettes in any indoor, public location that already bans the smoking of cigarettes and the expansion of Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) over the borders of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

MA: NRA's call to arms diverts attention from devastating crime study
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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The National Rifle Association is no doubt grateful for the sensation it caused last week with a video featuring propagandist Dana Loesch.

In 2015, Loesch starred in another NRA video on the depredations of the �godless left.� In her telling, liberals sought nothing less than the extermination of decent Americans, attacking not only �our right to believe,� Loesch said, but �our right to survive.�

Loesch�s latest service to the NRA all but announces civil war. If video technology had existed in South Carolina circa 1860, and secessionist propaganda were assigned to the cause�s most unscrupulous partisans, something similar might have emerged from Charleston.

Members of the National Rifle Association show different gun habits and policy views than other gun owners
Submitted by: Mark A. Taff
Website: http://www.marktaff.com

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The Pew Research Center released this week broad survey results unpacking attitudes toward gun ownership among members of the National Rifle Association, compared to other gun owners.

The survey�whose full results were shared last month�polled 3,930 adults in the United States, including 1,269 gun owners, 19 percent of whom belonged to the NRA. Pew found that NRA members both have more guns and use them more frequently than non-member owners�but are also more likely to have taken a gun safety course:

Ed.: Note that three times as many Americans self-identified as NRA members as there are actual NRA members, so this survey doesn't tell us anything about what NRA members think.