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WA: Family members try to understand shooting spree by matriarch
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On Friday, Seattle police said they were still without a motive behind the city's deadliest shooting spree in four years. And the family of Phan - a woman known to those in the crowded household as "Grandma" - was struggling to find answers.
The surviving family members, in a statement, said Phan had been suffering from schizophrenia and depression for several years and had sought medical attention numerous times. She had been taking medication prescribed to her by physicians, they said, but it was not clear whether she has been properly taking it over the past couple of months. |
Trying to see both sides
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My boyfriend Tim accompanied me to Seattle this summer, to meet my family. I worried about his interaction with my father, whose views have tended to the far left in the last decades, and who, refugee from totalitarianism that he is, takes his politics seriously. I imagined shouted arguments over the Second Amendment, and wondered if we would last the planned six nights. But their voices never got loud, so I relaxed.
After we got back to Colorado, I called to ask my father what he thought of Tim. "He's a bit extreme," he answered. "I looked up that Ron Paul on the Web."
Well, yes, Tim followed Paul's progress and that of the Libertarian Party. |
�Arms� are not just firearms; knives and the 2A wrap-up GRPC
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It was off to a roaring start, and it ended with more bang for the buck than one might imagine; the 25th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference generated excitement, lots of networking, an d a reminder and warning that the Second Amendment is not just about guns.
Sunday�s program opened with a presentation by the folks at Knife Rights, a fledgling group that is now doing battle with a prosecutor in New York over the Draconian knife rules he has imposed. The organization got full support from those attending GRPC, when its founder, Doug Ritter, told the audience, �It is our Second Amendment, too.� |
A Judge�s Warning About the Legitimacy of the Supreme Court
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In his dissent from a decision striking down the District of Columbia�s gun-control law, he showed why. �In my view,� he said, �there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.�
Still, he fits no conventional model of a liberal. The historian Jeff Shesol wrote in The Times Book Review: �Breyer has been less willing than any of his fellow justices to overturn acts of Congress.� The Supreme Court now has no old-fashioned liberals, like William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall. If it did, Justice Breyer�s deference to Congress would likely make him a centrist. |
WV: The use of deadly force OK in W.Va.
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In neither instance does the endangered party have a duty to retreat, according to the legislation.
Cabell County Prosecutor Chris Chiles said the right to protect one�s self from an intruder is �absolute.� So is the right to protect one�s self away from their residence as long as that person wasn�t the aggressor. He said, at times, the danger comes with a family member coming home unexpectedly or something similar.
�You want to make sure it�s not something different than it appears to be,� he said. �No one wants to be in the situation of shooting a family member under the mistaken belief that it was an intruder.� |
OH: Strickland�s A from NRA enough?
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In a target-rich environment, the two candidates for governor took aim last night at a group of leaders whose influence extends beyond the grass roots and into Ohio�s duck blinds, deer stands and bass boats.
More than 600 sportsmen, many of them leaders of outdoors groups across the state, listened to Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and his Republican opponent, John Kasich, make pitches for their support at the 14th annual U.S. Sportsmen�s Alliance meeting at the Aladdin Shrine Temple on the Northeast Side.
Strickland brandished his endorsement and A rating from the National Rifle Association, a designation that might have given him a leg up with the sportsmen, according to Rob Sexton, the alliance�s vice president |
GOP Pledge is Not Friendly to Civil Liberties
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The Pledge also vows to abort universal health care and target housing programs, human rights issues traditionally identified with the left, but does nothing to protect Second Amendment rights or limit eminent domain abuses, civil liberties issues that have historically been identified with the right.
In short, for all its talk of liberty and personal freedom, the document moves the Republican Party further away from its culturally libertarian roots, embracing nationalism and the Religious Right along with its conservative fiscal policy reforms. Traditional conservative libertarians will find it difficult to wholeheartedly embrace the Pledge's quasi-patriotic authoritarianism, ... |
Lax State Gun Laws Tied to Crimes in Other States
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Nearly 600 mayors nationwide, led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and other city leaders, are mounting a new campaign to identify states with lax gun laws and push for tighter restrictions to prevent the trafficking of guns used in crimes.
A study due to be released this week by a coalition called Mayors Against Illegal Guns uses previously unavailable federal gun data to identify what it says are the states that most often export guns used in crimes across state lines. It concludes that the 10 worst offenders per capita, led by Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky, supplied nearly half the 43,000 guns traced to crime scenes in other states last year. |
In Politics, Just How Far Is Too Far?
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What to make of the assertion of the Nevada Republican Senate nominee, Sharron Angle, that the Second Amendment was added so people could protect themselves against a tyrannical government, and �if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies�? And then there�s State Representative Tom Emmer, the Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, whose view of the ability of states to nullify federal laws approximates that of Jefferson Davis. |
DefenseReview (DR) Attends the 2010 Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in San Francisco!
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...attorney Alan Gura, who, with his District of Columbia (D.C.) v. Heller and McDonal v. Chicago wins, has been instrumental in reaffurming the 2nd Amendment as an individual right, not a collective right. In DefenseReview�s opinion, based on just those two U.S. Supreme Court decisions alone, Mr. Gura deserves to go down in history as one of the most important civil rights lawyers in the history of the United States.
...
The National Rifle Association (NRA) may have the numbers and the name, but the SAF/CCRKBA (led by the formidable Alan Gottlieb) and Alan Gura appear to be initiating and engaging in the most important Second Amendment/civil rights litigation in the country. |
Canada: Of guns and the politics of grievance
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In the U.S. citizens have the right to bear arms. In Canada, they have the right to bear grudges.
I believe this has a lot to do with the expressed determination of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to keep trying to trash the federal gun registry, which he came so close to doing last week.
I realize that the registry, set up in 1995 after the �cole Polytechnique de Montr�al massacre, was unable to stop other horrors such as the murder of four Mounties in Mayerthorpe, Alta., 10 years later or the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal in 2006.
I know that drug gangs and other criminal elements tend not to register the weapons they will use in breaking the law and causing mayhem. |
25th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference held in San Francisco
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The Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms held the 25th Annual Gun Rights conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel near San Francisco airport starting on Friday evening, going through today Sunday 26th of September. The event was sponsored by CalGun and the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
Saturday saw about 400 attendees from various clubs and organizations in California and other grass roots activists turn up to listen to the speakers. |
NY: Debate heats up over Elbridge gun club rules for 'black rifles' and other semi-automatics
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The controversy started this summer with the posting of new rules at the Elbridge Rod and Gun Club.
The rules addressed club members� concerns about disturbingly loud and in some cases unsafe shooting by members owning semi-automatic, military-type rifles � such as AK-47s or AR-15s.
�We had members who were mag dumping � shooting 30-round magazine clips with their AKs. You can�t shoot like that here,� said Ron Rosen, president of the 800-member Elbridge club located off Laird Road.
�They shoot their guns, we shoot ours. But we tried to put practices and policies into place. They resisted and we asked them to leave,� he said.
Ed.: How dare those miscreants voice opposition to the rules! We will not tolerate dissenting opinions! |
WI: Vote for Johnson is vote for freedom
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After hearing Ron Johnson's catchphrase, "Fight for Freedom," I was reminded of a lecture I attended in Germany in 2008. The professor explained to a mix of 50 German and American students what he saw when he looked at the United States.
His answer was but one word: freedom. He ardently described the hope found in a place that did not care where people came from, but rather where they were going and how hard they were willing to work to get there. As described on his website, www .ronjohnsonforsenate.com, Johnson plans to protect freedom by upholding our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, questioning the federal government's plan to allegedly spend an additional $3.6 trillion in next year's budget ... |
'American Taliban' wrapped in the flag
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Like their reactionary counterparts in the Middle East, the American Taliban fetishize guns and weaponry. In fact, President Obama's election has fueled an ammunition shortage that persists to this day. As myriad ideologically motivated violent incidents attest (such as the assassination of Dr. George Tiller, or the plane flown into the side of an IRS building in Dallas), they aren't afraid to cross that line. Heck, you have a top-tier Republican Senate candidate - Sharron Angle in Nevada - declaring that if Republicans don't take control of Congress, then "Second Amendment remedies" will be necessary. She's talking about revolution.
Ed.: That's right folks, if you aren't an extremist liberal, then you're an 'American Taliban'. |
YAF Holds a Great Class Reunion
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Randy Teague, Chairman of The Fund for Americans Studies and former YAF Executive Director, said in another of the dinner�s tributes, �When we began, we were planning the 50th anniversary of the founding of Young Americans for Freedom. As we continued that planning, we realized the focus should be the 50th anniversary of the Sharon Statement. Why? Because of what else also flowed from it: Young America�s Foundation, The Fund for American Studies, the American Conservative Union, the American Spectator, Eagle Publishing, the Leadership Institute, the Lincoln Institute for Public Policy, Radio America, the Clare Boothe Luce Institute, the Second Amendment Foundation and many others. What pride we should all take in each of them.� |
NV: Witnesses give conflicting accounts of Costco police shooting
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The fourth day of testimony in the coroner's inquest into the police shooting death of Erik Scott was filled with Costco customers who saw the shooting, but not all of their testimonies matched. Police responded to the store after a Costco employee called 911 to report a man acting erratically, possibly on drugs, damaging merchandise and carrying a pistol in his waistband. Some witness accounts of what transpired outside the store have conflicted with Metro's version of events and with the versions explained by other witnesses. ... Scott family attorney Ross Goodman ... has said the truth of what happened won't come out unless federal investigators look into the case.
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