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You have to give it to USA Today. In their editorial stance, the McPaper may be just one more predictably anti-gun mainstream media rag, but at least they devote some column inches to prominent voices on the other side. Yesterday it was our own maximum leader pointing out the uselessness and futility of disarming law abiding citizens for the ostensible purpose of making it harder for terrorists to get weapons. Today, the NRA ILA’s Chris Cox refutes the laughable idea that the NRA is somehow to blame (we all know the culprit is really climate change, right?) and calls out the disarmer-in-chief for his shameless opportunism in exploiting a terrorist attack for the purposes of further restricting Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms. As Cox concludes . . .

The NRA is calling on the president to stop exploiting tragedies to push his failed political agenda. It’s shameful. Given the reality that he’s unlikely to listen, however, we will continue to stand and fight for law-abiding gun owners who are both disgusted and heartbroken by these heinous acts — whether committed by madmen, gang members or terrorists. The NRA will neither accept the blame for the acts of murderers, nor apologize for fighting for our right to defend ourselves against them.

Read the whole thing here.

Our friends at the NRA followed up with this helpful fact sheet on the smashing success that strict gun control laws have been:

Gun control supporters have repeatedly referred to California’s gun laws as the “model for the nation.” In their state scorecards, they always give California the highest grade. These laws did nothing to protect the people in San Bernadino. Since 1975, when California began enacting its laundry list of gun control provisions, the state’s annual murder rates have averaged 21 percent higher than the national rate.

•             Gun control supporters repeatedly refer to California’s gun control laws as the “model for the nation.” 

•             Gun control groups always give California the highest grade when it comes to state gun laws. 

•             California prohibits the sale of semi-automatic firearms that gun control supporters call “assault weapons,” which are commonly owned in most other states. 

•             California requires a permit to purchase any firearm.

•             California requires that all firearm sales are registered

•             California requires that all firearm sales are subject to a background check. 

•             Less than one percent (0.154 %, to be exact) of California’s population is licensed to carry. 

•             France has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and yet those laws did nothing to stop the terrorist attacks last month. 

•             France requires a license to purchase any firearm. 

•             France requires special permits to own pump-action rifles and shotguns, semi-automatic rifles that hold more than three rounds of ammunition, and any other firearms capable of holding more than 11 rounds. 

Shooters who passed background checks:

•             Syed Rizwan Farook (San Bernardino shooting)

•             Christopher Harper-Mercer (Umpqua Community College shooting) 

•             Vester Flanagan (Roanoke, VA news crew shooting)

•             John Russell Houser  (Lafayette theater shooting)

•             Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez (Chattanooga National Guard shooting)

•             Dylann Roof (Charleston church shooting),

•             Elliot Rodger (Santa Barbara campus shooting),

•             Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard),

•             Wade Michael Page (Sikh Temple),

•             James Holmes (Aurora theater),

•             Jared Loughner (Tucson),

•             Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009) 

•             A new (June 2015) study by the Congressional Research Service stated that mass shootings accounted for a microscopic 0.004 percent of all deaths, about 0.66 percent of all murder victims, and less than one fiftieth the number of non-firearm murder victims in the United States over the 15-year period 1999-2013.

•            The number of guns in the country has doubled over the last 2 decades, during that same time: the murder rate in this country is at an all-time low and the violent crime rate is at a 43 year low.

The following efforts would NOT have stopped recent mass shootings:

•             Background checks

•             Waiting periods

•             Online sales restrictions

•             Closing the so-called “gun show loophole”

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22 COMMENTS

  1. Great summary; love the bullet points. We should parrot these points to all that will listen (and maybe a few that won’t).

  2. Facts in context always cause a shouting match, people of the gun know what we think and anti-gunners know how they”feel” . This makes actual communication very difficult.

  3. Not trying to be snarky or dense but doesn’t the list above of “Shooters who passed background checks …” play into the anti’s argument of, they passed background checks and are assumed to be law abiding for having passed the check which proves the need to take away all guns?

    • The ablity to pass background checks shows that the current system is flawed. What proof is there a better background check would work. What law can be passed…what test is can be given to show what evil a person will choose to commit.

    • Forcing everyone to admit the proven failure of background checks will just deny the antis their incrementalism and bring the inevitable showdown closer. High time for it and we should face it while we have some momentum. Let’s get this over with and start undoing the damage to 2A.

      • provided you’re careful to frame it as, “See, background checks don’t work” and don’t let them fill in a blank with “our current background check system clearly needs to be strengthened.”

        • To which we respond, all of these individual would have passed the “enhanced” background checks with respect to mental health that have been proposed, since none of them had been involuntarily detained because they were a danger to themselves or others, and we do not have a Pre-Crime Division.

    • Totally missing the point that background checks themselves are unconstitutional. The very concept that the government has the authority to create and maintain a list of people who may not exercise their Second Amendment protected right to keep and bear arms is the textbook definition of “infringed”.

  4. “if any party’s claim is such that: “I cannot defend you until you have surrendered the means by which you can defend yourself;” only the first half of the statement is true.” [J.M. Thomas R., TERMS, 2012, p 46]

    Especially your “government”. If your government (a/k/a: your a-hole neighbors needing jobs) tells you that it cannot protect you, tell them that’s ok, then tell them they are ineffectual and they need to PACK THEIR SH_T AND GO HOME!.

  5. Wish the article had taken things a step further and maybe called out the fact that this is the same administration who has armed Mexican drug cartels and extremist muslims in the middle East with not only military grade weapons but training, often special forces training, to go with it. I suppose there is a time and place for that though.

  6. Thank you NRA.
    My dues are will spent. Only California voters can change things in the golden state.
    And it seems there are distractions more important than open carry or consealed carry. Distractions more important than righteous killing in self defense in California.
    You can buy a sex toy in San Francisco but you can’t buy a gun.
    Big pictures of guns in a gun store window are illegal, but homosexual erotica in window displays is ok.

  7. It is a bit misleading to suggest that California requires a “permit” to purchase a firearm. In New Jersey, for example, you have to get police permission to buy any gun, while the “permit” in California is issued upon successfully passing a 20 question multiple choice test that covers safe gun handling and the basic transfer and transport rules. Formerly called the Handgun Safety Certificate, and now called the Firearms Safety Certificate after the law was extended to cover the purchase of long guns, few have any difficulty passing with a (minimum) 70% score or better. The most onerous part of the test is the $25 fee.

  8. From our most gun un-friendly and gun-restricted State (NY).
    It’s one thing talking about the devil and another thing to see him coming.

    Ulster County Sheriff’s Office
    Government Website · 19,293 Likes · Yesterday at 8:14am ·
    December 3, 2015

    ATTENTION LICENSED HANDGUN OWNERS
    In light of recent events that have occurred in the United States and around the world I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO.

    I urge you to responsibly take advantage of your legal right to carry a firearm. To ensure the safety of yourself and others, make sure you are comfortable and proficient with your weapon, and knowledgeable of the laws in New York State with regards to carrying a weapon and when it is legal to use it.

    I also want to remind all Police/Peace Officers both active duty and retired to please carry a weapon whenever you leave your house. We are the thin blue line that is entrusted in keeping this country safe, and we must be prepared to act at any given moment.

    Thank you,
    Paul J. Van Blarcum
    Ulster County Sheriff

  9. Once the climate change talk happens terrorism will be a thing of the past, or did they already take place……..

  10. This ->

    “The NRA will neither accept the blame for the acts of murderers (madmen, gang members or terrorists – ed), nor apologize for fighting for our right to defend ourselves against them.”

    We didn’t do it. They did. Not our fault. Theirs (and yours for declining to recognize that they are the problem.)

    Given that these whack-jobs exist, we’d like to be able to protect ourselves from them, and resent the hell out of your preferring that we more likely end up dead, so you can feel better, or feel better about yourselves.

    Any questions?

  11. Via that well-known propaganda arm of the gun nuts, CNN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWURpiDGC1E

    I point out the media source because this interview has to be yet another put up job by the infinitely powerful NRA lobbying arm on their own bought and paid for “news” channel, or something. Oh, wait. (That’s the problem with being an agenda-mongering propaganda operation: should you ever let slip something that helps the other side, it carries more weight … because everybody knows where you are coming from. Hint: once non-partisan media types started calling the AP, “The *A*dministration *P*ress” it was over for them as a news outlet. They have other names for CNN.)

    /Rant

    Here’s a citizen in San Bernadino using discretion, showing composure, and not making the situation worse, though himself carrying a side arm. He set up a perimeter so “it” wouldn’t move to his location. Told the police what he saw when they arrived.

    So, no “spray and pray”, no Rambo-delusions of glory, no collateral damage, no making a problem with the police when they arrive. Plus the courage and resolve to move calmly *toward* the gunfire, when that was needful.

    What happened? Simply this: “I’ve got employees that all have families. My wife was in the building.”

    So, he did what he could, with discretion and judgment. Also “irritating” to have to draw his gun, after 20 years of carry. Exactly so. Carry and hope you never have to use it. How about that?

    Of course the agenda-steeped interviewer can’t ask the obvious followups: “Perimeter?”, “How did you know the shots you heard were more powerful than what you carry?”, “What gave you the judgment to act defensively, rather than charge in?”

    Of course the $64 question is: “So, the apparent bad guys drove toward you until you unholstered your side arm & pointed it at them. So, first, you had your gun holstered this whole time? Really? Why was that? Then, as they approached, and you pointed your gun at them, they turned away. Do you think they saw you? Did your having and showing a weapon influence them to not come to where you work, do you think?”

    Somebody really wanting to understand how the situation unfolded might have asked: “How many in your building? I mean how many potential victims, not threatened when the shooters decided to go elsewhere?”

    Of course, that didn’t get asked, because a successful DGU where dozens of innocents don’t die in the crossfire isn’t the story “reporter”-person wanted to tell. The only DGUs that count drop the BG instantly as more or less incidental damage, among the dozens of bystanders splattered by adrenaline-induced, not a professional, inevitable bullet-hosing. Or, so I’ve heard.

    Of course, nobody’s lot was improved by this gun-carrying citizen because he didn’t put the three perps down with three consecutive 100-yard headshots. Nothing short of that counts, right? The time it bought as the BGs went looking for the next soft target was worth what, in dead and wounded, BTW?

    Police heroics, said the talking head. And yes, brave, and heroic of the police. But, how about this guy, too? Somehow we can only talk in “the story” about the properly appointed, authorized, designated folks doing such things, as mandated by some set of overlords. THIS GUY PUT THE POLICE ON TO THE FLEEING SUV. Through measured action and presence of mind. The on-air fabulist didn’t ask about that, either. Sounds like a story to me.

    This citizen deliberately taking individual action to – successfully it turns out – take care of himself and his, well, story-bot is sure the police will want to talk to him. After he made sure to flag down the arriving police, and get them a description of the likely fleeing perpetrators. At the time. On his own initiative. I think he already told them. But, you know, wait to be asked, because the official, important people will want to ask you things. (We have top men on it. Top. Men.) At least they’ll know where to find him.

    I’m pretty sure the interviewee did as well as it seems, because CNN. They’d never broadcast something like this if they didn’t have to. And the attitude of that smug news reader is just offensive.

    Let’s add this guy to the roll-call, of: “Please god, can I have the stones to do half as well when it matters.”

    And the name of the man who threw himself between the Paris gunmen and his friend is? And the guy who got people under cover & helped the wounded? And the people who helped each other get out the music hall exits and escapes?

    This guy’s name goes along with the people who got their own folks out, who went *into* burning buildings, who took down an airliner while our government still had it’s continuity plan around it’s ankles on the day they still trot out flags about when they want bigger budgets … and everybody before or since who has done what they can for themselves and theirs, and, yes, for strangers.

    And the hell you say to any media-swilling, “I’m smarter than you.” politi-bot who would take the means to look out for themselves and the rest of us away from people like these.

    You know why you can’t stand to look at people who do this well, or permit it in your world? Because you are afraid, in the end, that if it’s ever all up to you, you won’t be up to it. You don’t have to win, you just have to choose well. You don’t even know that.

    However, since I am not you, I will do what I can to see that people like this man have access to guns, because they are far, far more likely to use that power well than you and your minions. And I can live with seeing people in the world I can only hope to live up to. Maybe. On my best day.

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