Gun Rights - Dakota Firearms

God-Given Rights

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

Anti-gun leftists are waging a vicious war against OUR Second Amendment rights. Don’t be fooled into thinking they fight fair. Do you remember when Francis O’Rourke, our useless Secretary of Transportation, was running for president and shouted “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!”, to which the Democratic crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Rights Vs. Privileges

So, what’s the difference? Well, the primary difference is one can be taken away, the other cannot. Privileges are given to you by an authoritative person or agency. A driver’s license is a privilege given to you by the state Department of Transportation. The state gives you this privilege and the state can revoke it, such as when you are convicted of drunk driving.

A right, on the other hand, is something bestowed upon you from God, and therefore cannot be taken away by anyone, including the government. The right to speak your mind (1st Amendment). The right to not have your property searched (4th Amendment). The right to defend yourself, yes with firearms, if necessary (2nd Amendment). The awareness of these rights goes all the way back to the Declaration of Independence, where the document disclosed “unalienable rights” and “endowed by our Creator”…concepts completely foreign to British subjects at the time who were under the thumb of the King of England and under the belief that a ruling monarch told you what you were allowed or not allowed to do. This was such a powerful document at the time and still is today. And in case you missed it or were not taught these in school, these rights are identified as the first ten (10) Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, commonly known as the “Bill Of Rights”.

In what has become one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, a solitary man, who has become known as “Tank Man”, stands in front of a column of Chinese tanks in Tienanmen Square, in Beijing, in defiance to the government’s Communist policies

The anti-gun left believes that rights change over time. “The 2^nd Amendment may have been needed during the founding of the country, but has no bearing now,” as many would argue. Imagine, if you will, two people fighting with swords in the same canoe. One or both will eventually fall into the water. Now, imagine one of the swordsmen moved to solid ground to fight and the other still fought in the canoe. The firm foundation of the solid ground is a game-changer because the swordsman on solid ground now has a distinct advantage over his opponent. The solid ground foundation is that the 2^nd Amendment NEVER changes. This is your winning argument when going up against an anti-gun liberal.

And those who understand this the best are those who have been oppressed by totalitarian leaders. Regardless of your position of the openness of our southern border, the reason so many Venezuelans are among those crossing is because they have witnessed first hand the oppression caused when people are disarmed and can no longer defend themselves, making them ripe for totalitarian control by the government. The oppressiveness of that totalitarian dictator is making life unbearable for Venezuelan citizens.

Lily Tang Williams, a former Chinese citizen, now a Colorado resident, argued before the Colorado state assembly about the need for the 2nd Amendment, providing a first hand account of the perils of not having one in Communist China.

Some of you may be old enough to remember seeing news footage of the horrors of the Tienanmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989 in Beijing. Student protesters were gunned down with guns and tanks. The image which comes to mind more often than not is the single solitary man protesting in front of a column of tanks. China’s gun control policy only included the police and military. Everyone else was not allowed to own guns. And because their God-given right to defend themselves was nonexistent, these protesters were gunned down in the streets.

Many Chinese began questioning their faith in communism after that day. Among them was a young devout woman follower of Mao Zedong, and considered him a god. But after he died, she lost faith in the Communist party. Her name is Lily Tang Williams. She emigrated to the United States. A fellow American college student showed her a copy of the Declaration of Independence, which opened her eyes about the monster Mao truly was. She said “you mean I have rights? It doesn’t matter which country? Which race? Which color? I have rights?”

The conversation with that college student opened her eyes to the benefits of the 2^nd Amendment. He went on to tell her that Americans can own guns as a matter of right – without permission from the government. And if the government leaders become tyrannical, people have the right to stand up to the government with firearms. Lily Tang Williams got it. Having actually lived under oppression, she understood the significance of God-given rights vs. man-made privileges, and now, so should you.

There are three main takeaways from this blog if you find yourself arguing with an anti-gun liberal:

* People are “endowed by their Creator” with natural rights, including the right to keep and bear arms. These rights are NOT subject to compromise.

* Because natural rights are God-given, and are not privileges handed out by the government, human rights cannot be infringed. Hence, you need to argue against waiting periods, background checks, guns and ammunition bans, gun databases and more.

* Brutal and horrible consequences occur when government despots ignore the natural rights of their citizens – especially the right to keep and bear arms.

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Guns Save Lives

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

This statement of guns saving lives is one that happens far more often than the anti-gun left will admit. The unfortunate “see the light” moment usually occurs after a horrific gun-related incident.

To successfully argue against the anti-gun left, you need to present actual examples of how the use of a gun saved one or more lives. And you need to be ready to share those stories because the lame stream media will not. And if you are able to share a CCTV video of the incident, so much the better.

Here is a very tiny sampling of how guns saved lives.

The reason the lame stream media will not share these stories is because it undermines their mantra that “guns are bad”. But if you effectively do your homework and cite real world examples, you could very easily have a mic-drop moment. When caught in their “guns are bad” lie with specific evidentiary examples of how guns saved lives, most of the left will simply change the subject. There is no alternative course of action when the proof is irrefutable.

So, in many cases they will then argue, “but what if gun control saved just one life?” There are two possible answers to this convoluted argument. The first is “if eliminating gun control saves just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it?” The other argument is that “when people are free to exercise their fundamental right, historical evidence suggests that many more lives will be saved.”

You need turn the anti-gun left’s logic against them. Do you remember when anti-gun Demonrats staged a sit in on the floor of Congress back in 2016. The CNN host covering this clown circus was Carol Costello. She posted an on-screen graphic with figures from the CDC of gun-related deaths in the U.S. At the time, she was interviewing Eric Pratt, executive vice president of Gun Owners of America. He countered by pointing out that CDC statistics actually show that Americans use guns more often to save lives than to take them…about 16 to 100 times more often.

In 2016, these Demonrat numb-nuts sat on the floor of the House of Representatives to protest the need for more gun control.

Costello got flustered because Pratt was using her own authoritative source against her. She got upset. At the end of the day, Newsbusters said that Costello “got schooled” by Pratt during the interview.

So, if you end up arguing with an anti-gun liberal, come armed, so-to-speak. You need to cite specific examples of how guns save lives, because the left hates this and it puts them on the defensive. There are several ways to cite such examples.

First, discuss several recent examples of self-defense. Go to ConcealedNation.org if you need a good supply of stories. And visit this site frequently as it is updated often. Or if you are like me and live near a large city with soft-on-crime policies, like me living in the Philadelphia suburbs, stories abound.

Second, show that cops believe good guys with guns save lives, and use the following statistics:

* 93% of law enforcement agree that any law-abiding citizen be able to purchase a firearm for self-defense.

* 91% of law enforcement support concealed carry for law-abiding gun owners, and some law enforcement agencies even support Constitutional Carry.

* 86% of law enforcement agencies state that the way to reduce casualties in mass shootings is to allow citizens to carry firearms concealed.

* 81% of law enforcement agencies support arming teachers and school administrators as a way to prevent mass killers on campus.

Third, cite studies which demonstrate that defensive gun uses occur frequently.

To help you in your quest to shut down the anti-gun liberals, there are two (2) ground-breaking studies done during Democratic administrations.

The first of these studies was with the Clinton Justice Department in 1997. Anti-gun researchers conceded that guns are used 1.5 million time annually for self-defense.

The second of these studies was the Obama Centers for Disease Control in 2013. The CDC funded study found that anywhere from 500,000 to 3 million times a year, guns are being used in self-defense. Translated that means that guns are used 16 – 100 times more often to save a life than to take a life.

Fourth, debunk asinine scientific studies that supposedly discredit the number of self-defense cases in this country. The most well known of these bogus studies was by Arthur Kellerman in 1986. He came up with a bogus figure that a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to kill the homeowner than to help him. So how did he arrive at this bullshit statistic? He specifically excluded the overwhelming number of self-defense cases from his study. This exclusion omitted the majority, roughly 95% of the instances where the homeowners used a gun in self-defense merely by brandishing their guns or by firing a warning shot. Kellerman has since backed away

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Gun Control Failure

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

Gun control does not work. Period! That is because criminals, by their very nature, don’t obey the law.

Again, to combat the anti-gun left, you need to cite specific examples of how gun control fails miserably. Here is an example you can use. The victim’s name was Carol Browne, a New Jersey hairdresser. She was murdered outside her New Jersey home in 2015 by her ex-boyfriend, a violent felon who threatened her many times. She was killed by a man of whom the police were fully aware! She had gotten a restraining order against him, and even installed security cameras and an alarm system. Then she went about the arduous and complicated task of purchasing a firearm in New Jersey.

Carol applied for a permit to purchase a handgun on April 21 of that year. On June 3, as she was still waiting for permission to purchase a handgun, her ex showed up at her home and viciously stabbed her to death. Although state law required applicants be issued their Firearms Purchaser ID card within 30 days, she still had not received it 43 days after application, the day her ex violently killed her. Click here to read her tragic story.

Gun control does not stop criminals. It merely criminalizes law-abiding gun owners. Do you remember the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut? You better, because the anti-gun left does, and uses this horrific event as a stepping stone for their ridiculous rhetoric. Click here to read an unbiased view of the massacre, a view which does not contain leftist words like “Assault Rifle” or “High Capacity Magazines”. The attacker, who was not eligible to own guns, first went to his mother’s house, stole her guns, then killed her as his first victim.

Can you name a gun control law that would have prevented that tragedy? Universal background checks (whatever that is)? Gun-free school zones? Permit waiting times? Gun purchase waiting times? Which law would have prevented the shooter from obtaining a firearm? Actually, “universal background checks” is the left’s euphemism of a gun registry…something completely illegal per the U.S. Constitution.

The answer is “none”. The killer got into his mother’s safe, stole her firearms, then killed her, as his first victim? Then he continued on to the elementary school. So, what law would have prevented this? The killer broke countless laws and bypassed several existing gun control restrictions. Again, so what law would have stopped him from acquiring those weapons?

This failure of these laws is one of the most powerful arguments that gun rights activists can use. If you use the failure of these laws, which fits the colloquial definition of insanity…doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result, you will find this is a mic-drop moment.

Also, background checks fail to stop bad guys from getting their hands on guns. The background check system is known as NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check system). Here in Pennsylvania, we have PICS (Pennsylvania Instant Control System) which is tied into NICS. NICS was inaugurated in 1998. The anti-gun left treats NICS as the holy grail of gun control. It was snake oil sold to the American public as an essential tool to “keep guns out of the wrong hands”. The problem is that gun purchasers and concealed carry permit holders can pass the background check at the time of the gun purchase or permit application. But this system cannot tell if someone will commit a crime in the future. Nothing can.

The NICS background check system is ineffective and dangerous. These checks target the law-abiding. Do you think a criminal with a rap sheet is going to go into a Bass Pro Shop and purchase a gun the legal way via a mandatory background check? Over 95% of the initial NICS denials are “false positives”, which means the overwhelming majority of those denied are not the ones who want to rob the local convenience store. In fact, the last year on record, 2021, only 12 people were actually prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for trying to illegally purchase a gun, during a year when over 25 million background checks were conducted. This means that the people being denied are not the dangerous felons this system was meant to stop. The rationale for the denials is for stupid reasons…an unpaid parking ticket, having the same name as a bad guy, or engaging in a bar fight 50 years ago. Yes, those being denied can appeal it, but the fight is lengthy process. According to USA Today, the Obama Administration illegally diverted every single one of its FBI Appeal Examiners to other duties, making it impossible for the agency to overturn mistaken denials. Some appellants had to wait over 18 months for their denial appeal to be heard.

These background checks can also lead to illegal gun registrations. Our Founding Fathers deliberately put into the Constitution that the government is not permitted to have a list or registration of gun owners, for fear of future gun confiscations. Every time I process a PICS background check for a customer’s gun transfer, I have to provide the customer’s driver’s license number and their date of birth into the PICS system. The system responds with the all the pertinent personal information of the transferee. Eventhough the state doesn’t know what kind of gun is being transferred, they know that on a specific date and time, John Doe required a background check for a gun.

This is the screen on the PICS website in which I enter the gun transferee’s information (green fields). The big question is: “when this information is submitted, is the data being stored in a gun registry database, or it is merely retrieving the transferee’s data already on file via their driver’s license?”

In 2021 came an astounding report from the General Accounting Office (GAO). “The Biden Administration in just the past year alone stockpiled the records of more than 54 million U.S. gun owners and is poised to drastically alter gun regulations to ensure that information on Americans who own firearms ultimately ends up in the Federal Government’s hands, according to internal ATF documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.”

In fact, according to the New York Times, the ATF compiled so many records on gun owners, that a floor collapsed at its West Virginia site.

This table here lists mass shootings since 2009. ALL of the attackers passed their background checks. The only pro-gun organization which opposed this law, was Gun Owners of America. The GOA rationale is that they will not support legislation which infringes upon a God-given right. We don’t ask journalists to get fact checked before publishing something, per our 1^st Amendment right to free speech. We don’t ask clergy to get prior approval before conducting religious services, per our 1^st Amendment right to freedom of religion. So why would we force law-abiding gun owners to get government permission before exercising their 2^nd Amendment right.

If attempting to argue with an anti-gun leftist, you must use their foolish thinking against them. They claim waiting periods and background checks might save one life. The argument here is what if these measures actually cost many lives, and use the examples above.

But the reality is that these measures give bureaucrats the ability to say “no”. This was the basis of the Supreme Court’s “Bruen” decision in June of 2022. There were a handful of states which were considered “may issue” states as it relates to getting a concealed carry permit. Each of these states may issue you a concealed carry permit if you showed good character or need. For reference, Pennsylvania is “shall issue” state, which means that the state shall issue you a permit unless they can prove you are not entitled to one. They cannot deny you a permit because some bureaucrat doesn’t like you. The Bruen decision leveled the playing field by making all 50 states “shall issue” states. Both Communist New York and the People’s Republic of New Jersey hate that decision because they can no longer say “no”. So, New York, for example, is now attempting to pass laws which circumvent the Bruen decision by basically making the entire state a gun-free zone. Eventually that will go up in front of the Supremes because they are denying citizens their basic 2^nd Amendment right. And numerous times, the U.S. 2nd District Court, which oversees New York, has told New York their laws are unconstitutional. But New York doesn’t care, because there are no negative ramifications of noncompliance. If governor Hochul or attorney general James were hauled off to jail by federal marshals, they may reconsider.

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Gun-Free Zones

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

Gun-free zones are a mass killer’s paradise. Since 1950, over 90% of the public mass shootings in the U.S. occurred in gun-free zones.

Dr. Lee Silverman would be dead today if he did not break his own employer’s rule about not having a gun inside the hospital.

There is a sign along the perimeter fence of a hospital not far from me, in Darby, PA (a Philadelphia suburb), telling everyone who enters the property they cannot carry guns inside. But in 2014, a patient with psychiatric problems ignored the sign and walked into the hospital intent on killing as many people as he could.

But what he did not count on was that his number one intended victim, his doctor, ignored the hospital’s “no guns” policy and was carrying a gun of his own. Dr. Lee Silverman is a lawful permit holder. Once the gun man attempted to shoot his doctor, Dr. Silverman crouched behind his desk and shot back, hitting the gunman three times in the mid-section. The local police chief Donald Molineaux said “without a doubt, I believe the doctor saved lives.” And the Delaware County DA, Jack Whelan said if the doctor had not brought his handgun to work, he’d be dead and believes other people would be dead also. He didn’t press charges against the doctor.

Or how about a more recent incident involving “no guns allowed” signs, the shooting at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana. There were signs at every entrance, but as criminals do, the bad guy ignored them. He was stopped by a law-abiding concealed carry permit holder who ignored the entrance signs. Before a good guy with a gun stopped him, he had already killed three and injured two. The good guy who stopped the carnage was initially handcuffed, but was later released when CCTV footage revealed that he stopped the gun man’s attacks.

The food court at the Greenwood Park Mall, where the shooting took place. The bad guy first went into a nearby restroom. Upon exiting the restroom, he began shooting patrons in this food court.

Ironically, in both cases, the bad guys were stopped because good guys ignored these signs and carried into buildings whose building managers decided not to allow guns for their irrational fear of people getting shot. Yet people were shot anyway, because what those business managers don’t realize is that by putting up those signs, they are making their establishments “soft targets”.

There are two takeaways from both these incidences. First, bad guys intent on doing harm ignore those signs, and second, good guys with guns can save a lot of lives before the police arrive on the scene, because across the nation, the average response time of the police is 11 minutes.

The good guy with a gun, left, 22-year old Elisjsha Dicken, killed mass shooter, Jonathan Sapirman inside the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana, within 2 minutes of Sapirman opening fire, quicker than the police response time.

The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) has studied every public mass shooting since 1950. Their research indicated that 94% of all public mass shootings occur in gun-free zones. Go back to the previous blog and take another look at the locales of the more recent mass shootings to justify this statistic. And more importantly, ALL of these attackers passed their background checks. Proof again that background checks are worthless in identifying future actions.

Arguing with an anti-gun liberal, you need these two pieces of information in order to argue effectively.

These killers are not stupid in their location selection. They deliberately seek out gun-free zones. Here are a few examples, and their rationale for doing so:

Take the case of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting in 2012. The shooter’s original plan was to shoot up an airport, but seeing all the cops there, he decided on theaters. But he did not pick the one closest to his home, which ironically was the largest one. He deliberately picked one in Aurora, the ONLY theater within a 20-mile radius which had “no guns allowed” signs prominently displayed, the theater basically saying to concealed carriers “you can’t carry in here”. A perfect “soft target”.

Crime scene ballistic trajectory markers in the movie theater showing that James Holmes stood in front of the seats when he killed 12 innocent movie-goers. How many of those victims thought they would be safe because of the “no guns allows” signs?

In Orlando in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 13, 2016, a mass murderer went into the Pulse nightclub and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more. Prosecutors said his original plan was to open fire at the high traffic Disney shopping complex but decided to move to a softer target (Pulse) after seeing armed security at the Disney complex. As a sidebar, a good friend of mine owned a gun store in central Florida in 2016. This mass shooter patronized my friend’s store and my friend turned him away, stating “something just doesn’t feel right.”

In El Paso on 2019, a racist gunman killed 23 people at a Walmart. His manifesto said he would be going after “soft targets” or people who are disarmed. Now where was he going to find soft targets in pro-gun Texas? He lived in Dallas and committed his shooting spree in El Paso, 600 miles away from his home in Dallas. Why? Because he knew that every weekend, Mexican nationals would cross the border in droves to go shopping in El Paso. And these border crossers would be prohibited from carrying firearms across the border.

…and there are many more examples out there if you take the time to research them.

The FBI prepares “active shooter” reports. These reports definitively show that when a gun owner is present, mass shootings are either prevented or mitigated 94% of the time. But the lame stream media is almost entirely silent when it comes time to report good guys with guns. Rather, the media continues to report that mass shootings occur nearly every day. Which is a total lie. They cherry pick their stories relating to fatalities. In fact, more people are killed every year by automobiles than by guns. But if the media were to do a feature story on deaths by automobile, people would be calling on Congress to ban cars. Their job is to push public opinion to support additional gun control. So when researching video links some of the mass shooters I identify in this blog, it was very difficult to find a link from an unbiased, leftist news source.

The one question that anti-gunners ignore at all costs is “what if gun-free zones actually cost lives?” Or stated differently, “what if gun control policies cost lives?”

In 2014, a gunman opened fire in Fort Hood, Texas, killing 3 and wounding 14. This was the second mass killing at this Army base in five years. There is a federal law prohibiting servicemen from carrying guns unless they are Military Police or Security Forces. Again, another soft target because the prohibition on carrying guns and the fact that the base is large and the MPs cannot respond quickly enough.

I love driving past schools which post signs similar to this. Imagine if this sign had been posted at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Parkland High School in Florida, or Uvalde Elementary School in Texas.

But it is not just openly displaying a sign on the premises. It is also internal company policies, found only in employment manuals. An example of such a policy involved a woman named Kate Nixon of Virginia Beach. In 2019 she noticed a coworker acting strangely and violently, and told her husband about it. He suggested she bring a gun to work inside her purse, but she refused his suggestion as she was afraid she will lose her job if discovered. Sadly, that decision was a fatal one as she was one of 12 victims at the hands of that same coworker. She had a choice to make. Carry a gun and lose her job if discovered or not carry a gun and face this killer. No one should have to make that decision at the workplace. But a question for everyone facing the same dilemma. Is your job worth it, if the employer does not care about human life? Because many of these businesses who have “no-gun” policies also have no armed security onsite to protect workers. Click here to learn more of this tragedy.

Another place mass shooters love is schools, which are federally mandated to be gun-free zones. Yet, the law allows for exceptions, as adults with concealed carry permits are allowed to carry inside schools. As of 2018, there are 18 states which permit teachers to carry guns.

According to the CPRC, there has NEVER been a mass shooting attempted at any school where teachers are armed. And I love it when I drive past a school which has a sign reading “school personnel are armed and will use whatever force is necessary to protect students.”

If you were a bad guy with malice in your heart and wanted to inflict as much carnage as possible, which target of opportunity will you select. One which has “no guns allowed” signs posted or one which has “personnel are armed and will use whatever force is necessary to protect…” signs posted.

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Gun Control Abroad

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

All but two of the world’s 25 worst mass shootings have occurred outside the United States.

Residents of other countries think Americans have a “love affair” with guns. The media tries to fraudulently tell us that in countries like Australia and England, each of which has banned guns entirely and in doing so, has completely wiped-out mass shootings. But the realities are that after gun control was enacted, crime rates have actually risen, and mass shootings have not stopped. A comprehensive international study showed that by the turn of this century, Australia had one of the highest crime rates in the world, a rate well above that of the U.S. And now just over 20 years into this century, murders and gun crimes are higher than before the gun ban of 1996. Australia responded with strict gun control in 1996 due to a massacre that left 35 people dead in the town of Port Arthur on the island of Tasmania.

The anti-gun leftists claim that America is the murder capital of the world. They selectively choose countries with low murder rates to “prove” that America’s murder rates are higher. They cherry-pick their data. The reality is when it comes to murder rates, America is not even in the top 100. In fact, America is in the safe, bottom half. What the media is not telling you is those countries with high murder rates also have the strictest gun-control laws.

The media ignores countries like Venezuela, which banned private gun ownership in 2012. Then the Venezuelan government enforced that ban by confiscating guns, similar to what the Nazis did in pre-World War 2 Germany. Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world, over 20 times higher than here in the U.S.

And in North America, the media focuses on Canada and ignores Mexico. Mexico’s murder rate is 6 times greater than ours.

And guns are not the reason. If guns are banned, criminals will use other means to achieve their desired ends. Here is a small list of 6 other types of weapons used to commit mass murder:

* 2,996 murdered with utility knives and airplanes (September 11, 2001)

* 918 murdered with cyanide laced fruit drink in Jonestown, Guyana

* Up to 500 murdered with machetes in Nigeria

* 168 murdered at the Oklahoma Federal Building with fertilizer and a U-Haul truck in Oklahoma City

* 87 murdered with matches and gasoline in the Bronx

* 86 run over and murdered with a box truck in Nice, France

* 50 murdered in a coal mine attack in China

In order for these other countries to justify their draconian gun control policies, such as Australia and England, these nations have been accused of under-reporting their actual crime statistics. In England, “officers said that pressure to convince the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in a long list of ruses to ‘massage’ statistics”. According to Sgt. Mike Bennett, officers have become increasingly frustrated with the practice of manipulating statistics. He said “the crime figures are meaningless. Police everywhere know what’s going on.” A report from the British Inspectorate of Constabulary concluded that because of the “differences in reporting criteria, comparison of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham.”

And England is not alone. In Australia it is happening too. An Aussie newspaper reported that “the data suggests that despite our tough anti-gun laws, thousands of weapons are either being stolen or entering the country illegally.” This revelation came to light because police down under were also under-reporting the crime data.

Bottom line is that banning guns across the globe is not working. When an anti-gun leftist claims that other countries do not experience mass killings compared to the United States, that’s a lie. When an anti-gun leftist claims that banning guns, Americans will be safer, that is also a lie. Banning guns does not prevent evil hearts and minds from getting firearms. And if guns were ever banned, these bad guys would use other deadly instruments to carry out their crimes.

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Guns Prevent Tyranny

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting. And no Founding Father ever said “One if by land. Two if by sea. The deer are coming! The deer are coming!”

A former mayor of Boston once said “I can’t imagine a single sports hunter who needs an AK-47 or an Uzi to shoot deer.” I can just see Yoda saying “The stupidity is strong in this one.”

The Second Amendment is not about deer hunting. Owning guns is not a (government-issued) privilege. It is a God-given right of the people to protect themselves from their own government.

James Madison, known as the Father of the Constitution, said in Federalist 46 that:

The Constitution preserves “the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation. . . [where] the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

So why are these world governments afraid to trust the people with arms? It’s very simple. They’re afraid because if they were to start abusing an armed people, then the people would shoot back. How many times have we heard stories of bullies continuing their bullying until the victims fight back? The Supreme Court addressed this issue in the DC vs. Heller decision of 2008. On pages 24 and 25 of that very famous decision, the Supreme Court said that the right to keep and bear arms – is essential to “resist tyranny”.

To argue with anti-gun liberals on this issue, one must go back and revisit our own country’s history. The Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775 at the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The colonial militia was made up of average people: farmers, storekeepers, blacksmiths, doctors, etc. They stood up bravely to the what has been argued as the best fighting force of their day – the British Redcoats. But why did they feel they needed to stand up to the Redcoats? What was so atrocious that they needed to stand up with guns? The Redcoats were attempting to confiscate the guns and gun powder of the colonists in Concord. But the colonists did not simply prevent the confiscation of guns and powder. The colonists knew that if they gave up their guns, freedom and independence would be lost. They beat the Redcoats so badly that the Redcoats threw their guns in a nearby pond and fled for their lives.

An armed people do not have to be stronger than their oppressor. They simply need to serve as a credible deterrent.

Let’s look at another smaller, but credible deterrent. Take Switzerland for example. The biggest testimony to the right to bear arms came in World War II. The only country Adolf Hitler did not attack was Switzerland. Every other country he conquered had a standing, professional army. Why did he not attack Switzerland?

Every Swiss male between the ages of 20 to 55 must serve 17 weeks of training in the Swiss army. At the end of his training the recruit returns home, and brings home with him the fully automatic rifle he trained on, an allotment of ammo, his uniform, a military pack and a CBR mask.

And on a personal level, any wonder why Switzerland has the lowest crime rate in the world! Everyone is heavily armed! So, for the Swiss, it has been this way for hundreds of years. This concept has helped Switzerland from being sucked into the many wars which have ravaged Europe.

Also, what is not widely known is that Switzerland is loaded with actual hidden underground bunkers, with heavy artillery aimed at its roads at key border crossings. Had Hitler attempted to drive Panzers into Switzerland, the Wehrmacht would have been annihilated by that artillery.

This was best explained by General George Patton:

“Even Adolf Hitler’s Wehrmacht (army) which conquered all of Europe in the early months of World War II, chose not to attack Switzerland, despite the fact that the small country was in the crossroads of Western Europe…. In a classic example of dissuasion at work, Hitler’s general staff recommended against an invasion on the grounds that the costs would be disproportionate to the gains… In short, Switzerland is an armed bunker…”

If you haven’t yet figured it out yet, gun confiscation is a prelude to genocide. There was a study done years ago by the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) which analyzed seven (7) major genocides in the 20^th century:

Turkey
Soviet Union
China
Germany
Guatemala
Uganda
Cambodia

In every one of these atrocities, gun confiscation preceded genocide!

Most people are not up to speed with the genocide in Cambodia, so let me fill you in. In the 1970s, this country suffered the worst genocide of those listed above, as a percentage of the population…way more than Germany in World War II. Almost one third of the population was murdered by a Marxist government, known as the Khmer Rouge, and its despotic leader, Pol Pot.

What happened? First the government confiscated firearms from law-abiding citizens. Then, they slaughtered them. An eyewitness said this to New Yorker magazine:

“[The] first Khmer Rouge soldiers to arrive came on trucks from the forest, with other soldiers running behind them. The trucks stopped in the marketplace. [Mrs.] Eang watched soldiers stride onto the porches of the houses and knock on the doors and ask the people who answered if they had any weapons. The soldiers said ‘we are here to protect you and no one has a need for a weapon anymore’.

“People who owned no weapons were forced to stand aside and allow the soldiers to look for themselves. The roundup of weapons took nine or ten days, and once the soldiers concluded that the villagers were no longer armed, they dropped their pretense of friendliness.

“The soldiers said that everyone would have to leave the village for a while, so that the troops could search for weapons; when the search was finished, they could return.”

Once the civilians were disposed of their firearms, the massacres began.

The JPFO interviewed Holocaust survivor, Thomas Haas, who spent time in Dachau concentration camp. “Before Adolf Hitler came to power, there was a black market in firearms, but the German people were so conditioned to be law-abiding, that they would never consider buying an unregistered gun. The German people really believed that only hoodlums owned such guns. What fools we were… There is no doubt in my mind that millions of lives could have been saved if the people has not been ‘brainwashed’ about gun ownership and had been well armed. Hitler’s thugs and goons were not very brave when confronted by a gun. Gun haters always want to forget the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which is a perfect example of how a rag tag, half-starved group of Jews took up 10 handguns and made assholes out of the Nazis.”

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Gun Control Is Racist

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

This blog contains excerpts from the book “Fighting Back” from Eric Pratt, Senior Vice President of Gun Owners of America.

we all know about the famous “I Have A Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 in front of the Lincoln Memorial. While his speech is well-known, what is not so widely known is Dr. King’s views on Firearms.

Dr. King believed in firearms for protection. People who visited Dr. King’s home described it as an arsenal. In fact, one visitor to his home sat in a recliner and a gun fell off the wall and almost hit him. After Dr. King’s home was bombed in 1956, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. But he was denied. This rejection underscores the danger of gun control. It turns rights into privileges, allowing prejudiced officials to revoke rights of decent people at will.

One commentator said it best:

“Even though King’s house had just been bombed, his application for a concealed carry permit was still rejected. Few people in the U.S. needed a permit to carry more than Reverend King did in 1956, but since the local police had discretion in their decision-making, King, who no doubt, met the requirements of the law, was rejected nonetheless. This was the norm when the applicant was black.”

These handgun licensing laws in the late 1800s and early 1900s were at the heart of enforcing discrimination. They were clearly calculated to keep black Americans disarmed. On paper, they seemed “equal” because everyone had to ask for permission, until a Florida judge let the proverbial cat out of the bag by stating that such laws were “passed for the purpose of disarming negro laborers [and were] never intended to be applied to the white population.”

One black journalist, Ida Wells, documented many of the lynchings that took place in the 19^th Century. “The only time blacks actually escaped a lynch mob was when they had a gun and used it in self-defense.”

During the Civil Rights era of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Southern Democrat police departments would often look the other way when blacks were being abused. Former Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, tells the story of how her father would take his shotgun, and along with other armed blacks in the neighborhood, would form nightly patrols to protect the town’s people from the KKK. And because of seeing these patrols is the reason Rice is such a strong opponent of gun control.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the march on Selma, Alabama in 1965. If you haven’t heard about it, shame on your school for not teaching it. The march was intended to bring attention to the mistreatment of blacks that was occurring. The police formed a picket line at the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma. The police fired tear gas into the crowd, clubbed them, bull whipped them, hosed them down, and used dogs on them. The date, March 7, 1965 became known as Bloody Sunday.

Another peaceful student protest was scheduled a few days later in Jonesboro, Louisiana. But the Deacons for Defense, a group of four (4) armed black men, were determined not to have another Bloody Sunday. The police arrived and called for firetrucks. As the firefighters were unraveling their hoses in an attempt to hose down the protesting students, one of the Deacons was heard telling the others to shoot as soon as the water was turned on. The police officers retreated and ordered the firemen to roll up their hoses and depart. The Deacons successfully and peacefully used their weapons to prevent official violence against law-abiding students.

Law-abiding citizens were being forcibly disarmed. That’s been the history of gun control. It’s a tool that has be used time and again to control people. And despite the bullshit rhetoric that “gun control makes people safer”, that is simply not the case. Governments act in the self-interests of the ruling class and don’t always act in the best interests of their citizens, which is why we have the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right of people to bear arms, without infringement.

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Gun Activism 101

Gun Rights / By Gary Wolf

Don’t set out to change the world. Begin with your own sphere of influence.

I read and watch videos of everything I can get my hands on about guns…gun training, gun control, gun stupidity, Alec Baldwin, everything. The more I read and watch, the more I am becoming a pro-gun activist.

For me, the biggest game changer came in 2004 when I became a biological father for the first time. My little girl was the apple of my eye, and I vowed that no harm would ever come to her…at least not on my watch. Fast forward to today, and she is an 19-year old sophomore at the local Penn State branch campus.

I realize that at some point in time my protection watch will end and she will be on her own. Either as an upper class man at Penn State’s main campus, or after graduation, in the real world. So, she needs to be educated and trained on protecting herself. And that has happened.

My daughter is my assistant, my “Vanna” so to speak, in my training classes. She periodically comes up to me and asks if we can go to the range, to which I always agree, for some father-daughter bonding time. And it doesn’t hurt that the range is very close to some restaurants that we can patronize after our range visit for some wings and beers (well, me beers, her iced tea). I recently bought a new handgun made by Walther for women. I asked my daughter to try it at the range, under the supervision of the range safety officer (RSO). She refused, until the RSO gently coaxed her to try it. She loves shooting this gun now. And when I am home cleaning my guns, my daughter frequently picks up this unloaded gun and practices her training exercises. And in my classes, it is my daughter, using this gun, who shows students how to handle it, rack it, load it and unload it (using snap caps [dummy rounds]).

I realized that my daughter and the rest of my family is my sphere of influence. And so are the students of my classes. These folks, too, are my spheres of influence. These one-on-one relationships I have for four hours in my classes that are the most powerful mechanism for changing points-of-view on gun rights.

Here are the steps I would suggest that people like me dedicate their time and energy to as a pro-gun advocate:

Learn history – I bet there are numerous people out their who have never heard of the Cambodian Khmer Rouge and the atrocities they and other oppressive regimes have done to their respective citizens. Learn how racist gun control here in the U.S. disarmed innocent, law-abiding black citizens.
Learn your Constitutional rights, and know what the government is permitted to do or prohibited from doing. It is hard to be a pro-gun advocate if you don’t know what you are advocating.
Know the lunacy of current gun control laws, such as “gun free zones” or “assault weapons bans”, and that every gun law is unconstitutional. Referencing my daughter and every other college student under 21, the fact that 18 – 21 year olds cannot purchase guns is insane. My daughter is a college commuter. What would happen if she had en evening midterm only to be attacked or raped walking to her car following the exam. As it stands now, she can only pepper spray the attacker. Stupid f*cking law!
Join pro-gun organizations. The best, by far, is Gun Owners of America. As soon as liberal anti-gun governmental agencies attempt to restrict your gun rights more, GOA is right on top of it with filing law suits. A recent example is regarding the idiot mayor of Philadelphia, Bill Kenney. Instead of forcing his leftist District Attorney to crack down on violent criminals rather than issue no bail arrests, he attempted to institute an executive order which would have affected only law-abiding gun owners. His idiotic order prohibited guns in the city’s playgrounds, which went against Pennsylvania’s “preemption” law. So the GOA filed suit the following day. A week later, a judge sided with GOA. The other great thing about GOA is they make it very easy for its members to contact your state and federal legislators, to sign petitions, and to ask them to vote a specific way. Simply click on a web link, enter name and address, and an email is automatically sent on your behalf. Believe it or not, being bombarded with constituent emails does work.
Bring friends along. Bring one or more friends with you to one of our training classes. Many of our student are liberals who “see the light” or people who are not yet gun owners but are thinking about becoming one. Because in our view, a liberal is simply a conservative who has not been attacked at gunpoint.
Don’t worry about what you can’t control. Okay, so you don’t have the budget of the anti-gun liberal media. Do what you can at a grass-roots level. Talk to your family and friends. Invite me to your home. Come to one of my many one-hour lectures.
Attend gun shows. I attend every local gun show I can. No, I don’t have an unlimited budget to buy guns. But I go to gun shows every chance I get because for the time I am attending the shows, I am surrounded by like-minded pro-gun advocates. Everyone needs an ally in their camp, if for no other reason than to commiserate how stupid our government is.

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