Mr VJP

You're joking, right? Everything posted above addresses your question in every way possible and in great detail. If you're serious, you either didn't read any of the links, or just can't understand the issue. What specifically do you think wasn't addressed?

http://takimag.com/article/the_american_nosedive We’ve fallen from the top perch in education, wealth, infrastructure, and life expectancy. Every cultural icon and historical conquest that was once deemed a matter of pride is now designated as cause for shame and perpetual self-flogging. Uncle Sam has been recast as a creepy relative who molests you. But to protest any of these ongoing cultural inversions is to invite scorn, to be labeled paranoid and stuck in the past.

I joined the NRA 40 years ago and became a lifer 30 years ago. I've also signed up about a dozen others over the years that would not have done it on their own. My 3 children are lifers. If I have to buy a gift for any non-member who is a shooter, gun collector or hunter, they get a 5 year membership in the NRA for $100. A lot of non-members will take offense here again, but in my opinion, when it comes to the gun control fight, if you're not NRA, you're nothing.

[table] [tr] [td]Friday, July 01, 2011[/td][/tr] [tr] [td] [/td][/tr] [tr] [td] Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, newly appointed by anti-gun Mayor Rahm Emanuel, has wasted no time in sharing his views on Chicagoans’ individual right to keep and bear arms. Less than a month after his approval by the City Council, McCarthy attended a service at St. Sabina’s Church (a parish led by anti-gun extremist Father Michael Pfleger) and made a speech claiming that a lack of restrictive gun control laws is “government sponsored racism.” Those with a better understanding of history will find themselves confused trying to interpret McCarthy’s logic, as decades of scholarship have proven just the opposite; that gun control, rather than its absence, has often been used as a means of government sponsored racism. In his 1995 Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy article, “The Racist Roots of Gun Control,” Second Amendment scholar Clayton E. Cramer outlines the historical case that “racism underlies gun control laws.” Cramer notes that racist gun control in America stretches as far back as 1751 with a French law in the Louisiana territory that required colonists to “‘f necessary,’ beat ‘any black carrying any potential weapon, such as a cane.’” Though Superintendent McCarthy might be excused for not looking that far back, he should certainly be aware of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the case of McDonald v. Chicago. In a concurring opinion in that case, Justice Clarence Thomas explained that in the years preceding the Civil War, “Many legislatures amended their laws prohibiting slaves from carrying firearms to apply the prohibition to free blacks as well.” After the Civil War, little improved. Justice Thomas writes: “Some States formally prohibited blacks from possessing firearms… Others enacted legislation prohibiting blacks from carrying firearms without a license, a restriction not imposed on whites.” Other Reconstruction Era (and later) laws were less candid. For example, an 1870 Tennessee law barred the sale of all but the most expensive pistols, effectively disarming newly freed blacks and the poor. New York’s Sullivan Law of 1911, requiring a permit for handgun possession, was largely targeted at Italians and other disfavored immigrant groups. (That law is still on the books.) And the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was denied a concealed carry permit in Alabama under a similar discretionary permitting law—even after his house had been bombed. We suggest that in the future, Superintendent McCarthy might do a little more research before conflating respect for a fundamental individual right with its antithesis, government-sponsored racism.[/td][/tr][/table]

[table] [tr] [td]Friday, July 01, 2011[/td][/tr] [tr] [td] [/td][/tr] [tr] [td] This week, the most visible gun control advocate in this country, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, appeared on MSNBC and CNN, promoting his new TV ad urging that Congress impose so-called "terrorist watchlist" gun control legislation. The ad features an edited portion of the well-known video of a scraggly-looking al Qaeda misfit claiming -- falsely -- that jihadists can buy machine guns at gun shows in the United States, without a background check. Everyone in Congress knows the machine gun claim is a lie, and surely most are familiar by now with the many problems of "watchlist" legislation. But when Bloomberg appeared on MSBNC's "The Last Word," hosted by self-proclaimed socialist Lawrence O'Donnell, O'Donnell didn't blame Bloomberg's dishonesty for his pet legislation's failure to move. O'Donnell instead said Congress is "in favor of illegal guns," to which Bloomberg outrageously added, "Congress must believe that there is a constitutional amendment that says the right of terrorists to buy arms shall not be infringed." O'Donnell asked, "What does the NRA say?" and Bloomberg replied, "They won't say anything." That, of course, is another lie. NRA has said -- many times -- that 95 percent of the people who are on the watchlist are already ineligible to possess firearms in the United States, because (according to the FBI) they are not U.S. citizens or legal resident aliens of the United States. NRA has also pointed out repeatedly that the "watchlist" legislation would violate a watchlisted person's right to due process of law, by preventing him from clearing his name and getting his firearm rights restored in a fair hearing. NRA has also said that supporters of the legislation have yet to come up with a single violent crime committed by a watchlisted person with a gun acquired after a federal background check. And NRA has noted federal studies showing that less than one percent of imprisoned gun criminals obtained their guns at gun shows. That Bloomberg resorts to lies shows something about his character. That he resorts to lies that are so easily disproven shows how desperate he has become, as he tries to convince the American people and Congress to go along with his agenda. And maybe that should tell the billionaire anti-gun gadfly that some things cannot be bought at any price.[/td][/tr][/table]

[table] [tr] [td]Friday, July 01, 2011[/td][/tr] [tr] [td] [/td][/tr] [tr] [td] Working with the nation's top anti-gun activists to divert attention from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' "Fast and Furious" scandal, U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, held a "forum" on Thursday, June 30 to address what he sees as too narrow a focus in the ongoing investigation of the controversial program and by the committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). Not surprisingly, Rep. Cummings and his allies contend that Mexico's violent crime problem is due to the supposed lack of gun control laws in the U.S. NRA and others have refuted this ridiculous claim on numerous occasions. The forum comes just weeks after Chairman Issa held a series of hearings on the reckless operation that pushed Arizona gun stores to sell thousands of guns to suspicious buyers, despite objections from dealers and BATFE field agents alike. Among those participating in the forum were anti-gun stalwarts Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, and Paul Helmke, the soon-to-be-ex-president of the Brady Campaign. Unsurprisingly, the groups tried to exploit the Mexican crime situation in an effort to advance their anti-gun political agendas and attempt to gain relevancy. For example, according to a FoxNews.com story reporting on the forum, the Brady Campaign's Helmke blamed America's gun laws for the illegal flow of U.S. guns into Mexico, saying, "As the six-month anniversary of Tucson approaches, we have still seen no change in our nation's weak or non-existent gun laws. We still have no federal law criminalizing gun trafficking, banning assault weapons and magazines or closing the loopholes in our Brady Background Check system that help arm dangerous killers and supply gun traffickers." Perhaps most absurdly, during the forum's question and answer session, VPC's Rand claimed that "No one wants to ban 'standard' rifles, shotguns or handguns." VPC itself, of course, has long supported a ban on handguns, and the group's director, Josh Sugarmann, is a former staff member of another handgun ban group. The Fox News article further reports that Rep. Issa is questioning Rep. Cummings' timing and motive in holding the forum. "This is a predictable maneuver from a minority that has sought to obstruct the investigation into Justice Department sanctioned gunwalking," Issa spokeswoman Becca Glover Watkins told FoxNews.com. "It will not affect the committee's continued focus on a reckless operation that has been linked to deaths on both sides of the border." That investigation should continue until it gets full answers to the many troubling questions "Fast and Furious" has raised so far.[/td][/tr][/table]

Second Amendment: ATF Fires Whistleblower The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) appears to have retaliated against the agent who blew the whistle on Project Gunrunner. Agent Vince Cefalu, who has been with the agency for 24 years, was fired last week, and he says the move was politically motivated. "Aside from Jay Dobyns, I don't know of anyone that's been more vocal about ATF mismanagement than me," said Cefalu, a senior special agent based in Dublin, California. "That's why this is happening." (Dobyns is an agent based in Tucson.) Cefalu can appeal his termination, but he remains on "paid administrative leave" during the process. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) released a report detailing that ATF agents say gun laws need to be tightened in response to this scandal. Apparently, Cummings believes that the answer to a bureaucracy run amok is to give that bureaucracy even greater power to go after law-abiding citizens. As we predicted, the Left is using this episode to push for further gun control. "These reforms are essential to help law enforcement to stop guns from getting into the hands of the world's most dangerous criminals," Cummings said. "Prosecutors and law enforcement agents should not have to bend over backward to imprison those who provide military-grade weapons to murderers." Apparently, Cummings was absent through the entire hearing process. The whole scandal involved ATF agents facilitating the delivery of semiautomatic (not military-grade) weapons to drug cartels in Mexico. They were bending over backward all right, but to skirt the law, not enforce it.

Virgil, your ignorance is underwhelming..... http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat

[table][tr][td] I've just returned from the border between the United States and Mexico and I've never witnessed anything like the stinking, rotten level of murder, corruption, cover-up, and conspiracy confronting us today. This conspiracy ignited two years ago when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that your Second Amendment rights are to blame for the drug crimes and killings in Mexico. Holder and other top-level Obama Administration figures -- even the President himself -- claimed that 90% of the guns used by violent drug cartels were coming from American gun dealers. In short, they blamed our Second Amendment rights for the violence of the Mexican drug cartels. But leaked U.S. State Department cables have exposed this as a bald-faced LIE. These Obama Administration cables proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what the Mexican government already knew: That the drug cartels were getting guns -- along with fully-automatic weapons, grenade launchers, anti-personnel mines and other military hardware -- through Central America, NOT THE U.S. While these leaked cables exposed the lies propping up Obama's gun control agenda, administration officials at the highest levels pushed a strategy to fit their gun control aims. In a display of corruption and arrogance that's shocking even for this Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) launched Operation "Fast and Furious" -- an illegal pipeline for shipping guns into Mexico. With our government's full knowledge and complicity, BATFE higher-ups ordered firearms dealers to sell these guns illegally to straw purchasers. And it wasn't just a few guns... It was over two thousand!!! At the time, BATFE agents protested the insanity of Operation Fast and Furious, and the sheer stupidity of letting thousands of illegally purchased guns just walk over the border into the hands of criminals. But BATFE supervisors pushed back saying, "if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs." One of those "eggs" broke on the night of December 14, 2010. That night, 40-year old Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was in a remote Arizona canyon with a six-member tactical team that encountered a group of armed Mexican illegals. Sources said that the "illegal entrants" were in Arizona to rob cartel drug mules and other illegals. In the initial skirmish, the Border Patrol agents fired low-velocity shotgun beanbag rounds and were met with 7.62x39mm return fire. Officer Terry died in the exchange. And when the bandits fled, they left behind two AK-style rifles that were traced to sales made under the Fast and Furious operation. Senator Charles Grassley (IA) and Representative Darrell Issa (CA) are defending our Second Amendment rights and fighting for justice for Agent Terry by holding Congressional hearings on Fast and Furious. But they're being stonewalled by Obama, Holder and others who are bent on sweeping the truth under the rug. They are withholding government documents that say exactly who ordered the operations. Government e-mails warn witnesses not to cooperate. Congressional subpoenas are being ignored. If you want to help NRA protect our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, our freedoms and our country from corrupt government officials, then I need you to take action today. That's why I'm counting on you to sign NRA's National Petition to Fire Eric Holder. It will only take a moment, but your signature on this petition is absolutely critical. You can sign the petition by clicking here now. When Attorney General Holder was questioned by Senator Charles Grassley about how guns that were allowed to "walk" out of gun shops during Operation Fast and Furious ended up at a U.S. Border Patrol Agent's murder scene, Holder said, "I frankly don't know." That one statement from our nation's top law-enforcement official cuts right to the heart of the matter and proves that Holder is either covering up for Obama, his failed gun control schemes, and the crimes committed, or he's incompetent. Either way, he can't be trusted with the powers of Attorney General, the law enforcement agencies he commands, the sanctity of the Second Amendment, or the lives of Federal agents. That's why NRA is launching a nationwide campaign to gather hundreds of thousands of signatures on this Petition to Fire Eric Holder, one of Obama's chief architects for his gun ban agenda. We must act now because the Obama Administration and Holder have crossed the line. If the Obama Administration is willing to endanger Americans by attacking our Second Amendment liberties, there's no limit to their arrogance and willingness to abuse power to achieve political gain, and they must be stopped. Thank you for doing your part by signing NRA's petition. As always, thank you for your friendship, your support and your words of encouragement. I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. Yours in Liberty, Wayne LaPierre Executive Vice President</blockquote> http://graphics.nra.org/wayne/SignPetition_Button.png[/img][/t] [table][tr][td] http://graphics.nra.org/wayne/NRA_Footer2-11.png[/img] [/t] [/td][/tr][/table][/td][/tr][/table]

On Saving the Bill of Rights We're losing our Bill of Rights. The reason why is so basic it's overlooked; though Thomas Jefferson warned us about this threat to individual liberty when he wrote, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Jefferson said this in a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey on January 6, 1816. It was the basic truth that we can't retain our liberty unless we first grasp it that impelled me to write Saving the Bill of Rights. After two years spent in the National Archives researching our founding documents and after interviewing top legal minds and historians, it's clear to me we need to heed Jefferson's warning, as the average American's ignorance of our Bill of Rights is what's allowing the federal government to steamroll over so many of our individual liberties. So as we approach Independence Day in what Francis Scott Key's "Star-Spangled Banner" called "the land of the free and the home of the brave!" I'm hoping people will pick up, if not my book, then at least the U.S. Constitution and acquaint themselves with the basis of our freedom. Just consider what would have happened if the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and so many others hadn't tirelessly educated, not just their members, but also legislators and the general public about what the Second Amendment clearly protects. If this education hadn't occurred, more lawmakers (and more judges) would have gone along with the Left's lie that the Second Amendment only protects now outdated state militias. Without this fight against ignorance we would have lost our individual right to bear arms. In fact, even with all the historical evidence clearly showing the Second Amendment is an individual right, the U.S. Supreme Court still voted 5-4. And this right could still be lost to the semantic spin of anti-gun activists if just one "conservative" Supreme Court justice is replaced by a "liberal" one. The same understanding needs to be fostered to build buttresses around our First Amendment's right to the freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion; for the Fourth Amendment's protection of "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"; for the Fifth Amendment's protection of our property-which was weakened by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 in Kelo v. New London-and for all the rest of our rights up to and including the Tenth Amendment's exclamation point on the fact that the federal government is restricted to its enumerated powers as listed in the Constitution. In just one quick example of how ignorance of our Constitution can give an opening to the Left, consider Time magazine's current cover, which asks if the Constitution "still matters." Time magazine's managing editor, Richard Stengel, wrote the cover story. In it he claims, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it certainly doesn't say so." This statement made me exclaim, "Has Stengel even read the Constitution?" After all, if he had, he'd have seen that the Tenth Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The federal government was clearly designed to be a limited government; after all, why even write a Constitution unless to grant specific powers to the federal government. Stengel is obviously relying on the fact that most Americans haven't read the Constitution and so will just believe him. We can't let them get away with this. As Jefferson said, we must not be ignorant of what our Constitution protects. If freedom matters, then the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution) matters. In fact, the Tenth Amendment matters now more than ever. This is because ObamaCare's individual mandate which stipulates that we all must purchase federally approved health insurance by 2014 massively expands federal power and, if left standing by the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress, would bleed the Tenth Amendment to dead letters. President Barack Obama nevertheless says the Constitution's "Commerce Clause" can be used to force us to buy a product; he argues that the government's power to regulate "Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States..." is a broad enough power for the federal government to mandate that we make an active decision by purchasing health insurance. If the federal government is allowed to stray this far outside its Constitution-as Time magazine wants them to do-then it could conceivably mandate that everyone buy a Chevy Volt or, for that matter, anything else an imaginative bureaucrat might think would be in the best interest of the nation. To put this in historical perspective, consider that when Paul Revere and about 70 others dressed as Indians in 1773 and dumped thousands of pounds of tea into the Boston harbor in what became known as the "Boston Tea Party," they weren't just doing this because they opposed a tax on tea, they were also opposed to a monopoly given to the British East India Company to sell tea. Now with that history in mind, consider that the Left is now arguing that the Constitution these Colonial Americans were really fighting for would empower a federal government that could not only mandate that Americans buy tea, but for a government that could make people buy tea from only a specific private company. Is it conceivable that the Founders would create such an all-powerful government? So given this historical context, can any person who understands our founding documents really believe the Constitution gives the federal government the power to mandate we buy a product? Though it clearly doesn't; however, the Obama Administration is hoping that enough people are so ignorant of the Constitution that a majority of us will let this big, fat lie slip through. So as we close in on Independence Day once again, please reacquaint yourself with the Bill of Rights by checking out Saving the Bill of Rights. As for Jefferson, from the hindsight of history it now doesn't seem like a coincidence that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson passed away on July 4, 1826; in fact, as we hold onto to our individual liberty by making sure we first understand it, let's all raise a glass to the Founders on July 4 and say, "Yes, our constitutional freedoms still matter." --Frank Miniter Miniter's book "Saving the Bill of Rights" is available on Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Bill-Rights-Exposing-Exceptionalism/dp/1596981504/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309390770&sr=1-1

Pulitzers are also awarded for works of fiction.

She is a proud NRA member, believing if you are not, you are nothing. That's why she's more of an American than most of the critics on this site. She also has a very interesting theory on why you call yourself the "doewhacker".

The National Rifle Association is a Big-Money Special Interest Group The anti-gun movement needs to hang onto this myth because they can't admit being beaten by the average apolitical American. When it's all said and done, however, the NRA is simply a group of over 4 million gun owners that paid its dues, created a group with a common goal, and worked together to make sure gun rights are protected. Unlike the anti-gun groups that are funded by billionaire liberals, the pro-gun movement is largely self-funded. Even gun manufacturers lack the deep pockets of the liberal groups and biased establishment media conglomerates that are trying to destroy gun rights. Anti-gun groups and people like leftist propagandist Michael Moore simply can't admit they are being beaten by a group of nobodies, so they conjure an image of an evil, money-laden special interest group. The fact remains that it is the millions of members, not the money, that makes the NRA powerful - a fact that surely keeps the billionaire anti-gun liberals awake at night.

My travels allow me choices that do not take any extra drive time and are often fewer miles as well. It only takes an awful lot of time and effort to understand reality when one is simple minded. I think you just had an epiphany.

No, not all. Some are morons.

If you don't know by now, you either aren't paying attention, are in denial, or are incapable of understanding. Why don't you just Google the answer? Then you can argue with Google afterwards. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4835 http://www.triggerfinger.org/weblog/group/category/arms_control/gun_show_loophole/index.jsp http://www.nraila.org/media/misc/fables.html#FABLE%20I: http://www.minutemanreview.com/2011/02/gun-show-loophole-myth.html "The Gun Show Loophole" Exists So far, the anti-gun movement has lost in the legislatures, at the ballot box, in the courts and in the public opinion polls. So they have created yet another nefarious-sounding "loophole" they claim is arming criminals. There is one huge flaw in their argument - studies show only 1 percent of guns used in crimes are traced back to sales at gun shows. Once again, there are rich and powerful interests with a lot to lose if the "gun show loophole" is exposed as a fraud. Most notable is billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has used the "gun show loophole" myth as an excuse for why his gun control schemes aren't working to keep New York's criminals from getting guns. By blaming the "gun show loophole" and gun dealers outside of New York, Bloomberg can lay the blame for his bad public policy decisions at the feet of the gun industry. Like Don Quixote, Bloomberg is on a crusade to smite a mythical foe. The problem is he is well-funded and has the backing of a complicit establishment media - which makes him one of the most dangerous anti-gun leaders in the United States. He has so much invested in keeping the "gun show loophole" at the forefront of his anti-gun crusade that he clearly believes his own lies. Regardless, his anti-gun rallying cry is nothing more than a figment of a vivid imagination and incredibly well-thought-out political spin. What the gun ban crowd constantly trumpets as the “gun show loophole” is simply this: private individuals selling an occasional firearm from their individual collections. In most of the country such sales are completely legal and they are no different from private individuals selling an old car or boat in order to buy one that is newer or bigger. There is nothing about a gun show that makes these private sales somehow evil or sinister, and it is past time that the gun banners stop trying to sell the public a lie.

Obviously frustrated in the fornication arena.

Most Friday nights I don't get in as early as 1AM. Being single, I've got better things to do than sleep. My lady friend found all of your posts very amusing by the way. She also believes you have a thing for sheep.

It wasn't posted for you. Read my last post again.

No they're not. You can choose to drive on roads that don't have tolls, like I do. You seem to be OK with invasion of privacy though. All of the information you give to EZ Pass is very useful to lots of people. They refer to the masses as "useful idiots".

http://autos.aol.com/article/e-zpass-privacy-invasion/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk3%7C73391

Those posts took all of about 20 minutes to cut and paste, and were posted for intelligent people to read. You obviously didn't, or couldn't, read any of them.

Since everything you guys "know" is wrong, I'll take that as a compliment.

It's obvious you have a constant grip on your chicken and can't take time out to read the article. : I couldn't care less about your opinions or those of your friends. All things considered, you would be totally insignificant, if not for the danger you present to gun ownership for all. I'm glad no one responds. I'm tired of trying to educate the unintelligent. I believe there are people out there who read these posts and are smart enough to take heed, but won't respond to avoid attacks from the guys who are willing to kiss the azzes of the elected officials and anti-gun public that they fear. Maybe others are smart enough to realize it's not about public opinion, it's about rule of law. And the more laws we allow that restrict the 2nd Amendment, the more we sink into the pit of totalitarianism.