Joseph (Jody) Powell, Press
Secretary to former President Jimmy
Carter and now Chairman and CEO
of Powell Tate, a Washington, D.C.
public relations firm, said recently
that in DC, “their streets are awash in
guns, while they harass the law-abiding,â€
reports James Kinsella of the
Martha’s Vineyard Gazette. Powell
reportedly said laws such as those in
Washington place ridiculous restrictions
on legitimate gun owners while
being totally ineffective in controlling
illegal weapons. Kinsella wrote
that “not much time passes in the
company of gun control advocates,
Mr. Powell said, before an individual
realizes that the main agenda is not
so much to control guns as to outlaw
them.â€
Judge Carl Barbier of the U.S.
District Court for the Eastern District
of Louisiana this summer denied a
motion by New Orleans to dismiss a
Second Amendment lawsuit against
the city. “We’re encouraged by this
ruling,†said CCRKBA Chairman
Alan M. Gottlieb. “For almost a
year,†said Gottlieb, Founder of the
Second Amendment Foundation,
“we’ve been fighting the city’s delay
tactics, which included outright lying
by city officials that any firearms
had been seized. Only when we
threatened Mayor Ray Nagin and
Police Superintendent Warren Riley
with a motion for contempt did the
city miraculously discover that they
actually did have more than 1,000
firearms that had been taken from
their owners†during the crisis last
year following the devastation of
Hurricane Katrina.
In a recent article on federal
gun control legislation in the politically
prestigious National Journal,
Brian Friel reported that, “those on
both sides of the issue agree that
Congress is promoting the interests
of gun rights groups because they
have demonstrated their political
power in the last few election cycles.
“Some estimates are there are 80
million gun owners,’ said John Snyder,
Public Affairs Director for the
Citizens Committee for the Right to
Keep and Bear Arms. ‘Democrats
are coming to realize they’ve been
wrong on this. They’ve suffered at
the polls’…Snyder makes the case
that voting for any House Democratic
candidate helps put that party in
control of the chamber. ‘Supposing
the Democratic candidate in
a locale was OK on the gun issue
or hasn’t said anything about it – a
vote for him would still be a vote for
John Conyers and Nancy Pelosi,’ he
said, referring to the potential House
Judiciary Committee Chairman and
House Speaker.â€
“As a matter of principle,†writes
James J. Na in a Seattle Times
column, “a free, open society like
ours does not, and ought not, preemptively
restrict freedom of the
general population out of fear that a
small criminal minority would misuse that freedom. Just as the fact that
a few pedophiles use the Internet
to trade child porn should not move
the society to restrict access to the
Internet for the public at large, neither
should the right of the vast majority
of responsible, law-abiding citizens
to own and carry guns be sacrificed
in the false hope that criminals would
then be constrained. Second, as a
matter of practicality, such a restriction
on guns does nothing to curb
violence. Even if legal firearm ownership
were completely banned today,
no serious person would argue that
we could eradicate the availability of
firearms on the black market. Those
who intend to harm others will still
be able to get guns – illegally.â€
A break-in at a Richland County,
South Carolina home this summer
ended with one of the suspected
robbers being shot to death, reports
WISTV of Columbia, SC. “The homeowner
says a friend came through
to help stop the crime, suffering a
bullet wound. The homeowner tells
WIS, ‘I’m sorry he had to get shot in
the process but I’m really grateful
because my kids were in the house
and everything.’ The man, who we’ll
call ‘Mark’ showed us where he says
two armed robbers hid, waiting for
him to come home. Mark says the
crooks snuck in through the fence
and broke into his Richland County
home after his two friends dropped
him off.â€
