March 2007

The highly touted “summit” of an anti-gun mayors’ association in late January in Washington, D.C. appeared to be all rhetoric and no real solutions to violent crime in America, according to CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb. “Whether you’re talking about a desire of anti-gun mayors to get their hands on confidential generic gun tracing data to fuel harassment lawsuits of gun manufacturers and dealers, or a so-called ‘sportsmen’s group,’ claiming to represent hunters and shooters about the gun issue,” said Gottlieb, “you still have a gathering from which the nation’s leading gun rights organizations and authorities were excluded…For Ray Schoenke, President of the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a rather thinly disguised gun control group camouflaged in hunter orange, to claim it is a gun rights organization is an insult to the intelligence of gun owners and activists across the map.”
Jurors in Kokomo, Indiana early last month acquitted a defendant who claimed he acted in self-defense in a shootout at a busy commercial area that killed a man. The jury found Willie Winston, 60, not guilty of murder in the death of 24-year-old DeMarco Moore. Winston took the stand and said he had no choice but to shoot after Moore came at him and his family with a gun. Prosecutors said Winston exchanged gunfire with Moore on January 27, 2006 outside a fast-food restaurant near Markland Mall on the city’s east side. Moore died the next day at a hospital in the city about 50 miles north of Indianapolis. The jury also acquitted Winston on felony charges of possession of an altered handgun and criminal recklessness, but convicted him of a misdemeanor charge of carrying a handgun without a permit, which he did not dispute.
CCRKBA recently applauded the decision of Idaho Falls, Idaho Mayor Jared Fuhriman, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich and Rio Rancho, Nevada Mayor Kevin Jackson to quit an anti-gun mayors’ coalition created last year by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as “reasonable steps that other mayors should follow.” CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb encouraged other mayors who may have been coerced or lulled into Bloomberg’s rogue alliance to also drop out. “According to one published report, Mayor Fuhriman left Bloomberg’s coalition because he sensed the group has an agenda aimed at stripping away the gun rights of law-abiding citizens,” Gottlieb said. “It is not surprising that mayors from cities in Alaska, Idaho and New Mexico, where common sense still trumps political correctness, were able to figure this out while so many others have been bamboozled.”
“With Democrats running Congress for the first time since 1994, gun control advocates have more friends in high places than they have had in 12 years,” writes Brian Friel in the prestigious National Journal…‘The primary legislative objective of the entire gun-violence-prevention movement is removing the trace-data limits,’ said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center. She noted that trace data helped policy makers target ‘Saturday night specials’ for legislative bans, and helped them to identify the guns included in the ban on semiautomatic weapons. ‘It’s just a gold mine of information for advocates trying to effectively target policy proposals.’”
“Conduct this experiment,” suggests Mark Valentine of Ridgeland, Mississippi. “Lay a gun on the table and see who it kills. No one. A person must pull the trigger. All of the gun laws in the world will not stop crime. The only way you can stop the crime is to make the punishment so unbearable that the thugs will think twice before committing a crime. Oh, no, that is not politically correct, and neither am I.”
The right to bear arms is “guaranteed by the Mexican Constitution (Article 10),” notes Allan Wall of www.mexidata.info. “But Mexican weapons’ laws are more restrictive than in the United States. Needless to say, that hasn’t prevented Mexican criminals from bearing arms, including rocket launchers and grenades, as recent news reports demonstrate.”