THOSE WICKED GUNS AGAIN

"The gun-control movement's stock has tanked. Violent crime overall has continued to drop, leaving partisans to fret over the much smaller problem of accidental gun injuries. Most of the holdout states have now passed laws allowing citizens to carry personal-protection firearms -- and civilization as we know it has not ended. The 1994 Clinton ban on semi-automatic rifles is set to expire in September, and even some of its biggest supporters now agree that the law failed to cut crime. Still, gun-control foot soldiers in organized medicine churn out articles for relatively obscure scientific journals. Their message is increasingly devoid of any useful findings; it is mostly an attempt to paint gun owners as sociopaths or Neanderthals."

Crime and gun-control in Australia: "As with Britain, Australia invoked massive gun control following a mass murder, where a mentally ill man used firearms to commit the crime.... As with the UK study, it is important to establish a pre-ban baseline and then compare it to similar research after the ban to determine crime trends.... Here are some key findings about Australian crime trends for the period of 1995 (pre-ban) to 2001 (post-ban): The rate of assault has increased steadily from 563 victims per 100,000 people in 1995 to 779 per 100,000 people in 2001. In 2001 the rate for robbery peaked at 136 per 100,000 people- the highest recorded since 1995. The rate of sexual assault was 86 per 100,000 people, which is higher than any previous year. Here is the comparison in violent crime trends between Australia and the United States for the period of 1995 to 2001... Homicide: AUS down 11%; US down 32%.

Rah for the Pink Pistols! "Initially three, then later, four members of the Central Ohio Pink Pistols, a group promoting the safe handling of firearms in the GLBT community, were threatened by the Executive Director of Stonewall Columbus, who wielded a 2-foot club, and up to 30 volunteer security personnel at the Stonewall Columbus Pride Event on Saturday, June 26. The Pink Pistols were repeatedly ordered to surrender their legally-owned and carried firearms by a steadily-growing army of guards. Knowing the law was on their side, the Pink Pistols refused to surrender their property or knuckle under to illegal threats of violence, search, and seizure by Stonewall Columbus personnel. Police were summoned at Pink Pistols request. No firearms were surrendered or confiscated, and no arrests were made, as no laws were broken."

Indian enterprise: "With a view to provide a cheap and country-made weapon to the common people of the country for their self-defence, he had manufactured the weapon. This fact was revealed after interrogating Mahesh Sav, the person who had sent a pistol and a cartridge to President APJ Abdul Kalam last week in a parcel. Sav was brought to the Capital by a police team. He is likely to be produced before a court. The police said that during the interrogation, it was revealed that Sav has no criminal background. He is a small-time shopkeeper in Mojahidpur village near Patna and the idea to make a pistol struck him all of a sudden. He said he has been working on it for many years. He wanted to make an indigenous, cheap weapon for self-defence of the common people. A senior police official said that he got this idea a few years ago when he saw an advertisement of a country-made pistol in a newspaper."

10th anniversary of concealed weapons in Arizona: "Major civil-rights legislation reaches its tenth anniversary one month from today, and prospects for a vigorous future seem strong, according to industry experts. 'None of the hoplophobic (weapon-fearing) horror stories released ten years ago turned out to be true,' said Alan Korwin, author of The Arizona Gun Owner's Guide. 'Widespread reports about impending shootouts in traffic or in restaurants can now be seen, in 20/20 hindsight, as virtually delusional ...'"

"The gun-control movement is in trouble internationally. From Britain to Australia to Canada, promises of lower crime rates from gun control have turned into historic increases in crime. While the normal knee-jerk solutions are to press for even more controls, once guns are banned the explanation that the laws failed simply because they didn't go far enough becomes almost humorous. All these experiments were adopted under what gun-control advocates would argue were ideal conditions. All three countries adopted laws that applied to the entire country. Australia and Britain are surrounded by water, and thus do not have the easy smuggling problem that Canada claims to exist with regard to the U.S."

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ELSEWHERE

Now wait for the backtrack: "Sen. John Kerry pledged Tuesday in Phoenix that within 100 days of becoming president he would ask Congress for immigration reforms that would put undocumented immigrants on a path toward U.S. citizenship and establish a guest-worker program for temporary labor."

A Leftist comment on St. Ralph: "While Nader continues to campaign against corporate abuse, his own record, according to many of those who have worked closely with him, is characterized by arrogance, underhanded attacks on friends and associates, secrecy, paranoia and mean-spiritedness -- even at the expense of his own causes. If he were a corporate CEO, subject to the laws governing publicly held and federally regulated firms, there can be little doubt he would have been removed long ago by his company's board of directors."

Moore illogic: "Moore totally avoids the question of Israel. ... Here are some questions for Moore: If Bush is so 'in the pocket' of Saudi Arabia, why is he Ariel Sharon's strongest backer? Why, when he had Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah down at the Texas ranch a few years ago, did he flip off the Saudi's peace plan? And most important, why did he invade Iraq -- since Saudi Arabia was strongly opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq?"

Some French good guys: "Nowhere does one find such clear and lucid expositions and defenses of human liberty as those found among the French classical liberals of the nineteenth century, a group that included Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat, Charles Dunoyer, Charles Comte, Gustave de Molinari, Paul Leroy Beaulieu, Emile Faguet, and Yves Guyot, to name a few. Benjamin Constant (1767-1830) was one of the brightest stars in this constellation of thinkers."

"Reports circulated last week that the Bush administration will soon be unveiling a major mental health initiative that will recommend screening every citizen for mental illness. This latest manifestation of the nanny state is called, in Orwellian fashion, the New Freedom Initiative (of course).... While the Framers envisioned a limited federal government confined to enumerated powers, we instead have a bloated federal government obsessed with the minute personal details of its citizens' lives"

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Leftism is more popular with young people than with older people largely because Leftism is itself juvenile: They criticize what they don't understand. Which makes it ironic that "We know best" and "It's for your own good" are the basic Leftist messages. Leftists have never got past the simplistic thinking or the arrogance that are the characteristic limitations of youth

"Created" equal in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is a religious way of saying that people are NOT equal but start out with the same rights.

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