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 One wonders if NRA members should be proud of their organization’s apparent newfound fiduciary conservatism. The so-called “premier” gun rights organization has now managed to finagle its way into the spotlight after someone else’s sweat and money rented the hall, built the stage, and set up the sound system.
NRA lawyers are now second guessing pro-gun lawyer Alan Gura’s expertise. And this, after Gura masterminded and navigated the vitally crucial landmark Heller case to a victorious decision in favor of the Second Amendment.
The NRA’s leadership must have looked at each other and realized that (coming so close on the coat tails of Heller) McDonald actually had a good chance at victory. I can just hear them clinking their drinks in toast and chuckling: “Gura will likely win this one too. Let’s get on board now!”
All that might not be so bad, but look who the NRA has hired as their head counsel in this wedge into McDonald: Paul Clement, the very attorney who advocated against our gun rights in Heller!
That’s right, Clement led the federal government’s charge to protect the Washington D.C. ban on handgun ownership!-[source]
 Arizona has always held tightly to its legacy as part of the gun-toting Wild West and a protector of individual rights.
This year, the state’s Republican governor and a conservative Legislature may continue that tradition by giving Arizonans some of the least-restrictive weapons laws in the nation.
This session, state lawmakers have proposed more than a dozen bills on expanding rights to carry and use guns and knives.
The proposed laws would allow people to carry concealed weapons without a permit, end requirements that guns manufactured and kept in Arizona be registered, and allow university professors to carry guns on school grounds.
Although the number of bills on the subject is not unusual, weapons-rights supporters believe this year – with a conservative governor, a Legislature sympathetic to their cause and more freedom to address issues other than the budget – may be their year to lift many limits. It also is an election year, and gun rights have always been a popular campaign platform among conservatives.
“Arizona is very gun-friendly, and we’ve made a lot of progress over the past probably 10 to 12 years,” weapons-rights lobbyist Todd Rathner said. “But, right now, the Legislature and the governor are favorable to a pro-Second Amendment agenda, so we’re trying to accomplish as much as we can.”
Weapons advocates are so optimistic about their chances this year that a knife-rights advocacy group hopes to use Arizona to launch a national effort to give state Legislatures exclusive authority over local governments to regulate knife use. -[source]
More women than ever are carrying and learning to fire guns, according to several Upstate gun instructors.At Allen Arms Indoor Range in Greenville County, women from their 20s to 90s come in to learn to shoot.
Many moms are also taking the required course to get a concealed weapons permit.
Sherry Harris said, “I believe by having your CWP and you have the ultimate in protection of the lives of yourself and your children.”
Almost 28 years as an Intensive Care Unit and Emergency Room trauma nurse, with exposure to countless numbers of gunshot patients, have made Ladye Kelley more resolute when it comes to maintaining her Second Amendment rights.
Kelley, who lives in Greer, said 99 percent of the patients she has seen were injured in a crime-related shooting.
“I remember one patient involved in drugs who was shot in the back of the head execution-style,” said Kelley. “You could also see where he was bound on the wrists and ankles. His knees were scraped from being forced to kneel.”
Kelley recalled one young woman who was shot in the face by her boyfriend, who was an alleged drug dealer.
“They were watching an action movie and he had a .357 magnum revolver,” said Kelley. “He wondered what it would be like to shoot someone in the face.”
Kelley said the blast took out the right side of the victim’s face but, miraculously, did not harm the brain. The woman survived but lost most of her jawbone and all of her teeth.
“I’ll never forget her,” Kelley told WYFF.
Kelley is certified as a pistol instructor through the National Rifle Association. She also has a concealed weapons permit.-[source]
 The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to purchase sixty Remington Model 870 Police RAMAC #24587 12 gauge pump-action shotguns for the Criminal Investigation Division.
The Remington parkerized shotguns, with fourteen inch barrel, modified choke, Wilson Combat Ghost Ring rear sight and XS4 Contour Bead front sight, Knoxx Reduced Recoil Adjustable Stock, and Speedfeed ribbed black forend, are designated as the only shotguns authorized for IRS duty based on compatibility with IRS existing shotgun inventory, certified armorer and combat training and protocol, maintenance, and parts. – [source]
Who still thinks these won’t be used to tax the middle-class?
Lawmakers are debating legislation that would make sure gun owners can’t be prosecuted for showing a weapon to warn someone who is threatening them.
HB78 modifies existing law that bans threatening someone with a dangerous weapon in a fight or quarrel. The proposal would exempt from that prohibition anyone who displays a weapon — or claims to be carrying one — as a self-defense measure.
Utah law already protects the use of force in self-defense of the defense of others, but Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, R-Orem, said his bill would protect gun owners in actions short of pointing and firing a weapon. “If you are, by law, allowed to point a gun at someone, that would escalate the situation,” he told the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee Wednesday, “but if you’re just able to display it, it wouldn’t escalate it.” Sandstrom said he is considering adding language to distinguish the bill from “open carry” protections for gun owners when the committee continues its review Friday.
Salt Lake City attorney and firearms instructor Mitch Vilos said Wednesday the bill “seems to suggest you have to have justification to tell someone you’re carrying a firearm or to display a firearm. That’s not currently the [law].” -[source]
It’s official Obama was lying, and now the White House Anti-Gun Agenda is set to be argued in Supreme Court.
The long-awaited challenge to Chicago’s handgun ban will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 2, 2010 and already it is looking like everyone, on both sides of the issue, anticipates that the justices will rule that the Second Amendment is incorporated through the 14th Amendment as a barrier to local gun bans.
Even anti-gunners appear to realize the notion that the Amendment is incorporated, but want the justices to leave enough wiggle room in their ruling to allow most, if not all, existing gun control laws to stand.
Alan Gura noted during a press conference at the annual Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade Show that the case “would not have happened without the support” of the Second Amendment Foundation, and toward the end of the conference, he encouraged people to contribute to SAF “and take a new person shooting.”
Attorney Alan Gura, argued the landmark Heller case before the U.S. Supreme Court almost two years ago. The case of McDonald v. City of Chicago is one of two challenges filed against the Chicago handgun ban within 24 hours of the Heller ruling. Gura is representing the Bellevue, WA-based Second Amendment Foundation and Illinois State Rifle Association, and four individual Chicago residents.
Continue Reading ‘White House Anti-Gun Agenda Being Argued In Supreme Court’
 The U.S. will appeal a court decision dismissing manslaughter charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security contractors involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday.
Biden’s announcement after a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shows just how diplomatically sensitive the incident remains nearly three years later.
Blackwater security contractors were guarding U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad intersection. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraqi.
Biden expressed his “personal regret” for the shooting and said the Obama administration was disappointed by the dismissal. “A dismissal is not an acquittal,” he said.
The U.S. rebuffed Iraqi demands that the U.S. contractors face trial in Iraqi courts. After a lengthy investigation, U.S. prosecutors charged five of the contractors with manslaughter and took a guilty plea from a sixth.
But the case fell apart in December after a judge found that the Justice Department mishandled evidence and violated the guards’ constitutional rights. Prosecutors now face difficult odds getting an appeals court to reinstate the case.
The dismissal outraged many Iraqis, who said it showed the Americans considered themselves above the law. The Iraqi government began collecting signatures for a class-action lawsuit from victims who were wounded or lost relatives.
Messages seeking comment from lawyers for the guards were not immediately returned Saturday.
Blackwater has said the guards were innocent, contending there were ambushed by insurgents. Prosecutors said the shooting was unprovoked.
Court documents paint a murky picture of a case rife with conflicting evidence. Some witnesses say the Blackwater convoy was under fire; others say it wasn’t. Some said the entire convoy fired into the intersection; others said only a few men opened fire.
Even the government’s key witnesses, three members of the Blackwater convoy, at times seemed to undercut the government’s case.
Since the shooting, Blackwater has renamed itself Xe Services and overhauled its management. Iraq has pulled the company’s license to operate in the country.-[source]
If Jim Zumbo had the National Shooting Sports Foundation in his corner a few years ago, he might still be the hunting editor of Outdoor Life magazine.
Zumbo was literally driven from the temple after expressing discouraging words in his web site blog about the viability of so-called “black rifles” or AR-15-style guns as hunting firearms. Unfortunately, Zumbo expressed his opinions just at the time black rifles were gaining traction in the shooting sports world, and his comments touched off a firestorm of protests.
Zumbo and Outdoor Life parted ways, though the famed hunter has since regained his lofty status in the outdoor world. He also has redeemed himself in the eyes of his former detractors by participating in such programs as Purple Heart Hunters, whose members are among the primary users of black rifles: the United States military.
It is to reduce the likelihood of such faux pas that the NSSF announced here at the SHOT Show an ongoing effort to educate shooting sports enthusiasts about black rifles, euphemistically termed “modern sporting rifles” by the organization and its members that manufacture the firearms. Hopefully, what such traditionalists as Zumbo will learn from the project will rub off on the general public, though the process of osmosis might be unclear at this point.
“Modern sporting rifles are constantly being misrepresented and called terrorist weapons in the media,” NSSF spokesman Mark Thomas said. “Our campaign has the twofold purpose of developing an understanding among sportsmen about this type of rifle and to dispel some of the myths about these rifles among the general media.” -[source]
 The U.S. Supreme Court’s sweeping ruling on Thursday that invalidated large chunks of campaign finance law arose in part from an unlikely source: the emergence of Facebook, YouTube, and blogs, and the decline of traditional media outlets.
A 5-4 majority concluded that technological changes have chipped away at the justification for a law that allows individuals to create a blog with opinions about a political candidate–but threatens the ACLU, the National Rifle Association, a labor union, or a corporation with felony charges if they do the same.
The now-invalidated law “would seem to ban a blog post expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate if that blog were created with corporate funds,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion (PDF). “The First Amendment does not permit Congress to make these categorical distinctions based on the corporate identity of the speaker and the content of the political speech.”
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, called it the “first appearance” of the word “blog” in a Supreme Court opinion. And Google’s video-sharing site is singled out in the conclusion, with Kennedy writing that “skits on YouTube.com” that cast politicians in an unflattering light could give rise to “felony” charges if a corporation dared to post them.
Kennedy added: “Rapid changes in technology–and the creative dynamic inherent in the concept of free expression–counsel against upholding a law that restricts political speech in certain media or by certain speakers. Today, 30-second television ads may be the most effective way to convey a political message. Soon, however, it may be that Internet sources, such as blogs and social-networking Web sites, will provide citizens with significant information about political candidates and issues.”
Federal law generally prohibits for-profit and nonprofit corporations and unions from paying to advocate the election of or defeat of a political candidate. The 2002 McCain-Feingold law expanded that prohibition to include so-called electioneering communications, defined as any “broadcast, cable, or satellite communication” that even “refers to” a candidate for federal office and is made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.
Thursday’s ruling invalidates many of those requirements, meaning that nonprofit and for-profit corporations and labor unions will be able to spend money on political films, advertisements, YouTube videos, and so on. But the decision comes with two important caveats: first, none of that money will be permitted to go directly to political candidates. Second, an 8-1 majority of the court upheld a disclosure requirement applying to those groups spending money on the political ads or other materials.
The court pointed out that the now-invalidated laws are more sweeping than the term “campaign finance” might imply–and amount to simple censorship. It listed these acts of political speech that previously would have been criminalized: the Sierra Club running an ad (close to the time of an election) disapproving of a congressman who favors logging in national forests; the NRA publishing a book urging a vote against an incumbent U.S. senator who supports a handgun ban; and the American Civil Liberties Union creating a Web site telling the public to vote for a presidential candidate because of that candidate’s defense of free speech.-[source]
 In the end, the case of a Willows teenager expelled for having hunting guns in his pickup truck parked next to campus didn’t focus on gun rights.
It became a question of whether the authority of school officials to enforce the state’s Education Code extended to the school fence – or a sidewalk’s width beyond it.
On Friday, members of the Glenn County Board of Education drew the line at the gates of Willows High School.
They ruled that officials in the Willows Unified School District had exceeded their authority when they expelled Gary Tudesko – a 17-year-old with a history of disciplinary problems – for leaving two shotguns and ammunition in his truck parked a few feet from the school’s tennis courts on a public street.
“The district governing board acted in excess of its jurisdiction to expel the Pupil,” the board wrote in its decision.-[source]
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