Geeks + Guns Keep up on the newest, geekiest weaponry in the planetary arsenals!
Promote peace through superior firepower!
Have we mentioned that this isn't your fathers' 2nd Amendment Website?
Something Completely Different
|
 A controversy was brewing in East Palo Alto Tuesday night after a police detective made apparently joking comments through his Facebook account saying “open carry” advocates who visibly carry guns in public should be shot.
Now East Palo Alto has become a reluctant testing ground for a battle of constitutional amendments: one police officer’s ‘freedom of speech’ versus a group’s ‘right to bear arms.’
Area resident Adnan Shahab is an “open carry” advocate who frequently goes out in public displaying an unloaded gun on his belt. Such activity is legal in California with certain restrictions, such as staying clear of schools.
Shahab said he was offended by Facebook remarks posted by East Palo Alto detective Rod Tuason. Tuason published a comment that said he agreed with a friend that open carry advocates should come to Oakland, Richmond and East Palo Alto and — in an apparent joke — said officers should shoot the advocates.
“So it’s a little shocking and disappointing to hear that a sworn officer is basically so cavalier with violating a person’s second amendment rights and basically putting a bullet in them for doing absolutely nothing wrong,” said Shahab.-[source]
 Spreading the word that South Dakota is home to a “culture of hunting,” the state’s delegation to January’s Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference made a splash with participants.
The SHOT Show, which concluded Jan. 22 in Las Vegas, is the largest exposition of firearms, ammunition, archery, cutlery, outdoor apparel, optics, camping and related products and services. It regularly draws some 55,000 people daily for its four-day run.
It’s owned by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which prominently featured Gov. Mike Rounds’ one-day visit to the festivities.
“We were excited to have Gov. Rounds with us at SHOT Show,” NSSF senior vice president and general counsel Lawrence G. Keane said in a statement. “Time and again, he has proven himself to be a friend of America’s firearms industry, understanding that through our products the Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Americans are realized.”
South Dakota also got a shout-out from the National Rifle Association, which called it a “forward-looking state – truly a friend to the firearms industry.”
And in an interview with the NRA, posted at www.nrablog.com, state Department of Tourism Secretary Richard Benda had this to say during a press conference at the SHOT Show:
“We don’t just talk about the outdoor industry. We live it. We get it. South Dakota is absolutely not going to regulate the firearms industry out of business.”-[source]
Pragmatism versus patriotism — that was part of the argument for some Top of Utah lawmakers Wednesday as the Legislature prepares to send one of the leading message bills in this session to the governor for his signature.
The heart of the message is about states’ rights, and the vehicle is gun control.
“Our responsibility is to uphold the Constitution as we see fit,” said Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, about the reasoning behind Senate Bill 11.
Wilcox joined with others in a lengthy and sometimes passionate floor debate on the bill, its final hearing before House lawmakers passed it 56-17.
Firearms made and kept in Utah would be exempt from federal regulations under the measure, which an independent legislative analyst said was “highly likely” to be held unconstitutional and forced into court.
The proposal replicates one Montana enacted into law last year that’s intended to trigger a federal court battle.
The measures would allow guns made in the respective states to be exempt from federal gun registration rules such as background checks for those who purchase the guns.
The goal is to circumvent federal authority over interstate commerce, the legal basis for most gun regulation in the U.S.-[source]
Senate Judiciary Chairman Jeffrey Kessler hopes to send a strong message to the Big Apple and any others outside West Virginia: Hands off when it comes to entrapping residents with illegal firearms purchases.
In fact, order he dubbed his proposed new legislation Tuesday “the Bloomberg bill” after the New York mayor and his zest for rounding up guns.
“They’ve been sending folks across state lines, remedy outside the jurisdiction of his city, so I call it an entrapment bill,” Kessler said.
“Basically, it would make it a felony for them come out and try to purchase guns illegally in the state of West Virginia.”
Actually, the measure goes far beyond New York, he noted, since it is tailored to cover all states.
“I want to make sure they’re not entrapping people in this state and trying to enforce the laws of New York City outside the borders of New York,” Kessler, D-Marshall, said.
“It’s a movement just to basically stop that from occurring and say you’re not engaged in that kind of activity. And if it is, it’s a criminal offense in this state.”
Kessler said he wants a law on the books to discourage other states or large municipalities from “sensationalizing the fact” that firearms are being purchased illegally in one state and brought to another one.
“That’s the focus and thrust of it — to prohibit entrapment of West Virginia residents and citizens as part of a jurisdictional dispute,” the former prosecutor said.
“We don’t think they have jurisdiction to enforce their gun laws outside the state of New York.”
Kessler said the issue was raised with him by the National Rifle Association, which conveyed a concern that some anti-gun municipalities might attempt to extend the arm of their laws into West Virginia.
Kessler’s legislation would make it a felony to buy either a firearm or ammunition illegally in West Virginia from someone not allowed to possess either.
“What we’re trying to say is, the gun laws in your state can operate within your state, but they’re no good here,” he added.-[source]
The Wyoming House of Representatives has voted to introduce a bill that would allow people to carry concealed firearms without the requirement of a state permit.
The House voted 52-6 in favor of introducing House Bill 113, sponsored by Rep. Elaine Quarberg, R-Thermopolis. It now heads to the House Judiciary Committee.
Current Wyoming law requires people to get state-issued permits before they may carry concealed firearms.
Quarberg and other supporters say they support changing the law because the federal and state constitutions guarantee citizens’ right to bear arms.
Rep. James W. Byrd, D-Cheyenne, was among those who voted against the bill. He says he fears the bill would endanger peace officers in the state.-[source]
 The Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.
Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department’s request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans’ privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.
“This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century,” says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. “If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.”
Not long ago, the concept of tracking cell phones would have been the stuff of spy movies. In 1998′s “Enemy of the State,” Gene Hackman warned that the National Security Agency has “been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the ’40s–they’ve infected everything.” After a decade of appearances in “24″ and “Live Free or Die Hard,” location-tracking has become such a trope that it was satirized in a scene with Seth Rogen from “Pineapple Express” (2008). – [source]
A federal appeals court upheld a ban on convicted felons possessing firearms on Monday, saying it’s consistent with the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Thrice convicted felon Peter Vongxay, 27, had appealed a prison sentence for possession a loaded semiautomatic handgun, Horwood said. Vongxay, whose felony convictions include car burglary and drug possession, argued that the federal statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms was unconstitutional.
The second amendment establishes the right to keep and bear arms.
In its decision a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco concluded that the right to bear arms doesn’t extend to convicted felons. – [source]
 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, approved built the stage, order 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]
|
|
Loading ...
.Com Chatter