Guns - American Style

[Warph]

Fox News _ CHICAGO –  Chicago has logged its 500th homicide of 2012.
The last time the city reached the 500-homicide mark was in 2008, when the year ended with 512 killings. Last year, city records show Chicago had 435 homicides.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/28/chicago-logs-its-500th-homicide-for-2012-most-since-2008-512/#ixzz2GPRZAfL3

You Didn't Hear This on the News
Chicago, Illinois. 12-28-2012

446 school age children shot in Chicago so far this year with strongest gun laws in country – media is silent.

The cesspool known as Chicago probably has the toughest gun laws in the country, yet despite all the shootings, murders, and bloodshed, you never hear a peep about this from the corrupt state run media. In Chicago, there have been 446 school age children shot in leftist utopia run by Rahm Emanuel and that produced Obama, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, etc.

62 school aged children have actually been killed by crazed nuts in Chicago so far this year with almost two weeks to go.

So why isn't this news worthy? Is it because it would embarrass those anti-second amendment nuts who brag about Chicago's tough gun laws? Is it because most of the kids who were shot and killed were minorities? Or is it because the corrupt media doesn't want to show Chicago in a bad light? Amazingly, no Obama crocodile tears either.

For those of you too dense to get the point of this post, it's to make the point about gun laws. No matter how tough the gun laws are, the crazed, nut jobs will find a way to get them and if they so choose, use them. No draconian law can stop this, no matter how well intentioned the law is, or if it's just about leftists grabbing power from citizens and taking away their constitutional rights.

446 School Age Children Shot in Chicago so Far This Year 2012.

THE LIST OF SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN SHOT IN 2012

18 year old- 110
17 year old- 99
16 year old- 89
15 year old- 62
14 year old- 39
13 year old- 21
12 year old- 10
11 year old- 2
10 year old- 3
9 year old- 1
7 year old- 3
6 year old- 2
5 year old- 1
4 year old- 1
3 year old- 1
1 year old- 2

[Warph]

Violence, gangs scar Chicago community in 2012

Sharon Cohen, AP National Writer - December 29, 2012



CHICAGO (AP) — It was February, the middle of lunch hour on a busy South Side street. The gunman approached his victim in a White Castle parking lot, shot him in the head, then fled down an alley.

The next month, one block away, also on West 79th Street: Two men in hooded sweatshirts opened fire at the Bishop Golden convenience store. They killed one young man and wounded five others, including a nephew of basketball superstar Dwyane Wade. The shooters got away in a silver SUV.

In July, a Saturday night, two men were walking on 79th when they were approached by a man who killed one and injured the other. This shooting resulted in a quick arrest; police had a witness, and a security camera caught the shooting.

These three violent snapshots of a single Chicago street are not exceptional. It's been a bloody year in the nation's third-largest city.

A spike in murders and shootings — much of it gang-related — shocked Chicagoans, spurred new crime-fighting strategies and left indelible images: Mayor Rahm Emanuel voicing outrage about gang crossfire that killed a 7-year-old named Heaven selling candy in her front yard. Panicked mourners scrambling as shots ring out on the church steps at a funeral for a reputed gang leader. Girls wearing red high school basketball uniforms, filing by the casket of a 16-year-old teammate shot on her porch.

A handful of neighborhoods were especially hard hit, among them Auburn-Gresham; the police district's 43 homicides (as of Dec. 21) ranked highest in the city, and represent an increase of about 20 percent over 2011. The outbreak, fueled partly by feuds among rival factions of Chicago's largest gang, the Gangster Disciples, rippled along 79th street, the main commercial drag. That single corridor offers a window into the wider mayhem that claimed lives, shattered families and left authorities scrambling for answers.

The scars aren't obvious, at first. Drive down West 79th and there's Salaam, a pristine white building of Islamic design, and The Final Call, the restaurant and newspaper operated by the Nation of Islam. Leo Catholic High School for young men. A health clinic. A beauty supply store. Around the corners, neat brick bungalows and block club signs warning: "No Littering. No Loitering. No Loud Music."

Look closer, though, and there are signs of distress and fear: Boarded-up storefronts. Heavy security gates on barber shops and food marts. Thick partitions separating cash registers from customers at the Jamaican jerk and fish joints. Police cars watching kids board city buses at the end of the school day.

Go a few blocks south of 79th to a food market where a sign bears a hand-scrawled message: "R.I.P. We Love You Eli," honoring a clerk killed in November in an apparent robbery. Or a block north to the front lawn of St. Sabina church where photos were added this year to a glass-enclosed memorial for young victims of deadly violence over the years.

Then go back to a corner of 79th, across the street and down the block from where two killings occurred, both gang-related.

There, in an empty lot, a wooden cross stands tall in the winter night. Painted in red is a plea:

"STOP SHOOTING."


A lone cross stands in a vacant lot on the corner of 79th and Loomis
in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.
(Photo: Charles Rex Arbogast, AP)

THE TOLL
Chicago's murder count reached 500 last Friday — the first time since 2008 it hit that mark. In 2011, there were 435 homicides. More than 2,400 shootings have occurred. Gang-related arrests are about 7,000 higher than in 2011.

Gang violence isn't new, but it became a major theme in the Chicago narrative this year.

Maybe it was because of the audacity of gang members posting YouTube videos in which they flashed wads of cash and guns. The sight of police brandishing automatic weapons, standing watch outside gang funerals. The sting of one more smiling young face on a funeral program. Or dramatic headlines in spring and summer, such as: "13 people shot in Chicago in 30-minute period."

It was alarming enough for President Obama to mention it during the campaign, noting murders near his South Side home. Then, addressing gun violence in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, he cited Chicago again.

As grim as it is, Chicago's murder rate was almost double in the early 1990s — averaging around 900 — before violent crime began dropping in cities across America. This year's increase, though, is a sharp contrast to New York, where homicides fell 21 percent from 2011, as of early December.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says while murders and shootings are up, overall crime citywide is down about 9 percent. He says crime-fighting strategies against gangs — some just put into place this year — are working, but they take time.

"The city didn't get in this shape overnight," he says. "I think that we're doing ourselves a disservice by advertising a Vietnam-type body count. I've got to tell you when I speak to people ... they generally say, 'You know what? We don't even hear that anymore. It's white noise.'... The fascination unfortunately seems to be in the media and it's become a national obsession."

After the 500th homicide was reported, McCarthy released a statement saying the pace of violent crime had slowed since early 2012. Murders skyrocketed 66 percent in the first quarter of the year over the same period in 2011; by the fourth quarter, the increase had dropped to 15 percent, he said. For shootings, it was a 40 percent hike in the first quarter and 11 percent in the last quarter compared with 2011. The superintendent called the numbers "great progress."

Up to 80 percent of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring identified 59 gangs and 625 factions; most are on the South and West sides.

Gangs in Chicago have a long, dangerous history, some operating with the sophistication and hierarchy of corporations. In the 1980s, the leaders of the El Rukns were convicted of conspiring in a terrorism-for-hire scheme designed to collect millions from the Libyan government. Before the feds took down the leadership of the Gangster Disciples in the 1990s, the group had its own clothing line and political arm.

Nowadays, gangs are less structured and disputes more personal, says Eric Carter, commander of the Gresham district, home to 11 factions of the Gangster Disciples. "It's strictly who can help me make money," he says. "Lines have become blurred and alliances have become very fragile."

Carter says a gang narcotics dispute that started about six years ago is at the root of a lot of violence in his district.

Another change among gangs is the widespread use of YouTube, Facebook and other social media to taunt one another and spread incendiary messages. "One insult thrown on Facebook and Twitter becomes the next potential for a shooting incident on the street," Carter says.

McCarthy, who has consulted with criminologists, has implemented several plans, including an audit that identifies every gang member and establishing a long-term police presence in heavy drug-dealing areas, aimed at drying up business.

In two districts, police also have partnered controversially with CeaseFire Illinois, an anti-violence group that has hired convicted felons, including former gang members, to mediate street conflicts. McCarthy, who has expressed reservations about the organization, is taking a wait-and-see attitude.

"It's a work in progress," he says. "It hasn't shown a lot of success yet."

AMONG THE DEAD
An 18-year-old walking on a sidewalk. A 36-year-old at a backyard party. A 28-year-old in a car two blocks from the police station. A 40-year-old convenience store clerk, on the job just two months.

In a storefront on 79th, Curtis Toler has a map of the street and surrounding area with 10 stick pins. Each represents a homicide in 2012.

Toler, a former gang member, spent much of his life causing chaos. Now, he's preaching calm. As a supervisor at CeaseFire, his job is to ease tensions and defuse disputes before they explode.

Violence, he says, has become so commonplace, people are desensitized to death.

"I don't think we take it as hard as we should," he says. "When someone gets killed, there should be an uproar. But the ambulance comes, scoops them up, nobody says anything and it's back to business."

Toler's own life was shaped by guns and drugs. "In the early '90s, I was going to funerals back to back to back," he says. "When you're out there, you think you pretty much got it coming. It's a kill-or-be-killed mentality."

As he tells it, he was in a gang (in another neighborhood) from ages 9 to 30, including a six-year prison stint for involuntary manslaughter. He was shot six times, he says; he lifts a gray stocking cap pulled low over his head and presses a thumb over his right eyebrow to show the spot where a bullet struck. "I was blessed" to survive, he says, with a gap-toothed smile.

He was once so notorious, Toler says, that one day about a decade ago his grandmother returned from a community policing gathering and began crying. "She said, 'The whole meeting was about you. ... You and your friends are destroying the whole community. ... You're my grandson, but they're talking about you like you're an animal.'"

Now a 35-year-old father of four, Toler says he decided to go straight about five years ago. He knows some police don't believe his transformation. He regrets things he's done, he says, and for a time had trouble sleeping. "Life has its way of getting back at you one way or another," he says. "I believe in the law of reciprocity."

Toler's message to a new generation on the streets: I keep asking them,' What's the net worth on your life? There is no price.... You only get one. It's not a video game.'"

"You get some guys who listen," Toler says, "and some who really don't care. ... They say, 'I'm going to die anyway.'"

Two blocks east in another storefront on 79th, Carlos Nelson works to bring a different kind of stability to Gresham.

As head of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp., he lures businesses to a community that despite its problems, has well-established merchants and middle-class residents who've lived here for decades.

But Nelson, a 49-year-old engineering graduate raised in Gresham, sees changes since he was a kid, most notably the easy access to guns. "These aren't six-shooters," he says. "These are automatic weapons."

Police say they've seized more than 7,000 guns in arrests this year. Strict gun control measures in Chicago and Illinois have been tossed out by federal courts, most recently the state ban on carrying concealed weapons.

Nelson says he sees limited progress despite new crime-fighting approaches. "The Chicago police department is a lot like a rat on a wheel," he says. "They're getting nowhere. They put metal detectors in the schools but they don't put that same amount of money in to educate our kids."

But Nelson also believes the problem goes beyond policing. A cultural shift is needed, he says, to break the cycle of generations of young men seeing no options.

"It's almost like the walking dead," he says. "They're emotionless about shootings or death or drugs. They think that's all that's expected of them ... that they will die or end up in jail. That's a hell of an existence. That's truly sad."

AMONG THE LIVING
A 17-year-old hit in the leg, wrist and foot while in a park. A 13-year-old struck in the back while riding his bicycle, A 38-year-old shot in the face while driving.

Cerria McComb tried to run when the bullet exploded in her leg, but she didn't get far.

Someone heard her screams, her mother says, and rushed outside to help her make a call.

"Mommy, mommy, I've been shot!" Cerria cried into the phone.

Bobbie McComb ran six blocks, her husband outpacing her. "I'm panicking," she recalls. "I can't catch my breath. All I could think of was I didn't want it to be the last time I heard her voice, the last time I saw her."

Cerria and a 14-year-old male friend were wounded. The bullet lodged just an inch from an artery in the back of Cerria's right knee, according to her mother, who says her daughter is afraid to go out since the early December shooting.

Police questioned a reputed gang member they believe was the intended target; Cerria, they say, just happened to be in the wrong place.

"I'm angry," McComb says. "I'm frustrated. I'm tired of them shooting our kids, killing our kids, thinking they can get away with it. ... If it was my son or my daughter standing out there with a gun, I would call the police on them."

A few blocks west, on 78th Place, another mother, Pam Bosley, sits at the youth center of St. Sabina Church, trying to keep teens on track. The parish is run by the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a firebrand white priest in an overwhelmingly black congregation whose crusades against violence, drugs and liquor and cigarette billboards are a staple of local news.

Bosley's 18-year-old son, Terrell, a college freshman and gospel bass player, was killed in 2006 when he and friends were shot while unloading musical equipment outside a church on the far South Side. A man charged was acquitted.

"I think about him all day and all night," Bosley says of her son. "If I stop, I'll lose my mind."

Bosley works with kids 14 to 21, teaching them life and leadership skills and ways to reduce violence. Sometimes, she says, neglectful parents are the problem; often it's gangs who just don't value life.

"You know how you have duck (hunting) season in the woods?" she asks. "In urban communities, it's duck season for us every day. You never know when you're going to get shot."

In December, Bosley phoned to console the grieving mother of Porshe Foster, 15, who was shot a few miles away while standing outside with other kids. A young man in the group has said he believed the gunman was aiming at him.

"I know how it feels to wake up in your house without your child, and you don't want to get out of bed, you don't feel like living," Bosley says.

St. Sabina is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Bosley sent balloons to the girl's funeral.

On Dec. 6, hundreds celebrated the A-student who liked architecture and played on her school's volleyball and basketball teams.

Her brother, Robert, 22, says his sister "knew what was going on in the streets as well as we did," but he didn't worry because she was either at school, home or church.

"She was always a good girl," he says. "She didn't have to look over her shoulder. She was a 15-year-old girl. She didn't ever do any wrong to anybody."

In March, St. Sabina parishioners, led by the Rev. Pfleger, marched through the streets in protest, calling out gang factions by name. They planted the "Stop Killing" cross on 79th.

In April, the priest and other pastors returned to 79th to successfully stop the reopening of a store where there was a mass shooting; they condemned it as a haven for gangs.

In December, Pfleger stood in his church gym, watching gang members hustle down the basketball court.

On this Monday night, in this gym, it was hard to tell who was who.

The basketball teams wore different colored T-shirts with the same word: Peacemaker. They're all part of Pfleger's 12-week basketball league, aimed at cooling gang hostilities by having rivals face each other on the court. Many players, from 16 to 27, have criminal records.

The league grew out of a single successful game this fall and has high-profile supporters, including Joakim Noah of the Chicago Bulls.

Pfleger says the games have helped players build relationships, see beyond gang affiliation and stop shooting each other, at least for now.

"I have people tell me I'm naive, I'm stupid, I should be ashamed of myself working with these gangs," he says. "I could care less. We've demonized them so much we forget they're human beings."

But Pfleger also says games alone won't change anything. These young men need jobs and an education, and he's working on that.

"When there's no alternative," he says, "you'll continue to do what you do."

[Warph]

Breakup sparked theater shootout at "Hobbit" flick
By Ana Ley

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Breakup-sparked-theater-shootout-4123414.php#ixzz2Gc2xVYOg

A recent breakup set off a shooting spree that ended with a man wounded at a South Side movie theater before the suspect was shot by an off-duty deputy, authorities said Monday.

Jesus Manuel Garcia, 19, an employee at a China Garden restaurant next to the Santikos Mayan Palace 14 theater, apparently became upset Sunday night after his girlfriend broke up with him.

He lashed out by sending her a message saying he planned to go to the restaurant and "shoot somebody," said Bexar County sheriff's Sgt. Raymond Pollard.

Pollard said the woman called to warn restaurant employees, but by the time she saw his message, Garcia was already outside the China Garden firing a Glock 23 at the front door about 9:25 p.m.

Garcia went inside, chased people out the back door, and followed one employee as he ran toward the theater, apparently because he was the easiest target, Pollard said.

"He was chasing him, shooting in the air and at other cars," Pollard said.

He said that when a San Antonio police officer heard the gunshots and pulled into the theater's parking lot, Garcia shot out his patrol car's windshield.

Garcia then pursued the employee into the theater, firing more shots when he reached the lobby, Pollard said.

One of the shots struck a patron in the back, but the bullet did not strike any vital organs and the man was released from San Antonio Military Medical Center later Sunday night.

Bexar County sheriff's Sgt. Lisa Castellano, who was working off-duty as a security guard at the Mayan Palace, chased the gunman toward the back of the theater. The 13-year department veteran cornered him after he ran into a men's restroom, shooting him several times and taking his gun, Pollard said.

Armando Olguin, an off-duty San Antonio Independent School District police officer, restrained him using the sergeant's handcuffs, Pollard said.

Garcia was rushed to SAMMC, where he was in stable condition in the intensive care unit Monday.

Bexar County officials said Castellano was told not to talk to media about the shooting because the investigation is ongoing.

SAISD spokeswoman Leslie Price praised Olguin, a four-year department veteran, calling him an "excellent officer."

"It sounds like he did all the right things," Price said.

The shooting immediately sparked fears of a mass slaying like the one in July that killed 12 people and injured 58 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

Tara Grace, who was buying a drink from the concession stand when the shooting began, ran into the bathroom and locked herself in a stall with five other patrons to avoid the mayhem.

"We thought we were going to die," she said.

Cassandra Castillo waited anxiously outside the theater Sunday night for her son, a projectionist at the theater.

"It brings back memories of the other theater shooting, and the elementary school shooting," she said, referring to Friday's Newtown, Conn., shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead. "You only think the worst."

A restaurant employee who asked not to be identified said such an attack was out of character for Garcia, known as "Chuy" to coworkers.

"He's a good kid and not violent. He's quiet and minds his own business," the coworker said. "I have nothing bad to say about him."

The restaurant's owner declined Monday to talk about the shooting or provide his name, but he did say he planned to reopen the business once the front door is replaced and crews can fix the bullet holes in the walls and windows.

A Santikos spokesman did not return a message seeking comment.

Garcia was charged with attempted capital murder of a police officer and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to arrest records. His bail was set at a combined $1 million

[Warph]

1997) MS. Asst. School Principal Captures Mass Murderer With His Colt 1911 .45 (Love this Weapon)

                         

Pearl High School - shooting
Location Pearl, Mississippi, United States
Date - October 1, 1997 (UTC-6)
Attack type - School shooting, spree killing, matricide
Weapon(s) - Marlin Model 336 .30-30-caliber rifle, knife
Deaths - 3, including Luke Woodham's mother
Injured - 7
Perpetrator - Luke Woodham
Defender - Joel Myrick (Assistant Principal & US Army Reserve Commander) armed with Colt 1911 .45 auto [1]
Motive - (Majorly) School bullying, (Minorly) Childhood Abuse


This story is a little different than the normal self defense stories we publish here. This one is over 14 years old. However, I feel that it's important that we not lose track of the older stories that often times provide prime examples of what guns in the hands of law abiding citizens are capable of. I know many people that have followed the gun rights community for any amount of time may have seen this story, but I encourage you to share it now, in the age of social media so that more may understand.

This story focuses on the Pearl High School Shooting of 1997, possibly one of the earliest mass murders committed by a student at a school in the US.

Sixteen year old Luke Woodham was distraught due to the fact that his girlfriend of the time had broken up with him, so he started by beating and stabbing his mother to death at their home. Woodham then took a lever action .30-30 hunting rifle with him to his school, Pearl High. He made no attempt to hide or conceal the rifle. He entered the school and began shooting students. Two people were killed and seven others wounded. The first person killed was Woodham's ex-girlfriend. After she was shot Woodham began shooting indiscriminately at anyone in the area.

Woodham knew that the police would soon be on their way, but he had no plans to allow himself to be captured or kill himself (as is popular with many mass murderers). Woodham had planned to drive to nearby Pearl Junior High School and continue his shooting spree while police were occupied with the confusion at Pearl High.

Woodham successfully made his way to his car well before police arrived. However, Woodham would never make it to Pearl Junior High.

Assistant Princiapl Joel Myrick heard the shooting when it began and immediately went into action. After getting several students to safety and figuring out what was going on Myrick knew what he had to do. Myrick had a Colt .45 handgun in his truck. Due to gun laws Myrick was not allowed to carry his gun on his person. Myrick ran to his vehicle, retrieved the gun, loaded it, and headed back to the school.

Woodham was already in the parking lot, getting into his car. Myrick confronted Woodham in the parking lot, held his gun to the boy's head and managed to subdue Woodham until police arrived.

There is simply no telling how many lives were saved by this educator who took steps to make sure that he was prepared for any situation and to use a weapon when it was necessary to save the lives of others.

Source Articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_High_School_shooting
http://articles.cnn.com/1997-10-02/us/9710_02_miss.shooting.folo_1_mary-woodham-pearl-high-school-trench-coat?_s=PM:US
http://www.davekopel.com/2a/othwr/principal&gun.htm
http://davekopel.org/2A/OpEds/HeroesOutlawed.htm
http://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/loaded-coverage/singlepage
http://lubbockonline.com/news/101297/LA0540.htm
http://www.cnn.com/US/9806/12/school.shooting.verdict/

[Warph]

In 2012, 532 people were murdered in the city of Chicago, according to statistics compiled by theCrime in Chicago website. The number of people murdered the year before was 441, meaning in the city of Chicago, murders have increased by 91 from 2011 to 2012.

The Chicago Police Department was not available to confirm these numbers today, which is New Year's Day.

The website also claims that, through December 25, 2012, there 2,670 people were shot in Chicago last year. That's also an increase from the year before, when 2,217 people were shot in Chicago that year.

In all, it means that on average almost 1.5 people were murdered in Chicago each day last year, while on average 7.3 people were shot each day.

Oh yeah... Chicago started off this morning, 1/1/13, with a "bang"... 3 shot dead.

[Warph]

BREAKING! As of 12/21/12, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, AZ.... FULL STEAM AHEAD with B.H.Obama Investigation - Surprises COMING!

[Warph]

                         

Why the 2nd Amendment

By Walter E. Williams
1/2/2013

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings, said: "The British are not coming. ... We don't need all these guns to kill people." Lewis' vision, shared by many, represents a gross ignorance of why the framers of the Constitution gave us the Second Amendment. How about a few quotes from the period and you decide whether our Founding Fathers harbored a fear of foreign tyrants.

Alexander Hamilton: "The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed," adding later, "If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government." By the way, Hamilton is referring to what institution when he says "the representatives of the people"?

James Madison: "(The Constitution preserves) the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

Thomas Jefferson: "What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms."

George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, which inspired our Constitution's Bill of Rights, said, "To disarm the people -- that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

Rep. John Lewis and like-minded people might dismiss these thoughts by saying the founders were racist anyway. Here's a more recent quote from a card-carrying liberal, the late Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey: "Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. ... The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible." I have many other Second Amendment references at http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes.html.

How about a couple of quotations with which Rep. Lewis and others might agree? "Armas para que?" (translated: "Guns, for what?") by Fidel Castro. There's a more famous one: "The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing." That was Adolf Hitler.

Here's the gun grabbers' slippery-slope agenda, laid out by Nelson T. Shields, founder of Handgun Control Inc.: "We're going to have to take this one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. ... Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. ... The final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition -- except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs and licensed gun collectors -- totally illegal" (The New Yorker, July 1976).

There have been people who've ridiculed the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, asking what chance would citizens have against the military might of the U.S. government. Military might isn't always the deciding factor. Our 1776 War of Independence was against the mightiest nation on the face of the earth -- Great Britain. In Syria, the rebels are making life uncomfortable for the much-better-equipped Syrian regime. Today's Americans are vastly better-armed than our founders, Warsaw Ghetto Jews and Syrian rebels.

There are about 300 million privately held firearms owned by Americans. That's nothing to sneeze at. And notice that the people who support gun control are the very people who want to control and dictate our lives.

[Warph]

"The Average American Citizen"

Gun Confiscation in Ten Easy Steps


By Steve Sheldon / 1 January 2013 /

All the time fellow gun owners say things to me like, "Seriously, Steve, how would they possibly gather up all the hundreds of millions of guns that are out there?"

Well my naïve friend, let me tell you how it works.


Step 1: Create an anti-gun culture and make guns and gun owners the bad guys at every turn: On the evening news, every time a crime is reported, make sure there is a picture of a mean looking gun next to the chalk outline of a body. Portray hunters and sportsmen as backwoods unsophisticated hillbillies and rednecks. Feminize the society, especially the males. Create a culture where the police* are revered as heroes whose intentions can never be questioned. Demonize war and warriors. Label gun organizations "crazed lunatics" and "unreasonable extremists." Make shooting restrictive by forcing participants to private ranges, then close the ranges by legal means citing reasons of safety, nuisance, environmental, or whatever possible. Create terms like "assault weapon", "high-powered sniper rifle", "guns off the streets", "weapons of war" when engaging in the gun debate making ordinary guns out to have extraordinary functions. Build on this disinformation by using movies, gaming, and entertainment that creates the falsehood that guns are capable of doing impossible things like firing hundreds of times without reloading or overheating or blowing up a car's gas tank with the strike of a bullet.


Step 2: Build "security" systems that make the sheeple feel safe, giving them a false sense of security and overdependence on police and government authority while at the same time disarming them. Establish gun free zones. Install security cameras everywhere. Place roving security cars with strobes in mall parking lots. Create neighborhood watch programs under the careful supervision of law enforcement insisting that no one be armed and that all incidents are to be reported to the police. Install and maintain elaborate computer entry systems in buildings. Establish pat downs at sporting events, etc. Put "no gun" signs in all public places.


Step 3: Play soothing music prior to the execution: Tell the sheeple that the taking away of their protection is for their own good. Confuse them with emotional arguments. Convince them that you're doing it for the children. Couch it as a safety issue. Use turncoats to make illogical but emotionally appealing arguments. Tell them you're not coming for all the guns, just some of the more evil looking ones even though they function in exactly in the same manner.

Step 4: Wait until some horrible tragedy or series of events that make the sheeple susceptible to emotional arguments and knee-jerk reactions:

Step 5: Create a system that makes registration and confiscation simple and gun ownership very difficult and expensive: Close private sales between individuals. Create a national registration or database that can easily be turned to for confiscation. Create bureaucracies that are unaccountable to the people and can serve the purpose of registration, confiscation, and collection. Create processes so cumbersome that no one would possibly want to purchase and register a firearm.

Step 6: Begin the process of making certain kinds of guns illegal: Take incremental steps by isolating one group of firearm and pitting its owners against the "more reasonable" owner. Then continue to redefine "reasonable" insisting that if this class of firearm or that class of firearm were "off the streets" then society could be a better place and our children protected.

Step 7: Create "buyback" and "amnesty" programs that have the effect of identifying and confiscating guns that have slipped under the registration radar.

Step 8: Use some kind of national emergency to begin final implementation once the population has been sufficiently disarmed. This can be done through economic chaos or used as an excuse to quell civil uprising as a result of a variety of circumstances.

Step 9: Throughout the process, implement draconian fines and prison sentences for those who refuse to capitulate. Encourage neighbor to turn on neighbor and gun owner to turn on gun owner. Reward turncoats with positions of power or financial gain. THIS STEP IS KEY: To those that think, "They're not going to take my guns away," you are a fool. Most people will capitulate when they are faced with huge fines and prison sentences. Look no further than the holocaust less than sixty years ago. These were not guns that were rounded up and destroyed, but human beings! Does any reasonable person think that this could not possibly happen again? And for those of you who think democracy is the answer, Hitler was put in power through the democratic process and then gained absolute power though various political moves eventually taking full control of the government.

Step 10: Welcome to disarmament! My gun owning friends, do not fall for these steps. Resist them at every turn. Today it's thirty round magazines, "military looking" guns, online ammunition sales and registration, tomorrow, it's full confiscation.

One final thought: If safety, security, and protection of our children are really the issues, then why first go after something that is rarely used in violent crime? Why not start with something that kills far more innocents every year like abortion, prescription drugs, or automobiles?

Don't be lulled into false thinking, my average American citizen. It's not about safety or protecting children; there are better ways to protect against random acts of mass murderers than to disarm law abiding citizens. To quote one of my favorite bumper stickers, "It's not about the guns, it's about the control."

*This is not an indictment against police, as I have family members and very close friends who are members of the law enforcement community who believe as I do and are very necessary members of an ordered society.[/font]

[Warph]

America is under scrutiny for 'guns and violence', which from the point of view of the average American on the ground, is often very over stated and not their experience at all.


From the Daily Mail come the following interesting statistics:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

Britain's violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it has been revealed.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa – widely considered one of the world's most dangerous countries.


And the National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/334904/violent-britain-charles-c-w-cooke#

According to the Mail, Britons suffer 1,158,957 violent crimes per year, which works out at 2,034 per 100,000 residents. By contrast the number in notoriously violent South Africa is 1,609 per 100,000.

The U.S., meanwhile, has a rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, which is lower than France's, at 504; Finland's, at 738; Sweden's, at 1123; and Canada's at 935.


With all the accusatory finger pointing  the USA is taking lately  it is a reminder that sometimes things are not what the media portrays.  The US, for all its problems is no worse than much of the rest of the world and in many instances still  better off.


But who can deny that the entire world is in need of an overhaul in morality and character?


At a Brady Center event to "Prevent Gun Violence by Jodie Foster Fans from Accidentally Hitting White House Press Secretaries in the Head" the Brady Center Legal Action Project Director asked retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens whether having a right to a cell phone might be a more universal form of self-defense than gun ownership.


"Maybe you have some kind of constitutional right to have a cell phone with a predialed 911 number at your bedside, and that might provide you with a little better protection than a gun, which you're not used to using," Justice Stevens mumbled.

Stevens, who often seemed unclear on the difference between a right and an entitlement, had a point. Why bother waiting for the laborious process of using a gun, when you can instantly dial 911 and wait twenty minutes while being murdered for the police to arrive.

[Warph]

The extreme Hollywood view of America is the only view most people really have and it is a false one but it meets the liberal agenda of constantly putting the country down.    
http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/01/are-these-celebrities-hypocrites-calling-for-gun-control-photosvideo/

Talk about your HYPOCRITES! There is an awesome video that was created to show the hypocrisy called "Demand a Plan"

(Please be warned the video has foul language and violence)