Anti-Gun Groups No Longer Fighting For Assault Weapons Bans

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Photo Credit: TownHallAlas, gun control groups seem to have moved away from so-called assault weapons bans for reasons pro-Second Amendment groups have espoused for months; they’re ineffective and represent a very small fraction of firearm-related homicides. Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America now calls such policy initiatives “nonstarters.” Nonetheless, that does not mean that these people have abandoned their support for such bans on certain types of firearms (via ProPublica):

Nearly two years later, Watts works full-time as the head of the group, now named Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is a significant player in a coalition financed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But while polls suggest a majority of Americans still support an assault weapons ban, it is no longer one of Watts’ top priorities.

“We’ve very much changed our strategy to focus on public safety measures that will save the most lives,” she told ProPublica.

It’s not just that the ban proved to be what Watts calls a “nonstarter” politically, gaining fewer votes in the Senate post-Sandy Hook than background check legislation. It was also that as Watts spoke to experts and learned more about gun violence in the United States, she realized that pushing for a ban isn’t the best way to prevent gun deaths.

A 2004 Justice Department-funded evaluation found no clear evidence that the decade-long ban saved any lives. The guns categorized as “assault weapons” had only been used in about 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. “Should it be renewed,” the report concluded, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

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$2.66T: Tax Revenues for FY14 Hit Record Through August; Gov’t Still Runs $589B Deficit

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Photo Credit: APInflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $2,663,426,000,000 for the first 11 months of the fiscal year this August, but the federal government still ran a $589,185,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.

Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

The largest share of the tax revenue so far this year has come from individual income taxes, which totaled $1,233,274,000,000 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2014.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hillary Clinton in Iowa Stirs 2016 Speculation

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsHillary Clinton returned to Iowa on Sunday for the first time since her 2008 Democratic presidential primary loss in the state, telling the crowd at the 37th annual Harkin Steak Fry — “I’m back.”

Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner should she make a 2016 White House bid, was greeted with loud cheers at the fundraising event. The event was held in honor of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is retiring from Congress this year.

The former secretary of state told the crowd of several hundred that her immediate focus is helping fellow Democrats in the midterm elections but that she also thinks about “that other thing,” hinting at a 2016 run.

“It’s true, I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “People get excited about presidential campaigns, look I get excited about presidential campaigns, too.”

Missing in her speech were remarks on President Obama’s recent efforts to destroy the Islamic State militant group and on other pressing foreign policy issues.

Read more from this story HERE.

School Tells Soldier Escorting Daughter to Leave Because of Offensive Uniform

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Photo Credit: IJ ReviewA Lieutenant Colonel was escorting his daughter to Rochester Adams high school in Michigan, when the man in uniform was rudely informed that he would not be permitted to enter the premises.

The reason that the military officer was given? His uniform ‘might offend people.’

The security personnel hired by the school told the 24-year veteran Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker that if he wanted to take his daughter inside the building, he would have to go home and change clothes.

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US Air Force Confronts Atheists: Must Swear to God or Leave Service

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Photo Credit: AFP / Chris SchneiderThe US Air Force has told a sergeant he will have to leave the military unless he agrees to take an oath with the phrase “so help me God,” officials said Tuesday.

In the latest religious controversy to roil the air force, the atheist airman last month was denied his request to re-enlist because of his refusal to swear to God — and he is now poised to take the military to court, his lawyer said.

“We have not received word from the Air Force regarding our letter. It has not indicated a willingness to settle out of court,” said Monica Miller, an attorney for the American Humanist Association, which has taken up the service member’s case.

With the deadline for re-enlisting expiring in November, the technical sergeant at Creech Air Force base in Nevada — whose name has not been released — will be forced to sue the government in a federal court, Miller told AFP.

In the past, an airman could opt for an alternative phrase and omit the words “so help me God,” but the US Air Force changed its policy in October 2013.

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'DREAMER' Charged with Strangling 5-Year-Old Girl to Death in Texas

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Photo Credit: Dallas County Sheriff’s OfficeBy Dave Gibson.

On Sunday, police in Dallas arrested Angel Sanches, 17, after he reportedly strangled his 5-year-old cousin to death and left her tiny body hanging inside a closet inside an abandoned unit at the Sontera Palms Apartments in Lake Highlands. The victim “was found hanging in a closet by a shirt around her neck,” according to court documents.

The victim, Katherine Gonzalez, was staying with her uncle at the apartment complex, while her parents were at work. The uncle called police when he could not find the girl. Officers searched the complex and soon made the grisly discovery.

A witness, Freddie Washington, saw Sanches lure the little girl into the apartment.

Washington told WFAA:

He kept telling her to ‘Come on, come on,’ like come home or something. I think he waited for me to leave around the corner and then took her into the vacant apartment.

Read more from this story HERE.

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BUCHANAN: ‘ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION POSES GREATER THREAT THAN ISIS’

By Leo Hohmann.

President Obama’s vow to unilaterally create amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants poses more of a threat to the future of the country than the brutal ISIS radicals marching across Iraq and Syria, according to a leading voice in the conservative movement.

Pat Buchanan, author of numerous books on American politics and a former Republican presidential candidate, said on the Laura Ingraham show Monday that the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is not as big of a long-term threat as the failure to secure the border and uphold the rule of law on the homefront.

“Look, we better realize the United States itself is in tremendous long-term danger, I think, in the bleeding border along our southern border, and the mass movement of peoples all over the world into this country,” Buchanan said. “The decomposition of the country socially and culturally and politically – all of these things it seems to me are far greater long-term threats to the United States than even those dreadful characters over there in Syria or Iraq beheading people.”

To view it otherwise is to miss a historical tipping point, he said.

“I don’t think that (ISIS) is the threat. I think it’s basically the country breaking up internally and failing as the great nation that it was, and I think there is an awful lot of things that need to be done right here in the United States, and not simply in the economy, to bring us all together and make us one people again, that have nothing to do with what’s going on in Iraq,” Buchanan said.

Read more from this story HERE.

These Two Teenage Girls Left Their Homes in Austria, See What They Look Like Now as ISIS Fighters

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A heartbreaking story comes to us via our friends at Young Conservatives. According to the Daily Mail, two teenage Austrian girls have left their homes to join in the fight for ISIS.

The two girls, 16-year-old Samra Kesinovic (left) and her 14-year-old friend Sabina Selimovic, are being hunted by Interpol for becoming the new “public face” of ISIS.

Read more from this story HERE.

'Armed Patriots': the Private Citizens Out to Secure the U.S. Border

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Rick Wilking By Lisa Maria Garza.

With binoculars in hand, an assault rifle slung over his chest and a Glock pistol on his hip, a man named Will scans the banks of the Rio Grande looking for anyone trying to cross from Mexico into Texas.

Will is a member of the Patriots, a group of heavily armed private citizens who use displays of force to intimidate people attempting to cross the border illegally. Since early summer the Patriots have patrolled an area near Brownsville, Texas.

“If you spot them and shine your light on them, that lets them know that you’re there,” said the 25-year-old construction worker from Indiana who flew to Texas for a stint with the Patriots. “Nine times out of 10, they’re not going to come over.

“Even if they are going to try to cross again, we’re still making it harder for them, and that’s the reason we’re here.”

The Patriots Information Hotline, a networking call center, estimates that 22 groups of “armed patriots” have sprung up along the border from Texas to California this year.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Feds Force Public Schools To Enroll Illegal Immigrant Children With No Medical Screening

By Eric Owens.

Since October 2013, 50,303 “unaccompanied children” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have crossed America’s porous Southern border to claim green cards via the immigration courts.

The Obama administration has sent none of these children home. Instead, federal officials have chosen to set aside normal immigration practices and to allow this wave of young illegal immigrants to apply for green cards via asylum applications and to disperse across the country.

With school now in session, these kids have enrolled in public schools nationwide.

In the event that any of these thousands of Central American children are carrying communicable diseases, experts claim, any subsequent health crisis will likely first manifest itself within a public school environment.

That’s alarming news. But wait! There’s more!

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: UPIAmerica: Obama Isn’t A Strong Leader

By Sam Rolley.

In light of widespread American perception that President Barack Obama has failed to adequately respond to national problems such as illegal immigration and the threat of Islamic State terrorists, the commander in chief’s rating for “strong leadership” has reached a new low.

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday, a majority (56 percent) of Americans disprove of the president’s handling of international affairs. Fifty-two percent reported that Obama has been too cautious in responding to ISIS and 65 percent want more airstrikes on positions held by the terror group in the Middle East.

Read more from this story HERE.

Benghazi Security Contractors: About 25 Americans are Still Alive Because We Broke 'Stand Down' Order

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Photo Credit: FNCThe Obama administration, the CIA, and even some congressional committees—they all said there “was no ‘stand down’ order.”

But now five men who helped ward off the terrorists that attacked U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya two years ago say it’s only because they defied such an order that as many as 25 Americans are alive today.

“There’s quite a few—the soft-skins, we call them, or the non-shooters,” Kris “Tanto” Paronto, one of the security contractors that fateful evening, said in a phone interview on early Monday afternoon. “They’re all still working. I can’t give their names out or give their call signs out. The only ones I can are like me and Oz and Tig who have come out. We’re all on board with the project and we are all a team together, but some want to remain anonymous.

“As far as the numbers, you’ve got—and I’m going to be approximate—but there’s about 25 people that came out there and then there’s however many that left from Tripoli from the State Department when we got there,” Paronto continued. “There’s a lot of them. I haven’t stayed in touch with all of them, and haven’t felt the need to. But a lot of them are staffers for the most part. A lot of them are still working.”

Terrorists who stormed the compound that evening killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and Foreign Service Office Sean Smith. As the attack was beginning, Paronto, John “Tig” Tiegen, Mark “Oz” Geist, Jack Silva, Dave “D.B.” Benton, and Tyrone “Rone” Woods—the security team at the CIA Annex—were ready within minutes to head over to a nearby diplomatic compound, where terrorists from Anshar Al-Sharia armed with AK-47s and other powerful weapons had stormed the building. Inside the compound were Smith, Stevens, and five other Americans.

Read more from this story HERE.

Soviet-Styled Obamacare on Course to Create Enormous Costs, Destroy Finest Healthcare System in World

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Photo Credit: APThe bill is coming due for ObamaCare, and it’s a whopper. According to Medicare’s actuaries, U.S. health care spending is about to skyrocket. . .

Back in the 1960s, many Americans paid for doctor and hospital services out of pocket or through modestly priced private insurance. Health care spending was about 6% of the country’s gross domestic product.

Enter President Lyndon B. Johnson and Medicare. He bought millions of votes by giving seniors free health care that they never paid for through payroll taxes during their working years. He also helped lay the foundations for the entitlement state with Medicaid. . .

Today health care spending is more than 17% of GDP. Life-extending treatments are part of the jump, but Germany and Holland spend about 12% and have those. The extra costs in the U.S. are federally mandated giveaways, inefficiencies and abuse — about $850 billion, which is much more than what is spent on defense. . .

Just as Soviet central planning failed to put enough TVs and beef on store shelves, federally managed health care creates long waits to see doctors and lots of opportunities for soft fraud — activities by health care providers that game federal rules — and outright stealing.

Read more from this story HERE.