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Serbu Firearms Refuses To Sell .50 Cal Sniper Rifles To NYPD

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Photo Credit: Freedom Outpost

Back in February I informed you that several gun makers and those that sell them had decided to boycott selling to law enforcement in states that were putting forth legislation hostile to the Second Amendment. Within a week, that number had grown by over 700%. Now word is that Serbu Firearms, a manufacturer of bolt-action and semi-automatic .50 caliber sniper rifles, will not be selling their arms to the New York Police Department. The reason is obvious, New York’s unconstitutional SAFE Act.

The company’s founder, Mark Serbu, posted on the company’s Facebook page an email exchange between himself and a NYPD-FTS. The officer said that he was “assigned to the NYPD Firearms and Tactics Section. I have been directed to research a new semi-automatic .50 caliber platform for my department.”

He had apparently been waiting for two weeks to hear back from Serbu’s office regarding obtaining a rifle for test and evaluation.

Mr. Serbu finally responded:

I feel bad because I’d love to get my rifle into as many police departments as possible…who doesn’t want their law enforcement agencies armed with the best possible tools to take out the bad guys? I heard a rumor that the only other company with a .50 BMG semi-auto rifle in production won’t sell to NY police agencies either. So because of a stupid law the venerable NYPD won’t have the best tools for the job….

Read more from this story HERE.

Gun Store Rescinds Mark Kelly’s Rifle Purchase, Questions His ‘Intent’

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Photo Credit: AP

A Tucson gun store owner has decided to rescind the sale of a military-style rifle to Mark Kelly, the husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, after Kelly said he had intended the purchase to make a political point about how easy it is to obtain the kind of firearms he’s lobbying Congress to ban.

Kelly’s March 5 purchase of an AR-15-style rifle and a 45.-caliber handgun at Diamondback Police Supply sparked a frenzy of reaction from both sides of the debate after he posted to Facebook a photo of himself shopping.

A background check took only a matter of minutes to complete, Kelly said in the Facebook post, adding that it’s scary to think people can buy similar guns without background checks at gun shows or on the Internet.

But Kelly couldn’t immediately take possession of the rifle because the shop had bought it from a customer. As a result, the store is required by a Tucson ordinance to hold the gun for 20 days to give the city enough time to make sure the weapon wasn’t used in a crime.

Store owner Doug MacKinlay said Monday in a Facebook post of his own that he “determined that was in my company’s best interest to terminate this transaction prior to his returning to my store.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz Threaten Filibuster on Guns (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are threatening to filibuster gun-control legislation, according to a letter they plan to hand-deliver to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office on Tuesday.

“We will oppose the motion to proceed to any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions,” the three conservatives wrote in a copy of the signed letter obtained by POLITICO.

Reid plans to bring up a gun-control measure that focuses on broadening background checks and cracking down on interstate gun-trafficking after the current Senate recess.

Conservatives are concerned that once that bill reaches the floor, amendments could stiffen restrictions on gun control.

Watch the video here:

[our apologies, but this video is not viewable on all browsers]

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Hitler Survivor Condemns Gun Control, Says ‘Keep Your Guns and Buy More!’

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Kitty Werthmann was born in Austria, and lived there for seven years under Hitler’s brutal regime, and after World War II, she also lived three years under Soviet communist occupation. Needless to say, Mrs. Werthmann is someone who has an acute awareness of how media distorts things and tyranny comes to power. Mrs. Werthmann, not only says that the media was wrong about how Hitler came to power, but she says that “In the beginning, Hitler didn’t look like, or talk like a monster at all. He talked like an American politician.”

She says that the story of Hitler overthrowing governments and people in order to come to power just simply isn’t true, but rather the Austrian people elected Hitler with 98% of the vote at the ballot box. Mrs. Werthmann then goes on to say that the Austrian people had guns, but the government began to say that they were dangerous, so they began to implement gun registration. Then she said this was followed by turning in their weapons to the police station in order to cut down on crime, and if citizens didn’t… there would be capital punishment.

Mrs. Werthmann says that the dictatorship, “didn’t happen over night, but it took 5 years, gradually, little by little, to escalate to a dictatorship.”

She then goes on to say that, “When the people fear the government, that’s tyranny, but when the government fears the people, that’s liberty.”

As a Nazi survivor, what is her advice to us… “Keep your guns, keep your guns and buy more guns.”

Watch video here:

Here is a much longer video where Mrs. Werthmann gives even more background on what happened in Austria and Germany under Hitler:

Finally, here is Mrs. Werthmann’s Camp America speech, given in Howard Lake, MN:

Mental-Health Officials Clash on N.Y. Gun Law Reporting

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Photo Credit: Seth Wenig AP

Psychiatrists, county officials and law enforcement are questioning a portion of New York’s new gun-control law that requires them to take steps that could lead to guns being seized from potentially dangerous people.

Since mid-March, New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act has required mental health professionals to report when a patient is a potential danger to himself or others. A county receives the information, decides whether to approve it, and if so sends it to the state for entry into a database. Local law enforcement officials then must suspend or revoke any gun licenses and remove a gun owner’s firearms.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has touted the reporting requirements outlined in the law, saying they will keep guns out of the hands of the dangerously mentally ill and prevent mass shootings that have claimed more than 900 victims in the past seven years.

But parties who must participate in the process said the new law was hastily designed and broadly written.

“When someone drops a whole new set of rules out of the sky, … you trip up on a lot of stuff,” said Eric Caine, psychiatry department chairman at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bloomberg Begins Multimillion Dollar TV Gun Control Blitz to Push Swing Senators

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Photo Credit: NY Times

The commercial is an unambiguous appeal to gun owners: a middle-aged hunter, rifle in hand, vows that he will fight to protect the Second Amendment. But in a sensible, father-of-the-house tone, he also urges voters to support comprehensive background checks, “so criminals and the dangerously mentally ill can’t buy guns.”

The man behind the advertisement is not known for his kinship with the gun crowd: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the nation’s fiercest advocate of restrictions on firearms since the December rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Determined to persuade Congress to act in response to that shooting, Mr. Bloomberg on Monday will begin bankrolling a $12 million national advertising campaign that focuses on senators who he believes might be persuaded to support a pending package of federal regulations to curb gun violence. The ads, in 13 states, will blanket those senators’ districts during an Easter Congressional recess that is to be followed by debate over the legislation.

In a telling sign of how much the white-hot demands for gun control have been tempered by political reality, Mr. Bloomberg’s commercials make no mention of an assault weapons ban once sought by the White House and its allies, instead focusing on the more achievable goal of universal background checks.

“You don’t want to lose everything in the interest of getting the perfect,” Mr. Bloomberg said in an interview, acknowledging his disappointment over the apparent unlikelihood of an assault weapons ban, but insisting he is resolved to push the legislation through at a time when its prospects are uncertain.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.N. Threatens to Override Second Amendment

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While President Obama lost a round this week on his gun-control agenda in Congress, he’s making up for lost ground by pursuing a broader gun grab at the United Nations.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said there was not enough support to give Sen. Dianne Feinstein the stand-alone vote she demands on the “assault weapon” ban, but the upper chamber may soon be the deciding factor in whether the United States ratifies an international treaty that could strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights.

On Monday, the United States joined in the nine day conference in New York to finalize negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The treaty is intended to regulate the global trade of conventional weapons, but depending how the final document is worded, it could put at risk Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.

The countries were negotiating the draft last July, but stopped when the U.S. asked for a delay. Many believe Mr. Obama pushed the issue past Election Day in order not to further alienate gun owners. Now that he has more “flexibility” in his second term, the U.S. is back at the table.

Secretary of State John Kerry has encouraged reaching consensus by March 28. “The United States is steadfast in its commitment to achieve a strong and effective Arms Trade Treaty that helps address the adverse effects of the international arms trade on global peace and stability,” he wrote in a statement Friday.

Read more from this story HERE.

Round Two Of Gun Control Battle: Extension Of Federal Background Checks

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Photo Credit: Christian Gooden/AP

In the early hours of Monday morning, James Seevakumaran pulled the fire alarm in his dorm at a Florida university, at the start of what he intended to be the latest mass shooting to horrify the nation. The plan was to force his fellow students out of their rooms, so he could “give them hell” with a military-style assault rifle equipped with a high-capacity magazine and plenty of back-up ammunition.

It was only the sharp wits of Seevakumaran’s room-mate that spared the US another massacre. He locked himself in the bathroom and called 911; as the SWAT team arrived minutes later the would-be gunman turned his rifle on himself and, before he had the chance to take anyone else’s life, ended his own.

A few hours later, Harry Reid, the majority leader in the US Senate, called his fellow Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein into his office and gave her some disappointing news. He told her that the chances of success of the bill she had sponsored – a ban on the sale of the type of assault rifle that Seevakumaran had just come so close to using – were so remote that he had decided to drop it from the gun control legislation that he will be bringing to the Senate floor next month.

Reid’s dumping of Feinstein’s assault weapons ban marks the first stage in the epic political struggle over guns prompted by the Newtown school tragedy in December, in which 20 children and six teachers were killed. Round one goes to the pro-gun lobby and its cheerleader, the National Rifle Association.

Now, almost exactly 100 days after the Sandy Hook massacre, round two begins. The stakes are even higher. On Thursday night, Reid indicated that unlike the assault weapons ban, he would be including in his bill a provision to extend federal background checks to all gun sales.

Read more from this story HERE.

NY SAFE Act Nabs Its First Gun Owner: An Iraq War Vet

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Photo Credit: Buffalo News

A Western New York man now faces seven years in prison for violating Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new gun control-law, the NY Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act (or SAFE Act).

Benjamin M. Wassell, an Iraq War veteran, was charged with twice selling newly banned military-style ‘assault’ weapons and standard-capacity magazines to an undercover police officer as part of a sting operation conducted by State Police and the New York Attorney General’s Office, the Buffalo News reported.

Altogether, the 32-year-old Silver Creek resident was slapped with three felony charges and one misdemeanor, which as noted could end up putting Wassell, who has no prior convictions, behind bars for as many as seven years.

“By selling these illegal firearms, Mr. Wassell’s actions had potentially dangerous consequences for New Yorkers,” said state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “We have seen far too much gun violence in our state in recent months, and the sale of illegal semiautomatic weapons will not go unpunished.”

On Jan. 24 Wassell sold a Del-Ton AR-15 to an undercover agent along with six standard-capacity magazines and 299 rounds of ammunition for $1,900.

Read more from this story HERE.

Senate Gun Bill Would Expand Background Checks

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Gun control legislation the Senate debates next month will include an expansion of federal background checks for firearms buyers, Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday in a victory for advocates of gun restrictions.

The announcement underscores that Democrats intend to take an aggressive approach in the effort to broaden the checks, currently required for transactions involving federally licensed firearms dealers but not private sales at gun shows or online.

President Barack Obama and many supporters of curbing guns consider an expansion of the system to private gun sales to be the most effective response lawmakers could take in the wake of December’s elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. The system is designed to keep guns from criminals, people with serious mental problems and others considered potentially dangerous.

The overall gun measure will also include legislation boosting penalties for illegal gun trafficking and modestly expanding a grant program for school security, said Reid, D-Nev. Its fate remains uncertain, and it will all but certainly need Republican support to survive.

Reid said that during Congress’ upcoming two-week break, he hopes senators will strike a bipartisan compromise on broadening background checks. Without a deal, he indicated the gun bill would include a stricter version approved this month by the Senate Judiciary Committee and authored by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expanding the system to virtually all private gun transactions with few exceptions.

Read more from this story HERE.