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Background Checks Won’t Make US Safer

Photo Credit: Ross Catrow

In April of 2007, a mentally disturbed student showed up at the campus of his school, Virginia Tech, brandishing two semi-automatic pistols, murdered 32 students, teachers and school employees and wounded 17 others. Then he took his own life.

It was the one of deadliest mass-shooting incidents in American history. The nation was in shock, as it is now following the December mass murder at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

The press and public outcry was the same then as now. How can we stop horrors like this from occurring? We’ve got to stop criminals and nut cases from getting their hands on guns. The tragedy spurred passage of the first major piece of federal gun-control legislation since the assault weapon ban was passed in 1994.

The new law, signed by President George W. Bush in January of 2008, appropriated $1.3 billion for states to get the names of those deemed mentally ill into the FBI national data base used for gun-purchase screening. This supposedly would solve the problem of lax state compliance and make the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) more effective.

If only this had been the law of the land a year earlier, commentators opined, the Virginia Tech tragedy might not have happened.

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Palin To Conservatives: Influence, Culture, Sports; Cling To God, Guns, Constitution

Photo Credit: Breitbart

At a leadership forum at Southeastern University in Lakeland Florida on Friday, Sarah Palin told conservatives to influence the culture by impacting sports and continue to cling to God, guns, and the Constitution.

Sports has often always been upstream from culture and, as Andrew Breitbart always said, culture has been upstream from politics.
According to NewsChief.com, Palin encouraged conservatives to “infiltrate” the culture and study journalism while going into Hollywood and the sports world.

“Get out there and influence culture,” she said. “The future of the country depends on what you do.” She also asked the next generation to help change the country’s moral fiber because “our foundation will crumble if we choose to ignore it,”

“Cling to your God, your guns, your Constitution!” Palin said. “God deserves so much better than what we give him … What has happened when we can’t say his name in public?”

She hammered the crony capitalism in Washington D.C., referring to Washington as a “hotbed of cronyism” and calling the federal government “bloated, corrupt, and out-of-control.” Palin injected “crony capitalism” into the political bloodstream with her speech in Indianola, Iowa in 2011 and at her maiden appearance at CPAC in 2012.

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Video: Sportsman Channel TV Host Shot Dead

Photo Credit: The Sportsman Channel

A Sportsman Channel TV host was shot and killed in Montana Thursday by the husband of a woman he was visiting, according to the Associated Press.

Police said 41-year-old Montana man Wayne Bengston shot host Gregory G. Rodriguez in an apparent jealous rage, beat his wife, took his 2-year-old son to a relative and then committed suicide.

Rodriguez, a 43-year-old Texas resident, was the host of the Sportsman Channel show “A Rifleman’s Journal,” in which he traveled the world in pursuit of big game.

According to the AP, Bengston’s wife told police Rodriguez was in town on business and visited her at her mother’s home. Wayne Bengston showed up around 10:30 p.m. and shot Rodriguez as the pair sat at the kitchen table. Bengston then proceeded to beat his wife on the face and head, likely with his pistol. She was treated and released from the hospital.

Watch video here:

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Teachers Get Permission To Carry Guns In Class

Photo Credit: WND

It’s the law. Teachers in South Dakota can carry guns in the classroom. Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed the bill today.

It appears to be the first state law in the nation that specifically allows teachers to carry firearms. Other states have gun laws that could make it possible for teachers to carry arms, but the South Dakota law is apparently the first to directly allow it.

The law does not force teachers to carry guns, and it does not require school districts to arm teachers. The South Dakota law also does not specify that guns carried by teachers must be concealed, but it does require a valid permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Similar bills introduced in about two dozen states since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newton, Conn., have stalled. Supporters of the South Dakota law say it is particularly important in a rural state where emergency responders may be many miles away from schools.

The bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Scott Craig, R-Rapid City, says rural districts do not have the money to hire full-time law officers, so they want to arm teachers or volunteers.

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Obama In Guns-To-Jihadists Cover-Up?

Photo Credit: WNDIn a radio interview, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, questioned whether the Obama administration may be covering up the role played by the CIA annex in Benghazi in a possible scheme to run guns to rebels in the Middle East. The annex was attacked Sept. 11 along with the special U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Charged Paul: “There has been a lot made of the political cover up of President Obama’s administration saying this (Benghazi attack) had something to do with a homemade film from some guy in Los Angeles. But in reality the question is, or the secondary quotation is, why would they do a cover up? What are they covering up?” Paul said he has “a feeling that it had something to do with the CIA annex.”

“You know, a week before the ambassador was killed in Libya, a ship left Libya and docked in Turkey, and it actually interviewed the captain of that ship who said there were arms on board and that he actually witnessed the rebels taking the arms and disputing over who got what,” he said. “That there were grenade launchers; that there were significant arms being transferred.

Paul said it doesn’t prove the CIA was involved but raised the question of the purpose of the annex.

“The Libyan government is said not to have known that they were there,” he noted. “And is that the reason for the cover up? So there are a lot of unanswered questions.” Paul was speaking Sunday night on WABC Radio’s “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.”

Any arming of Middle East rebels would be considered highly controversial. Widespread reports have documented that Syrian and Libyan rebels consist in large part of jihadists, including members of several major al-Qaida groups.

Listen to audio:

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ABC Justifies Editing Out Michelle Obama’s False ‘Automatic Weapon’ Claim

Photo Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery ABC is defending its decision to edit out an apparently erroneous claim by Michelle Obama in its broadcast of the first lady’s interview on Good Morning America today, saying it made the changes “solely” for the sake of time.

As The Washington Examiner reported this morning, the first lady claimed during an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts that 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed in Chicago shortly after performing during the President’s Inauguration, was shot because “some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need.”

In fact, Chicago Police reported Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened fire with a handgun before fleeing in a waiting car,” according to the Associated Press.

For the broadcast, ABC’s Good Morning America producers edited out the first lady’s “automatic weapon” line.

“She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids grow – grew – up, where our house is. And she was caught in the line of fire. I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.”

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New York Army Vet Facing 7 Years In Prison Over Empty Ammo Magazines

Photo Credit: WGRZ-TV An Army veteran in New York is facing up to seven years in prison for possessing five empty 30-round ammunition magazines.

Nate Haddad told WGRZ-TV he was parked on a road last month waiting to meet someone interested in buying them off him when police approached. According to the station, the magazines were for an AR-15 rifle, the same type of weapon Haddad once carried in combat. Magazines over 10 rounds have been illegal in New York since 1994, unless they were manufactured before the law went into effect. Haddad says he thought his were legal, until he found out otherwise.

“I certainly did not think I was committing a felony crime by having these,” Haddad told WGRZ. “My understanding of what I had in my possession was that it was manufactured before 1994, but the arresting officers told me otherwise after I showed them the magazines that I had in my possession.”

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Missouri House Bill Makes Proposing Gun Control Illegal

Photo Credit: CBS St. Louis A Missouri lawmaker is proposing to send colleagues to prison for introducing gun control legislation — a plan that even its sponsor acknowledges has no chance of passage but nonetheless highlights the increasingly strident tone of gun measures in Missouri’s generally pro-gun Legislature.

Rep. Mike Leara said Tuesday that he considers his bill a statement of principle. It would make lawmakers guilty of a felony punishable by up to four years in prison if they introduce legislation restricting gun rights.

“I have no illusions about the bill making it through the legislative process, but I want it to be clear that the Missouri House will stand in defense of the people’s constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” Leara, a Republican from suburban St. Louis, said in a written statement. He declined further comment.

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Gun Dealers Report Shortages Of Ammunition

Photo Credit: John Rawlston, AP Gun shops are running low on ammunition from a run by customers fearful of potential gun-control legislation, according to gun retailers and customers.

Prices have more than doubled over past year in some shops, retailers are putting limits on the amount a customer can buy, and some common types of ammunition, such as .22-caliber long rifle shells, are hard to get.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents ammunition makers, retailers, hunters and sport shooters, attributes what it calls “spot shortages” around the country to rising popularity of sport-shooting and hunting, and to people who are “keeping firearms for personal and home defense.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December reported recently that hunting license sales were up 9% from 2006 to 2011, reversing a 25-year decline. Michael Hampton, Jr., executive director of the National Skeet Shooting Association and the National Sporting Clays Association, says participation in those sports, which includes up to 4 million participants in each sport, is growing 3-5% annually.

But retailers say much of the demand is from gun owners who are stockpiling in case certain weapons are banned, who believe that economic chaos may be coming, or who are driven by rumors of inevitable background checks or rising taxes on ammunition. Gun sellers and owners say a run on ammunition began shortly after President Obama was re-elected, and has intensified in the gun-violence debate since the December mass killing of 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Conn.

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Levin: US Gov’t Buying Up Billions Of Rounds Of Ammo, Preparing For Societal Collapse (+audio)

Photo Credit: Daily CallerOn Friday’s night broadcast of his radio show, Mark Levin speculated that the federal government is stockpiling ammunition to ensure the rule of law in the event of a total societal and economic collapse.

On Feb. 8, Investor’s Business Daily editorial writer Andrew Malcolm penned a piece about the Department of Homeland Security amassing what he called “sufficient firepower to shoot every American about five times –including illegal immigrants,” or more than 1.6 billion bullets.

“I’m going to tell you what I think is going on,” Levin said. “I don’t think insurrection. Law enforcement and national security agencies — they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios. I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating: the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses.”

“I’m not talking about a recession,” Levin continued. “I’m talking about a collapse when people are desperate, when they can’t food and clothing, when they have no way of going from place to place, when they can’t protective themselves. There aren’t enough police officers on the face of the Earth to adequately handle a situation like that.”

The conservative talker and author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America” based his hypothesis on his time in the Reagan Justice Department.

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