Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. (VCDL)

Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
PO. Box 513, Newington, VA 22122 • 804-639-0600 • 703-372-3285 • 757-271-3705 • 540-446-5783

09/24/09 - VCDL Update 9/24/09 - Part 3

More recently, after having been a pro-gun member of the 111th Congress from New York's 20th District, Democrat Kirstin Gillibrand - now elevated to the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton when she became Secretary of State - has been voting consistently anti-gun, and just the other day she joined only six other senators to oppose a measure that cut funding to the anti-gun ACORN organization in the midst of a scandal that suggests the organization has no moral compass at all. Virginia's Mark Warner, another Democrat who has appeared in a video extolling the virtues of waterfowl hunting for an afternoon, accused the National Rifle Association of having been "hijacked by those who are in the extreme" during the confirmation process for freshman Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has twice been involved in anti-gun rights rulings while on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. When Warner was Virginia governor a few years ago, he signed several pro-gun bills, but it now appears he did so only because the Legislature was strongly Republican. Warner had earlier voiced support for the 1994 Clinton gun ban. Now he's insulting and angering NRA members. Who can forget the famous Warner quote that suggests a coalition of conservative groups, including the NRA, had "just about completely taken over the Republican Party" in Virginia. In his words, this was "a whole coalition of people that have all sorts of different views that I think most of us in this room would find threatening to them and what it means to be an American." Hmmm, isn't this another way of defining "diversity?" If that's a threat to "what it means to be an American," perhaps Sen. Warner - who voted for Sotomayor's confirmation - ought to examine his own party before taking shots at the NRA. Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill from Missouri - where the 24th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference unfolds Sept. 25-27 in St. Louis - has never been pro-gun except during her campaign for the seat she now holds. As Larry Keane, vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation recalled in a scathing piece he wrote about candidate McCaskill "stalking hunters' and gun owners' votes" in the Oct. 20, 2006 edition of Human Events, "She's running radio spots claiming that by following her dad through the woods as he hunted she learned to value and protect the 2nd Amendment." This is the same Claire McCaskill who opposed concealed carry in Missouri, and who balked at the NRA for having the audacity to score votes on a recent Senate measure that would have established national concealed carry reciprocity. That was the vote that demonstrated just how deceptive some Democrats are on gun rights. The measure, sponsored by staunch pro-gun Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, required 60 votes for passage. Democrats, including Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln from Arkansas, played what Huffington Post blogger Ryan Grim revealed was a game of political sleight-of-hand, counting votes and giving one another cover under the watchful eye of choreographer Sen. Chuck Schumer, essentially so they could go home and tell the folks that they had voted with the NRA, but the measure still failed. The way Democrats set up the vote, it would have been nearly impossible not to fail, but it should have succeeded. In my book last year with Alan Gottlieb, These Dogs Don't Hunt: The Democrats' War on Guns, we took a hard look at how Democrats, as a party, had established such an awful history on gun rights that they became known as "The Party of Gun Control." It is a label they just can't shake, despite the efforts of many pro-gun individual members, including the 65 courageous House Democrats I wrote about in March who sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, telling him to back off on gun control initiatives because such measures would not get their support. It is not enough for Democrats or Republicans to claim they "support the Second Amendment." That kind of rhetoric is cheap and meaningless, and it is dished out by people who think American gun owners are a stupid lot that meet the stereotype depicted in all too many anti-gun editorial cartoons, that of a paranoid fool. You know, the kind of conservative whack job that candidate Barack Obama whined about at a 2008 San Francisco fund raiser, people who "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." A truly pro-gun Democrat would have had his or her name on that March letter, drawing a line in the sand they vowed to protect when they ran for election and asked for your votes. With Democrats in trouble and the mid-term elections looming in 14 months, pay close attention to how many of these politicians at some point start reaching out to appeal to those very gun owners whose rights they routinely disregard. Members of the NRA and other gun rights organizations are tired of being taken for suckers. Democrats learned that the hard way in 1994, and in 2010, they may get a refresher course. ************************************************** 29. Axe-wielding pupil wounds several in German school ************************************************** The student also uses gasoline bombs and knives in the attack. Ban guns and everyone is safe? Yeah - only in the over-active imagination of anti-gunners. Tim Whitney emailed me this: -- http://tinyurl.com/n8omd5 www.nytimes.com Axe - Wielding Pupil Wounds Several In German School By REUTERS Published: September 17, 2009 ANSBACH, Germany (Reuters) - An 18-year-old man threw petrol bombs into two classrooms and lashed out with an axe at his school in Germany on Thursday, severely wounding two girls, before police shot him in the stomach to stop him. One girl was in a life-threatening condition after receiving skull injuries while another was severely burnt by the petrol bomb, a police spokesman said. Others had light injuries. The 18-year-old student, who was armed with two knives and several petrol bombs when police cornered him inside the Carolinum secondary school in the southern town of Ansbach, was shot several times and arrested, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said. "Police smelt burning in the stairs and ran into the suspect, who was armed with an axe, several knives and further petrol bombs," Herrmann told a news conference. The 18-year-old was in a critical condition. Police had evacuated the school's 700 pupils, who were now with their families, or being treated by counsellors. Police said they had no idea what had motivated the young man, who had never aroused attention, to attack his fellow students. The incident is the latest in a spate of school attacks in Germany. In March, a 17-year old killed 15 people in a shooting spree at his former school in the southwest town of Winnenden before killing himself. In 2006, a masked man armed with rifles and explosives attacked a school in the western town of Emsdetten, wounding 11 people before killing himself. Germany suffered its worst school shooting in April 2002 when a gunman killed 17 people, including himself, at a high school in the eastern city of Erfurt. Herrmann said Bavarian police had been able to react quickly and effectively after studying the Winnenden attack and had reached the school several minutes after an alarm was raised. (Editing by Jon Hemming) ************************************************** 30. Antis trying to use extremely rare crimes by CHP holders to their advantage ************************************************** Internet comments spark debate on crimes committed by CCW permit holders Shannon Honaker emailed me this link to a response from "VT Hokie" to Dan Casey's attack on permit holders. My response to Casey's opinion piece follows VT Hokie's response: http://tinyurl.com/nt2xva http://blogs.roanoke.com 7 police officers, 43 citizens. Across the entire nation. Fifty murders by concealed carry permit holders. That averages to one per state in two years. How many of these were in Virginia? Only one, in December 2008. There are over 200,000 permit holders in VA. The VPC wants to color the public's view of all 200,000 of these citizens with the actions of one? One could use a study on the instances of killings of abortion doctors to insinuate that pro-life citizens are a danger to our society. It would be just as valid an argument. I've never said that CHP holders were incapable of being morons, or criminals. But one can conclude from this study that the VAST majority of them are the law-abiding citizens we claim them to be. Comment by VT Hokie -- September 14, 2009 * 2:35 pm --- There are over 5,000,000 permit holders in the US. Assuming every case you documented were correct, that means the odds of a permit holder committing such a crimes is 10 / 5,000,000 or .000002 - that is for all practical purposes statistically a zero. The 10 was from the claim of 30 incidents in a 3 year period. Comment by Philip Van Cleave -- September 14, 2009 * 2:35 pm ------------------------------------------- ***************************************************************************