The NRA's Perverted View of America

Huffington Post by josh Horwitz

Responding to the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Houston earlier this month, Connecticut's freshman Senator Chris Murphy noted, "The NRA kind of announced this weekend they're morphing into a paramilitary group, that essentially they're going to be advocating for armed resistance to the U.S. government." Law professor Stanley Fish mused, "The more militant members of the NRA and most of its leaders may be un-American ... [John Wilkes] Booth's modern successors are saying that a house in the hands of tyrants does not deserve to stand and they are ready to bring it down with their constitutionally protected guns." They weren't exaggerating.

The NRA didn't just throw down the gauntlet to our government in Houston. It also articulated a vision of America and its ideals that is the antithesis of what our Founders intended, and which would mean the abolition of our Constitution.

There can longer be any doubt that the NRA's leadership views our government as a dangerous enemy that must be defeated with violence and force of arms. The rhetoric at their convention was consistently apocalyptic. Keynote speaker Glenn Beck declared:

The freedom of all mankind, make no mistake, is at stake ... Our liberty, our way of life, is being legislated out of existence. Our rights are being diminished by a ruling class of powerful elites. They're growing out of control. We are in a precarious situation. We are. The hour grows late. We have a government that is now run by radical revolutionaries ... They know, if you lose the Second Amendment you certainly lose the First and the Fourth and the Fifth, the right to a grand jury, and the 10th and the 14th and the 19th...

Posters In Washington State Capitol Claim Gun Laws Are Just Like Anti-Gay Discrimination

Think Progress

A series of posters appeared around the Washington State Capitol in the last several days linking gay rights and opposition to gun laws. One poster even suggests that laws intended to prevent gun violence are the moral equivalent of discrimination:




Another poster proposes armed vigilantism to “defend” the right to marry:



The poster of the two women isn’t new. It has been around for about four years and St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner Kurt Hofmann wrote about it in November 2009. I suppose Kurt's a big supporter of the poor-persecuted-gun-owners idea. Maybe he's be willing to elaborate for us.

The NRA List of The ‘Coolest Gun Movies’ Ever

 

TPM

After the December killings in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association’s chief lambasted the the evils of violent movies and video games, saying they, rather than guns, were a source of the nation’s woes.

Now, less than six months later, the NRA’s “flagship publication,” American Rifleman, is celebrating cinematic savagery with a list of the top 10 “coolest gun movies” that unabashedly praises Hollywood depictions of death and crime.

“This movie made shooters realize the importance of firepower, and that preparedness might be needed in the future,” Rackley wrote about “The Terminator.” “That is what this movie is about — the future — and how anything is possible, even the creation of cyber units that are a mix of man and machine, which isn’t that unbelievable since recent news reports reveal that scientists have built a bionic man that utilizes a working heart, a set of lungs and a face. Let’s just hope they don’t come for us.”

American Rifleman’s top 10 list is a far cry from the remarks NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre made at a >press conference a week after the Newtown shooting. In that statement, LaPierre decried Hollywood as a “a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people.”

“Isn’t fantasizing about killing people as a way to get your kicks really the filthiest form of pornography?” LaPierre said. “In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes.”


Here’s the NRA’s full list of gun flicks:

1. Red Dawn
2. The Terminator
3. The Alamo
4. Die Hard
5. The Godfather
6. Zombieland
7. The Matrix
8. The Delta Force
9. The Road Warrior
10. Tremors

I love that Red Dawn is number one. Gun owners are often overgrown adolescents who pretend to be serious.  There's no movie on that list which brings out the gun-nut fantasies like Red Dawn.

What do you think?

Smart Guns

 

The Washington Post

A high-tech startup is wading into the gun control debate with a wireless controller that would allow gun owners to know when their weapon is being moved — and disable it remotely.

The technology, but not an actual gun, was demonstrated Tuesday at a wireless technology conference in Las Vegas and was shown to The Associated Press in advance. It comes at a time when lawmakers around the U.S. are considering contentious smart gun laws that would require new guns to include high-tech devices that limit who can fire them.

The new Yardarm Technologies LLC system would trigger an alarm on an owner’s cellphone if a gun is moved, and the owner could then hit a button to activate the safety and disable the weapon. New guns would come with a microchip on the body and antennas winding around the grip. It would add about $50 to the cost of a gun, and about $12 a year for the service.

“The idea is to connect gun owners more directly with their guns, no matter what the circumstance,” said Yardarm CEO Robert Stewart.

The Yardarm system is one of several recently introduced high-tech offerings: the iGun only fires if it recognizes a ring on a finger, the Intelligun uses a fingerprint locking system and TriggerSmart uses radio frequency identification.

I'll bet the same guys who applaud the plastic 3D printed gun, even in its primitive stages, will denigrate smart gun technology as impractical and expensive.

What do you think?  Please leave a comment.

Arias Jury Deadlocked over Death Penalty

CSM

Jurors in the Jodi Arias murder trial told the judge Wednesday they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether the convicted murderer should be sentenced to life in prison or death for killing her one-time boyfriend, prompting the judge to instruct them to continue deliberations and try to work through their differences.

The jury reported its impasse after only about two and a half hours of deliberations that began Tuesday afternoon.

"I do not wish or intend to force a verdict," Judge Sherry Stephens told the jurors before sending them back to continue discussions. She instructed them to try to identify areas of agreement and disagreement as they work toward a decision.

Under Arizona law, a hung jury in the death penalty phase of a trial requires a new jury to be seated to decide the punishment. If the second jury cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge would then sentence Arias to spend her entire life in prison or be eligible for release after 25 years.

That's an interesting rule.  If the first jury can't see their way clear to sanction murder, they bring in another jury to try.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

Man Linked to Boston Bombing Suspect Killed by FBI in Florida

 
Ibragim Todashev, killed by the FBI

Yahoo News reports

A Chechen immigrant who was being questioned about his possible links to one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects was shot and killed by a federal agent in Florida on Wednesday after he suddenly turned violent, the FBI said.

A friend of the dead man identified him to Reuters as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, who had previously lived in Boston and knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older of the two brothers suspected of planting two bombs at the marathon on April 15, killing three people and injuring 264.

NBC News reported that Todashev had confessed to his involvement in an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb that investigators believe was drug related, citing law enforcement officials.

Authorities were investigating possible connections between Tsarnaev, who died in a shootout with police, and the 2011 incident.

Three men including a close friend of Tsarnaev were found stabbed in the neck in an apartment on September 12, 2011, in Waltham, Massachusetts. News reports said marijuana was strewn over their bodies.

Wednesday's incident took place at an apartment complex near the Universal Studios theme park, where the FBI and members of other law enforcement agencies were interviewing the man about the marathon bombing.

"A violent confrontation was initiated by the individual," the FBI said. A special agent, it said, "acting on the imminent threat posed by the individual, responded with deadly force. The individual was killed and the special agent was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries."

More on the North Carolina 2-Year-old - Still No Charges

News and Record further to our report at the time of the incident.

Authorities will wait to be sure a toddler has recovered from his injuries sustained in an accidental shooting with his parents’ gun before they decide if charges will be filed.

“We want to make sure the child is out of the woods,” Hill said. “He’s scheduled to have surgery later this week for a broken jaw.


“We want to make sure he continues to improve,” Hill said. “We’ll wait until the conclusion of the investigation to determine if charges will be filed.”

The 2-year-old found a gun in his parents’ bedroom Saturday afternoon and picked it up. Capt. Derrick Hill of the Randolph County Sheriff’s office said the gun went off and hit the child in the face.

They've got it ass-backwards.  The gun owners should have been in jail the night of the incident.  I don't understand this waiting to see if the kid is out of the woods first before deciding if charges will be be brought. Charges should be brought immediately upon determining who the responsible person is.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.