"We want them registered."

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=4753

...
on Tuesday, on ABC's "Good Morning America," Pelosi said, "we [members of Congress] have to find some level of compromise" on guns. She noted that the Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to guns. But, she said, "We want them registered."

HR45 Gun Control

This is the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sale Act of 2009.

We just learned yesterday about this on the Peter Boyles radio program

Even gun shop owners didn't know about this because it is flying under the radar.

To find out about this - go to any government website and type in HR 45 or Google HR 45 Blair Holt Firearm Licensing & Record of Sales Act of 2009. You will get all the information.

Basically this would make it illegal to own a firearm - any rifle with a clip or ANY pistol unless:

It is registered.

You are fingerprinted.

You supply a current Driver's License.

You supply your Social Security #.

You will submit to a physical & mental evaluation at any time of their choosing.

Each update - change or ownership through private or public sale must be reported and costs $25 - Failure to do so you automatically lose the right to own a firearm and are subject up to a year in jail.

There is a child provision clause on page 16 section 305 stating a child-access provision. Gun must be locked and inaccessible to any child under 18.

They would have the right to come and inspect that you are storing your gun safely away from accessibility to children and fine is punishable for up to 5 yrs. in prison.

If you think this is a joke - go to the website and take your pick of many options to read this. It is long and lengthy. But, more and more people are becoming aware of this. Pass the word along. Any hunters in your family - pass this along.

This is just a "termite" approach to complete confiscation of guns and disarming of our society to the point we have no defense - chip away a little here and there until the goal is accomplished before anyone realizes it. (Did Obama promise transparency? It seems his motives are more and more transparent while his methods are hidden in back rooms.)

This is one to act on whether you own a gun or not.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.45:

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h45/show

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-45

One in Three Children Fear Earth Apocalypse

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/kids-worry-about-environment.php

There's a new bogeyman lurking in the closet, and this one isn't imaginary. Us. One out of three children aged 6 to 11 fears that Ma Earth won't exist when they grow up, while more than half—56 percent—worry that the planet will be a blasted heath (or at least a very unpleasant place to live), according to a new survey.

Commissioned by Habitat Heroes and conducted by Opinion Research, the telephone survey polled a national sample of 500 American preteens—250 males and 250 females.

On a sliding scale of anxieties, minority kids have it worst; 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children believe that the planet will be irrevocably damaged by the time they reach adulthood.

Interestingly enough, kids vex over the state of the planet, especially when it came to safe and clean air and water, regardless of any pro-environmental measures on the part of their parents. A staggering 95 percent of the children surveyed said their parents pitched in by recycling, using rechargeable batteries, and conserving water and electricity.

"We commissioned the survey as a result of my own childrens' experiences with the recent fires in Australia as they expressed much concern for both their safety and the planet’s,” said Sharon Lowe, founder of Habitat Heroes, in a press release. “While it is upsetting to hear how many children in the United States have expressed similar concerns, I am more committed than ever to help educate children around the globe in a way that is not scary to them.”

Other interesting findings

• 50 percent say that hurricanes and tornadoes are the natural disasters that scare them the most.
• 28 percent say that they fear animals, such as polar bears and penguins, will become extinct and disappear from the planet more than any other environmental concern.

Girls worry more

• 67 percent of girls ages 9-11 versus 60 percent of boys ages 9-11 worry that the earth won’t be as good a place to live when they're adults.
• 57% of girls ages 6-8 versus 43 percent of boys ages 6-8 worry that the earth won’t be as good a place to live when they're adults.

Urban kids are more anxious than suburban kids

• 59 percent of kids in metro areas are more concerned that the Earth won’t be as good a place to live when they grow up compared to non-metro kids (47 percent).

Study shows congressional delegation's most-used words

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=6214320

By Andrew Adams

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A new list shows the most common words spoken by Utah's senators and representatives. Capitolwords.org analyzes everything on the Congressional Record over the past year.

The top word for Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is "country."

For Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, "blue" is his most-used word on the House floor. "Bipartisan" is his 28th most popular word.

The favorite word of Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, is "land."

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, likes the word "percent."

All of the congressional delegation's favorite words, ranked in order, are available at the link on this page. The Web site is set up by the Sunlight Foundation.

E-mail: aadams@ksl.com

ABC’s Shameful ‘20/20′ Experiment

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/04/15/lott__gun_control_experiment_rigged/

Gun control advocates look desperate. Last Friday night, on April 10, ABC aired a heavily promoted, hour long “20/20″ special called “If I Only Had a Gun.” It is ABC’s equivalent of NBC’s infamous exploding gas tanks in General Motors pickups where NBC rigged the truck to explode. With legislation in Texas and Missouri advancing to eliminate gun-free zones at universities, perhaps this response isn’t surprising.

The show started and ended by claiming that allowing potential victims to carry guns would not help keep them safe –- not even with hundreds of hours of practice firing guns.

No mention was made of the actual multiple victim public shootings stopped by people with concealed handguns nor did they describe who actually carried out such shootings. Instead, ABC presented a rigged experiment where one student in a classroom had a gun. But sometimes even the best editors can’t hide everything the camera sees.

The experiment was set up to make the student fail. It did not resemble a real-world shooting. The same scenario is shown three times, but in each case the student with the gun is seated in the same seat –- the center seat in the front row. The attacker is not only a top-notch shooter –- a firearms expert who teaches firearms tactics and strategy to police -– but also obviously knows precisely where the student with the gun is sitting.

Each time the experiment is run, the attacker first fires two shots at the teacher in the front of the class and then turns his gun directly on the very student with the gun. The attacker wastes no time trying to gun down any of the unarmed students. Thus, very unrealistically, between the very first shot setting the armed student on notice and the shots at the armed student, there is at most 2 seconds. The armed student is allowed virtually no time to react and, unsurprisingly, fails under the same circumstances that would have led even experienced police officers to fare poorly.

But in the real world, a typical shooter is not a top-notch firearms expert and has no clue about whether or not anyone might be armed and, if so, where they are seated. If you have 50 people –- a pretty typical college classroom –- and he is unknown to the attacker, the armed student is given a tremendous advantage. Actually, if the experiment run by “20/20″ seriously demonstrated anything, it highlighted the problem of relying on uniformed police or security guards for safety: the killer instantly knows whom to shoot first.

Yet, in the ABC experiment, the purposefully disadvantaged students are not just identified and facing (within less than 2 seconds) an attacker whose gun is already drawn. They are also forced to wear unfamiliar gloves, a helmet, and a holster. This only adds to the difficulties the students face in handling their guns.

Given this set-up the second student, Danielle, performed admirably well. She shot the firearms expert in his left leg near the groin. If real bullets had been used, that might well have disabled the attacker and cut short his shooting spree.

Nevertheless, even terrible shooters can often be quite effective. Despite all of ABC’s references to the Columbine attack, the network never mention the armed guard at the school. He had an unusually poor target shooting record –- indeed it is reported that he couldn’t even hit a target. Yet, his bravery still saved many lives because his poorly aimed shots forced the two killers to engage in gunfire with him. This slowed down their killing spree and gave many students a chance to escape the building. The guard was only forced to retreat and leave the school himself because of the homemade grenades that the Columbine murderers had.

The Columbine murderers strongly and actively opposed passage of Colorado’s right-to-carry law, particularly the part that would have allowed concealed handguns being legally carried on school campuses. What goes unnoticed is that the Columbine attack took place the very day that the state legislature scheduled final passage of the concealed handgun law.

Time after time the attackers in these multiple victim public shootings consciously avoid areas where people might be able to defend themselves. In the attack on the Jewish community center in Los Angeles in which five people were wounded, the attacker had apparently “scouted three of the West Coast’s most prominent Jewish institutions—the Museum of Tolerance, the Skirball Cultural Center and the University of Judaism—but found security too tight.”

In the real world, even having a gun and pointing it at an attacker has often convinced the attacker to stop shooting and surrender. Examples include high schools in Pearl, Mississippi and Edinboro, Pennsylvania, as well as the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. Street attacks in Memphis to Detroit ended this way, too, without any more shots fired.

Even if the cases don’t get much attention, gun permit holders stop these multiple victim attacks on a regular basis. Ironically, just this past Saturday, the day after ABC’s broadcast, a permit holder in Columbia, Texas stopped a mass robbery by fatally shooting the criminal. Some Web sites have started collecting these and other defensive gun use cases (e.g., see here, here, and here).

ABC’S “20/20″ exaggerates “the danger of accidentally hitting a friend” when confronting an attacker. The show cites as an example is a man who mistook his wife for an intruder. Obviously that case is a tragedy, but those cases are exceedingly rare. But why didn’t they present a single multiple victim attack as an example? Simple, because it has not happened.

ABC pushes the notion that gun show regulations, rather than arming potential victims, can stop these attacks. But very few criminals get their guns from gun shows: a U.S. Justice Department survey of 18,000 state prison inmates showed that less than one percent (0.7%) of prisoners had obtained their gun from a gun show. Even adding flea markets and gun shows together raises the number to just 1.7 percent. There is not a single academic study showing that regulating private individuals selling their own guns — the so-called “gun show loophole” — reduces any type of violent crime. What the regulations have accomplished is cutting the number of gun shows by 25 percent.

The show ends with this claim:

“If you are wondering where are all the studies about the effectiveness of guns used by ordinary Americans for self-defense, well keep searching, we could not find one reliable study and the ones we found were contradictory.”

Yet, “contradictory” is an overstatement. There have been 26 peer-reviewed studies published by criminologists and economists in academic journals and university presses. Most of these studies find large drops in crime. Some find no change, but not a single one shows an increase in crime.

You would think that if gun control worked as well as ABC implies, there wouldn’t be these multiple victim public shootings in those European countries with gun laws much stricter than those being publicly discussed in the United States or by ABC. Yet, multiple victim public shootings are quite common in Europe. In just the last few days, there have been a shooting at a college in Greece and in a crowded café in Rotterdam. Of course, the worst K-12 public school shootings are in Europe.

Given the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent annually in the United States for police officers on campus and other programs, one would hope that this relatively inexpensive alternative, where people are willing to bear the costs themselves to protect others, would be taken more seriously.

ABC never mentions a simple fact: all multiple victim public shootings with more than 3 people killed have occurred where permitted concealed handguns are prohibited. Rather than studying what actually happens during these shootings, ABC conjured up rigged experiments aimed at convincing Americans that guns are ineffective. Unfortunately, ABC’s advice, rather than making victims safe, makes things safer for attackers.

John Lott is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland and the author of More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, second edition, 2000) and The Bias Against Guns (Regnery, 2003). Much of the discussion here is based on both books. John Lott’s past pieces for FOX News can be found here and here.

N.S.A.’s intercepts exceed limits set by Congress

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30238492/

Where's the people that were outraged at Bush doing wire tapping?

The National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year, government officials said in recent interviews.

Gov. Perry Backs Resolution Affirming Texas’ Sovereignty Under 10th Amendment

http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/12227/

“I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state,” Gov. Perry said. “That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union.”

Federal agency warns of radicals on right

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/14/federal-agency-warns-of-radicals-on-right/

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officials about a rise in "rightwing extremist activity," saying the economic recession, the election of America's first black president and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.

A footnote attached to the report by the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis defines "rightwing extremism in the United States" as including not just racist or hate groups, but also groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.

"It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," the warning says.

...

Will bill give Obama control of Internet?

http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=93966

Jed was telling me about this

A pair of bills introduced in the U.S. Senate would grant the White House sweeping new powers to access private online data, regulate the cybersecurity industry and even shut down Internet traffic during a declared "cyber emergency."

Senate bills No. 773 and 778, introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., are both part of what's being called the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, which would create a new Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, reportable directly to the president and charged with defending the country from cyber attack.

A working draft of the legislation obtained by an Internet privacy group also spells out plans to grant the Secretary of Commerce access to all privately owned information networks deemed to be critical to the nation's infrastructure "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access."

Another shooting in a another gun free zone: Binghamton, NY

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/04/03/gun-free-zones-are-a-magnet-for-attacks-like-the-tragedy-in-binghampton/

Time after time multiple- victim public shootings occur in “gun free zones” — public places where citizens are not legally able to carry guns. The horrible attack today in Binghamton, New York is no different. Every multiple-victim public shooting that I have studied, where more than three people have been killed, has taken place where guns are banned.

"The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/

You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."

-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true. . . . .

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/20871.html

The bankers struggled to make themselves clear to the president of the United States.

Arrayed around a long mahogany table in the White House state dining room last week, the CEOs of the most powerful financial institutions in the world offered several explanations for paying high salaries to their employees — and, by extension, to themselves.

“These are complicated companies,” one CEO said. Offered another: “We’re competing for talent on an international market.”

But President Barack Obama wasn’t in a mood to hear them out. He stopped the conversation and offered a blunt reminder of the public’s reaction to such explanations. “Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” . . .