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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Newtown</title>
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		<title>Common Core&#8217;s Anti-Gun Lessons on Sandy Hook</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/common-cores-anti-gun-lessons-on-sandy-hook/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=common-cores-anti-gun-lessons-on-sandy-hook</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/common-cores-anti-gun-lessons-on-sandy-hook/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Dec 2013 05:30:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mary Grabar]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Common Core]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gates foundation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sandy Hook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212491</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gates Foundation propaganda invading our schools. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/classroom.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212492" alt="classroom" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/classroom.jpg" width="254" height="195" /></a>The pundits may have thought that Barack Obama’s efforts to exploit the Sandy Hook School tragedy on December 14, 2012, where a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/25/newtown-shooter-acted-alone-had-no-clear-motive/">mentally ill</a> young man killed 20 elementary school students and 6 teachers, had been <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/11/biden-dont-let-immigration-die-like-gun-control-177370.html?ml=m_po">tabled</a> for lack of support.  Now we learn that Obama’s Organizing for Action super pac is <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-super-pac-to-exploit-newtown-kids-with-fake-memorial-events/">exploiting</a> the one-year anniversary with fake memorials in order to resume the push for gun control.</p>
<p>Along with the efforts to reach adults are those to reach children in schools.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of Obama’s education initiative called Common Core (recently admitted to be an “<a href="https://eagnews.org/axelrod-claims-common-core-an-obama-initiative/">Obama initiative</a>” by David Axelrod) is aiding in the effort to eviscerate the Second Amendment by emotionally manipulating and indoctrinating students.</p>
<p>An <i>Education Week</i> article touts free “anti-violence” lesson plans for students in grades 4-12 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the shooting.  <i>Education Week </i>is full of handy “tips” and “news” for teachers, but is really a Gates Foundation-subsidized Common Core propaganda outlet, as I noted in my <a href="http://www.aim.org/special-report/terrorist-professor-bill-ayers-and-obamas-federal-school-curriculum/">report</a> on Common Core for <i>Accuracy in Media</i>.  <i>Education Week </i>articles are frequently linked in the U.S. Department of Education’s newsletter, <a href="http://www.ed.gov/teaching/teachers-edition-archive"><i>The Teachers Edition</i></a>.</p>
<p>The “anti-violence” Common Core-aligned lesson plan that <i>Education Week</i> is <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2013/11/rep_giffords_and_sandy_hook_mother_co-author_anti-violence_lesson_plan.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2">promoting</a> could hardly be more propagandistic.  It is written by shooting victim Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona Congresswoman, and Nicole Hockley who lost her son Dylan at Sandy Hook.   It claims the ostensible purpose of “turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation” and “To be open to all possibilities.”  It says students should be “Open to those with the most opposing views.”</p>
<p>But the only views teachers are told to give are those that advance an anti-gun rights agenda.</p>
<p>To prime students emotionally, teachers are asked to show a <a href="http://www.schooltube.com/video/1720cd68aa4041c0b34b/">School Tube video</a> from Roma High School to demonstrate how a student-led vigil can “show how people can come together after tragic events to make the world a better place.”  (No empirical evidence is given about the cause and effect.)</p>
<p>There is very little reading required in the lesson, but what there is a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/01/07/gabby-giffords-mark-kelly-tucson-shooting-gun-control/1816383/">USA Today article</a> by Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly, chiding “special interests,” like the NRA, which they claim is “advancing the interests of an ideological fringe” and “cow[ing] Congress” into refusing to take action on “common sense reforms.”  The other is an article linked to Giffords’s and Kelly’s lobby group called <a href="http://americansforresponsiblesolutions.org/gabrielle-giffords/">Americans for Responsible Solutions</a>.  (There is an attachment for additional reading from <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html">Slate</a> Magazine for “older students” that unscientifically aggregates the number of gun deaths by asking readers to send in news about gun deaths in their towns.)  Teachers are advised to have students read the “Sandy Hook Promise” from the website and discuss “why they feel the promise was created.”</p>
<p>Teachers are told that the first two paragraphs of the promise are “most helpful.”</p>
<p>These are<i> </i>the first two paragraphs:</p>
<p>“Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) is a national, non-profit organization led by community members and several parents and spouses who lost loved ones in the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. . . .</p>
<p>Our intent is to honor all victims of gun violence by turning our tragedy into a moment of transformation.”</p>
<p>Teachers are told to have students “brainstorm” on the question, “How can we work together to make the United States a safer place?”</p>
<p>Teachers are offered the suggestion of having students trace their hands on construction paper and then making cut-outs.</p>
<p>On these they should write one-sentence statements, beginning with the words, “I hope.”</p>
<p>As models, photographs of the lesson plan writers’ own construction paper hands are presented: &#8220;I hope for a country that can work together to prevent gun violence,” wrote Gabby Giffords on her hand.  &#8220;I hope parents can come together to build a future for our children safe from gun violence,” wrote Nicole Hockley on hers.</p>
<p>Finally,</p>
<blockquote><p>Show students the other postings on <a href="https://www.uclass.org/about">UClass</a> [a “global lesson exchange” for teachers]. Have them comment positively on other students’ hands that have been posted on UClass. Urge them to do at least one thing to make the United States a better place.</p></blockquote>
<p>Teachers are assured that the lesson plan follows the new Common Core education standards.</p>
<p>For grades 3-8, the “Correlating Common Core Standards” are:</p>
<blockquote><p>CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.3.1 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.</p></blockquote>
<p>It gets a little more rigorous for high school students:</p>
<blockquote><p>CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1 Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 11–12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.</p></blockquote>
<p>In case the difference in these two academic standards is not obvious, students in upper grades are asked to “<b>create a plan for their own anti-violence campaign</b>” (words in bold in original). In other words, high school students should become activists.</p>
<p>The promoters of Common Core have repeated sales points about “high standards,” “rigor,” “close reading,” and including “critical thinking.”  Really?  Do you remember tracing your hand on construction paper in high school?</p>
<p>The lesson on Sandy Hook is typical of those now being produced and advertised as meeting Common Core requirements.</p>
<p>Of course, we know that many teachers have been using classrooms to indoctrinate students for decades now.  What is different under Common Core is that the lessons are even more ideological.  They <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2013/11/researchers_estimate_7600_district_buyers_for_common_core_materials.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2">profit</a> the multinational publishing companies as they rewrite materials to adhere to Common Core.  And they advance the agendas of left-wing non-profits and the federal government.</p>
<p>The construction paper hands being produced in grades 4 through 12 to commemorate Sandy Hook show how Obama’s Common Core initiative is working (pardon the pun) hand in glove with his political pac.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<slash:comments>27</slash:comments>
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		<title>Obama Super PAC to Exploit Newtown Kids with Fake Memorial Events</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-super-pac-to-exploit-newtown-kids-with-fake-memorial-events/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-super-pac-to-exploit-newtown-kids-with-fake-memorial-events</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-super-pac-to-exploit-newtown-kids-with-fake-memorial-events/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Dec 2013 22:37:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OFA]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212257</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is how you can tell you're dealing with people who have no conscience ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/newtown-kids.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-212272" alt="newtown-kids" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/newtown-kids-450x340.jpg" width="450" height="340" /></a></p>
<p>This is <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/12/02/sickening-ofa-instructs-followers-to-hold-newtown-anniversary-events-to-exploit-tragedy-for-gun-control/">how you can tell you&#8217;re dealing with people who</a> have no conscience and no shame. Obama&#8217;s very own Super PAC, the absolutely totally non-partisan Organizing for Action is planning to put together fake memorials for the Newtown kids.</p>
<p>But the &#8220;remembrance&#8221; ceremonies won&#8217;t be about actually remembering the victims&#8230; but about using them to campaign against the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights.</p>
<blockquote><p>By hosting a Newtown Anniversary event, you are joining thousands of Americans across the country as we remember the tragic events that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School one year ago. Supporters will be gathering at events in communities across the country, with partner organizations, to pay tribute to the 26 victims and call on Congress to finally take action to make our communities safer.</p>
<p>It has been one year since the tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut, where 26 Americans lost their lives to gun violence. Despite overwhelming public support for expanding background checks for gun sales, Congress has failed to act. Join local supporters as we remember Newtown and ask Congress: What will it take to make our communities safer? #WeAreNewtown</p></blockquote>
<p>And what better way to pay tribute to some dead children than by using them as poster children in your preexisting pet cause. And if you trick some civilians into joining in what they think is a memorial, you really score big.</p>
<p>The first time I saw the left really roll out its fake memorial sideshows was right after September 11. And I do mean right after.</p>
<p>Suddenly there were numerous memorial events that were really there to push Anti-War messages and blame American foreign policy for the attacks. It was another hard and direct lesson in the left&#8217;s utter cynicism and disdain for anything resembling decency.</p>
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		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
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		<title>Did Media Coverage of Breivik Lead to Newtown Massacre?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/did-media-coverage-of-breivik-lead-to-newtown-massacre/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=did-media-coverage-of-breivik-lead-to-newtown-massacre</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/did-media-coverage-of-breivik-lead-to-newtown-massacre/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 19 Feb 2013 01:50:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anders Behring Breivik]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lanza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=178127</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ If the media had not provided compulsive coverage of the Breivik shootings, would Adam Lanza have developed an ambition to top his 'score'?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/did-media-coverage-of-breivik-lead-to-newtown-massacre/lanza-breivik_620x350/" rel="attachment wp-att-178129"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-178129" title="lanza-breivik_620x350" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/lanza-breivik_620x350-450x254.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="254" /></a></p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57569958/newtown-shooter-motivated-by-norway-massacre-sources-say/">current claims bylaw enforcement sources</a> are that Lanza was treating mass murder as a video game score that he felt compelled to beat Breivik at. Breivik had his own gaming obsessions and seemed to be living in an imaginary world where he was the leader of an army of crusader knights.</p>
<p>Crazy people are basically crazy. Still it would appear from this that Lanza knew entirely what he was doing and that the obsessive publicity that the media gave to the Breivik case may have inspired the Newtown massacre.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Naturally we won&#8217;t be calling for a video game ban or a media ban, because attacking the First Amendment because of a madman&#8217;s actions is wrong. But somehow attacking the Second Amendment isn&#8217;t.</p>
<blockquote><p> Law enforcement sources say Adam Lanza was motivated by violent video games and a strong desire to kill more people than another infamous mass murderer.</p>
<p>Sources say Lanza saw himself as being in direct competition with Anders Breivik, a Norwegian man who killed 77 people in July 2011.</p>
<p>Two officials who have been briefed on the Newtown, Conn., investigation say Lanza wanted to top Breivik&#8217;s death toll and targeted nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School because it was the &#8220;easiest target&#8221; with the &#8220;largest cluster of people.&#8221;</p>
<p>Evidence shows that his mind, sources say, Lanza was also likely acting out the fantasies of a video game as he killed 20 first graders and six adults at the school. For Lanza, the deaths apparently amounted to some kind of &#8220;score.&#8221;</p>
<p>Officials have not publicly revealed what led them to the motive, but sources say investigators have found evidence Lanza was obsessed with Breivik.</p>
<p>They&#8217;ve also recovered what they called a &#8220;trove&#8221; of video games from the basement of Lanza&#8217;s home. Sources say Lanza spent countless hours there alone, in a private gaming room with the windows blacked out, honing his computer shooting skills.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s rather unlikely that Lanza shared Breivik&#8217;s confused muddle of politics. Rather he wanted to be the world&#8217;s biggest serial killer.</p>
<p>He apparently chose the Gun-Free Zone of a school because it was an easy target. And like Breivik he targeted the underage.</p>
<p>If the media had not provided compulsive coverage of the Breivik shootings, would Adam Lanza have developed an ambition to top his &#8216;score&#8217;?</p>
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		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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		<title>Father of Sandy Hook 6-Year-Old: &#8220;Gun Laws Are Not the Problem, Personal Responsibility Is&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/father-of-sandy-hook-6-year-old-gun-laws-are-not-the-problem-personal-responsibility-is/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=father-of-sandy-hook-6-year-old-gun-laws-are-not-the-problem-personal-responsibility-is</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/father-of-sandy-hook-6-year-old-gun-laws-are-not-the-problem-personal-responsibility-is/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:22:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=175426</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[He then continued by dealing with gun laws in Chicago. “Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and I would say to people who wanted to have a civil discussion on the topic that I don’t think the gun laws are protecting the people, let alone the 500 alone, who perished last year in that city.”]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The leftist response to Sandy Hook has been to emphasize the government as a national nanny state parent making one rule for all Americans. &#8220;You misused your gun, now all the guns get taken away.&#8221;</p>
<p>But Mark Mattioli, who lost his son James at Newtown, reminds us in this important video that parenting is an individual act.<a href="http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/01/father-of-slain-6-year-old-sandy-hook-victim-gun-laws-are-not-the-problem/"> A work of personal responsibility</a>.</p>
<p><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fqpzOSYqX3c?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" width="540" height="360"></iframe></p>
<blockquote><p>On Monday in Hartford, Connecticut, Mark Mattioli spoke in front of a gun violence task force. Mattioli lost his six-year-old son James in the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut back in December. “Gun laws are not the problem,” he said.</p>
<p>In an emotional testimony, Mattioli said that more gun laws would not solve the problem and that politicians who try and proclaim that the issue is “complex.” He believes there is simply a lack of civility and that “what we are seeing are symptoms of a bigger problem. This is a symptom. The problem is not gun laws. The problem is a lack of civility.”</p>
<p>Mattioli recalled his own experience as a young adult watching “R” rated movies and compared that with what comes on broadcast television today with regards to violence. He believes this is one of the symptoms.</p>
<p>“We need civility,” he said. “We need common decency to prevail.”</p>
<p>The father of the slain six-year-old began to speak about his son, but overcome with emotion attempted to change the subject to the school and students, which again, overcame him with emotion.</p>
<p>While he did make it to speak somewhat about the school of Sandy Hook and referenced the parents as the “primary educators and providers,” one thing I will note here is that public schools that have your children for seven to eight hours a day are the primary educators and in many ways the primary providers. From my perspective this is one of those symptoms in our culture that must be treated and it will only be treated as parents assume the role of primary educators of their children.</p>
<p>Mattioli recalled a time when he was six years old and his parents, who grew up out of the Depression, did not believe in a lot of entertainment and extras. He recounted the story of how he asked his mother for some bubble gum one time and she told him “No.” He said, “So I stole it.” he then tells how his mother found out about it as they arrived home. She quickly returned to the store and made him hand the gum back to the cashier, apologize, and say that he would never do it again.</p>
<p>“That is the kind of parenting we need,” he said. “Parenting is where we need to focus our attention.”</p>
<p>We do not need complex laws,” Mattioli continued. “I am a big proponent of individual accountability and enforcement, so if there are going to be laws, we should enforce them.”</p>
<p>He then continued by dealing with gun laws in Chicago. “Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country and I would say to people who wanted to have a civil discussion on the topic that I don’t think the gun laws are protecting the people, let alone the 500 alone, who perished last year in that city.”</p>
<p>“What have those laws done to make Chicago a safer city?” he asked. “Nothing, I propose.”</p>
<p>He then asked, “Can’t we do better?” His response was an unwavering “Yes.”</p>
<p>Mattioli then makes the point that all of us on this site have made time and time again. “Criminals, by definition, break the law. What we experienced at Sandy Hook, did (he) break the law? Of course, (he) broke the law.” With reference to the 500 killed in Chicago,he said those that killed them broke the law.</p>
<p>He then said, “Is one more law….I don’t care if you named it ‘James’ law’….I don’t want it.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In a time when too many parents are pressured into endorsing some &#8220;Insert Your Child&#8217;s Name Here&#8221; Law in response to any tragedy, Mark has reminded us all what truly matters.</p>
<p>Change begins with the individual, the parents and the family. Not the government.</p>
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		<title>Hollywood Blames Guns, Americans Blame Hollywood</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/hollywood-blames-guns-americans-blame-hollywood/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hollywood-blames-guns-americans-blame-hollywood</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/hollywood-blames-guns-americans-blame-hollywood/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2013 04:32:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ben Shapiro]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gun]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NRA]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Second Amendment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174512</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For Americans, parenting, mental illness and media top the list for causes of gun violence.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ben-shapiro/hollywood-blames-guns-americans-blame-hollywood/photo-29/" rel="attachment wp-att-174569"><img class=" wp-image-174569 alignleft" title="photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/photo.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="187" /></a>Ever since the horrific shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, liberals have been on the warpath against so-called “assault weapons.” Never mind that the semi-automatic rifles they have on their hit list are used in fewer murders than hammers and clubs; never mind that handguns are used in the vast majority of killings in this country. Never mind, either, that the state with the lowest rate of gun murder is New Hampshire, which has virtually no gun laws, and the municipality with the highest rate of gun murder is Chicago, which has a bevy of them. Forget all this and remember the party line:  guns are the problem, not people.</p>
<p>But the American public disagrees, and does so strongly. Unlike liberal Hollywood, Americans largely blame individuals for their actions. A new poll from NBC/<em>Wall Street Journal</em>, for example, shows that Americans blame the following problems in American life more than the presence of guns with regard to shootings:</p>
<ul>
<li>“Parents not paying enough attention to what is going on in their children’s lives” (83%);</li>
<li>“Lack of effective treatment for mental illness” (82%);</li>
<li>“The amount of media coverage of mass shootings” (67%);</li>
<li>“Movies, television programs, and video games that portray violence and violent behavior” (62%).</li>
</ul>
<p>“Assault and military-style firearms being legal to purchase … the availability of high capacity ammunition clips” clocked in at 59%.</p>
<p>In other words, Hollywood’s concept of human nature is directly at odds with that of the American public. They  don’t see people as mechanistic tools in the hands of instruments of war. They  see them as individual actors shaped by their environment, their personal choices, and their biology. Which is accurate.</p>
<p>But that hasn’t stopped the Democrats and Hollywood from casting their ire at guns rather than parents who fail to control their children, or lack of effective mental illness treatments, or, for that matter, violent games produced by the entertainment industry itself. More specifically, Democrats and Hollywood hate the National Rifle Association, which they see as the root of all evil. Even though the NRA is an interest group that receives no public funding, writes no legislation, and is not subject to the voting public, the left trots out the NRA as the organization most responsible for tragedies like Sandy Hook.</p>
<p>Jon Stewart of <em>The Daily Show</em> called the NRA “either an elaborate, avant-garde, Joaquin Phoenix-style joke, or a false flag operation run by Michael Moore in an attempt to discredit responsible gun owners.” David Boreanaz, star of <em>Bones</em>, said the NRA is “repugnant and cowardly.” Olivia Wilde of <em>House</em> labeled them “disgusting.” And Zach Braff, he of the supremely irritating face, criticized a recent NRA ad as an “SNL skit.”</p>
<p>But once again, Hollywood is out of touch. The American public blames Hollywood itself more than it blames the NRA for shooting incidents. According to that same NBC/<em>Wall Street Journal</em> poll, NRA approval clocked in at 41% after Sandy Hook. Hollywood? A paltry 24%. Perhaps that’s because the NRA stands up for its principles, while Hollywood hypocritically earns cash from lurid depictions of gun violence while standing on the side, condemning gun violence. Or perhaps it’s because Hollywood is filled with leftists convinced of their own moral rectitude, even as they cash their checks on the basis of exploiting moral degradation.</p>
<p>In any case, it’s clear that the culture gap between Hollywood and the rest of America is growing, not shrinking. And Hollywood implicitly knows that. That’s why despite their repeated protestations dating back to the 1960s that they will get film and television violence under control, they continue to produce violent content. They know intrinsically that the American people don’t see violence as an evil in and of itself; they know that violence is a tool to be used rarely and with great care, but a tool nonetheless. Hollywood makes the narrative distinction between good and evil on a regular basis, even though those who populate Hollywood pretend to believe in moral relativism.</p>
<p>In the end, Hollywood is destined to lose the fight against guns, because the American people don’t buy in. But that won’t stop Hollywood from mouthing of about guns, even as they buy Glocks by the case, fake blood by the barrel, and blanks by the ton.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Guns Don&#8217;t Kill People, the Mentally Ill Do</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/guns-dont-kill-people-the-mentally-ill-do/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=guns-dont-kill-people-the-mentally-ill-do</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jan 2013 04:40:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Adam Lanza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guns]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=173791</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why it has become nearly impossible to commit society's ticking time bombs. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/ann-coulter/guns-dont-kill-people-the-mentally-ill-do/newtown-shooting-gunman-adam-lanza/" rel="attachment wp-att-173814"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173814" title="Newtown shooting gunman Adam Lanza" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Newtown-shooting-gunman-A-011-450x350.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="210" /></a>Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, had been diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder as a child and placed under treatment.</p>
<p>But Virginia Tech was prohibited from being told about Cho&#8217;s mental health problems because of federal privacy laws.</p>
<p>At college, Cho engaged in behavior even more bizarre than the average college student. He stalked three women and, at one point, went totally silent, refusing to speak even to his roommates. He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for one night and then unaccountably unleashed on the public, whereupon he proceeded to engage in the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history.</p>
<p>The 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shopping mall shooter, Jared Loughner, was so obviously disturbed that if he&#8217;d stayed in Pima Community College long enough to make the yearbook, he would have been named &#8220;Most Likely to Commit Mass Murder.&#8221;</p>
<p>After Loughner got a tattoo, the artist, Carl Grace, remarked: &#8220;That&#8217;s a weird dude. That&#8217;s a Columbine candidate.&#8221;</p>
<p>One of Loughner&#8217;s teachers, Ben McGahee, filed numerous complaints against him, hoping to have him removed from class. &#8220;When I turned my back to write on the board,&#8221; McGahee said, &#8220;I would always turn back quickly &#8212; to see if he had a gun.&#8221;</p>
<p>On her first day at school, student Lynda Sorensen emailed her friends about Loughner: &#8220;We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I&#8217;m not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon.&#8221;</p>
<p>The last of several emails Sorensen sent about Loughner said: &#8220;We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living cr** out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird.&#8221;</p>
<p>That was the summer before Loughner killed six people at the Tucson shopping mall, including a federal judge and a 9 year-old girl, and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, among others.</p>
<p>Loughner also had run-ins with the law, including one charge for possessing drug paraphernalia &#8212; a lethal combination with mental illness. He was eventually asked to leave college on mental health grounds, released on the public without warning.</p>
<p>Perhaps if Carl Grace, Ben McGahee or Lynda Sorensen worked in the mental health field, six people wouldn&#8217;t have had to die that January morning in Tucson. But committing Loughner to a mental institution in Arizona would have required a court order stating that he was a danger to himself and others.</p>
<p>Innumerable studies have found a correlation between severe mental illness and violent behavior. Thirty-one to 61 percent of all homicides committed by disturbed individuals occur during their first psychotic episode &#8212; which is why mass murderers often have no criminal record. There&#8217;s no time to wait with the mentally ill.</p>
<p>James Holmes, the accused Aurora, Colo., shooter, was under psychiatric care at the University of Colorado long before he shot up a movie theater. According to news reports and court filings, Holmes told his psychiatrist, Dr. Lynne Fenton, that he fantasized about killing &#8220;a lot of people,&#8221; but she refused law enforcement&#8217;s offer to place Holmes under confinement for 72 hours.</p>
<p>However, Fenton did drop Holmes as a patient after he made threats against another school psychiatrist. And after Holmes made threats against a professor, he was asked to leave campus. But he wasn&#8217;t committed. People who knew he was deeply troubled just pushed him onto society to cause havoc elsewhere.</p>
<p>Little is known so far about Adam Lanza, the alleged Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooter, but anyone who could shoot a terrified child and say to himself, &#8220;That was fun &#8212; I think I&#8217;ll do it 20 more times!&#8221; is not all there.</p>
<p>It has been reported that Lanza&#8217;s mother, his first victim, was trying to have him involuntarily committed to a mental institution, triggering his rage. If true &#8212; and the media seem remarkably uninterested in finding out if it is true &#8212; Mrs. Lanza would have had to undergo a long and grueling process, unlikely to succeed.</p>
<p>As The New York Times&#8217; Joe Nocera recently wrote: &#8220;Connecticut&#8217;s laws are so restrictive in terms of the proof required to get someone committed that Adam Lanza&#8217;s mother would probably not have been able to get him help even if she had tried.&#8221;</p>
<p>Taking guns away from single women who live alone and other law-abiding citizens without mental illnesses will do nothing about the Chos, Loughners, Holmeses or Lanzas. Such people have to be separated from civil society, for the public&#8217;s sake as well as their own. But this is nearly impossible because the ACLU has decided that being psychotic is a civil right.</p>
<p>Consequently, whenever a psychopath with a million gigantic warning signs commits a shocking murder, the knee-jerk reaction is to place yet more controls on guns. By now, guns are the most heavily regulated product in America.</p>
<p>It hasn&#8217;t worked.</p>
<p>Even if it could work &#8212; and it can&#8217;t &#8212; there are still subway tracks, machetes, fists and bombs. The most deadly massacre at a school in U.S. history was at an elementary school in Michigan in 1927. It was committed with a bomb. By a mentally disturbed man.</p>
<p>How about trying something new for once?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Atheist Response to Sandy Hook</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dennis-prager/the-atheist-response-to-sandy-hook/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-atheist-response-to-sandy-hook</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Jan 2013 04:10:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A perfect illustration of the intellectual and emotional emptiness at the heart of atheism.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dennis-prager/the-atheist-response-to-sandy-hook/balloons-hang-from-the-sandy-hook-elementary-school-sign-in-sandy-hook-in-newtown/" rel="attachment wp-att-173625"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-173625" title="Balloons hang from the Sandy Hook Elementary School sign in Sandy Hook, in Newtown," src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/sandy_hook_birthers-450x318.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="191" /></a>Last week the New York Times published an opinion piece that offered atheism&#8217;s response to the evil/tragedy in which 20 children and six adults were murdered at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut.</p>
<p>What prompted Susan Jacoby to write her piece was a colleague telling her that atheism &#8220;has nothing to offer when people are suffering.&#8221;</p>
<p>She wrote the piece, &#8220;The Blessings of Atheism&#8221; (&#8220;It is Here and It is Now!&#8221; screams the subhead) to prove her colleague wrong by offering a consoling atheist alternative to religion&#8217;s consoling belief in an afterlife. Atheists cannot believe that there is any existence other than this life. But, Jacoby insists, atheists can still offer consolation to people who lose loved ones, such as the parents whose children were murdered at Sandy Hook.</p>
<p>It is meant as no disrespect to this well regarded writer that her piece provides one of the finest illustrations of the intellectual and emotional emptiness at the heart of atheism. Jacoby&#8217;s piece actually confirms her colleague&#8217;s assessment.</p>
<p>Jacoby offers a quote from Robert Green Ingersoll, who died in 1899. He &#8220;was one of the most famous orators of his generation, [and] personified this combination of passion and rationality. Called &#8216;The Great Agnostic &#8216;&#8230; he also frequently delivered secular eulogies at funerals and offered consolation that he clearly considered an important part of his mission. In 1882, at the graveside of a friend&#8217;s child, he declared: &#8220;They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest &#8230; The dead do not suffer&#8221;(ellipsis in original).</p>
<p>I read this quote at least a half dozen times, convinced that I had somehow missed its consoling message. But, alas, there was no consoling message.</p>
<p>&#8220;The dead do not suffer&#8221; is atheism&#8217;s consolation to the parents of murdered children? This sentiment can provide some consolation — though still nothing comparable to the affirmation of an afterlife — to those who lose a loved one who had been suffering from a debilitating disease. But it not only offers the parents of Sandy Hook no consolation, it actually (unintentionally) insults them: Were these children suffering before their lives were taken? Would they have suffered if they had lived on? Moreover, it is the parents who are suffering, so the fact that their child isn&#8217;t suffering while decomposing in the grave is of no relevance.</p>
<p>And, most germane to our subject, this atheist message offers no consolation at all when compared to the religious message that we humans are not just matter but possess eternal souls.</p>
<p>Though I am intellectually convinced that only an Intelligence (i.e., God) could have created intelligence, I understand atheism. Anyone observing the terrible amount of unjust human suffering understands the atheist. But even atheists — indeed, especially atheists, since they claim that, unlike believers, they are guided solely by reason and intellect — have to be intellectually honest. They would have to acknowledge that, in terms of consolation, there is no comparison between &#8220;The dead do not suffer&#8221; and &#8220;Your child lives on, and you will be reunited with her.&#8221;</p>
<p>What we have here is an intellectual unwillingness or a psychological inability on the part of Susan Jacoby and just about all atheist activists (including the New York Times, which featured, not just published, her column) to confront the consequences of their atheism.</p>
<p>If they did, they would have to say something like this to the parents of the murdered children of Sandy Hook:</p>
<p>&#8220;As atheists, we truly feel awful for you. And we promise to work for more gun control. But the truth is we don&#8217;t have a single consoling thing to say to you because we atheists recognize that the human being is nothing more than matter, no different from all other matter in the universe except for having self-consciousness. Therefore, when we die, that&#8217;s it. Moreover, within a tiny speck of time in terms of the universe&#8217;s history, nearly every one of us, including your child, will be completely forgotten, as if we never even existed. Life is a random crapshoot. Our birth and existence are flukes. And you will never see your child again.&#8221;</p>
<p>An atheist with the courage of her convictions would have written that. But the New York Times would not have published it.</p>
<p>All this column did for me was reconfirm this insight of the Bible: &#8220;Wisdom begins with reverence for God.&#8221;</p>
<p>No God, no wisdom (witness your local university). And certainly no consolation.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Off With a Bang: Assault on Second Amendment Begins</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/off-with-a-bang-assault-on-second-amendment-begins/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=off-with-a-bang-assault-on-second-amendment-begins</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jan 2013 04:40:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[biden]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=172526</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[New Congress and an emboldened President Obama are after much more than an "assault weapons" ban. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/off-with-a-bang-assault-on-second-amendment-begins/bidenobama-12-12/" rel="attachment wp-att-172527"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-172527" title="bidenobama.12.12" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bidenobama.12.12-438x350.jpg" alt="" width="263" height="210" /></a>President Obama is planning an aggressive, in-your-face, blitzkrieg-style campaign against Americans&#8217; fundamental Second Amendment right to self-defense.</p>
<p>After a madman murdered 26 people including 20 young schoolchildren last month at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama initially urged a reinstatement of the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban. The demonstrably useless law lapsed in 2004 and had no detectable impact on crime. It was designed to cater to big-city liberals and their irrational fear of firearms.</p>
<p>But the Obama administration&#8217;s plans to assault the Bill of Rights grew more ambitious over the Christmas holidays. The administration has now had an opportunity to brainstorm more extensively with the left-wing gun-grabbing lobby, which is heavily financed by radical financier George Soros.</p>
<p>The president is hoping to use the bloody Newtown massacre to impose sweeping new restrictions on firearms and to create a massive new database to track and spy on law-abiding gun owners. Americans are wise to be wary of such proposals. Governments the world over have used such databases time and time again to crack down on internal dissent, lay the groundwork for gun confiscation, and clear the way for genocidal slaughter.</p>
<p>Citing multiple sources &#8220;involved in the administration’s discussions,&#8221; the Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-weighs-broad-gun-control-agenda-in-wake-of-newtown-shootings/2013/01/05/d281efe0-5682-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_print.html">reports</a> that the Obama White House is now &#8220;weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation’s gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to the newspaper:</p>
<blockquote><p>A working group led by Vice President [Joe] Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors&#8230;</p></blockquote>
<p>Vice President Biden &#8220;guaranteed&#8221; Boston Mayor Thomas Menino that President Obama would push through sweeping firearms restrictions before February.</p>
<p>“He said, ‘Tommy, I guarantee you, we’ll get it done by the end of January,’” Menino said, according to the Boston Herald. “They’re going to get it done.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama may intend to bribe and blackmail businesses in order to win their support for his assault on law-abiding gun owners, the Post article suggests.</p>
<p>&#8220;[T]he White House is developing strategies to work around the National Rifle Association that one source said could include rallying support from Wal-Mart and other gun retailers for measures that would benefit their businesses,&#8221; the article stated.</p>
<p>The Obama White House is coordinating its strategy with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken enemy of the Second Amendment. Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns with Boston&#8217;s Menino.</p>
<p>Biden&#8217;s working group is reportedly gearing up to present a package of recommendations to the president soon. After that the Community Organizer-in-Chief intends to head up a public-relations campaign to further inflame the public before the passions generated by the Newtown murders cool.</p>
<p>“They are very clearly committed to looking at this issue comprehensively,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which is participating in Biden&#8217;s group.</p>
<p>Despite ceaseless cheerleading by their allies in the mainstream media, leftists probably won&#8217;t be able to shoot holes in the Second Amendment easily.</p>
<p>Lawmakers from both parties are opposed to further crackdowns on the ownership of guns, which author David B. Kopel notes are already &#8220;the most severely regulated consumer product in the United States — the only product for which FBI permission is required for every single sale.&#8221;</p>
<p>Newly sworn-in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said gun control proposals now being discussed –including a plan by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to create a national gun registry– are unconstitutional. The federal government doesn&#8217;t have &#8220;any business having a list of law-abiding citizens&#8221; who choose to exercise their right to keep and bear arms, he said.</p>
<p>After Newtown &#8220;within minutes, we saw politicians run out and try to exploit this tragedy, try to push their political agenda of gun control,&#8221; Cruz told &#8220;Fox News Sunday.&#8221;</p>
<p>What happened in Newtown is &#8220;a tragedy, but it’s not a tragedy that should be answered by restricting the constitutional rights of all Americans.&#8221;</p>
<p>Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) also cautioned against taking aim at gun owners&#8217; rights.</p>
<p>“I think you need to put everything on the table, but what I hear from the administration — and if the Washington Post is to be believed — that’s way, way in extreme of what I think is necessary or even should be talked about. And it’s not going to pass,” the new freshman senator said on a Sunday TV talk show.</p>
<p>Heitkamp said mental health-related proposals have to be part of any package aimed at reducing violent crime.</p>
<p>“Let’s start addressing the problem. And to me, one of the issues that I think comes — screams out of this is the issue of mental health and the care for the mentally ill in our country, especially the dangerously mentally ill. And so we need to have a broad discussion before we start talking about gun control,” she said.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s sudden reversal on gun rights shouldn&#8217;t come as a surprise. Obama has a long anti-gun track record that he carefully distanced himself from when he began running for the presidency. In his academic days he <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-weighs-broad-gun-control-agenda-in-wake-of-newtown-shootings/2013/01/05/d281efe0-5682-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_print.html">told</a> a colleague: &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe people should be able to own guns.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a candidate for state office in 1996, Obama <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-weighs-broad-gun-control-agenda-in-wake-of-newtown-shootings/2013/01/05/d281efe0-5682-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_print.html">promised</a> to ban &#8220;the manufacture, sale &amp; possession of handguns.” Seeking his U.S. Senate seat in 2004, Obama advocated blocking citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits.</p>
<p>This documented antipathy toward Second Amendment rights stands in stark contrast to Obama&#8217;s statements on the presidential campaign trail in 2008 when he <a href="http://cnsnews.com/blog/gregory-gwyn-williams-jr/flashback-obama-i-will-not-take-your-guns-away">promised</a> to respect Americans&#8217; individual right to bear arms.</p>
<p>&#8220;When you all go home and you&#8217;re talking to your buddies and you say, ah &#8216;He wants to take my gun away.&#8217; You&#8217;ve heard it here, I&#8217;m on television so everybody knows it. I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people&#8217;s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won&#8217;t take your handgun away.&#8221;</p>
<p>But that was before the Newtown opportunity came along. Obama never allows a gut-wrenching crisis to go to waste.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Piers Morgan and the Failure of British Gun Control</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/david-paulin/piers-morgan-and-the-failure-of-british-gun-control/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=piers-morgan-and-the-failure-of-british-gun-control</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jan 2013 04:05:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Paulin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CNN]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gun Control]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[homicide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Newtown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Piers Morgan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=171264</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Could the CNN host really be so ignorant of his own country's recent history? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/david-paulin/piers-morgan-and-the-failure-of-british-gun-control/piers_morgan_gun_control/" rel="attachment wp-att-171272"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171272" title="piers_morgan_gun_control" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/piers_morgan_gun_control-450x299.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="179" /></a>It&#8217;s a strange omission: liberal pundits like CNN&#8217;s Piers Morgan are fulminating over America&#8217;s &#8220;gun culture&#8221; following Newtown&#8217;s school massacre &#8212; yet they seem blissfully ignorant about what happened after Britain&#8217;s draconian handgun ban following a school massacre in Scotland, in 1996, eerily similar to Newtown&#8217;s.</p>
<p>After the ban, more than 160,000 law-abiding citizens <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/164402.stm">gave up</a> their handguns. The idea was to stop gun violence. But ironically, crime-related gun violence jumped a whopping 40 percent in the two years after the ban. And since then, gun crime has <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2640817.stm">continued to soar </a>at an alarming rate. Anti-gun liberals may be aghast, but as that old NRA bumper sticker stated: &#8220;When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.&#8221; One wonders how long before guns are used in another massacre in the United Kingdom; or perhaps next time it will be done by a madman carrying a can of gasoline.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Morgan">Piers Morgan</a>, an urbane native of England, surely knows what happened after Britain&#8217;s gun ban. But like others <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/23/School-Obama-s-Daughters-Attend-Has-11-Armed-Guards-Not-Counting-Secret-Service">anti-gun media elitists</a> and politicians (whose children are defended by armed guards at upscale private schools) Morgan avoids discussions of the complexities and nuances of gun control and their impact on ordinary people &#8212; that is, law-abiding gun owners. &#8220;You&#8217;re an unbelievably stupid man, aren&#8217;t you?&#8221; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC4JJWUtzkc">Morgan told</a> Larry Pratt, director of Gun Owners of America, during a discussion about gun regulations that included proposed bans on large clips and military-style weapons like the AR-15 used by Newtown, Connecticut&#8217;s shooter, Adam Lanza. Now, an <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2012/12/24/some-americans-want-cnns-piers-morgan-deported/1789273/">online petition</a> demanding that the smug Brit be deported is drawing tens of thousands of signatures.</p>
<p>Morgan surely knows about Britain&#8217;s failed effort to reduce gun violence &#8211; and how those efforts backfired. Even the lefty BBC took notice &#8212; explaining that the 40 percent surge in gun violence suggested the handgun ban was &#8220;targeting legitimate users of firearms rather than criminals.&#8221; Specifically, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1440764.stm">BBC explained</a> that &#8220;The Center for Defense Studies at Kings College in London, which carried out the research, said the number of crimes in which a handgun was reported increased from 2,648 in 1997/98 to 3,685 in 1999/2000.&#8221; Moreover, it noted there was &#8220;no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession; that &#8220;of the 20 police areas with the lowest number of legally held firearms, 10 had an above average level of gun crime. And of the 20 police areas with the highest levels of legally held guns only two had armed crime levels above the average.&#8221;</p>
<p>Interestingly, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre">massacre in Dunblane </a>was hardly the case of an upstanding citizen inexplicably exploding into a murderous rage. Thomas Hamilton, the 43-year-old shooter, had been on the radar of law-enforcement authorities and townspeople for some time, just as Newtown shooter Adam Lanza was on the radar (both to school officials and townspeople) for having significant mental health issues.</p>
<p>Yet in each case, nothing was done.</p>
<p>Hamilton was a closet homosexual and serial child abuser. Interestingly, police were aware of his proclivities for young boys. Parents had lodged a number of complaints about Hamilton&#8217;s sordid behavior as a Scout leader and in other youth groups. Yet Hamilton, a shopkeeper and registered gun owner, was never brought to justice by legal authorities. It&#8217;s an issue that came up repeatedly after his rampage, provoking charges that police engaged in a cover-up regarding Hamilton&#8217;s sexual crimes. Suspicions of police negligence were further aroused when records pertaining to the sexual abuse allegations were sealed for 100 years (ostensibly to protect Hamilton&#8217;s abuse victims). Although Hamilton escaped legal prosecution for molesting children, he was nevertheless shunned by townspeople. His shop went out of business. And community leaders prohibited him from leading or organizing anymore groups for boys.</p>
<p>On March 13, 1996, Hamilton took his revenge, entering the Dunblane Primary School with four handguns &#8211; two 9 mm Browning HP pistols, and two Smith &amp;amp; Wesson M19 .357 Magnum revolvers. All of them were legally held. He carried 743 bullets.</p>
<p>He fired 109 times and killed 16 children, ages 5 and 6, shooting them at close range in a gymnasium. He murdered their teacher as she tried to protect them. He shot up other parts of the school, then returned to the gym where he committed suicide by putting the barrel of a handgun against the roof of his mouth and pulling the trigger. Fifteen others were wounded in his rampage.</p>
<p>Britain, to be sure, has not experienced another massacre. But given the number of handguns still in Britain &#8211; now mostly in the hands of bad guys and not good ones &#8211; it&#8217;s only a matter of time before another massacre happens. After all, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws (and madmen) will have them. And if they can&#8217;t get their hands on a gun, they&#8217;ll find another means to kill.</p>
<p>Interestingly, some anti-gun elitists who would deprive ordinary law-abiding citizens from owning firearms seem unconcerned about madmen obtaining nukes in Iran and North Korea. They entertain the naive delusion that the United Nation&#8217;s Security Council and Human Rights Commission will keep these madmen at bay, just as they naively believe the United Kingdom&#8217;s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_use_of_firearms_in_the_United_Kingdom">mostly unarmed </a>police officers can keep growing gun crime at bay.</p>
<p>One thing can be safely inferred about Thomas Hamilton&#8217;s mental state: He had no reason to fear that an armed policeman might quickly show up: Scotland&#8217;s police, like England&#8217;s famous bobbies, are mostly unarmed.</p>
<p>Piers Morgan, for his part, says that in the unlikely event he&#8217;s deported, he may broadcast from the Caribbean island-nation of Jamaica, part of the British commonwealth. Does Morgan know that Jamaica has one of the world&#8217;s highest <a href="http://worldnews.about.com/od/crime/tp/Top-Murder-Rates-In-The-World.htm">murder rates</a>? And that obtaining a handgun permit there, especially for non-Jamaicans, often <a href="http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20111023/lead/lead9.html">drags on </a>for months and months?</p>
<p>Good luck, Piers.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Cathedral Crusade for Gun Control</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/cathedral-crusade-for-gun-control/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cathedral-crusade-for-gun-control</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Dec 2012 04:10:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[episcopal church]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The first step in the Religious Left's agenda to dismantle the Second Amendment.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-d-tooley/cathedral-crusade-for-gun-control/national-cathedral-dc/" rel="attachment wp-att-171275"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-171275" title="national-cathedral-DC" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/national-cathedral-DC-445x350.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="210" /></a>Barely a few hours after the horrendous December 14 Newtown, Connecticut murders, the National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, D.C. quickly publicized a news release pledging to “work with our national leaders to enact more effective gun control measures.”  Then the cathedral announced its relatively new dean, Gary Hall, would sermonize on gun control that Sunday.   The gothic cathedral that soars over the nation’s capital has been struggling in recent years, like many liberal, old line Protestant institutions, over declining membership and finances.  And the political pronouncements of cathedral clergy, like most Episcopal and other old line clergy, in recent decades are mostly ignored.  More typically the National Cathedral gains attention as a favored locale for state funerals, such as for Presidents Ford and Reagan, as well as astronaut Neil Armstrong.  But CNN, <em>The Washington Post</em> and <em>New York Times,</em> among other media, uncharacteristically covered this sermon.</p>
<p>“If we are truly America’s ‘National’ Cathedral, as we say we are, then we must become the focal point of faithful advocacy of gun control, calling our leaders to courageous action and supporting them as they take it,&#8221; Rev. Hall preached.  “For a variety of reasons our political culture has been unwilling and unable to address the question of gun control, but now it is time that you and I, as followers of Jesus, help them to do that.”  Ostensibly “helping” Americans identify the right political solutions has been, unsuccessfully, the objective of old line Protestant elites for many decades.</p>
<p>In keeping with liberal theology, Rev. Hall warned against calling the Newtown murderer “evil” as dehumanizing.   Instead, he focused more abstractly on “violence” and social tolerance for it.  And in a familiar theme for old line Protestant clergy, he touted a political rather than a redemptive or spiritual crusade:  “Our political leaders need to know that there is a group of people in America who will serve as a counterweight to the gun lobby, who will stand together with our leaders and support them as they act to take assault weapons off the streets.”  The best way to mourn Newtown’s victims is to “mobilize the faith community for gun control.”  And the Episcopal priest pledged his cathedral would become a “focal point of faithful advocacy of gun control, calling our leaders to courageous action and supporting them as they take it.”  Rev. Hall promised that the “the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby.”</p>
<p>Keeping his promise, the National Cathedral last week hosted an interfaith press conference for gun control.  Rev. Hall was joined by the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., a United Methodist bishop, the National Council of Churches, a retired Catholic prelate, and the Islamic Society of North America.   Cathedral officials urged banning semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, while also urging better care for the mentally ill.  These stances are of course within the realm of reasonable discourse.  But for much of the Religious Left, these policy objectives are only incremental steps towards more sweeping gun bans.  The United Methodist Church, for example, has advocated for about 40 years an abolition of hand gun ownership.   A former National Council of Churches president suggested transcending a Second “Amendment crafted for a time that bears little resemblance to our own.”  Former lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) Richard Cizik professed to represent “new” evangelicals in backing gun control.   “American Evangelicals need to be born again on this issue,” he insisted, denouncing “weapons of war” that defy “everything we say we stand for.”</p>
<p>But the president of his “old” evangelical group, although not joining the National Cathedral press conference since NAE has no official gun control stance, told <em>The New York Times</em> that maybe they should<em> </em>“take a harder look.” He cited the “decisive action” of the Holy Family after King Herod slaughtered the innocents.  Whatever the NAE ultimately says, polls show that evangelicals are the religious demographic most opposed to more gun control.</p>
<p>At the press conference, Rev. Hall mocked the National Rifle Association’s suggestion of more armed guards at schools as answering “violence with more violence” and showing the NRA’s “answers are directly at odds with the teachings of all faith traditions of the vast majority of people of faith in America.”  Unlike the United Methodist stance for a total ban on handguns, among other weapons, the Episcopal Church, according to its D.C. lobby, apparently more moderately advocates keeping “guns out of the hands of criminals (and to make certain assault weapons impossible to own), as well as to promote better availability of mental-health care and other measures designed to address the causes and effects of violence in our communities.”</p>
<p>Rev. Hall more specifically declared:   “We must urge our legislators to support a ban on assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines, and commit ourselves to improving mental health treatment and critiquing our culture of glorified violence.”  He also wants “tighter controls on all gun sales.”  Rev. Hall insisted he doesn’t want to “take away someone’s hunting rifle, but I can no longer justify a society that allows concealed handguns in schools and on the streets or that allows people other than military and police to buy assault weapons or that lets people get around existing gun laws by selling weapons to people without background checks at gun shows.”</p>
<p>The cathedral dean’s seeming emphasis on background checks and mental health is obviously not outrageous of itself.  But clerics leading political campaigns tend to invest their crusades with rhetoric pitting the angelic against the demonic.  Not just the NRA but nearly all gun owners likely are the ultimate target of the true believing Religious Left, which for more than a century has had almost unlimited faith that the Kingdom of God can be achieved through legislation expanding state power.   Interestingly, the Newtown killer reportedly degenerated emotionally after his parents’ divorce.  Murderers and other violent felons overwhelmingly come from families broken by divorce or out of wedlock births.  Churches typically bring no particular expertise to legislative issues, much less gun control.  They do have 2000 years of expertise in promoting family life and the morality it sustains.  None of the clerics who spoke at the National Cathedral press conference evidently extolled traditional church teachings about marriage and family as at least a partial remedy not only to violent crime but to a vast array of destructive social pathologies.  Maybe they could start.</p>
<p>Nor did any of the clerics on the lawn of the National Cathedral mention that, even with the Newtown and other horrendous mass murders of recent years, murder rates in American are at record lows. In 1980, there were 10.2 murders for every 100,000 Americans. In 2011, it was 4.7, a more than 50 percent per capita drop.   Murders today are less common per capita in America than they were in 1960.  While not minimizing the urgency of deterring future Newtown-like horrors, maybe the clerics should have, and still could, give thanks for this massive improvement.  And they could even ponder the reasons behind it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Contempt for &#8216;Bitter Clingers&#8217; Fuels Gun Control</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/contempt-of-bitter-clingers-fuels-gun-control/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=contempt-of-bitter-clingers-fuels-gun-control</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Dec 2012 04:37:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170641</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The real reason the Left has renewed its assault on the Second Amendment.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-thornton/contempt-of-bitter-clingers-fuels-gun-control/urban-league-obama-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-170705"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170705" title="urban-league-obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/urban-league-obama1.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="151" /></a>The massacre of school children in Connecticut has been followed by the same irrational reactions and useless prescriptions that attend every mass shooting. The usual suspects have already been rounded up, most predictably the availability of weapons in America, especially what many misleadingly call “assault weapons.” President Obama has established a commission and promised, “This time the words need to lead to action. I will use all the powers of this office to help advance efforts aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.”</p>
<p>Of course these “efforts” will include new gun control laws that will serve liberal political ends, but will do nothing to prevent the next massacre.</p>
<p>One of the biggest culprits in this process is the media. Their incessant coverage of the crime and its aftermath, especially the suffering of the victims’ families, turns the tragedy into a sentimentalized commodity. Morbid curiosity becomes a kind of voyeurism, the same impulse that makes people slow down for car wrecks. Another effect of the media is the platform it gives to the psychotic or evil killer eager for global attention and fame. Like Hierostratus, who burned down the temple of Artemis in Ephesus just to become famous, the lunatic loner seeks power and validation through his crimes. The 24/7 coverage of killings on cable television and the Internet assures the wannabe killer that he will get the obsessive attention to his life and deeds he craves. He may have been an anonymous loser in life, but now he is a celebrity.</p>
<p>All this intense coverage does nothing, of course, for the grieving families and survivors. But these irrational feelings create emotional momentum that can be politically exploited to further extend big government’s control over our lives. Witness the calls to restrict First Amendment rights by censoring violent video games, as West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller has done, despite the absence of any demonstrable causal link between such games and mass shootings. This outsized media attention and its lurid drama also obscure the more rational context necessary for creating public policy: risk evaluation. From that perspective, hysteria over gun deaths is disproportionate. Dying at the hands of a stranger is a remote contingency for most people outside of inner city areas. Getting shot to death didn’t make the top 15 causes of death in 2011. Deaths by alcohol (26,256), car accidents (34,677), and drugs (37,485; about 15,000 from prescription painkillers) all exceeded homicides by firearms (11,101), with gun deaths at the hands of strangers representing less than a fifth of those killings.</p>
<p>But all this everyday loss of life does not create the obsessive drama of mass shootings, or a fraction of the demands for new regulations and restrictions that always follow gun deaths. Of course, the deaths of children like those in Newtown affect us more powerfully. But every year thousands of children and teens die from legal drugs and drunk drivers. Aren’t those lives as valuable and worthy of our concern as the victims of mass shootings? Why don’t we demand more intrusive regulation and restrictions on alcohol and painkillers as vehemently and persistently as we call for gun restrictions that cannot be shown to lower the risk of getting killed by a gun? Why do we accept the risk of death that attends driving, drinking alcohol, and using prescription drugs yet demand that ownership of guns be absolutely risk-free?</p>
<p>The answer can be found in the way many liberals have made a fetish out of the gun. They are the anti-gun nuts, attributing mystic powers of destruction to a tool that like cars or drugs can be misused by the careless, lunatic, or evil. Thus they demand gun-control laws that are effective only for limiting the rights of the law-abiding and sane. Take the ban on “assault” weapons. The 1994 ban, which expired in 2004, had no demonstrable effect on reducing gun-deaths, according to a University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the Justice Department. Yet new legislation is being proposed by Senator Diane Feinstein to bring the ban back, with the same exceptions and the same focus on cosmetics of the earlier legislation.</p>
<p>Once again, the irrational and superficial drives policy: if a weapon just <em>looks</em> like a fully automatic military assault rifle because it has a bayonet mount or a folding stock, then we will restrict it, even though a few simple modifications of a legal rifle can turn it back into a banned one. And what do we do about the 200 million guns currently in circulation? Or how do we stop people from getting guns illegally? We’ve spent $1 trillion over the last 40 years on the “war on drugs,” and today any motivated teenager can get illegal drugs in a few hours. Finally, there is no historical correlation between availability of guns and homicide rates. Murders increased after the 1968 Gun Control Act, and later declined after the 1994 assault weapon ban expired––down 50% over the last 30 years. Of all the contributors to the increase in mass shootings over the last decade––greater media coverage that incites copycat killers, or the deinstitutionalizing of the mentally ill­­––the existence of semiautomatic weapons that merely resemble military assault rifles is way down on the list.</p>
<p>But media-stoked irrational hysteria about gun violence isn’t the only reason we are hearing calls for more gun control. Politics is a factor as well. According to the <em>New York Times</em>, while 60% of Republicans have a gun in the house, only 25% of Democrats do. “Whether someone owns a gun,” Nate Silver writes, “is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South or a number of other demographic characteristics.” That’s why Obama used the Newtown killings to bully the Republicans into caving on his demands for higher taxes. Like class warfare, gun control is a reliable issue for Democrats to exploit for political gain no matter how ineffective the resulting policies. Just as the soak-the-rich policies dominating the Democrats’ solutions to the “fiscal cliff” will do nothing to reduce the deficit and control spending, so too more gun control will not stop tragedies like the Newtown massacre.</p>
<p>Gun control laws, then, represent yet another instance of the progressive ideology that distrusts the average person to control his own life, and so demands ever greater regulatory intrusion into private life that necessarily expands the scope and power of the government. Restrictions on guns assume that most people, especially those conservative “bitter clingers to guns and religion,” as Obama called them, are too untrustworthy or incapable or stupid to own and carry a weapon. Such laws are written by elite snobs who think they know how to run your life better than you do, just as progressive economic policy is predicated on the belief that the federal government has a right to confiscate your money because it knows how to spend it more efficiently or justly.</p>
<p>In the end, the progressive point is not to solve problems that history shows big government is usually incapable of doing without extracting prohibitive costs. The point is to expand the leviathan state at the expense of individual freedom and autonomy, based on a contempt for ordinary people whom progressives at heart believe are not as worthy of freedom as they are. The emotional excesses that surround a tragedy like the Newtown massacre are merely the camouflage for advancing this assault on freedom.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>We Know How to Stop School Shootings</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/ann-coulter/we-know-how-to-stop-school-shootings/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=we-know-how-to-stop-school-shootings</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:50:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Only one law has ever been shown to reduce the death rate from mass shootings. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ann-coulter/we-know-how-to-stop-school-shootings/woman-with-gun-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-170228"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170228" title="woman-with-gun" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/woman-with-gun.gif" alt="" width="244" height="174" /></a>In the wake of a monstrous crime like a madman&#8217;s mass murder of defenseless women and children at the Newtown, Conn., elementary school, the nation&#8217;s attention is riveted on what could have been done to prevent such a massacre.</p>
<p>Luckily, some years ago, two famed economists, William Landes at the University of Chicago and John Lott at Yale, conducted a massive study of multiple victim public shootings in the United States between 1977 and 1995 to see how various legal changes affected their frequency and death toll.</p>
<p>Landes and Lott examined many of the very policies being proposed right now in response to the Connecticut massacre: waiting periods and background checks for guns, the death penalty and increased penalties for committing a crime with a gun.</p>
<p>None of these policies had any effect on the frequency of, or carnage from, multiple-victim shootings. (I note that they did not look at reforming our lax mental health laws, presumably because the ACLU is working to keep dangerous nuts on the street in all 50 states.)</p>
<p>Only one public policy has ever been shown to reduce the death rate from such crimes: concealed-carry laws.</p>
<p>Their study controlled for age, sex, race, unemployment, retirement, poverty rates, state population, murder arrest rates, violent crime rates, and on and on.</p>
<p>The effect of concealed-carry laws in deterring mass public shootings was even greater than the impact of such laws on the murder rate generally.</p>
<p>Someone planning to commit a single murder in a concealed-carry state only has to weigh the odds of one person being armed. But a criminal planning to commit murder in a public place has to worry that anyone in the entire area might have a gun.</p>
<p>You will notice that most multiple-victim shootings occur in &#8220;gun-free zones&#8221; &#8212; even within states that have concealed-carry laws: public schools, churches, Sikh temples, post offices, the movie theater where James Holmes committed mass murder, and the Portland, Ore., mall where a nut starting gunning down shoppers a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>Guns were banned in all these places. Mass killers may be crazy, but they&#8217;re not stupid.</p>
<p>If the deterrent effect of concealed-carry laws seems surprising to you, that&#8217;s because the media hide stories of armed citizens stopping mass shooters. At the Portland shooting, for example, no explanation was given for the amazing fact that the assailant managed to kill only two people in the mall during the busy Christmas season.</p>
<p>It turns out, concealed-carry-holder Nick Meli hadn&#8217;t noticed that the mall was a gun-free zone. He pointed his (otherwise legal) gun at the shooter as he paused to reload, and the next shot was the attempted mass murderer killing himself. (Meli aimed, but didn&#8217;t shoot, because there were bystanders behind the shooter.)</p>
<p>In a nonsense &#8220;study&#8221; going around the Internet right now, Mother Jones magazine claims to have produced its own study of all public shootings in the last 30 years and concludes: &#8220;In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.&#8221;</p>
<p>This will come as a shock to people who know something about the subject.</p>
<p>The magazine reaches its conclusion by simply excluding all cases where an armed civilian stopped the shooter: They looked only at public shootings where four or more people were killed, i.e., the ones where the shooter wasn&#8217;t stopped.</p>
<p>If we care about reducing the number of people killed in mass shootings, shouldn&#8217;t we pay particular attention to the cases where the aspiring mass murderer was prevented from getting off more than a couple rounds?</p>
<p>It would be like testing the effectiveness of weed killers, but refusing to consider any cases where the weeds died.</p>
<p>In addition to the Portland mall case, here are a few more examples excluded by the Mother Jones&#8217; methodology:</p>
<p>&#8211; Mayan Palace Theater, San Antonio, Texas, this week: Jesus Manuel Garcia shoots at a movie theater, a police car and bystanders from the nearby China Garden restaurant; as he enters the movie theater, guns blazing, an armed off-duty cop shoots Garcia four times, stopping the attack. Total dead: Zero.</p>
<p>&#8211; Winnemucca, Nev., 2008: Ernesto Villagomez opens fire in a crowded restaurant; concealed carry permit-holder shoots him dead. Total dead: Two. (I&#8217;m excluding the shooters&#8217; deaths in these examples.)</p>
<p>&#8211; Appalachian School of Law, 2002: Crazed immigrant shoots the dean and a professor, then begins shooting students; as he goes for more ammunition, two armed students point their guns at him, allowing a third to tackle him. Total dead: Three.</p>
<p>&#8211; Santee, Calif., 2001: Student begins shooting his classmates &#8212; as well as the &#8220;trained campus supervisor&#8221;; an off-duty cop who happened to be bringing his daughter to school that day points his gun at the shooter, holding him until more police arrive. Total dead: Two.</p>
<p>&#8211; Pearl High School, Mississippi, 1997: After shooting several people at his high school, student heads for the junior high school; assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieves a .45 pistol from his car and points it at the gunman&#8217;s head, ending the murder spree. Total dead: Two.</p>
<p>&#8211; Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A student shoots up a junior high school dance being held at a restaurant; restaurant owner pulls out his shotgun and stops the gunman. Total dead: One.</p>
<p>By contrast, the shootings in gun-free zones invariably result in far higher casualty figures &#8212; Sikh temple, Oak Creek, Wis. (six dead); Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va. (32 dead); Columbine High School, Columbine, Colo. (12 dead); Amish school, Lancaster County, Pa. (five little girls killed); public school, Craighead County, Ark. (five killed, including four little girls).</p>
<p>All these took place in gun-free zones, resulting in lots of people getting killed &#8212; and thereby warranting inclusion in the Mother Jones study.</p>
<p>If what we care about is saving the lives of innocent human beings by reducing the number of mass public shootings and the deaths they cause, only one policy has ever been shown to work: concealed-carry laws. On the other hand, if what we care about is self-indulgent grandstanding, and to hell with dozens of innocent children being murdered in cold blood, try the other policies.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Anti-Gun Lunatics Take Over the Asylum</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/anti-gun-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-gun-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 04:59:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=170132</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama offers bread and circuses to the anti-Second Amendment mob -- while ignoring the deadly damage caused by the ACLU.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/matthew-vadum/anti-gun-lunatics-have-taken-over-the-asylum/1355722466804-cached/" rel="attachment wp-att-170134"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-170134" title="1355722466804.cached" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/1355722466804.cached.jpg" alt="" width="266" height="200" /></a>Instead of undoing reckless policies that have allowed dangerous mentally ill people to roam free, President Obama is using the bloody Newtown massacre to target Americans&#8217; fundamental right to self-defense.</p>
<p>Determined not to let the senseless murder of at least 20 young schoolchildren and six adults by a madman last Friday in Connecticut go to waste, the nation&#8217;s Demagogue-in-Chief is taking aim at the Second Amendment by urging a reinstatement of the useless federal Assault Weapons Ban.</p>
<p>The Assault Weapons Ban, enacted during the Clinton era, prohibited civilian use of specific semi-automatic firearms that politicians arbitrarily deemed &#8220;assault weapons&#8221; for superficial reasons largely unrelated to how they operate. As Daniel Greenfield wisely <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/an-assault-rifle-ban-would-still-not-cover-the-rifle-lanza-used/" target="_blank">put it</a>, an assault rifle &#8220;is some sort of mysterious weapon forged in the fires of hell solely for the purpose of murdering people.&#8221; The ban, which had no measurable impact on crime, expired in 2004 and attempts to revive the nebulous law have failed so far.</p>
<p>The rifle that the reportedly mentally ill perpetrator, Adam Lanza, primarily relied on was a .223-caliber Bushmaster M4 carbine, which was apparently allowed under the federal ban and under Connecticut’s own assault weapon ban.</p>
<p>White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in addition to banning assault weapons Obama supports a proposal to close the misleadingly named &#8220;gun show loophole,&#8221; which allows people to conduct private secondary-market gun transactions without submitting to background checks. Crime expert John Lott, author of  the groundbreaking book, &#8220;More Guns, Less Crime,&#8221; told radio host Mark Levin last night that such private trades are almost nonexistent, amounting to just seven-tenths of one percent of all gun transactions nationwide.</p>
<p>Obama is &#8220;interested in looking at&#8221; restricting high-capacity ammunition clips, Carney said, along with social and mental health issues associated with gun-related violence.</p>
<p>Of course sharp-witted cynics might reply that left-wingers consider any desire to own a gun to be prima facie proof of mental illness.</p>
<p>Leftists across the fruited plain have gone apoplectic in light of last week&#8217;s multiple murders. TV talking heads Piers Morgan, Soledad O&#8217;Brien, and Martin Bashir have been particularly obnoxious, cutting off and shouting down guests who defend Second Amendment rights.</p>
<p>In recent days any principled defense of the Second Amendment has raised howls of indignation from affective, sheltered so-called progressives who wouldn&#8217;t know the difference between a Glock and a glockenspiel. Even more than usual, reasonable debate is not possible with leftists who mere days ago were cheering labor union violence aimed at preventing Michigan from becoming a &#8220;right to work&#8221; state.</p>
<p>Those on the Left seem completely unaware that, with the backing of groups like the ever-litigious American Civil Liberties Union screaming about the so-called rights of disturbed individuals, they helped to lay the foundation for future waves of mass shootings in America.</p>
<p>As Clayton Cramer <a href="http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/madness-deinstitutionalization-murder">writes</a>, mass murders had been relatively rare in the United States until the 1980s. Although it was &#8220;fashionable to blame gun availability for this dramatic increase &#8230; guns did not become more available&#8221; before multiple-victim shootings started to become increasingly common.</p>
<p>&#8220;At least half of these mass murderers (as well as many other murderers) have histories of mental illness,&#8221; says Cramer.</p>
<p>&#8220;Many have already come to the attention of the criminal justice or mental health systems before they become headlines. In the early 1980s, there were about two million chronically mentally ill people in the United States, with 93 percent living outside mental hospitals. The largest diagnosis for the chronically mentally ill is schizophrenia, which afflicts about 1 percent of the population, or about 1.5 percent of adult Americans.&#8221;</p>
<p>But in the late 1950s, egged on by newfangled theories, the nation began deinstitutionalizing psychiatric patients, moving them from long-term wards in state mental hospitals to community-based mental health facilities. Often patients refused to take prescribed medications and became homeless.</p>
<p>Back in the 1960s the strange behavior reportedly exhibited by Lanza probably would have warranted an involuntary stay at a mental hospital. But after deinstitutionalization, such psychiatric patients were left at liberty, fending for themselves in society, until they killed someone, Cramer writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a clear statistical relationship between deinstitutionalization and murder rates,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;Violent crime rates rose dramatically in the 1960s, most worrisomely in the murder rate.&#8221;</p>
<p>But even if Americans didn&#8217;t live in an era of &#8220;deinstitutionalization&#8221; today, Lanza probably would have been able to pull off his killing spree.</p>
<p>If a <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/12/18/fear-being-committed-may-have-caused-connecticut-madman-to-snap/">new report</a> from Fox News is accurate, a critical social safeguard that might have protected society from the shooter failed. Lanza &#8220;may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility,&#8221; according to Fox.</p>
<blockquote><p>Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims&#8217; families worship.</p>
<p>“From what I&#8217;ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,&#8221; Flashman told FoxNews.com.</p>
<p>&#8220;Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”</p>
<p>A senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation confirmed that Lanza&#8217;s anger at his mother over plans for “his future mental health treatment” is being looked at as a possible motive for the deadly shooting.</p></blockquote>
<p>If Lanza&#8217;s mother was indeed trying to do the right thing by getting her son psychiatric help, her efforts failed when he shot her to death. Presumably no one and no law could have stopped Lanza before he opened fire at the schoolhouse.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, some left-wingers are now claiming that President Obama is a friend of the Second Amendment and that all he wants to do is to impose some supposedly reasonable restrictions in order to save lives.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t believe it.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s recap what Obama actually believes, as opposed to his official actions as president.</p>
<p>Obama has a well-documented history of anti-gun fanaticism.</p>
<p>During his time teaching at the University of Chicago, he <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tUJaUY2OiY">told</a> then-colleague John Lott point-blank: &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe people should be able to own guns.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, Obama <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/225448/obamas-aim/david-freddoso#">promised</a> to ban &#8220;the manufacture, sale &amp; possession of handguns.”</p>
<p>While running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama spoke in favor of heavy-handed (and no doubt unconstitutional) federal legislation to block citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. “National legislation will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents,” he said.</p>
<p>Obama supported the District of Columbia&#8217;s draconian near-total ban on handgun ownership that was struck down in the Supreme Court&#8217;s landmark 2008 ruling in D.C. v. Heller.</p>
<p>On the presidential campaign trail Obama all but labeled gun owners as crazies. He revealed his contempt toward average gun-owning Americans, infamously describing small-town Pennsylvanians as people who bitterly cling to their guns and religion.</p>
<p>As Obama&#8217;s defenders delight in pointing out, gun policy has become less restrictive at the national level during his administration, albeit ever so slightly. Obama signed legislation allowing guns to be stowed in luggage on Amtrak trains and to be carried concealed on some federal parkland.</p>
<p>Of course this doesn&#8217;t prove Obama in his heart supports the Second Amendment. Rather, it shows that even statist demagogues can have the good sense to pick their battles carefully in a country with a long, proud history of firearms ownership dating back hundreds of years.</p>
<p>But with Obama now safely ensconced in the White House for another four years, there is no reason for him to hold back.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Left&#8217;s Renewed Assault on the NRA</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:58:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=169864</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Second Amendment zealots vow to "exploit" and "politicize" the Newtown massacre.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/left-vows-to-exploit-and-politicize-newtown-tragedy/jerrold_nadlerx390_5c66f/" rel="attachment wp-att-169881"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169881" title="Jerrold_NadlerX390_5c66f" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Jerrold_NadlerX390_5c66f.jpg" alt="" width="262" height="193" /></a>While much of the country mourns the horrific death of the 26 children and adults murdered at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut at the hands of an alleged mentally unstable individual who also killed his mother, the Left lost no time in shamelessly exploiting the tragedy.  In fact, Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY) used the word &#8220;exploit&#8221; in urging President Obama to take advantage of the Newtown massacre to prod Congress into passing stronger gun control legislation.</p>
<p>The Left&#8217;s avowed goal is to use what happened to galvanize support for cutting the Second Amendment into pieces and disarm law-abiding Americans. To accomplish that purpose, they are committed to discrediting and destroying the National Rifle Association.</p>
<p>Some unhinged leftists have taken to social media to literally call for NRA President David Keene and NRA members to be shot.</p>
<p>For those leftists who would not go quite that far, they have called for an all-out political war to take down the NRA. For example, in a clarion call to its readers, the progressive Daily Kos proclaimed:</p>
<blockquote><p>After Connecticut, we can&#8217;t stay silent and just hope that something like it will never happen again. We have to stand up to the political power of the NRA, and we have to do it right now while their support is weakest.</p></blockquote>
<p>CREDO, a progressive group, organized a march on NRA headquarters in Washington, D.C. These zealots blamed the NRA for the shooting. &#8220;To stop the senseless killing we must first stop the NRA,&#8221; they said in announcing their march. Evidently, these progressives have as little regard for the NRA&#8217;s constitutional right to petition their government under the First Amendment as they do for the right of individuals to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.</p>
<p>The mainstream media is also jumping on the anti-gun bandwagon. &#8220;We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets,&#8221; CNN anchor Don Lemon demanded during an anti-gun tirade. During the same tirade he said that mental health is a &#8220;secondary issue.&#8221;</p>
<p>Jeff Greenfield, a political analyst now with PBS who used to work for CBS News, CNN, and ABC News compared the Newtown shootings to the sinking of the Titanic, which cost 1,522 passengers and crew members their lives, and to the horrible 1911 fire that broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in lower Manhattan and killed 146 garment workers, mostly young female immigrants, who were trapped inside. In both of these earlier cases, Greenfield argued, the tragedies spurred tighter regulations. Now, Greenfield wrote, it was time to  &#8220;politicize the Newtown school shooting, starting right now&#8221; and clamp down on gun ownership.</p>
<p>The progressives who demand stricter gun control measures refuse to look at the consequences of their own actions that have made it very difficult to get mentally unstable individuals off the streets and institutionalized if they represent a danger to themselves or others.  The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the main culprits.</p>
<p>While the ACLU has little use for the Second Amendment, which it has said is only &#8220;a collective right,&#8221; despite the Supreme Court&#8217;s opinion to the contrary, the ACLU endangers communities by advocating the release of potentially violent individuals into society without adequate safeguards, monitoring to make sure they are taking their meds, and intervention if necessary. The ACLU even helped defeat a bill in the Connecticut Senate that would have allowed the state to institutionalize those persons whom it had reason to believe posed a threat to themselves or others. The ACLU charged that the bill would &#8220;infringe on patients&#8217; privacy rights by expanding [the circle of] who can medicate individuals without their consent.&#8221; Did the ACLU ever stop to worry about the rights of ordinary citizens to go about their business without the risk of coming face-to-face with an unsupervised mentally deranged shooter? Obviously not. Would the children and adults killed in Newtown Connecticut be alive today if that bill had passed?  We&#8217;ll never know, thanks in part to the ACLU.</p>
<p>There is room for honest debate on whether to tighten background checks and to consider more restrictions on the sale of military-style semi-automatic rifles. But the Left&#8217;s gun prohibitionists have no interest in reasonable dialogue or in seeking a sensible solution to prevent more carnage that addresses all relevant factors including mental health rather than focus single-mindedly on gun control. They are using the slaughtered kids as props for their radical anti-Second Amendment agenda.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Never Let a Horror Go To Waste</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/never-let-a-horror-go-to-waste/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=never-let-a-horror-go-to-waste</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Dec 2012 04:58:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Left sees opportunity in tragedy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/never-let-a-horror-go-to-waste/screen-shot-2012-11-13-at-3-54-32-pm/" rel="attachment wp-att-169689"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-169689" title="Screen-Shot-2012-11-13-at-3.54.32-PM" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Screen-Shot-2012-11-13-at-3.54.32-PM-437x350.png" alt="" width="262" height="210" /></a>“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mzcbXi1Tkk">said</a> President Obama’s former <em>consigliere</em> Rahm Emanuel, who is now the mayor of the strictly gun-controlled <a href="http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/The-Deadliest-Global-City-163874546.html">gun murder capital</a> of the world, Chicago. So naturally the statist anti-gun utopians see opportunity in Friday’s Newtown school massacre to push the total gun ban they’ve been lusting after for so long.</p>
<p>Rather than pause long enough to grieve with the rest of us over the horrific murders of twenty children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school; rather than wait for the media frenzy to subside so all the facts could be known; rather than honor the victims’ families and friends by refusing to politicize the nightmare, all the usual 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendment-hating suspects wasted no time pushing their agenda in the <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamGabbatt/status/280006994516123649/photo/1/large">ghoulish media</a> and accusing gun proponents of having blood on their collective hands.</p>
<p>Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, and Richard Blumenthal, among others, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/16/durbin-says-will-reopen-capitol-hill-debate-on-gun-rights-in-coming-weeks/">vowed</a> to introduce gun-ban legislation immediately. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man who never saw a human behavior he didn’t want the state to control, said in true totalitarian fashion that Obama has “to tell this country what to do.” Speaking of totalitarians, the Communist Chinese, who always have America’s best interests at heart, are now siding with the gun-ban fascists and <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/communist-china-calls-for-obama-to-engage-in-protracted-war-for-gun-control/">urging</a> Obama to “make preparation for a protracted war” to make it happen. Quelle surprise.</p>
<p>When Democratic Representative Jerrold Nadler from New York was asked on MSNBC’s <em>The Ed Show</em> whether the Newtown shooting could be the turning point in the gun control debate, he replied, “I think we will be there if the president <em>exploits</em> it, and otherwise we’ll go on to the next” incident [emphasis added]. Perhaps “exploit” was just a poor choice of words; more likely it is just unintentionally revealing about the Democrats’ Alinskyite manipulation.</p>
<p>And of course Michael Moore, apologist for the mass murderer Fidel Castro, swiftly took to Twitter, which has become the medium of choice for inane grandstanding by narcissistic celebrities on current event topics that no one asked them about. The propagandist behind <em>Bowling for Columbine</em> <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/michael-moore-nra-hates-freedom-we-must-demand-strict-gun-control-free-mental-health-care/">tweeted</a> that “the way to honor these dead children is to demand strict gun control, free mental health care, and an end to violence as public policy.”</p>
<p>I have no idea what violent public policy he’s talking about, but it probably has to do with the war we’re already not waging against Islamic fundamentalists who kill our soldiers with impunity now both abroad (green-on-blue killings, anyone?) and at home (remember the workplace violence at Ft. Hood? Those soldiers were unarmed because base protocol forbade it, enabling jihadist Nidal Hasan to slaughter his victims, including a pregnant woman, at will).</p>
<p>As for strict gun control, we already have that. The apparently insane Newtown shooter violated numerous gun laws in the commission of his crimes. Funny how that works – the evil aren’t constrained by laws, and they take full advantage of gun-free zones like Ft. Hood and schools to carry out their demonic mission.</p>
<p>Moore went on to target the National Rifle Association with a particularly vile tweet: “The NRA hates freedom. They don’t want you to have the freedom to send your children to school &amp; expect them to come home alive.” This is typical progressive projection. It is the totalitarian left that hates freedom. The hypocrite 1%er Moore, with his armed bodyguards, has never been unwilling to exploit the deaths of children in his obsession with ensuring that arms are limited to the state and to criminals – or is that redundant?</p>
<p>Let me be clear, as Obama is fond of saying: the statists aren’t talking about <em>stricter</em> gun control. They want a total ban on guns in America. “I don’t think people should be able to own guns,” Obama once <a href="http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/2012/11/obama-i-dont-believe-people-should-be-able-to-own-guns/">reportedly told</a> gun rights advocate John Lott. And so in his statement after the massacre he promises “meaningful action.” Keep in mind that our President wants to disarm Americans while shipping more fighter jets and tanks to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about guns either. Holder once said that he wanted a campaign to “really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way” and to “change the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC” about guns. About the Newtown massacre, <a href="http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/12/14/attorney-general-eric-holder-addresses-connecticut-school-shootings-we-must-ask-ourselves-some-hard-questions/">he said</a>,</p>
<blockquote><p>As a nation I think we have to ask ourselves some hard questions. We gather too often to talk about these kinds of incidents. We need to discuss who we are as a nation, talk about the freedoms that we have, the rights that we have and how those might be used in a responsible way.</p></blockquote>
<p>Translation: it’s our rights and freedoms that are irresponsible, not criminals and the insane, so we need to curtail them. This is the same Attorney General who ducks responsibility for the Fast and Furious program that fed weapons into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Again, the Obama administration has no compunction about disarming American citizens and arming America’s enemies.</p>
<p>The mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has pierced the heart of every American. The horror of it is unimaginable. Who is to blame? “I’ll tell you who’s to blame,” <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/14/connecticut_shootings_gun_control_mental_health_and_our_responsibility_to.html">opined</a> a blogger for the left-leaning Slate. “You are. I am. Everyone is.” This is typical of the left’s inability to comprehend the notion of personal responsibility. “Society” is always to blame (except when it’s more convenient to blame Bush or Cheney). In fact, Adam Lanza is to blame. It’s too soon to know yet just what his mental condition was and whether or not it was being mismanaged; perhaps warning signs were ignored, in which case that national conversation needs to take place. But banning guns is not the answer.</p>
<p>Holder is partly correct – we <em>do</em> need to discuss who we are as a nation and talk about the freedoms and rights that we have, such as the 1<sup>st</sup> and 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendments, and how the totalitarian left under Obama is capitalizing on Friday’s horror to deny Americans those freedoms and rights.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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