Anti-gun activist group Moms Demand Action admits to having armed security in another brazen example of the left’s hypocrisy — “for me, but not for thee.”

Erika Soto Lamb, Communications Director for the Everytown for Gun Safety campaign, an effort of newly joined anti-gun groups Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action, admitted in a tweet to conservative pundit Dana Loesch that the Moms Demand Action team at the NRA Annual Meetings has armed security:

What? Armed security?! The hypocrisy seems to never end with anti-gun liberals.

Incredibly, Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand, claims the group is not anti-gun. In a Guns.com interview also promoted via tweet by Everytown’s Communication Director, Watts said, “We are in no way anti-gun” (emphasis added). However, in the same interview she said, “It’s no longer possible to ignore the truth that 86 Americans are killed every day with guns” (emphasis added), a statistic that purposely ignores that a full two-thirds of gun deaths are self-inflicted suicides. Moms Demand Action was previously exposed exploiting suicide deaths while simultaneously stating suicide is not their problem:




The claim Moms Demand is not anti-gun also fails the evidence test when one examines Shannon Watts’ tweets about guns and the policy actions Moms Demand has pursued. When a Moms Demand follower asked about a suicide awareness campaign, Watts responded, “Data shows few of daily shootings in the U.S. are due to mental illness. We don’t have more ill people, just more guns.”

Following a Philadelphia shooting, Shannon Watts tweeted, “It’s the guns”:

Shannon Watts and Moms Demand Action’s twitter accounts both bemoaned the deaths following the most recent Fort Hood shooting, which took place in a gun free zone. But then they lobby to create more gun free zones:

Based on evaluating Moms Demand’s actions, one can only conclude they are anti-gun, and not pro-gun rights. Moms Demand Action’s first campaign was to try to get Starbucks to ban guns from its stores (and thereby make it a gun free zone). An effort in which they failed. Their next campaign was to attempt to get Staples to ban guns from its stores. This also failed. They also attempted to get Facebook to ban posts advertising guns for sale or trade. They also failed. They have announced they will target McDonald’s to try to get guns banned from all McDonald’s restaurants.

In one area does the Moms Demand founders’ claim to not be anti-gun hold up to scrutiny: when it comes to their own paid-for armed security. “For me, but not for thee.” “When I need it, it’s fine; when someone else needs it, it’s not fine.” To Moms Demand, Mayors Against Guns (the correct name) and Everytown for Gun Safety, that passed for #gunsense.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication April 28, 2014).

Moms Demand Action Admits to Using Armed Security

by Matt MacBradaigh | Apr 28, 2014 | News | 0 comments

Anti-gun activist group Moms Demand Action admits to having armed security in another brazen example of the left’s hypocrisy — “for me, but not for thee.”

Erika Soto Lamb, Communications Director for the Everytown for Gun Safety campaign, an effort of newly joined anti-gun groups Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action, admitted in a tweet to conservative pundit Dana Loesch that the Moms Demand Action team at the NRA Annual Meetings has armed security:

What? Armed security?! The hypocrisy seems to never end with anti-gun liberals.

Incredibly, Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand, claims the group is not anti-gun. In a Guns.com interview also promoted via tweet by Everytown’s Communication Director, Watts said, “We are in no way anti-gun” (emphasis added). However, in the same interview she said, “It’s no longer possible to ignore the truth that 86 Americans are killed every day with guns” (emphasis added), a statistic that purposely ignores that a full two-thirds of gun deaths are self-inflicted suicides. Moms Demand Action was previously exposed exploiting suicide deaths while simultaneously stating suicide is not their problem:

The claim Moms Demand is not anti-gun also fails the evidence test when one examines Shannon Watts’ tweets about guns and the policy actions Moms Demand has pursued. When a Moms Demand follower asked about a suicide awareness campaign, Watts responded, “Data shows few of daily shootings in the U.S. are due to mental illness. We don’t have more ill people, just more guns.”

Following a Philadelphia shooting, Shannon Watts tweeted, “It’s the guns”:

Shannon Watts and Moms Demand Action’s twitter accounts both bemoaned the deaths following the most recent Fort Hood shooting, which took place in a gun free zone. But then they lobby to create more gun free zones:

Based on evaluating Moms Demand’s actions, one can only conclude they are anti-gun, and not pro-gun rights. Moms Demand Action’s first campaign was to try to get Starbucks to ban guns from its stores (and thereby make it a gun free zone). An effort in which they failed. Their next campaign was to attempt to get Staples to ban guns from its stores. This also failed. They also attempted to get Facebook to ban posts advertising guns for sale or trade. They also failed. They have announced they will target McDonald’s to try to get guns banned from all McDonald’s restaurants.

In one area does the Moms Demand founders’ claim to not be anti-gun hold up to scrutiny: when it comes to their own paid-for armed security. “For me, but not for thee.” “When I need it, it’s fine; when someone else needs it, it’s not fine.” To Moms Demand, Mayors Against Guns (the correct name) and Everytown for Gun Safety, that passed for #gunsense.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Apr 28, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.

Ninth Circuit Court’s Peruta decision to make Hawaii a shall-issue concealed carry state

It seems the Ninth Circuit court’s Peruta decision will make Hawaii a shall-issue concealed carry state, as the ramifications of the February Peruta v. San Diego County decision continue to work their way through the lower courts. The District Court in Hawaii had previously rejected Christopher Baker’s complaint against state agencies that denied him a concealed carry license in Baker v. Kealoha. But following the Peruta decision, the Ninth Circuit court ordered the lower court to reexamine the case and hold “further proceedings consistent with Peruta.”

Christopher Baker had filed suit to legally carry, either openly or concealed, firearms in public. The District Court denied him, “concluding in part that Baker was not likely to establish that Hawaii’s restrictions on carrying firearms in public were unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, and therefore, Baker was not likely to succeed.” However, the Ninth Circuit disagreed when they ruled the Second Amendment does confer a right to bear arms outside the home in Peruta, and remanded the case back to the lower court. The Ninth Circuit said:

"we concluded that the Second Amendment provides a responsible, law-abiding citizen with a right to carry an operable handgun outside the home for the purpose of self-defense. In light of our holding in Peruta, the district court made an error of law when it concluded that the Hawaii statutes did not implicate protected Second Amendment activity. Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s decision denying Baker’s motion for a preliminary injunction and remand for further proceedings consistent with Peruta."

There are still formalities that must occur before Hawaii’s law is removed, but it appears it is only a matter of time before Hawaii will become the latest state to recognize that the Second Amendment allows lawful carry of firearms outside of the home. Court time is not necessarily speedy. As Eugene Volokh, of The Volokh Conspiracy, wrote in the Washington Post:

"[T]he writing is on the wall. Of course, if the Ninth Circuit agrees to rehear Peruta en banc and then reverses it, or if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Peruta and then reverses it, then the foundation for the Baker decision will be reversed, too. And if the defendants in Baker petition the Ninth Circuit for rehearing or the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari (and get a stay of the Ninth Circuit’s judgment in the meantime), then the Baker decision won’t have to be implemented until all those proceedings are over. So there’s still a ways to go, I suspect, before Hawaii goes “shall-issue,” so that any law-abiding adult can get a license to carry concealed."

However, as Brenner Brief had reported previously, the Ninth Circuit ruled the right to keep and bear arms is, in and of itself, a sufficient cause for bearing arms for self-defense both inside and outside of the home. Judge O’Scannlain’s majority opinion emphasized “the right to bear arms includes the right to carry an operable arm outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense.” The courts said the Second Amendment must be read as including “the right to carry weapons outside the home” because “the risk of armed confrontation” is in no way limited to one’s home.

The Peruta decision is based on several Supreme Court decisions, primarily D.C v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. The Supreme Court ruled in Heller, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” As this author has previously written, the ruling says “for lawful purposes” – plural – “such as self-defense within the home”, meaning self-defense within the home is one of several lawful purposes. The Court explicitly mentions several other lawful purposes in Heller that do not logically restrict the Second Amendment to the home, including hunting, resisting tyranny from government, repelling an invasion, and suppressing an insurrection. Heller also reaffirms the court’s prior definition of “bear arms” in Muscarello v. United States that “surely a most familiar meaning is, as the Constitution’s Second Amendment indicates: wear, bear, or carry upon the person or in the clothing or in a pocket, for the purpose of being armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.” McDonald held that the Second Amendment rights applied to the states via the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Based on these decisions, the Ninth Circuit found: “people are more sensibly said to ‘bear Arms’ in nondomestic settings… self-defense, recognized since ancient times as a ‘basic right’, is the central component of the Second Amendment… consequently, that right restricted not only the Federal government but under the Fourteenth Amendment, also the states.”

If the lower court sends Baker back to the Ninth Circuit, or if it ends up before the Supreme Court, it seems likely either court will rule based on the precedent set in these landmark cases. The lower court may simply reverse its decision based on the Ninth Circuit’s Peruta decision. It seems inevitable though that Hawaii will eventually have to concede the point and rule in favor of allowing lawful carry of firearms in public.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication April 16, 2014).

CHICAGO, Ill., April 10 – Chicago’s murder rate dropped to its lowest level since 1958, following the adoption of a concealed carry gun law by Illinois last year. Chicago had some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, and in 2012, Chicago led the nation in murders. But the courts said the tough gun laws violated the Second Amendment, and Illinois was forced to adopt a law allowing concealed carry. Chicago police began accepting applications in January of this year. Anti-gun critics predicted an increase in crime, murder and mayhem. Now Chicago police are reporting the lowest level of crime and murder in decades.


When Illinois passed the law allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed hangduns, it became the last state in the Union to do so. The Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the right of an individual to “keep and bear arms” protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states. Then the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Illinois to repeal its law that prohibited concealed carry and gave the state until July 9, 2013 to replace it.

Anti-gun zealots predicted mayhem, warning that high-crime areas, like Chicago, would only see more violence if residents were allowed to carry guns in public. Governor Quinn called the concealed carry bill “extremely disappointing,” saying it “will lead to tragedy” and that “public safety should never be compromised or negotiated away.” He accused the legislature of “surrender[ing]” to the NRA. But the opposite occurred–instead of crime and murder rising, it has decreased.

Chicago has had a significant problem with murder and gun crime. According to the FBI, the U.S. had a national homicide rate of 4.7 per 100,000 people in 2011. Illinois’ homicide rate in 2011 was 6.4 per 100,000, or 136 percent of the national rate. And though during that time it was illegal to carry them, handguns were involved with the vast majority of murders. In 2012, Chicago led the nation with 506 murders. Gun control, evidently, was not working out very well.

However, in the first three months of 2014, Chicago saw six fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a nine percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, making it the lowest first-quarter murder total since 1958. There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively. Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year.

The drop is consistent with academic research that, contrary to gun bullies’ claims, clearly shows that lawful carry of guns by law-abiding citizens reduces and deters crime. It is more guns that leads to more safety, not the other way around. Though this may seem counterintuitive, the findings are confirmed by multiple academic sources. A CDC study ordered by President Obama found lawful carrying of guns was an important deterrent to crime. The CDC study further states that lawful carrying of guns saves lives, noting, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.” Research by gun crime experts John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard found that “When state concealed handgun laws went into effect… murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by five and seven percent.” They state that “more guns mean less crime.”

A Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy study by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser of 36 developed nations–virtually all of which have stronger gun control than the United States–concludes that higher gun control is consistently associated with higher levels of violent crime and homicide, and low gun restrictions are associated with lower levels of violent crime and less murder. They note, “Whether viewed as a cause or coincidental, the long-term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlate with stable or declining murder rates” (p.673).

They further state, “Laws whose effect is to reduce gun ownership by law-abiding citizens–the ones who obey gun laws–are futile because these laws do not reduce violence or murder” (p.672). Professors Kates and Mauser state it is a criminologist axiom, verified in virtually every study since at least the 1890s, that average, law-abiding people do not commit murder. Instead, they state that career criminals do: 90 percent of adult murderers have adult criminal records, with multiple prior contacts to the justice system. The same is true with minor offenders. Professors Kates and Mauser state that “there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law-abiding responsible adults, because such people virtually never murder… disarming them becomes not just unproductive, but counter-productive” (p. 670). Laws intended to prevent crime by keeping all citizens from having guns are useless because crime is committed by criminals with history of doing so. Criminals simply do not obey gun laws, as Chicago demonstrates.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s police chief credit the drop with changes in police strategies, and do not support the new concealed carry law. Honest researchers will rightly tell us correlation does not equal causation–something anti-gun zealots only seem to remember when it benefits their agenda to do so. However, while we may not rightly say Chicago’s decrease in crime is solely attributable to concealed carry, we can say that concealed carry has not resulted in the increase of crime that the anti-gun rights lobby wrongly predicted. The decrease in crime observed in Chicago is consistent with - and to be expected considering  - academic research that clearly shows that lawful gun carrying reduces crime.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication April 10, 2014).

Chicago’s murder rate drops to lowest level in decades following new concealed carry gun law

by Matt MacBradaigh | Apr 10, 2014 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

CHICAGO, Ill., April 10 – Chicago’s murder rate dropped to its lowest level since 1958, following the adoption of a concealed carry gun law by Illinois last year. Chicago had some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, and in 2012, Chicago led the nation in murders. But the courts said the tough gun laws violated the Second Amendment, and Illinois was forced to adopt a law allowing concealed carry. Chicago police began accepting applications in January of this year. Anti-gun critics predicted an increase in crime, murder and mayhem. Now Chicago police are reporting the lowest level of crime and murder in decades.

When Illinois passed the law allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed hangduns, it became the last state in the Union to do so. The Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the right of an individual to “keep and bear arms” protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states. Then the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Illinois to repeal its law that prohibited concealed carry and gave the state until July 9, 2013 to replace it.

Anti-gun zealots predicted mayhem, warning that high-crime areas, like Chicago, would only see more violence if residents were allowed to carry guns in public. Governor Quinn called the concealed carry bill “extremely disappointing,” saying it “will lead to tragedy” and that “public safety should never be compromised or negotiated away.” He accused the legislature of “surrender[ing]” to the NRA. But the opposite occurred–instead of crime and murder rising, it has decreased.

Chicago has had a significant problem with murder and gun crime. According to the FBI, the U.S. had a national homicide rate of 4.7 per 100,000 people in 2011. Illinois’ homicide rate in 2011 was 6.4 per 100,000, or 136 percent of the national rate. And though during that time it was illegal to carry them, handguns were involved with the vast majority of murders. In 2012, Chicago led the nation with 506 murders. Gun control, evidently, was not working out very well.

However, in the first three months of 2014, Chicago saw six fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a nine percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, making it the lowest first-quarter murder total since 1958. There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively. Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year.

The drop is consistent with academic research that, contrary to gun bullies’ claims, clearly shows that lawful carry of guns by law-abiding citizens reduces and deters crime. It is more guns that leads to more safety, not the other way around. Though this may seem counterintuitive, the findings are confirmed by multiple academic sources. A CDC study ordered by President Obama found lawful carrying of guns was an important deterrent to crime. The CDC study further states that lawful carrying of guns saves lives, noting, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.” Research by gun crime experts John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard found that “When state concealed handgun laws went into effect… murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by five and seven percent.” They state that “more guns mean less crime.”

A Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy study by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser of 36 developed nations–virtually all of which have stronger gun control than the United States–concludes that higher gun control is consistently associated with higher levels of violent crime and homicide, and low gun restrictions are associated with lower levels of violent crime and less murder. They note, “Whether viewed as a cause or coincidental, the long-term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlate with stable or declining murder rates” (p.673).

They further state, “Laws whose effect is to reduce gun ownership by law-abiding citizens–the ones who obey gun laws–are futile because these laws do not reduce violence or murder” (p.672). Professors Kates and Mauser state it is a criminologist axiom, verified in virtually every study since at least the 1890s, that average, law-abiding people do not commit murder. Instead, they state that career criminals do: 90 percent of adult murderers have adult criminal records, with multiple prior contacts to the justice system. The same is true with minor offenders. Professors Kates and Mauser state that “there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law-abiding responsible adults, because such people virtually never murder… disarming them becomes not just unproductive, but counter-productive” (p. 670). Laws intended to prevent crime by keeping all citizens from having guns are useless because crime is committed by criminals with history of doing so. Criminals simply do not obey gun laws, as Chicago demonstrates.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s police chief credit the drop with changes in police strategies, and do not support the new concealed carry law. Honest researchers will rightly tell us correlation does not equal causation–something anti-gun zealots only seem to remember when it benefits their agenda to do so. However, while we may not rightly say Chicago’s decrease in crime is solely attributable to concealed carry, we can say that concealed carry has not resulted in the increase of crime that the anti-gun rights lobby wrongly predicted. The decrease in crime observed in Chicago is consistent with – and to be expected considering  – academic research that clearly shows that lawful gun carrying reduces crime.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Apr 10, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.