DOWNLOADS: (105)

PLAYS: (788)

Embed

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck responded to a shooting at Houston's largest airport on Thursday by suggesting that it had been a plot to "set up" gun owners like the the burning of German's parliament -- or Reichstag -- in 1933, which Nazis exploited as a pretext to suspend constitutional rights.

According to CBS News, a man named Carnell Moore fired a pistol into the ceiling of Terminal B at Bush International Airport and was shot by a federal agent. At the same time, Carnell also shot himself. A fully-loaded, black Smith & Wesson AR-15 was found in a suitcase next to where he was sitting.

Messages on social media indicated that Carnell had planned a mass shooting, but a suicide note found on the body suggested that he changed his mind.

But because the shooting happened as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were arriving in Houston for its annual convention, Beck saw a conspiracy behind Carnell's actions.

"The idea that this is happening at the airport with the NRA is too much to believe," Beck told a studio audience in Houston. "If I were a journalist -- let me correct that -- if I were an honest journalist, I would be looking for these connections. Look for the connections of who this man is and any connection he might have to the uber-Left."

"I believe this man could fall into the category of somebody who has lost his job, is depressed, etc., etc. Somebody comes in off to the side, winds him up, says, 'Oh, you should make a statement, you should make a statement.' I believe that's probably -- I shouldn't say that -- I believe it is a very good chance that is what happened."

But Beck speculated that the man realized that "that's not who I am" and decided not to go through with the mass killing.

"If I were an honest journalist, I'd find out where these guns came from -- were they purchased or were they illegal?" he continued. "If there were illegal, oh, I can guarantee you, this is a set up. Someone knows history. I do."

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (56)

PLAYS: (205)

Embed

This is the second time I've heard Chris Wallace repeat this remark that the Boston residents on lockdown during the manhunt last week would have been safer if they were just more heavily armed. The first time was right around the same time Arkansas state Rep. Nate Bell sent out this tweet, on one of other the Faux "News" morning shows. The second time was during his interview with Rep. Dianne Feinstein on Fox News Sunday, who pushed back sternly at Wallace's assertion.

From Politicususa: Dianne Feinstein Calls BS on the Right’s Fantasy That Assault Weapons Can Stop Terrorists:

The thing that the right doesn’t seem to understand is that the Boston manhunt makes the case for why everyone should not have an assault weapon. The bombers were able to kill a campus police officer because they had the element of surprise. They were able to carjack and rob someone due to the element of surprise. A panicked population armed with assault weapons is likely to take law enforcement’s focus off of the bombers, because they would be dealing with every trigger happy scared individual who fired their gun. The last thing law enforcement needed during the search for the bombers was more people running around with guns.

Arming more people with assault weapons would help terrorists by distracting law enforcement. Sen. Feinstein was correct. If people wanted to feel safe there are literally thousands of guns that they could own.

The idea that assault weapons in the hands of regular citizens can stop terrorism is more NRA action movie fantasy.

The reality is that a scared and on edge population armed with assault weapons probably would have resulted in more death and destruction, but this is something that the NRA and their congressional lackeys don’t want to discuss.

Full transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

Apparently the weapon was real and he could do this legally in the state of New Hampshire. Organizers called the event not a gun rally but an "Honor Your Oath" event as a warning to lawmakers who break the faith, presumably to the Second Amendment.

via The Union Leader

Organizers said the event, which happened to fall on the birthdate of Thomas Jefferson, was not a "gun rally."

But that didn't stop 11-year-old Hunter Cogswell of Concord from bringing an AR-15 and a big white flag with black lettering: "Come and Take It."

The boy said he was there to "stand up for gun rights."

"I believe in gun rights. It's our constitutional right," he said, adding the gun was real but "not loaded."

Emcee Jeff Chidester, a local radio talk show host, jokingly welcomed "all you racist, hateful tea-baggers to this event."

DOWNLOADS: (115)

PLAYS: (439)

Embed

The National Rifle Association's (NRA) National School Shield program on Tuesday announced recommendations that they said were designed to decrease violence in schools by allowing trained personnel to carry firearms like shotguns and AR-15 assault rifles on campuses.

Task force chair Asa Hutchinson, who headed the Drug Enforcement Agency under President George W. Bush, told reporters that the 225-pages of recommendations did not address universal background checks and other gun control measures that Congress was considering after the December massacre of 20 children in Connecticut because "our focus was on school safety."

"That debate goes on, we're trying to do something about school safety," Hutchinson explained, adding that background checks should be required for armed school personnel.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (170)

PLAYS: (1227)

Embed

Conservative radio host Dana Loesch on Thursday argued that classifying certain guns as assault rifles was silly because "if you stab someone with a spoon it can be qualified as an assault weapon."

Following Thursday's revelations that Newtown shooter Adam Lanza had fired over 150 rounds with an AR-15 in less than five minutes, Loesch appeared on CNN to argue that it was a "false premise" that Lanza had used an assault weapon.

"We are talking about semi-automatic weapons," the former Breitbart editor explained. "I do not own a military-style assault weapon. Just because, what, a firearm looks scary then you call it military assault? Do you realize that one of my children has a BB gun that looks like an AR-15? Is that going to be considered a military-style assault weapon? It sounds silly and uneducated."

CNN host Piers Morgan noted that Lanza had "in the space of 300 seconds using an AR-15, killed 26 people. He had magazines with 30 bullets."

"Anyone can reload!" Loesch shouted.

"Are you telling me that doesn't qualify as an assault weapon?" Morgan asked.

"By the technical definition, no, Piers," Loesch shot back. "Oh, anything can be qualified as an assault weapon. If you stab someone with a spoon, it can be qualified as an assault weapon."

"So you're equating stabbing someone with a spoon with shooting dead 26 people?" Morgan wondered.

Liberal CNN contributor Van Jones said that Loesch's argument was part of the "conscious strategy on the part of the pro-gun folks to constantly bring things back around to things that don't make any sense."

"You're talking about people stabbing people with spoons," Jones observed. "If that were the problem that we had in America -- stabbing people with spoons -- we wouldn't be talking about this right now. What we're talking about is funeral after funeral after funeral. What we're talking about is children being gunned down. And what we're talking about is common-sense measures, not confiscating guns."

(h/t: Media Matters)

DOWNLOADS: (107)

PLAYS: (671)

Embed

Police in Cottonwood Heights are searching for an assault rifle that was stolen Wednesday from the vehicle of a top Utah gun lobbyist, who called for more guns in schools after the shooting deaths of 20 children in Connecticut last year.

Utah Shooting Sports Council Chairman Clark Aposhian told KSTU that he was cleaning out his garage and placed the firearm in the back of his Dodge Magnum station wagon. He said the AR-15 military-style assault rifle was in a locked case and equipped with a thermal scope for night vision. Aposhian insisted the gun was not loaded at the time.

"To leave a weapon of that value, an assault rifle, in a car is just nuts," Cottonwood Heights Police Department Sgt. Scott Peck observed.

Peck fears that the weapon, which is registered, is on the streets of Cottonwood Heights.

“We definitely have a concern,” he explained. “There’s lots of them everywhere and we know there’s another one out there and it’s in the hands of a thief obviously.”

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (134)

PLAYS: (799)

Embed

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says that if his Imaginary Family were victims of disasters like Hurricane Katrina, they would need to have military-style AR-15 assault rifles to protect themselves against "armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods."

During a hearing Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, the South Carolina Republican pressed Attorney General Eric Holder about his support for a proposed assault weapons ban.

"Can you imagine a circumstance where an AR-15 would be a better defense tool than, say, a double-barrel shotgun?" Graham asked. "Let me give you an example, that you have an lawless environment, where you have an natural disaster or some catastrophic event -- and those things unfortunately do happen, and law and order breaks down because the police can't travel, there's no communication. And there are armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods. Can you imagine a situation where your home happens to be in the crosshairs of this group that a better self-defense weapon may be a semiautomatic AR-15 vs. a double-barrel shotgun?"

Holder pointed out that the senator was "dealing with a hypothetical in a world that doesn't exist."

(Obviously, Eric Holder doesn't get it. That's where all wingnuts live!)

"I'm afraid that world does exist," Graham insisted. "It existed in New Orleans, to some extent up in Long Island [after Hurricane Sandy], it could exist tomorrow if there's a cyber attack against country and the power grid goes down and the dams are released and chemical plants are -- discharges."

(Lindsey really likes to think about --discharges.)

"I don't think that New Orleans would have been better served having people with AR-15s in a post-Katrina environment," Holder replied.

"What I'm saying is if my (imaginary) family was in the crosshairs of gangs that were roaming around neighborhoods in New Orleans or or any other location, the deterrent effect of an AR-15 to protect my family, I think, is greater than a double-barrel shotgun."

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there were reports of armed vigilantes with assault weapons shooting African-Americans.

"Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims," ProPublica's A.C. Thompson wrote in 2008. "Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about 15 to 30 residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply 'didn't belong.'"

Thompson found that at least 11 African-American men ended up being shot near the Algiers Point neighborhood by a militia of men who were apparently all white.

(h/t: Think Progress)

DOWNLOADS: (227)

PLAYS: (2705)

Embed

A senior fellow from the conservative Independent Women's Forum (IWF) on Wednesday told a Senate committee that assault weapons should not be outlawed because they were the "weapon of choice" for young mothers who need a "scary-looking gun."

At Senate Judiciary Hearing on gun violence, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked IWF's Gayle Trotter, who also writes for The Daily Caller, if it would "disproportionately burden women" to ban assault rifles like the Bushmaster AR-15 used to slaughter 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut.

"Young women are speaking out as to why AR-15 weapons are their weapon of choice," Trotter explained. "The guns are accurate. They have good handling. They're light. They're easy for women to hold."

She added: "And most importantly, their appearance. An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman defending her babies in her home becomes a defense weapon, and the peace of mind that a woman has as she's facing three, four, five violent attackers, intruders in her home, with her children screaming in the background, the peace of mind that she has knowing that she has a scary-looking gun gives her more courage when she's fighting hardened, violent criminals."

"And if we ban these types of assault weapons, you are putting women at a great disadvantage, more so than men, because they do not have the same type of physical strength and opportunity to defend themselves in a hand-to-hand struggle. They're not criminals, they're moms, they're young women. And they're not used to violent confrontations."

DOWNLOADS: (138)

PLAYS: (802)

Embed

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that AR-15 military-style rifles should not be banned and that it is just "lovely propaganda" to call them "assault weapons."

Following the introduction on Thursday of Sen. Diane Feinstein's (D-CA) bill to ban assault weapons, CNN host Piers Morgan reminded Gingrich that Aurora shooter James Holmes used an AR-15 that could fire 100 bullets in a minute and it was legal under current law.

"How many more bullets do you need to fire, Mr. Speaker, before that qualifies as a dangerous killing machine by your criteria?" Morgan wondered.

"Well, by my criteria, and this goes back to the question of what you respect, Piers," Gingrich asserted. "I think the Second Amendment really matters."

"I put it to you that an AR-15 military-style assault weapon was used in the last five mass shootings," Morgan pointed out.

"It's not a military-style assault weapon," Gingrich insisted. "Look, this is a lovely propaganda."

"What else do you call then?" Morgan pressed. "A machine that can fire 100 bullets in a minute. What else do you call it?"

"I would simply say to you that millions of people, by your own definition, own an AR-15," the Georgia Republican explained. "They're law-abiding. They think it is their right under our Constitution to own it, and don't kid the rest of us."

"[T]he reason you find so many of us, and by the way, it's a substantial majority -- I think the last time I saw, 63 percent of the American people agree that the Second Amendment is actually there to protect us from tyranny," Gingrich continued. "The reason you find so many of us very reluctant to go down this road is we believe each step down this road leads to the next step and the next step and the next step."

DOWNLOADS: (145)

PLAYS: (1566)

Embed

A Colorado man, who said that he was an ex-Marine and claimed a "right-wing declaration of independence/constitutionalist political manifesto," built improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to trade for cocaine and hoarded several military-style assault weapons that may have been converted to machine guns, the Department of Justice said on Thursday.

According to an affidavit, federal agents with the Bureau of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) raided the home of Richard Lawrence Sandberg in Jefferson County on Thursday after he provided an undercover agent with homemade bombs.

After receiving a tip from a Denver Police Department detective, ATF Special Agent Shane Abraham contacted Sandberg and told him he needed an explosive device to protect a building. Sandberg, who claimed to be "former Special Ops Recon SS Marine Corps," allegedly said that he was in possession of "incendiary" or "napalm" explosives, but the devices were wrong for the job. The suspect then recommended a "frag" -- or fragmentation device -- and suggested that he could provide something that was also waterproof.

Sandberg claimed that the kill zone for his "frags" was 20 meters and the hurt zone was 60 meters, the affidavit said. He called his IEDs "homemade shit" that were built with materials from Home Depot and were "life or death." The suspect said that he also had 18 military-grade M67 fragmentation hand grenades, but would only sell five.

During their first meeting on Tuesday, Sandberg told Abraham that he had built Claymore bombs with glass shrapnel while serving in war zones, and that the shrapnel could not be detected in bodies of the victims. The affidavit said that Sandberg "claimed a right-wing declaration of independence/constitutionalist political manifesto" and worried that the Obama administration's current gun safety push was an effort to take away his guns.

Continue reading »