Obama Administration and Social Security Administration Finalizes New Gun Prohibition Rule
Source: NRA-ILA | Grandma Got Run Over by Obama: SSA Finalizes New Gun Prohibition Rule
Category: gun control
Cedar Rapids Police Chief Pushes More Ineffective Gun Control
In mid-August “Organizing for Action,” a nonprofit group which mobilizes support for President Obama’s legislative and political agenda, organized the “Gun Violence Prevention Rally” in Cedar Rapids Iowa. According to a Gazette story only about 30 people wandered into the event.
The most prominent of the several community leaders to speak was Cedar Rapids Police Chief Wayne Jerman. Chief Jerman has been trying to organize a gun “buyback” program since early this summer yet has only received $1,000 in donations from the community for that program.
At the gun control rally, Jerman said he supports background checks for all gun sales, restricting gun magazines to 10 rounds and banning so-called “assault weapons.” His support for these measures not only puts him out of touch with what has proven effective but also out of step with the vast majority of rank and file police officers who care more about catching bad guys than giving speeches.
Jerman’s support for “universal background checks,” while setting the framework for registration of lawful guns and law-abiding owners, would do little to reduce crime. A 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of prison inmates convicted of gun crimes found that 79 percent acquired their firearms from off the books sources. Simply put, crack dealers buying guns on the black market will NOT be undergoing “universal background checks.”
Perhaps that’s why in a recent comprehensive survey of police officers, fully 79.7% of responding cops said that “a federal law prohibiting private, non-dealer transfers of firearms between individuals” would NOT reduce violent crime.
Restricting gun magazines to 10 rounds would be ineffective also. A 2004 Department of Justice report found “that assailants fire less than four shots on average, a number well within the 10-round magazine limit” making it irrelevant in most street crimes. Even in the more newsworthy yet rare mass shootings the arbitrary 10 round limit is mostly irrelevant. The Virginia Tech shooter and one of the Columbine shooters used 10 round magazines and were able to rack up massive body counts against their unarmed victims anyway.
An overwhelming 95.7 % of police officers said that a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds would NOT reduce violent crime.
Jerman’s support for banning “assault weapons” is equally unwarranted. Firstly, such a ban cuts to the heart of the Second Amendment giving a legislature a blank check to ban any and all firearms since “assault weapon” is a meaningless political term that can only be defined by the ban itself. Assault weapons affected by the previous federal ban were not fully-automatic “machine-guns” nor were they more powerful than traditional weapons.
So-called “assault weapons” were only used in a tiny percentage of crimes to begin with. Crime continued to fall after the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004 and has continued to fall as previously banned weapons have sold by the million. Even the radical anti-gun group, Violence Policy Center, said “You can’t argue with a straight face that the [assault weapon] ban has been effective.”
71% of cops said that an ban on so-called “assault weapons” would have no effect on violent crime. Another 20.5% of police officers said that such a ban would actually INCREASE violent crime!
Oh, as for Jerman’s gun “buyback” program that the community has not embraced, a recent CDC report stated simply that “gun turn-in programs are ineffective.” 81.5% of police officers agree with that assessment.
Jerman’s home state of Maryland (“There’s yer problem!”) has magazine capacity restrictions, bans on “assault pistols,” and prohibitions on private sales of “regulated firearms,” similar to the laws he is stumping for. Maryland also has a murder rate of 6.8 per 100,000 (in 2011) compared to Iowa’s rate of 1.5 per 100,000. Sounds like those gun laws are really helping out there and we need to import them so we too can become a crime free Utopia like Maryland. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)
The taxpayers of Cedar Rapids need to decide if they are paying their police chief to serve and protect their community and ensure that beat cops have the resources they need to do their jobs or if they’re paying him to be a political shill for the anti-freedom agenda of the Obama administration.
"Iowa" Gun Ban Group Folds
According to a Radio Iowa report, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence (IPGV), a group dedicated to incrementally banning gun-ownership in Iowa, has disbanded due to lack of funds. The article states that the group was founded in response to the 1991 shootings by deranged student Gang Lu on the campus of the University of Iowa (a gun-free zone, I might point out).
While IPGV might have started out as a grassroots campaign, it quickly turned into nothing more than a surrogate for the large anti-gun Joyce Foundation out of Chicago (on the board of which President Obama served at the time).
According to a 2005 article by lawyer/author David Hardy, the Joyce Foundation dumped $250,000 into IPGV in 2002 and again in 2004. After he checked IPGV’s tax records (which are open to the public, since IPGV was a tax-exempt “charity”), Hardy concluded that “it would appear that the ‘grassroots’ group’s entire contribution income and budget consists of the Joyce money.” That’s right, in that time period apparently not a single Iowan contributed a penny to this supposed group of “concerned” Iowans. IPGV has also received funds from the Joyce Foundation during other years and from Freedom States Alliance, which is also largely funded by the Joyce Foundation.
Poor fiscal management might have helped to hasten IPGV’s fall. According to analysis at the LonelyMachines blog, in one particular year 67% of IPGV’s funding was gobbled up paying themselves salaries while only 3% went toward the group’s stated mission. No wonder that not too many Iowans opened their wallets up for these clowns and no wonder that the Joyce Foundation finally slapped IPGV off the teat.
I recall that after 9-11 gun control groups decided to target .50-caliber rifles for elimination. “It can shoot down airliners!” they warned in a tizzy. Well, you could theoretically bring down an airliner tossing a well-aimed bar of soap, but it would be a million-to-one shot. Anyway, IPGV jumped on the bandwagon as usual.
I read a news article in the “Cedar Rapids Gazette” where John Johnson, then Executive Director of IPGV, was trumpeting the supposed evils of these .50-cals. I looked online and quickly found who must have been handing Johnson his talking points: Tom Diaz from the anti-gun Violence Policy Center (which is largely funded by guess who… the Joyce Foundation). Johnson didn’t just use these talking points as a starting point, he mindlessly parroted the words almost verbatim. A couple examples:
- Diaz: “It is indeed almost impossible to exaggerate the lethality of these weapons of war.” Johnson: “It is almost impossible to exaggerate the lethality of the .50-caliber sniper rifle.”
- Diaz: “Translate that into civilian terms and you have the perfect weapon for assassination and terrorism[.]” Johnson: “[B]ut in civilian terms, you have a perfect weapon for assassination and terrorism.”
I shot off a letter to the “Gazette” pointing all this out and which I concluded, “It’s easy to see who is controlling IPGV’s agenda, and it’s not the people of Iowa.” In a stroke of good luck they published my letter three days before Johnson had one published in which he used those very talking points, hopefully eroding his credibility. It was fun for this David to sling a stone at a (then well-funded) Goliath.
In the end, however, IPGV probably wasn’t brought down by the efforts of gun owners like myself so much as it was by it’s own waste, greed and inefficiency. But like the mighty Soviet Empire, as long as it topples who cares why?
It should be noted that while IPGV couldn’t find many actual Iowans to support their cause, pro-gun freedom groups like Iowa Carry (which relies primarily on dues and contributions from living, breathing Iowans) seem to be surviving and growing.
So on behalf of myself, Iowa’s gun owners, and every other Iowan who wouldn’t open their wallet to IPGV, let me say: “Good riddance!” I think I’ll celebrate IPGV’s demise with a trip to the shooting range.
Cold Hard Cashner 