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http://www.nssfblog.com/unintentional-firearms-fatalities-fall-17-percent/

Happy New Year everyone! It promises to be an interesting year, what with Trump soon to be in the Whitehouse and the new challenges and opportunities that raises. Here in Iowa the Republicans will now have a trifecta of power in state government. Gun owners in the state salivate while some civil libertarians brace for impact. Thanks to Gary Johnson’s performance in the state, the Libertarian Party will now be a fully recognized political party in Iowa. So much promise and challenge in 2017!

Here at Cold Hard Cashner I have a new web address: https://coldhardcashner.blog  Please update your web browsers accordingly.

No matter what happens in the 2017, I wish all of you and your families safety and prosperity.

A buddy of mine makes steel pistol targets. They’re 10″ round and 1/2″ thick. They have rings on top so you can hang them. He’s asking $20 each. You can email him at austintimmerman@gmail.com for more info and to order.  Tell him Cold Hard Cashner sent you.

Iowa Gun Owners (IGO) reports that this week, Representative Tom Shaw (R-10), will introduce new legislation in the House which would remove schools from the list of areas where Iowans with a permit to carry weapons are prohibited to carry. According to IGO,  Rep. Shaw, a current police officer, “knows firsthand that he can’t be everywhere at once and that the only way to prevent events like this from happening is by arming potential victims.”

You can help to get this historic piece of commonsense legislation passed here in the Hawkeye State.

First, go HERE and find out who your State Representative is. Send him or her an email urging them to co-sponsor Shaw’s bill. (You can use the sample letter below if you’d like.)

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Dear Representative:

I am writing to urge you to co-sponsor the new bill being introduced by Representative Tom Shaw (R-10), which removes public schools from the list of areas where citizens with permits to carry concealed firearms are forbidden to carry. The current ban creates a nuisance for Iowa’s hundreds of thousands of permit holders who must displace their weapons (which they can carry just about anywhere else) just to pick up their kids at school. More importantly, the creation of “gun free zones” around schools creates an atmosphere attractive to psychopaths who want to rack up a lot of kills before armed police arrive, as we’ve seen in Columbine and Sandy Hook Elementary.

In a July 2012 New York Daily News op-ed piece, John R. Lott points out a salient fact from his research that should be required reading for everyone on both sides of this debate: “With a single exception, every multiple-victim public shooting in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed since at least 1950 has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry their own firearms.” That fact alone is shocking and points out the failure of “gun-free zones” of any kind in this country.

In 2000 Professors John R. Lott Jr. and William M. Landes released an exhaustive study of “Multiple Victim Public Shootings.” Some key findings from that study:

• “Right-to-carry laws reduce the number of people killed or wounded from multiple victim public shootings as many attackers are either deterred from attacking or when attacks do occur they are stopped before the police can arrive.”
• “Given that half the attackers in these multiple victim public shootings have had formal diagnoses of mental illness, the fact that some results indicate concealed handgun laws reduce these attacks by almost 70 percent is remarkable.”
• “Not only does the passage of a right-to-carry law have a significant impact on multiple shootings but it is the only gun law that appears to have a significant impact.”
• “[S]tates with the fewest gun free zones have the greatest reductions [in] killings, injuries, and attacks.”[Emphasis added.]

There are many things that contribute to school shootings and many proposed solutions. Armed guards and police presence at schools are great, but cost money when budgets are seemingly always stretched thin. Gun control laws are unconstitutional infringements upon the people’s freedom and come with political backlash. Ending the pointless “gun-free school zones” would increase safety and cost the state nothing. Please co-sponsor Representative Shaw’s bill.

Sincerely,

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Second, since you’re already writing emails, why not drop Rep. Shaw a line and tell him thanks for doing the right thing. IGO points out that he’s about to (metaphorically) be in the crosshairs of “Anti-gun blogs, the media, and anti-gunners in the Capitol,” so a kind word might be appreciated. Tom Shaw’s official email is: tom.shaw@legis.iowa.gov

Thirdly, pass this information along to your friends!

On July 25th the U.S. House of Representatives passed Ron Paul’s “Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2012” (HR 459) by a wide, bipartisan vote of 327-98. The bill would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct comprehensive audits of the Fed’s Board of Governors and 12 regional banks, whose actions directly influence U.S. monetary policy, inflation, and the economy.

Among those voting FOR this important bill were all five of Iowa’s U.S. Representatives: 1st District- Bruce Braley (D); 2nd Dist.- Dave Loebsack (D); 3rd Dist.- Leonard Boswell (D); 4th Dist.- Tom Latham (R); 5th Dist.- Steve King (R).  All five were also co-sponsors of the bill.  Good work gang!

The bill will now move to the Senate where it faces a rocky future. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R) is already a co-sponsor of the companion bill in the Senate (S.202).  Unfortunately, our junior senator, Tom Harkin (D), appears okay with allowing the Fed to control our country’s monetary system in secrecy.  Liberty Iowa PAC has set up an online petition to ask Harkin to support the bill.  You can click here to sign it or call Senator Harkin at 1(202) 224-3254.

Okay, I’m back from my month-long hiatus.  It was nothing I had planned, I’ve just been busier than a one-legged tap dancer lately and haven’t had much time or energy to write.  I’m going to try post a little more often now, even if it kills me.

Here in my pastoral Iowa town of Monticello (pop. 3,796) there’s been a small debate about getting a new terminal building for our airport.  I say a “small debate” because only a couple of people have spoken out against it at City Council meetings.  Why would the community be against it?

According to our local paper the Federal Aviation Administration will fund 95 percent of the new structure and the remaining 5 percent will come from private donations to the airport.  Perhaps the gist of the pro-terminal side of the debate can be summed up in the words of one member of the local Airport Board.  He said: “This is a ‘no brainer.’ It will cost the Monticello taxpayer nothing[.]”  [Emphasis added.]

Free money!  The federal government will pick up the tab. It’s a common refrain all across the fruited plain.  It won’t cost local taxpayers anything… unless they also happen to be live in the U.S. or have children who will.

The U.S. is already $14 trillion in debt and is borrowing another $3 million every minute.  That’s $46,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in America.  If you include the unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and the Republican prescription drug entitlement, that number is much, much higher.  According to Strong America Now, “Americans born in the 1980′s and 1990′s could face an income tax rate of 60% just to cover the interest on our national debt.”

President Obama and the Democrats say we can pay for government’s constantly skyrocketing spending by increasing taxes on those dastardly rich people.  But, as Amy K. Frantz (writing for Iowa’s own Tax Education Foundation) points out, already “the top 10 percent of tax returns paid 69.9 percent of all federal income taxes, and the top 25 percent of tax returns paid 86.3 percent of all federal income taxes.”

A recent Wall Street Journal article cited by Frantz states that even if the Democrats placed a confiscatory top income tax of 100% on all millionaires and billionaires “[t]hat yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.”

In a Washington Times article, Cato Institute senior fellow Richard W. Rahn concludes that to balance the budget through tax increases, “[T]he only way for the government to obtain significantly more revenue is to increase taxes greatly on the lower- and middle-income groups who now pay very little. But increasing tax rates on the upper-, middle- or lower-income groups will have the nasty side effects of further slowing economic growth and increasing unemployment.”

What money the government can’t tax or borrow to cover its spending it often prints out of thin air which causes inflation. U.S. Representative Ron Paul has called inflation the “hidden tax” since nobody really thinks about what causes it. Paul explains: “The inflation tax, while largely ignored, hurts middle-class and low-income Americans the most. Simply put, printing money to pay for federal spending dilutes the value of the dollar, which causes higher prices for goods and services. Inflation may be an indirect tax, but it is very real — the individuals who suffer most from cost of living increases certainly pay a ‘tax.’” Those “individuals who suffer” higher prices include those lucky folks in Monticello or your community who got some “free” goody from the feds.

My point here is not that my community does or doesn’t need a new airport terminal or that your community does or doesn’t a new parking ramp or Earwax Museum.  The point is that we can no longer treat federal largess as manna from heaven that comes with no cost whatsoever.  It comes with the shackles of indebtedness that we are slapping on our children.  May they and God forgive our selfishness.

Name of war, year and number of U.S. military killed and wounded:

American Revolutionary War 1775–1783 50,000

Northwest Indian War 1785–1795 1881+

Quasi-War 1798–1800 556

First Barbary War 1801–1805 138

Other actions against pirates 1800–1900  294+

Chesapeake–Leopard Affair 1807 21

War of 1812 1812–1815  ~25,000

Marquesas Expedition 1813–1814 7

Second Barbary War 1815 148

First Seminole War 1817–1818 83

First Sumatran Expedition 1832  13

Black Hawk War 1832  390

Second Seminole War 1835–1842 1535

Mexican–American War 1846–1848 17,435

Third Seminole War 1855–1858 53

Civil War 1861–1865 646,392 (Union Forces)

Dakota War of 1862 (Little Crow’s War) 1862 220–263

Shimonoseki Straits 1863 10

Snake Indian War 1864–1868 158

Indian Wars 1865–1898 1,025

Red Cloud’s War 1866–1868 226

Korea (Shinmiyangyo) 1871 12

Modoc War 1872–1873 144

Great Sioux War 1875–1877 525

Nez Perce War 1877 291

Bannock War 1878 34

Ute War 1879 67

Ghost Dance War 1890–1891 99

Sugar Point- Pillager Band of Chippewa Indians 1898 23

Spanish–American War 1898 4,068

Philippine–American War 1898–1913 7,126

Boxer Rebellion 1900–1901  335

Mexican Revolution 1914–1919 70

Occupation of Haiti 1915–1934 184+

World War I 1917–1918 320,518

North Russia Campaign 1918–1920 424

American Expeditionary Force Siberia 1918–1920 380+

China 1918; 1921; 1926–1927; 1930; 1937 83

US occupation of Nicaragua 1927–1933 116

World War II 1941–1945 1,076,245

China 1945–1947 56

Berlin Blockade 1948–1949 31

Korean War 1950–1953 128,650

U.S.S.R. Cold War 1947–1991 44

China Cold War 1950–1972 16

Vietnam War 1955–1975 211,454

1958 Lebanon crisis 1958 7+

Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961 4

Dominican Republic 1965–1966 213

Iran 1980 12

El Salvador Civil War 1980–1992 35

Beirut deployment 1982–1984 169

Persian Gulf escorts 1987–1988 31

Invasion of Grenada 1983 138

1986 Bombing of Libya 1986 2

Invasion of Panama 1989 324

Gulf War 1990–1991 1,231

Somalia 1992–1993 153

Haiti 1994–1995 3

Colombia 1994–Present 8

Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995–2004 18

Kosovo 1999–2006 22+

Afghanistan 2001–present 12,035

Iraq War 2003–2010 36,395

*Source: Wikipedia

From NRA-ILA:

Iowa’s Natural Resources Commission recently announced its intent to ban hunters’ use of lead shot on numerous state and federal wildlife areas across Iowa, except for use in turkey and deer hunting. The ban will also prohibit the use of lead shot in target shooting.

According to the Commission, the purpose of imposing this ban is to “begin limiting the use of lead for all hunting and fishing on all public areas”. The proposed ban would also designate three wildlife areas as completely “lead free,” including rifle ammunition and fishing tackle. The announcement does not mention any research showing that the use of lead shot is having a negative impact on the state’s wildlife populations. The DNR should base any proposals to restrict hunting on science, not politics and emotion. Unfortunately this is not the case in this instance.

This proposal should be treated as a statewide ban because of the size of the area it covers and because of the Commission’s intent to extend it to all public lands in the future. It is critical that the Commissioners hear strong opposition to its proposal from hunters, shooters, and anglers across the state. Written comments are being accepted until April 27 and can be sent to Dale Garner, Wildlife Bureau Chief, at Dale.Garner@dnr.iowa.gov

The Commission is not alone in advocating a ban on lead ammunition and fishing tackle. They are keeping company with anti-hunting extremists, anti-gunners, and radical environmentalists who are campaigning for a nationwide ban.