GunENews - GSL Daily Blog

From: Bob Hazard rmorganhazard@gmail.com>
Date: April 18, 2009 8:32:45 AM CDT
To: webmaster@gunssavelife.com
Subject: a suggestion to improve your visibility

Dear Sirs,

Try hiring a poet who made it out of middle school. Your road-side poetry makes you look like a bunch of inbred rejects from the Andy Griffith Show.

Sincerely,

Bob

All you have to do is support the Constitution, oppose Gun Control, oppose abortion, oppose illegal immigration, oppose gay marriage, call yourself a Christian or serve in the military and return from war. That’s right, If you’re a Veteran, you’re now a potential “Terrorist” according to the Department of Homeland Security (update: DHS halfway apologizes today for singling out veterans if they felt accused. If you’re a veteran and didn’t feel accused, the accusation apparently still stands). I’m not going to waste my time posting the entire news story here. You can read it on Foxs’ website for yourself. I will make it easy for you though and post the DHS report here for those who would like to read it for themselves.

But wait, there’s more! Have you purchased any extra guns or ammunition lately? Have you lost your job recently or even worse, lost your home to foreclosure? You too should be considered a potential threat to Homeland Security.

Still feeling left out? Maybe this will make you feel better. Did you attend a TEA Party yesterday? Are you opposed to the ever increasing size and control of our Federal Government? Do you think the Banks and Wall Street have raped the American taxpayer in broad daylight with our Governments blessing? How about voicing your displeasure with spending 3.8 Trillion dollars so we can get 120 Billion in tax breaks? Here’s an analogy even my four year old son could grasp: You give me all your allowance for the next 20 years (in taxes) and I’ll let you keep $1.25 a year (he get’s about $5 a month). Even he could see the insanity in that deal… so I did what any loving parent should do, I warned him not to complain about it because then he could also be considered a terrorist by DHS.

See folks? Being a potential terrorist in America is now so easy, even a four year old can do it.

If you thought the MIAC report was bad, just wait until you read this one. It’s not surprising though since DHS originally helped Missouri Law Enforcement write their report. This report however, covers the entire country and adds a few additional dissenters to its list.

What in the name of Pete (to quote Glenn Beck) is going on in this country?

Someone please tell me this type of political profiling, this type of heavy handed first amendment infringement, is not that of a communist regime. TEA Parties were broken up in D.C. and several other cities yesterday because the protesters lacked the proper permit. That sure as hell sounds a lot like Communist China and the people who wanted to protest the Summer Olympics last year: Can’t protest your Government without a permit which you must get from the Government. This administration has even openly adopted the language used by Communists and Marxist by appointing several “Czars” to various posts around the world, the most recent being the Mexican Border Czar.

Still don’t believe me? Ever hear of the Ten Planks of the Communist Manefesto? I suggest you take a look because every one of them has been addressed in some form of legislature proposed by this current administration and folks, we’re not even 4 full months into it.

So what can we do about it? Nothing, if we just sit on our asses and complain. It’s time to wake up and start putting the heat on our legislators. Start making some calls. Start writing some letters to both their offices and your local Newspaper Editors. Start engaging the political process. Half of this country doesn’t even vote! Apathy is killing us and it has to stop now before it’s too late.

It’s time to take back America and I think a few good places to start would be for the American people to institute term limits on all our politicians. Additionally, we need to take away their golden parachutes and make them work for their retirement like the rest of us. It’s time to subject them to the same healthcare system we have.  They need to be reminded that they hold an office of “Public Service” not “Public Privilege”. It’s time to stop putting them up above the ordinary citizen in every way and make them understand it’s “We the People” and they are subject to the same rules, laws, and consequences for their actions as the rest of us. They will never vote for these reforms so it’s up to the American public to make it happen.

I’m pretty sure this editorial will get my name on a DHS list (if it’s not already there) so please feel free to join me on that list and sound off on this one too. I’d like to know I’m not the only person in America that feels this way and it would be nice to know who my potential future prison cellmates may be. Gotta go… caller ID says the F.B.I. is wanting to talk to me and someones knocking at my door. Boy that was fast!

-Matthew Skaj

PS. Many thanks to the “Welcome to Homeland Security” website for the use of their public domain satirical posters.

Every month we have a meeting in Champaign, IL.  It’s more than a gun meeting; it’s a freedom meeting. 

GunsSaveLife meets again Tuesday night at Alexander’s Steakhouse (from I74 take Neil Street exit north, then left on frontage road. 100 yards to great steaks!). If you can, arrive EARLY (I plan to!) and eat outside the meeting room. Before 7 those of us outside can go in to the seating arranged there without tables. This should reduce the congestion. Later arrivals can eat in the meeting room and continue eating as the meeting starts….

                 Tonight’s DRAWING: EAA Witness .40 caliber polymer frame defense pistol.                  NIB

Lots of folks are fed up.  Some of them voted for hope and change, and some voted against the offered brand of hope and change. 

Either way, lots of folks were floored by the speed and reckless abandon with which our money, our defense, and our sovreignty are being surrendered. 

But thousands are standing up.  Check out http://www.teapartyday.com/.  Thousands are gathering on Tax day, April 15, to protest all of the above, and to put the politicians on notice. 

Another indicator of dissatisfaction is the record gun and ammo sales.  Literally millions more than the same time last year.  Demand for ammo is way up, despite the high price of ammo. 

Lots of folks are signing up for gun training classes, including lots of “nontraditional” (women, young people, older adults, etc.) signing up.  GSL Defense Training http://www.gsldefensetraining.com/ has classes, and since the April basic class filled up, another has been added for May 23-24 at Darnall’s in Bloomington. 

Appleseed two day rifle marksmanship clinics www.appleseedinfo.org are starting to sell out in spots where they have a limited firing line.  On April 18-19, there are close to 60 of these clinics all around the country, including three in Illinois, two of which (Ottawa and Elizabeth, IL) are sold out or close to it.  The one at Alton, IL sitll has some space left.  If any of you have read John Ross’ Unintended Consequences, http://john-ross.net/faq.php the range in a quarry described in that book is Mr. Ross’s personal range, and the Alton Appleseed shoot is being held there. 

Over 1500 people are preregistered for the various Appleseeds on the weekend of April 18-19.  That’s a bunch more awake Americans, along with the tea party participants and the pistol training folks, who won’t be fooled again.  There’s still time to pre-register.  Women, folks under 21, and active military with ID don’t have to pay.  For others, it’s just $70 for two days if you pre-register. 

You can complain, or you can do something.  Find out what’s happening in your area, and participate.  You won’t regret it. 

John Naese

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott

FOXNews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/

Thursday, April 02, 2009

EXCLUSIVE: You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

– CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

– California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: “It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors … come from the United States.”

– William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that “there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States.”

There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:

It’s just not true.

In fact, it’s not even close. By all accounts, it’s probably around 17 percent.

What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

“Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,” Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

Video: Click here to watch more on where the guns come from.

A Look at the Numbers

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

– The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

– Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

– Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

– The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

– Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America’s cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

‘These Don’t Come From El Paso’

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered “assault rifles” that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

“These kinds of guns — the auto versions of these guns — they are not coming from El Paso,” he said. “They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don’t get these guns from the U.S.”

Some guns, he said, “are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way — the fully auto versions — they are not smuggled in across the river.”

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years — but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

“Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California,” according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Boatloads of Weapons

So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown “straw” buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?

Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.

The exaggeration of United States “responsibility” for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the “90-percent” falsehood — and some Second Amendment activists believe it’s designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.

In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States — 730,000 a year. That’s a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general’s office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.

“Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this,” Cox said. “The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment.”

“The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It’s estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?”

But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the “90 percent” issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.

“Let’s do what we can with what we know,” he said. “We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open.”

Getting the pro-gun, pro-freedom word out, that is.  The media WILL NOT do it for us. 

The “G-20″ meeting was all the news today and tonight. 

Side Note:  Is it my imagination, or have we never heard of the “G-20″ before the last week?  I follow news and events pretty closely, have for 20 years.  I remember the “G-7″ and the “G-8″, but the “G-20″ is new to me. 

Anyway, the news reported 4,000 protesters in London, a motley collection of environmental extremists, anarchists, and ne’er-do-wells.  All kinds of video of them smashing windows at the Bank of Scotland or some such. 

Just three weeks ago, Illinois gun owners swamped the Illinois capitol with over 5,000 gun owners (one estimate I saw put the number at over 6,000).  Not one arrest.  One injury - a 77 year old gun owner who took the trouble to lobby his state representative fell down the Capitol steps.  Lots of positive energy, no negativity, no riots, no damaged property or riot police. 

And hardly any coverage by the press.  Two TV news reports on the late news, a minute or two each, one of which had an insane comment tacked on to the end of it by a clueless “anchor”.  A smattering of newspaper stories the next day.  And that was it. 

Want another example?  The “Tea Parties” that have sprung up all over the country.  One of them apparently had 15,000 people attend.  I say “apparently” because I only heard about it when Greta on Fox News was interviewing Newt Gingrich, and he made the comparison to the 4,000 London protesters. 

Another example?  The Appleseed Project (www.appleseedinfo.org) has nearly 1300 people signed up to learn marksmanship and history at over 50 events on April 18-19.  (There’s room for 1700 more, and over two weeks to go.  Sign up for an event.)  That has been accomplished by volunteers making people aware of the existence of the program and convincing people that they should attend.  The press has covered none of it. 

WE’VE GOT TO DO IT OURSELVES.  Write that letter to the editor.  Call that call-in show.  When gun owners do good things and there is no PR componnent, no one will know.  WE’VE got to tell them. 

YOU’VE got to tell them. 

John Naese