Gun control and its consequenses

[Mech]

Fact Sheet: The Unintended Consequences of Gun Control

A. Waiting periods threaten the safety of people in imminent danger

* Bonnie Elmasri -- She inquired about getting a gun to protect herself from a husband who had repeatedly threatened to kill her. She was told there was a 48 hour waiting period to buy a handgun. But unfortunately, Bonnie was never able to pick up a gun. She and her two sons were killed the next day by an abusive husband of whom the police were well aware.1

* Marine Cpl. Rayna Ross -- She bought a gun (in a non-waiting period state) and used it to kill an attacker in self-defense two days later.2 Had a 5-day waiting period been in effect, Ms. Ross would have been defenseless against the man who was stalking her.

* Los Angeles riots -- USA Today reported that many of the people rushing to gun stores during the 1992 riots were "lifelong gun-control advocates, running to buy an item they thought they'd never need." Ironically, they were outraged to discover they had to wait 15 days to buy a gun for self-defense.3

B. Trigger Locks can delay one's ability to use a firearm for self-defense

* Trigger locks are dangerous and cumbersome for self-defense. The Wall Street Journal noted how when Beretta tested a "Saf T Lok," it cause 18 of 27 rounds to "totally malfunction." And when Handgun Control's chief attorney attempted to demonstrate the same trigger lock at an HCI-sponsored event, he found, to his embarrassment, that he was unable to disengage the lock.4

* A trigger lock can be very difficult to remove from a firearm in an emergency. Maryland Governor Parris Glendening struggled for at least two whole minutes to remove a trigger lock at a training session in March 2000.5 If it can take that long to remove such a lock -- when there's only the pressure of being embarrassed in front of the cameras -- what will a trigger lock mean for a homeowner who needs to use his or her self-defense gun during an emergency, in the bedroom, in the dark?

* The Mafia favors trigger locks -- for their victims. Mafia turncoat, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, expressed his love for gun control in an interview with Vanity Fair: "Gun control? It's the best thing you can do for crooks and gangsters. I want you to have nothing. If I'm a bad guy, I'm always gonna have a gun. Safety locks? You pull the trigger with a lock on, and I'll pull the trigger. We'll see who wins."6

C. Real life examples of how "locking up one's safety" can result in death

* Canada: Ian Dunbar of Green Lake, B.C. was four years old and home from kindergarten in 1994. While playing in his back yard, a bear attacked him. His mother jumped on the bear and hit him. A neighbor went to get a rifle, but was unable to find the key. They finally snatched Ian away and rushed him to the hospital, but he died in his mother's arms on the way.7

* United States: Every month, the American Rifleman magazine publishes a column entitled the "Armed Citizen" -- a column which highlights recent press stories from around the nation where private citizens have used guns in self-defense. Virtually any self-defense story one reads out of the "Armed Citizen" would NOT have occurred if a trigger-lock had been in place on the firearm.

* Colorado: "If I'd had a trigger lock, I'd be dead." After being repeatedly stabbed by three young men in his Colorado home, Chuck Harris managed to grab the .44-Magnum pistol he kept in a desk drawer. Thankfully, Harris didn't have to remember a combination or fiddle with a trigger lock -- he just pointed the gun and fired.

That quick thinking saved his life, and has caused Harris to later reflect upon what was, perhaps, the obvious. "If I'd had a trigger lock, I'd be dead," he said. "If my pistol had been in a gun safe, I'd be dead. If the bullets were stored separate, I'd be dead. They were going to kill me."8

D. California: A Case Study in Contrasts

* Merced. On the morning of August 23, 2000, Jonathon David Bruce attacked a houseful of kids. Armed with a pitchfork -- and without a stitch of clothing on his body -- Bruce proceeded to stab the children. Two of them died.

The oldest of the children, Jessica Carpenter (14), was quite proficient with firearms. She had been trained by her father and knew how to use them. There was just one problem: the guns were locked up in compliance with California state law. Unable to use the firearms, Jessica was forced to flee the house to get help. Mr. Bruce's murderous rampage was finally cut short when officers -- carrying guns -- arrived on the scene.9

* San Francisco. Contrast the Carpenter's tragic situation to that of A.D. Parker. In February 2000, he was awakened by strange noises outside his bedroom in the middle of the night. The 83-year-old Parker grabbed a handgun he had not even used in several decades, went to his bedroom door, and found himself face-to-face with a thug holding a crowbar.

Thankfully, because Mr. Parker had not obeyed California law, he didn't have to fiddle with a trigger lock, remember a combination, or look for a key in the dark room. He simply pointed the gun and pulled the trigger -- which is why he survived the attack.10


1 Congressional Record (May 8, 1991), at H 2859, H 2862.
2 Wall Street Journal (March 3, 1994) at A10.
3 Jonathan T. Lovitt, "Survival for the armed," USA Today (May 4, 1992).
4 "A Simple Invention Points Up Complexity of Gun-Control Suits, The Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1999.
5 Gerald Mizejewski, "Device wins police praise but fails to move skeptics," The Washington Times (March 23, 2000).
6 Interview with Sammy Gravano in Howard Blum, "The Reluctant Don," Vanity Fair (September 1999), p. 165.
7 The Gun Owners, April 16, 1999, p. 5.
8 Ellen Miller, "Man faces suspects accused of attacking him after getting ride," Rocky Mountain News (March 14, 2001).
9 Kimi Yoshino, "Gun advocates say fear of liability keeps parents from teaching survival skills," The Fresno Bee (August 26, 2000).
10 William Rasberry, "Ask A.D. Parker about gun control," The Denver Post (March 20, 2000).

[Mech]

The Hidden Costs Of Gun Control

By
Dr. John Lott

State legislatures across the country are debating the imposition of "childproof" locks on guns_. Unfortunately, despite the obvious feel-good appeal of these rules, they are more likely to cost lives than save them.

To understand why, consider first how many accidental gun deaths occur in the U.S. In 1995 there were 1,400 such deaths. Just 200 of those involved children under 15. In comparison, 2,900 children died in motor vehicle crashes, 950 children drowned, and more than 1,000 children died from fire and burns. Hundreds more children die in bicycle accidents every year than die from all types of firearms accidents. But which is more likely to make the "Eyewitness News"? And which is more likely to inspire legislators' attempts at a quick fix?

Of course, any child's death is tragic and it's hardly consoling that such common home fixtures as swimming pools and space heaters are potentially lethal. Yet it is true that the very rules that seek to save lives can result in more deaths. Banning swimming pools would help prevent drowning, for example; but if fewer people exercised, life spans would be shortened. Heaters may start fires, but they also keep people from getting sick, and from freezing to death. So whether we want to allow pools or space heaters depends not only on whether some people may be harmed by them, but also on whether more people are helped than hurt.

Similar trade-offs exist for gun locks. Mechanical locks that fit either into a gun's barrel or over its trigger require the gun to be unloaded, and may prevent a few children's deaths. But locked, unloaded guns offer far less protection from intruders, and so requiring locks would likely greatly increase deaths resulting from crime.

Futuristic guns like those necessitating wearing a wristband that emits a radio signal to activate the gun are far from reliable and will cost $900 when they are finally available. Under the new rules, such costs of gun ownership would fall far more heavily on law-abiding citizens than on criminals -- decreasing the numbers of innocent people who could use guns to protect themselves. So the debate over gun locks comes down to how many of the 200 accidental child deaths will be avoided vs. how such rules will reduce all people's ability to defend themselves.

Unfortunately, despite the best of intentions, safety rules do not always increase safety. President Clinton has argued many times that "we protect aspirin bottles in this country better than we protect guns from accidents by children." However, Harvard economist W. Kip Viscusi has shown that child-resistant bottle caps have resulted in "3,500 additional poisonings of children under age 5 annually from (aspirin-related drugs) ... (as) consumers have been lulled into a less-safety-conscious mode of behavior by the existence of safety caps." If Mr. Clinton were aware of such research, he surely wouldn't refer to aspirin bottles when telling us how to deal with guns.

Other research shows that guns clearly deter criminals. Polls by the Los Angeles Times, Gallup and Peter Hart Research show that there are at least 760,000, and possibly as many as 3.6 million, defensive uses of guns per year. In 98% of the cases, such polls show, people simply brandish the weapon to stop an attack.

The defensive nature of guns is further reflected in the different rates of so-called hot burglaries, in which a victim is at home when a burglar strikes. In Canada and Britain, which both have tough gun-control laws, almost half of all burglaries are "hot." In The U.S., where greater gun ownership is allowed, only 13% of burglaries are "hot."

Criminals are not behaving differently simply by accident. U.S. felons reveal in surveys that when committing crimes they are much more worried about armed victims than about the police.

In recent research into gun ownership rates across states over time, I have found that higher gun ownership rates are associated with dramatically lower crime rates. Further, it is the poorest people in the most crime-prone areas who benefit most from gun ownership. Safety rules that raise the costs of gun purchases will thus reduce gun ownership and hit these people the hardest. And the higher costs of gun ownership go well beyond the costs of buying guns with mechanical or electronic locks; they include civil and likely criminal liability if guns are involved in accidents.

So if gun lock laws are unlikely to save lives, indeed if they are likely to cost lives, then who would benefit from them? Answer: plaintiffs' lawyers. The General Accounting Office reported in 1991 that mechanical safety locks are unreliable in preventing children over six years of age from using a gun. Will manufacturers meet the proposed laws' requirements if their products carry disclaimers saying that the gun locks may not work? Without such a disclaimer, imagine the lawsuits manufacturers would face for supplying locks that they know would fail to guarantee protection. Research into similar situations involving children's vaccines suggests that such liability costs can account for 90% of the price of a product.

Laws frequently have unintended consequences. Fortunately, it's not too late to stop the new gun "safety" laws before they produce the same headaches -- and much worse -- that the aspirin-bottle rules have caused.

[Mech]

Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict

* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2

* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3

* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4

* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5

* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."7

* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.8 Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night Specials."

B. Concealed carry laws help reduce crime

* Nationwide: one-half million self-defense uses. Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home.9

* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:

* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;10 and

* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.11

* Vermont: one of the safest five states in the country. In Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission... without paying a fee... or without going through any kind of government-imposed waiting period. And yet for seven years in a row, Vermont has remained one of the safest states in the union -- having twice received the "Safest State Award."12

* Florida: concealed carry helps slash the murder rates in the state. In the ten years following the passage of Florida's concealed carry law in 1987, there were 478,248 people who received permits to carry firearms.13 FBI reports show that the homicide rate in Florida, which in 1987 was much higher than the national average, fell 39% during that 10-year period.14

* Do firearms carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.

1. During the first fifteen years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.15

2. And even the 155 "crimes" committed by concealed carry permit holders are somewhat misleading as most of these infractions resulted from Floridians who accidentally carried their firearms into restricted areas, such as an airport. (FN -- John R. Lott, Jr. "Right to carry would disprove horror stories," Kansas City Star, 7-12-03)

C. Criminals avoid armed citizens

* Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.16

* Ten years later (1991), the residential burglary rate in Kennesaw was still 72% lower than it had been in 1981, before the law was passed.17

* Nationwide. Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms. Consider the following rates showing how often a homeowner is present when a burglar strikes:

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the gun control countries of Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands: 45% (average of the three countries); and,

* Homeowner occupancy rate in the United States: 12.7%.18

Rapes averted when women carry or use firearms for protection

* Orlando, FL. In 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando's rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.19

* Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.20

Justice Department study:

* 3/5 of felons polled agreed that "a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun."21

* 74% of felons polled agreed that "one reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime."22

* 57% of felons polled agreed that "criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police."23

[Mech]

My Transformation From Anti-Gun Feminist To Armed Feminist

By
Katherine von Tour
GOA Member

Most people who support the Second Amendment have probably wondered at one time or another how to change the thinking of anti-gunners.

Since I was once a staunch gun-control proponent, including being a member of Handgun Control Incorporated (HCI) in the 1970's, but am today a fervent and virtually no-compromise Second Amendment supporter, perhaps the story of my mental shift will be of interest.

When I recall my mindset in the 1960's, when I was in college in Chicago, and in the early 1970's, when I was teaching grade-school in a private school in Pennsylvania, what I remember most is how completely convinced I was that government was the best and ultimate answer to all of society's ills -- war, poverty, crime and injustice.

I was a true Sixties liberal, who protested the Vietnam War, sported a "Question Authority" bumper sticker on my Volvo, who was a charter member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and a charter subscriber to Ms Magazine.

I voted for George McGovern. I hung out with other earnest liberals, many of whom were also members of NOW. It wasn't that I believed government was perfect -- far from it! -- but I had blind faith that, with enough effort and money, it could be made so.

My idea of a perfect government was one which had a generous welfare program, free medical care for all, lots of benign and helpful social programs, and government-mandated fairness and equality for all.

I joined NOW because it promised to fight for equality under the law for women; it encouraged women to empower themselves, and to be independent. Since I was a single woman, these all sounded like sensible ideas to me.

I joined HCI because it had convinced me that guns were a root cause of violence and crime, and that only criminals owned and used them.
The Liberal Years

I had grown up stationed with my family overseas, and had been sent to private boarding school in Honolulu, where my family is from, and then to Chatham Hall, a young ladies' "finishing school" in Virginia.

Most of my life had been protected and privileged; while my family didn't have a lot of money, we somehow gave the illusion that we did, since we lived overseas, complete with servants and first-class travel paid for by my father's company.

I had been raised, as my mother puts it, "to be a lady," and certainly "ladies" in our social circle weren't trained in self-defense, particularly self-defense involving firearms, which, in any case, were completely banned in the countries where we lived.

After graduating from Northwestern, and doing graduate work at Lehigh, I got a job teaching 6th grade at a private day school in Pennsylvania, where I stayed for 10 years, during which time I was an earnest and unwavering liberal.

It was during this time that I joined HCI and NOW, and crusaded loudly and vociferously against "violence," "intolerance" and "unfairness."
The "Bubble" Bursts

After ten years of teaching, I was still making very little money, and had burned out. I decided to move back to Hawaii, which was my home, and where my parents had retired after 25 years of being stationed overseas, and purchase a franchise of a skin-care and cosmetic business, whose products were sold through home shows.

I spent five ghastly years in Honolulu, struggling to run a business in a government climate which was as socialistic and larded with welfare and social programs as any I had previously worked towards; those five years were the undoing of my liberalism.

I tried in vain to recruit women who were on welfare to work to do home shows and make money by being independent, but I could in no way compete with the obscenely generous welfare benefits they were receiving for staying home and doing nothing, except in many cases growing pakalolo, (marijuana) which they had plenty of time to do, since all of their needs were more than being met by the state.

The Hawaii State Labor board delivered the final death blow to my business by declaring that all of the independent contractors who worked for my company -- and whom I could hardly convince to work at all -- were to be classified as "employees," and that I had to pay unemployment, workers' compensation and health care for them.

The government cared not a whit that there was no money in my company to fund this state-mandated largess. I was forced to close down the business, to file bankruptcy, and I moved back to the Mainland, my formerly liberal tail between my legs, a newly-hatched libertarian conservative.

[Mech]

I no longer saw government as the solution to social problems. It certainly hadn't solved mine, nor had it encouraged my trying to create jobs for the people of Hawaii, jobs which they didn't want to do because it was too much work, even though the Honolulu Star Bulletin was filled almost every week with whining letters from people complaining that there were no jobs to be had, and imploring the government to "create" more jobs.

With the fervor and passion I had previously reserved for trying to get the government to expand its powers and programs, I began to read the writings of conservative and libertarian authors -- Bastiat, Hayek, Thomas Sowell and others. I also plunged into the writings of the founders of America -- Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Paine, George Mason.

I started meeting people who had also been abused by government agencies -- the police, Customs, DEA, IRS and others. I started hearing stories of people having property seized without due process, and of people calling 911 and not having the police not show up in time.

But the pivotal turning point for me was the Los Angeles riots.
Armed in L.A.; guns save lives

I was living in Orange County at the time, but had to go up to LA regularly on business. At that time there had been a rash of violent car-jackings, many of them committed against women who were driving alone.

A friend, who knew a great deal about guns and had grown up around them, told me that, because I was a woman living and driving alone, he wanted me to start carrying a pistol in my car.

He lent me a .38 Special, and showed me how to load, unload and fire it.

One day, just before the riots exploded, I was driving in downtown LA in a scary part of town. It was dusk. As I was stopped at a stop-light, with one car in front of me, two men who had been watching me began quickly and menacingly approaching my car from the sidewalk. One of them was carrying a tire iron.

I grabbed the pistol, which I had laid on the seat beside me, and held it up so they could see it.

The look in their eyes changed in an instant from threatening to fearful, and they immediately turned around and ran in the opposite direction. The light changed. I drove away.

No one was hurt, but a gun in my formerly liberal hand had, I believe, probably saved my life, or at least prevented me from likely injury.
L.A. Riots turn anti-gun advocates into pro-gun supporters

Within a week, the very street where this incident happened had erupted in rioting, looting and killing.

I watched on television as the Korean grocers defended their property with AK-47's and AR-15's, and thus prevented it from being torched and looted. The police couldn't stop the violence and killing.

I had friends who worked in the garment district in LA who barely made it out alive, and who told tales of pulling out pistols and having would-be attackers turn tail and run away.

Guns were saving lives and property.

As the riots threatened to spill over into Beverly Hills, myriad Hollywood types stormed gun stores to arm themselves, only to be told that there was a 15-day waiting period; radio talk shows boiled with people calling in and screaming about how unfair this was, and how the law was leaving them helpless.

Some of them even admitted that they had previously supported the waiting period, and that they were now furious that it had left them unarmed.
Coming full circle: From HCI to GOA

My transformation was complete. I joined the National Rifle Association (I didn't know about Gun Owners of America or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership yet) and started reading their literature. I bought and read "Armed and Female" by Paxton Quigley -- another ex-gun-control woman.

I fell in love with and married the friend who had lent me the .38 Special, and started learning in earnest about guns and how to use them. We joined GOA and JPFO.

And the National Organization for Women? Here's the thing that makes me crazy about an organization ostensibly dedicated to the empowerment of women -- NOW is uncompromisingly and adamantly anti-gun, including urging all women to disarm themselves, and supporting legislation to force their disarmament.

The incongruity and hypocrisy of this stance is simply stunning. How can such an organization claim to be "for women?" In my experience as a single woman, there is nothing more effective than a gun for protection.

In my experience as a married woman, when my husband can't be there to pull out a firearm to protect us and our home, he has made sure that I can do so. What could be more empowering and independent and equalizing for a woman than that?

And what could be more threatening to women than women like Sarah Brady, Barbara Boxer, Diane Feinstein, Carolyn McCarthy and Barbra Streisand who, while beating the drum for "women's rights" are attempting to disarm women as well as men, and leave them at the mercy of criminals? I still believe fervently in the original NOW position supporting the empowerment of women.

And I believe that the most effective thing any woman can do to empower herself is to acquire and learn to use a gun, and to become vocal and aggressive in defending gun rights and the Second Amendment.

When I look back on my mindset when I supported gun control, I see that I was naïve, idealistic and swayed by irrational, baseless propaganda, especially the absurd myth that, by disarming law-abiding citizens, society will be made safer.

There is absolutely no hard evidence to support this. Criminals by definition disregard laws, especially gun control laws. In Australia, which has disarmed its population, it is reported that violent home invasions have increased in some areas by 44%. Rapes and murders have also increased substantially.

In being confronted by the reality that government cannot and will not guarantee my personal safety, I am infinitely thankful, both as a woman and an American, that the Bill of Rights still guarantees my right to defend myself with a gun. Any true feminist must support this position. Any woman who claims to be a feminist, but who supports disarmament of law-abiding citizens is simply a dangerous hypocrite.

[Mech]

NAZIS and GUN CONTROL


Are you tired of being told that "gun control" is a chronic pain that you have to accept because there's no cure? Do you -- a law abiding person -- want to be free: to own whichever firearms you want to own, regardless of where in America you live; from waiting periods, gun bans, magazine capacity restrictions, etc.; to spend your time on the range or in the field, rather than fighting "gun control"?

Are you tired of giving hard earned bucks to efforts that have at best only slowed the gun grabbers' push toward firearms registration and confiscation? If you have had enough of death by a thousand cuts, you are ready to take action to wipe out "gun control" -- now.

Adolph Hitler signed the Nazi Weapons Law. The Gestapo (Nazi National Secret Police) enforced it. In "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny we present the official German text of the Nazi Weapons Law and a side-by-side translation into English. Even more deadly: a side-by-side, section-by-section comparison of the GCA '68 with the Nazi Weapons Law. If you have this in your hands, no one can tell you that you're imagining things.

The clincher: JPFO knows who implanted into American law cancerous ideas from the Nazi Weapons Law.

The likely culprit is a former senator, now deceased. We have documentary proof -- see below -- that he had the original text of the Nazi Weapons Law in his possession 4 months before the bill that became GCA '68 was signed into law.

This former senator was a senior member of the U.S. team that helped to prosecute Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945-46. That is probably where he found out about the Nazi Weapons Law. He may have gotten a copy of it then, or at a later date. We cannot imagine why any U.S. lawmaker would own original texts of Nazi laws. To find out his name, read on.

With this hard evidence in your hands and in your head, you can destroy cancerous "gun control". You can challenge anyone who backs "gun control". You can show them the Nazi ideas, line by line.

The parallels between the Nazi law and GCA '68 will leap at you from the page. For example, law abiding firearm owners in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey must carry identification cards based on formats from the Nazi Weapons Law. Nazi based laws have no place in America. Thousands of Americans died or were wounded in the war to wipe out the Nazis. They did not suffer or die so that Hitler's ideas could live on in America and kill more Americans. Remember Killeen, Texas! The 23 who died in Luby's Cafeteria there died because they obeyed Nazi inspired "gun control" laws. The law forced them, unarmed, to face an armed madman.

To destroy "gun control" before more law abiding Americans are murdered by criminals or madmen helped by "gun control", you need to get hold of the evidence as presented in "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny. You can then challenge the media, the most aggressive backers of "gun control". Ask media personalities in your city or town why they back Nazi based laws. You can help to erase "gun control", Hitler's last legacy.

GCA '68 puts your life at risk right now. You have a constitutional civil right to be armed in order to protect yourself, because under U.S law the police have no duty to protect the average person:

"There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state (or Federal) against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: it tells the state (gov't) to let people alone; it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order"

(Bowers v. DeVito, U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 686F.2d 616 [1982]).


The Supreme Court last dealt with this issue in 1856; the 1982 decision states the position in modern language. The laws of virtually every state parallel federal law (see JPFO Special Report Dial 911 and Die! covered in Guns & Ammo, July 1992). This has been so ever since the Constitution was adopted in 1791. As a result, the framers of the Second Amendment deliberately created (guaranteed) an individual civil right to be armed. It is your only reliable defense against criminals. GCA '68 ties your hands and keeps you from carrying out your legal duty to ensure your own self defense. GCA '68 thus undermines a pillar of U.S. law and helps criminals to kill law abiding Americans. Hitler would be pleased.

Thus, GCA '68 marked a new approach to "gun control". It replaced the Federal Firearms Act (June 30, 1938), which was based on the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. The 1938 law required firearms dealers to get a federal license (which then cost $1). Only dealers could ship firearms across state lines. Ordinary people could receive shipments from dealers.

In GCA '68 the government required that in almost all cases only dealers could send and receive firearms across state lines. This ended "mail order" sales of firearms by law abiding persons who are not licensed dealers. GCA '68 hits you even harder. Congress gave federal bureaucrats in Washington D.C., the power to decide what kinds of firearms you can own. The framers of GCA '68 borrowed an idea -- that certain firearms are "hunting weapons" -- from the Nazi Weapons Law (Section 21 and Section 32 of the Regulations, page 61 and page 73, respectively, of "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny). The equivalent U.S. term, "sporting purpose," was used to classify firearms. But it was not defined anywhere in GCA '68. Thus, bureaucrats were empowered to ban whole classes of firearms. They have, in fact, done so.

We wanted to know the source of these new ideas. On reading "Dial 911 and Die!" a JPFO member told us he had seen an article -- by Alan Stang in 'Review of the News,' October 4, 1967 (pages 15-20) -- the author of which felt that the Nazi Weapons Law was the model for GCA '68. We found the article. But Stang did not reproduce the Nazi law, so we could not check his conclusions.

We started to hunt for the text of the Nazi Weapons Law. We eventually found it, in the law library of an Ivy League university.

Until 1943-44, the German government published its laws and regulations in the 'Reichsgesetzblatt,' roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Federal Register. Carefully shelved by law librarians, the 1938 issues of this German government publication had gathered a lot of dust. In the 'Reichsgesetzblatt' issue for the week of March 21, 1938, was the official text of the Weapons Law (March 18, 1938). It gave Hitler's Nazi party a stranglehold on the Germans, many of whom did not support the Nazis. We found that the Nazis did not invent "gun control" in Germany. The Nazis inherited gun control and then perfected it: they invented handgun control.

[Mech]

NAZIS AND GUN CONTROL...CONTINUED



The Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 replaced a Law on Firearms and Ammunition of April 13, 1928. The 1928 law was enacted by a center-right, freely elected German government that wanted to curb "gang activity," violent street fights between Nazi party and Communist party thugs. All firearm owners and their firearms had to be registered. Sound familiar? "Gun control" did not save democracy in Germany. It helped to make sure that the toughest criminals, the Nazis, prevailed.

The Nazis inherited lists of firearm owners and their firearms when they 'lawfully' took over in March 1933. The Nazis used these inherited registration lists to seize privately held firearms from persons who were not "reliable." Knowing exactly who owned which firearms, the Nazis had only to revoke the annual ownership permits or decline to renew them.

In 1938, five years after taking power, the Nazis enhanced the 1928 law. The Nazi Weapons Law introduced handgun control. Firearms ownership was restricted to Nazi party members and other "reliable" people.

The 1938 Nazi law barred Jews from businesses involving firearms. On November 10. 1938 -- one day after the Nazi party terror squads (the SS) savaged thousands of Jews, synagogues and Jewish businesses throughout Germany -- new regulations under the Weapons Law specifically barred Jews from owning any weapons, even clubs or knives.

Given the parallels between the Nazi Weapons Law and the GCA '68, we concluded that the framers of the GCA '68 -- lacking any basis in American law to sharply cut back the civil rights of law abiding Americans -- drew on the Nazi Weapons Law of 1938.

Finding the Nazi Weapons Law whetted our appetite. We wanted to know who implanted this Nazi cancer in America. We began by probing the backgrounds of lawmakers who championed "gun control". We focused on those whose bills became part of GCA '68. GCA '68 as enacted closely tracks proposals dating to August 1963. We felt that if the culprit were a lawmaker -- or a congressional staffer -- he or she would know Germany, German law and possibly even speak German. He or she probably would have spent time in Germany on business or during military service. Alternatively, if the culprit were not a member of Congress or a staffer, there would be testimony at the hearings to that effect.

Most potential suspects were quickly eliminated; they had no apparent ties to Germany. But one lawmaker caught our attention.

An old "Who's Who" entry showed he had been a senior member of the U.S. team that prosecuted German war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945-46. Thus, he had lived in Germany just after the Nazi period. His official duties required him to look at Nazi records, including Nazi laws. In 1963 he led the effort to greatly expand the Federal Firearms Act of 1938.

We then got a break. We told a legal scholar of our findings. He was intrigued. He sent us an extract from the record of hearings held a few months prior to the enactment of GCA '68. At the end of June 1968, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to investigate Juvenile Delinquency -- chaired by Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) -- held hearings on bills: (1) "To Require the Registration of Firearms" (S.3604). (2) "To Disarm Lawless Persons" (S.3634) and (3) "To Provide for the Establishment of a National Firearms Registry" (S.3637), among others.

U.S. Representative John Dingell (D-MI) testified at these Senate hearings on "gun control". Senator Joseph D. Tydings (D-MD) chaired some of these hearings, in Dodd's absence.

Rep. Dingell expressed concern that if firearms registration were required, it might lead to confiscation of firearms, as had happened in Nazi Germany. Tydings angrily accused Rep. Dingell of using "scare tactics":

"Are you inferring that our system here, gun registration or licensing, would in any way be comparable to the Nazi regime in Germany, where they had a secret police, and a complete takeover?"

Rep. Dingell backed away.

(Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Congress, 2nd Session, June 26, 27 and 28 and July 8, 9 and 10. 1968, pp. 479-80, 505-6 cited as Subcommittee Hearings.)

Tydings later inserted into the hearing record various documents, "concerning the history of Nazism and gun confiscation."

Exhibit No. 62 (see reproduction) is fascinating. This letter -- dated July 12, 1968 -- is to Subcommittee Chairman Dodd from Lewis C. Coffin, Law Librarian at the Library of Congress. Coffin wrote:


" ... we are enclosing herewith a translation of the Law on Weapons of March 18, 1938, prepared by Dr. William Solyom-Fekete of [the European Law Division -- ed.] as well as the Xerox of the original German text which you supplied" (Subcommittee Hearings, p. 489, emphasis added).


This letter makes it public knowledge that at the end of June 1968 -- 4 months before GCA '68 was enacted -- Senator Thomas J. Dodd, now deceased, personally owned a copy of the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law.

[Mech]

NAZIS AND GUN CONTROL


Why did Dodd own the original German text of any Nazi law? Why did he make known that he owned it?

The Library of Congress then had (and still has) the 'Reichsgesetzblatt' in its collection. The Library of Congress translator, Dr. Solyom-Fekete, could easily have used the Library of Congress' own copy.

Any member of Congress who wanted to read the Nazi Weapons Law need only have asked for it to be produced from the shelves of the Library of Congress and for it to be translated by Library of Congress experts. Why should any member of Congress ever have owned the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law?

Without access to Tom Dodd's personal papers, archived under his heirs' control, we unfortunately cannot offer definite answers.

Dodd could have acquired the German text of the Nazi Weapons Law during his time at Nuremberg. But he had no need to do so.

Dodd did not personally handle the prosecution of Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, who signed the Nazi Weapons Law. The case against Frick was presented by Robert M.W. Kempner, Assistant Trial Counsel for the United States (see 'Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal,' cited as TMWC, Vol. V, pp. 352-67, Nuremberg, Germany, 1947).

Nor should the Nazi Weapons Law otherwise have come to Dodd's attention. The Nazi Weapons Law was not used as evidence against Frick (see Kempner's speech, TMWC, V, pp. 352-67 and 'Index of Laws, Decrees, Orders, Directives, and the Administration of Justice in Nazi Germany and Nazi Dominated Countries', TMWC, Vol. XXIII, pp. 430-33). The Nazi Weapons Law is not listed among documents submitted as evidence to the Tribunal by the American prosecutors (see Vol. XXIV, pp. 98-169).

The prosecutors at Nuremberg doubtless knew of the Nazi Weapons Law. They probably saw it in the 'Reichsgesetzblatt.' On the same day that Nazi Interior Minister Frick signed the Weapons Law, March 18, 1938, he signed another law governing security measures in newly annexed Austria. This law concerning Austria appeared in the 'Reichsgesetzblatt' -- directly in front of the Weapons Law -- and was introduced into evidence at Nuremberg ('Reichsgesetzblatt' 1938, I, p. 262; the Nazi Weapons Law was published in the same volume, p. 265; see TMWC, Vol. V, p.358 for reference to law concerning Austria).

Thus, the Nazi Weapons Law appeared to have no historical merit at Nuremberg and should not have attracted anyone's notice, certainly not to the extent of causing anyone to want to keep a copy of it as a separate document.

If Dodd got his copy of the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law during his time at Nuremberg, it likely was part of a collection of documents, for example, issues of the 'Reichsgesetzblatt'.

But if he acquired the original German text of the Nazi Weapons Law after his service at Nuremberg, he must have done so for a very specific reason. The Nazi Weapons Law plainly did not figure at Nuremberg.

We may safely conclude it had little, if any, interest for those interested in the history of the Nazis' rise to power. For example, the Nazi Weapons Law is not mentioned at all in William L. Shirer's very thorough study of Nazi Germany, 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1950).

At the hearings held by Dodd's subcommittee at the end of June 1968, Rep. Dingell had objected to the firearms registration provision then being discussed. Dodd may have offered his copy of the Nazi Weapons Law to show that the specific proposal did not resemble anything in the Nazi law.

He may not have realized that he was revealing a broader truth; that the whole fabric of GCA '68 was based on the Nazi Weapons Law, even if the specific registration proposal was not so based.

Alternatively, Dodd may not have cared whether or not anyone knew that he had the German text of the Nazi Weapons Law. He doubtless knew that months would pass before the hearing record was printed and so generally available for scrutiny. Thus, even if anyone then noticed the parallels between the two laws, the bill would already have become law.

Rep. Dingell does not appear to have pursued the matter: the firearms registration provision was not included in GCA '68. The Congress was stampeded on "gun control" by public enthusiasm. Martin Luther King had been murdered on April 4, 1968, and Robert F. Kennedy had been murdered on June 6, 1968.

We are not the first to have seen this hearing record. But we appear to be the first to have recognized its importance. This hearing record suggests strongly that the late Senator Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) himself implanted the Nazi Weapons Law into American law, or, at very least, helped others to do so.

Now you know the ugly truth about the roots of GCA '68. But you need to see -- with your own eyes -- the hard evidence of the Nazi roots of "gun control" in America presented in "Gun Control": Gateway to Tyranny.

If you want to destroy "gun control", you can use this book to do it.

The Nazi Weapons Law of March 18, 1938, cleared the way for World War II and Nazi genocide against the Jews, Gypsies and 7,000,000 other people.

[Mech]

Posted on Wed, Nov. 19, 2003
FLORIDA LEGISLATURE

Records on gun owners assailed

www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/7294898.htm


Lawmakers consider a bill that would stop police from tracking some gun sales, a tactic that prosecutors say helps convict criminals.
BY MARC CAPUTO
[e-mail]

TALLAHASSEE - Invoking Adolf Hitler's and Fidel Castro's atrocities, a handful of conservative lawmakers have filed a bill to prohibit police from compiling gun-owner and gun-sale lists, saying it infringes on citizens' rights to privacy and to own firearms.

The proposal, supported by the National Rifle Association, says the records are not legitimate law-enforcement tools and are instead part of ``a phony excuse to harass and abuse American citizens.''

The bill will be heard today in a House judiciary committee alongside two other measures likely to provoke controversy.

One would ''immunize'' gun ranges from environmental lawsuits concerning lead and arsenic poisoning from ammunition. The other seeks to amend the state Constitution's right of privacy to give parents potential authority over an underage daughter's abortion.

If approved by the committee, they could be among the first bills passed by the House in 2004.

Rep. Dennis Baxley, an Ocala Republican, said he's troubled by the idea that police agencies across the state are tracking people who are exercising a right enshrined in the state and U.S. constitutions.

PRIME SPONSOR

Baxley said he's the prime sponsor of the NRA-backed bill limiting the liabilities of the 400 gun ranges in Florida because he wants to prevent ''environmental extremism.'' He's also co-sponsoring the gun-tracking bill with Rep. Lindsay Harrington, R-Punta Gorda.

A government employee who violates the provisions of the gun-tracking bill could face a five-year prison sentence and a fine of $5,000. The agency involved could be fined another $250,000 but wouldn't be required to furnish the employee with a taxpayer-backed lawyer.

''We're at a point in our history where the government is trying to slowly take away our rights, piece by piece, and I'm trying to stop that,'' Baxley said. ``By accumulating all this data, it could fall into the wrong hands. And that could be a treacherous thing.''

To drive the point home, the gun-tracking bill mentions Hitler and Castro by name and says both favored gun control and registration to maintain control over the population.

''It's clear what's going on here. These are polarizing social issues designed to excite conservatives in an election year,'' said Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach. ``But what's really offensive is the way they're going about it. The most outrageous thing is invoking the atrocities of the Holocaust to pass what's really an anti law-enforcement bill. It's in bad taste.''

Gelber, a former federal prosecutor, said that prohibiting police and prosecutors from tracking gun ownership will hamper law enforcement agencies, which often collect gun-sale information from pawnshops, gun stores and even federal authorities. They then use that data to establish a chain of custody in gun-crime cases to prove that a weapon was in a perpetrator's hand.

Police track the gun's serial number in a fashion similar to the way they can track a car's license plate.

The Miami-Dade state attorney's office said Tuesday that gun-tracking records have helped prosecutors catch and convict criminals.

In one case, a group of Miami police officers who stole a gun from a drug dealer and planted it on a suspect were caught after police tracked the gun to a previous arrest made by one of the officers. In another instance, prosecutors tracked a gun to the father of a man accused of shooting three of his Miami Beach neighbors in June after a birthday party kept him awake. The father told police he had given his son the gun.

The state attorney's office executive director, Theodore Mannelli, said the cases underscore the importance of collecting and storing gun-related data. Still, he said, the office has yet to take a position on the bill.

EARLY IN PROCESS

''We're still early in the process, so we want to see how this evolves,'' Mannelli said. ``But we do have some concerns.''

Among them: The bill doesn't clearly spell out when police agencies can collect gun-ownership information. And the measure seems to conflict with a law requiring pawnshops to furnish police with records of gun purchases, which the shop owners must keep for a year.

''If you don't have to register your television sets and your steak knives, which aren't protected by the Constitution, why do police have the right to track this?'' NRA board member Marion Hammer said.

[greywolf]

The ultimate consequence of gun control is the inability of citizens to resist criminal actions by their own government:

Armed law abiding citizens are no threat to police or government.

Only criminals benefit from disarming law abiding citizens/
of course police state fascists also benefit from disarming honest law abiding citizens.

We might insist a gunpoint that they actually obey the law.

thus the fear any police state has for an armed populace.


and the best arguement for an armed populace.

Tryanny fails when citizens can resist.


Americans didn't just 'steal the land' from Native americans.
Their military,
in campaigns authorized by Congress
raided villages and massacred unarmed women and children.
(legalized genocide like hitler copied)

Laws back then forbade selling guns to "indians".
Legally murdered by government agents is not a valid gun issue.

Had the "indians" been well enough armed,
the military and militia murders could have sucessfully been resisted.

First glaring example of gun control laws effictively preventing people from protecting themselves.
A genocide that armed resistance might have prevented.
That's a gun issue!

On the idea of citizens of today resisting an unconstitutional criminal action by our military.

Many of us are veterans and far more deadly than the current crop of "bushbabies" who attacked Iraq..

Such a simple concept.
why is it beyond the grasp of so many otherwise intelligent people?:

Nobody but criminals are making it easy for criminals to get guns.

The fact that criminals break laws are what defines them as criminals.

Passing a law does nothing but put words on paper.

The criminal breaks laws;
Therefore those words mean nothing to a criminal.

Waving a law book does not stop a criminal shooting or robbing you at gunpoint.

Only law abiding citizens obey laws;
And law abiding (even armed) are no threat to anyone.
We obey the law!

Such a simple concept.
why is it beyond the grasp of so many otherwise intelligent people?

Gun control laws only disarm the law abiding whose guns are not used for crime.


Difference between the US and Canada in frontier days.
Mounties were not corrupt, and Canadians could rely on law enforcement to obey the laws as they enforced them.
BTW Canada has a milder genocide program against native americans.

There is a DIRECT relationship between countries that have stricter gun control laws, and countries that have lower murder rates.
There were gun control laws in effect when Germany "legally" murdered 13 million.
There were gun control laws when 25 million russians went to suffer and die in the Gulags.
There were gun control laws when the Red Guard murdered ???nobody admits how many millions in China.

Gun control laws work!

They successfully prevent citizens' effictively resisting criminal acts by their own government!

How many Jews wished they'd had a gun as they were herded into the death camps?


BTW:
do an internet search for "Officer shot" and you find most cops are shot by their own guns.
do an internet search for "Officer involved in shooting" and you find hundreds of unarmed citizens shot by badge wielding thugs.

Tryanny fails when citizens can resist.

In the Gulag Archipelago
Solzhenitsin commented on how many of Stalin's victims wished they had had guns to make the inhuman Checka think twice before leaving home to opress honest citizens for their police state.


Tryanny fails when citizens can resist.

How many law abiding jews wished they had guns to resist as their families were murdered before their eyes?

[JerseyBluEyz]

Amen!

What else can one say?