In mid-April, Kansas passed a law asserting that federal gun regulations do not apply to guns made and owned in Kansas. Under the law, Kansans could manufacture and sell semi-automatic weapons in-state without a federal license or any federal oversight.
Kansas' "Second Amendment Protection Act" backs up its states' rights claims with a penalty aimed at federal agents: when dealing with "Made in Kansas" guns, any attempt to enforce federal law is now a felony. Bills similar to Kansas' law have been introduced in at least 37 other states. An even broader bill is on the desk of Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell. That bill would exempt any gun owned by an Alaskan from federal regulation. In Missouri, a bill declaring federal gun laws "null and void" passed by an overwhelming majority in the state house, and is headed for debate in the senate.
Mobilizing the pre-Civil-War doctrine of "nullification," these bills assert that Congress has overstepped its ability to regulate guns — and that states, not the Supreme Court, have the ultimate authority to decide whether a law is constitutional or not.
The head of the Kansas's State Rifle Association, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association, says she put the bill together and found it a sponsor. While the NRA regularly lauds passages of states' gun-rights laws, it stayed silent on Kansas' law, and, so far, has kept a low profile on nullification. (The group did not respond to our requests for comment.)
The video ad above was put together by VoteVets.org, and is currently running on various social media. It asks viewers to contact Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and urge him to support universal background checks for all firearms. Glenn Kunkel, an Iraq War veteran who received two Purple Hearts during two tours of duty, is featured in the ad firing an AR-15 at a water-filled mannequin.
Kunkel says:
"I had to pass a background check to join the Marine Corps, before I could carry a weapon similar to this one in Iraq. Here at home, anyone can purchase this weapon, no questions asked."
"I support the Second Amendment, but we've seen what can happen when these fall into the wrong hands."
"I needed a background check to carry similar weapons in combat. We should require the same here at home. Call Senator Flake and tell him to support Universal Background Checks."
VoteVets says there are other versions available for other Senators, as well.
The U.S. Senate is set to vote on universal background checks in early April, and despite the fact that 92% of Americans support the measure, its passage remains in doubt. Watch VoteVets video ad, and tell your Senators that you support universal background checks.
Franklin Sain, a 42-year-old Colorado Springs man, was arrested last Friday for threatening Colorado lawmaker Rep. Rhonda Fields (D-Aurora) over gun control legislation that she is currently sponsoring and that recently passed in the state House.
Franklin Sain is accused of threatening Fields and her daughter using racial and sexual slurs.
Fields told KOA Radio that she does not know Sain, and said "All I know is the kinds of things that he said were very inappropriate, and they're alarming, and they were very intimidating."
"It started last week around the 13th or the 14th," Fields told KOA. "And then the emails got worse; it started to escalate until it got to a letter that was sent to the Capitol. At first, I was really taken aback by the tone and the language in it, especially the racial overtones - I've just never seen something like that before. No one has ever said those things or written those things towards me in the last two-and-a-half years that I've been serving the state. So, I was like 'Wow, this is unbelievable.' And then they kept coming."
9News has obtained the arrest affidavit, and now the full scope of threats allegedly left by Sain over a nine day period are viewable. The threat of violence and use of racist language is prevalent throughout the messages, and they messages appear to escalate in tone by the ninth day. Caution: The language used is explicit and extremely offensive.
There are many misspelled words and incorrect grammar usage in the messages, and they appear as written in the affidavit, along with censoring of offensive words.
According to an affidavit, one of the letters alleged to have been written by the Colorado Springs man reads, "Rhonda Fields, mother of [Field's daughter]. Death to both." The letter goes on to say "There will be blood! I'm coming for you, N----- B----."
In one of the emails, Sain allegedly wrote, "hopefully somebody Gifords [sic] your asses with a gun."
The following is one of seven emails police say Sain sent to Fields:
"THANKS N----- C---! You really think passing nay more laws will stop gun violence? You and that other N----- OBAMA are living in fantasy land. Chicago and DC have the most strict gun laws in the nation and more people die from gun violence than anywhere. You f---ing c---s are pathetic excuse for civil servants. Hell, n-----s love shooting themselves with GATS, isn't that what your people call it. What you have done here is creater [sic] criminals out of law abiding citizens, and put yourself out of a job. You politicians have no idea what you are even doing anyway, do you know how long it takes some to change a magazine, less than a second, so what if some with experience decides to flip out and bring their gun in with 5 or so 10 round magazines, they can do the same amount of damage. Limiting magazine sizes is stupididty, [sic] and will not work..."
Then the most unhinged of Sain's messages also refers to Field's daughter:
Rhonda Fields, N----- C---, Mother of -----, Death to Both, All N----- Back to Africa, F--- you, F--- Your Laws, I Keep my 30 Round Magazines, There Will Be Blood!, I'm Coming For You, N----- B----
Sain told police that he didn't mean to threaten Fields, and regrets the language he used. He has no prior record, and is the chief operating officer at SofTec Solutions in Englewood, Colorado, where he does consulting work for the government and private organizations
House Speaker Mark Ferrandino and two other Democratic Reps also received similar threatening messages.
Tuesday afternoon, SofTec announced the suspension of Sain via Facebook:
"SofTec Solutions, Inc. has been informed of allegations against our employee, Mr. Frank Sain. We are shocked to learn of these allegations and are taking this matter very seriously. If true, these actions are highly inappropriate and will not be tolerated. Pending SofTec’s investigation into this matter, Mr. Sain has been suspended immediately from further duties at SofTec. SofTec Solutions is a minority-owned, small business and we employ a large diverse workforce. We will absolutely not tolerate any racial, sexual, gender-based slurs or threats of violence by employees."
The full arrest affidavit is available online here, but caution, as the language is explicit and offensive. Sain is scheduled to appear in court on March 8, 2013.
A Portland gun rights activist and a few of his friends decided to roam the streets in Portland on Wednesday in order to "educate the public" on their second amendment rights, with their AR-15s slung over their shoulders.
Medford police have received at least 67 complaints about Warren R. Drouin openly carrying a semi-auto rifle or handgun in a wide range of public settings between June 2011 and December 2012, according to agency records. One episode generated more than two dozens calls to police. At least one Medford business barred him from the property because of his behavior.
The 22-year-old Medford man is so familiar to police in the southern Oregon city that top officials in the 103-member police force refer to him simply as "Warren" when describing their interactions with him. Officers receive training specifically on how to approach Drouin and others in the so-called open carry movement, which promotes the ability to openly carry guns.
Tim Doney, Medford's deputy police chief, said department officials have emphasized to officers that not everyone openly carrying a weapon will be as benign as Drouin.
"We go out on every one of these calls," Doney said. "And who knows? The next one may be the one that is an active shooter."
You can listen to some of the 911 calls from terrified citizens who weren't aware they were being educated at this link.
I really don't think this is the way to go about winning the hearts and minds of people who supportive of gun control, and I think these "activists" know that. Or...maybe not. From Warren Drouin's Facebook page, he says he was "homeschooled," and...:
"I am a full flesh libertarian and a gun right extremest. We the people should control our government and bring us back to when we had and own our Life, Liberty, and Property. I hate socialist, dictators, and corrupt Government. We are losing are rights every day while not knowing it and then it become to late."
In the Youtube video below, listen to the runaround the armed men give the local police when they simply ask to see their gun permits (You need a concealed carry permit to carry a loaded weapon in public) and identification:
U.S. gun policy is set by both state and federal law. We previously published an explainer on the ways states have eased gun restrictions. But federal policy, too, has become more gun friendly in recent years — and we're not just talking about the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the handgun ban in Washington, D.C., and held that people have a right to keep guns in their homes.
Here, we outline five federal policies relating to guns you may not have known about:
1. A federal firearms trace database is off-limits to the public.
How often do federally licensed gun dealers sell guns that are then used in crimes? It's hard to know, because for nearly a decade such gun trace data has been hidden from the public. Even local law enforcement had been, until recently, barred from accessing the database for anything but narrow investigations.
Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, licensed dealers are required to record certain information about a buyer and the gun's serial number at the point of sale. These records go into a database maintained by The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. A tool to catch criminals, the database in the early 2000s became a political flashpoint, as the Washington Post details. Outside research tying seized guns to a small handful of dealers spurred the federal government to impose tougher sanctions and inspections on gun retailers and manufacturers.
But those sanctions sparked a backlash: Since 2003, the Tiahrt Amendments, so named after the former Kansas Republican congressman who introduced the measures, have concealed the database from the public. Prior to 2010, local police could access the database only to investigate an individual crime but not to look for signs of broader criminal activity.
Despite the relaxing of some restrictions, parts of the original Tiahrt Amendment remain in place. The ATF can't require gun dealers to conduct an inventory to account for lost or stolen guns; records of customer background checks must be destroyed within 24 hours if they are clean enough to allow the sale; and trace data can't be used in state civil lawsuits or in an effort to suspend or revoke a gun dealer's license.
It's staggering to think back on how much gun violence we've seen in 2012. Bill Moyers made this video essay after the Colorado movie theater shootings, and his message bears repeating.
In this web-exclusive video essay from July 2012, Bill says the deadly shooting in Colorado is yet another tragic indication that our society — and too many of our politicians — covet guns more than common sense or life itself. The National Rifle Association in particular, Bill says, “has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel and deadly hoax.”
"Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence may cost our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns."
The full transcript of Moyers' video essay, "Living Under the Gun," follows:
"You might think Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of and spokesman for the mighty American gun lobby, The National Rifle Association, has an almost cosmic sense of timing. In 2007, at the NRA’s annual convention in St. Louis, he warned the crowd that, "Today, there is not one firearm owner whose freedom is secure."'
"Two days later, a young man opened fire on the campus of Virginia Tech, killing 32 students, staff and teachers. Just last week LaPierre showed up at the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty here in New York and spoke out against what he called "Anti-freedom policies that disregard American citizens’ right to self-defense."'
"Now at least 12 are dead in Aurora, Colorado, gunned down by a mad man at a showing of the new Batman movie filled with make-believe violence. One of the guns the shooter used was an AK-47 type assault weapon that was banned in 1994. The National Rifle Association saw to it that the ban expired in 2004. The NRA is the best friend a killer’s instinct ever had."
"Obviously, LaPierre’s timing isn’t cosmic, just coincidental; as Shakespeare famously wrote, “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” In other words, people. People with guns. There are an estimated 300 million guns in the United States, one in four adult Americans owns at least one and most of them are men. The British newspaper The Guardian, reminds us that over the last 30 years, "The number of states with a law that automatically approves licenses to carry concealed weapons provided an applicant clears a criminal background check has risen from eight to 38."'
"Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence may cost our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns."
"So why do we always act so surprised? Violence is alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass and the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012."
"We are after all a country which began with the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on arms against Native Americans for its Westward expansion. In truth, more settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than from Indian attacks – we were not only bloodthirsty, we were also inept."
"Nonetheless, we have become so gun loving, so blasé about home-grown violence that in my lifetime alone, far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter – a 9-millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol – doubled."
"We are fooling ourselves. That the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the second amendment’s guarantee of a "well-regulated militia" be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like. That’s a license for murder and mayhem and it’s a great fraud that has entered our history."
"There’s a video of which I’d like to remind you. You can see it on YouTube. In it, Adam Gadahn, an American born member of al Qaeda, the first U.S. citizen charged with treason since 1952, urges terrorists to carry out attacks on the United States. Right before your eyes he says: "America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely, without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?"'
"The killer in Colorado waited only for an opportunity, and there you have it -- the arsenal of democracy transformed into the arsenal of death and the NRA -- the NRA is the enabler of death -- paranoid, delusional, and as venomous as a scorpion. With the weak-kneed acquiescence of our politicians, the National Rifle Association has turned the Second Amendment of the Constitution into a cruel hoax, a cruel and deadly hoax. I'm Bill Moyers."
