Liberal Forum

NRA Vows To Stop Tucson From Destroying GunsThe Tucson Police Department held a gun buyback Tuesday. Police want to destroy the 206 firearms turned in to them.But the National Rifle Association says that would violate Arizona law.A line of people with guns formed in front of the midtown Tucson police station well before the 9 a.m. starting time for the buyback.At a command post in the parking lot, officers checked weapons to make sure they hadn't been stolen or used in a crime, and took the guns. The people who turned them in got a $50 Safeway gift card for every gun money donated by the grocery chain and by private contributors.Anna Jolivet had four old rifles she didn't want: "They belonged to my husband, and he passed away four years ago, and I haven't had any success in having someone take them off of me since then. So I thought this is a good time to turn them in."That's exactly what Republican Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik expected when he asked the police to do the buyback. What he didn't expect was the response after he announced the event."I've been getting threats," Kozachik says. "I've been getting emails. I've been getting phone calls in the office trying to shut this thing down or 'We're going to sue you' or 'Who do you think you are?' "Todd Rathner, an Arizona lobbyist and a national board member of the NRA, may sue. He has no problem with the gun buyback, but he does have a problem with the fate of the guns once police take possession of them."We do believe that it is illegal for them to destroy those guns," he says.Rathner says Arizona state law forces local governments to sell seized or abandoned property to the highest bidder."If property has been abandoned to the police, then they are required by ARS 12-945 to sell it to a federally licensed firearms dealer, and that's exactly what they should do," he says.That way, Rathner says, the guns can be put back in circulation or given away.The Tucson city attorney calls that a misreading of the law.Councilman Kozachik says the guns aren't being abandoned; they're being turned in voluntarily.Exactly. It's ridiuculous to say that this law would apply. These guns are not being not seized or abandoned, they are being sold voluntarily.The buyer, in this case the Tucson Police Department, can do what whatever it wants to with them.

Joe Miller, Alaska Tea Party Favorite, Wore Bulletproof Vest After GOP Senate Primary Win, Informant SaysAlaska Tea Party favorite Joe Miller wore a bulletproof vest the night he beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to become the Republican Party's 2010 Senate nominee, his former private security guard told The Huffington Post."As we're finding out that he's winning, I'm in the bathroom putting a bulletproof vest on the guy," William Fulton said in one of several interviews this week. Describing Miller as "paranoid," Fulton said the underdog conservative was afraid he'd be targeted at election headquarters in Anchorage on that August night. "It was **** ridiculous."Less than two months after primary night, Fulton made headlines of his own when he handcuffed and detained Tony Hopfinger, editor of the Alaska Dispatch, alleging the newsman was trespassing at a public event. Fulton, owner of Drop Zone, a security company/military surplus store/fugitive recovery business, was soon dodging phone calls from reporters all over the country. But there was one person Fulton couldn't ignore: his FBI handler.Fulton, as it turned out, was a federal informant at the same time he was providing security at events for the Miller campaign. Once members of an Alaska militia were arrested in a plot to kill law enforcement officials in March 2011, Fulton faded from view.Now, with militia ringleader Schaeffer Cox sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 26 years behind bars, Fulton is speaking out publicly for the first time.Fulton, formerly an active participant in the Alaska Citizens Militia who said "99.9 percent" of his business came from Republicans, now says he's fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. He said he thinks that "anybody should be allowed to marry anybody they want" and that abortion is an issue between a woman and her doctor. Global warming, he said, is real. He voted for President Barack Obama -- both times.But he's still bitter about the drubbing he took from the media after he handcuffed a member of the fourth estate -- an arrest he still defends. "The left-wing completely attacked me, including Huffington Post, you bastards," Fulton said. "I was working for you, you sons of bitches, and nobody knew it."Fulton's FBI handler was among those displeased he handcuffed a journalist."Really?" the agent said when Fulton described the incident, according to Fulton. "That was the response, 'Really?'"Fulton said the editor arrest actually helped boost his cover. "I mean, we got complete props from the right wing," he said.Under the media spotlight, Fulton shut down his security operation, but kept the military surplus store running as he got more involved in the Cox investigation. A few months later, in early February 2011, two of Cox's militia associates contacted Fulton about obtaining grenades as part of their plot against law enforcement. Cox later alleged in court that Fulton kept pushing and pushing" him to develop a plan and "fanned the flames of government overthrow." But Fulton, who was first introduced to Cox in 2008 by Frank Bailey, a former top aide to Sarah Palin, said the militia member was determined to pull off his plot.For Fulton, the bulletproof vest story demonstrates that Miller was "a paranoid guy with a bunch of guys with guns that like to hang out with him who almost became a senator." Miller, though he beat incumbent Murkowski in the GOP primary, lost the general election to Murkowski's write-in campaign, which he unsuccessfully challenged on the grounds that some voters misspelled Murkowski.For University of Alaska political science professor Gerald McBeath, it's not unexpected that Miller would don body armor, given the state's gun culture."We always thought he was a wussy, but that sort of demonstrates it," joked McBeath. Still, McBeath said he wouldn't expect Miller, a West Point graduate and Bronze Star winner, to be greatly concerned about personal security at a campaign rally on primary night."News was out that he was likely to win that primary, so maybe that was a factor weighing into what he was wearing," McBeath told HuffPost. "But I'm thinking about attempted assassinations in Alaska politics and I'm drawing a blank. We don't have a lot. It's not Arizona. And while the gun culture is widely respected, we don't have a lot of people running around and shooting at other people in political gatherings."Miller, now an online publisher, said he wasn't interested in responding to Fulton's stories. "We have responded to the Bill Fulton (and Shaffer Cox) stories many times in the past and have no further comment," spokesman Bill Peck told HuffPost in an email, asked specifically whether Miller wore a bulletproof vest the night of the primary.Read more at the link in the title.ROFL. Who would have guessed that the teabagger is a paranoid wussy.Fulton got 'props' from the right wing for handcuffing and detaining a newspaper editor.More proof that these flying monkeys love the Second Amendment, but hate the First.

Unhinged Tactical Response CEO Threatens To ‘Start Killing People’ Over Obama’s Gun ControlThe CEO of a Tennessee company that specializes in weapons and tactical training is threatening to “start killing people” if President Barack Obama moves forward with gun control measures.In a video posted to YouTube and Facebook on Wednesday, Tactical Response CEO James Yeager went ballistic over reports that the president could take executive action with minor gun control measures after the mass shooting of 20 school children in Connecticut last month.After the Drudge Report likened Obama to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin on Wednesday, pro-gun conservatives expressed outrage over the idea that the White House could act without Congress.“Vice President [Joe] Biden is asking the president to bypass Congress and use executive privilege, executive order to ban assault rifles and to impose stricter gun control,” Yeager explained in his video message. “banned word that.”“I’m telling you that if that happens, it’s going to spark a civil war, and I’ll be glad to fire the first shot. I’m not putting up with it. You shouldn’t put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you’re going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifle’s clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight.”The CEO concluded: “I’m not bad word putting up with this. I’m not letting my country be ruled by a dictator. I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.”As The Atlantic noted on Wednesday, gun advocates can stop “freaking out” because Obama cannot ban assault weapons or close the gun show loophole without Congress.The president, however, can take small steps like modernizing the background check system and limiting importation of assault rifles.By Thursday morning, the video promising violence in response to gun control measures had been removed from Yeager’s YouTube page, but the link had not been removed from Facebook.Calls to Yeager and Tactical Response were not returned by the time of publication.Update : Yeager has replaced his YouTube video with an edited version that does not include the threat to “start killing people.” Raw Story preserved a copy of the original threat below.Watch this portion of the video that James Yeager removed from the original clip, broadcast Jan. 9, 2013:http://www.rawstory....as-gun-control/For a further update see my next post.

State Suspends Gun Permit For CEO Who Said He Would ‘Start Killing People’ Over Gun Control The CEO of a weapons and tactical training company has had his gun permit suspended by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security after he published a video on YouTube in which he threatened to “start killing people” if President Obama pushes forward with increased gun control, reported News Channel 5. James Yeager, who heads the Tennessee-based company Tactical Response, issued a video Thursday in which he said, “I was mad when I said it” and “probably allowed my mouth to overrun my logic” but does not retract his statements. He admits he cut his controversial video by eliminating the part where he says he will “start killing people.” He claims he does not “condone anybody doing anything rash” or “committing any kind of felonies, up to and including aggravated assaults and murders, unless its necessary. Right now, it’s not necessary.” In addition, more videos of Yeager are on YouTube. He published a video on Oct. 30, 2012 titled, “Who is James Yeager?” which appears to be a advertisement for his company. In it, he says, “If the world collapses, not only am I going to survive, I’m going to be the bad word king.” “I’m James Yeager, and I’m prepared for everything,” he says while holding a large gun. He claims to have enough food, guns and medical supplies to last a year but that he has told his daughters not to reveal the stockpile. “And they would ask ‘Why?’ And I say, ‘You want me shooting your friends in the face?’” He shows two “AK”s that he has, then an assortment of weapons including two AR-15s and a grenade launcher. Training with him is not for the lighthearted, he argues, as “the guns are real, the bullets are real, and the danger is real.” He then shows the “team room,” which he describes as a “frat house, but with machine guns.” Another video, published in July of 2011, is an audition video for One Man Army, a TV series on the Discovery Channel. It begins with Yeager shooting an AK-47 machine gun. He claims at one point to be standing in front of his house, where his door bears the greeting, “Welcome To The House That Guns Built,” and he says that “every dollar I have earned as an adult comes from the caring of a gun.” He says his “winning strategy, both physically and intellectually, is about having a fighting mindset” and says that “all the things that make us a superior warrior are what I try to use in every aspect of my life.” In the original video that Raw Story reported on Thursday, which brought scrutiny to Yeager, he said in response to his belief that President Obama may attempt to enforce gun control by executive order, ” I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.” Watch the videos here: http://www.rawstory....er-gun-control/ Very nice. A guy who threatens to start killing people, including his daughter's friends, and he lives in a 'Frat House' with machine guns. I wonder what happens next, now that his gun permit has been suspended?

State Suspends Gun Permit For CEO Who Said He Would ‘Start Killing People’ Over Gun Control That's a pretty harsh punishment.

That's a pretty harsh punishment. I have a feeling it's just the beginning. Just read this on a survivalist website: To the point, will James Yeager go on an insane shooting spree? Well, I don't think so. As a gun enthusiast, as a proclaimed patriot, he's polarized on the pro gun control issue and he's upset about what he sees as measures to take away his rights and freedoms for something that in his opinion, will fix nothing. He had a strong emotional reaction just like everybody is having right now and he vented his frustrations on a popular media format he had access to. So, everybody just calm the heck down. The U.S. isn't a tyrannical dictatorship (yet). No one is going to start any war (yet). Let's just all take a step back and think logically, shall we? Yea I know. That's asking too much. I take it back. Let the emotions fly. http://rednecksurviv...-killing-people Yes. By all means. Let the emotions fly. I hope more people keep talking like James Yeager. It only helps the people who want common sense gun regulations, to have these fringe lunatics going around threatening to start shooting people.

Yet it's acceptable when the state threatens to kill people.

Yet it's acceptable when the state threatens to kill people. Not really, i.m.o.

Yet it's acceptable when the state threatens to kill people.Well I didn't say that, but maybe you'd care to elaborate?

america is getting ready to explode in gun violence. thank liberalism for this. it has dehumanized the population and instigated this violence they hope to use to fulfill their totalitarian agenda.

america is getting ready to explode in gun violence. thank liberalism for this. it has dehumanized the populationand instigated this violence they hope to use to fulfill their totalitarian agenda.The only people I see inciting violence with their constant fear mongering, are not Liberals.Chris Matthews went into 'nut country' tonight.These people are the fringe of the fringe.They're not helping their case.http://www.msnbc.msn...tthews#50437100

The only people I see inciting violence with their constant fear mongering, are not Liberals. Chris Matthews went into 'nut country' tonight. These people are the fringe of the fringe.http://www.msnbc.msn...tthews#50437100 the people are becoming angry because liberalism is destroying everything they hold dear. the gun violence is going to become a defensive reaction. people are fed up with the meaninglessness of liberalism. they're gonna start showing it.

The only people I see inciting violence with their constant fear mongering, are not Liberals.Chris Matthews went into 'nut country' tonight.These people are the fringe of the fringe.They're not helping their case.http://www.msnbc.msn...tthews#50437100Marlo, look, you are not the sole provider of opinion here and your above quote is simply that. Opinion, it is not a fact. Please re read your choice of words, and then wrap around why it carries no water.Lib link, "nutjobs", quid pro quo.

the people are becoming angry because liberalism is destroying everything they hold dear. the gun violence is goingto become a defensive reaction. people are fed up with the meaninglessness of liberalism. they're gonna start showing it.It's so nice to know that you speak for the people.

Marlo, look, you are not the sole provider of opinion here and your above quote is simply that. Opinion, it is not a fact. Please re read your choice of words, and then wrap around why it carries no water.Lib link, "nutjobs", quid pro quo.ROFL..I'm pretty sure I've never said that I am the sole provider of opinion on this forum, becausethat would be just plain silly.And yes. My quote was just simply that, my opinion.I think you may be confused about how things work in this thread.I post items that are of interest to me, then I give my opinion.And I welcome others to also give their own opinion.Therefore, while my words may not carry any water with you, they do with me.BTW, I love when you call me Marlo. LOL

Okay, so my husband and I were watching Hardball last night, and Chris Matthews played this clip, at which point we looked at each other with our jaws agape, and then immedialtely burst into laughter.You can now add Larry Ward, chairman of Gun Appreciation Day, to the list of gun advocates who need to keep their frikkin mouths shut.Ward was recently on CNN to defend Gun Appreciation Day on Jan. 19, a one-day call for folks to support their local gun and ammo dealers. (It's like Chic-fil-A day, but instead of rallying around a bunch of homophobes, you're supposed to exercise your Constitutional right to ignore the "well-regulated milita" part of the the Second Amendment.)Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned for Ward. Instead of winning converts with his winning words, he just ended up inserting his foot in his mouth and fellating his stinky piggies.Here's what he said:I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the countrys founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.Watch the video here.Should we have given African Americans the right to keep and bear arms BEFORE or AFTER we removed their shackles?Let us not forget that then Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Mulford Act in 1967, prohibiting the public carrying of loaded firearms in California, when it was African Americans who wanted the right to KABA.

I rarely miss NYC since I moved to PA full time in 2011, but when I see stuff like this, I do get a little homesick.I rode the subway for decades, and just for whatever the price of a token was at the time, you also got a great little show.No Pants Subway Ride 2013All are invited to participate in the 12th Annual No Pants Subway Ride.The event will take place at 3:00 PM on Sunday, January 13.REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATION:1) Willing to take pants off on subway2) Able to keep a straight face about it

^ Degenerates

This little pinhead just loves to ignore the subject of any thread and get into some stupid argument over semantics. I've been arguing with him for days because like many people I used the term 'default on the debt' in relation to the Republican's threats not to raise the debt ceiling.He always insists he's right about everything and constantly suggests that other members 'educate' themselves on the issue at hand.Check out his siggy.As any idiot can see, I didn't say we never 'shut down the government' before.What I clearly said was, 'we have never NOT raised the debt ceiling'.The goverment shutdowns in the 90's had absolutely nothing to do with the debt ceiling.They were budget disputes between President Clinton and Congress.This is a whole different animal.Hoist by his own petard.If you're going to go around acting like you know it all, you'd better know it all.I wonder if Goofbot will remove his siggy, or if he will continue to advertise his ignorance and dishonesty?He has never backed up an inch - ever. And he has been in dozens of flame wars over FACTS. No one bats a thousand - but some people are crooked little twerps.There's no one on this board who has not seen me eat crow. When I have been misinformed, I have confessed as much - many times. And considering my prodigious intellect and encyclopedic knowledge, it's fair to assume that I have been wrong less than ANYONE. Therefore, I would have less backtracks than anyone, IF everyone we as honest as I.Some are not. G00fgirl is among them.

I was doing a little research on the Second Amendment and came across this: Gun-Rights Advocates Should Fear History of Second Amendment Think it’s one short sentence that gives everyone the right to bear arms? Think again. Saul Cornell unravels the tangled history of one of our most misunderstood Amendments. Dec. 12, 2012: On Sunday, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer went on CBS’s Face The Nation and argued that people who support gun control “have to admit that there is a Second Amendment right to bear arms." Schumer’s effort to reach out to the gun-rights community may be well-intentioned, but it is also deeply ironic. If the nation truly embraced the Second Amendment as it was originally written and understood, it would be the NRA’s worst nightmare. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. It’s time for a history lesson about one of America’s most popular and least understood rights. It’s also long past time to expose the hollow, ignorant fawning over the Second Amendment by gun-rights advocates for what it is. In contrast to the libertarian fantasies that drive the contemporary debate about firearms in America, the Founders understood that liberty without regulation leads not to freedom, but anarchy. They understood that an armed body of citizens easily becomes a mob. In other words, a bunch of guys grabbing their guns and waving a flag emblazoned with a rattlesnake is not a militia. A cursory look at the history of the Second Amendment shows that regulation was a central part of its rationale—putting “well regulated” at the very start of the amendment was no accident. For instance, starting in the colonial period, states enacted a variety of “safe-storage” measures to deal with the danger posed by stored gunpowder. A 1786 law went as far as prohibiting the storage of a loaded gun in any building in Boston. But many people who defend gun rights today are more than happy to skim over the first part of the amendment in their zeal to embrace the second. (The NRA itself literally chopped off that pesky first half when it chiseled the words on the face of its old headquarters.) As a result, our modern gun-rights ideology is often unmoored from any sense of corresponding civic obligation. This ideology claims to rely heavily on the Second Amendment, and yet it is rooted not in the Founders’ vision, but in the insurrectionary ideas of Daniel Shays and those who rose up against the government of Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787. Indeed, there are gun-rights advocates today who think the Second Amendment actually gives them the right to take up arms against the government—but if that were true the Second Amendment would have repealed the Constitution’s treason clause, which defines treason as taking up arms against the government! This is all so deeply twisted: after all, the Founders framed the Constitution in part as a response to the danger posed by Shays’ Rebellion. As a result, our modern debate over gun rights has virtually nothing to with the Founders’ Second Amendment; that debate actually started about 30 years after the Amendment was adopted. What emerged was the notion that reasonable regulation was not inconsistent with the right to bear arms. In fact it was the only option in a heavily armed society. Up until the 1980s, there was no “individual-rights” theory of the Second Amendment. Many states had adopted provisions protecting an individual right to own guns, but this tradition was distinct from the Amendment. All that changed when right-wing think tanks undertook a conscious effort to fund new scholarship to rewrite the amendment’s history. At first that effort was not well received, even in conservative circles. As late as 1991, former Supreme Court chief justice Warren Burger famously called the idea of an individual right to bear arms “one of the greatest pieces of fraud—I repeat the word ‘fraud’—on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” But the revisionism ultimately won over most of the legal establishment, reaching its zenith in 2008, when the Supreme Court broke with 70 years of established jurisprudence and affirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have guns in the home for reasons of self-defense. In order to do this, the majority followed the lead of gun-rights advocates and essentially excised the first clause of the amendment—the “well-regulated militia” part—from the text. (Let us pause briefly to note the irony that the opinion, District of Columbia v. Heller, was written by none other than Justice Antonin Scalia—America’s staunchest defender of originalism, or reading the Constitution according to its supposed original meaning.) If the Heller court had simply said, “Look, most Americans think the Amendment is about an individual right, and no one really cares what James Madison or the average man on the street in 1791 thought”—then the case would be pretty uncontroversial. Instead, Scalia produced a pompous, error-filled opinion that has done more to discredit his beloved originalism than a generation of liberal academics ever could. Even leading conservative legal scholars have harshly criticized the ruling: federal judge Richard Posner said most professional historians reject Scalia’s historical analysis in the case, and described Scalia’s jurisprudence as “incoherent”. Perhaps even more damning, J. Harvie Wilkinson, a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan,comparted Heller to Roe v. Wade. Of course, the fact that the Second Amendment is now treated as an individual right has almost no bearing on gun regulation, because no right is absolute. You can’t shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater, nor can you fire a gun in one. And most Americans—including those who own guns—are open to reasonable gun regulation. The only people who oppose such policies are the NRA, extreme gun-rights advocates, and the craven politicians who do their bidding. But what would such regulation look like? For one thing, we could have a comprehensive system of firearm licensing and registration. At the moment we have none (even though it is hard to fathom how one might ever muster a militia without such a system). To avoid the irrational fears of gun confiscation, such a system ought to be instituted by the states, which maintained militias long before the Second Amendment existed. Could anyone with even a minimal understanding of the history of the Second Amendment seriously maintain that a state-based system violated the Amendment’s text or spirit? The bottom line is that although we hear the Second Amendment invoked all the time, few of those who trumpet it the most vehemently realize that restoring the Founders’ vision of the Second Amendment would be a call for more gun regulation, not less. http://www.thedailyb...-amendment.html Further research showed me thatafter the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army was disbanded and state militias became the new nation's sole ground army. Our firsttrained standing army, the Legion of the United States, wasn't established until 1792, a year after the Bill of Rights was adopted. So, since we had no standing army when the Second Amendment was adopted, they had to depend on state militias, hence the phrase 'a well regulated militia'. I hear a lot of people say that the Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms in case we have to rebel against a tyrannical government, yet it seems that the Founders framed the Constitution in part as a response to the danger posed by a rebellion against the government (Shay's Rebellion). Ironic.