Exercising the Second Amendment right?

Of course, something which begins "A well regulated militia" and says it's necessary to the security of the free state might actually have something to do with it.

And before Orlin or Greg make more dumb comments:

In the second article, it is declared, that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state; a proposition from which few will dissent. Although in actual war, the services of regular troops are confessedly more valuable; yet, while peace prevails, and in the commencement of a war before a regular force can be raised, the militia form the palladium of the country. They are ready to repel invasion,to suppress insurrection, and preserve the good order and peace of government. That they should be well regulated, is judiciously added. A disorderly militia is disgraceful to itself, and dangerous not to the enemy, but to its own country. The duty of the state government is, to adopt such regulations as will tend to make good soldiers with the least interruptions of the ordinary and useful occupations of civil life. In this all the Union has a strong and visible interest.

But, given the type of things gun nuts say, I can see how they might be willing to say that's just a distraction from the meat of the subject: no matter how strong the evidence that's just plain WRONG.

Anyway,  this picture is making its rounds on the internet with people wondering if this is real or a sick joke.  Of course, given the amount of gun violence in the US, that is a good question.  The gun looks fake, but lots of fake guns can look pretty real.

So, where are the truly responsible gun owners?  I've been wanting to write about the "pro-gun" crowd being a better argument for strict gun control.  Of course, deep down they want to see more guns and more people walking around with guns--even if they are total morons.

But, what better argument is there for serious restrictions on firearm ownership when guns are so much a part of the culture and people want to see them everywhere that we end up with pictures like this? :

Isn't this the logical outcome of all the wanting to see guns everywhere?

I hope you feel really good about yourselves and feel smug about how good you are with your guns.

Anyway, More info on the pic here: http://nolongervictimsblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/nolonger-victims-urgent-help-needed-child-abuse/

Abuse of By-back Program

The NRA is fond of promoting the insanity and poor critical thinking of the phrase "guns don't kill people, people kill people."
A more factually correct statement summing up the causal and correlational relationship between firearms and people killing people is that people using guns kill people. Sometimes the people they kill are other people, sometimes the people they kill are themselves, and sometimes they only wound, trheaten, harass or intimidate people.
The NRA tries to pretend that firearms are not lethal weapons; that is inherently dishonest.  The NRA makes money for gun manufacturers by promoting a violent gun culture, one which advocates for gun violence in order to sell more guns for the gun manufacturers they represent.  They promote laws which make it easier, not more difficult, for guns to be sold that go directly and indirectly into the hands of criminals and terrorists, because their goal is to sell more guns.
That they are not primarily focused on legal gun use, but rather on maiximizing gun sales is evident in the NRA having someone on their board like Ted Nugent, a chronic advocate for violence against individuals with whom he disagrees, and a serial violator of laws.  That they intend to promote a violent gun culture where people take the law into their own hands is evident in the material and positions they take, as evidenced by their spokespeople and their statements.
Police should know what the quality is of the guns they purchase in these buybacks.  The situation should be corrected so that an appropriate minimum and maximum are established depending on the state and quality of the firearm in these purchases to prevent this kind of abuse.  But it is also a statement of their lack of character that this group would act this way; it is an indication of the contempt for the boundaries between legal and illegal firearms that this group would undermine an effort by the police to get illegal guns off the streets.

From MSNBC.com :

Chicago gun buyback unknowingly raises money for NRA kids' gun camp

By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com

Chicago’s firearm buyback program, titled “Don’t kill a dream, save a life,” aims to get dangerous weapons off the street. But a pro-gun rights group gleefully says it used the program to turn in “non-firing junk” to raise money for a National Rifle Association youth shooting camp.
Guns Save Life, based in Champaign, Ill., three hours south of Chicago, turned in dozens of guns and BB guns it had collected – “rusty scrap metal,” the group called the load – taking home $6,240.
Of the 5,500 guns turned in on June 23, 60 came from Guns Save Life.
The Chicago Police Department program pays $100 for every gun and $10 every BB gun, air gun or replica, no questions asked. The money is given in the form of a Visa debit card.
“We are redirecting funds from people who would work against the private ownership of firearms to help introduce the next generation to shooting safely and responsibly,” John Boch, head of Guns Save Life, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Boch said the money will go toward paying for ammunition for the youth camp.
Police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton was not amused, according to the Sun-Times.
“It’s unfortunate that this group is abusing a program intended to increase the safety of our communities,” Stratton said.

From the New York Times: Felons Finding It Easy to Get Gun Rights Reinstated

I have no problem with felons getting their voting rights restored after they serve their sentences; it is not possible for them to use their voting right to harm anyone else, and it has a clear benefit in reducing the probability of recidivism.

But a firearm? Is there anything that is MORE likely than possibly alcohol or drug use which would make it EASIER, a temptation, to reoffend and to harm others. Who do we have to blame for this insanity? Who else - the NRA and gun nuts!

No wonder states fail to comply with the gun check data base; they've been corrupted by the NRA; they plan to give these felons their guns back, due to single issue fanatics, due to the effective lobbying of gun manufacturers. The safety and security of the rest of us who live in a lawful society be damned, so long as they make their blood money profits.

This section, from page 3 (of 5) particularly caught my attention, both because it addresses the irresponsible and outrageous efforts of the NRA specifically, but also because this is a former Minnesota senator.  He was very much a conservative who represented MY home state, serving from 1978 until 1995, to give this a better historic context for how LONG the NRA has been the irresponsible marketing arm of gun manufacturers, how long they have NOT been advocates for 'responsible gun ownership'.

When Senator David F. Durenberger, a Minnesota Republican, realized after the law passed that thousands of felons, including those convicted of violent crimes, in his state would suddenly be getting their gun rights back, he sought the N.R.A.’s help in rolling back the provision. Doug Kelley, his chief of staff at the time, thought the group would “surely want to close this loophole.”
But the senator, Mr. Kelley recalled, “ran into a stone wall,” as the N.R.A. threatened to pull its support for him if he did not drop the matter, which he eventually did.
“The N.R.A. slammed the door on us,” Mr. Kelley said. “That absolutely baffled me.”
Until then, the avenues for restoration had been narrow and few: a direct appeal to the federal firearms agency, which conducted detailed background investigations; a state pardon expressly authorizing gun possession, or a presidential pardon. Felons convicted of crimes involving guns or other weapons, as well as those convicted of violating federal gun laws, were expressly barred from applying to the federal firearms agency.

From the NYTimes:

Restoring Gun Rights to Felons: Every year, thousands of felons across the country have their gun rights reinstated, often with little or no review. (my emphasis added - DG)

By MICHAEL LUO

Published: November 13, 2011

In February 2005, Erik Zettergren came home from a party after midnight with his girlfriend and another couple. They had all been drinking heavily, and soon the other man and Mr. Zettergren’s girlfriend passed out on his bed. When Mr. Zettergren went to check on them later, he found his girlfriend naked from the waist down and the other man, Jason Robinson, with his pants around his ankles.

 

Documents: Felons and Guns

Related

• Some With Histories of Mental Illness Petition to Get Their Gun Rights Back (July 3, 2011)

• Times Topic: Gun Control

Follow @NYTNational for breaking news and headlines.

Geoff Crimmins/Moscow-Pullman Daily News, via Associated Press

Erik Zettergren killed a man soon after regaining gun rights.

Enraged, Mr. Zettergren ordered Mr. Robinson to leave. After a brief confrontation, Mr. Zettergren shot him in the temple at point-blank range with a Glock-17 semiautomatic handgun. He then forced Mr. Robinson’s hysterical fiancée, at gunpoint, to help him dispose of the body in a nearby river.
It was the first homicide in more than 30 years in the small town of Endicott, in eastern Washington. But for a judge’s ruling two months before, it would probably never have happened.
For years, Mr. Zettergren had been barred from possessing firearms because of two felony convictions. He had a history of mental health problems and friends said he was dangerous. Yet Mr. Zettergren’s gun rights were restored without even a hearing, under a state law that gave the judge no leeway to deny the application as long as certain basic requirements had been met. Mr. Zettergren, then 36, wasted no time retrieving several guns he had given to a friend for safekeeping.
“If he hadn’t had his rights restored, in this particular instance, it probably would have saved the life of the other person,” said Denis Tracy, the prosecutor in Whitman County, who handled the murder case.
Under federal law, people with felony convictions forfeit their right to bear arms. Yet every year, thousands of felons across the country have those rights reinstated, often with little or no review. In several states, they include people convicted of violent crimes, including first-degree murder and manslaughter, an examination by The New York Times has found.
While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. The restoration movement has gathered force in recent years, as gun rights advocates have sought to capitalize on the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms.
This gradual pulling back of what many Americans have unquestioningly assumed was a blanket prohibition has drawn relatively little public notice. Indeed, state law enforcement agencies have scant information, if any, on which felons are getting their gun rights back, let alone how many have gone on to commit new crimes.
While many states continue to make it very difficult for felons to get their gun rights back — and federal felons are out of luck without a presidential pardon — many other jurisdictions are far more lenient, The Times found. In some, restoration is automatic for nonviolent felons as soon as they complete their sentences. In others, the decision is left up to judges, but the standards are generally vague, the process often perfunctory. In some states, even violent felons face a relatively low bar, with no waiting period before they can apply.  
The Times examined hundreds of restoration cases in several states, among them Minnesota, where William James Holisky II, who had a history of stalking and terrorizing women, got his gun rights back last year, just six months after completing a three-year prison sentence for firing a shotgun into the house of a woman who had broken up with him after a handful of dates. She and her son were inside at the time of the shooting.
“My whole family’s convinced that at some point he’ll blow a gasket and that he’ll come and shoot someone,” said Vicky Holisky-Crets, Mr. Holisky’s sister.
Also last year, a judge in Cleveland restored gun rights to Charles C. Hairston, who had been convicted of first-degree murder in North Carolina in 1971 for shooting a grocery store owner in the head with a shotgun. He also had another felony conviction, in 1995, for corruption of a minor.
Margaret C. Love, a pardon lawyer based in Washington, D.C., who has researched gun rights restoration laws, estimated that, depending on the type of crime, in more than half the states felons have a reasonable chance of getting back their gun rights.