Anti-Gun Policies at Work

[revwardoc]

When knives are outlawed, only outlaws will have knives.

Geez! This world is really going downhill.

[darrels joy]

Barak Obama: Firearms SALESMAN of the month!


Since the end of the last election gun sales in America have skyrocketed and the firearms industry barely keeps up with the demand. The ranks of the "seasoned" gun owners have swollen with millions and millions of people who until Hopechangey was elected President would have never considered buying and owning a firearm.

If somebody deserves credit for this incredible boom of the firearms industry and the revival 2nd Amendment rights, it is President elect Barak Hussain Obama.
And now, a gun range in California is doing just this: giving credit where it is due.

http://transsylvaniaphoenix.blogspot...-of-month.html

[MORTARDUDE]

There is an interesting email making the rounds on the 'Net that claims 18 states have coded ammuntion bills in the works. See here :

http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ammunition.asp

Snopes is researching and hasn't called it yet.

Larry

[darrels joy]

The usual suspect: How the Baikal became Britain's favourite killing machine


By Adam Luck


Last updated at 10:00 PM on 10th January 2009

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This is a Baikal IZH-79, exhibit 'MAJ/4' in a recent crown court trial... and the new weapon of choice on our gunravaged streets. Live traced its alarmingly smooth passage from Russia to east London to reveal the macabre popularity of Britain's favourite killing machine



The Baikal IZH-79: The handgun can be bought for as little as £1,200 from gangs in the UK's largest cities
From where the detective-sergeant is standing – shielded from the bright summer sunshine in a doorway set back from Romford Road’s halal chip shops and East European-run car-wash forecourts – he can still clearly see the entrance to the Shah Jalal Mosque. He watches closely as the faithful start to spill out of the Islamic centre after prayers.
They trust their fate to God as they duck in and out of the traffic that clogs the arteries of Manor Park, a rundown suburb a couple of miles from what will be London’s 2012 Olympic Village.

DS Trevor Gardner’s targets are easy to spot. They are two young black men among a largely Bangladeshi congregation. Their swagger and bling are in sharp contrast to the traditional worshippers’ outfits of kurta and kufi.

Now gathering pace, the two leave their fellow worshippers behind before crossing the street and turning into Carlyle Road, unaware they are being shadowed by the detective. A few minutes later they reach the corner of the dog-leg road.

They turn left and left again before stopping at the front door of number 106. They pause momentarily before disappearing through the door of the Victorian terraced house. The property is identical to its neighbours bar the unkempt front garden.

Gardner now waits for about 15 minutes from his new vantage point. Then one of the pair saunters out of the house carrying a package in a blue plastic bag. Confident of his anonymity, he glances cursorily in both directions before approaching a silver Mercedes people carrier that’s just parked up. He ducks inside and 30 seconds later emerges without the bag.

Ricky Denty, 28, was jailed for six years after pleading guilty to possession of firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life

The driver pulls away almost immediately. Ricky Denty, a member of a south London street gang called the Muslim Boys, is tall, black, well-muscled and shaven-headed and wears a smart leather jacket with a hoodie. He turns the vehicle into the traffic flowing along Romford Road where, just before hitting the Stratford one-way system, he finds he can go no further; a police car has pulled across his bows. Other police vehicles quickly congregate.

Nine officers from the Met’s SO19 armed support unit, dressed in black and kitted out with Heckler & Koch carbines, swarm around him. They shout clear instructions to Denty to get out of the car. He complies; he is spread across the bonnet and frisked while officers begin a search of the vehicle.

The package is found in a hidden compartment above the wheel arch of the Mercedes. Gardner’s colleagues warily remove layer after layer of tightly wrapped plastic and bubble wrap to reveal two silencers, 100 rounds of Czech and South African ammunition and two 9mm Baikal IZH-79 handguns. Black and compact, each gun fits comfortably in the palm of a teenager’s hand and weighs, unloaded, a modest 2lb.

A Baikal can be bought for as little as £1,200 from gangs in the UK’s larger cities. With the silencer, it can be used discreetly at close quarters, meaning targets rarely escape with their lives; it is so cheap, so reliable and so accurate that it has completely changed British gang culture and street crime.
Indeed, the police are unsurprised with their find. The Baikal is now so ubiquitous it’s known to both sides of the law simply as the ‘hitman kit’.

In the court case that follows his arrest, Denty pleads guilty to possession of a firearm and is jailed for six years. The file is added to the growing pile of identical offences. Baikals are flooding our streets.

In its 2008 report on the threat of organised crime to the UK, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) noted that since 2006 the seizures of guns in the country have increased both in number and in volume of weapons, and ‘of the seizures, there has been an increased trend of Baikal gas pistols converted to fire 9mm ammunition entering from Lithuania’.
Denty’s brace of Baikals ended their lives in August 2007 as exhibits labelled MAJ/2 and MAJ/4 in court No 5 of Snaresbrook Crown Court, east London. Designed to fire teargas pellets, they were produced in Russia, made lethal in Lithuania, smuggled into the UK by a well-run Eastern European gang – one gang member was so well enmeshed in British life he claimed incapacity benefit and had a series of eye operations on the NHS – and received by a British divorcee looking for some pin money.

The story of Denty’s Baikals – pieced together here for the first time – shows only too well how they have become as much a part of the fabric of British criminal life as crack cocaine and house burglary...


FROM RUSSIA...

Izhevsk is 2,500 miles east of Manor Park; draw a line from London to Izhevsk and Moscow appears at the 1,800-mile mark. It is a drab, cold backwater in the Urals, scarcely evolved from its communist past; there is a Lenin Street, a Karl Marx Street, a statue of Lenin on Soviet Street. Old buses, trams and Lada, Volga and Moskvich cars rattle and cough through the city. There is only the occasional gleaming black jeep.

Little of the money and glamour that has arrived in other parts of Russia with the explosion of capitalism has made its way to Izhevsk. And yet this grey, decaying outpost has a place in history. It is the centre of Russia’s arms industry, the birth place of the AK-47. Some 80 per cent of Russian guns are made here.

On this gloomy November day, President Dmitry Medvedev has dropped in (his visit has closed all airspace around the city for several hours). Hundreds of armed militia are on the streets as he reviews progress in the arms industry; he is banking on growth here to pull Moscow out of recession.

The two arms factories that produce the guns dominate the city. One, the Seventies industrial block that houses Izhevsky Mekhanichesky Zavod, is the home of the Baikal. Denty’s guns were made here but were never intended to kill. After World War II, Izhevsky developed the Makarov pistol for the Soviet military and police.

Production of Makarovs ceased in the early Nineties; the Baikal is a facsimile of this gun, with one modification: the barrel was to fire 8mm gas cartridges instead of bullets. In the anarchy that gripped Russia after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Baikals were used to ward off muggers or rapists with CS gas cartridges.

It was not long, however, before the world’s leading gangsters realised that with an easy modification, the Baikal could be an ideal substitute for the Makarov.


... TO LITHUANIA

On a potholed backstreet in Alytus, a small town in southern Lithuania, there is a row of lock-up garages with double wooden doors. They look rarely used but in fact they were the secret hub of a network of makeshift factories where, until recently, one of Lithuania’s most feared criminal syndicates, the Baubliai gang, converted Baikals into deadly weapons.

Most guns manufactured specifically to fire gas cartridges are made of cheap components and aren’t strong enough to fire real ammunition; the Baikal, though, is made of solid steel.

As well-established drug dealers, the Baubliai gang already controlled a criminal network that stretched from Russia to the UK. It was a simple step to add guns to their exports. Baikal pistols cannot be obtained legally in Lithuania but the gang bought vast quantities over the counter in Russia and neighbouring Latvia, where they are readily available. When bought in bulk (up to 1,000 pistols at a time) they cost between £8 and £10 each.

Only the senior members of the gang had the necessary equipment and expertise to rebore the pistols so they could fire 9mm Czech and South African ammunition. The barrels were also threaded to fit silencers, a demand of British criminals who were particularly keen to get their hands on the new product.

In Britain, where hand guns are outlawed, criminals had to rely on either crude makeshift weapons or incredibly expensive, hard-to-source pistols. The arrival of the Baikal changed all that – gang members such as Denty could now get hold of a reliable, cheap, deadly weapon with relative ease.

The Alytus production line converted countless weapons before a major joint operation last year by the Lithuanian police and secret services, SOCA and the Metropolitan Police smashed the ring in a dramatic armed raid. It led to the arrest of six men, including Remigijus Laniauskas.
In an earlier British court case of three other Lithuanian gun-runners, Laniauskas was named as the head of an organised crime group that had been supplying guns to the UK. With his shaven head, hard-lined features and bull neck – and his Soviet army training – Laniauskas presents a chilling figure, a man who now stands accused in Lithuania of bringing death to British streets.


... TO BRITAIN

The only thing that made the car transporter and its two cars stand out at Thurrock Services on the M25 was its Lithuanian number-plates. Police watched as two men got out of a car and walked over to the driver of the transporter.

Blind Lithuanian Romas Dumbliauskas was a senior member of the Alytus syndicate

They knew they were Lithuanian nationals Romas Dumbliauskas, 32, and Bernardas Kudarauskas, 32. Despite being blind, the thick set, softly spoken Dumbliauskas was a senior member of the Alytus syndicate. He says he lost his sight in a car accident but during an earlier trial for gang rape at which he was acquitted, one witness said he was blinded during a gang shoot-out in Amsterdam. He claimed incapacity benefit, had a series of eye operations on the NHS and went on to claim legal aid. His fellow British resident Kudarauskas was his trusted lieutenant, as well as his eyes and ears.

After a short discussion with the driver of the transporter, the pair returned to Dumbliauskas’s home in Trader Road, Beckton, east London, where he lived with his wife and daughter.

Three days later, police saw the pair, along with another man, driving to Carlyle Road, Manor Park. Armed police pulled them over. The gang were on their way to deliver their deadly order. In the car detectives discovered a bag under the front seat, inches from the feet of the third man, Danius Barzdaitis. The bag contained two Baikal pistols, two silencers and 72 rounds of Czech and South African 9mm ammunition.
The guns had been smuggled into the UK hidden inside vehicles. Dumbliauskas’s cover as a car dealer allowed him to import vehicles in which he hid weapons. Some of the guns were smuggled inside car batteries that had been lined with lead. This ensured they did not show up on X-rays. The transporters were driven across Europe by ‘mules’ with clean driving licences and no criminal records. The gang masters also paid private individuals already travelling to the UK to act as couriers.
But the guns still had to go through one further person. In order to distance themselves from the hardware, the gang ensured they were sold on to a ‘fence’ in the UK, who then sold them on the streets.


... TO MANOR PARK

At 5.30pm on an August afternoon, a black Vauxhall Corsa with two men inside pulls up in front of 106 Carlyle Road. Out of the house comes a dishevelled-looking woman who goes up to the car and talks to one of the men. He gets out and accompanies her into the house. Fifteen minutes later, the front door opens again and the man walks out, gets back into the car and drives off.
At 9pm the same car returns to Carlyle Road for a second visit. Minutes later the driver gets back in and drives off in the same direction that Denty had taken a few months before. A hidden armed police team wait until the driver reaches nearby Romford Road before making the move and, just yards from where Denty was arrested, they pull over the car.

Glenn Jacobs admitted possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life and was sentenced to four years in prison in 2007

Inside are Glenn Jacobs, who handles guns for the notorious Peckham Boys, and his driver Sammy Idemudia. Although Jacobs manages to escape in the chase that follows, police recover 55 rounds of 9mm Czech Sellier & Bellot and South African Pretoria Metal Pressing ammunition that Jacobs throws away. He is subsequently arrested.

The house on Carlyle Road has been under continuous police surveillance for four months. It transpires that the woman who lives there, 42-year-old divorcee Jeanette Hodges, is a fence for the Lithuanian syndicate. She also has an impressive wealth of underworld contacts in the UK, many through her son Trevor Hodges, who was then in jail for his part in a string of extremely violent car-jackings.

Trevor Hodges exploited his time inside to build up a lengthy client list for his mother, including members of some of London’s most notorious gangs, the Muslim Boys and the Peckham Boys; members of the latter were jailed for the murder of schoolboy Damilola Taylor.
Jeanette Hodges built up a friendship with Dumbliauskas when she began selling their cigarettes, so when her son’s contacts asked her to source guns she immediately turned to the Lithuanians. She could get guns within four to six weeks. The price was between £1,200 and £1,400 per gun if they were bought in bulk. A one-off order would cost £2,250.
After their four-month surveillance operation, the police raided Hodges’s house. They discovered 17 rounds of ammunition at her address. It was a small haul because she deliberately held the goods for the shortest amount of time possible.

The arrest of Hodges, along with that of Denty, Idemudia, Kudarauskas, Dumbliauskas, Barzdaitis and Jacobs meant that police had broken one of the main supply chains. According to SOCA, 9mm ammunition was going for 50p a round on the street; after breaking the Baubliai supply chain, prices went up to £3 a round. When the UK trials that followed came to a close, Barzdaitis walked free. However, he has since been arrested in Lithuania and charged with exporting firearms.

But SOCA is well aware that they can’t afford to be complacent. In their report last year they noted that Baikals are coming in to the UK in batches of up to 30 at a time. It is clear that the British police have a big and ongoing problem – they are dealing with a Hydra-headed monster.

SOCA is not alone in believing that our gun laws are due an overhaul. Andrew Frymann, who acted for the prosecution in the trial of Dumbliauskas and Kudarauskas, says, ‘The problem is that the Firearms Act 1968 has failed to keep pace with the spread of gun culture in this country and its complexity. There is no specific offence of gun running, for example.






From left to right: Lithuanian Remigijus Laniauskas and the Fence, Jeanette Hodges

'The Government and the country as a whole need to take a fresh look at how we can combat gun culture. The alternative is that this problem will only get worse and society will continue to foot the bill.’

This is ominous. But it is perhaps more disturbing that some of Britain’s criminals are already moving up from Baikals. During the raid on the garage in Alytus, Lithuanian police also found a stash of Agrams – lightweight, rapid-fire machine pistols made in Croatia. New guns, with a new story, making a new journey to Britain’s streets.



PACKED AND READY TO GO...

One of several hauls of ammunition (below) - including 95 9mm cartridges - bought by undercover police from Jeanette Hodges during their four-month surveillance of her house in Carlyle Road, London. The bullets were wrapped in plastic to keep them dry, then packed in a padded envelope and a Warehouse carrier bag. Two of the bullets have been opened by police.








GANG MEMBER:

MUSLIM BOYS



Ricky Dentry

Arrested in 2006 in Romford Road.

A part-time bouncer and member of the Muslim Boys. The south London-based gang has been linked to dozens of shootings. Its ranks number around 200, with a hardcore cadre of about 20. Denty, 28, whose family originally came from Uganda, was jailed for six years after pleading guilty to possession of firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life.



GANG MEMBER: PECKHAM BOYS

Glenn Jacobs

Arrested in 2006 in Romford Road.

With a string of street-level drug convictions, the 22-year-old soon progressed to handling guns for the notorious Peckham Boys. Police raided his home and discovered guns in his wardrobe. In 2007, he admitted possession of ammunition with intent to endanger life and was sentenced to four years in prison. This sentence will start once he has finished time for a previous conviction for four years for possession of a gun.


THE LITHUANIAN

Remigijus Laniauskas

A soldier in the final days of the Soviet army, Laniauskas was arrested in a police raid and charged with possession and export of firearms. Faces trial in Lithuania later this year.


THE GANGSTER

Romas Dumbliauskas

After his arrest en route to Carlyle Road, the blind Lithuanian was put on trial last summer at Snaresbrook Crown Court, where the two Baikals retrieved from Denty, opposite, were used as evidence against him. He was jailed for five-and-a-half years.


THE POLICEMAN

DS Trevor Gardner

Headed the surveillance of the Shah Jalal Mosque, Romford Road.
He grew up on the same south London estates now dominated by gangs who routinely use guns. He is a member of the Met Police's Racial And Violent Crime Task Force.


THE FENCE

Jeanette Hodges

Lived in Carlyle Road, Manor Park.

The 42-year-old divorcee pleaded guilty to conspiracy to endanger life and was sentenced to 14 years in jail. The irony is that if Hodges had pleaded not guilty she would be serving a fraction of her current sentence because the conspiracy charges were eventually dropped against the other defendants after the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to support the charge.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/mosl...g-machine.html#

[darrels joy]

The British called - They want their guns back!

YouTube - The British called - They want their...

[darrels joy]

http://www.gunlaws.com/index.htm

GUNLAWS.COM — National Directory

State-by-State Firearms Information
Click on any state below

Or click here for
National Resources

[darrels joy]

Gun law update: Brady Gun-Ban Strategy Outlined

Alan Korwin Thursday, 15 January 2009

The powerful gun-ban lobby has developed its own language to color and disguise its true agenda -- the disarming of law-abiding Americans in every way possible, and the end of effective self defense.

Their latest set of plans -- used as a fund raiser (outlined below) -- is filled with nice sounding terms that put a deceptive spin on their goals. Respect for the Bill of Rights is nowhere to be found, only clever end runs and literal destruction of rights Americans have always had.

Starkly missing from these plans is any direct attack on criminals -- the whole game plan is aimed at firearms the public holds. It is a product of abject gun fear -- hoplophobia -- that afflicts the people behind the plan. They deny they're hoplophobic, but just look at their plans, directed solely at restricting and eliminating guns -- instead of the crime caused by criminals they nominally complain about. I noticed that all mentions of accident prevention, a former holy grail for the group, are gone.

The hypocrisy is unequivocal and self evident. Sarah claims, "We need to get these 'killing machines' off our streets." Well, go ahead. Any person, on any street, operating any "killing machine" belongs in prison immediately under existing law, right? Everyone, even the Bradys, know this. It doesn't matter if your gun is black, or too short, or holds the right amount of ammo.

The problem isn't the "machines," it's the lack of law enforcement -- in the bad parts of town and among the gangs where most of the problems occur (see maps: http://www.gunlaws.com/GunshotDemographics.htm). They will not admit this, and they do not address this.

Instead, they act out on their phobia and attack you and me. The real problem of crime and violence is just an excuse for them to work on disarming people who didn't do anything.

The Federal Bureaucracy of Investigation, along with the Bureaucracy of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives are in complete sympathy with the plan. The Brady plan will get them more staff, more office space, more of our money and more power, the acknowledged holy grail of bureaucrats.

Politically Corrected Glossary -- of Bradyspeak

(See the entire glossary: http://www.gunlaws.com/politicallycorrect.htm)

TERMS THEY USE / WHAT THAT MEANS

"Commonsense" gun laws / Public disarmament laws
Lifesaving legislative agenda / RKBA infringement plan
Gun pushers / Heavily regulated honorable gun dealers
Gun violence / Undeterred and unprosecuted felonies
Gun violence prevention measures / Illegal infringement laws
Assault weapon bans / Public gun bans
Gun show loophole / Universal gun registration
Close the gun show loophole / Close gun shows
Suspected terrorists / Attorney General listings
Killing machines / Semiauto firearms
Crime fighting / (The term is not used)
Criminal apprehensions / (The term is not used)
Incarceration of violent perpetrators / (The term is not used)
Revolving door judiciary / (The term is not used)
Gun safety training / (The term is not used)
Respect for the Second Amendment / (The term is not used)

All quotes from Sarah Brady unless noted.

Time Frame:

"As soon as President-elect Obama is inaugurated and the 111th Congress is sworn in, the Brady Campaign will be making an all-out push to advance our lifesaving legislative agenda... But that doesn't mean we are waiting until Inauguration Day."

Preparations:


"We are already reaching out to Obama's transition team, as well as our allies in Congress" on numerous fronts:

• A blueprint for regulatory action
• Roll back Bush's policies that made our "streets into shooting galleries"
• Lists of appointments to Justice Dept., BATFE and federal courts
• Provide funding to increase the number of people in the NICS Index

Two announced regulatory changes:

• "Strengthen" ATF's authority to regulate "gun pushers"
• Overturn the recently lifted ban on CCW in National Parks (Brady is calling for a boycott of such parks where 'dangerous people are free to roam armed' -- without realizing the silliness -- anyone legally armed in a park can carry anywhere else in the state, what's the difference?);

In the recent past, RKBA opponents have also sought to regulate guns out of the public's hands using:

• The Centers for Disease Control (currently banned from such actions);
• The Consumer Products Safety Commission (currently banned from such actions);
• Proposed new entities such as the so-called "Dept. of Peace" (a cabinet-level office more accurately a "Dept. of Social Engineering," with enormous regulatory power over the military and RKBA, more here, see item #9: http://www.gunlaws.com/PageNine-27.htm);
• A proposed gun-safety agency akin to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "The National Firearm Safety Administration" (more here, see item #1: http://www.gunlaws.com/Page9Folder/PageNine-53.htm);
• Massive increases to the excise tax on firearms and ammunition, to make both only affordable to an elite class of rich people;
• Gun-ban proposals from the U.N., designed to overturn U.S. laws and RKBA through enforceable international treaties (a policy stopped in its tracks by former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, but which would be embraced by Obama's minions)]
• Unmentioned anywhere is the horrific Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, unenforced so far, that criminalizes any non-CCW travel with a firearm within 1,000 feet of school grounds -- which is virtually everywhere in populated areas (maps: http://www.gunlaws.com/Gun_Free_School_Zones.htm).

Top Legislative Priorities:

• Enact a new, larger, permanent ban on a tremendous variety of firearms to be labeled assault weapons.
• "Extend the Brady criminal background check to every gun sale. America's gun policy should be: No background check, no gun, no excuses."
• Close the loophole that allows "suspected terrorists" to buy guns. (Note: If for any reason you become "listed" you're not only stopped from shopping, but any guns you own could become contraband -- because a person prohibited by a NICS check is presumptively a prohibited possessor. Removal from the "suspected" list might involve the FISA spy court, where civil rights are suppressed in the name of national security. Good luck.)

Policy Positions:

• "An end to the violence enabled by toothless gun laws."
• "An all-out push to advance our lifesaving legislative agenda."
• "Real change to protect our families and support law enforcement."
• "Make preventing gun violence a national priority in 2009."
• Use the media to advance the cause: "Obama can be a powerful ally -- and a powerful voice to rally the American people to our fight to stop gun violence."

Dismantle The Heller Case

The Heller decision was a double-edged sword, everyone recognized that. Now it's time for the Bradys to use Heller to attack the Second Amendment:

"Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Federal government cannot ban all guns, but that the government can place reasonable restrictions on gun ownership -- a position Obama shares -- the days of gun control being too controversial an issue for candidates to run on are over," says Ms. Brady.

"Scare tactics about gun bans aren't going to work anymore now that the NRA's slippery-slope argument about gun confiscation has been dismantled by the Supreme Court."

In a little noticed speech at the New York Bar Association in December, which I was fortunate to attend, Brady president Paul Helmke said of the Heller case, "The Supreme Court got it wrong." It's obvious the anti-rights people feel that way, and this implies they will seek to overturn the decision if they can seat a majority of their ideologues on, or bring the right case to, the High Court. Obama's statements about Supreme Court nominees do not bode well in that regard.

Obama has said: "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges." And: "If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that's the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court." There is no mention of rule of law, original intent, rules of interpretation, historical record or precedent.

Helmke went on to say that the dissent and the list of restrictions will be the crucial parts of the decision (for him at least). "This is going to be good for my side," because, "the slippery slope is gone." In other words, with the High Court ruling out the total bans the Bradys have been fighting to get, they believe that all sorts of lesser bans cannot be argued against. "They (the High Court) took confiscations off the table," he said. "Any gun, anytime, anywhere is off the table." Although the Bradys desperately wanted and vigorously pursued total bans, they're now trying to turn lemons into lemonade.

Regarding the end to total bans, and the individual rights v. collectivism subterfuge that's now dead, "That was the hardest thing for me to argue," Helmke said, "taking the collective-militia-rights vs. individual rights, and the D.C. total ban off the table is going to help us politically. We de-wedgified the issue." In an eye-popping statement, Helmke said, "I don't consider the Brady Center anti gun."

He went on to try to apply the Heller case to one of his most detested firearms, ".50 caliber sniper rifles are not that common," so they may be subject to control under the "dangerous and unusual" provision in the Heller opinion.
He's referring to where the Court said: "We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms ... fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of 'dangerous and unusual weapons.'"

But they also said: "...we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those 'in common use at the time.'" (Like .50 cals many people own and enjoy?) And quoting historical material the Court noted: "... a militia would be useless unless the citizens were enabled to exercise themselves in the use of warlike weapons." Be very cautious, Helmke's statements cannot be left standing unchallenged.

The six panelists at that presentation generally agreed that the question going forward is, What's the test for reasonable restrictions?

Although most ardent gun-rights proponents' knee jerk response might be "no infringement of any kind at any time," it rapidly becomes obvious that, at the very least, disarming violent felons -- or anyone convicted and in prison -- does not amount to infringement. Some sort of limits on the very young, mental incompetents and similar restraints are permissible boundaries around the right to keep and bear arms. But anything that disarms the general public, even slightly or incrementally, is cause for alarm. Would disarming politicians be acceptable?

The Heller case -- where there were not five votes to apply strict scrutiny to 2A (the highest judicial test for robust protections) -- toyed with guidelines but set no iron-clad rules. On the low end however, it flatly rejected Breyer's invented so-called interest-balancing test, which would have meant virtually no limits to what the Bradys could shoot for.

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You can get all 400 key quotations from the case, and comments by 20 top scholars, in my 11th book,

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On the pro-rights side, it's critical to hammer these bedrock portions of the decision in your writing, debates and fight for the RKBA:

"The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding."

"Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation."

"The way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people's arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents... because Congress was given no power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, such a force could never oppress the people."

"Virtually all interpreters of the Second Amendment in the century after its enactment interpreted the amendment as we do."

The right to keep and bear arms is a "specific enumerated right" on a par with "freedom of speech, the guarantee against double jeopardy, the right to counsel." I think of it this way: The right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right on a par with free speech.

"The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges' assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad."

So just how far can the Bradys push? They're prepared to push all the way, and as their current proposals suggest, they will stop at nothing. But they didn't count on us.

Author: Alan Korwin.
Alan Korwin is a founder and two-term past president of the Arizona Book Publishing Association, which has presented him with its Visionary Leadership award, named in his honor, the Korwin Award. He is active with the speaker's bureau for the non-profit, Wash., D.C.-based news-media watchdog, Accuracy In Media.
Alan's first book,

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, is now in its 23rd edition with more than 100,000 copies in print. He went on to write or co-write seven more books on gun laws, including state guides for

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,

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,

Texas" target="_blank">Texas
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and

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, the unabridged federal guide

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[darrels joy]

Deaths on rise as government anti-knife crime strategy fails

Number of killings up in cities targeted in £3m crime campaign

• Alan Travis, home affairs editor
• The Guardian, Wednesday 22 July 2009
• Article history

The failure of the government's £3m knife crime campaign is a severe embarassment to ministers. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA


The high-profile government campaign to tackle knife crime in big English cities has failed to cut the number of fatal stabbings, according to Home Office figures published today.

The number of teenage homicide victims of knife crime remained unchanged at 23, while the number of adults over the age of 20 killed actually went up during the campaign by seven to 103, results of the official monitoring programme show.

The failure of the £3m campaign to reduce the number of teenagers killed in knife attacks in England's 10 priority police areas is a severe embarrassment to ministers on a highly political crime issue that is likely to dominate the debate on law and order between now and the general election.

Ministers will tomorrow launch a £5m second phase of the "tackling knives action programme" (TKAP) which will see the campaign expanded to 16 police force areas and widened to tackle all forms of serious violence among 13- to 24-year-olds, including gang culture.

Home Office ministers preferred to emphasise the research findings that violent knife crime incidents involving those aged 19 and under were down by 17% during the first phase of the campaign, which ran from July 2008 to March this year.

The home secretary, Alan Johnson, also cited a 32% reduction in NHS hospital admissions for knife crime victims in the 10 target areas.
The Home Office said this compared with an 18% drop in hospital admissions for stabbing injuries outside the targeted areas over the same period.

Controversy has surrounded the knife crime statistics since last December, when the former home secretary Jacqui Smith had to apologise to parliament for the "premature release" of the hospital data when she made public some early results to suggest that the police were making headway against knife crime. Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the UK Statistics Authority spoke out publicly against her "premature, irregular and selective" use of statistics.

The figures published today show that much of the overall 17% reduction in teenage violent knife crime victims is concentrated in some of the biggest cities, including London and Birmingham. But in three out of the 10 police forces involved – Greater Manchester, Nottinghamshire and Thames Valley – violent knife crime went up during the campaign.

The Metropolitan police have had some modest success in reducing the total number of knife crime murders by three, and the West Yorkshire force succeeded in reducing the number of teenage deaths from seven to none during the campaign period. But Manchester saw the number of teenage murder victims of knife crime rise by four and the death toll on Merseyside rose by three.

The number of robberies involving a knife fell by 13% for those 19 and under but rose by 11% for those involving adults.

The campaign included the extensive use of knife arches and wands at pubs, train, tube and bus stations, after-school police patrols and stop-and-search campaigns. More than 250,000 searches yielded 5,469 knives and other weapons.

Home Office statisticians said the overall findings were encouraging, suggesting fewer youngsters were becoming victims. "While caution must be applied when interpreting these trends, TKAP may have contributed to a decline in some measures and persisting reductions in others," said the official research report.

Chief constable Keith Bristow, who is in charge of rolling out the second phase, said "public angst" over knife crime was understandable: "In any crime reduction approach the first thing to do is arrest the increase and turn that cycle around.

"This is a long journey. Success when you're dealing with these sort of problems might be measured in generations, not weeks or months."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/ju...me-deaths-rise