Tag Archives: Gun Control

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Homeland Security head says that “the system worked”

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Consider Janet Napolitano, Barack Obama’s pick for the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

According to a report produced in April 2009 by the DHS, conservative Americans who are pro-life and pro-marriage, and who believe in the Constitution, federalism and the rule of law are potential terrorists.

Here’s a refresher of what the report was about from US News & World Report.

… Napolitano’s department prepared a report for state and local police officials titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” Little more than a nine-page screed against phantoms, the report purports to address potential threats from religious and racial hate groups as well as “those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.” The report also singles out for special consideration anti-abortion activists, gun owners, immigration opponents and… returning veterans.

Here she is on CNN talking about how returning Iraq war veterans are potential terrorists.

And consider this story where she refuses to say the word terrorism in her remarks to Congress.

Excerpt:

Napolitano is the first homeland security secretary to drop the term “terror” and “vulnerability” from remarks prepared for delivery to the House Homeland Security Committee, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

Tom Ridge, who headed the agency when it was launched in 2003, mentioned terrorism 11 times in his prepared statement at his debut before the oversight committee in 2003. And in 2005 Michael Chertoff, the second secretary, mentioned terrorism seven times, according to an AP analysis of the prepared testimonies.

Does she strike you as grounded in reality? Or ideology?

And now she says that “the system worked”

I’ve posted all this background to introduce Napolitano’s latest comments of the recent terrorist attack, that Al-Quaeda is taking reponsibility for, and that the DHS failed to prevent.

Here she is on CNN:

She is saying that the system worked.

Excerpt:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has created controversy over her remarks that “The system worked” on CNN’s “State of the Union”. She was referring to the terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.

“The system worked”, she says. This, in spite of the following facts:

  • The terrorist’s name, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was on the tied list of potential terrorists.
  • Abdulmutallab’s father reported his son had been recruited and trained by al Qaida to the United States Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.
  • Abdulmutallab is not permitted into the UK because of terrorist concerns.
  • Abdulmutallab may have been allowed on board without a passport. Witnesses in the gate area allege he was introduced by a well-dressed man as a Sudanese refugee seeking sanction in the United States.
  • Homeland Security cleared the passenger list before NW253 departed.

But “the system worked”!

Maybe the system is only designed to prevent terrorist attacks from”right-wing extremists”? I really don’t know. What I do know is that the DHS will not be effective if they believe in an alternate “Michael Moore” parallel universe, where Rush Limbaugh is actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks instead of Osama Bin Laden.

ABC News writes:

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.

[…]American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.

Elections matter, so let’s remember Janet Napolitano the next time we have to vote in 2010. The only way to deal with Napolitano is by voting Democrats out and putting some grown-ups in to handle things like the economy, health care, and national security.

News

MUST-READ: Pro-abortion shooter murders two people, pro-abortion groups silent

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Story from LifeSiteNews. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

An elderly pro-life activist was shot multiple times and killed this morning in front of Owosso High School in Michigan while he was peacefully protesting abortion with a sign depicting a baby and the word “Life,” according to local police cited in the Flint Journal newspaper.

Locals say that the victim, James Pouillon of Owosso, was well-known in the area for his pro-life activities.

[…]Reports indicate that a second individual was shot and killed in a different area of the city earlier in the day, and the two shootings are believed to be related, according to Shiawassee County sheriff George Braidwood. According to M-live.com, the second victim has now been identified as Mike Fuoss, 61, the owner of a local gravel pit. Fuoss was found dead in his office.

Police have confirmed that a suspect – a 33-year-old Owosso man – was taken into custody at the suspect’s home shortly after the 7:30 a.m. shooting. After being taken into custody he confessed to the second killing as well.

Pro-abortionists silent:

Police charged 33-year-old Owosso resident Harland James Drake Friday afternoon with Pouillon’s first-degree murder, as well as the first-degree murder of local gravel pit owner Mike Fuoss, 61, killed earlier in the morning.

Prosecutors said Drake told them he targeted Pouillon because of his pro-life activity.

Though Pouillon’s death has made headlines in major news media, leading national pro-abortion organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL, the National Organization for Women, and the National Abortion Federation have issued no response to the slaying as of 4:45 p.m. EST.

Compare and contrast:

However, within minutes after news broke that Wichita’s late-term abortionist George Tiller was shot and killed on a Sunday morning while serving as an usher at his Lutheran church, dozens of nationwide pro-life leaders and organizations immediately poured out condemnations against the violence.

Operation Rescue, which had spearheaded peaceful protests of Tiller’s business for several years, was among the first to denounce the “vigilantism and the cowardly act that took place this morning,” adding that they were offering prayers for Tiller’s family.

More coverage:

Another story of an attempted murder of a pro-lifer by a pro-abortionist.

News

Understanding how concealed carry laws save lives

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has this story. (H/T John Lott)

Excerpt:

A gunman who had wounded a shopkeeper and opened fire on several customers was stopped yesterday when another man shot him at the store in South Richmond, authorities said.

…The man who shot the robber is a friend of the store owner, and he was wearing a holster with a Western-style revolver, said Managing Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Tracy Thorne-Begland.

After the suspect shot the store owner and opened fire on patrons, the owner’s friend shot the suspect once in the torso, took his gun and called police, Thorne-Begland said.

How many times are legally-owned firearms used to prevent crimes, as occurred in this story?

Consider this interview with Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck.

Excerpt:

“In 2006, about 11,600 homicides were committed by criminals armed with guns, claiming 68 percent of all homicides,” he says. Based on data from the National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS), as many as 500,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States in 2006 by offenders armed with guns, and around 26 percent of robberies and 7 percent of assaults were committed by gun-armed offenders.

These facts have led many people to conclude that America’s high rate of gun ownership must be at least partially responsible for the nation’s high rates of violence, or at least its high homicide rate, says Kleck, adding that this belief in a causal effect of gun levels on violent crime rates has, in turn, led many to conclude that limiting the availability of guns would substantially reduce violent crime, especially the murder rate.

“What’s not so widely known, though, is that large numbers of crime victims in America also use guns in the course of crimes (but) in self-defense,” says Kleck.

Based on 16 national surveys of samples of the U.S. population, he continues, the evidence indicates that guns are used by victims in self-protection more often than crimes are committed by offenders using guns. Victims used guns defensively two to two-and-a-half million times in 1993, for example, compared to about 850,000 crimes in which offenders possessed guns.

Maybe guns are not as scary as we had been led to believe!