Friday, February 27, 2015

Why shouldn't Americans be able to defend themselves with firearms?

Guns and the New York Times: Why shouldn't Americans be able to defend themselves?

Published February 24, 2015

FILE -- New York Times building (AP/Richard Drew)

With Somali terrorists threatening this past weekend to attack the Mall of America, the nation’s largest mall, the debate over allowing citizens to defend themselves has heated up again.

Gun control advocates just can’t accept the fact that concealed handgun permit holders are incredibly law-abiding. The New York Times’ recent attack on permit holders is typical. It is filled with triple-countingof legitimate self-defense cases. Murders or suicides by permit holders are blamed on guns, even when no gun was involved. In point of fact, permit holders are incredibly law-abiding. Some new evidence puts things in perspective.

Police are the single most important factor for reducing crime, but even police commit crimes on very rare occasions. Even more law-abiding than police, however, are permit holders.

Police are the single most important factor for reducing crime, but even police commit crimes on very rare occasions. Even more law-abiding than police, however, are permit holders.

According to a study in Police Quarterly, the period from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2007 saw an average of 703 crimes by police per year. 113 of these involved firearms violations. This is likely to be an underestimate since not all police crimes receive media coverage. The authors of the study may also have missed some media reports.

So how law-abiding are police? With about 570,000 full-time police officers in the US at that time, that translates into about 124 crimes by police per hundred thousand officers. For the US population as a whole over those years, the crime rate was 31 times higher -- 3,813 per hundred thousand people.

Perhaps police crimes are underreported due to leniency from fellow officers, but the gap between police and the general citizenry is so vast that this couldn’t account for more than a small fraction of the difference.

Concealed carry permit holders are even more law-abiding. Between October 1, 1987 and January 31, 2015, Florida revoked 9,366concealed handgun permits for misdemeanors or felonies. This is an annual rate of 12.5 per 100,000 permit holders -- a mere tenth of the rate at which officers commit misdemeanors and felonies. In Texas in 2012, the last year the data is available, 120 permit holders were convicted of misdemeanors or felonies – a rate of 20.5 per 100,000, still just a sixth of the rate for police.

Firearms violations among police occur at a rate of 6.9 per 100,000 officers. For permit holders in Florida, it is only 0.31 per 100,000. Most of these violations were for trivial offenses, such as forgetting to carry one’s permit. The data are similar in other states.

Clearly, people who are going to commit crimes don’t bother going through the process of getting a concealed handgun permit.

At some point, maybe the New York Times and other gun control advocates will realize that making false claims about permit holders actually endangers public safety.

John R. Lott, Jr. is a columnist for FoxNews.com. He is an economist and was formerly chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission. Lott is also a leading expert on guns and op-eds on that issue are done in conjunction with the Crime Prevention Research Center. He is the author of eight books including "More Guns, Less Crime." His latest book is "Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench" Bascom Hill Publishing Group (September 17, 2013). Follow him on Twitter@johnrlottjr.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/02/24/guns-and-new-york-times-why-shouldnt-americans-be-able-to-defend-themselves/

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Illinois Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) Class

Illinois Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW/CCL) License Training Class

Get your Illinois Conceal Carry License / Permit.... Plus get 3 other CCW's licenses FREE! (Utah CCW, Arizona CCW & Florida CCW) - together safely and legally conceal carry a handgun in over 35 States...!!!

Price: $285 (NO other class fees),

price includes;

1. Range fees ($25)

2. Illinois Livescan digital fingerprints ($70)

3. Utah & Arizona ink fingerprints ($25)

4. Florida ink prints - done by a cop ($15)

5. Passport photos ($15)

6. CCW application paperwork

7. Assistance with CCW application paperwork

Class Date: March 7-8th (16 hours)

Location: Oak Brook, Illinois

331-642-8110 / www.IllinoisCC.com

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Self-defense is an individual responsibility - invest in CCW training

Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone

WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.

The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.

For hours on the night of June 22, 1999, Jessica Gonzales tried to get the Castle Rock police to find and arrest her estranged husband, Simon Gonzales, who was under a court order to stay 100 yards away from the house. He had taken the children, ages 7, 9 and 10, as they played outside, and he later called his wife to tell her that he had the girls at an amusement park in Denver.

Ms. Gonzales conveyed the information to the police, but they failed to act before Mr. Gonzales arrived at the police station hours later, firing a gun, with the bodies of the girls in the back of his truck. The police killed him at the scene.

The theory of the lawsuit Ms. Gonzales filed in federal district court in Denver was that Colorado law had given her an enforceable right to protection by instructing the police, on the court order, that "you shall arrest" or issue a warrant for the arrest of a violator. She argued that the order gave her a "property interest" within the meaning of the 14th Amendment's due process guarantee, which prohibits the deprivation of property without due process.

The district court and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit dismissed the suit, but the full appeals court reinstated it and the town appealed. The Supreme Court's precedents made the appellate ruling a challenging one for Ms. Gonzales and her lawyers to sustain.

A 1989 decision, DeShaney v. Winnebago County, held that the failure by county social service workers to protect a young boy from a beating by his father did not breach any substantive constitutional duty. By framing her case as one of process rather than substance, Ms. Gonzales and her lawyers hoped to find a way around that precedent.

But the majority on Monday saw little difference between the earlier case and this one, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, No. 04-278. Ms. Gonzales did not have a "property interest" in enforcing the restraining order, Justice Scalia said, adding that "such a right would not, of course, resemble any traditional conception of property."

Although the protective order did mandate an arrest, or an arrest warrant, in so many words, Justice Scalia said, "a well-established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes."

But Justices Stevens and Ginsburg, in their dissenting opinion, said "it is clear that the elimination of police discretion was integral to Colorado and its fellow states' solution to the problem of underenforcement in domestic violence cases." Colorado was one of two dozen states that, in response to increased attention to the problem of domestic violence during the 1990's, made arrest mandatory for violating protective orders.

"The court fails to come to terms with the wave of domestic violence statutes that provides the crucial context for understanding Colorado's law," the dissenting justices said.

Organizations concerned with domestic violence had watched the case closely and expressed disappointment at the outcome. Fernando LaGuarda, counsel for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said in a statement that Congress and the states should now act to give greater protection.

In another ruling on Monday, the court rebuked the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, for having reopened a death penalty appeal, on the basis of newly discovered evidence, after the ruling had become final.

The 5-to-4 decision, Bell v. Thompson, No. 04-514, came in response to an appeal by the State of Tennessee after the Sixth Circuit removed a convicted murderer, Gregory Thompson, from the state's death row.

After his conviction and the failure of his appeals in state court, Mr. Thompson, with new lawyers, had gone to federal district court seeking a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that his initial lawyers had been constitutionally inadequate. The new lawyers obtained a consultation with a psychologist, who diagnosed Mr. Thompson as schizophrenic.

But the psychologist's report was not included in the file of the habeas corpus petition in district court, which denied the petition. It was not until the Sixth Circuit and then the Supreme Court had also denied his petition, making the case final, that the Sixth Circuit reopened the case, finding that the report was crucial evidence that should have been considered.

In overturning that ruling in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the majority said the appeals court had abused its discretion in an "extraordinary departure from standard appellate procedures." Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O'Connor joined the opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the majority had relied on rules to the exclusion of justice. Judges need a "degree of discretion, thereby providing oil for the rule-based gears," he said. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and David H. Souter joined the dissent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0

$75 Utah & Arizona Conceal Carry Weapon CCW Licenses Class

$75 Utah & Arizona Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) License Class

Get your non-resident Utah & Arizona CCW permits / licenses - legally and safely conceal carry a handgun in over 33 States.

Plus earn 4 hours toward your Illinois CCW 16 hours of mandatory training.

Location: Oak Brook, Illinois

Date: March 7th (8AM - Noon)

Cost: $75.00, includes fingerprints and passport photos

331-642-8110 / www.IllinoisCC.com

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Illinois Conceal Carry Weapon (CCW) Permit Class

Illinois Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW/CCL) License Training Class

Price: $285 (NO other class fees),

price includes;

1. Range fees ($25)

2. Illinois Livescan digital fingerprints ($70)

3. Utah & Arizona ink fingerprints ($25)

4. Florida ink prints - done by a cop ($15)

5. Passport photos ($15)

6. CCW application paperwork

7. Assistance with CCW application paperwork

Class Date: March 7-8th (16 hours)

Location: Elmhurst, Illinois

331-642-8110 / www.IllinoisCC.com

Saturday, February 21, 2015

National Firearm News...

U.S. court rules residency requirements for pistol buys is unconstitutional

A federal district court in Texas overturned a 1968 gun law prohibiting the sale of handguns to out-of-state residents, granting those who live in Washington, D.C., the ability to travel to an out-of-state gun store, buy a handgun and bring it home without a middleman.

The ruling takes aim at the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which prohibited handgun sales to out-of-state residents and was defended by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who argued that the law doesn’t violate the Second Amendment.

Proponents of lifting the ban said the 1968 law had become dated given technological advances in instant background checks, which are performed every time a gun is purchased from a federally licensed firearm dealer. It also prohibited a robust national handgun market from developing, as rifles and shotguns can be purchased regardless of state residency, but handguns are not.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/11/federal-court-rules-residency-requirements-pistol-/

How do I carry a gun when it's not easy to carry a gun?

How do you carry a gun when it’s not easy to carry a gun? | Personal Security Institute

Getting it right the first time is easier than fixing it later!

Wikimedia Commons

I’ll be honest: I find carrying a firearm to be work. I know, someone out there will chime and and tell me that it’s not really work, that they “never notice” their gun, and so on. Frankly I think that’s nonsense!

I’ve been carrying a concealed firearm for a long time now, and while it’s not uncomfortable it’s definitely not as liberating as walking around without that extra weight on my belt. (Yes, I do have top-end holsters and belts; it fact, I’ve designed and sold a few over the years and have long held that the most important part of a holster is the belt!) The fact is we have to balance the need to be able to protect ourselves with the downsides of the extra weight, bulk, and interference with our wardrobe choices. That’s the tradeoff, and I encourage people to make that tradeoff whenever they can, but that doesn’t mean the tradeoff doesn’t exist.

What I’m getting to is this: let’s not be disingenuous and pretend that carrying a gun isn’t work; it is, and understanding why it’s work and the concepts involved in deciding how to do that work with less effort and intrusion is an important thing for any concealed carrier. It helps us make better choices and can even help us carry when we don’t think it’s possible to carry!

Part of this process is acknowledging the fact that carrying a firearm is easier in some circumstances than others. I’m lucky, in that I can dress casually for about 99% of the time I’m in public. Not poorly, mind you, but casually — anything from outdoor clothing to khakis and polo shirts. It’s rare that I need to don a suit, and almost invariably when I do it’s because I’m in an environment where I’m prevented from carrying by law. So, my carry life is actually pretty easy.

If I were still an avid cyclist, or if I were still in a business that required high-end suits and close proximity to clients, or if I were ever a skier or runner, that would be different! It’s difficult to carry a firearm in specialized or formal clothing, and it’s made more difficult by physical activity or being in occasional physical contact with others. Women face even greater challenges, as their wardrobes (and societal expectations) make CCW even tougher.

http://www.personalsecurity.us/2015/02/09/how-do-you-carry-a-gun-when-its-not-easy-to-carry-a-gun/?utm_content=buffer78b32&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer