Don's Tuesday column

       THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   2/26/2013

They want to intimidate and disarm us

The Tea Party Patriots in both Red Bluff and Corning will have programs worth your attendance: Tonight, at the Westside Grange, 6 PM, member Robert Pinyon will play a DVD on FEMA camps. Reasonable preparation for victims of natural disasters (as in “Emergency Management”) or something less altruistic. Hard, sourced and corroborated information or Internet myths. Come, watch and judge for yourself.

Then, at the Corning Senior Center, 1015 Fourth St at 6 PM on Thursday, hear someone that I know to be a powerful and persuasive speaker on gun rights and the gun-controllers in Sacramento, Sam Paredes of Gun Owners of California. Their attentiveness and efforts have weighed in tirelessly to stop bad laws. A Feb. 8 article in the Daily News, “Calif. seeks to adopt nation’s toughest gun laws,” proved that, when it comes to “doing something” (mindlessly, unconstitutionally passing anti-Second Amendment legislation), Democrats in Sacramento are challenged only by the prospect of topping New York’s “toughest gun laws” – our rights and self-protection be damned.

Folks, this is why liberal politicians, building hurdles and barriers to law-abiding citizens’ self-defense, recreational hunting and shooting, inspire me to write on the subject. This battle contains every element of what I despise about the political, cultural and media left in America. They, Democrats in Sacramento, want to “outlaw the future sale of semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. The restriction would prevent quick reloading by requiring bullets to be loaded one at a time.”

What pointless, feel-good, impractical nonsense! Those weapons are used nationally in maybe 200 murders, a fraction of the people killed by knives, blunt objects, or by someone’s bare fists. Many criminally insane, that mental health professionals and those around them know pose threats to others, are not reported to authorities to prevent purchase of guns. They will get around the law, steal or otherwise acquire the multiple weapons they desire to indulge homicidal, or suicidal, deranged fantasies. Police will always respond, people will die in the mean time, police will take reports, but armed citizens can stop them. That is unless, as the Aurora, CO, theater shooter proved, such killers drive by theaters allowing the concealed carrying of weapons, to get to a “gun free” theater.

Also: a President who opposed the right of a homeowner to defend his “castle” as an Illinois state senator; that same President disingenuously demanding his proposed laws be passed “right now,” using phony, manipulated data to make his case for “executive (despotic?)” action to do what Congress won’t; news media putting their collective finger on the scale of public opinion via selective and incomplete coverage of the pro-gun side; even local writers that mock and berate gun defenders.

On the war for public opinion, I asked the Tea Party Patriots to hold hands up if they thought the gun rights/defenders were winning (not many hands) or the gun control/confiscation side was winning (many more hands went up). Hence, I was happy to share a Forbes article, “NRA Winning the Influence Battle Over Gun Control,” (search by title, 2/01/2013). Without taking a position on the merits, “Forbes Insights” engaged Appinions to measure “who is leading or gaining ground through the lens of influence … We found that the NRA and the pro-gun rights voices are winning the influence battle and will continue to be strong and more influential (against fragmented gun control voices) … (The NRA) has the stamina (and) are persistent, un-yielding and gaining influence.” While “Republican politicians are missing from the debate … Wayne LaPierre’s NRA” have held Obama, Biden and the Democrats” to a near tie in shaping debate, to the benefit of gun rights advocates.

It is, therefore, not surprising to find Obama with higher disapproval than approval on “Gun policy” and other domestic issues according to Gallup (Look up “Gallup Poll: Majority of Americans disapprove of Obama’s gun policies,” Feb. 7-10). From “Immigration” to “Energy policy,” “Taxes,” “The economy,” “The federal budget deficit,” Americans give him negative “Job approval ratings” by 54 to 42 percent (Gun policy), to double digits on others and even 65 to 31 disapproval on the deficit. Only on “National defense” does he have a 53 to 44 approval.

It was curious to read the bar graph, “Party ID and gun proposals” (in Jan. 17 DN, adults polled by Pew, Jan. 9-13). Not unlike the measures passed in New York, proposed in Sacramento, desired by Democrats in Washington, and outlined in Obama’s 23 executive actions, none of them would have prevented the Newtown or almost any other gun massacre, with the exception of armed guards (currently at over 25 percent of schools) and armed school personnel. What jumped off the page is that Democrats want policies and laws that won’t prevent more killings, but will interfere with the rights and “pursuit of happiness” of others.

Look up “Defensive gun use” and you’ll find that from 1 million to 3 million incidents of self-defense happen every year. I posted a “reddit.com/r/dgu” article with details of many incidents. Finally, look up “California unable to disarm 19,700 felons and mentally ill people” (latimes.com 2/18). So, they can’t rightly take guns away from nearly 20,000 people but they want us to give ours up (NY law requires surrendering guns; DOJ memo says Obama’s goals would require complete registration and confiscation). Sorry, but “from my cold, dead hands.”