Gun Nut Roundup Nov. 2011

Right-To-Carry Reciprocity Bill Passes House

H.R. 822, the “National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011” a bill being championed by the National Rifle Association, recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.  According to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “This legislation requires states that currently allow people to carry concealed firearms to recognize other states’ valid concealed carry permits, much like states recognize driver’s licenses issued by other states."  Several anti-gun amendments to the bill were defeated.

The bill may now be voted on by the Senate and if it passes there would have to be signed into law by the president.

Operation Iraqi Subjugation

After America spent God knows how much blood and treasure on "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the new Iraqi government seeks to strip the Iraqi people of the freedom to own firearms, according to a recent Radio Free Europe (RFE) report. 

According to the article, the proposed bill would lay down "strict requirements for licensing the possession of arms to ensure that the state and its respective security organs have a monopoly on the use of weapons."  Never mind that in these third-world shitholes "the state and its respective security organs" are the ones often committing violence and the ones that the people need arms to defend themselves from.

RFE says that Abbas al-Bayati, the deputy chairman of the parliament's Security and Defense Committee, said that "the army, police, and security agencies alone will be responsible for protecting the people, whose sole duty is to cooperate with those forces and report any suspicious activity to the authorities."  Glad we got rid of that pesky dictatorship and replaced it with parliamentary democracy!  Let us remember the 1992 words of Marvin Simkin: "Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote."  (No, Benjamin Franklin never said that.)

Survey Says: Guns Are Awesome

The latest annual Gallup Crime poll showed continued declines in support for restrictions on gun ownership among Americans.  Key findings in the poll:

1. "A record-low 26% of Americans favor a legal ban on the possession of handguns in the United States other than by police and other authorized people. When Gallup first asked Americans this question in 1959, 60% favored banning handguns. But since 1975, the majority of Americans have opposed such a measure, with opposition around 70% in recent years."
2. "For the first time, Gallup finds greater opposition to than support for a ban on semiautomatic guns or assault rifles, 53% to 43%. In the initial asking of this question in 1996, the numbers were nearly reversed, with 57% for and 42% against an assault rifle ban. Congress passed such a ban in 1994, but the law expired when Congress did not act to renew it in 2004. Around the time the law expired, Americans were about evenly divided in their views." 
3. "Additionally, support for the broader concept of making gun laws "more strict" is at its lowest by one percentage point (43%). Forty-four percent prefer that gun laws be kept as they are now, while 11% favor less strict laws."

So to Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, Michael Bloomberg, Josh Sugarmann, et al: Eat my shorts!