Yosemite National Park & the fools it attracts!
Month: July 2019
‘Public Health Summit’ Typifies One-Sided National Approach to ‘Gun Violence’
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- A controversial two-day “public health summit” held near Seattle typifies the one-sided approach toward solving the nation’s so-called “gun violence” dilemma because the discussion over two evening sessions failed to include important representation from specialists on gun safety: gun owners and representatives from any firearm rights group.
Elsewhere around the country, whenever the news media reports on the gun issue, almost invariably gun control groups are labeled “gun safety” advocates while the Second Amendment community is referred to as “the gun lobby.” This apparently justifies the exclusion of gun owners from discussions that ultimately affect their rights.
And making guns a “public health issue” has become a cornerstone of the gun prohibition crusade on the national and state levels. What is currently happening in Seattle is a microcosm.
As noted by the West Seattle Herald, the summit, held over the course of two evening sessions in White Center, a suburban community immediately south of Seattle, saw representatives from the King County Department of Public Health, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle Children’s Hospital, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, Moms Demand Action and “community leaders working with youth, gun violence survivors, and elected officials from King County, Seattle, and surrounding communities.”
Missing from the agenda were certified firearms instructors, gun dealers, range operators and representatives from such groups as the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, or the National Rifle Association. Washington State gun rights activists were suspicious from the outset because the national headquarters for both SAF and CCRKBA are located just a few miles away in the City of Bellevue. There are at least two popular indoor shooting ranges and gun stores within easy travel distance to the summit location, as well.
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb summed it up tersely.
“This isn’t about public health,” he said. “This is all about politics.”
The Seattle area has become a hotbed of gun prohibition politics over the past five years, largely fueled by wealthy anti-gunners who, according to Second Amendment activists, have “weaponized their wealth” in an effort to turn the right to bear arms into a tightly-regulated privilege.
The King County Board of Health organized the event. Gottlieb, who also chairs the CCRKBA, told a reporter from local NBC affiliate KING 5 News, “They are trying to make gun ownership a communicable disease, and it is really kind of stupid.”
Earlier in the week, SAF launched a national campaign to end so-called “gun-free zones.” It not only raised the hackles of the Seattle-based Alliance for Gun Responsibility but served notice to anti-gunners across the map that just because the National Rifle Association currently appears to be in disarray, the gun rights movement overall remains aggressive and is maintaining its momentum.
According to the Health Board’s website, “In the absence of federal and state action on common-sense gun safety laws, King County must take action to protect our residents from gun violence. Much of this work must include shedding light on the impact firearms have on the health and safety of King County residents, while taking steps to limit their impact.”
The proposed “gun safety” action plan agenda includes these items:
- Require disclosure of information on health risks related to firearms. At retail locations, signs will be posted at entrances and where firearms are sold. At ranges, they will be posted at the entrance and where used. Signs will be available in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, Somali, Chinese, Korean, Ukrainian, Amharic and Punjabi on the Public Health – Seattle & King County website.
- Require gun owners to securely store firearms and ammunition at all times, on all premises. (There is no definition of “secure storage” in the plan.)
- Work with youth and young adults to assess and provide recommendations for reducing gun violence that they experience.
- Require that the King County Sheriff’s Office destroy working forfeited weapons, including those that have been turned in by owners.
- Establish a work group tasked with developing gun safety and gun violence prevention strategies based on proven public health models.
Alarming to gun owners was this footnote: “These proposals are just the beginning.”
This effort is spearheaded by King County Councilman Joe McDermott, a former state legislator and one-time congressional candidate who has pushed gun control in the past. When he ran to succeed former Congressman Jim McDermott (no relation), his campaign literature included this statement: “For too long, politicians in Washington DC have kowtowed to the National Rifle Association. It is past time that we pass tough background checks, ban military style assault weapons plaguing our communities and once and for all hold gun manufacturers liable for the over thirty thousand deaths they cause in our country every year.”
So, when McDermott recently asserted to the Seattle Times that he had no legislative goals, rights advocates including Gottlieb were incredulous, and not without reason.
The county health board’s website offers action plan goals, and this statement:
“We expect and demand they (the Legislature) use their power to save lives, or at the very least, get out of the way and give us the local control to do it ourselves. If and when the state preemption law is repealed by the Washington State Legislature, the King County Gun Safety Action Plan will immediately move to:
- Ban the sale and possession of semi-automatic, high velocity weapons
- Ban the sale and possession of high capacity ammunition magazines
- Raise the age to 21 for all firearm purchases and possession
- Establish a waiting period before taking possession of a firearm after purchase
- Require firearm safety training before taking possession of a firearm after purchase
Critics contend that this is the same “wish list” that Democrats and their gun control supports have been pushing in the Legislature in Olympia. High on that list is repeal of state preemption, which has been the law in Washington for more than 35 years. This statute has served as a model followed by other states in crafting their own preemption laws. Anti-gunners would like nothing better than to strike down the model.
There is no small irony in all of this. Gottlieb, in a conversation with Ammoland, noted that Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership (DRGO) – founded some years ago by pro-gun physicians – is now under the SAF umbrella and is an important project. One of DRGO’s main interests is what it calls “boundary violations,” when doctors begin asking patients about firearms in their homes. This happens all over the country.
Gottlieb personally has become a leader in a suicide prevention effort in Washington State. Working with the Forefront program at the University of Washington, he has brought together gun safety experts including retailers and range operators, to work with pharmacists and others to reduce suicides in Washington State.
RELATED:
Gun-Free Zones Are Shooting Galleries For Maniacs; End Them
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
Categories
If only!
New preamble to the Constitution. This has been attributed to Lewis Napper, a Jackson, Mississippi computer programmer. He didn’t expect his essay, a tart 10-point list of “rights” Americans don’t have, to become an Internet legend. But it names a lot of sense to me……
‘We the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior, and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great-grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt ridden and delusional.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that a whole lot of people are confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim they require a Bill of NON-Rights.’
ARTICLE I:
You do not have the right to a new car, big screen TV, or any other form of wealth..
More power to you if you can legally acquire them, but no one is guaranteeing anything.
ARTICLE II:
You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on freedom,
and that means freedom for everyone — not just you! You may leave the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc.; but the world is
full of dummies, and probably always will be.
ARTICLE III:
You do not have the right to be free from harm. If you stick a screwdriver in your eye, learn to be more careful; do not expect the tool manufacturer to make you and all your relatives independently wealthy.
ARTICLE IV:
You do not have the right to free food and housing. Americans are the most charitable people to be found, and will gladly help anyone in need, but we are quickly growing weary of subsidizing generation after generation of
professional couch potatoes who
achieve nothing more than the creation of another generation of professional couch potatoes.
ARTICLE V:
You do not have the right to free health care. That would be nice, but from the looks of public housing, we’re just not interested in public health care.
ARTICLE VI:
You do not have the right to physically harm other people. If you kidnap, rape, intentionally maim, or kill someone, don’t be surprised if the rest of us want to see you get the blue juice.
ARTICLE VII:
You do not have the right to the possessions of others. If you rob, cheat, or coerce away the goods or services of other citizens, don’t be surprised if the rest of us get together and lock you away in a place where you still won’t have the right to a big screen color TV or a life of leisure..
ARTICLE VIII:
You do not have the right to a job. All of us sure want you to have a job, and will gladly help you along in hard times, but we expect you to take advantage of the opportunities of education and vocational training laid before you to make
yourself useful.
ARTICLE IX:
You do not have the right to happiness. Being an American means that you have the right to PURSUE happiness, which by the way, is a lot easier if you are unencumbered by an
overabundance of idiotic laws created by those of you who were confused by the Bill of Rights.
ARTICLE X:
This is an English speaking country.
We don’t care where you came from, English is our language. Learn it!
Lastly
ARTICLE XI:
You do not have the right to change our country’s history or heritage. This country was founded on the belief in one true God. And yet, you are given the freedom to believe in any religion, any faith, or no faith at all; with no fear of persecution. The phrase IN GOD WE TRUST is part of our heritage and history.
H/T Doverthere
FROM THEO SPARK
The reality of the Soviet space program
Yesterday, I wrote a post about The New York Times’ praise of the Soviet space program because they launched the first woman into space, and that was more important than the fact that the Soviet Union was a mass-murdering tyrannical police state.
While everyone who reads The New York Times knows that the Soviets put the first man and first woman into space, not many of them know why the Soviets never made it to the moon.
I found an article on NPR that really illustrates, in a heartbreaking way, the reality of the Soviet space program.
Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth ‘Crying In Rage’
So there’s a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he’s on the phone with Alexei Kosygin — then a high official of the Soviet Union — who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.
The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won’t work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, “cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.”
In 1967, both men were assigned to the same Earth-orbiting mission, and both knew the space capsule was not safe to fly. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. But he wouldn’t back out because he didn’t want Gagarin to die. Gagarin would have been his replacement.
The story begins around 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular midspace rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships.
The plan was to launch a capsule, the Soyuz 1, with Komarov inside. The next day, a second vehicle would take off, with two additional cosmonauts; the two vehicles would meet, dock, Komarov would crawl from one vehicle to the other, exchanging places with a colleague, and come home in the second ship. It would be, Brezhnev hoped, a Soviet triumph on the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution. Brezhnev made it very clear he wanted this to happen.
The problem was Gagarin. Already a Soviet hero, the first man ever in space, he and some senior technicians had inspected the Soyuz 1 and had found 203 structural problems — serious problems that would make this machine dangerous to navigate in space. The mission, Gagarin suggested, should be postponed.
He’ll die instead of me. We’ve got to take care of him.
The question was: Who would tell Brezhnev? Gagarin wrote a 10-page memo and gave it to his best friend in the KGB, Venyamin Russayev, but nobody dared send it up the chain of command. Everyone who saw that memo, including Russayev, was demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. With less than a month to go before the launch, Komarov realized postponement was not an option. He met with Russayev, the now-demoted KGB agent, and said, “I’m not going to make it back from this flight.”
Russayev asked, Why not refuse? According to the authors, Komarov answered: “If I don’t make this flight, they’ll send the backup pilot instead.” That was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir Komarov couldn’t do that to his friend. “That’s Yura,” the book quotes him saying, “and he’ll die instead of me. We’ve got to take care of him.” Komarov then burst into tears.
Once the Soyuz began to orbit the Earth, the failures began. Antennas didn’t open properly. Power was compromised. Navigation proved difficult. The next day’s launch had to be canceled. And worse, Komarov’s chances for a safe return to Earth were dwindling fast.
All the while, U.S. intelligence was listening in. The National Security Agency had a facility at an Air Force base near Istanbul. Previous reports said that U.S. listeners knew something was wrong but couldn’t make out the words. In this account, an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov’s wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying.
When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence “picked up [Komarov’s] cries of rage as he plunged to his death.”
This is the picture accompanying the article (you’ve been warned):
Vladimir Komarov’s remains in an open casket
Imagine that happening in the United States under NASA.
Engineers at Kennedy finding over 200 potentially fatal defects and letting the flight go because they were afraid the FBI would arrest them because the President wanted the flight to happen.
Yes, there was a cultural issue at NASA the lead to the Challenger Disaster in 1986, but nobody the Challenger went up certain in the knowledge that they were going up to die on a poorly built deathtrap, launched to appease a politician.
A casual disregard for human life was a hallmark of Soviet design. Everything from the design of their tanks which make the crews expendable for the survivability of the weapon platform, to the submarines which occasionally sink, leak radiation, or catch fire without warning killing some or all of the crew.
The Soviets proved several times that they could strap a human being to a rocket and put him just outside the reach of the earth’s atmosphere, and usually bring him home alive. The 250,000 mile trip to the moon was a technical challenge that the Soviets were never able to surmount, and they knew it.
So when The New York Times writes “How the Soviets won the space race for equality” what the really mean is “How the Soviets also treated a woman like expendable objects to be launched into space on faulty garbage.” I guess there is equality in known that a tyrannical government treats both men and women as disposable, but I have a feeling that’s not the type of equality that most Americans like to think about.
While everyone who reads The New York Times knows that the Soviets put the first man and first woman into space, not many of them know why the Soviets never made it to the moon.
I found an article on NPR that really illustrates, in a heartbreaking way, the reality of the Soviet space program.
Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth ‘Crying In Rage’
So there’s a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he’s on the phone with Alexei Kosygin — then a high official of the Soviet Union — who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.
The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel; its parachutes — though no one knows this — won’t work and the cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts in Turkey hear him crying in rage, “cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship.”
In 1967, both men were assigned to the same Earth-orbiting mission, and both knew the space capsule was not safe to fly. Komarov told friends he knew he would probably die. But he wouldn’t back out because he didn’t want Gagarin to die. Gagarin would have been his replacement.
The story begins around 1967, when Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, decided to stage a spectacular midspace rendezvous between two Soviet spaceships.
The plan was to launch a capsule, the Soyuz 1, with Komarov inside. The next day, a second vehicle would take off, with two additional cosmonauts; the two vehicles would meet, dock, Komarov would crawl from one vehicle to the other, exchanging places with a colleague, and come home in the second ship. It would be, Brezhnev hoped, a Soviet triumph on the 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution. Brezhnev made it very clear he wanted this to happen.
The problem was Gagarin. Already a Soviet hero, the first man ever in space, he and some senior technicians had inspected the Soyuz 1 and had found 203 structural problems — serious problems that would make this machine dangerous to navigate in space. The mission, Gagarin suggested, should be postponed.
He’ll die instead of me. We’ve got to take care of him.
The question was: Who would tell Brezhnev? Gagarin wrote a 10-page memo and gave it to his best friend in the KGB, Venyamin Russayev, but nobody dared send it up the chain of command. Everyone who saw that memo, including Russayev, was demoted, fired or sent to diplomatic Siberia. With less than a month to go before the launch, Komarov realized postponement was not an option. He met with Russayev, the now-demoted KGB agent, and said, “I’m not going to make it back from this flight.”
Russayev asked, Why not refuse? According to the authors, Komarov answered: “If I don’t make this flight, they’ll send the backup pilot instead.” That was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir Komarov couldn’t do that to his friend. “That’s Yura,” the book quotes him saying, “and he’ll die instead of me. We’ve got to take care of him.” Komarov then burst into tears.
Once the Soyuz began to orbit the Earth, the failures began. Antennas didn’t open properly. Power was compromised. Navigation proved difficult. The next day’s launch had to be canceled. And worse, Komarov’s chances for a safe return to Earth were dwindling fast.
All the while, U.S. intelligence was listening in. The National Security Agency had a facility at an Air Force base near Istanbul. Previous reports said that U.S. listeners knew something was wrong but couldn’t make out the words. In this account, an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov’s wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying.
When the capsule began its descent and the parachutes failed to open, the book describes how American intelligence “picked up [Komarov’s] cries of rage as he plunged to his death.”
This is the picture accompanying the article (you’ve been warned):
Vladimir Komarov’s remains in an open casketImagine that happening in the United States under NASA.
Engineers at Kennedy finding over 200 potentially fatal defects and letting the flight go because they were afraid the FBI would arrest them because the President wanted the flight to happen.
Yes, there was a cultural issue at NASA the lead to the Challenger Disaster in 1986, but nobody the Challenger went up certain in the knowledge that they were going up to die on a poorly built deathtrap, launched to appease a politician.
A casual disregard for human life was a hallmark of Soviet design. Everything from the design of their tanks which make the crews expendable for the survivability of the weapon platform, to the submarines which occasionally sink, leak radiation, or catch fire without warning killing some or all of the crew.
The Soviets proved several times that they could strap a human being to a rocket and put him just outside the reach of the earth’s atmosphere, and usually bring him home alive. The 250,000 mile trip to the moon was a technical challenge that the Soviets were never able to surmount, and they knew it.
So when The New York Times writes “How the Soviets won the space race for equality” what the really mean is “How the Soviets also treated a woman like expendable objects to be launched into space on faulty garbage.” I guess there is equality in known that a tyrannical government treats both men and women as disposable, but I have a feeling that’s not the type of equality that most Americans like to think about.
A Strange looking Critter to these tired old eyes. In that it looks like a semi automatic pistol but instead is a Single shot. Also it looks like that it has been ridden hard and put away wet to boot.
