Tennessee Firearms Assoc. Inc.

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The biggest fight in history over Americans' right to keep and bear arms is being waged today. There were attacks on the Second Amendment in the early 1990s with the passage of the Brady bill and the "assault weapons" ban. The gun-control battle of 2013, however, could easily see the greatest losses of Second Amendment rights ever.

There are two key factors that make this assault more serious: billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is willing to spend anything to win, and a longtime anti-gun fanatic Barack Obama, who is applying the full power of the presidential bully pulpit for the gun-grabbers' cause.

Obama's long-time, gun-control agenda

Back when Mr. Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate, he didn't try to hide his anti-gun views. When asked on a candidate questionnaire in 1996 if he supported legislation to "ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns," Obama simply answered, "Yes." He also responded that he wanted laws to ban assault weapons and "mandatory waiting periods, with background checks, to purchase guns."

In his third term in the Illinois Senate, he supported a package of bills that would have limited citizens to buying only one handgun a month and allowed civil liability lawsuits for death or injuries caused by handguns.

During his 2004 run for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Obama elaborated on his views. Answering the same questionnaire again, he previewed what would be his top agenda in 2013, saying he supported mandating background checks of buyers purchasing guns at gun shows, through the Internet and through print advertisements.

On the question of legislation to ban all handguns, Obama replied, "While a complete ban on handguns is not politically practicable, I believe reasonable restrictions on the sale and possession of handguns are necessary to protect the public safety."

He reiterated his support for reinstating the Clinton-era assault weapons ban that Congress let expire that same year because it had not reduced crime. U.S. Senate candidate Obama also said on the questionnaire, "I would support banning the sale of ammunition for assault weapons and limiting the sale of ammunition for handguns."

Going after bullets is just a backdoor way to get to guns.

Obama in Washington

True to his word, once he got to Washington, then-Sen. Obama was one of only 30 votes in favor of an amendment sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy to expand the definition of "armor-piercing" ammunition, a deliberately vague label that could cover regular hunting ammo.

However, once he was elected president, Mr. Obama didn't push his gun control agenda in his first term for political reasons. But a secret internal Justice Department memo obtained by the National Rifle Association (NRA) Institute for Legal Action described the Obama administration's true goal — confiscation.

Greg Ridgeway, who is now acting director of the National Institute of Justice, wrote in January that, "in order to have an impact, large-capacity magazine regulation needs to sharply curtail their availability to include restrictions on importation, manufacture, sale and possession. An exemption for previously owned magazines would nearly eliminate any impact."

The Justice Department has refused to say who requested the memo or who received it.

A socialist's view of gun control

Why do gun issues matter so much in American politics? Votes.

Only one of four registered voters believes stricter gun control laws will reduce firearm-related violence. Nearly half of all households have a gun — and that is just the ones who would admit to a strange pollster on the phone that they have a firearm at home.

The highest rate of gun ownership is in the South (54 percent) and the lowest is in the East (36 percent). Note that none of the presidential swing states is in the East.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, the strongest defender of the Second Amendment in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, also warned about the true political objectives of Barack Obama.

I interviewed Mr. Perry at the NRA's annual meeting in Houston on May 3. I told the governor that, while he was speaking, Mr. Obama was just south of the border, saying that infringing on Second Amendment rights would benefit Mexicans.

"Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," Obama said in Mexico City. "I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United States."

The Texas governor was so shocked that he pushed back his chair from the table and thought before answering. "The idea that a United States president would go to Mexico and make that statement is incredible," he said. "His goal — well before he became president of the United States — was to try to disarm the American public. He just disregards the Constitution."

Mr. Perry went on to say, "He believes this. I got in trouble for calling Barack Obama a socialist, but he is. Socialists believe in disarming the public. Just go look at how he's performed on economic issues, health care, gun control, and Barack Obama is a central-control socialist."

Disarming the American public has been the goal all along for Mr. Obama. He and Mr. Bloomberg were laying the groundwork for the right time to try to do it. Sadly, that came in December 2012 with the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Liberal media distort the gun debate; loaded language misleads the public
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I am a member of the mainstream media, but I'm also pro-Second Amendment. There are few in the journalism profession who share my beliefs. The public, therefore, gets a heavily biased view of firearm ownership and gun violence in America.

The anti-gun media bias has had a serious impact on the public's understanding of the issues. Most tellingly, the majority of Americans don't know that gun violence has been going down every year. Firearm-related homicides in the U.S. have declined 39 percent in the last 30 years, according to the Justice Department.

However, over half of the public wrongly believes gun violence is higher now than 20 years ago, according to a recent Pew Research poll. Only 12 percent of Americans know that firearms-related crimes are down.

The media are largely to blame for this misconception. There are two main reasons for the distortion of the facts. "If it bleeds, it leads" is a saying that originally described local TV stations that started their news broadcasts with stories about violent-crime victims, but it also applies equally to the national media after a mass shooting.

The Sandy Hook massacre was particularly horrific because the victims were innocent school children, but it was a rare event, not a sign of an increase in mass shootings. Nevertheless, the media went wall to wall with coverage from Connecticut for weeks.

The big three broadcast networks — ABC, NBC, and CBS — ran 216 segments on gun policy on their evening and morning shows in the month after the December 2012 Newtown shooting, according to a Media Research Center study. Of these, the stories advocating more gun control outnumbered stories featuring opposition to new restrictions by a ratio of 8 to 1. CBS was the most biased with a 22-to-1 ratio of gun control to gun-rights stories.

Once the airwaves and newspapers had been saturated, Mr. Obama and his money man New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg used the terrible crime to launch their plans to bring back the "assault weapon" ban.

But the media distortion goes beyond the fact that shootings and grisly deaths interest viewers and boost ratings. Anti-gun bias also plays a role. Mainstream media outlets are based in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Few reporters are gun owners or have any familiarity with firearms. As a result, they are constantly making mistakes about simple gun terminology and functionality.

Their ignorance of basic types of firearms was widely exposed after the White House released a photo of President Obama skeet shooting. Major print media outlets, including the New York Times, incorrectly labeled the gun a "rifle" instead of a shotgun.

Just to be clear, a rifle shoots a single bullet straight, while a shotgun fires a shell that usually has many pellets that scatter in a wide area. Skeet shooting — which Mr. Obama claimed he does "all the time" — is done with a shotgun in order to have a chance at hitting the small fast-moving clay target.

Rifles are what the gun-grabbers want to take, not shotguns. Well, at least not yet.

Almost every newspaper uses the term "assault weapons" and "high-capacity" magazine (or frequently "clip") without putting quotation marks around those loaded terms.

Reporters use words such as "stockpile," "arsenal" and "weapons of war" for the kinds of firearms and amounts of ammunition in the average gun owner's possession. The media are continually astonished at unremarkable quantities of ammunition.

A New York Times editorial in July 2012 entitled "6,000 bullets," questioned why bulk Internet purchases of ammunition aren't monitored by the government. A Washington Post editorial that same month mentioned the "astonishing 3,000 rounds of handgun ammunition" that Aurora shooter James Holmes purchased online and asked, "Should online sales of ammunition be prohibited or more carefully scrutinized?"

Apparently the writers didn't realize that an avid shooter can easily go through over a thousand rounds at the range in a single weekend. So it's very common, perfectly reasonable — and cost-effective — to order a large amount at one time.

As I was writing the previous paragraph, I went to my closet to see how much ammunition I have. I'm no gun nut, just a woman who owns a gun for self-defense and goes to the range occasionally to train. I have 1,500 rounds of 9 mm ammunition in boxes right now. It takes up about as much space as my TiVo.

Obama enraged gun control couldn’t pass Democrat-led Senate
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The kind of gun control laws that were making it so ridiculously difficult for me to get a gun for self-defense in D.C. have been out of reach for the anti-gun politicians on the national level since 1994.

Capitol Hill has been pro-gun since the Republican takeover of the House that year, in the wake of President Clinton signing the "assault weapons" ban. No major anti-Second Amendment legislation has passed Congress in 20 years.

President Obama may have thought he finally had his chance after the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but the will of the people blocked him, for now.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid never seemed to believe the legislation could pass, but he was pressured by the White House to bring it up for a vote. Sources familiar with the machinations behind the failed anti-gun bills in April 2013 believe Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg were in a rush to push the issue before the memory of Sandy Hook faded.

Politically, Mr. Obama wanted to appease his base by showing he was doing something on an issue that is a high priority for them. He also wanted to force Republicans to be on the record voting against his "common sense" gun control proposals — so he could use those votes against them to elect more Democrats to Congress in 2014.

The president also genuinely believes in limiting gun rights and didn't want to pass up an opportunity — even if it was a long shot — to achieve it on the federal level. The publicity surrounding the push for federal gun control laws only helped their anti-gun campaigns in the states, where they had a better shot at actually getting legislation passed.

I interviewed Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus in June about Mr. Obama's actions and reactions to the gun-control fight on Capitol Hill. "He overreached and overplayed his hand. Democrats in his own party sitting in red states weren't going to walk off a plank on a flawed bill that wouldn't even do what it said. The bill doesn't even match up to his rhetoric."

After the vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment to expand background checks to private transactions failed, the president was enraged. Mr. Obama disregarded the possibility that pro-gun senators may simply believe in the Bill of Rights. Defiant, he said it was a "pretty shameful day for Washington" and promised "this effort is not over."

The next day, Mr. Reid pulled the entire legislation from a vote. "I have spoken with the president. He and I agree that the best way to keep working toward passing a background check bill is to hit pause and freeze the background check bill where it is," Mr. Reid said on the Senate floor. But we should make no mistake; this debate is not over. In fact, this fight is just beginning."

The National Rifle Association views the background checks vote as a clear victory but believes that Mr. Obama and Mr. Reid are serious when they say the fight is not over.

"The Senate win was an important battle in a much longer war, and we fully expect them to make another run," Christopher Cox, head of the NRA's legislative arm, told me. "They are either going to tweak the language slightly to try to secure additional votes or they're going to wait until the next tragedy — like they did with this one — to try to ram it through."

Mr. Cox continued, "What's unfortunate about all of this is that they are doing nothing for the overall goal of all Americans of making sure that criminals and people with mental health disorders who are dangers to themselves and others don't have access to a firearm."

Nevertheless, Mr. Priebus said that Mr. Obama's drama in the Rose Garden and swearing up and down that the legislation would save lives affected public sentiment. "He has mastered the art of having people judge him by the things he says, rather than what he does. And he's good at it, and that's our problem."

Colorado recall election a call to arms against Obama’s second-term gun grab
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Just nine months after President Obama launched his second-term gun grab, citizens have answered a call to arms. The historic recall elections in Colorado on Tuesday mark a turning point in a string of successes in the states by gun-control advocates in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., tragedy. The outcome of the races could determine how much further Second Amendment rights are abridged across the nation.

For the first time, Coloradans have organized recall elections for holders of state office — state Senate President John Morse and state Sen. Angela Giron of Pueblo. Mr. Morse, the Democratic leader from Colorado Springs, led his party to pass four gun-control laws this year, coming after the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., in July 2012.

The elections are being watched closely by both sides to see if this movement will be a referendum on Mr. Obama’s gun-control agenda, and whether the grass-roots movement will spread. That’s why New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg wrote a personal check for $350,000 in the final week. The billionaire mayor wants to win these elections in order to say that it was a repudiation of the National Rifle Association.

Mr. Bloomberg’s group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, labor unions and other left-wing and Democratic outside groups have spent millions on these state races. The NRA and other pro-Second Amendment groups are also running independent expenditures, but they are being vastly outspent.

The chairman of the Republican Party of Colorado, Ryan Call, said in an interview, “The fact that so much money from out of state is being spent here is an indication that Obama and Bloomberg and their allies know that if they get pushed back here in Colorado, it takes the wind out of their sails to enact gun control on the federal level or other states around the country.”

Early voting for the recall started on Thursday. Mr. Call told me on Sunday that returns in Mr. Morses's district showed Republicans out performing in early voting. The Colorado Springs district is 34 percent Democrats, 26 percent GOP and 40 percent unaffiliated. However, 4,160 Republicans had voted, compared to 3,400 Democrats.

Ms. Giron's district is much more strongly Democratic (45 to 23 percent) and early voting showed 6,300 Democrats had turned out compared to 4,000 Republicans.

While the elections have taken on national importance, they are organically driven by grass-roots supporters. These activists and pro-gun groups were able to get well in excess of the approximately 10,000 signatures required to force a recall.

The anger arose when the Democratic governor and Democrat-controlled legislature ignored their constituents’ interests and instead rammed through bills in closing hearings without allowing law enforcement to testify.

The laws that passed were a “high-capacity” magazine limit of 15 rounds and a “universal background check” for private exchanges as of July 1, banning people from taking an online course to get a concealed-carry permit and confiscation of weapons for those merely accused of domestic violence.

The politicians didn’t want the public to hear from the elected sheriffs who do not support these measures, a view that is shared by up to 96 percent of law enforcement nationwide, according to a PoliceOne poll. Fifty-five of the 62 elected county sheriffs in Colorado even joined as plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the magazine limit and the private-exchange background check requirements.

As not a single gun-control law has ever been proven to reduce crime, police view it as a waste of time and resources to go after the law-abiding instead of criminals.

In fact, in the first month that the private exchanges went through the mandatory background checks, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation reported that only 10 of the 561 applications were initially denied. The agency did not release the reason for the initial denials, but the low percentage shows that criminals are not going to go to a licensed firearms dealer for a background check before handing over an illegal gun.

It’s not as though the politicians don’t know this. As I wrote in my new book, “Emily Gets Her Gun,” the White House put the screws to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper to push for gun-control bills in this Western and largely rural state.

Mr. Hickenlooper had previously said that no gun law would have prevented James Holmes from committing the horrific movie-theater shooting. Unfortunately, the Democratic governor was not able to stand up to Mr. Obama and his moneyman, Mr. Bloomberg.

In this same legislative session this spring, Democrats also rammed through new voting rules that allows for same-day, “motor voter” registration and moved away from precinct polling places to district or county polling centers. Republicans estimate these changes could give Democrats a 2 to 3 percentage point advantage.

Colorado has a strong tradition of gun rights and ownership, along with a culture of agriculture, sportsmanship and hunting. Mr. Obama may have thought that making inroads in a swing state would help his cause, but it may end up backfiring on him. Gun owners do not want to have their rights abridged, especially when it would do nothing to make anyone safer.

Whatever the results of this recall, it has shown the power of our democracy that citizens have an outlet against politicians who don’t listen to their views or respect their constitutional rights.

National gun registry gets head start as Maryland compromises gun owners’ privacy
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Gun owners place a high value on their privacy. Anti-gun politicians realize this and are hoping they can use the prospect of entering their names into a gun registry to scare these Americans away from buying a firearm. Every time these gun grabbers get caught in the act, Second Amendment supporters need to cry foul.

Over the weekend, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Maryland State Police released the confidential information of people applying for firearms purchases to five massive state agencies. The stated purpose, according to a police statement Saturday night, was to speed up the processing of a backlog of 39,000 applications.

The backlog was created by the public response to Mr. O'Malley's radical new gun-control laws that kick in on Oct. 1, requiring anyone who wants to buy a handgun to submit to fingerprinting, licensing and the completion of a four-hour training course. This will be just like the mandatory course the District of Columbia did away with last year after concluding it was entirely unnecessary.

Citizens of states without such restrictions may wonder why the police are involved at all in the purchase of a firearm. Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat with ambitions for higher office, does not allow federally licensed dealers to have direct contact with the FBI's National Instant Background Check System. Maryland law demands that a dealer go through the state police for the background check before releasing a gun.

However, what is supposed to be a seven-day process has stretched much longer. Mr. O'Malley refuses to rectify the situation by allowing the dealers to conduct the background checks themselves. Apparently, he will do anything to make it harder to get a gun, even if dealers are releasing guns to prohibited people to follow state law.

"First Martin O'Malley stops firearms dealers from calling in federal background checks on handgun buyers," Patrick Shomo, the president of Maryland Shall Issue told me. "Now he now thinks it a good idea to give personal and private information — names, addresses and even Social Security numbers — on an unsecure Internet site so that dozens of random state employees can access them from anywhere in the world using a single shared password and log-in."

The government practice of releasing of gun owners' information came into the national spotlight when a New York newspaper, the Journal News, published an interactive map with the names and addresses of law-abiding handgun permit holders' homes just two weeks after the tragic school shootings in Newtown, Conn.

The paper used the New York State Freedom of Information Law to procure the information from Westchester and Rockland counties, which willingly released the confidential information. Either deliberately or carelessly, the newspaper set up innocent people to be targets of theft and violence in an article titled, "The gun owner next door: What you don't know about the weapons in your neighborhood."

In reaction, Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, offered an amendment in April to President Obama's gun-control legislation in the Senate that would have blocked the government from publicly releasing any information about gun owners. Mr. Barrasso's amendment got 67 votes and was one of just two of the 10 amendments offered that passed the upper chamber.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled the base bill from the floor because he couldn't get 60 votes for it, so Mr. Barrasso's legislation never went to the House. Since then, several states have also passed laws prohibiting the public release of gun owners' personal information.

The larger issue is how much Americans can trust the federal government with registration lists of gun owners. Our Founding Fathers created the Second Amendment specifically so that an armed civilian populace could protect the nation from a tyranny.

When the government knows the whereabouts of every single gun in the country, the deterrence of an armed citizenry as a counterweight to overbearing authority is removed, and the possibility of confiscation becomes more likely.

When it was revealed this summer that the National Security Agency has been spying on thousands of law-abiding citizens for no reason, gun owners' fears were reinforced. That is why the National Rifle Association filed an amicus brief last week in a case that the American Civil Liberties Union is bringing against the agency for its Prism data-mining program.

The NRA's position is that once enough data has been collected and compiled, establishing a gun registry would be easy to create.

In the brief, the organization that represents more than 5 million Americans wrote that the "the mass-surveillance program" provides the feds with the "means of identifying members and others who communicate with the NRA and other advocacy groups, but also with the means of identifying gun owners without their knowledge or consent."

Maryland gun owners are justified in their anger about their personal information being disseminated to a variety of state bureaucratic databases. Americans cannot trust their government with their personal information and ought to be vigilant about demanding answers when their privacy is compromised.

Obama uses Naval Yard shooting to stoke fear, push anti-gun agenda
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Scaring the American public is one of President Obama’s favorite political tactics to get gun control. Just hours after the terrible shooting at the Navy Yard on Monday, Mr. Obama said that, even though he didn’t have the facts, “We’re confronting -- yet another -- mass shooting. And today it happened on a military installation in our nation’s capital.”

Yet another?

The last mass shooting was over nine months ago at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. While we mourn every one of those children and educators lost that day -- and today in Washington, D.C. -- these events are not a cause for increased alarm.

A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) released in April showed there have been 78 public mass shootings in the last 30 years that claimed 547 lives. That averages to 18 victims a year.

To put that number in context, there were 8,583 murders by firearm in the U.S. in 2011, the most recent year for which we have figures from the FBI. And, there were 851 people accidentally killed by firearms in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The congressional report concluded that, “While tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”

The president also added about the horrific crime at the naval building that law enforcement will be "investigating thoroughly what happened, as we do so many of these shootings sadly that have happened, and do everything we can to try to prevent them.”

As I wrote in my new book, “Emily Gets Her Gun,” every life is precious. But Mr. Obama never has much to say about the thousands of people murdered every year in individual shootings. You never hear Mr. Obama talk about investigating those killed every day in our cities.

(Well, except for Trayvon Martin, who the president said looked like the son he never had -- before the trial of George Zimmerman even started.)

Instead, Mr. Obama focuses on the rare mass shootings because the uncontrollable and random nature of them are more frightening to the public, which is politically helpful for him to push for more gun-control laws.

We don’t yet know know how the shooter or shooters got into the military installation, but if it was a random mass shooting and not terrorism, Mr. Obama is off base talking about prevention.

The CRS reported that because of the rarity of the events, “potential perpetrators cannot be identified accurately, and no systematic means of intervening are known to be effective.”

Mass shootings are extremely rare and should not be described by the president as if they are a common occurrence. He does this to frighten people into believing that they are in more danger in order to get support for restricting Second Amendment rights.

The reality is gun crimes have decreased steadily for 20 years. We cannot stop every single evil person from using a firearm to murder, but we can use facts when talking about these crimes.

The president of the United States should be reassuring the public of their safety, not blatantly trying to scare them to further his political goals.

New York Times gets it wrong, media obsessed with linking AR-15 with Navy Yard shooter
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The liberal media is so obsessed with linking the Navy Yard shooter with the AR-15 rifle that it is making up false tales of Aaron Alexis trying to obtain one.

The New York Times attempts to give the impression that a so-called assault-weapon law stopped Alexis from buying a rifle in Virginia, but that is not true.

The Times has a story Tuesday on its homepage with the headline “State Law Stopped Gunman From Buying Rifle, Officials Say.”

The first line says: “The gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday test fired an AR-15 assault rifle at a Virginia gun store last week but was stopped from buying one because state law there prohibits the sale of such weapons to out-of-state buyers, according to two senior law enforcement officials.”

Apparently neither the reporter nor his editors took the time to fact check their vague “law enforcement officials” sources.

“Virginia law does not prohibit the sale of assault rifles to out-of-state citizens who have proper identification,” Dan Peterson, a Virginia firearms attorney, told me Tuesday night. The required identification is proof of residency in another state and of U.S. citizenship, which can be items like a passport, birth certificate or voter identification card.

The Commonwealth defines "assault firearm" as any semiautomatic centerfire rifle or pistol with a magazine which will hold more than 20 rounds or can accommodate a silencer or is equipped with a folding stock.

John Frazer, also a firearms attorney in the Commonwealth, told me that, “State law in Virginia -- like most states -- allows purchase of rifles or shotguns by residents of other states. Virginia simply requires some additional forms of identification.”

Spokesmen for the Times did not respond to requests for comment.

Federal law is clear on this residency issue. A quick glance at the ATF website would have informed the New York Times journalists that a person may buy a rifle or shotgun, in person, at a federal firearms licensee's premises in any state, provided the sale complies with state laws, which it would in this case.

Perhaps they were confused with the federal law on handguns, which can only be sold or transferred through dealers in the same state as the buyer.

While it is true that Alexis rented and shot an AR-type rifle at Sharpshooters Small Arms Range in Lorton, sources close to the investigation tell me that he did not attempt to buy the rifle.

Instead, he passed both the federal and state background checks and bought a Remington 870 shotgun and 30 shotgun shells (00 buckshot), which he used, tragically, to kill 12 innocent people.

The Times' mistakes indicate the paper is trying to give the impression only some unexplained “assault weapon” ban in Virginia stopped Alexis from killing more people. The truth is that we have thousands of gun laws on the books, but none of them stopped a homicidal maniac intent on mass murder.

Despite all the stories over the last 48 hours about the AR-15, it was never used by anyone but law enforcement at the shooting on Monday. The New York Times should issue a correction immediately.

Remember: guns have only a few real enemies: Rust, politicians and the anti-gun billionaires like Geo Soros and Mike Bloomberg who pay the politicians off.

you can't blame politicians for getting themselves elected.

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Alan Gura is disappointed the Supreme Court said Tuesday that it would not take up a challenge to Maryland’s “may issue” carry laws, but he is determined to get a high court ruling on the right to bear arms.

“This is far from the last chance the Court will have to rule,” the lead attorney in Woollard v. Gallagher told me in an interview Tuesday. “While disappointing, cases continue to develop in lower courts and one may prove to be more attractive to the Supreme Court.”

The Woollard case challenged Maryland law that citizens have to show “good and substantial reason” to get a carry permit. Mr. Gura represents the Second Amendment Foundation in this and the other high-profile cases, including Madigan v. Moore, in which the Seventh Circuit Court overturned the carry ban in Illinois last year.

Alan Gottlieb, the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation said the Woollard news was unwelcome, but not the end of the line. “We have several more legal cases on the right to carry a firearm for self-defense in the pipeline that the high court is aware of,” he told me Tuesday. “Hopefully, they will get to hear one of them in the near future.”

Mr. Gura did not want to speculate on why the high court did not take up Woollard, but offered that perhaps the justices are waiting to see further splits on the carry issue in the lower courts before stepping in to resolve.

The attorney of the firm Gura & Possessky said his next step is to file a petition next month for Drake v. Filko, which challenges New Jersey’s requirement to show “justifiable need” to get a carry permit.

On a larger scale, the the lead attorney in the landmark Heller case in 2008 is deeply concerned about lower courts turning away most gun-control cases by simply deferring to the legislature.

“The Supreme Court needs to rule on the lower courts using rational basis review, which it clearly forbade in Heller” said Mr. Gura. The civil right lawyer is referring to Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion which said that a higher level of scrutiny must be applied when judging restrictions on constitutional rights, especially fundamental ones.

“If the Court doesn’t address the issue, then the Second Amendment is largely a dead letter — it would become mostly unenforceable because there is no such thing as a gun law for which the legislature or police can’t offer a hypothetical justification.”

The high court ought to take up key Second Amendment cases before President Obama has the chance to appoint anti-gun liberals to flip the majority.

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The Supreme Court decided Tuesday to hear the case of a Virginia man who bought a gun for his uncle and was then convicted of committing a “straw purchase.” The high court will determine whether it is a crime to buy a gun with the intent to resell to another lawful person.

Arguments for Abramski v. United States will take place in January. Bruce Abramski, a retired police officer, bought a handgun for his elderly uncle because he could get it at discount as former law enforcement. Mr. Abramski checked the box on the federal background check form that said he was the “actual buyer.”

Under federal law, handgun sales across state lines have to go through a federal firearms licensee. So, after buying the firearm in Virginia, Mr. Abramski drove to gun store in his uncle’s hometown in Pennsylvania. His uncle filled out the federal background check forms, paid fees and the transfer was approved.

However, ATF pursued the case against Mr. Abramski for saying he was the “actual buyer” in the original sale.

The federal law on “straw purchases” is intended to stop a criminal from having someone who is not a felon, drug user or other miscreant that would get blocked on an FBI background check to buy a gun for him. The buyer, or “straw man,” could then be charged with perjury for lying about the identity of the of the actual purchaser.

The issue in the Abramski case is whether this should apply when a lawful person buys a gun for someone who is legally allowed to own a firearm.

The case could affect future rulings on so-called universal background checks, which requires government approval for private exchanges of firearms. President Obama has pushed to make this a federal law, but he was unable to get enough votes in the Senate to pass it this year. Several states like Colorado and New York are being sued for this same requirement.

Second Amendment groups warn that “universal background checks” are really intended to create a national gun registry so the government knows who owns every gun in the U.S.

The high court has not taken up a major Second Amendment case since McDonald v. Chicago in 2010 which overturned Chicago’s gun ban and established the individual right to keep arms in the states.

It ought to rule in the Abramski case that it is fully lawful to buy a gun for another legal individual.

Ostensibly, gun-control laws are intended to make us safer. There is no reason to waste law enforcement resources to go after law-abiding people exchanging firearms.

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The highly restrictive firearms laws in Washington, D.C., are enforced differently depending on your status and political position on gun control.

Once again, the D.C. police are using their resources to provide illegal guns for a public relations stunt intended to pressure politicians to pass federal restrictions on the Second Amendment.

Outside the Washington National Cathedral on Sunday, blacksmiths will “forge firearms into garden tools” as a symbolic enactment of this year’s theme, “Swords into Plowshares.”

The Children's Defense Fund, which is cosponsoring the event, said in a press release that blacksmiths will be using “illegal guns confiscated by the police.”

The dramatic scene will follows a children’s church service in which the organization’s president Marian Wright Edelman will speak.

It is illegal in the District to possess a firearm that is not registered. When asked about the event, Police Chief Cathy Lanier’s spokesman said that, “These are not firearms. They are scrap parts only, and they are inoperable.”

That’s actually legally irrelevant. According to the District firearms laws written after the Supreme Court’s Heller decision in 2008, even a non-functioning firearm must be registered and can result in criminal liability.

The chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police for D.C., Kris Baumann, disagrees with the department participating in this event.

“We are supposed to be the police and, as such, the laws must be applied to everyone without bias,” the head of the 3,600 member union told me Friday. “The minute we become politicized in how we enforce the law, we become compromised and we lose public trust. This is not rocket science, and yet there appears to be no learning curve on this issue.”

He’s referring to two cases of Chief Lanier using her power to help gun-control advocates. David Gregory of NBC News possessed an illegal 30-round magazine in an interview in December 2012 with National Rifle Association (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre, but the anchor was never arrested or charged.

Also, Chief Lanier provided confiscated guns for a press conference in January at Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s request. As I reported in a column last week,Mrs. Feinstein used the weapons set by D.C. police on a pegboard as a backdrop to push for a new federal “assault weapon” ban for rifles with one feature like a pistol grip.

Using a Freedom of Information Act request, I uncovered emails between the chief, the senator’s staff and the sergeant at arms office in which they coordinated how to transfer the weapons, without technically breaking laws for which civilians have been jailed.

The dean of the Cathedral, the Rev. Gary Hall, spoke at Mrs. Feinstein’s media event. Wearing a clerical collar and standing in front of the illegal guns, he said that, “I can no longer justify a society that allows people other than military and police to own weapons like these.”

The NRA sent an email to its members about the event at the cathedral: “We believe that overbroad laws unequally enforced to advance a political agenda constitute an abuse of authority. If MPD is to carve out exceptions to D.C.’s draconian gun-control laws to avoid absurd and unjust consequences, hopefully it will do so on an equal opportunity basis.”

The organization added, “Better yet, hopefully the D.C. Council, or the U.S. Congress, will finally embrace the Second Amendment and reform D.C.’s unreasonable firearm laws.”

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The Washington National Cathedral, a symbol of unity among faithful Americans, was the site of a politically divisive event promoting gun control on Sunday.

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, and the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the cathedral, exited the church service to participate in a event based on a theme of “beating swords into plowshares.”

The gun-control leaders donned protective eye gear and took up hammers to bang on the gun parts that blacksmiths had turned red from heat.

Before the dramatic performance in Northwest Washington, I interviewed Mrs. Edelman about her goals.

“This is a public health crisis,” the longtime liberal activist said. “The NRA has blocked gun violence research, so most parents don’t know that having a gun in the home puts themselves and their children in more danger.”

“The NRA and the gun manufacturers are selling guns to people by making them believe it will make them safer!” she railed. “The gun manufacturers are even marketing guns for 4- and 5-year-olds.”

I asked where she saw those advertisements for guns for preschool children. Mrs. Edelman paused and then told me to call Josh Sugarman, a radical anti-gun proponent who founded the Violence Policy Center.

Mrs. Edelman seemed particularly animated when talking about the more than 5 million members of the National Rifle Association.

“We can beat the NRA,” she said. “Most members of the NRA support background checks and a reasonable ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.”

I asked Mrs. Edelman if she was aware that gun violence had decreased steadily in the past 20 years.

She pointed at me and said, “A child is shot and killed every three hours in this country!”

According to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 380 children age 14 and under were killed by firearms in 2010, and 1,337 among those age 15 to 17.

Mr. Hall, wearing his clerical collar, echoed Mrs. Edelman’s words in saying the church’s events were intended to “put a spotlight on gun violence as a major public health crisis.”

I asked the clergyman if he was aware that gun ownership has gone up in this country but that gun crime has gone down.

“Those of us who are opposed to gun violence need to work with gun owners to lessen gun deaths,” he said.

I asked if, by that reasoning, he was saying gun owners supported gun violence. He said that is not what he meant.

The dean said he represented “a faith community, standing in the center to find consensus.”

I asked who was represented this day on the side opposing gun control.

“This is not about the Second Amendment,” he answered. “This is about putting the spotlights on gun deaths.”

The priest said he was not speaking on behalf of the Episcopal Church but insisted, “Everything I’m saying consistent with the church’s position since 1976 on gun violence.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Hall spoke at Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s press conference in support of her new “assault-weapon” ban, which got only 40 votes in the Senate in April.

Asked about it now, he answered, “I don’t think it is going to pass because the NRA is against any regulations of guns.”

Raymonde Charles, a spokesman for the Children's Defense Fund, said the event at the church was co-sponsored by Mayor Vincent C. Gray and the Metropolitan Police Department, which provided the “illegal, confiscated guns.”

Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier’s spokesman told me Saturday that the gun parts were not illegal because they were “inoperable.” However, that is legally irrelevant under city laws. Most of the pieces being used to bang into shovels appeared to be barrels, though one was attached to a receiver.

“Active guns can’t be on cathedral grounds,” Ms. Charles explained.

Actually, guns can’t be outside the home in the District of Columbia at all. And all firearms in the city must be registered.

But enforcing the multitude of gun laws on the books didn’t seem to be a high priority for this group. Neither does recognition of the fact that no gun-control law had ever led to a reduction in violence.

The cathedral is one of the most visited tourist sites in Washington because it is a place of unity of faiths. It should not be used for political grandstanding.

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Mark Witaschek, a successful financial adviser with no criminal record, is facing two years in prison for possession of unregistered ammunition after D.C. police raided his house looking for guns. Mr. Witaschek has never had a firearm in the city, but he is being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The trial starts on Nov. 4.

The police banged on the front door of Mr. Witaschek’s Georgetown home at 8:20 p.m. on July 7, 2012, to execute a search warrant for “firearms and ammunition … gun cleaning equipment, holsters, bullet holders and ammunition receipts.”

Mr. Witaschek’s 14-year-old daughter let inside some 30 armed officers in full tactical gear.

D.C. law requires residents to register every firearm with the police, and only registered gun owners can possess ammunition, which includes spent shells and casings. The maximum penalty for violating these laws is a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

Police based their search on a charge made by Mr. Witaschek’s estranged wife, who had earlier convinced a court clerk to issue a temporary restraining order against her husband for threatening her with a gun, although a judge later found the charge to be without merit.

After entering the house, the police immediately went upstairs, pointed guns at the heads of Mr. Witaschek and his girlfriend, Bonnie Harris, and demanded they surrender, facedown and be handcuffed.

In recalling what followed, Mr. Witaschek became visibly emotional in describing how the police treated him, Ms. Harris and the four children in the house.

His 16-year-old son was in the shower when the police arrived. “They used a battering ram to bash down the bathroom door and pull him out of the shower, naked,” said his father. “The police put all the children together in a room, while we were handcuffed upstairs. I could hear them crying, not knowing what was happening.”

Police spokesman Gwendolyn Crump would not provide further information on the events in this case.

The police shut down the streets for blocks and spent more than two hours going over every inch of his house. “They tossed the place,” said Mr. Witaschek. He provided photos that he took of his home after the raid to document the damage, which he estimated at $10,000.

The police found no guns in the house, but did write on the warrant that four items were discovered: “One live round of 12-gauge shotgun ammunition,” which was an inoperable shell that misfired during a hunt years earlier. Mr. Witaschek had kept it as a souvenir. “One handgun holster” was found, which is perfectly legal.

“One expended round of .270 caliber ammunition,” which was a spent brass casing. The police uncovered “one box of Knight bullets for reloading.” These are actually not for reloading, but are used in antique-replica, single-shot, muzzle-loading rifles.

This was the second police search of his home. Exactly one month earlier, Mr. Witaschek allowed members of the “Gun Recovery Unit” access to search without a warrant because he thought he had nothing to hide.

After about an hour and a half, the police found one box of Winchester .40 caliber ammunition, one gun-cleaning kit (fully legal) and a Civil War-era Colt antique revolver that Mr. Witaschek kept on his office desk. The police seized the Colt even though antique firearms are legal and do not have to be registered.

Mr. Witaschek is a gun owner and an avid hunter. However, he stores his firearms at the home of his sister, Sylvia Witaschek, in suburban Arlington, Va.


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Beretta has eliminated Virginia from its short list of states to move its company because anti-gun Democrat Terry McAuliffe was elected governor.

The firearms manufacturer made the decision to scratch Virginia off the list after the McAuliffe campaign fixated on restricting gun owners’ rights after receiving over $1 million in campaign donations from billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“The anti-gun ads that McAuliffe ran in northern Virginia were particularly offensive,” Jeff Reh, general counsel of Beretta USA, told me in an interview. “And the fact that he could gain a voting advantage by doing so caused us additional concern.”

The family owned, 500-year old Italian company has been scouting locations for its Accokeek factory in reaction to Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley ramming radical gun-control into law last spring.

The Virginia site of the possible plant was one of six finalists locations that Beretta executives are now considering, after visiting 80 location in seven states.

Mr. Reh said that, “All this was a real disappointment because of the great pro-gun and pro-business response we received from the Commonwealth and local political and business leaders throughout our search process in Virginia.”

A spokesman for outgoing Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell would not comment on “unannounced projects.” Calls to Commerce and Trade Secretary Jim Cheng were not returned.

Beretta has a distribution center in Spotsylvania County, Va., which it opened after former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening passed an absurd law that would have made shipping pistols a bureaucratic mess.

The firearms industry is one of the few that has grown and prospered during the Obama administration. Gun manufacturers bring much needed jobs and revenue to states feeling pinched in the weak economy.

But the sweep of new gun-control laws passed in seven states this year due to pressure from President Obama and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has changed the business plans of several companies.

Lawrence Keane is general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which is the trade association for firearms and ammunition manufacturers.

“It is clear that firearms manufacturers will not invest in states where the legislature and governor do not respect the Second Amendment, or if they have already have a presence in such a state that they will not invest further in that state,” Mr. Keane said.

“More than one CEO has told me that they receive offers on an almost daily basis to move their factories to pro-gun, pro-business state — practically for free.”

Gun control laws are enacted on emotions, not facts. They do nothing to make the public safer. At the same time, these result in job loss and a worse economy. Any governor or state legislature that continues to pursue more gun-control laws does so for the sake of their own agenda, not the citizens’.