A politician is described as a “lame duck” once he or she has been defeated or announced their retirement, and is simply finishing out the remainder of their term in office. And even after Nov. elections are over and a large number of Senate and House members are voted out, the lame duck Senators and House members are usually just that – lame. But occasionally, they are fierce because the defeated office holder is bitter and has approximately two months to wreak havoc with his or her vote before leaving DC. When this happens, ideologues will use the time where they’re completely accountable to voters to score points for their side. We saw this after the Nov. 2010 elections when defeated Senators and House members banded together in late Dec. to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” so homosexuals could serve openly in the military. Yet as bad as this is, the opportunities for a lame duck office holder to attack our freedom grows exponentially when said office holder is in the White House, and when he’s an ideologue who hates private gun ownership, the right to self defense, and the 2nd Amendment.

And this brings us to a crucial point. Namely, that if Obama wins re-election in 2012, he will be awarded four years of lame duck status in which to do anything and everything he wants to lessen our ability to own and use guns. He knows he won’t have to answer for it because he will not be running for re-election in 2016.

What would four years of a lame duck President Obama mean for gun owners? The only way to know is to gauge it by the things Obama has done already. In 1995, when pursuing a state level office in Illinois, Obama “endorsed a complete ban on all handguns.” At that time, he also expressed his support for waiting periods for handgun purchases. A “waiting period” is a set period of time, usually 5 to 10 days, which has to elapse between the time an individual buys a gun and is actually allowed to take it home. In other words, customer “X” would pay for a gun on Monday of this week, but would not be allowed to pick it up at the store until Monday of next week. (The foolishness of this scenario is evident when one considers what that waiting period might mean for a female who is being threatened by a violent criminal or sexual predator. She would have to buy her gun then spend the next week, the “waiting period,” hoping the criminal or predator would be willing to wait a week before attacking as well.)

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Walk into your local gun shop and you’re likely to be greeted by some of the hardest working salesmen and women in America. On Black Friday alone Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests for prospective hand gun and long gun buyers, smashing the previous record by more than 30%. Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to nearly 130,000 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008. The actual number of firearms sold is likely much higher because multiple firearms can be included in a transaction by a single buyer. The FBI does not track actual gun sales.

Gun buyers are more diverse than ever. This however is not the kind of diversity the anti-gun left is happy about. Young professionals, people starting families and women, in greater numbers than ever, are purchasing guns. Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he was “skeptical” of the Black Friday gun surge.

Refusing to accept the reality of the trend, he said “I think there may be no real significance at all.” This of course is the same Brady Center that that in the face of gun violence, has focused it’s efforts on restricting law abiding citizens’ access to guns, rather than campaigning for tougher penalties against criminals who use guns in crimes.

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For the better part of a year, I have been saying that the end goal of Fast and Furious was more gun control. Rush Limbaugh has said this, Sean Hannity and other FOX NEWS personalities have said this, and the NRA and Gun Owners of America have said this, among others. (I had a post on Big Government on July 13th dedicated to making this very point.)

Throughout this time, I have had a copy of an email that was sent to me back in March of 2011. It’s an July 2010 email from ATF Special Agent in Charge Mark R. Chait to ATF Supervisor William Newell. It is copied to a third ATF Supervisor, William McMahon. Newell and McMahon were assigned to the Phoenix area at the time (and Phoenix just so happened to be ground zero for Fast and Furious.) In it, Chait asks Newell if he can find enough “anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales.” In other words, Chait was asking whether, in the midst of the flood of new weapons hitting the streets via Fast and Furious, a means could be found to justify more gun control.

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When England banned the private ownership of handguns within its borders, I remember the National Rifle Association (NRA) airing videos of steamrollers rolling over mounds of confiscated weapons and crushing them to bits. I remember seeing videos of containers full of guns – handguns and long guns – being placed in large compactors where they too were crushed beyond recognition.

The NRA’s message was simple: Elect people to Congress and the Senate who are anti-gun and it won’t be long till they’re steamrolling your father’s shotgun or your .38 revolver or your buddy’s Colt .45.

And the NRA warned that once that happened, emboldened criminals would come into our homes and businesses without hesitation: for they’d know that we, as a disarmed citizenry, have no way to turn them back.

That was back in the mid-to-late 1990s, and I still remember how the progressive world, which included Democrat leadership in the U.S., mocked the NRA for using scare tactics to control people and subsequently praised the way England was supposedly saying “no” to the gun lobby and “yes” to fighting crime.  And it was open season on the NRA and the 2^nd Amendment in the college classroom too, where I heard professor after professor recite their talking points on the supposed benefits of gun control during lectures that had nothing to do with guns or control.

Fast forward to 2011 and look at the riots taking place in London, England: the city of unarmed people where crime was long ago vanished via the confiscation and destruction of handguns.

Now that the criminals are confident the citizenry is thoroughly unarmed, they’re going into homes and businesses whenever they wish, taking whatever they want once they go in, and walking (or running) away with a smile on their face.

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Just one week ago on Sunday, June 19^th, we were reminded once again that our God given right to life, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, is meaningless without the right to self-defense.  That day, Father’s Day, a terrible tragedy took place in a Medford, New York pharmacy when an armed robber shot and murdered four innocent people.

Imagine yourself in that pharmacy.  You are facing an obvious threat from a man with a gun.  You cannot retreat because the gunman is too close.  You have no weapon, because the State of New York has made it extremely difficult to posses any sort of a weapon, and certainly not a gun.  Hence, your only means of self-defense is to plead for compassion from a soulless thug.  At that point, with your right to life materially impaired by the government restricting your right to self-defense, you simply die.

Gun law advocates are undoubtedly ready to demand more control of firearms, and argue that citizens should rely on the police.  They are missing the point.  Had those innocent victims in the Medford Pharmacy managed to call the police and had the police responded within minutes, all four would still have been killed because the robber acted within seconds.  The painful meaning of the phrase, “when seconds count, the police are minutes away” was all too clear on June 19^th.

For decades the National Rifle Association, gun rights advocates in general and especially hunters have worked hard to prevent gun laws from becoming too restrictive.  Their argument is the Second Amendment and its words proclaiming, “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  For all their fine work, these groups are also missing the point.  Guns, knives, batons and other tools of defense are only tools.  It is the right to self-defense that has been under attack all this time.

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On his Wednesday show, Adam Carolla interviewed Andrew Breitbart to discuss Andrew’s new book, Righteous Indignation.  Let me assure you, you’ll LOVE this duo. Andrew’s been a guest on Carolla’s show before, but this was hands down the most entertaining so far.

Check out some of the comments from Carolla’s regular listeners – not surprisingly, some aren’t exactly Breitbart fans (which makes it that much more enjoyable for me, at least).

Carolla tackled topics with Andrew on just about everything – from Righteous Indignation to Communism, the Left’s Racist meme, the racket of building permits and greenwashing, and unions, just to name a few.  And a whole lotta LA, which, as Andrew illustrates for us, ain’t what is used to be.  The two were on such a rant roll over our waning freedoms, Carolla, who has described himself as having libertarian leanings, almost sounded like another grassroots activist.  Who knows? Sounds like he may just have a bit of Presidential appeal.  Andrew certainly thought so!

“By the way, are you aware that the Republican Party has nobody running for the presidency right now, and if you had put that out there by mistake and people heard that, and that was your spiel, you would have gone up to Donald Trump level, you would have gone up to 17%?”

Oh yeah – Carolla’s also not a big fan of Maxine Waters.  Not. At. All.  Which reminds me, this audio is NSFW.

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Just outside the DC Beltway, in Maryland’s sprawling first congressional district, an electoral battle is underway that exposes unique ideological fault lines beneath America’s political landscape.

The campaign pits freshman “Blue Dog” Democratic congressman Frank Kratovil in a rematch against Republican Dr. Andy Harris. Given the political tilt of the district, coupled with the Tea Party tsunami gathering force this year, one would think that this race should be a slam dunk for Harris.

A tall, affable family man, Harris is an anesthesiologist, Navy veteran, hardcore free-marketer, and constitutional conservative. By contrast, Kratovil, a former attorney, tries to portray himself as an “independent” who distances himself from Nancy Pelosi and the House Democratic majority. However, the Washington Post reports that “Frank Kratovil has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 84.6% of the time during the current Congress.” Among his least popular votes since taking office: support for the “cash for clunkers” program, for the near-trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending orgy, and for the hugely expensive “cap-and-trade” energy bill. Plus, of course, his vote to elevate the widely reviled Pelosi to the Speaker’s position.

Yet, despite all that, a recent poll finds Harris holding only a statistically insignificant three-point lead over Kratovil. This, while other GOP candidates are faring much better even in usually “safe” Democratic districts.

What’s going on here?

One of the most infuriating spectacles this election season is supposedly “Republican,” “conservative,” and “pro-business” individuals and groups supporting entrenched liberal incumbents against free-market, limited-government challengers. For many special-interest “insiders,” even on the right, philosophical convictions are far less important than sharing a “seat at the table” with the politically powerful.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid scheduled a second vote on the DISCLOSE Act for Thursday. Rather than address the 14.4 percent unemployment in his home state of Nevada, he wants to regulate political speech through hastily cobbled together campaign finance legislation. This legislation would impose a burdensome new disclaimer and disclosure regime on speakers who seek to exercise their First Amendment right to political speech.

The DISCLOSE Act is a desperate attempt to respond to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Citizens United the Court embraced the First Amendment protection of political speech. Now groups of Americans may stand together and speak, regardless of whether they have sought the protection of a corporate form, labor union, or non-profit organization.

Fearful of how these groups of Americans may exercise this right, Senator Schumer, Representative Chris Van Hollen, and leaders of the Democratic Party sought to create a burdensome new disclosure and disclaimer regime to make it difficult for Americans to exercise these rights. Senator Schumer is hopeful that the legislation will result in fewer political ads being run.

The DISCLOSE Act was crafted behind closed doors with the input of Democratic lobbyists. Labor unions and large special interests groups including the National Rifle Association were afforded special exemptions from various provisions of the bill. This partisan legislation is an assault on the First Amendment, and principled conservative groups like Citizens United were right to oppose it.

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“We had to put the Second Amendment over the First Amendment.” (7:21)

Yes, it’s common sense to credit the NRA for its involvement with the McDonald vs Chicago case and its fight for the Second Amendment, which, I think, would have been infringed upon even greater longer ago without the NRA.

However.

I don’t like what I’m seeing with the NRA on this – and their wish to protect the Second Amendment by way of seeking exemption under DISCLOSE is nullified if they traded exemption for silence on the hearing of an anti-gun Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan as part of of the deal.

You can’t be non-partisan because the Second Amendment, in current society, is not a bipartisan issue.

By silencing yourself, ironically, on an issue for exemption so that you don’t have to be silenced later on is playing with the First Amendment whether you realize it or not.

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Last year, when Tea Party activists almost derailed ObamaCare, the White House and its comrades in the House of Labor knew they had to somehow neutralize Americans who voiced opposition to their agenda. Ever since President Obama dispatched his soldiers to take on concerned Americans at townhall meetings last year, unions have tried to downplay their culpability in targeting tea party activists. But the targeting has not stopped. In fact, it seems like a new assault takes place every month.

In February, the union campaign against the Tea Party movement was publicly exposed.  In fact, the union-backed website TheTeaPartyisOver.org openly states  that “Patriot Majority is also putting together a tracking program of Tea Party activity nationwide to monitor outbreaks of actual violence, threats of violence or other types of extremism.” [Emphasis added.]

In March, Teamster boss James P. Hoffa took aim at Tea Party activists accusing them of being ‘manipulated’ and ‘misdirected.’

In April, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill that eviscerates the First Amendment called the DISCLOSE Act.  The DISCLOSE Act is another attempt by the union-controlled Democrat Party to shill for its big union bosses.

As Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) noted here on Big Government, ”the White House and their allies on Capitol Hill see honest criticism as a threat to forcing their big government, liberal agenda through Congress.”  While the DISCLOSE Act provides exemptions for traditional news media, Reason’s Bradley Smith and Jeffrey Patch point out:

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A third instance of Elena Kagan opposing Americans’ Second Amendment right to own a gun became public Thursday, ensuring gun rights will be a major issue in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. It also confirms that President Obama’s gun-control agenda is to create a Supreme Court that will “reinterpret” the Second Amendment until that amendment means nothing at all.

This year, no case on the Supreme Court docket is more important than McDonald v. Chicago, where the Court is deciding whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is only a right you have against the federal government, or instead if the Second Amendment (like most of the Bill of Rights) also secures a right you can assert against state and local governments. At issue is whether Chicago’s law banning guns—even in your own home—is constitutional.

When the Supreme Court considered its last Second Amendment case in 2008, District of Columbia v. Heller, then-Solicitor General Paul Clement filed a brief in the case, and then requested and received time to argue the federal government’s position on the meaning of the Second Amendment.

When the McDonald case was argued before the Court on March 2, current Solicitor General Kagan argued… Nothing. Not only did she not ask for time during oral argument, she didn’t even file a brief (which the solicitor general routinely does in important constitutional cases—and the McDonald case is tremendously important).

If someone asserts that the solicitor general shouldn’t file a brief because it’s a state issue as to whether the Second Amendment is “incorporated” to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (which is the issue in McDonald) the record speaks to the contrary. The last time the Supreme Court “incorporated” a right from the Bill of Rights to the states, in the 1969 case Benton v. Maryland, the solicitor general filed a brief, and then (just like Heller in 2008) was given time in oral argument time to express the government’s views in front of the Court.

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Is President Obama a surprising gun rights supporter? He might be if the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman is correct. And Chapman isn’t the only one. It seems to be shaping up to be the lefty complaint du jour this week. Reality, however, might say something different.

Chapman makes a classic mistake that many people make when discussing matters political. He mistakes Washington’s inaction on an issue as some sort of statement on the ideology on that issue. While there are times when this is true, inaction is not necessarily a statement of support or opposition to an issue, but often just a matter of merely not having gotten to it yet, or even not being able to.

In this case Chapman is talking about guns. Is Obama for them, against them, indifferent to them? Chapman has a sneaking suspicion that President Obama is for our rights and only supports modest gun control measures. This is because the president hasn’t launched into all sorts of left-wing attempts to curtail our Second Amendment rights in his one year in office. But I think Chapman is reading too much into Obama’s inaction.

While it is true that Obama has signed a few bills with measures that have given gun rights advocates reason to celebrate and while it is true that Obama has not come to the aid of virulent anti-Second Amendment folks like the Brady Center, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Obama is the NRA’s next poster child!

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Imam Zaid Shakir came to speak at my school, Claremont McKenna, on December 9^th to respond to the “tragedy of Ft. Hood.” Rather than respond to the massacre of American servicemen, Shakir spent the evening indicting the United States – saying “we were born in genocide.” The reason for the Ft. Hood Massacre, according to Shakir? Not jihad or Islamic fundamentalism, but the “pervasiveness of violence in our society” and because of Americans’ “easy access to guns.”

Zaid Shakir – Final from The Claremont Conservative on Vimeo.

For those wondering who Mr. Shakir is, he’s the go-to expert on Islamic issues for the mainstream media. The New York Times describes him as a “leading intellectual light,” while rap scholar, Cornel West says “he is one of the towering principle [sic] voices not only in contemporary Islam, but in American society,” according to this biography.   Most recently, he was described by John Esposito as one of the “500 Most Influential Muslims.”

After comparing the massacres at Ft. Hood by Major Nidal Hassan to the Columbine killers and Maurice Clemmons, of Mike Huckabee pardon fame, Shakir said that the violence we have seen was not a “Muslim problem,” but a problem for everyone. You never quite know when someone will “snap.” [The following is extracted from a transcript from audio I took of the public lecture at my college.] (more…)