Archive for Power to the People

Murder down, gun sales up; proof that guns don’t cause crime

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on December 27th, 2009

by SAF staff

A ten percent drop in murders during the first six months of this year at a time when gun sales were up dramatically is more proof that there is no correlation between gun ownership and violent crime, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

The FBI released data Monday that shows murders dropped by 10 percent from the same period in 2008. Meanwhile, according to data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows that during the first six months of this year, gun sales were up. January 2009 background checks rose 28.8 percent over the same month in 2008, February’s NICS checks were up 23.3 percent and in March they were up 29.9 percent over March 2008. The trend continued in April, with NICS checks up 30.3 percent, while May showed a slowdown, up only 15.5 percent, and in June they were up 18.1 percent.

“What this shows,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb, “is that gun prohibitionists are all wrong when they argue that more guns result in more crime. Firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens are no threat to anyone. Perhaps violent criminals were actually discouraged by all of those gun sales earlier this year, because the media made a point of reporting the booming gun market.

“Anti-gunners,” he continued, “have lost another one of their baseless arguments. Millions of Americans bought guns during the first six months of this year, many of them for the first time. Yet with all of those new guns in circulation, coupled with an increased demand for concealed carry licenses around the country, the streets have not been awash in blood, as gun banners repeatedly predict.

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Shall we get serious?

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on December 12th, 2009

by Richard C. Evey

“Government is the art of keeping people from meddling in their own business.”

- Francoise Giroud

A challenge was made on a number of questions on the subject of Libertarians getting serious and I would like to rant. Correction: I am going to rant.

There will always be government, so how do we improve it?

We make it smaller. We make it accountable. The United States government is mandated to do only four things according to the US Constitution. State government is mandated to do what, maybe highways? County government: enforce just laws, keep order and maybe run schools. City government: enforce just laws and keep order. I am not sure who said it: “The government that governs less, governs best.” Government must be reminded that they work for “We the People!”

There will be taxes, so how can we make them beneficial rather than draconian?

There will be just enough to facilitate government. The taxing of products: sales tax, import tax and the like. Tax money will be used for running government and not welfare, roads, grants for whatever, loans and the list is endless. You do not tax necessities: income, food, transportation, housing, booze, etc.

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Pay your own doctors

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on November 4th, 2009

by Ari Armstrong

What was the total cost of your last doctor’s visit? If you’re like most Americans, you have no idea, because somebody else is paying most of the bill.

Patients directly pay only about 14 percent of medical bills. The rest comes from insurance or government. This is the fundamental reason why health costs have skyrocketed. Patients have little incentive to monitor costs and look for good value, and sending routine expenses through third parties adds paperwork and administrative costs.

When somebody else pays the bill, many doctors think of their client as the insurer, not the patient. Likewise, insurers cater to employers, not you. The patient often gets cut out of the medical loop.

While Barack Obama pretends that insurance companies are at fault, the reality is that federal tax distortions drove insurance into the expensive, non-portable, employer-paid system. This tax distortion explains why Americans tend to use insurance as pre-paid health care, rather than to cover unexpected, high-cost treatments.

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Health care innovation

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on October 21st, 2009

by Jessica Peck Corry

Dr. Keith Smith is a proud capitalist. The anesthesiologist often helps poor patients obtain surgeries at no cost while managing to keep his Oklahoma-based practice afloat.

Speaking recently to a roomful of American reporters at a Vancouver hotel, Smith could have easily relied on lazy clichés to point out how Canada’s system fails its critically ill. Instead, he talked about something much more important to most Americans: how our system is failing us.

“The Canadian system is a Ponzi scheme that is just a little further along than ours,” he said, condemning what he called a “cartel” between U.S. hospitals and insurance companies, and condemning the lack of consumer choice present in both countries.

While speaking ill of the health care establishment, one of America’s most powerful political lobbies, might be enough to spell the demise for most medical professionals, Smith remains undeterred, accusing the two industries of often exaggerating each other’s expenses to generate greater public sympathy and more taxpayer funding.

“In the hands of a good surgeon, a tonsillectomy can take 10 to 15 minutes,” he said. “It’s criminal that this is billed out at $9,000.” He also expressed outrage that not-for-profit hospitals in his hometown made profits of up to $100 million in the last year alone and that more than 50 cents of every dollar spent on U.S. health care comes from taxpayers.

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Health care protests on target

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on August 12th, 2009

by Jay Ambrose

Now we know the enemy in the health-care debate, the really, truly despicable people, the worms who ought to be stuffed back in the dirt they crawled out of. It’s ordinary citizens who have had the temerity to show up at meetings of their representatives in Congress, asking in so many words — “What in the name of heaven are you planning to do with our lives?”

Happy enough to be cheerleaders when Cindy Sheehan and her ragtag followers were out and about calling George W. Bush a mass murderer, Democrats, the left generally, some pretend journalists and a number of big-name commentators are aghast at a lack of respect for the Washington malefactors, fearful that someone will think everyday Americans actually know what they’re talking about and worried about how hard it will be to set the record straight if their critiques are widely circulated.

Nancy Pelosi goes further. She asserts swastikas had been spotted at these protests, as if that is comment enough. Listen, speaker of the House: There are kooks out there. No matter what the event, kooks show up. I have no idea whether someone with a swastika actually was at some health-care protest or two or three, but that would hardly mean what Pelosi implied, that what we have here is just a bunch of neo-Nazis. What we have are people who have been following developments and very well may grasp what is at stake in the rush-job “reform” proposals better than poor Pelosi ever could or even more than some gullible, non-sequitur-plagued, exaggerating writers in big-time media.

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Daley’s bodyguard catches killer; ‘We should all be so lucky’

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on July 18th, 2009

by SAF staff

The capture of a convicted killer Monday near the Michigan vacation home of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley proves that guns in the right hands are necessary for personal safety, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

“Mayor Daley is protected by an armed guard,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “but what about the citizens of his city, who have no such luxury? The mayor is a world class hypocrite, who has bodyguards with guns to protect him from escaped killers like Charles Smith. Yet he is continuing to stubbornly fight against average citizens who are willing to protect themselves, but unable to because of Daley’s deranged double standard about firearms and personal protection.”

The Second Amendment Foundation is challenging Chicago’s handgun ban and the case may be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Smith broke out of prison with two other men, a rapist and another murderer, in Michigan City, Indiana. At last report the other two were still at large, and one is believed to be in the Grand Beach, MI area where Daley’s summer home is located. Authorities there have been warning residents to stay inside.

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NRA members must oppose Sotomayor

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on July 1st, 2009

by Sandy Froman

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, has a narrow view of the Second Amendment that contradicts the Court’s landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. A heated debate has started in the U.S. Senate over her opposition to the right to keep and bear arms. This issue, which has decided the fate of presidential elections, could also decide her nomination. Gun owners, and especially the members of the National Rifle Association, must aggressively oppose Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

On June 24, senators began speaking on the floor of the Senate expressing grave concerns over Judge Sotomayor’s Second Amendment record. Senator Jeff Sessions R-AL, the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, pointed out that although her record on the issue is “fairly scant,” she has twice stated that the Second Amendment is not a fundamental right. Senator Sessions also noted that in Second Amendment and other constitutional cases, Sotomayor’s analysis of important constitutional issues has been lacking suggesting “a troubling tendency to avoid or casually dismiss difficult Constitutional issues of exceptional importance.” Sotomayor’s view on the Second Amendment clearly reflects an extreme anti-gun philosophy, and some Democrat senators from pro-gun states are justifiably nervous.

Last year, the Supreme Court held in Heller that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individual Americans to keep and bear firearms. But that ruling was a fiercely-contested, 5-4 split decision. Justice Kennedy joined the four conservatives on the Court to make the majority, with the four liberal justices writing passionate dissents about how the Second Amendment does not apply to private citizens.

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New models for real health care reform

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on June 3rd, 2009

by Linda Gorman 

Introduction

Paying for health care has been a problem since ancient times. In the Middle Ages, guilds collected funds to provide care for infirm members. In 1789, imitating the British, the U.S. Congress funded the Marine Hospital Service by taxing American seamen 20 cents a month.

As U.S. governments grew, they continued passing laws to regulate the kind of health coverage people could purchase. By 1960, most people with coverage got it through their employer. Plans provided by hospital monopolies controlled the coverage market. The true cost of health care was hidden from covered individuals. Vast spending increases were the result. The introduction of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 made the situation worse. Finkelstein found that Medicare increased real hospital expenditure by 23 percent between 1965 and 1970. Extrapolating from the Medicare estimates suggests that the spread of health coverage may “explain at least 40 percent of the rise in real per capita health spending” between 1950 and 1990.[1]

Only in the last two decades have economists reconsidered the effect that government regulations have had on the form health coverage takes, its cost, and how it encourages people to use health care. Government coverage programs obscure the real cost of health care and increase health spending by shifting the out-of-pocket cost of health care spending from the savings of individuals to the paychecks of working Americans.

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Coburn amendment a win for common sense

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on May 16th, 2009

by CCRKBA staff

A key amendment that would allow national park visitors to carry concealed firearms in accordance with state statute is a common sense provision that deserves support, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the amendment - added to House and Senate credit card legislation - was adopted by an overwhelming 67-29 Senate vote Tuesday, showing broad bipartisan support. If passed into law, Coburn’s amendment will essentially restore a new national parks concealed carry rule that became effective in January, but was challenged in court by the gun ban lobby.

In a statement, Coburn noted that, “If an American citizen has a right to carry a firearm in their state, it makes no sense to treat them like a criminal if they pass through a national park while in possession of a firearm.”

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SAF hails Ninth Circuit ruling in Glock lawsuit

Posted in Power to the People by R Lee Wrights on May 14th, 2009

by SAF staff

Monday’s ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that dismisses a lawsuit against Glock by the victims of a deranged gunman in Grenada Hills, CA was a proper decision under existing statute, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.

In a 2-1 decision, a three- judge panel upheld a lower court’s ruling that the case, Ileto v. Glock, was nullified under the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). That federal statute was passed to prevent junk lawsuits against gun makers, and this specific case was cited during Congressional debate as precisely the kind of lawsuit the law would prohibit.

“We are delighted that the Ninth Circuit panel not only affirmed the lower court ruling,” said SAF founder Alan Gottlieb, “but also that the court upheld the constitutionality of the federal law prohibiting this kind of lawsuit. While we sympathize with the victims, it would be an egregious miscarriage of justice to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the acts of criminals over whom they have no control.”

In August 1999, a deranged man named Buford Furrow opened fire at a Jewish Community Center summer camp in Granada Hills. The Glock pistol he used had once been owned by a police department in Washington State, but had been sold as surplus and passed through several hands before Furrow got it. Furrow wounded three children, a teenager and adult at the Jewish Center and later murdered a postal carrier, Joseph Ileto. Families of the victims, and Ileto’s widow, sued Glock and others in 2001, claiming that gun companies “intentionally produce, market, distribute, and sell more firearms than the legitimate market demands.”

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