PA Bill Number: HB1472
Title: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contributions ...
Description: In primary and election expenses, further providing for reporting by candidate and political committees and other persons and for late contrib ...
Last Action: Referred to STATE GOVERNMENT
Last Action Date: Apr 22, 2024
Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Jefe Joshua Horowitz is a Liar :: 07/27/2015
After blogging hundreds, if not thousands of anti-gun rants I’m finally fed up. The CNN editorial This could have prevented Lafayette movie theater killings has brought me to the point of complete exasperation.
In it, the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Josh Horowitz [above] argues that better gun laws would have stopped John Hauser from opening fire at a cinema in Lafayette, LA. Specifically . . .
A policy recently enacted in California, the Gun Violence Restraining Order, or GVRO, would seem to hold enormous promise for those looking to stop the next gunman before he can carry out his plans.
The GVRO is based on the same principle as a domestic violence restraining order. It would allow family members and/or law enforcement to go before a judge and request that guns be temporarily removed from an individual who is likely to be dangerous toward himself and/or others (while allowing for due process).
Am I the only one who reads that the GVRO “would seem to hold enormous promise” and wonders WTF? If one of the point men for civilian disarmament deploys such obvious qualifiers to sell support for a national gun control law, upon what factual foundation could this law rest?
I’ll tell you: none. There is no evidence whatsoever that GVROs would/could/can/will stop a mass shooter – compared to the fact that every mass shooter is stopped by a good guy with a gun be he a policeman, bystander or the (not so good) gunman himself.
Not to put too fine point on it, Josh pulls this stuff out of his posterior parts. But that’s how it is with these people. They justify their Constitutional corruption with nothing more than good intentions. And hope for change. It’s wing-and-a-prayer propaganda that the mainstream media regurgitates without once thinking to challenge its propagators to prove their point. Fact check much? No. Never.
Look at that last bit. Josh says GVROs are potentially awesome “while allowing for due process.” Absolute unmitigated horseshit. In California, where the Constitutional abomination known as AB 1014 was passed into law, family members and police can obtain a Gun Violence Restraining Order without any representation from the gun owner. Here it friggin’ is:
This bill would additionally authorize a court to issue an ex parte gun violence restraining order prohibiting the subject of the petition from having in his or her custody or control, owning, purchasing, possessing, or receiving, or attempting to purchase or receive, a firearm or ammunition when it is shown that there is a substantial likelihood that the subject of the petition poses a significant danger of harm to himself, herself, or another in the near future by having in his or her custody or control, owning, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm and that the order is necessary to prevent personal injury to himself, herself, or another, as specified.
Click here for the law as enacted. But let’s be clear: ex parte means “a legal proceeding brought by one person in the absence of and without representation or notification of other parties.” The GVRO specifically excludes the gun owner in question from the confiscation hearing. There is no due process, and Horowitz knows it. He’s lying. Because he knows it.
Horowitz knows that the GVRO’s lack of due process is an affront to Americans’ belief that citizens are innocent until proven guilty. He knows that the GVRO creates a situation that is, in fact, the exact opposite. He’s ready, willing and able, happy to piss on our entire system of justice to disarm Americans, to create a fascist state where secret hearings deprive citizens of their Constitutionally protected rights. And Horowitz’s organization calls us insurrectionists.
The GVRO became law in California following the 2014 mass shooting at the University of California-Santa Barbara in Isla Vista. The gunman in that case, Elliot Rodger, had been subject to a welfare check, but law enforcement had no authority to remove his guns. California lawmakers, to their credit, acted quickly and decisively to prevent the next tragedy from happening.
More lies. The police who visited Elliot Rodger before his heinous crimes had every authority to remove his guns. They made the wrong call and chose not to. Like this [via time.com]:
On April 30, deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction in Isla Vista, visited Rodgers at his home to assess his mental state. They had been indirectly summoned there by Rodger’s mother. Reportedly disturbed by videos her son had posted on YouTube, she called a therapist who had been treating him, who called a mental-health hotline, which contacted the authorities. The deputies interviewed Rodger and determined that he was shy, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown — but polite and did not pose a risk to himself or others. Absent that, they had no legal right to take him into custody. They urged him to call his mother and they left.
Note: if the cops had determined that Rodger was a threat to himself and others, if they hadn’t been fooled by his act or actually watched the video he uploaded or talked to his mother directly, they could have removed his guns. Better yet, they could have taken Rodgers into protective custody, denying him access to knives (which he used to start his killing spree by stabbing his three roommates to death) and his car (he struck and injured five victims with his BMW).
Again, Horowitz knows these facts and chooses to lie about them. Why wouldn’t he? His campaign for civilian disarmament runs counter to everything that patriotic Americans hold dear. He has to lie about it, and divert attention away from its inherent, amoral failure.
A society whose citizens can no longer peaceably attend church, see a movie or study in school is a society that can no longer call itself free. To state the obvious, James Madison and our Founders did not ratify the Second Amendment so that men such as John Russell Houser could obtain guns, legally or otherwise. Preventing killers like this from arming to the teeth is imperative if we are to “insure domestic Tranquility” as envisioned by our Constitution.
As we say in these parts, look at that baby! Horowitz has to distract readers away from his tissue of lies by redefining freedom (obviously), putting words in the mouths of our Founding Fathers (that they would have spat out) and cherry picking the preamble of the United States Constitution to further his agenda. Here’s the entire text:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In Horowitz’s America, disarmed citizens sacrifice justice (e..g., the GVRO) for domestic tranquility. Two words for that: fascist state. To be fair, Horowitz isn’t lying about the end game. He’s just hiding it in the usual utopian vision of a world without [non-governmental] violence.
What if South Carolina, Tennessee and Louisiana had put a GVRO policy in place? Family and law enforcement in each of these cases saw the red flags, and in Houser’s case they had taken some steps. What if state legislators had provided them with a new means to intervene and disarm their loved ones before the shooting ever started?
They would have found another way to kill. It’s as simple as that. Besides, we already have commitment procedures for people who are seriously mentally ill; a process that lowers their chance of harming others to near zero. The idea that taking guns away from dangerously mentally ill people – and leaving them in society – will prevent spree killing is dangerously naive.
I bet Josh Horowitz isn’t that stupid. I bet he’s just a liar, doing his damnedest to mislead Americans into surrendering their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. Not that he’d admit it. What liar would?
