PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
FOAC's Weekly Message For Sunday September 2nd 2018 :: 09/02/2018
This past week has seen an explosive series of revelations about the lies perpetrated by the anti-gun / anti-constitution groups to advance the narrative of gun control. Two issues in particular, School Shootings and Mass Shootings, have been pushed through a narrative of propaganda meant to deceitfully manipulate public opinion through a persuasive campaign of lies! These lies, propaganda, especially the media’s visual propaganda, has been used to change the way Americans think and perceive not only gun ownership but self-defense and our Constitution.
Gun Control Propaganda relies on coercing individuals to pick a side with the use of tools like black and white logic, where people are presented with only two available options for how to feel or behave such as “ban guns or kids die”! This bypasses the responsible approach of problem solving by creating scapegoats, negative stereotyping, and using labels and/or name calling to make the target of a campaign into a generic 'other' who threatens the familiar 'us.'
BIG Lie #1 is a ‘whopper’ in that Dr. John Lott has released a study showing that America is NOT at the top of the list of Mass Public Shootings. This study by Dr. Lott clearly demonstrates not only the bias and unethical mercenary conduct in certain parts of academia but also the willingness of unscrupulous politicians to embrace lies to further their agenda. Adam Lankford’s 2016 flawed study joined politics and a portion of academia into a unified weapon against our Constitutional Freedoms by declaring that Mass Shootings in the US are more prevalent in America!
The 2016 paper on mass public shootings by Adam Lankford has been quoted and distributed through massive national and international media attention and through the gloating of politicians like Senator Schumer, Rep. Pelosi and President Obama. Lankford's study claimed that over the 47 years from 1966 to 2012, an enormous amount of the world’s mass public shooters — 31% — occurred in the United States. Lankford then went on to directly link this to America’s gun ownership.
By Lott’s study, the US makes up less than 1.43% of the mass public shooters, 2.11% of their murders, and 2.88% of their attacks. All these are much less than the US’s 4.6% share of the world population. Attacks in the US are not only less frequent than other countries, they are also much less deadly on average.
Given the massive U.S. and international media attention Lankford’s work has received, and given the considerable impact his research has had on the debate, it is critical that this issue is resolved. His unwillingness to provide even the most basic information to other researchers raises real concerns about Lankford’s motives.
***The paper is available to be downloaded here.
“The power of this report should convince academic and medical groups to reevaluate all prior statistical studies of mass shootings and the overall public health danger of firearms,” said Professor Arthur Z Berg, M.D., DLF APA, Harvard University emeritus.
Here is a graph that the New York Times put together using Lankford’s data (data on the rate of mass public shooters by country that has not been released to anyone other than the New York Times) and the CPRC graph using the corrected data.
UPDATE: What has been Adam Lankford’s response to Dr. Lott’s study? He told the Washington Times: “I am not interested in giving any serious thought to John Lott or his claims,” he said in response to an email seeking comment. . . .
This is an amazing response from someone who has refused to provide even the most basic data to other researchers. Perhaps Lankford was paid well enough for his study that he no longer needs to be seen as a credible researcher?
BIG Lie #2 of the Past Week: Overstated School Shooting Lies Exposed as well as the ‘Bad Math’ of the Dept. of Education Can't Count
The US Department on Education — a federal agency with no clear purpose or need — conducts something called the Civil Rights Data Collection survey every two years. They ask all 96,000 public schools around the country hundreds of questions about all aspects of their operations, ostensibly to better craft education policy. They’ve just published the results of the survey for the 2015-2016 school year and one of the questions in the survey involves shootings in schools.
In the 2015-2016 school year, (they asked) “Has there been at least one incident at your school that involved a shooting (regardless of whether anyone was hurt)?”
The answer — “nearly 240 schools (0.2 percent of all schools)” — was published this spring.
There’s one problem. That total is orders of magnitude more than any other similar survey of shooting incidents in US schools found in other surveys. Even the fabulists at Everytown for Gun Safety only claim 29 school shootings during the same period.
So the notorious gun industry shills at NPR set out to confirm the CRDC’s result.
…NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.
from npr.org
Take, for instance, one California district that, according to the CRDC, was a virtual shooting gallery in 2015-2016.
Most of the school leaders NPR reached had little idea of how shootings got recorded for their schools.
For example, the CRDC reports 26 shootings within the Ventura Unified School District in Southern California.
“I think someone pushed the wrong button,” said Jeff Davis, an assistant superintendent there. The outgoing superintendent, Joe Richards, “has been here for almost 30 years and he doesn’t remember any shooting,” Davis added.
Did someone in the Department of Education have a political agenda and intentionally inflate the results of the survey? We’re dealing with government bureaucrats here on both ends of the survey, which means Hanlon’s razor is always at play: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Case in point: the results for Cleveland.
The biggest discrepancy in sheer numbers was the 37 incidents listed in the CRDC for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Roseann Canfora, the district’s chief communications officer, told us that, in fact, 37 schools reported “possession of a knife or a firearm,” which is the previous question on the form.
The number 37, then, was apparently entered on the wrong line.
And as always, garbage in, garbage out.
Similarly, the CRDC lists four shootings among the 16 schools of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in California. Gail Pinsker, spokeswoman for the district, says that “going back 20-plus years,” no one can remember any incident involving a firearm. Their best guess, she says, is that there was some kind of mistake in coding, where an incident involving something like a pair of scissors (California Education Code 48915[c][2]), for example, got inflated into one involving a firearm (48915[c][1]).
The CRDC shows seven shootings in DeKalb County, Ga. Police reports provided to us by that district give a sense of more of the many, many ways the data collection may have gone wrong.
At Redan Middle School, there is a report of a toy cap gun fired on a school bus — not a shooting.
The CRDC shows a shooting at Stone Mountain Middle School, but a police report shows an incident at Stone Mountain High School instead.
The NPR report also points out a number of ways the wording of the survey itself is confusing and inconsistencies in how various states and districts account for incidents. They also point out that 240 out of 96,000 is well within the margin of error.
A number of districts have tried to correct the data they reported, but the DoE says they won’t be republishing the results.
Give credit to NPR for going to the time and expense to troubleshoot this obviously broken process and the wildly over-inflated “statistic” that it produced. In the mean time, if you see someone on the anti-gun side spout that ludicrous 240 school shootings in one year number, you’ll know where it came from. And who to thank for it.
Dick's Sporting Goods Stock Drops On Unexpectedly Lower Sales – Stand on Guns BLAMED
My mother used to caution me, as a child, to NOT gloat at another’s misfortune! This time I admit to it being extraordinarily difficult to contain my satisfaction at the dropping sales at Dick’s Sporting Goods. I apologize in advance.
All of that said, Dicks Sporting Goods this week reported a larger-than-expected drop in same store sales and their stock has taken a dive as a result. What’s more, analysts are blaming their post-Parkland Bloomberg-approved gun sales polices for a big part of the drop.
As reuters.com reports . . .
Shares in the company fell as much as 10 percent after it posted a 1.9 percent drop in same-store sales, bigger than analysts’ average estimate of a 0.62 percent dip.
Dick’s was one of the first retailers to stop selling so-called assault rifles and high-capacity magazines as well as to prejudicially bar the sale of guns to people under age 21 following the Parkland school shooting in February.
The company had initially predicted that its hunting guns business would be energized by the change in policy and said the move should also attract more people to its stores.
Dick’s said on Wednesday it expected annual same-store sales to decline by 3 percent to 4 percent, compared with a 0.3 percent decline in 2017.
Dick’s and their lamestream bootlickers in the media touted the fact that the chain’s sales were up initially following the announcement of their new anti-gun polices and CEO Edward Stack’s cash support for gun control lobbyists in Washington. Stack and his new “socially responsible” management style were hailed by civilian disarmament organizations. Everything was going to be just fine.
But now the worm has turned and the full-on effects of the retail chain forsaking a significant portion of its customer base seem to be having the result many predicted.
Dick’s is also blaming the downturn in part on a nosedive in sales of Under Armour gear, a brand Dick’s had counted on to make up for a big chunk of their lost gun and ammo business.
Much like Dick’s, though, Under Armour hasn’t exactly endeared itself to the hunting gear-buying public in recent years.
Parkland happened in February and hunting season is now just weeks away. These results could be the first tangible effects of hunters and other gun buyers deciding to take their business to other, more gun-friendly big box retailers such as Cabela’s, Bass Pro, and Academy.
It appears many of Dick’s customers have decided there’s no reason to give their hard-earned money to a retailer that has openly and actively worked to restrict their right to keep and bear arms.
Greater Pittsburgh Gun Club Fighting with Robinson Township AGAIN with the Help of the Second Amendment Foundation
The Greater Pittsburgh Gun Club has been battling Robinson Township off and on for decades. This time the club is claiming that Robinson Township (of Washington County) is attempting to zone them out of existence and now the Second Amendment Foundation has stepped into this Hatfield / McCoy’s feud by filing a lawsuit in federal court.
Here’s the SAF’s press release . . .
SAF SUES PENNSYLVANIA TOWNSHIP, OFFICIAL OVER GUN RANGE DISPUTE
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a lawsuit in federal court on behalf of the owner of a local gun club in western Pennsylvania against Robinson Township and its zoning officer, alleging violations of Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights “by subverting the club’s operation.”
SAF is joined by William Drummond, owner of property on which the Greater Pittsburgh Gun Club is located, and has been since 1967. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. The case is Drummond v. Robinson Township.
Legal troubles between the range operation and Robinson Township date back to 1993, when the township brought a nuisance action against the range, then known as the Greater Pittsburgh Trap and Skeet Club. The club prevailed. A second action mounted two years ago also failed.
But now the operation, under Drummond’s management since December 2017 via a lease, is having trouble again. New zoning restrictions have been adopted and the lawsuit says that the defendants, under color of law, have deprived the plaintiffs, their members and their customers, of their right to keep and bear arms in violation of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
“This amounts to a local government attempting to drive a legal operation out of business through the use of zoning restrictions,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “There have been meetings about which Mr. Drummond was not informed, and we believe this has been done in order to close down the historic range operation.
“We’re seeking a permanent injunction against the defendants,” he added, “and a court order for the Township to issue all the necessary permits for operation. We expect the federal court to bring an end to what appears to be a long running effort to shut down this range facility, and hold the township responsible for this nonsense.”
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
The UK has Destroyed Self-Defense and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; Americans Should Learn from THIS!!
Despite very severe anti-knife laws, Great Britain has been suffering from a surge in knife crime. Some Britons propose making the laws even harsher. Others are offering more constructive solutions to get to the root causes of the problem.
Britain’s experience demonstrates that pulling the teeth of the ‘wolf dog’ will NOT protect the sheep or stop the wolf and serves to once again reiterate the importance of the Second Amendment. Under the logic of the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia v. Heller decision, knives are certainly among the “arms” protected by the Second Amendment. Courts in Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Washington are among those that have recognized as much, with courts in the first two states finding that particular knife controls went too far and were unconstitutional.
“Although England’s 1689 Bill of Rights recognized the right to possess defensive arms, that right is now a dead letter, as are many of the others enumerated in that document. So today, Great Britain has trapped itself in a vicious cycle of rising crime and intensifying repression.” – David B. Kopel and Vincent Harinam in Britain’s Failed Weapons-Control Laws Show Why the Second Amendment Matters [via nationalreview.com]
The Americas and 'Gun Violence' - The Patriot Post
A new study shows that countries in North and South America are the most violent in the world when it comes to deaths perpetrated using firearms.
U.S. News & World Report reveals, “Half of all global deaths from gun violence occur in six countries in the Western Hemisphere, according to a new study that exposes trends in fatal shootings, particularly in the cause of death.” Topping the list in the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation study are Brazil, the United States, and Mexico.
Yet one of the more interesting results of the study is that the U.S. actually ranks 30th in the rate of homicides with guns, which, given the prevalence of firearms in our nation, flies in the face of those claiming that more guns cause more violence. The trick to ranking the U.S. second overall is suicides. More on that below.
First, let’s consider “gun violence,” a politically charged term devised by the media and leftist politicians to blame guns and avoid focusing on the real problem. As gun-rights advocates rightly say: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. The factor making up most of the homicides has nothing to do with flag-waving, Bible-thumping, country-music-loving gun owners in America’s flyover country (as the Left would have us believe); instead, the violence is mostly caused by gangs, drugs, and the breakdown of our culture and values in cities that have been run by Democrats for generations.
To Read More: https://patriotpost.us/articles/57981
Yours in Freedom!
Kim Stolfer, President
