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FOAC's Weekly Message For Sunday May 26th 2019 :: 05/26/2019

In these last days of spring, we commemorate those who died in the military service. We celebrate Memorial Day on the last Monday of May.  So it was fitting that yesterday, FOAC joined with Representative Bud Cook for a concealed carry seminar at the (very impressive) Charleroi Sportsmen’s Club and at this presentation we were honored to have a gold star father attend, which made yesterday very special!

So What is Memorial Day?

The history of Memorial Day goes back to the 19th century. People who lost their friends and relatives in the Civil War started to decorate the graves of their dead with flowers, wreaths, and flags. That is why the initial name of this holiday was Decoration Day.

After World War I, all Americans adopted this remembrance tradition of the Southern states and devoted it to all those who died in any military action. We are honoring men and women who gave their lives for our country up to now.

What is the Difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day?

If you are one of those asking “is Memorial Day not for veterans?” it is time to learn the answer. Since a lot of us still confuse Veterans Day and Memorial Day, you should know the difference to avoid any misunderstanding.

These two holidays have different origins. The official observance of Memorial Day started in 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery where people decorated the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers with flowers. This tradition was extended to commemorate all military men and women who died in all American wars.

Veterans Day dates back to the early 20th century when Armistice Day was declared after World War I to honor the heroism of the American soldiers and their contribution to the world peace. After World War II, the name of the holiday was changed to “Veterans.” Ever since then Veterans Day is observed on November 11 to celebrate the veterans of all American wars.

It is important to remind ourselves and others on Memorial Day that freedom does not come free and easy and that these freedoms have come at a high cost!. Our history is full of instances showing the prices we pay for our liberties. That is why we offer these quotes to express our gratitude to those who paid the highest price for our freedoms:

• "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." –John F. Kennedy
• “It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.” – General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.
• “The patriot’s blood is the seed of freedom’s tree.” — Thomas Campbell
• “Freedom does not come without a price. We may sometimes take for granted the many liberties we enjoy in America, but they have all been earned through the ultimate sacrifice paid by so many of the members of our armed forces.” - Charlie Dent
• “Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.” – Harry S. Truman

We should all thank God that America (still) has such men and women who will put themselves in harm’s way to protect all that we hold dear!

Gun Crime Is A Manufactured Term from The Anti-Gunners Who Distort (Lie) the Truth, Let’s Look at The Real Numbers

in nearly every debate and presentation, when we talk about firearms, there is a LOT of misinformation and … outright lies told by the gun grabbing lefties.

For the anti-gunners and their billionaire supporters it is a means to an end, a way to gain power and has nothing to do with saving lives. This is one of the reasons their programs have always failed. They don’t want to stop shootings but use them to enhance their power over the public debate.

Here are the facts they, the media, and select politicians choose to ignore. Facts YOU can use.

There are at least 120,000,000 gun owners in the US. There’s 5 million+ gun owners in Pennsylvania with 1.17 million of them possessing a license to carry concealed firearms. We are the majority of voting adults.

53% of all shootings are by black men under 30. So, 3% of the US population does more than ½ the killing. 83% of all shootings are gang and drug-related.

Only about 7% of all shootings from a rifle or shotgun and less than 40% of that 7% involve so-called “assault weapons”.

The U.S. ranks 11th in mass shootings for industrialized nations. 50% of the counties in the US will not have a murder within their boundary. Over 80% of all American cities experienced no homicides whatsoever while only 2% of the counties had 53% of all the murders in the U.S.

Both Japan and Korea have MUCH higher suicide rates than the US. Both nations virtually ban private gun ownership. 75% of all gun deaths are attributed to suicide. Guns are not the cause, just the means.

An Obama administration study showed guns are used over 500,000 time a year to save a life or prevent crime or assault while a CDC study, that was buried, confirmed Prof. Kleck’s research that over 2 million times a year a firearm is used to save a life.

U.S. Numbers

• Total Number of gun deaths: 38,000
• Suicides: 28,500
• Gang and Drug: 7,885
• Remaining: 1,615

If not for gangs and drugs, the number of murders by guns is below 1,700 in a county of 330,000,000 people. Remove the gangs and drugs, and the US is one of the SAFEST countries in the world.

So fellow firearms owners – here are facts – the REAL facts

Now it is up to you to SHIFT the paradigm. We need to be relentless in forcing the left and our elected leaders to face the reality that gun ownership is not the cause of violence but the salvation to it. It is the left's failed social programs, the use of mind altering drugs like Prozac (SSRIs), and open borders that bring in opioids that destroys lives, that are the real cause of gun deaths.

Use these facts, fight for our rights with EDUCATION and the TRUTH!

These facts will help all of us save the country and rights that we love!

Oh, in case you’re wondering where I got these facts see the FBI unified crime report. They’re all there for ANYONE to see.

Also take a moment to check out Dr. John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center.

Columbine School Shooting Survivor, Now A State Representative Supports Arming Teachers

Colorado state House Minority Leader Patrick Neville, a third-term Republican, supports legislation to allow concealed handguns on school campuses and defended that position recently in an interview with NPR, and has a unique perspective: he’s a survivor of the 1999 Columbine High School attack.

Neville was interviewed by NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro just days after the STEM school attack in Highlands Ranch that left one student dead and several others injured. He told Garcia-Navarro that he thinks students at the school would have been safer, had there been a legally concealed handgun on campus that day earlier this month when two other teens, using guns stolen from one of their homes, opened fire. Both have been charged in connection with the case.

“I think that probably wouldn't have – the shooting probably wouldn’t have happened in the first place,” Neville contended, according to an NPR transcript. “One of the reasons I propose this bill year after year is the fact that it’s a major deterrent. If they (school shooters) know they’re going to go in there and face opposition and they don’t know where that opposition’s going to come from, they’ll probably think twice about doing it in the first place. So I think they probably would have been safer had it actually broken out. But I think it probably would have prevented it from even happening in the first place.”

This is not the expected rhetoric of someone who survived a school shooting. Indeed, other Columbine survivors and at least one parent of a Columbine victim, have taken the opposite position, and support more gun control laws.

Neville said further that, “I’d point to the fact that we really haven’t seen this problem in our schools until Americans adopted gun-free-zone policies throughout the states,” during his interview. “And that’s what’s actually contributed – not the only cause, but contributed to this happening.”

Recently in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 7030, which authorizes local school boards to allow teachers, who voluntarily go through training, to be armed on campus. The Unified Sportsmen of Florida backed the measure, which actually was the result of a suggestion by a panel of law enforcement, education and other specialists that looked into the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

So, what Neville is suggesting is not so radical after all, it would appear. It just isn’t politically correct among liberal anti-gunners.

Much will be learned from the tragedy at the STEM school, and Neville’s argument that having armed staff on school grounds might be a deterrent may now get serious consideration. After all, the “gun-free school zones” approach has been tried, and it hasn’t worked. That policy was in place 20 years ago and it didn’t prevent Columbine, and Neville was there. It was still in place earlier this month, and it didn’t prevent the STEM school shooting, and now Neville wants to try a “common sense” approach.

Pending US Supreme Court Case Could Profoundly Reshape the Interpretation Of The Second Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up a challenge by the New York State rifle and Pistol Association over a New York City gun control scheme that effectively prohibits lawfully licensed handgun owners from leaving the city with their own firearms. The plaintiffs in the case have raised a number of objections to the regime, the foremost of which is that it violates the Second Amendment. The case is New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. New York City.

Given the uniquely oppressive and bizarre nature of the challenged restrictions, many observers believe the real question in the case isn’t whether New York City will lose but on what grounds and how badly. The City itself, in fact, recently made a desperate attempt to avoid a ruling on its laws by claiming to the court that it was in the process of revising the regulations to address the issues raised in the case. The court rejected that gambit, and proceedings in the case have continued, with a number of stakeholders filing friend of the court (amicus curiae) briefs this week to help inform the justices’ deliberations.

Chief among them was none other than the Trump administration, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) filing a brief in support of the plaintiffs. The DOJ offered two possible bases for finding New York City’s regulations unconstitutional, including that the “transport ban infringes the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.”

The government’s brief urges the court to “look first to the text of the Second Amendment, the history of the right to keep and bear arms before ratification, and the tradition of gun regulation after ratification” to judge the validity of a gun control law.

Applying this test to New York City’s travel ban, it states:

Few laws in the history of our Nation, or even in contemporary times, have come close to such a sweeping prohibition on the transportation of arms. And on some of the rare occasions in the 19th and 20th centuries when state and local governments have adopted such prohibitions, state courts have struck them down. That is enough to establish that the transport ban is unconstitutional.

Also filing in support of the plaintiffs was a coalition of pro-gun states led by Louisiana and including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgie, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Like the DOJ’s brief, the states’ brief urges the Supreme Court to use text, history, and tradition to find that New York City’s travel ban violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendment.

Alternatively, the states’ brief argues, if the court should adopt the Second Circuit’s approach to applying a tiered level of scrutiny, it should subject the law to a rigorously applied heighted scrutiny. “New York City could not possibly meet such scrutiny here,” the brief concludes.

One hundred and twenty pro-gun members of Congress, led by Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), urged the court to rule in favor of the plaintiffs as well. Emphasizing that “[t]he Second Amendment enshrines the fundamental right of citizens to protect themselves from violence and tyranny,” the congressional brief joined the chorus criticizing the dismissive treatment the Second Amendment has received in the lower courts.

Tellingly, even certain well-known gun control groups – including the Giffords Law Center and the Brady Campaign – filed briefs that made no attempt to argue that New York City’s travel ban survives Second Amendment scrutiny. Rather, their briefs merely urge the court to rule narrowly in the case and in a way that preserves ample leeway for states and localities to continue to regulate firearms.

Why Second Amendment Supporters Must Be on The Watch for Socialist Measures Embedded Within So-Called Election Reform (a.k.a. silencing critics)

One of the biggest threats to our right to keep and bear arms is not a gun ban like that proposed by the California congressional screwball, Eric Swalwell. It’s not Cory Booker’s licensing scheme. Nor it is Kamala Harris promising to ban imports of modern semiautomatic firearms.

No, the biggest threats are various campaign reform laws, like the For the People Act that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year.

In 2002, Michael Barnes, then the president of the Brady Campaign, explained the reasoning behind their support for McCain-Feingold:

“Even though the measure will impact our election activities as well, it will cut into the NRA’s even more, reducing the gun lobby’s ability to obstruct the progress of sensible gun laws.”

Translation: The NRA was doing too well in persuading Americans that millions of law-abiding gun owners shouldn’t be punished for the actions of criminals and nutcases, so the Brady Campaign wanted to change the rules. It seems the Second Amendment isn’t the only part of the Bill of Rights that they hated. They tried to use the power of the government to muzzle their opponents. It was a concession that they were losing the argument.

You have to admit, at least they were being honest.

It would have been far easier for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton to win if gun owners had to jump through hoops set up by some Lois Lerner wannabe. Even if the anti-Second Amendment candidate lost, FEC investigations could saddle Second Amendment supporters with legal bills in the best of situations.

Intimidate Furthermore, you can bet that anti-Second Amendment extremists will get a pass. Dinesh D’Souza got a felony conviction for his scheme to bypass campaign donation limits in one election, but Rosie O’Donnell has yet to face any legal repercussions for repeatedly violating campaign donation limits in support of candidates who oppose our Second Amendment rights.

The goal is not just to bog down Second Amendment supporters who get involved, although the likes of Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts do benefit from that. The real target of this campaign of legal and bureaucratic harassment are those Second Amendment supporters who are thinking about becoming activists and advocates.

By making examples of activists supporting the Second Amendment, they hope to intimidate others from getting involved.

This template was tried in Wisconsin after Scott Walker became a viable gubernatorial candidate in 2010 (the effects of that harassment may have included Walker’s narrow loss to an anti-Second Amendment opponent in 2018). It is also likely that dissuading activism was the purpose of the harassment of the Tea Party by the Internal Revenue Service.

When you think about it, the use of such tactics by anti-Second Amendment extremists should not be a surprise. Commenting on the abuses carried out by some Wisconsin prosecutors using “John Doe” statutes, National Review’s David French noted the “by any means necessary” approach, and added that in the minds of those who carried out the John Doe abuses, the targets were getting “what they deserve.”

The Swirling Winds of Prevarication: How Politicians Turn into Enemies of The State

Let’s examine the case of (failing presidential candidate) Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Her campaign is now seen as a floundering presidential effort. The fact of the matter is, she could have carved a very interesting niche for herself, but blew her opportunity to do so.

Like our Senator Robert Casey, Kirsten Gillibrand went from being a supporter of our Second Amendment rights to supporting the irrational push to punish law-abiding citizens for crimes and mass shootings they did not commit. At one point, she signed a brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban. When she was appointed to the Senate, she drew fire for her track record in favor of law-abiding gun owners.

Kirsten Gillibrand had a choice: She could continue to stand up for law-abiding gun owners – many of whom owned semi-automatic firearms – or she could chase the approval of anti-Second Amendment extremists. She chose the latter, claiming she changed her views after talking to victims of urban gun violence.

She betrayed the law-abiding gun owners in New York, who hoped she would defend them from those who would strip away their rights as punishment for shootings they did not commit for what she saw was a path to higher office. She went from someone who had the unique opportunity to stand up for Second Amendment supporters to just another irrational anti-Second Amendment politician.

But she chose the path of political expediency instead.

Today, she supports a ban on modern multi-purpose semi-automatic firearms along with an arbitrary limit on magazine capacity. Also, she is not ruling out support for court-packing plans, which would be devastating for Second Amendment supporters on multiple fronts. She has resisted calls for licensing schemes like Cory Booker’s, but she still has become an enemy of law-abiding gun owners, one who knowingly lies about the Second Amendment.

Compromise: Does it Protect Our Rights or Just Slow Down the Point of No Return

We hear all the time how compromise will protect our Second Amendment rights but does it? Consider our current situation where the circumstances and/or landscape are worse than our present situation. To review, the Republicans lost the House, and Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler is leading scathing attacks on our rights in the House Judiciary Committee. Supposedly, we have a pro-Second Amendment Senate and a pro-Second Amendment president, so we do not face the prospect of legislation passing-or do we?!

Consider this that a little over a quarter-century ago, we faced a similar yet different prospect. Anti-gun groups political lackeys controlled the House, Senate, and White House. The push was for the Brady Bill and a semi-auto ban. The balance as to how bad it would be rested on nominal Second Amendment supporters in both parties who faced difficult balancing acts.

For some, it was how to support the Second Amendment in a way that would not cause them to lose to an anti-Second Amendment extremist in the next general election. For others, it was how to support the Second Amendment, and not be primaried by an anti-Second Amendment extremist. So, to do this involved coming up with something that was less onerous than what might pass if Second Amendment supporters just said, “No.”

The result, in 1993, was the passage of NICS. Now, it could have been even less onerous had gunowners and their supporters succeeded in getting NICS to override all state and local waiting periods and licensing schemes, but the fact was, the intent was to create a permanent, federal waiting period, and that didn’t happen. This is not to say NICS doesn’t need fixes and improvements, but when you think about the whole scam of waiting periods, NICS largely rendered moot the arguments for them. In this case, while the NICs system may have stopped waiting periods it laid the foundation for the collection of data that could very easily turn into a nationwide database of registered gunowners! Some have argued that this was the intent all along.

A quarter-century prior to Bill Clinton’s first year in office, Second Amendment supporters faced a similar situation. Lyndon Baines Johnson wanted a federal licensing and registration scheme, which is the keystone for what made the confiscation laws passed by New Zealand and Australia workable. In 1968, gunowners worked to make sure the legislation that would pass in the wake of the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. did not have that, and succeeded, or did they? The 1968 gun control act laid the foundation for the FFL dealers control over the sale of firearms and expanded the power of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.

There is a positive aspect that so-called damage control can have is that it could prompt anti-Second Amendment extremists to kill a bill.

Some believe that if we are to truly see the Second Amendment prevail, Second Amendment supporters must recognize that there is a time for a stand, a time to go into damage control mode, but have we reached a point where compromise intrudes into the core of the Second Amendment?

With the majority of the Democratic Party rejecting the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights and Pennsylvania’s article 1 section 21 guarantees to the right to bear arms, is it even feasible to consider compromise as a viable political option? Perhaps we have reached the end of the road where compromise protects rights and instead only further erodes what’s left of them!

Gun control has been used as a crutch by self-serving politicians who are unwilling to deal with the criminal element and the human element!

Founding Father’s Statement on Freedom: "Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." Thomas Jefferson, (1775)

Yours in Freedom,

Kim Stolfer, President

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