PA Bill Number: SB99

Title: In county boards of elections, further providing for expenses of county boards and of primaries and elections to be paid by county, expenses of ...

Description: In county boards of elections, further providing for expenses of county boards and of primaries and elections to be paid by county, expenses of ... ...

Last Action: Re-referred to APPROPRIATIONS

Last Action Date: May 8, 2024

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Obama soft on crime, hard on gun owners? :: 10/29/2015

President Barack Obama is taking one on the chin this morning from a crime columnist in his hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, for failing to use three important words in his speech yesterday to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

President Obama spoke yesterday to police chiefs gathered in Chicago.

The words, according to columnist John Kass, were “Mandatory minimum sentencing.” Translation: A stretch in jail for “thugs who carry guns illegally.”

This comes on the heels of a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) – which describes itself as a “data gathering, data research and data distribution organization at Syracuse University” – that shows prosecutions for gun crimes under the Obama administration have plummeted 34.8 percent from 2005, and have steadily declined since 2013, the year the president went ballistic on guns following the 2012 Sandy Hook tragedy.

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UPDATE: The Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms this morning critized the president for seemingly being harder on guns than on criminals who misuse them.

“This raises a question that the president needs to answer,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Does he want to put criminals behind bars, or just discourage legal gun ownership?”

“Obama can talk all he wants about being tough on crime,” he added, “but his agenda only seems to erode the Second Amendment and the privacy rights of gun owners.”

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The TRAC report notes that gun crime prosecutions during Fiscal Year 2015 were down 5.8 percent from FY 2014, and down 15.5 percent from five years ago. Yet there was the president yesterday in his adopted hometown, talking to the IACP about more gun laws. There are plenty of laws on the books to use against criminals. New laws only seem designed to discourage honest citizens from exercising their Second Amendment rights, critics argue.

This morning’s Rasmussen Reports revealed that 46 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of the president’s job performance, while 52 percent disapprove. According to Rasmussen, these figures include 25 percent who “Strongly Approve” of Obama’s job performance and 40 percent who “Strongly Disapprove.” The result is a minus-15 approval rating. Anybody want to guess which category gun owners fall into?

The president, Hillary Clinton and other anti-gunners have lately been comparing America’s gun laws with those in other countries. It’s not unusual for gun prohibitionists to yearn for the kind of gun control found in many European nations. The following revelation is going to ruin their day.

The Daily Mail, one of the United Kingdom’s popular newspapers, is reporting that gun sales in Austria are skyrocketing, and that women are “driving the sales rush.” They’ve apparently re-discovered the philosophy of armed self-defense, driven by fears over the influx of “refugees crowding into their country” and crime in general.

This year, the story noted, police report 70,000 gun sales in Austria. Shotguns are sold out, primarily because no permit is needed to buy a shotgun. Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, just returned from a gun rights meeting in Belgium, and this week he told Examiner the same thing he just told WND.

He said there’s been a marked change in attitude about gun ownership, and that people all over Europe are concerned about self-defense. He learned from European gun enthusiasts that sales are at record levels. People want to protect their lives, families and homes.

Back here in the United States, gun rights versus gun control has become a central issue in the race for the 2016 presidential nomination in both parties. Democrats tend to favor more gun control while Republicans are far more supportive of gun rights.

And Obama? He appears far more interested in penalizing the good guys rather than prosecuting the bad ones.

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