Page Nine

New Twist on Mental Illness and Gun Debate

HOPLOPHOBIA: Gun Fear

The Most Dangerous of All Phobias

by Bruce N. Eimer, Ph.D., ABPP

and Alan Korwin, Author, Gun Laws of America


First in a series

Is Hoplophobia Real?

Copyright 2013 Bruce N. Eimer and Alan Korwin

Abstract: Hoplophobia, the morbid fear of guns, is a real, extremely dangerous, widespread and clinically recognizablecomplex specific phobia with a number of unique characteristics, described. It has caused and continues to cause grievous harm in America. Dr. Sarah Thompson, M.D., author of two seminal papers on gun phobia, claims hoplophobia is little more than name calling and rare, points we dispute.

Because one of the avoidance mechanisms of this phobia uniquely involves politics, its effects and importance are greater than for other phobias. Co-morbidities include suppressed rage, post-traumatic stress disorder, delusional disorder and panic disorder, with implications for society at large. Some behaviors heretofore written off because they seemed irrational may be explained.

Should Pro-gun ads be allowed at Phoenix bus stops?

Front Page News:

"Should pro-gun ads be allowed at Phoenix bus stops?"

asks the Arizona Republic

"GUNS SAVE LIVES"

Censorship Case Advances

"Surprising" Friend of the Court brief filed in support of Korwin's case
April 25, 2013
ACLU?


http://www.trainmeaz.com

It made the front page of the B Section on Sunday: "Unlikely allies in firearm ad case" (an accurate headline would be "Unlikely allies ingun-safety ad case" but what can you expect from the "news" these days; we're not advertising firearms). The Goldwater Institute is suing Phoenix for censoring our advertisements, which Phoenix tore down without warning.

The 1st Amendment free-speech issues, and 14th Amendment due process and equal protection violations, attracted nationwide attention. We were just joined in the case by one of the greatest First Amendment advocates there is, the name you know, someone not everyone thinks of as a friend all the time, wait for it... the American Civil Liberties Union.

When it comes to free speech, the ACLU has few equals. They are certainly on the right side of things on this one. I'll have a full report on this soon. (I've been saying that too much lately, a sign that I have too much on my plate.)

Here is the Goldwater Institute news release, followed by a comment of my own. The Arizona Republic's article follows.

Alan.

"Background gun-check records are saved."

The so-called "background check" bill is really about gun registration --
ultimate and imminent registration of every gun and gun owner in America.

The mandatory paper records are saved -- nobody denies that.
Federal agents use those all the time.

The electronic records have virtually no controls on them.
They go into a system designed as a recording device.
This bill vastly expands the electronic records federal agents will collect.

THE MANCHIN-TOOMEY-SCHUMER KEY:

Read the bottom of page 27 of the bill* (below at the asterisk, read it, it's killer, very short) and you tell me if you think that language stops the federal government from recording, storing, collating, compiling, distributing, securing, retrieving, integrating, merging, using or... backing up its records forever. It doesn't. Show me an audit trail. You can't. It's not there.

It doesn't even limit the FBI or BATFE in this regard. It only restricts gun dealers and gun owners. It is a complete farce.

Show me where they can't go around and just use all the Form 4473 gun-registration papers you fill out that every dealer must permanently keep -- as they are doing right now and have been doing for years. You can't. This bill allows the federal government to do almost anything it wants with records of you and your firearms, and massively expands the records it can collect -- even though it can't collect absolutely every record at this time, yet.

Failure to give them all the records they currently demand under this bill, even by accident (and there are plenty of easy ways to innocently make an error), would put you in prison. The 15-year prison term they threw in for creating a federal registry is a meaningless smokescreen.

The bill requires you to get a background check to buy firearms from people you meet at a gun show, but doesn't require anyone to do a background check just because you want one. Dealers would have plenty of reasons not to do such a check -- like having paying customers, liability, fee caps, and pressure from a sometimes rogue federal agency like BATFE. That would mean the end of freedom at gun shows. This is something Sen. John McCain has been working on for more than a decade. McCain was quoted by the Associated Press today as "very favorably disposed" to this Manchin-Toomey-Schumer gun-infringement bill (meaning he likes it). This bill is totally unacceptable.

And what's that bit at the end of that section that says medical- and health-insurance-company owned guns are exempt? Say what? Where's the media on that? I'll do a more detailed report on this soon.  Or someone should -- who's planning what that got that in there?

The bill offers gun owners some trinkets -- "sweeteners" they're called. Like being able to buy a firearm in any state you are in, not just your state of residence. That would remove a grotesque infringement in place since the 1968 Gun Control Act. It was apparently squeezed in there by a gun-rights group (CCRKBA.org) now taking a lot of heat for cooperating with the anti-rights bigots. That's a good trinket, true, and I might accept that -- but only as a stand-alone bill, certainly never as a condition for gun registration.

Do you think the gun grabbers would go for that? They only accepted Retail Freedom to get their tyranny enacted. There are other "sweeteners," like restoration of rights, and other things America should have -- but only as stand-alone bills, never as bait to allow gun registration. Manchin-Toomey-Schumer must be rejected outright. The idea of making tyranny acceptable by offering trinkets is absurd and must be killed.

It's far more important to look at the underpinning of this scheme, the story behind the story the public loudspeaker omits entirely.

Why are we even having this discussion? Because a madman killed children in a kindergarten in a corner of the nation.  That's really the only reason.

This led Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, and the president of the United States to begin a campaign to ban certain firearms we own by brand name and looks, our ammunition magazines by size, to restrict public gun shows, and introduce gun registration and background checks on all innocent Americans as a response. They are dancing in the blood of victims, to advance a monstrous agenda, a game they have played for decades.

They can call it background checks all they want.
It's about gun registration (and other illegal infringements).

And gun registration itself is a false flag,
and the media doesn't know that.
Most of the public doesn't either.


Think -- A gun list would not have saved or solved any of the mass killings that have ignited these law-writing frenzies, right? Right. In no way whatsoever. So what do we need? At last, the right question.

Gun Law Drafted in Secret

NOTE: Two senators announced today (April 10, 2013) they have reached a "compromise" on so-called "universal background checks." This is a code word for universal gun registration.

A press announcement and the wording of a long new gun law are not the same thing. DO NOT BELIEVE any news media that treat them as the same.

I will read the bill when it is released. It has NOT been released. NO ONE knows what it says."News" reports are blowing smoke at you. They have no idea what's in the bill, drafted in secret.

When senator Schumer recently said his background bill "explicitly" states no registration he lied. It said no such thing. The Associated Press quoted him anyway. The "news" media in general has become a direct enemy of gun rights in this country. They violate every ethical principle there is when dealing with this subject.

I'm working on a report about the current background check system. It denies people the right to obtain firearms without a trial or due process. Despite more than one million supposedly legitimate denials, less than 150 were prosecuted in a two-year period according to the government's own numbers, with an unknown number of convictions. Who are these people? A bureaucracy set up to deny rights with little oversight and virtually no results is extremely suspect. More later.

For now, look what is happening in this legislation just enacted.

Consider the goal. Will this save children in kindergarten classes?
Or is something more sinister at work?


--


CONNECTICUT DRAFTS GUN LAW IN SECRET

Bans Firearms Public Already Owns

State retains power to own all especially deadly guns

Forces federal agents to either violate state law or deny civil rights

Effectively immediately

That's not the way networks covered it, is it, but it's the identical story


by Alan Korwin, Author
Gun Laws of America
GunLaws.com

--

Can you imagine what a tough uphill struggle the anti-gun-rights people would have if the "news" media wasn't falling all over itself to support the anti-rights side?

--

Connecticut just drafted 138 pages of gun law basically in secret, enacted it before it could be read and digested by those who signed it -- and certainly not by the public it pretends to legitimately control -- and in doing so ended up requiring federally licensed agents in the state to violate federal law, or flatly deny citizens their rights. Just on practical grounds this is a disaster. But that's as if nothing, according to leading experts.

Legislators who draft laws in secret are behaving like the king's men who ignited the American Revolution. They can expect no less if they continue down such a dark road, many experts say.

Schumer Offers Nothing (oh, the irony)

The lamestream media told you:

According to published reports (AP, 3/14/13), Sen. Charles Schumer, speaking about his proposed background-check bill S.374, said, "The bill explicitly says there is no registration, explicitly says no confiscation."

Schumer Offers Nothing (oh, the irony)

A number of Page Nine readers misunderstood my recent offer to Mr. Schumer (though most got it), when I suggested we take him up on this part of his plan. We'll have nothing to do with the so-called background check part, because that's just a coverup for gun registration and everyone knows that. But the no-confiscation and no-registration part might be a good idea, let's see a bill for that part, and maybe agree at least there. I don't think that's what he expected, but why not try to hold him to his own words.

Now for the irony. His bill says nothing of the sort.
There are no explicit, implicit or smoke signals dealing with a restriction on gun confiscations or registration. We can only assume the Associated Press got it wrong, played along, failed to read the bill, took Schumer at his word, misquoted, misheard, quoted someone else, hey I'm running out of excuses here.

Even if it's in there somehow and I missed it (the bill does it's deeds in only 15 pages), we all know by now that a Schumery statement in a bill such as "There shall be no such act..." is meaningless tripe, lets the government walk, and must be coupled with punishment to count. "Anyone who acts thus shall pay..." is where the teeth are. Make it comitatus law or legislators are lying, it's that simple. If they mean it, they can say it, no problem. The idea of prison terms for actual or attempted confiscations or registrations remain sound.

I think what threw some people was the headline, designed to attract the media's attention.
Which it did.

The only part of Schumer's plan that gun owners might accept,
depending on the final draft, would be arresting politicians for infringement.
A cool word we should be using more often.


--------

The original letter to the editor (it got a lot of ink nationwide):

Gun Owners Could Back Part of Schumer's Plan

Dear Editor,

According to published reports (AP, 3/14/13), Sen. Charles Schumer, speaking about his proposed background-check bill, said, "The bill explicitly says there is no registration, explicitly says no confiscation." It's good that Mr. Schumer put this on the table, it's a step in the right direction.

The firearms community might accept this, in principle, with slightly different wording. It's a question of laws with teeth. What if, instead of saying "no gun registration," Schumer's bill said, "Anyone who creates or attempts to create any sort of gun registration shall go to prison."

Think of it as constitutional comitatus law -- law with teeth that holds officials accountable, instead of laws that merely make statements (like Mr. Schumer's draft). The rewrite is modeled after our posse comitatus law that has worked so well for a century and a half.

Similarly, instead of "explicitly" saying no confiscation, let it say, "Anyone who confiscates or attempts to confiscate firearms (or ammo or accessories) that the public bears shall go to prison, too. And pay serious fines." Mr. Schumer's noble assurance would be met.

I'll bet the pro-rights community might support Mr. Schumer along those lines, and we'd have at least partial agreement at last. Let's work together for reasonable bipartisan compromise. No registration and no confiscation, under penalty of law. It's just common sense. Honest legislators should have no reason to object.


Note: Because the NICS background-check system is inherently a registration-prone model, the registration-free BIDS model should get serious consideration at this point in time. http://www.gunlaws.com/BIDSvNICS.htm


Alan Korwin

"Background gun check records are saved."

The lamestream media told you:

It's only reasonable, and studies show the overwhelming majority of Americans support universal background checks. We're not talking about registering guns.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

How soon we forget. When the NICS computer was built and turned on by attorney general Janet Reno, in compliance with the Brady bill in 1994, she announced that the system not only would not erase records immediately after a gun-buyer background check as required by law, it could NOT erase records at all. She said it with a straight face, to Congress.

The Justice Dept. under Bill Clinton, had built a computer capable of checking out every American, from one spot in West Virginia, controlled by the FBI, a dream project the Bureau was dying for, and the quarter-billion dollar computer was incapable of deleting a record. That's what Janet Reno wanted us to believe, it's what she told us, and who knows -- maybe it's exactly what she built. We have no way to know. [Note: C'mon it's a computer, there's no such thing as one that can't delete a file, she lied through her teeth, had planned this all along].

Congress went wild, because the bill that authorized the monster computer (read, buildings full of equipment and staff) required that background check records be destroyed instantly after the background check was completed. Congress was well aware, and had been pressured incessantly by its constituents, not to start creating rosters of gun owners. The only way the background check got in the bill at all was with instant destruction of the record mandatory. Turns out statute didn't matter much to the feds.

Gun-owner registries are the start of confiscations, everyone knew that, history proved it over and over all last century. Now the government had gone and done that very thing, directly against the law. The so-called background check computer was a recording device.

They use the same machine today of course and no, you can't look at it. The FBI, which knew the Brady bill was its one vehicle for their much-coveted one-stop-shopping ID checker, didn't scrap it and start over. They only had this shot at the $250 million needed to build the thing, including the "campus" features, ongoing operating costs, and of course the upgrades, maintenance, and literal federal jobs program that goes with it. But it's still the NICS system Janet Reno gave us, retrofitted to erase some records somehow, probably. There is no way to know. The FBI will not allow you in for an independent audit.

It's worse than that. Multiple federal sources have revealed that the information checking infrastructure of the NICS system, and its interconnected NCIC and III data systems, link with international sources of criminal data. Record destruction is not a requirement anywhere but here (and even here it can be disregarded at will, as we've seen), so "privacy" might as well all be wishful thinking. On top of this, ten consecutive sets of backups are made, it's routine, according to agents within the FBI, and these are sequentially stored and destroyed, over some time frame, on and off site... it's complicated.

The government has already told us that background check records are saved. It has built a system designed to save records and register gun owners, with no way to behave differently, in direct defiance of written law. It has provided no way to confirm that such records are not saved.

This is like hearing Iran continuously say they are not building nuclear weapons, while they continue to build their nuclear weapons.  The calls for universal background checks are a deception. The NICS background check system is designed as and fully functional as a record storage system and federal gun registry. The risks it presents to freedom is so significantly great it should be dismantled, and replaced with the equally effective, far less expensive, non-invasive transparency of the BIDS system. http://www.gunlaws.com/BIDSvNICS.htm

GUN REGISTRATION BUILT INTO BACKGROUND CHECKS

Starters

1. "The Brady bill will make the streets of America so safe that our nation's police will not even need to carry guns anymore."

William Jefferson Clinton, on TV, while signing the Brady bill in 1993, quoted in Sheriff Richard Mack's book, The Magic of Gun Control.

"When they're not lying they're just ignorant."
--Anonymous, speaking about political leaders.

2. ALERT: So-called "universal background checks" can stop all gun sales nationally:

When NICS (the FBI background computer) is down, you can't buy a gun at retail. But you can still get a gun if you need to -- private sale, loaner, gift, temporary transfer, etc.

If all transfers are forced through NICS, no one in the nation could get a gun if NICS were turned off, or broken, or went under maintenance for a while.

No one has thought that angle through very far so far, or made much noise about it.

NICS was closed 84 times in a six-month period in 1999. http://www.gunlaws.com/brady8day.htm

It's been closed for as long as four days in a row (so far). It can be closed regionally. http://www.gunlaws.com/updates.htm (Scroll down to Federal Gun Registration Plans)

Although the law explicitly says you don't have to use NICS if it's not running, federal agents have intimidated everyone into waiting until they turn it on again.

And of course, so-called "universal background checks" is a coverup for universal gun registration, everyone but the lamestream media knows that, see the main story below.

3. Name calling.

Friend Jon Haupt was struck recently by how liberals like to put down conservatives (and Founding Fathers) as a bunch of "dead old white men." It occurred to him that's ageist, racist and sexist, and let me add, morbid. The left is forever projecting their own biases onto those they hate. I'm forever reminding them, "It's not good to hate."

4. Christmas in July

It's not too early to start thinking about National Training Week, when everyone is encouraged to go to the range and practice during 4th of July week (July 4 - 11). http://www.gunlaws.com/NationalTrainingWeek.htm. "Celebrate the 4th of July with fireworks, firearms and freedom!" Ask your local range if they plan to support it with free one-hour handgun rentals during that week.

Adult gift giving -- Maybe your first gun came under the Christmas Tree. Today, with so many adults considering their first gun, Independence Day becomes the perfect gift-giving holiday! A uniquely American tradition on the day firearms ensured our freedom. There's just enough lead time to get ad placement done... if only inventory wasn't already maxed out...

Look at the plans for National Training Week. NOTE: Supporters -- It's time to get this year's info up on your websites. Copy and paste at will. http://www.gunlaws.com/NationalTrainingWeek.htm

5. "I do find it mysterious that the lefties fear excessive government power yet want to disarm everyone but the king's men. Very irrational... [in an email, that I can't find now]. The word "irrational" is becoming ever more important, as the medical community comes under ever greater scrutiny in the firearms debate.

6. You can trust lawyers as much as you can trust a guy with a gun.

7. This whole ammo shortage thing --

I haven't seen anything that suggests foul play of any kind, to me, it's strictly supply and demand, and it shows you what panic in a market looks like. Rationing and price spikes are the result of demand far outstripping supply. Sure, government ammo purchases should give you pause, it's the reason we're all armed.

A trusted source provided this: "Take for example .22LR ammunition. The industry as a whole (all manufacturers combined) is setup to produce 4,200,000,000 (4.2 Billions) .22 LR annually. That is running all the machines, full capacity all the time, all manufacturers together. There is NOTHING they can do to produce more. That corresponds to 230,137 cartridge per State per day, which is 460 bricks of 500 .22lr per day per State. That means that if less than 50 people per day in each State are buying 10 bricks of .22, it is enough to dry up the entire supply as it is being manufactured."

News from ammo makers seems OK too, but it's right to be wary. Trust but verify. How do you do that?

If you don't have ammo, you're stuck in a high market. If you're like many Americans, you'll comfortably ride this out until the market corrects.

8. How did that ASU debate go?

Thanks for asking, here's that short video as I warmed up the Students for Liberty event at Arizona State University. It's a little unsteady at the start but the guy sits down, audio's fine.

The entire gun-rights debate in a capsule according to Alan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-KdfuP-rX4

The whole debate that day if you care:
http://www.youtube.com/ld26azgop 

9. Let’s conduct a thought experiment.

If there was no mental illness and everyone owned five assault rifles, how many senseless murders would occur?

If everyone was mentally ill and guns did not exist, how many senseless murders would occur?

(Thanks, Bob.G. for the idea)

Gun Owners Could Back Part of Schumer's Plan

According to published reports (AP, 3/14/13), Sen. Charles Schumer, speaking about his proposed background-check bill, said, "The bill explicitly says there is no registration, explicitly says no confiscation." It's good that Mr. Schumer put this on the table, it's a step in the right direction.

The firearms community might accept this, in principle, with slightly different wording. It's a question of laws with teeth. What if, instead of saying "no gun registration," Schumer's bill said, "Anyone who creates or attempts to create any sort of gun registration shall go to prison."

Think of it as constitutional comitatus law -- law with teeth that holds officials accountable, instead of laws that merely make statements (like Mr. Schumer's draft). The rewrite is modeled after our posse comitatus law that has worked so well for a century and a half.

Similarly, instead of "explicitly" saying no confiscation, let it say, "Anyone who confiscates or attempts to confiscate firearms (or ammo or accessories) that the public bears shall go to prison, too. And pay serious fines." Mr. Schumer's noble assurance would be met.

I'll bet the pro-rights community might support Mr. Schumer along those lines, and we'd have at least partial agreement at last. Let's work together for reasonable bipartisan compromise. No registration and no confiscation, under penalty of law. It's just common sense. Honest legislators should have no reason to object.


Note: Because the NICS background-check system is inherently a registration-prone model, the registration-free BIDS model should get serious consideration at this point in time.http://www.gunlaws.com/BIDS%20v.%20NICS.htm

BAN GUNS OR BUY GUNS?

Note to my friends and fans --
This press release is going to the national "news" media.
You are welcome to send it to your local media,
or use it in your club or other newsletters and correspondence.

The more gun owners we have, the more political power we have.
Help more people hold freedom in their hands. Gun owners understand.

When left-leaning anti-gun-rights people read this it boils their blood.
You can help move them. Get this into their hands.

I've got my latest research, the Feinstein gun-ban bill analysis and more, here:
http://www.gunlaws.com/newstuff.htm. I'm working on a new Page Nine report,
I've just been backed up with so many other things.

FLASH: We filed our appeal with the Arizona Court of Appeals yesterday, against
censorship of our Guns Save Lives advertisements, which the City of Phoenix tore down.
I'll have the Goldwater Institute brief posted soon, it's superb, and I understand we will
be joined by an outstanding heavyweight in this First and Fourteenth Amendment lawsuit soon.

Alan.

P.S. Come meet me at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show, Mar. 16-17, 2013,
at the Glendale Cardinals Stadium. Huge show. They have ammo. Free parking.




FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2013
Contact: Felicity Bower, 602-996-4020


BAN GUNS OR BUY GUNS?
New book proposes novel solution
Hi-rez images

A new book by a nationally recognized gun-law expert takes a surprising perspective on the gun controversy.

While the nation is debating how many and which firearms to ban, Your First Gun by prolific author Alan Korwin is advising people on overcoming the fears and inertia that keep them out of the gun community -- to more easily lose their gun virginity and buy a gun.

"It is completely out of left field," Korwin says, acknowledging the pun, "and against the flow of today's news, but that's exactly the point," he says.

"Sixty million American homes are safely armed -- and are never in the news -- so why not yours?" he asks.

Guns have great social utility, are virtually never used to hurt anyone, and this has been totally overlooked in the current frenzy. Is it time at last for you to get a gun? Americans are flocking to gun stores in record numbers -- this book tells why.

Your First Gun is not about how guns work, how to shoot straight or a shopper's guide. It is a plain-English question-and-answer look at the social and cultural ingredients of gun ownership. Gun owners take this for granted, but gunless people, and especially reporters and the political left, are essentially clueless about all this. It is an eye opener for people who aren't gun cultured.

Gun ownership is normal healthy behavior, and Bloomberg News recently reported* that more than half of all homes have at least one firearm, contradicting the book's position that half of all homes have guns. The figure is not precisely known, since gun ownership is a private matter in a free country like the United States. Half of everyone's neighbors own firearms, how about that.

In an unusual twist, the book is being marketed not to the gunless, though that is a secondary target, so to speak, but to gun owners themselves, for giving to their unarmed friends and relatives.

"Gun owners are frustrated," author Korwin says, "at how poorly they are understood by some people who are close to them. This book explains gun ownership in a friendly, normative way that communicates to the gunless and removes the confusion, doubt and fear. It's better than arguing with your co-workers or cousins."

Your First Gun bridges a gap between nice guys who own guns -- rich and poor -- and those who don't own or even understand why anyone would even want to own a gun.

"It is remarkable that in this day and age a person could graduate from high school or college and not understand why so many Americans choose to own firearms. Maybe something is missing in our education system. What do you think the chances are that a simple book like this would make it into a classroom for study these days? Would kids or teachers be punished for bring this book to school? It's only a book."

Reports that the public school system is spreading ignorance instead of education about firearms could not be confirmed before press time.

Even gun-control journalism requires balance

Note to my friends and fans --
This letter is going to the national "news" media.
You are welcome to send it to your local media,
or use it in your club or other newsletters and correspondence.

I've got my latest research, the Feinstein gun-ban bill analysis and more, here:
http://www.gunlaws.com/newstuff.htm

Alan.

P.S. Come meet me at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show, Feb. 23-24, 2013,
at the Phoenix Fairgrounds, 19th Avenue and McDowell Road. Huge show.
They have ammo.


--

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 11, 2013


Dear Editor,

I've noticed you've run entire features about guns without including one redeeming word about gun ownership -- it's 100% guns are bad, what can we do about it. When you run stories about people harmed by guns, you should balance that with stories about people saved by guns, but you consistently fail to do so.

This is not journalism or ethical. The various journalism codes require balance, let alone inclusion of principles this nation champions, like equality and fairness. One-sided coverage misleads the public and dangerously campaigns for political goals that assault the very Bill of Rights you work under. This harms journalists everywhere. I'm a journalist and gun-law expert. Let me help set the record at least partially straight.

Thirteen scholarly studies show between 700,000 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) annually, depending on study size, time frames and sets of respondents. The largest was conducted under the Clinton Justice Dept. The studies are summarized in the book "Armed," by Gary Kleck and Don Kates, available at GunLaws.com.

Guns save lives, stop crime and protect you. This is why we arm police, why people arm themselves and why the Founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution. Broadcasters need to hear this, because they constantly ask why anyone would even want a gun -- your "news" coverage leaves them wondering! That's a deplorable state of affairs -- wouldn't you say?

At the most basic level this is about balance of power, which is why our government has never turned on its people, as governments the world over throughout history have done. It's why free people need equivalence in what they keep and bear. Your writers don't seem to understand this, or care. You think this nation's liberty comes from good luck or an act of God? You would cede the very power that has kept America free all this time.

Police want AR-15s and all the powerful ammo they can carry because it's the best there is, it works and it's reliable -- all the reasons people want the same. Since people typically face criminals first and police are second responders we need it more than they do.

Virtually none of the guns held by the public or police have ever killed anyone -- despite vitriolic verbiage about "killing machines" -- these arms simply stand ready to protect, their core and legal function. Your coverage should have plenty of this normal sort of discussion instead of none. Shame on you. Fix it.

Your failure to fix this, or even recognize it after repeatedly being told, is why your credibility is so low and you are suffering financially. More than half the nation sees this with crystal clarity. C'mon guys, re-read the SPJ or AP Code of Ethics, and get on the case. You are harming the nation.

If you needed a license, as many of you are demanding of gun owners, you would fail the test and lose your ability to wield a pen, for lack of competence. (500)


Alan Korwin
The Uninvited Ombudsman
GunLaws.com


(Alan Korwin is the author of ten books on gun law (six with co-authors) and runs the website GunLaws.com. His latest book,Your First Gun, comes out this month.)

P.S. I've kept this letter short so you can run it.
I have a more complete look at the lack of balance posted here,
in response to a legislator's request about Newtown.
http://www.gunlaws.com/NewtownOrEverytown.htm