BIASED Much?

This is prime anti-gun media bias on full display. What exactly are "Shoot First Laws"? What makes "authorized journalist" Fanny Carrier think that it's a good idea to allow a burglar to sue his victims if they shoot him in the commission of a crime? Seriously, where does she get off? Defending yourself against a bad guy is somehow wrong?

She goes on to portray the criminals in the most flattering light possible and portraying the true victims of these criminals as murdering, trigger happy thugs.

Tellingly, the sole source of information quoted in the article is a spokesman for The Freedom States Alliance, a virulently anti-gun organization, founded by the Joyce Foundation. One has to wonder if they wrote this article for the "authorized journalist"?

My favorite bit of bias is on the original web page where they illustrate the story with a picture of a soldier and a .50 caliber machine gun.

Thanks to www.sondrak.com for the tip.

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'Shoot first' laws make it tougher for burglars in the United States

by Fanny Carrier Sat Oct 27, 3:53 AM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Burglars in the United States could once sue homeowners if they were shot, but now a growing number of states have made it legal to shoot to kill when somebody breaks into a house.

John Woodson, 46, found that out last week when he ambled into Dennis Baker's open garage in a Dallas suburb. A surveillance video showed the robber strolling inside, hands in his pockets.

From the shadows, Baker opened fire and killed Woodson.

"I just had to protect myself and that was it," Baker told reporters despite the fact Woodson had not tried to enter the bedroom near the garage where Baker had been sleeping.

The incident made national headlines since it was Baker's parrot that gave the alarm when it innocently squawked "good morning" at the intruder.

But Woodson's death seemed anecdotal compared to another Dallas resident who a few days earlier had killed his second robber in three weeks inside his home.

Police are investigating both cases, but it is unlikely charges will be filed. Texas recently passed a law branding anybody breaking into a home or car as a real threat of injury or death to its occupants.

In contrast with traditional self-defense laws, this measure does not require that a person who opens fire on a burglar be able to prove that he or she was physically threatened, that force was used only as a last resort and that the victim had first tried to hide.

Florida was the first state to adopt in 2005 a law that was dubbed "Stand your ground" or "Shoot first."

But now they have proliferated largely under pressure from the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA), the main weapons lobby in the United States.

Today 19 out of 50 US states, mostly in the south and the central regions of the country, have this kind of laws, and similar legislation is pending in about a dozen others.

"This law will bring common-sense self-defense protections to law-abiding citizens," said Rachel Parsons, a spokesperson for the NRA.

"If someone is breaking into your home, it's obvious that they are not there to have dinner with you," she continued. "You do have a right to protect your belongings, your family and yourself.

"The law needs to be put on the side of the victim, and not on the side of the criminal, who is attacking the victim."

But for the Freedom States Alliance that fights against the proliferation of firearms in the United States, these new laws attach more value to threatened belongings than to the life of the thief and only serve to increase the number of people killed by firearms each year, which currently is estimated to stand at nearly 30,000.

"It's that whole Wild West mentality that is leading the country down a very dangerous path," said Sally Slovenski, executive director of the alliance.

"In any other country, something like the castle doctrine or stand-your-ground laws look like just absolute lunacy," she continued.

"And yet in this country, somehow it's been justified, and people just sort of have come to live with this, and they just don't see the outrage in this."

According to Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were 2.18 million burglaries to the United States in 2006, up 1.3 percent compared to the year before.

But the number is still well below the 3.24 million burglaries a year committed 20 years ago.

I get the most interesting visitors...

Looking through my logs today, I discovered that I had received a visit from WAVE (Wisconsin Anti Violence Effort). What were they looking for exactly? This is it, which makes sense if you look at their site. They list links from them on their home page. It's kind of sad actually. Why don't they choose a more reputable news source to put on their Internet site? After all, aren't we judged by the company we keep.

Visits from anti-gun groups are nothing new to me (the Brady's, et.al.), but so far I've just let it slide.

Guys, if it's education you're after, just let me know. I'm not saying you anti's are ignorant, or even lacking general education or knowledge about firearms, but if past experience is any indicator, y'all need some help.

For instance: A Clip is what feeds ammunition into a magazine. A Magazine is what holds the ammunition. And a "Barrel Shroud" is a SAFETY feature which prevents second and third degree burns.

If y'all made an effort to educate yourselves, you wouldn't come across as ignorant as you do. It doesn't help either when one of your elected mouthpieces in Congress reveals on national television that she has no clue what a barrel shroud is, even though her own bill expressly bans it.

That is all...

-Yuri

Follow the money--a look at the Gun Guys' sugar daddies

From Armed and Safe: Thanks for letting me use it! -Yuri

"Anyone who reads this blog semi-regularly has probably noticed that I really enjoy picking on the Gun Guys website. There's just something about the hysterical dissemination of outright lies (such as "where there is a firearm, there will be firearms violence."--the kind of thing they say all the time, and about as honest as saying "where there are children and parents, there will be child abuse.") that bothers me. Today, though, instead of making fun of the Gun Guys directly (which was kind of fun for awhile, but way too easy), I thought it would be interesting to take a look at their funding. Comments from 1957 Human provided much of the inspiration for this little project--thanks '57.

The Gun Guys are part of the cynically named "Freedom States Alliance" (that name might be the biggest lie of all), which also boasts such paragons of internet wisdom as 50 Caliber Terror--about the "horrific threat" of .50 caliber rifles (tell me, guys, have you uncovered a single case of someone in the U.S. being killed with one of those yet--get back to me when you do), License to Murder--which is their catchy name (they do like lurid sensationalism, don't they?) for laws that explicitly state that the burden of proof that a self-defense shooting was not self-defense lies with the prosecution (apparently, the whole concept of the presumption of innocence pending proof of guilt offends them), and (I'm not kidding here) Newspaper Loophole (apparently, the mythical "gunshow loophole" isn't quite silly enough for these geniuses, so now they're trying to make it impossible for people to place classified ads to sell their used guns).

Of all the Freedom States Alliance websites, the Gun Guys would seem to be the flagship--at least it gets updated regularly--the rest seem to be pretty static. The Freedom States Alliance, in turn, is apparently part of, or managed by Mark Karlin and Associates, a Chicago based public relations firm. The funding, or at least a vast chunk of it, comes from the Joyce Foundation. According to this, in 2006, the Joyce Foundation gave $650,000 to the Mark Karlin group, for the Freedom States Alliance (they also gave $185,000 to the same PR firm in 2003, "to help raise the media presence and capacity of Midwest gun violence prevention groups," although this may have been before the Freedom States Alliance was formed). Actually, a look on the Joyce Foundation's list of grants for public policy dealing with "gun violence" is something of a who's who of anti-gun groups--and the money involved is huge: $500,000 to the Violence Policy Center, a staggering $1,795,000, since July, 2004, to the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence (here, here, here, and here)--and that's just a sampling--in all, there's over six and a quarter million dollars devoted just to pushing more restrictive gun laws (according to this)--and that doesn't count all the money for firearms "research."

Something I found interesting is that over half a million dollars (here and here) of that money has gone to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, just in the last year. That certainly sounds impressive, (or would--if one believes that an international group should have a say in U.S. public policy). The Gun Guys, by the way, quote the IACP all the time--apparently, half a million dollars in one year buys quite a lot of support for one's position to strip Americans of their Constitutionally guaranteed fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

In fairness, attacking the Second Amendment isn't the Joyce Foundation's only passion--they also seem to have it in for the First Amendment, as seen here by their monetary support for the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002

Joyce helped fund several of the groups that provided critical research and advocacy on behalf of state and federal campaign finance reforms. After Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2002, Joyce provided funding to the Brennan Center at New York University, Democracy 21, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Public Citizen Litigation Group to help defend the act against lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. The Supreme Court upheld BCRA in 2003.

Does anyone besides me find it ironic that they would use money to support legislation ostensibly aimed at "keeping money out of politics"?

So it seems that the Gun Guys and their pals are well funded. You'd think with all that money, they could afford a word processing program with a spell check feature, or am I just not clever enough to have encountered the word, "renowed" before? Update: I guess they dropped in, learned of their spelling problem, and fixed it--hey Gun Guys, how about sending some of that Joyce Foundation money this way, if you're going to use my proofreading service?

EDITED TO ADD: Living as I do (unfortunately) in the self-defense denied state of Illinois, I kind of left out the Joyce Foundation's contributions to self-defense suppression in other states--to give an idea, since 2003, they've given $1,270,000 to WAVE Educational Fund, $112,000 to Citizens for a Safer Minnesota Education Fund , $350,000 to Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, and $250,000 to Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence. Basically, if you're a gun rights deprivation advocacy group in the Midwest, the Joyce Foundation has a big stack of blank checks for you."