Sheriff Joe Arpaio Deploying 'Armed Posse' to Schools

At Fox News, "Arizona Sheriff Arpaio: Armed Volunteer Posse Should Guard Schools."

Video Credit: Nice Deb, "Sheriff Arpaio to Deploy Armed Posse to Guard Phoenix Schools (Video)."

Gun-Grabbing Democrats Exploit Tragedy to Push Radical Agenda

A great segment from Hannity's last night:

Stay with that video until the 6:00 minute mark or so, with the brutal discussion of Sam Donaldson and the progressive elite.

Also at Power Line, "Democrats Seek the Holy Grail of Gun Control." (Via Memeorandum.)

Women Pose With Assault Rifles They Got For Christmas

At Instapundit, "A HEARTWARMING PHOTO GALLERY."

Progressives Lose the Gun Control Narrative

From Kurt Schlichter, at Townhall, "Liberals Panic As They Lose the Gun Narrative":

When you argue for a living, you can tell how an argument is going for you. The evidence and my gut both tell me that the liberals have lost control of the gun control narrative.

Not for lack of trying – it was almost as if they were poised to leap into action across the political, media and cultural spectrum the second the next semi-human creep shot up another “gun free zone.” This was their big opening to shift the debate and now it’s closing. They’ve lost, and they are going nuts.

The evidence is all around that this is not going to be the moment where America begins a slide into disarmed submission through an endless series of ever-harsher “reasonable restrictions” on our fundamental rights. You just have to look past the shrieking media harpies to see what’s really happening.

Let’s start with the most obvious omen that this tsunami has peaked...

Continue reading.

Democrats might get something on semi-automatic weapons and large capacity clips. Beyond that, bupkes.

Still, take a look at this piece at The Economist for an idea of how dramatic the impact of Newtown has been on the gun control narrative, "Newtown’s horror."

The Reality of Modern Politics, We Go After Each Other

An outstanding essay from Kathleen McKinley, at Right Wing News:

I am about fed up with all of politics. I’ve never been as SICK of it in my life as I am now, and I have been in it ALL my life.

This is the time we should be focused on our families. We should be focused on our country getting through this terrible economic time, and terribly sad time.

Focus on what matters. Don’t focus on anger, pettiness, and self righteousness.

The media needs to decide what it is going to be in the future. Is it going to be what it is supposed to be? Reporting fairly both sides? Or is it going to continue to promote a liberal agenda? Because as long as it does the latter, then other news organizations will pop up, like Fox News, that reports on the conservative side, and we have no unbiased reporting whatsoever.

So, decide media. It’s up to you.

If the liberals current political fight continues as “divide and conquer,” then I congratulate them. They are winning. They won the Presidency that way, and they continue to win that way.

But what a price America is paying for that. Neighbor against neighbor. Friend against friend. Brother against brother.

RTWT.

Just a Bunch of Bloggers Get NBC's David Gregory in Whole Heap o' Trouble

Here's the background with video, "NBC's David Gregory Under Investigation by Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police."

And here's William Jacobson, "D.C. Police — NBC requested and was denied permission to use high capacity magazine in news segment." (Via Memeorandum, where just a whole lot more bloggers are also reporting.)

Laws are for little people, I guess. But I wonder, is that really a "planned vacation" for Gregory next Sunday? He won't be hosting "Meet the Press." Arrest the f-ker, I say. He and his producers should be prosecuted.

NBC's David Gregory Under Investigation by Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police

Wiilliam Jacobson has been all over this story, "NBC News stonewalls inquiries regarding David Gregory and “active investigation” by D.C. Police":

As previously reported, last Sunday David Gregory held up what he described as high capacity AR-15 ammunition magazine, which would violate the District of Columbia’s gun law if the magazine were real.

My multiple attempts last Sunday to obtain a response from NBC News as to whether the magazine was real were met with stone cold silence. None of the three senior communications executives with responsibility for Meet the Press responded.

Now there is news via Breitbart.com (h/t Drudge) that the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department is investigating.

I spoke with Officer Alali, the spokesman on duty today at the MPD, who refused any further comment except to confirm that there is an “active investigation.”

It may be even worse for Gregory and NBC News. According to an e-mail received by The Patriots Perspective website, which originally broke the Gregory story, NBC News had inquired whether it was permitted to use the magazine and was told that it was not permitted. The authenticity of the email has not been verified.

More at the link.

And following it, here's Warner Todd Huston, at Big Journalism, "DC Police Investigating NBC's Gregory for Brandishing Illegal Magazine." Also at Patriot Perspective, "David Gregory Violated DC Gun Laws After Being Denied By DC Police?"

And here's a kicker, at the Weekly Standard, "W.H. Petition: 'Press Charges Against David Gregory' for Breaking D.C. Gun Laws." (Via Memeorandum.)

News of White House Petition to Deport Piers Morgan Goes Viral

I've avoided the Piers Morgan controversy. I've tried to be fair-minded, but the dude makes it really hard. I watched his town hall program on CNN last week and Morgan was just screaming at gun advocate John Lott. It was over the top. And he's been emotionally obsessed with the issue on Twitter.

Team Twitchy goes in for some snarky lulz, "Piers Morgan pathetically wallows in deportation petition attention, British start petition demanding he’s not sent back":

The attention-seeking ghoul has once again taken to Twitter to exploit a tragedy for his own benefit.

No doubt.

I am now trending in the United States because of this deportation threat. This is getting ridiculous.
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) December 24, 2012

And there's a stoic White House petition request to "not send Piers Morgan back to us in the UK."

AP is now reporting on this (via Memeorandum and Moonbattery).

Oh boy. What a Christmas holiday!

Still more from Twitchy, "Givers! Happy warriors offer ideas for Piers ‘Musket’ Morgan deportation gifts."

Newtown's Big Tradition of Gun Rights

I wondered --- and others may have as well --- but what got into Nancy Lanza that she became such an unabashed lover of firearms? Perhaps one factor is the deep cultural tradition of gun ownership in Connecticut. The Los Angeles Times reports on the region's huge local defense of Second Amendment rights. See, "Newtown's firearms tradition clashes with gun-control push":

NEWTOWN, Conn. — When the wind blows a certain way across the tree-topped hills, Gary Bennett can stand in his yard and hear echoes of gunfire from his hunting club five miles away. The sound comforts him.

"It's a huge tradition here," said Bennett, a retired electrician and former president of the club, which helped defeat a proposal to tighten Newtown's gun ordinances in September. "I'd rather see more gun clubs come to town, training people with the use of firearms so that everyone's doing it safely."

Anguished families are still burying the 20 children and six women who were shot to death by a lone gunman last Friday just after the morning Pledge of Allegiance at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But a surprising local undercurrent has emerged: Many gun owners here say the slaughter has sharpened their view that guns alone aren't the problem.

"I wish that at that school somebody was armed," said Kuthair Habboush, a software engineer who keeps a weapon at home for protection. "If a security guard or a teacher or a principal had been armed, somebody could have taken the [killer] out" before his lethal rampage.

Firearms are deep in the culture of this corner of New England. Two of America's most storied weapons manufacturers, Colt and Winchester, were based in Connecticut. Some historians say the West was won in Hartford — the state capital and birthplace of the Colt revolvers favored by lawmen and outlaws alike beginning in the 1830s.

Today, dozens of gun dealers, gun instructors, gun repair shops and shooting ranges do a brisk business in Newtown and nearby cities and towns. Private hunting clubs are widespread, many with waiting lists for membership.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a powerful lobbying group for gun retailers, has its headquarters across the highway from Sandy Hook Elementary School.

"You'd be surprised," said Sean Eldridge, owner of Parker Gunsmithing, a gun repair shop in nearby Danbury, referring to his customers. "They're regular people and they have an arsenal in their basement."

That was the case with Nancy Lanza, a wealthy divorced mother who enjoyed jazz, craft beer and frequent visits to shooting ranges. She kept at least five weapons, all legally registered to her, in the large Colonial-style house she shared with her 20-year-old son, Adam.

Continue reading.

Actually, the Times' report was out last week, so it's not true that Newtown's still burying its dead. See the New York Times, "Newtown Mourns Last of Its Children Killed in Massacre."

Dianne Feinstein's Concealed Carry Permit

Senator Feinstein's leading the left's gun control chorus on Capital Hill, but she's no stranger to the right to bear arms, and has availed herself of that right many times. See MRC, "Feinstein in 1995 on her concealed carry permit: 'I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did'."

And at Instapundit, "REMINDER: Sen. Dianne Feinstein Has Concealed Carry Permit."

Well, sure, because her life is important. Not like yours.

Also, "DID WE EVER GET AN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION? Does Piers Morgan’s Bodyguard Carry a Gun?" I love the illustration at the post:

ADDED: This is something else, at Legal Insurrection, "Did David Gregory just violate D.C. gun law by possessing a high-capacity gun clip?"

Adam Lanza's Downward Spiral

Still not quite there as far as explaining why this guy went off, but a great piece nevertheless, at WSJ, "School Gunman's Downward Spiral."

Also at Advice Goddess, "Where Was Dad In All Of This? The Question Not Being Asked In Newtown Mass Murder."

Guns and the Right to Bear Arms at Saberpoint

My friend Stogie at Saberpoint has been posting some excellent material on the gun debate.

See: "The NRA: Target and Scapegoat for the Hyper-Angry Left," and "'An Opinion on Gun Control" Article Goes Viral'." (And more here and here.)

PHOTO: Women with Guns on Tumblr.

Gun Nut! NRA's Wayne LaPierre Misses Opportunity After Newtown Massacre

High drama at the New York Post, "NRA aims at foes, but shoots itself in the foot with LaPierre's statements."

LaPierre's been with the NRA as long as I've been a political junkie. I don't know. Facts are truly on the side of gun rights activists, but this guy's rant was lacking all the appropriate optics. My earlier comments, with video are here, "NRA Calls for Armed Officers in Schools."

NRA Calls for Armed Officers in Schools

It's the news of the day, and folks on Twitter couldn't resist hammering away at how bizarre this press conference was. I tuned in late, but watching the video, I thought somebody hacked this clip when that first Code Pink protester put up his banner. And then you get the obligatory Medea Benjamin scream-fest. It's unreal. LaPierre just stands there dumbstruck. It was a metaphor for the NRA's response to the outrage. I'm personally disgusted by the left's despicable demonization and rank opportunism, but I doubt the press conference changed many minds. Jonathan Tobin has more on that: "The NRA Should Have Stayed Silent."

And here's this, from the Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—The nation's most powerful gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed security guards in schools, saying that children had been left vulnerable in their classrooms.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said that "the monsters and the predators of the world" have exploited the fact that schools are gun-free zones. Other important institutions—from banks to airports to sports stadiums—are protected with armed security, he said, but this country has left students defenseless.

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," Mr. LaPierre said at a news conference Friday morning.

The comments were the most extensive statements the NRA has made since the Dec. 14 killings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six adults dead. The gunman also killed his mother and himself. The organization issued a statement earlier this week expressing shock and sadness over the shootings.

In the aftermath of the attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School, much of the national conversation has focused on gun-control measures. But on Friday, Mr. LaPierre said that time should not be wasted on legislation that won't work.

Mr. LaPierre said that the media rewards monsters who would shoot school children by giving them the attention that they crave, and he suggested that some other deranged individual already is planning the next attack.

"The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters, people that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them," Mr. LaPierre said.

The shootings have led to calls for a variety of new gun laws, including the reinstatement of an assault-weapons ban similar to one that was in effect from 1994 to 2004. The White House also has urged Congress to pass a ban on high-capacity magazines and to require background checks for all gun purchases.

Continue reading.

My immediate impression was doubtful that a nationalized armed schoolhouse security regime would be effective. On Twitter Melissa Clouthier made a number of stinging critiques, but she was especially acute on the need for local school districts, with parents, deciding what's best for their own children and their own circumstances:

BTW, the @nra asking for Department of Education version of the TSA is absurd. JUST NO. Let districts decide, i.e. parents.
— Melissa Clouthier (@MelissaTweets) December 21, 2012

And from Joshua Treviño:

Still, what LaPierre proposes is a TSA-style solution. Far better to let school districts simply adopt their own policies as they see fit.
— Joshua Treviño (@jstrevino) December 21, 2012

I'll have more later, as always...

Evil Exists in This World

Michelle Malkin discusses the Obama administration's responsibility for increasing gun violence, as well as the partisan reaction --- and overreaction --- to the massacre in Newtown:

I'll have more later...

Obama Makes Gun Control Top Priority

The Los Angeles Times reports, "Obama makes gun control top priority."

And Jake Tapper's report from last night's World News Tonight:

They've launched a task force so that will defuse some of the urgency, although I don't doubt that Obama would love to confiscate Americans' guns. He's just the authoritarian asshat to do it.

Montana's 'Castle Doctrine' Law

At the New York Times, "'Castle' Law at Issue After Fatal Montana Shooting":

Heather Fredenberg, 22, said she and Dan [Fredenberg] were passionate about each other, but also bickered about child care, bills, fixing the car and other stresses amplified by having two infants and not enough time or money. The county attorney’s report said they were “mutually abusive with each other, both verbally and physically.” More than once they considered divorcing.

About three months before the shooting, Ms. Fredenberg started seeing Mr. [Brice] Harper. She has called it a flirtation and an “emotional affair” that was intimate but never sexual. She told her husband about the relationship, and the two men once clashed at Fatt Boys Bar & Grille in Kalispell.

Although Ms. Fredenberg said she and her husband were committed to each other despite everything, Mr. Fredenberg’s father said his son believed the marriage was breaking apart. The day before he died, he told his father, “I’m giving up on it. I just can’t put up with it anymore,” his father said.

On Sept. 22, Mr. Harper called Ms. Fredenberg and asked a favor: He was moving out of town the next day, and could she come over and help him clean the house? She took her 18-month-old twin boys and spent the afternoon at his home, a five-minute drive from hers. She swapped tense text messages with Mr. Fredenberg and talked on the phone around 8:30 p.m. He asked whether she was with Mr. Harper. She said she did not answer. He cursed and hung up.

As she was strapping her sons into their car seats and getting ready to leave, she said, she asked Mr. Harper to circle the block with her to diagnose a clunking sound in her car. As they drove, she saw headlights in her rearview mirror. Her husband had come looking for her, and he was behind them.

Ms. Fredenberg said she dropped Mr. Harper off at his house and told him to go inside and lock the doors. She said he told her that he had a gun and was not afraid of her husband. Mr. Fredenberg, close behind, parked his car and followed Mr. Harper into his garage, its light spilling onto the driveway.

Read it all at the link.

And at Althouse, "The NYT attempts an anecdotal argument against the law that lets you defend yourself in your home."