This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 20, 2016:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its report on student loan repayments on Tuesday, revealing that 114,000 Americans age 50 and over had their Social Security checks garnished (the GAO calls them “offsets”), including 38,000 over age 65. In total the government recovered $171 million from this group last year, putting many of them into poverty.
Under the law,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, May 2, 2018:
Will Riley, a senior at the 1,600-student Carlsbad High School in Carlsbad, New Mexico, got upset when he saw the mainstream media fawning over the likes of David Hogg and his March for Our Lives rally. He decided to do something about it: “I’m watching the news and I see they’re saying, ‘Well, we have to do something about [school shootings]. We have to enact some sort of gun control legislation because this is what the kids are asking for.’ And I’m thinking, ‘I’m not asking for that. I look at my friends and I think, ‘They’re not asking for that.’”
So, on his own, he started “Stand for the Second” — a 16-minute walkout by students at Carlsbad to support the Second Amendment. The walkout took place today at 10 a.m. Said Riley, “I wanted to give a voice to all of the people who feel that they’re being misrepresented by the media.”
Riley was invited to express his views by the Washington Examiner, and he unloaded on the mainstream media’s attempt to apply the views of David Hogg to every student in the country. He wrote in April:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 30, 2018:
When the Bank of America (BofA) and Citigroup announced changes in their policies earlier this month restricting loans to companies that sell or manufacture firearms, Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to the CEO of each bank:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, April 30, 2018:
This writer remembers a time in this country when a customer could purchase a firearm over the counter at Sears. “Did you want some ammunition with your purchase, sir?” and out the door. No showing of a driver’s license. No Form 4473 to complete. No phone calls to the NICS to see if you had a criminal record.
Then came the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the war against the private ownership of firearms began in earnest. Most Americans weren’t aware that war had been declared until 1994, with the Clinton gun law banning semi-automatic rifles.
Since then, the NRA and its variants have awakened from their slumber, and, with the help of the internet, the war has been joined.
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, April 27, 2018:
When Kyle Kashuv, one of the more prominent figures in the ongoing debate about what to do to reduce high school mass shootings, went to a shooting range with his father last Friday, the first thing he did was post some pictures and some pro-Second Amendment comments on Twitter.
He should have known better. With the pain still fresh from the massacre that took place there on Valentine’s Day, he shouldn’t have been surprised at the response. A few of his fellow students at Marjory Stoneman High School took umbrage and reported his Twitter pictures and comments to school authorities. Kashuv explained what happened next:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 19, 2018:
Joe Thoele, an Effingham County, Illinois board member, was tired of his state’s continued assault on the Second Amendment and decided to do something about it. On Monday he persuaded seven of the other eight board members to declare his county a “sanctuary” county, ordering county employees not to enforce any new infringements coming from Springfield, the state’s capitol. Said Thoele, “I would just like to send a statement to Springfield that I don’t want them to be infringing on our Second Amendment rights as legal gun owners.” After all, echoed Effingham state’s attorney Bryan Kibler, “If you can be a sanctuary county for undocumented immigrants, why can’t you be one for firearms?”
The board meeting was attended by a near-record number of Effingham County’s 34,000 residents, according to local news sources. The Fox News affiliate reported that the resolution was motivated by a similar resolution passed by Iroquois County, Illinois, in March, “opposing the passage of … any bill where the 100th Illinois General Assembly desires to restrict the individual right of U.S. citizens as protected by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution.” That resolution resolved
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, March 28, 2018:
One of the many factors behind the decision by the board to seek bankruptcy protection for Remington Arms on Sunday was likely the pending lawsuit against the company stemming from the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
The 40-page lawsuit, filed two years after the horrific murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut, names as defendants not only Remington Arms (the maker of the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that Adam Lanza used on December 14, 2012 to commit those murders) but the entire supply chain. The suit named Camfour, the distributor; and Riverview Sales, the retail gun store where Adam’s mother, Nancy Lanza, purchased the weapon.
The lawsuit begins by claiming
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, March 1, 2018:
House Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.) introduced a bill last week similar to the Clinton-era Federal Assault Weapons Ban but with even greater restrictions. So far 163 of the 193 House Democrats have signed on in support of the bill. Cicilline’s rant against semi-automatic rifles is familiar:
Assault weapons were made for one purpose. They are designed to kill as many people as possible in a short period of time. They do not belong in our communities.
I am proud to introduce the Assault Weapons Ban with the support of leaders in law enforcement. It’s on all of us to end this carnage.
Of course, if semi-automatic firearms were actually able to commit crimes without human assistance, then the ban would make sense. Who would want self-firing weapons walking around the neighborhood unrestricted? But that appears not to matter to Cicilline — who sports a F-minus rating from the National Rifle Association (NRA) and a Freedom Index (FI) rating of 26 percent from The New American , and who was a founding member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns while he was the mayor of Providence.
Such illogic also appeared in the words of Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), representing several counties including Broward where the Valentine’s Day massacre took place) — with an FI of just 17 percent — as he announced he was supporting Cicilline’s bill:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, February 26, 2018:
Chad Robichaux, a former special agent with the U.S. Federal Air Marshall Service, has been here before. Objections to arming pilots following the Islamic terror attacks on September 11, 2001 were the same as those being raised against arming teachers. Said Robichaux on Breitbart News Tonight last Thursday: “Well, you trust them [pilots] flying your airplane. So now people are saying, ‘We can’t trust teachers with firearms.’ We trust them with our children!”
Robichaux worked with the Federal Air Marshall Service in developing and implementing the pilot training program launched following the 9/11 attacks and said that the present hostility toward arming teachers is the same that was voiced against the arming of pilots.
Prior to 9/11, airplanes were in essence “gun free” zones, an inviting target for terrorists:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, February 19, 2018:
Politifact, the fact-checking website run by the Tampa Bay Times, was quick to discredit the blatantly false headline, “Michelle Obama: Florida shooting is clearly Trump’s fault, these shootings are happening constantly since he became our president” offered by an alt-right blogger.
Politifact searched for confirmation and, finding none, informed its readers “that former first lady Michelle Obama did not make those remarks … in any format whatsoever.” No website that picked up the story “should be trusted,” added the fact-checking service.
Wouldn’t that include Everytown for Gun Safety, which promoted the lie that there have been 18 mass shootings in the country since the first of the year? Wouldn’t those MSM outlets that picked it up without question also fairly and reasonably not “be trusted” either? John Lott, the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center and author of bestseller More Guns, Less Crime, put the torch to the lie:
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, January 3, 2018:
That salute to Seattle’s progressivism was published in 2014, and little has changed in the city council’s ideology. It now boasts a minimum wage of $15.45 an hour, with predictable effects: total wages paid to lower-income people has gone down, not up. A study just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) explained:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 19, 2017:
With victory over tax reform clearly in sight, President Trump on Sunday tweeted, “As a candidate, I promised we would pass a massive TAX CUT for the everyday working American families who are the backbone and the heartbeat of our country. Now, we are just days away.” From the White House came more details:
Official portrait of United States Senator Rand Paul
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, October 20, 2017:
Senator Rand Paul’s vote against the GOP-backed budget resolution, which maintains the big-spending status quo, indicates that the senator is willing to go against his party’s leadership, even if it means he is the only Republican senator doing so.
President Trump tweeted early Friday morning, in celebration of the previous day’s Senate vote to pass the GOP’s budget resolution:
The Budget passed late last night, 51 to 49. We got ZERO Democrat votes with only Rand Paul (he will vote for Tax Cuts) voting against…..
And:
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
his article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, October 4, 2017:
When House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was asked on Tuesday about the status of the “suppressor” legislation (Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act), which had passed a House committee last month and was headed for a vote on the floor, Ryan was disingenuous: “That bill is not scheduled now. I don’t know when it’s going to be scheduled.” Ryan’s response was disingenuous because, as speaker of the house, he is the one responsible for scheduling such votes.
RINO Representative Chris Collins (a Republican from New York with a Freedom Index rating of just 53 out of 100), agreed: “I think it is safe to say in our Republican conference, you are not going to see those bills [the ‘suppressor’ bill or the national reciprocity bill] moving forward.”
When pressed, the president himself said that that conversation will be delayed for the time being: “We’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.” Trump’s press secretary, Sarah Sanders, made the point even clearer:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 28, 2017:
The Supreme Court of the United States. Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.’s Attorney General Karl Racine filed a petition on Thursday with the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia, asking the court to rehear a decision that a three-judge panel of that court issued in July. That decision, 2-1, issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the district from enforcing its “good reason” requirement to obtain a concealed carry permit.
At issue is the requirement that citizens applying for a permit have a “good reason” for it that goes beyond just wanting a firearm for self-defense. It even obviates claims that a permit is needed because someone lives in a dangerous neighborhood.
Writing for the majority in that panel’s decision, Judge Thomas Griffith said:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 27, 2017:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest member on the court.
By refusing to consider Peruta v. San Diego on appeal on Monday, the Supreme Court once again sidestepped an opportunity to clarify the Second Amendment issue of carrying a firearm outside the home. That issue has remained open since the court’s decisions in Heller and McDonald, dating back to 2008 and 2010, respectively. Those cases didn’t clarify whether the right guaranteed in the Second Amendment extends to public places, and anti-gun states such as California have rushed in with state laws that virtually prohibit the exercise of rights guaranteed by that amendment.
That was the problem faced by Edward Peruta back in 2009.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 6, 2017:
Aetna Insurance Company and Aetna National Bank, Hartford, Conn, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views
Aetna, the $50 billion health insurer that has had its headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut, since 1853, confirmed rumors last week that it was looking to move out of state. The company said, “We are in negotiations with several states regarding a headquarters relocation, with the goal of broadening our access to innovation and the talent that will fill knowledge-economy type positions … and hope to have a final resolution by early summer.”
Hartford’s Mayor Luke Bronin expressed his disappointment:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 6, 2017:
The Connecticut State Capitol in downtown Hartford
Joseph De Avila, writing in the Wall Street Journal following Aetna’s announcement of its imminent departure from Hartford for more business-friendly climes, used the “B” word: “Hartford, Connecticut’s capital city and hub of the state’s insurance industry, is edging closer to a small club of American municipalities: those that have sought bankruptcy protection.”
As a hanging tends to focus the mind, so is Aetna’s departure focusing more and more attention on Hartford’s financial problems and, to a greater extent, those of the state of Connecticut itself. After being headquartered in Hartford since before the Civil War, Aetna said
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 4, 2017:
In 2014, the latest year for which sufficient data is available, half of all murders in the United States took place in just 63 U.S. counties — two percent of the 3,144 counties in the country. Two-thirds of all murders that year happened in 157 counties — five percent. On the other hand, according to John Lott, the author of the study by his Crime Prevention Research Center, more than half had no murders at all.
This disproportionality has skewed the statistics. Anti-gun politicians often use the United States’ overall violent crime rate as an excuse to impose more gun laws on the populace. But when the worst five percent of U.S. counties are removed from the equation, the nation’s overall murder rate of 4.4 per 100,000 people drops to 2.56.
Lott noted further in his study that
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, April 26, 2017:
Current Status of Shall Issue Laws in America
When House member Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) introduced his bill, the “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017,” on the first day of the 155th Congress, he explained:
Our Second Amendment right doesn’t disappear when we cross state lines, and this legislation guarantees that. The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 is a common sense solution to a problem too many Americans face. It will provide law-abiding citizens the right to conceal carry and travel freely between states without worrying about conflicting state codes or onerous civil suits.
As a member of President-elect Trump’s Second Amendment Coalition, I look forward to working with my colleagues and the administration to get this legislation across the finish line.
His efforts appear to be succeeding. As of this writing, he has 188 co-sponsors for the bill out of 435 members of the House. It will only take 218 of them to pass his bill.
Chris Cox, the head of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRAILA), summed up the case for national reciprocity while simultaneously chiding those pushing back against it:
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