What's More Important to You--Our Children or an A Grade from NARAL?

On Monday, President Obama gave a demagogic speech urging Congress to pass gun control legislation.  In doing so, he asked a hypothetical question, "what's more important to you--our children or an A grade from the gun lobby?" True to form, the President posed a false choice. Ironically, in survey research and legal proceedings, the type of question the President posed is known as a double barreled question, meaning the potential answers are not mutually exclusive.  Protecting children and the second amendment are not mutually exclusive. Many NRA-backed politicians and many NRA members fight for the second amendment in part because they wish to be able to defend their children in the same way that the Secret Service is able to defend the President's children.

How about a question that isn't double barreled, Mr. President and your gun control allies? What's more important to you--our children or a Grade A from the abortion lobby? NARAL Pro-Choice America grades politicians on how "pro-choice" they vote, they and endorse candidates.  President Obama received their endorsement for President twice, even before Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race in 2008. Obama is actually more supportive of abortion than NARAL. In 2006, NARAL did not oppose the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that protected children who survived an abortion. While the Senate approved this by a unanimous voice vote, a nearly identical bill had been presented in the Illinois legislature a few years prior, and Obama opposed it as an Illinois state senator.

NARAL has other allies outside of elected office. Planned Parenthood sees NARAL as a "partner for women's health and rights". Despite the claim that these organizations support women's rights, both have opposed a ban on sex-selected abortion.  To them, it is fine for a woman to choose to have an abortion simply because her unborn baby is a girl, yet they claim to stand for women's rights? In their annual report released in January, Planned Parenthood indicated that they performed a record number of abortions in 2011 and nearly a million abortions from when President Obama took office in 2009 through the end of 2011. The media are pro-choice in their coverage of these horrors of abortion, and they often choose not to cover it. Meanwhile, some media outlets choose to consider children as collectively "ours" as society, not as children who belong to their parents.  First things first, however, in order for children to "belong to us "or to their parents, they cannot belong to the medical waste bin. What's more important to you?

Crossposted here and here.

Urge Illinois Legislators to Support the Second Amendment

In addition to pension reform, the Illinois legislature is debating gun legislation this week. In mid December, a court of appeals struck down a ban on concealed carry of guns in the state, giving the state 180 days to pass concealed carry legislation.  Just a couple weeks ago, the appeals court denied Attorney General Lisa Madigan's request to re-hear the case. The Illinois state legislature has a several bills being discussed in committee including bills requiring gun owners to have liability insurance , bans on specific types of guns, and legislation delineating specific reasonable requirements for training and licensing among a host of  other bills.  The Illinois State Rifle Association has a page with links to each of these pieces of legislation, the status of the bill, and their stance on  these  bills.  Please see here for more information.

 The National Rifle Association shares this caution with the legislative approach currently being taken by 2nd amendment opponents:

[This week], the Illinois House will consider extreme anti-gun legislation that will ban commonly owned semi automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines. The particular language will most likely be attached on the House floor as amendments to shell bills, so no language is currently available. While under a federal court order to pass a state Right-to-Carry law, anti-gun Chicago politicians continue to play games with your right to self-defense. Rather than working on measures to reduce violent crime, they continue to play politics and attack the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

Economist John Lott Jr. warns that the legislation being proposed, at least with the amendments discussed last week, would be "the most restrictive concealed hand gun law in the country", as the amendments' vague language essentially prohibit guns from being carried almost anywhere.  As an example, one amendment prohibits concealed carry on college campus, not even allowing individual campuses to make that decision themselves. This is in spite of the fact that campuses that allow concealed carry showed a reduction in crime following implementation of such policies.

 Also this week is the extremely timely Illinois Gun Owners Lobby (IGOLD) Day in Springfield on Wednesday, March 6th. For information about the day's scheduling and transportation options to Springfield, please see here. Please contact your legislators and ask them to uphold their oath of office in supporting the 2nd amendment. Contact information for Illinois state representatives can be found here and state senators here. The right to bear/bare arms in Illinois should not apply only to Michelle Obama's fashion choices.

Crossposted from Illinois4Palin.

Illinois O4P/AGU: Re-Affirming Our "Prairieroots" Activism

As a former mayor and governor, Governor Palin is keenly aware of the importance of being involved in local government. For all that is happening with our federal government--from sequestration to aiding rebels in Syria-- it is also important to remain engaged at a local and state level. In Illinois specifically, our state legislature is discussing some very important issues right now. Additionally, there are local school board races throughout the state and a special election in our second congressional district on the horizon.

While we still want to remain engaged with what is going on with our federal government, we also want to re-affirm our commitment to truly being engaged on a "prairieroots" level in our state and local governments. In the coming days, as part of this re-affirmation on more local issues, Illinois4Palin's blog will highlight pension reform, gun control, and gay marriage legislation to help inform Illinoisans of the issues at stake so that we all can take appropriate action. Illinois's pension system is the  most poorly funded in the country which has lead to multiple credit downgrades.  Lawmakers are continuing to wrestle with legislation to reform this mess of a system.  Recently, an appeals court rejected an appeal by attorney general Lisa Madigan to overturn a lower court's decision that would require Illinois to implement concealed carry legislation.Now, the Illinois general assembly is discussion gun legislation that would allow concealed carry of guns, but with extreme restrictions. Legislators are also working on same sex marriage legislation. The  implementation of civil union legislation in recent years has proven to be an assault on faith based social service organizations. Regardless of one's stance on same sex marriage, it is imperative that the same assault on religious liberties that occurred with civil union legislation is not repeated if same sex marriage legislation is passed.

 Please stay tuned for these upcoming posts with information on proposed legislation and how you can make your voice heard.  In the coming weeks and months, we will highlight other legislative issues,  political discussions of local interest, and important political races. If you have anything in particular that you would like to see highlighted or if you would like to contribute a post to the blog, please contact illinois@organize4palin.com.

Crossposted from Illinois4Palin.

President Obama's "Conceal-Carry" Approach to Firearms Research

Late business professor Aaron Levenstein once said, "statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital". He is right, and President Obama's "executive actions" are a great example of this.

As part of his cache of executive actions, President Obama issued "a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence". The press secretary's release elaborating on this action states:

But for years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)and other scientific agencies have been barred by Congress from using funds to “advocate or promote gun control,” and some members of Congress have claimed this prohibition also bans the CDC from conducting any research on the causes of gun violence. However, research on gun violence is not advocacy; it is critical public health research that gives all Americans information they need.

President Obama bemoans the supposedly unclear language barring funding of research that would advocate for gun control, but President Obama signed the most recent consolidated appropriations act which had the language he criticized. Additionally, the Obama administration's Department of Justice and its research arm the National Institute for Justice (NIJ) has not funded a "single public study on firearms" during his presidency (and that's according to a report by his gun control comrade in arms, Michael Bloomberg, who would likely would have gone out of his way to show deference to the President on this matter). Meanwhile, a quick cursory search found that under President Bush, NIJ funded at least one study on ballistics analysis in crime and one on smart gun technology. If these issues are so important to the president, why did he sign a bill with murky language? Why did his Justice Department not fund studies on firearms?

Additionally, the President decries the lack of "critical public health research" being performed while at the same time using suspect and uncited non-federally  funded research in his press release. President Obama notes that "40% of guns are purchased without a background check". However, as Breitbart's AWR Hawkins notes, the source of that statistic is a study done by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the 40% on refers to guns already in circulation, not new guns. In his remarks, President Obama fails to indicate the source of his numbers. Additionally, John Fund at the National Review notes that what Bloomberg references is a small survey done during the Clinton administration nearly 20 years ago.Much of the self reported survey (surveys that  intrinsically have social desirability bias) was performed prior to the passage of the Brady Act requiring federal background checks. . Like Levenstein suggests, President Obama's gun statistics are revealing of his agenda they suggest, but what he conceals is vital.

If President Obama Department of Justice can't even fund the research that President Bush funded and if his staffers have to resort to statistics that are old enough to vote, what can be said about the research he wants to actually fund now? I think it can say what University of Illinois sociologist David Bordura and epidemiologist David Cowan said when the CDC had funded studies last during the mid 1990s (emphasis added):

In a presentation at the American Society of Criminology's 1994 meeting, for example, University of Illinois sociologist David Bordua and epidemiologist David Cowan called the public health literature on guns "advocacy based on political beliefs rather than scientific fact." Bordua and Cowan noted that The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, the main outlets for CDC-funded studies of firearms, are consistent supporters of strict gun control. They found that "reports with findings not supporting the position of the journal are rarely cited," "little is cited from the criminological or sociological field," and the articles that are cited "are almost always by medical or public health researchers."

 For more, please see Jacob Sullum's piece at Reason about the problems with publicly funded firearms research and the subsequent bias often found in the journals that publish such research. Suffice it to say, this latest proposal by President Obama appears to be nothing more than his version of conceal-carry--conceal the truth, and carry the misrepresentations.

 Crossposted here and here.

Stand for the Second Amendment in the Land of Lincoln!: Updated

In writing his "Commonplace Book", Thomas Jefferson quoted the Italian philosopher and legal scholar Cesare Beecaria's book Of Crime and Punishments: 

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one."

Beccaria very well could have been describing present day Illinois where gun control often means the law abiding are punished for the actions of those who will continue to break gun laws no matter how numerous or restrictive. Despite having some of the most onerous gun laws in the country and currently being the only state in the union without some form of conceal and carry laws, Illinois' largest city of Chicago had more than 500 homicides in 2012. Gun control is not evil control. In mid December the US Court of Appeals declared Illinois' ban on concealed carry unconstitutional and gave the state 180 days to craft " a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public". For anti-gun proponents of Illinois, this judicially imposed deadline,the Chicago violence, the ineffably saddening shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, and a lame duck legislative session have provided the impetus to simultaneously meet the court's demands while also restricting guns in new ways. With the lame duck session ending on January 9th, the Illinois legislature is trying to ram through two pieces of legislation that would heavily restrict guns. The NRA's Institute of Legislative Action notes several aspects of these bills that are particularly draconian:

Among other things, House Bill 815 would: 

- Prohibit anyone without a FOID card from using a commercial shooting range, which in many cases would make it impossible to introduce new shooters to the safe and responsible use of firearms. 

- Grant the State Police broad discretion to impose design, construction and operation standards that could shut down most commercial shooting ranges. 

- Ban possession of magazines and other feeding devices that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. A "grandfather clause" would require registration by owners of such devices and give the State Police discretion to impose and charge fees. Registration would require "proof of ownership" that could be impossible for most people to provide, and even registered owners could not transfer magazines within Illinois, except to an heir or a licensed dealer. Transfers of "grandfathered magazines" would have to be reported to the ISP. 

- Violations of this magazine ban would be a felony. Failure to report theft or loss of a magazine would be a misdemeanor until the third violation, which would be a felony. 

House Bill 1263 would: 

- Ban, at a minimum, all detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles and pistols. Remington 7400 deer rifles, Ruger 10/22 squirrel guns, Glocks, 1911s, etc. This ban would include about 80% of handguns now sold in the U.S. 

- Possibly ban all semi-automatic rifles and even revolvers or single-shot pistols with the capacity to accept muzzle brakes or compensators. 

- Ban "assault weapon attachments," so possession of a thumbhole stock, a pistol grip,or a fore-end (a "shroud" that "partially or completely encircles the barrel") would be a crime even if you didn't possess a firearm. 

- Ban all .50 BMG rifles. 

- Contains "grandfather" provisions that would require registration by owners of devices and give the State Police discretion to impose and charge fees. Registration would require "proof of ownership." 

- Create felony penalties for violation of this ban on guns or attachments. 

- Create lost and stolen penalties that would criminalize victims of gun theft

These bills moved out of the Senate's public health committee on Wednesday, but have not been voted on in the Senate at this point. However,  the Illinois House will discuss an additional gun control bill  (SB 2899) and additional amendments when they reconvene Sunday. These overly restrictive bills do not seem to honor the court's request for "reasonable" legislation. After all, what's reasonable about disallowing citizens the opportunity to learn how to use a gun safely at a gun range? Your voice can make a difference. Use your first amendment rights to re-affirm your support for the second. Please call or email your representatives to voice your support for the second amendment and your opposition for even more government impingement on our liberties. You can find contact information for your representative here.  As this legislation is being discussed in Springfield and national legislation is being proposed as well, exercising the right to bear arms in Illinois shouldn't only refer to Michelle Obama's right to wear sleeveless dresses!

Crossposted from Illinois4Palin.

Update: Per Illinois House GOP this Sunday afternoon, the Judiciary Committee will not discuss gun control legislation the remainder of this lame duck session, making such legislation dead for this legislative session.