Exaggeration?  Perhaps. 

Yet, shouldn’t we consider the phrasing of one of his supporters? 

Obama Spokesman Says ‘Obama Ready to RULE on Day 1′

The co-chair of Barack Obama’s Transition Team, Valerie Jarrett, appeared on Meet the Press this weekend and used, shall we say, an interesting word to described what she thinks Barack Obama will be doing in January when he’s officially sworn into office. She told Tom Brokaw that Obama will be ready to “rule” on day one. It’s a word that reflects the worst fears that people have for Obama the “arrogant,” the “messiah,” that imagines he’s here to “rule” instead of govern.

Jarret told Brokaw that “given the daunting challenges that we face, it’s important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.”

By itself it is a minor event, perhaps an unconscious gaffe.

But then, consider this:

Obama to target Bush executive orders in first days

Barack Obama wants to find ways to make his mark quickly in the opening days of his presidency and reverse the legacy of George W. Bush.  Obama will focus his efforts on the list of executive orders that shaped White House policy, reversing them quickly.  That does not require legislative approval, but it could bring the most contentious issues to the forefront immediately and create more polarization than post-partisanship (via Jazz Shaw):

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

The woman in question lost a son to gun violence and went on a crusade against guns in the UK.  She formed a chapter of Moms against Guns, and was well know in her campaign to end gun and gang violence.

She was stabbed to death by her grandson:

The grandson of prominent anti-gun campaigner Pat Regan has been arrested on suspicion of stabbing her to death.

Mrs Regan, 53, was discovered at the property on Marlborough Grange in the Hyde Park area of Leeds on Sunday.

The mother-of-six started campaigning against gun crime when her son Danny was shot dead in 2002.

The 20-year-old man was being held on suspicion of murder, police said. It is thought he had been arrested earlier in the day over another stabbing.

So many points here.  Anti gun activists always point to the gun being taken from you in your home, and how domestic violence is increased with guns.

Yet in her case, both existed without a gun in sight.

This is not a case for or against her position, but clearly, it is a reminder that the gun is but one of many tools a person committed to violence can employ.

The real enemy is violence, not just the guns.  And as you can see, take away the gun, and the deaths will continue.

This is not intended to trivialize her death, or belittle her passion for her cause.

It is just sadly ironic.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary’s Thoughts, 123beta, Maggie’s Notebook, Adam’s Blog, Right Truth, Big Dog’s Weblog, Cao’s Blog, The Amboy Times, Democrat=Socialist, Conservative Cat, Adeline and Hazel, Allie is Wired, Faultline USA, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, McCain Blogs, DragonLady’s World, The World According to Carl, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Wolf Pangloss, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, CORSARI D’ITALIA, , Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, Stageleft, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Bet you didn’t hear about this on the news did you?

Municipalities can’t ban people from owning handguns, court rules

San Francisco’s ban on handguns, blocked by a legal challenge since voters approved it in November 2005, suffered a possibly fatal blow Wednesday when a state appeals court ruled that local governments have no authority under California Law to prevent people from owning pistols.

The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco agreed with a June 2006 ruling by Superior Court Judge James Warren, who said state laws regulating gun sales, permits and safety leave no room for a city or county to forbid handgun possession.

State courts have upheld some local restrictions, including prohibitions on the sale or possession of guns on public fairgrounds, Presiding Justice Ignazio Ruvolo noted in the 3-0 ruling. But in general, “when it comes to regulating firearms, local governments are well advised to tread lightly,” he wrote.

San Francisco’s ban was challenged by the National Rifle Association, whose lobbyist Chris Cox called Wednesday’s ruling “a big win for the law-abiding citizens and NRA members of San Francisco.”

Alexis Thompson, spokeswoman for City Attorney Dennis Herrera, said the ruling  was disappointing, “particularly in light of the continuing plague of handgun violence here in San Francisco.”

About that…so tell me, would the hand gun ban stop the violence?  No.  The fact is that using a handgun for violence is already a crime, so outlawing peaceful ownership is absolutely pointless.  Banning their guns from people who already are using them criminally is unlikely to have a measurable impact.

The city could ask the state Supreme Court to review the case. History would not be on the city’s side, however, as the state’s high court refused to review a 1982 ruling by the same appeals court striking down an earlier San Francisco ordinance that prohibited handgun possession in the city limits.

We shall see.  Newsbusters says:

Today, some guy decided to go out of this life in style by shooting up a mall.

Days like this I really hope there is a God and a hell.

Police Identify Gunman in Deadly Westroads Shooting

Nine people are confirmed dead - including the gunman - following the shooting at Westroads Mall this afternoon.  Five others were hurt, including two who are still listed in critical condition Wednesday night.  Police have identified Robert Hawkins of Sarpy County as the alleged shooter.  Sergeant Teresa Negron says he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside the store.  Hawkins was 20 years old.  At one point he attended Papillion-La Vista High School.  Sources tell Action 3 News Hawkins recently tried to get in the Army, but wasn’t accepted.

Police Chief Thomas Warren says five of the victims are female, three are male.  He would not disclose the ages of the victims, but says the group appears to include both Von Maur employees and shoppers.

This just sucks.  Why these people think they need to depart this mortal coil with a body count is beyond me.  My sorrows to the families.

But now I am waiting.   What will likely stir much debate is this:

Officers have recovered the gun.  They say it was an SKS assault rifle.

An SKS is a Russian designed carbine rifle.  I am sure we will find out if it was modded to make it more assault like or if it was just a conventional semi auto rifle, but the immediate cry will be for more bans on assault rifles, as that is how it was described.  The 7.62mm cartridge is really the same essential size as a Winchester 30-30 or a 30.06, both of which are used in hunting daily across the country, both of which can be used in semi auto configuration, and both of which will make people dead.

But the news media would not stoop so low as to say that some crazed lunatic was shooting up a mall with a deer rifle.  It stirs the passions to make sure it is an assault rifle.

This is a clear assault not only on free speech but on the second amendment.

Be afraid.  Be outraged.  Apparently wanting to carry a weapon is not only politically incorrect, but enough to get you suspended from College.  And you can’t come back unless you undergo a Psych eval.

At least at this college anyway (H/T ST:

After the Virginia Tech tragedy, even talking about concealed carry is grounds for suspension

Sipping soda from a straw and leaning on his elbows at Perkins, Troy Scheffler seems harmless enough. The 31-year-old Hamline University grad student resembles a post-Pulp Fiction John Travolta—slightly overstuffed, with graying sideburns and a small, tense smile. It’s easy to imagine him hitting on a girl at a dance club.

But Scheffler is packing heat. A gun-toting concealed carry permit holder, he rarely leaves home without his sidearm.

On April 16, colleges were rocked by the news coming out of Virginia Tech. Initial reports were sketchy and confused, but by the end of the day a clear picture emerged: An angry and deranged Seung-Hui Cho had killed 32 students and faculty before turning his gun on himself in the largest mass shooting in American history.

In the aftermath, officials at Hamline University sought to comfort their 4,000 students. David Stern, the vice president for academic and student affairs, sent a campus-wide email offering extra counseling sessions for those who needed help coping.

Scheffler had a different opinion of how the university should react. Using the email handle “Tough Guy Scheffler,” Troy fired off his response: Counseling wouldn’t make students feel safer, he argued. They needed protection. And the best way to provide it would be for the university to lift its recently implemented prohibition against concealed weapons.

“Ironically, according to a few VA Tech forums, there are plenty of students complaining that this wouldn’t have happened if the school wouldn’t have banned their permits a few months ago,” Scheffler wrote. “I just don’t understand why leftists don’t understand that criminals don’t care about laws; that is why they’re criminals. Maybe this school will reconsider its repression of law-abiding citizens’ rights.”

The killing of innocents always brings out the conflicting feelings in me.  I feel rage at the evil that was done and helplessness at not being able to do anything as the horrific drama unfolds.

I feel sorrow for the families of the victims, horror at the suffering the victims themselves must have suffered,  and pity for the unmentioned victims, the family of the shooter, for they are victims also in that they well bear his stigma in his coward’s death.

But sadly for me, in this day and age, I also feel frustration at the politicians and media (bloggers included) who will spin, promote and demagogue away with this event.  What ought to be a shared moment of national sorrow becomes a media circus in what Michelle Malkin has labeled the Blame-the-guns bias watch.

And the sad truth is that as I watched the events unfold, she was totally correct, within hours the first calls for gun control were generated, one at the President’s briefing, another in the promos for the MSNBC Scarborough and Country gun control special.¹

I won’t say that the topic is not relevant, nor that there may or may not be some merit to it, but have we lost our compassion to the point that we have to trample on the dead while the steam still rises form their corpses in order to “scoop” the story?

And already one alleged false report has surfaced from such hasty reporting, that being the false identification of the shooter:²

The Internet rumor mill, chasing down leads on the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter, has been grinding all day. Allah debunks one of those rumors, which Hot Air received, investigated, and debated this afternoon and evening:

He’s not the shooter.

More anti gun reactions at the NYTime and Reuters.

There are some interesting reactions from the blogsphere too.³

Bull Dog Pundit: “In one sentence they say is that it is ‘premature to draw too many lessons,’ yet they then go on to say that stronger laws are needed over ‘lethal weapons,’ even though nothing is known about how he got them.”

To have to have one such grisly shooting happen is bad enough, but two in just a few days just makes the situation all the more surreal.

The first:

 Police pin UW shooting on victim’s ex- boyfriend

A University of Washington resear cher was shot to death in her office Monday morning by a former boyfriend who then turned the gun on himself, police said.

Officers responding to reports of gunfire found the two dead in an office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall, the university’s architecture building, Assistant University Police Chief Ray Wittmier said.

The 26-year-old woman was granted a restraining order last month against Jonathan Rowan, according to court documents. University police said he was not affiliated with the school.

Small comfort that is.  The fact is this is a grim and heartbreaking tale of an obsessed ex lover and a woman who tried all legal means to ensure her protection and safety.

“I cannot find him but he can find me (knows my place of work),” the victim, identified by colleagues as Rebecca Griego, wrote in a restraining order petition filed against Rowan on March 6 in King County Superior Court.

Lance Nguyen, who worked with Griego at the Runstad Center for Real Estate Research, said the victim had become increasingly worried about her former boyfriend in recent weeks.

“She said it’s a psycho from her past,” Nguyen said.

One frustrating thing emerging in the aftermath is that the police are quick to note that they had not officially served him with the restraining order.

Uh…so friggin what?  Are you suggesting it would have made a difference?  I highly doubt it. 

Another idiot comment was this:l

Campus police were not aware of the restraining order, Wittmier said. He also said he did not think the man had permission to carry a handgun on campus, where firearms are banned.

Well duh.  Thanks, that’s helpful.  I will address the firearm ban in a moment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down Washington DC’s ridiculous handgun law, citing of all things the Second Amendment.

In all seriousness what is intriguing is “why’ they did, and even more curious is what the Dissenting Justice and the City Cited as their justification to keep the law.

D.C.’s Ban On Handguns In Homes Is Thrown Out

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the District’s longtime ban on keeping handguns in homes is unconstitutional.

The 2 to 1 decision by an appellate panel outraged D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and other city leaders, who said that they will appeal and that gun-related crimes could rise if the ruling takes effect. The outcome elated opponents of strict gun controls because it knocked down one of the toughest laws in the country and vindicated their interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s language on the right to bear arms.

Right there strikes to the heart of the issue.  Most gun control lovers cite the militia provision in the Second Amendment as proof that private gun ownership is not covered.  But the Appeals Court ruled the opposite, which is the main argument pro gun groups have consistently maintained:

“We conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms,” Silberman said in the 58-page majority ruling.

In the majority opinion, Silberman wrote that federal and state courts have been divided about the extent of protections covered by the Second Amendment. Some have sided with the District’s position, that a militia means just that. Others have ruled that the amendment is broader, covering the individual rights of people who own guns for hunting or self-defense.

The Supreme Court addressed the Second Amendment in 1939, but it did not hold that the right to bear arms meant specifically that a person could do so.

The Opinion states:

AndrewsDad, fellow NW Blogger, has a great post at NW Bloggers about the gun show loophole myth.

The Commentaters on KVI am 570 discussed this today, in the wake of the recent shooting at a Tacoma High School, and it is sure to be repeated ad naseum how we need stricter control of guns to curb this sort of senseless violence.  One of the hot button issues often reported (incorrectly as you will see) that gunshows are terrible black pit allowing criminals to bypass background checks and obtain weapons with which to committ their crimes.

So here is the truth of the gun show myth.

Originally posted at AndrewsDad on Oct. 24th 2006 

The Seattle P.I. had an article about Washington Ceasefire planting bulbs at Greenlake to commemorate the 600 victims of gun violence in Washington State this year.  It seems odd to me that a group can just go plant bulbs at a city park and I have a question into the Seattle Parks department asking about that but that is a post for another day.  What Washington Cease Fire does not say and what the "reporter", Neil Modie, does not seem interested in knowing is the fact that about 400 of those 600 deaths were suicides.

Now Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, whose department issued handgun was stolen out of his car earlier this year was in attendance.

In 2005, two violent gun crimes were reported for every 1,000 people nationwide, compared with 1.4 in 2004, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Kerlikowske said it was the "No. 1 issue" at a national meeting of local law enforcement leaders he attended in Washington, D.C., last month.

The reasons? Kerlikowske said criminologists say that for one thing, "we are awash in firearms." Unlike a number of other states, efforts to close Washington’s gun-show loophole have been blocked in the Legislature.

To understand the "gun show loophole", you first must know what it is.  The gun show loophole specifically means when a non gun dealer, a private citizen, sells a gun to another private citizen at a gun show, just as they would if they had taken out a classified ad in a newspaper, a background check is not required.  From Washington Ceasefire’s own press release:

Reposted without edit or comment from Andrews Dad:

Illegal Immigration Counter Protesters Detained

The topic of discussion on the Bryan Suits radio show on 570 KVI earlier this evening was a call by a Seattle area citizen, Eric, who called to say that while thousands of illegal immigrants marched a couple of feet away, 5 United States citizens, he being one of the 5, who should be covered by all of the constitutional amendments, including the 1st and 2nd, were detained by the Seattle Police Department for over 2 hours because… well hard to say really. The reason for Caller Eric’s call into the show was, surprise, surprise, the medias total lack of coverage of what should be a fairly big story. U.S. Citizens constitutional rights infringed in order to protect illegal aliens non existent right to hold a protest march.

Now I am a regular listener of the Bryan Suits show, as you should be, especially if you, like me, are in the male 35-64 year old demographic, and as Bryan can testify, I am also a regular emailer, but did not catch every single minute of the show since the 5pm to 8pm time slot is right in that end of the work day - drive home - eat dinner time window so I may have missed out on some of the conversation but here is a recap as best as I can recall. Full disclosure on my part requires that I state my Father is a 25 year retired Seattle Police Officer and I may or may not own a gun, try breaking into my house and you may or may not get an answer right then and there.