Ted Nugent has a well deserved (and proud) reputation for being loud, crude and crazy, but here, he makes a calm, reasoned and very sensible case for gun rights.

This is several years old, but still relevant.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

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.