O’Reilly Is O’Really in Left Field on the Guns and Ammo Issue

“This year will go down in history. For the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead into the future.” —Adolf Hitler, 1935

When I shout at the TV it’s usually because of one of these three reasons:

1. Noticing that Bob Beckelhas just dyed his hair a shade of ginger that Carrot Top would eschew. What shade is that, man? Clairol’s “Rusted Barn Pipe” especially blended for the sassy progressive? 

2. Seeing Roseanne Barr on the tube braying her insanity, on any subject, will also get me throwing cigar ashtrays at my flat screen and howling like a Bluetick on a fresh coon track.

3. And lastly, always guaranteed to get a screech out of me, is when I happen to see Jan Crouch sitting on a gold TBN pagoda sporting a wig that makes her the envy of RuPaul.

 

However, this past week I was hollering at Bill O’Reilly. Normally, I respect and enjoy Bill’s take on pressing issues, but OMG was O’Reilly out in leftist field on the guns and ammo issue.

On Monday, July 23rd’s Talking Points, O’Reilly made some outrageous and erroneous statements about guns and gun purchases. They were so misleading that I was wondering if Michael Moore was moonlighting as a writer for The Factor.

Initially Bill got off to a good start stating, “[Bill] Moyers has no clue, no clue at all. He apparently believes that federal and state governments can actually control gun crimes. That’s so dumb it hurts.” But then he follows up this statement with some of the most uninformed Talking Points that I have witnessed on his show, and yes, I am a regular viewer. Check it out …

O’Reilly: “Anyone who sells a heavy weapon or ammo should be compelled to report the sale to the FBI. It’s a felony if you don’t. That’s what we should have in the U.S.A. and it just makes sense in this age of terrorism. Right now some gun dealers do background checks but nobody reports the sale of heavy weapons like AK-47s to the feds. That’s insane.”

Bill, if you purchase an AK-47 today at a gun store, you will be required to fill out Federal Form 4473. On this form, you will answer a barrage of questions about your criminal history and citizenship. On page 2, section D, the form lists the type, model number, manufacturer, serial number, etc. of the firearm that is being purchased.

If a licensed gun dealer does not accurately complete this form, he would face penalties up to and including prison time. All dealers are required to complete this form for every firearm purchase. This form is a BATFE form, and if they do not talk to the FBI, then that is a problem between those agencies and not gun purchasers.

As it relates to purchases of ammo, the idea that one would report the hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition sold yearly would take an army of federal employees to process the information. I would wager that they would catch as many criminals as the TSA has caught potential terrorists by groping Granny. However, they would be able to compile a great list of people like me who shoot regularly and buy their ammunition in bulk. That list would include my cowboy action shooting friends, trap and skeet shooters, prairie dog hunters, individual police officers, military personnel, gun collectors, reloaders and so on. Keeping lists of law-abiding citizens does not stop killers bent on bedlam.

Bill’s next ditty was so outrageous that it is near impossible to comment on without laughing. O’Reilly: “Terrorists could just move in here, buy bazookas and the FBI doesn’t know about it. Here is how crazy this is. If you take a flight lesson, the feds get a heads up. But you can buy a machine gun and they don’t know.”

Bazookas and machine guns are commonly referred to as class III weapons and/or destructive devices, which require a very special license to own. Yep, it’s a wee bit different than buying a Ruger 10/22. The “Feds” have been licensing machine guns since 1934. To own a machine gun, one must first live in a state where it is legal, and then complete a Federal licensing process that, as I understand, takes a few months. On top of the aforementioned, get ready to drop about ten grand because the manufacturing of new guns has been banned for years. To the best of my knowledge, only one legally owned machine gun has been used in a crime in the U.S. since 1934, and the owner was a member of the law enforcement community.

Another thing I was howling over was O’Reilly calling an AK-47 a “heavy weapon.” Heavy weapon? Uh … not hardly. Granted, I wouldn’t want any round from a .22LR up inside of my body, but the pipsqueak little 7.62×39 is hardly considered a heavy caliber by anyone who knows anything about guns.

Then to cap off Bill’s misinformation, the following night O’Reilly stepped in it again by wrongfully asserting that the Aurora jackwagon who shot up the theater ordered “60,000 rounds of ammo over the Internet.” Bill screamed that several times … “60,000 rounds!” Wrong again. Holmes ordered 6,000 rounds, and not one ton of ammo.

Look, folks can try to ban semi-automatic weapons and limit ammo sales all day long, but criminals will always be able to get their paws on them. The only thing that would have stopped James Holmes would have been a bullet to his head by an armed citizen who, in this case, was unfortunately banned from entering the theater.

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it.”

—William S. Burroughs

This piece was co-authored by Steve Sheldon.

Check out my latest video, “Obama Loves Us This We Know, For He Allows Our Businesses To Grow.”

Doug Giles

Doug Giles is the Big Dawg at ClashDaily.com. Watch him on ClashTV. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. And check out his books on Amazon.

http://townhall.com/columnists/douggiles/2012/07/29/oreilly_is_oreally_in_left_field_on_the_guns_and_ammo_issue/page/full/

Ultrasound, Ultra-Truth

“Seeing is believing” is an ancient idiom. It teaches that a dispute can often be resolved by presenting physical evidence.

Opponents of the ultrasound bill passed last week by the Virginia legislature and expected to be signed soon by Governor Bob McDonnell, thought they could stop the measure because they said it would require an invasive vaginal probe to determine the age of the fetus in an early-stage pregnancy. The bill passed after it was modified to mandate only a non-invasive procedure.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, Virginia will join seven other states “that mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound on each woman seeking an abortion, and require the provider to offer the woman the opportunity to view the image.”

Before other surgeries, doctors and hospitals must present information to patients who are then required to sign documents consenting to the procedure. No one would deny women access to information about a kidney transplant. So then for abortions, as part of this information-providing process, why shouldn’t ultrasound images be included? Shouldn’t abortion-seeking women see the life they are about to end?

The debate in Virginia and elsewhere over ultrasound legislation should include the voices of women who favor ultrasound laws.

The media speak of “women” as a monolithic group who consistently subscribe to the liberal-secular line. But there are many women — I have met a few — whose voices are rarely, if ever, heard. These women either decided to give birth after seeing an ultrasound image, or regretted having had an abortion and would testify that if they had seen an ultrasound image before the procedure they would have made a different choice. Does not seeing an ultrasound image change the reality of abortion?

There are several websites featuring testimonies from some of these pro-ultrasound women. One is: http://www.projectultrasound.org/testimonies.html.

Why would anyone want to deprive women of the joy they experience after seeing a picture of their baby and deciding to preserve their baby’s life? Why would anyone not want to protect these women from the pain many have experienced from not seeing a picture and going forward with the abortion, only to later regret it?

In Britain, two “medical ethicists” associated with Oxford University have published an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” which asserts that newborn babies are not “actual persons” and thus do not have a “moral right to life.” As reported in the London Daily Telegraph, the professors argue, “Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are ‘morally irrelevant’ and ending their lives is no different to abortion.” The authors, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, maintain that “killing a newborn should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.”

The Telegraph story quotes Giubilini and Minerva: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual. Rather than being ‘actual persons,’ newborns were ‘potential persons’.” They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.”

Let’s hear “pro-choicers” argue against infanticide and present their reasons for doing so. Having ceded any moral high ground that defines human life as distinct from animal life, though some do equate the two, on what basis do they say “no” to the ethicists’ argument? They have no basis.

This is where our indifference to human life and its Creator has led us. Requiring ultrasounds before a woman has an abortion will help restore recognition of a baby’s right to live and of our own humanity.

Tags:                 A Culture of Life            ,                                    Abortion            ,                                    ultrasounds

Cal  Thomas

Cal Thomas is co-author (with Bob Beckel) of the book, “Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America

http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2012/03/06/ultrasound_ultratruth/page/full/

Losing Liberty

“Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?” — Thomas Jefferson

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” — Patrick Henry

Liberty is always tenuous. Those who enjoy it seem to be a minority in the world. That’s why liberty must not only be preserved by those who currently benefit from it; it must also be fought for and constantly renewed for future generations, because there are always those who wish to restrict or eliminate our freedoms.

The Obama administration‘s ham-fisted attempt to require that contraceptives and abortifacients be offered to employees of Catholic and other religious institutions is a serious threat to our civil liberties. Yes, federal (through EEOC oversight) and state governments already play this role and have for a time. According to the Guttmacher Institute, “Some 28 states have mandated coverage of birth control and 20 of those have some sort of exemption for religious employers.” New York and California are among the 28. But do we really want government to continue to take the place of individual conscience? Should government continue to dictate to its citizens how to order and conduct their lives?

But wait. Didn’t President Obama give in to the concerns of Roman Catholic bishops by excusing Catholic institutions from paying for contraceptives and “morning-after” pills for their employees? Not exactly. The president disingenuously shifted the burden to insurance companies, which have now been ordered to offer the pills “free” to any employee who wants them.

Nothing is “free.” The cost will eventually be added to the price of the policies, which the employer will wind up paying for anyway. The cost will then be passed along to the employee.

The bishops weren’t fooled. After initially expressing “cautious optimism” over the administration’s “first step in the right direction,” they issued a statement, reports the Wall Street Journal, saying they still have “serious moral concerns” and cannot support the announced compromise, despite the fact that many thousands of religious institutions will be exempted from the mandate.

This issue was always about more than contraceptives and who pays for them. It is about individual liberty and whether the government under “Obamacare” has the constitutional right to dictate to private businesses and church-related entities when such orders violate conscience and religious beliefs. Would the administration also order a conscientious objector to engage in combat? It’s the same principle.

If the administration can get away with this, there will be no stopping it. If government can force an insurance company or institution to pay for a birth-control pill or a morning-after pill, it can, under the same authority, conceivably force them to pay for a euthanasia pill for those others have deemed unfit to live.

Too extreme? Most inhumanities begin with extremes. What is to stop the government from such behavior? If the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom is to be annulled, along with the already voided “endowed” right to life written into the Declaration of Independence, by what moral or legal authority can anyone stop government from doing anything? This is more than a slippery slope; this is an avalanche and it threatens our most fundamental rights, without which we morph into something other than the America we have known.

Responding to the president’s remarks in which he pulled back on his insurance company mandate, Amy Ridenour, chair of the National Center for Public Policy Research, weighing in on the cost of providing contraceptive benefits, said, “Here’s the problem: The ‘savings’ substantially comes from pregnancy avoidance. That’s what religious-based opponents of the birth control/early abortifacient mandate objected to in the first place.”

There are two possible remedies: A decision expected this spring by the Supreme Court that Obamacare is unconstitutional, or a complete repeal of the health-care law, which would require a Republican Congress and a Republican president.

What other liberties does the Obama administration want to subvert? In his Super Bowl Sunday interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, President Obama appeared to complain about the Founding Fathers, whom he suggested, “…designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change that I would like sometimes.” It’s called the separation of powers, Mr. President, and it was created to protect the nation from a dictatorial executive branch.

 

 

 

Tags: Liberalism , Obama Administration , Liberty

 

Cal Thomas

Cal Thomas is co-author (with Bob Beckel) of the book, “Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America“.
 
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http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2012/02/14/losing_liberty/page/full/