Illinois State Police say they’re trying to deal with a huge backlog of applications for Firearms Owner Identification cards.The agency received more than 28,000 applications for cards during April alone.That’s on top of an existing backlog of nearly 76,000 applications. The state police say they are dealing with a record number of applications.

Or this from the NY Post:
The US diplomat who was second in command in Libya during the fatal attack on the Benghazi consulate fought back tears yesterday when he told lawmakers about his colleagues’ final moments — and said he was “stunned” by administration claims it was sparked by a spontaneous protest. Gregory Hicks, the first person to testify to Congress who was on the ground in Libya during the fateful night of the Sept. 11, 2012 siege, told a House committee that he was incredulous just five days later when UN Ambassador Susan Rice said on Sunday talk shows that the assault was not a terrorist attack. “My jaw dropped,” Hicks said. “I was embarrassed.” . . .After listening to the testimony above or reading reports such as in the New York Post, please tell me how that is consistent with this administration claim.  From an earlier report on ABC News:
On Tuesday, both President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry addressed claims being made by House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committee leaders that the administration is impeding the Congressional testimony of State Department and CIA employees who survived the attack. “I’m not familiar with this notion that anybody’s been blocked from testifying,” said the president. “What I’ve been very clear about from the start is that our job with respect to Benghazi has been to find out exactly what happened, to make sure that U.S. embassies, not just in the Middle East but around the world, are safe and secure and to bring those who carried it out to justice.” . . .Instead it looks like Chaffetz was the one who was correct regarding the Benghazi whistleblowers.
“Absolutely, and more than one,” Chaffetz said on “Fox News Sunday” when asked if the Obama administration had blocked potential witnesses. “There are people who want to testify that have been suppressed. …They’re scared to death of what the State Department is doing with them.” . . .The Washington Post's Dana Milbank had this summary:
Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 U.S. diplomat in Libya the night Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, was to be the star witness for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the man leading the probe of the Obama administration’s handling of the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.  But despite Issa’s incautious promise that the hearing’s revelations would be “damaging” to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hicks didn’t lay a glove on the former secretary of state Wednesday. . . . Suppose that we take everything that Milbank says about the facts are correct, that no direct evidence implicated Clinton.  You still have the problem that Clinton's number 2 person was direct implicated.  If this was a Republican administration, would Milbank not be asking for further investigation to see how high things actually run?

But the problem goes beyond Benghazi.  See for example this article on Politico:
The watchdog who tracks the billions of taxpayer dollars spent to rebuild Afghanistan says government officials have tried to silence him because they think he's embarrassing the White House and Afghan President Hamid Karzai by pointing out the waste and fraud. John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, used a speech at the New America Foundation on Wednesday to blast government “bureaucrats”' who have told him to stop publicizing damning audits that detail case after case of waste, corruption and mismanagement of rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Some government officials have even complained that they aren't allowed to pre-screen or edit his reports, he said.  “Since my appointment by the president last summer, I have been surprised to learn how many people both in and out of the government do not understand the role of an independent inspector general,” Sopko said. . . .UPDATE: As David Limbaugh correctly notes, another example is Gerald Walpin (see here).



Judge Andrew Napolitano: "Lying to Congress carries the same criminal liability and the same punishment as lying under oath to Congress. I'm not suggesting that Mrs. Clinton lied, but I'm saying that a case could be made out, either legally in a courtroom if a prosecutor wanted to, and certainly politically in a public sphere should she decide to seek higher office."

Proposed anti-gun laws that have been debated and discussed for weeks in Trenton continue to move closer to approval in the state legislature.  Many of these onerous legislative proposals, previously reported here by the NRA-ILA, have already passed in the Assembly and are now tentatively scheduled for floor action in the Senate on Monday, May 13.  The state legislature has reached a critical point in its process, and New Jersey gun owners must continue to pressure state lawmakers to defeat these dangerous gun bills.

Today, an anti-gun amendment was offered to Senate Bill 1002, turning this bill into another vehicle for gun control.  Sponsored by state Senator Antonio Munoz (D-1), this amendment seeks to ban the possession, purchase, manufacture, sale or delivery of all magazines in Illinois that can hold more than ten rounds of ammunition or that can be readily converted to do this. 

House Bill 937, a comprehensive Right-to-Carry reform bill, passed its second reading in the state House of Representatives on Monday by a partisan 76-38 vote.  On Tuesday, the state House passed H 937 on its third reading by a 78-42 vote, with state Representative Paul Tine (D-6) as the sole Democrat to vote in favor of it.  (Representative Tine was not on the floor for Monday’s vote, so he did not cast a vote on its second reading.)  H 937 now moves to the state Senate for further consideration.  Please contact your state Senator and urge her or him to support H 937 and to work to ensure that it is taken up for consideration as soon as possible.

Manager Joe Cho was working in the office of Pepe’s Grocery and Deli in Dallas, Texas when two armed men wearing bandannas entered the store and demanded money from a cashier. Cho responded by retrieving a .38-caliber revolver and firing at the criminals, who returned fire and fled. None of Cho’s employees were hurt during the incident.Cho’s decision to provide for his and his employee’s defense proved to be a wise one. Following the attempted robbery, Cho notified the police, telling them, “Hey, we got robbed, I need police as soon as possible.” “As soon as possible” turned out to be about an hour and 20 minutes later.

A House panel has approved legislation that would greatly curtail when veterans deemed mentally incompetent are reported to the FBI's background check system.

The legislation signed Wednesday is the first bill in a package of gun control measures proposed by Markell after the Connecticut school shooting in December to be enacted into law.

A New Jersey Senate committee is set to consider several gun control bills, but a limit on the number of bullets allowed in ammunition magazines is not among the measures due to be discussed.

"Superficial"

Today, Governor Rick Snyder (R) signed into law an important hunting reform that will help preserve Michigan’s rich hunting heritage for generations to come.  Senate Bill 288, introduced by state Senator Tom Casperson (R-38), passed in the state Senate by a 25 to 11 vote on April 25 and was approved in the state House by a 72 to 38 vote on May 2.  SB 288, which took immediate effect, will improve the scientific management of wildlife and ensure that hunting rules and regulations are based on verifiable biological evidence – not a political agenda.

NRA members in Kansas spoke loudly during the 2013 legislative session and state legislators answered the call.  However, your action is still needed to advance a critical pro-gun reform, Senate Bill 45.  The state legislature’s veto session is currently underway and SB 45 is one of the few pro-gun measures still awaiting final approval.

With a few days remaining in the 2013 legislative session, the Missouri General Assembly is taking critical steps to reform the state’s Right-to-Carry law and further protect your inherent right to self-defense.

For someone deeply involved in the data, it can be surprising to see the gap between what is happening and people's perceptions.  Surely the media has a big effect.
The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found. . . .  Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed  more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased. It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news. . . .Thanks to Michael Wahl for the link. 

The one serious flaw that I have with PEW's discussion is that they keep discussing 1993 as if it were the peak year in violent crime.  In fact, 1991 was the peak year for murder, robbery, and overall violent crime.  And 1992 was the peak year for rape and aggravated assault.

Well, the more data the better!  Kyle Coplen has now expanded his program to 14 cities.  From the local CBS station in New York City:

A group wants to arm New York City residents with shotguns for free, in order to put some fear into criminals. As 1010 WINS’ John Montone reported Tuesday night, the Armed Citizen Project wants to arm law-abiding citizens. The group’s founder, Kyle Coplen, told 1010 WINS the group will give free pump-action shotguns to New Yorkers who pass background checks and take a safety course. “It’s our hypothesis that criminals do not want to die in your hallway. We think that society should use that fear to deter crime,” Coplen said in a report by Mike Puccinelli of WBBM-TV, CBS 2 Chicago.“We’re giving folks the tools with which to defend their life, liberty and property, we’re training them how to use the weapons and empowering citizens.” . . .  In Houston, Coplen said he hopes to arm one-fourth of the neighborhood where his group is now giving away guns. Then signs would be put up warning criminals that the neighborhood is armed.

National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.

The debate over gun control is coming back to the Senate earlier than expected.Sen. Tom Coburn (R Okla.) intends to file a pair of firearms related amendments to the Water Resources Development Act that the Senate began considering on Tuesday afternoon.One amendment would repeal a gun prohibition on land under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers. The other would require annual reports from federal agencies on ammunition and gun purchases as well as firearm thefts, excepting some national security arms of government.

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

It's honestly a strange time for politicians to push ever tighter restrictions on gun controls. Even if you're the sort of person who thinks that everybody's personal liberty should be restricted if somebody, somewhere, misbehaves, a report released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics makes it apparent that crimes committed with firearms continue their steady, two decade decline. In terms of specific policy, the recent focus on restricting "assault weapons" makes no sense in an environment in which the preferred weapon for committing those diminishing crimes is the handgun. And the recent obsession with extending background checks on people making legal gun purchases is a true head scratcher, since most criminals don't buy their guns legally, with fewer than one percent acquiring their weapons at much demonized gun shows.

Even as President Barack Obama works with legislators in Washington to revive efforts to enact stricter federal gun control legislation, local politicians have filed seven pro gun bills in an effort to pass even more permissive state gun laws.