The following article was originally published by The Lima News. Republished with permission.

by Greg Sowinski

LIMA - A national survey of police officers show overwhelming support for the Second Amendment while opposing many federal gun control proposals they say would do little, if anything, to stop crime.

Those beliefs are supported by some local officers, as well.

The national survey was conducted by PoliceOne.com, an online resource for law enforcement officials that offers a wealth of information and services to officers across the country. The group has more than 450,000 members and conducted a scientific survey by polling more than 15,000 of its members.

Of the gun-control legislation proposed at the federal level, 71 percent of officers said a ban on "assault weapons" would not reduce violent crime and 96 percent of officers said banning magazines that hold more than 10 rounds would not reduce violent crime.

Officers strongly supported legal concealed carry for citizens with 91 percent in favor. Officers also said the No. 1 way to stop mass shootings is more permissive concealed-carry policies for citizens.

"There is no way any type of ban on weapons or stricter rules on weapons is going to help anything," Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper James Bennett said. "It's a lot easier for a person to be able to protect themselves if they have a tool like a firearm to do that with. It's a lot easier to carry a gun than a cop."

by Alan Korwin

The so-called "background check" bill is really about gun registration -- ultimate and imminent registration of every gun and gun owner in America.

The mandatory paper records are saved -- nobody denies that.
Federal agents use those all the time.

The electronic records have virtually no controls on them.
They go into a system designed as a recording device.
This bill vastly expands the electronic records federal agents will collect.

THE MANCHIN-TOOMEY-SCHUMER KEY:

Read the bottom of page 27 of the bill* (below at the asterisk, read it, it's killer, very short) and you tell me if you think that language stops the federal government from recording, storing, collating, compiling, distributing, securing, retrieving, integrating, merging, using or... backing up its records forever. It doesn't. Show me an audit trail. You can't. It's not there.

It doesn't even limit the FBI or BATFE in this regard. It only restricts gun dealers and gun owners. It is a complete farce.

Show me where they can't go around and just use all the Form 4473 gun-registration papers you fill out that every dealer must permanently keep -- as they are doing right now and have been doing for years. You can't. This bill allows the federal government to do almost anything it wants with records of you and your firearms, and massively expands the records it can collect -- even though it can't collect absolutely every record at this time, yet.

Failure to give them all the records they currently demand under this bill, even by accident (and there are plenty of easy ways to innocently make an error), would put you in prison. The 15-year prison term they threw in for creating a federal registry is a meaningless smokescreen.

The bill requires you to get a background check to buy firearms from people you meet at a gun show, but doesn't require anyone to do a background check just because you want one. Dealers would have plenty of reasons not to do such a check -- like having paying customers, liability, fee caps, and pressure from a sometimes rogue federal agency like BATFE. That would mean the end of freedom at gun shows. This is something Sen. John McCain has been working on for more than a decade. McCain was quoted by the Associated Press today as "very favorably disposed" to this Manchin-Toomey-Schumer gun-infringement bill (meaning he likes it). This bill is totally unacceptable.

And what's that bit at the end of that section that says medical- and health-insurance-company owned guns are exempt? Say what? Where's the media on that? I'll do a more detailed report on this soon. Or someone should -- who's planning what that got that in there?

The bill offers gun owners some trinkets -- "sweeteners" they're called. Like being able to buy a firearm in any state you are in, not just your state of residence. That would remove a grotesque infringement in place since the 1968 Gun Control Act. It was apparently squeezed in there by a gun-rights group (CCRKBA.org) now taking a lot of heat for cooperating with the anti-rights bigots. That's a good trinket, true, and I might accept that -- but only as a stand-alone bill, certainly never as a condition for gun registration.

Do you think the gun grabbers would go for that? They only accepted Retail Freedom to get their tyranny enacted. There are other "sweeteners," like restoration of rights, and other things America should have -- but only as stand-alone bills, never as bait to allow gun registration. Manchin-Toomey-Schumer must be rejected outright. The idea of making tyranny acceptable by offering trinkets is absurd and must be killed.

It's far more important to look at the underpinning of this scheme, the story behind the story the public loudspeaker omits entirely.

Why are we even having this discussion? Because a madman killed children in a kindergarten in a corner of the nation. That's really the only reason.

This led Dianne Feinstein, Charles Schumer, and the president of the United States to begin a campaign to ban certain firearms we own by brand name and looks, our ammunition magazines by size, to restrict public gun shows, and introduce gun registration and background checks on all innocent Americans as a response. They are dancing in the blood of victims, to advance a monstrous agenda, a game they have played for decades.

They can call it background checks all they want.
It's about gun registration (and other illegal infringements).

And gun registration itself is a false flag,
and the media doesn't know that.
Most of the public doesn't either.

Think -- A gun list would not have saved or solved any of the mass killings that have ignited these law-writing frenzies, right? Right. In no way whatsoever. So what do we need? At last, the right question.

by Jim Shepherd

With the United States Senate now moving toward the eventual passage of legislation that is more anti-gun owners than anti-crime, anti-gun legislators and the media are starting to celebrate another baby-step toward their ultimate goal: disarmament of the private citizen. That sounds fatalistic, but even as New York Governor Cuomo calls proposed compromise legislation a "sell-out to the gun lobby" he uses the same breath to say it's "better than nothing."

Better than nothing is political shorthand for: "we'll get 'em all next time." With a number of allegedly pro-2A Senators more concerned at being called mean-spirited than principled, they may be right. And once again, we find ourselves at a societal tipping point. This time it's "the gun issue". Last week it was gay rights. Next week, who knows?

Washington really isn't where the pitched "gun battles" are being fought. Money and lobbying muscle is generally enough to tone down most radical proposals. That's why Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, et al, remain so valuable. They play to the extreme edge as their "moderate" cohorts work their incremental magic, all the while carping about not "getting enough". They know that in Washington, any win, however small, goes down in the books as a "W".

Pitched battles are being fought at lower government levels. In city halls and county courthouses, social pressure is used as a velvet hammer to pound those who disagree with "reasonable restrictions" into submission.

We are rapidly being divided into two nations. The question remaining is which one is the "have" nation and which is the "have-not". That depends on your definition of what an "ideal America" would look like.

by Dave Kopel

The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid's gun control bill are billed as a "compromise" which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in fact major advancements for gun control. In particular:

1. The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry.

2. The provision which is supposed to strengthen existing federal law protecting the interstate transportation of personal firearms in fact cripples that protection.

Let's start with registration. Here's the Machin-Toomey text.

(c) Prohibition of National Gun Registry.-Section 923 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
"(m) The Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize the records of the
"(1) acquisition or disposition of firearms, or any portion thereof, maintained by
"(A) a person with a valid, current license under this chapter;
"(B) an unlicensed transferor under section 922(t); or
"(2) possession or ownership of a firearm, maintained by any medical or health insurance entity.".

The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations. For example, the Secretary of HHS may consolidate and centralize whatever firearms records are maintained by any medical or health insurance entity. The Secretary of the Army may consolidate and centralize records about personal guns owned by military personnel and their families.

The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of "a person with a valid, current license under this chapter." In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.

Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.

The vast majority of FFLs are small businesses, often single proprietorships. Only a tiny fraction of FFLs are enduring corporate entities (e.g., Bass Pro Shops) which will never surrender their FFL. By consolidating and centralizing the records of all out-of-business FFLs, BATFE will be able to build a list of most people in the U.S. who have bought a gun from a store. The list will not be fully up-to-date for every gun owned by every individual, but the list will identify the very large majority of gun owners.

A new bill would make it a crime to "transfer" your gun to a spouse for more than seven days.

by Dave Kopel

Public-opinion polls about "universal background checks" for gun sales show widespread support. While President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg talk about "gun sales," the actual legislation moving through Congress aims to regulate far more than sales. It would turn almost every gun owner into a felon. The trick is that the language under consideration applies not only to sales but also to "transfers," which are defined to include innocent activities such as letting your spouse borrow your gun for a few hours.

Consider, for example, Senate bill S.649, which the Senate will soon take up for debate. The background-check portion of the bill, Charles Schumer's "Fix Gun Checks Act," is based on model language that the Bloomberg gun-control lobby is pushing all over the country.

To see how the Bloomberg bill makes felons of people who do not sell guns, consider a woman who buys a rifle when she is 25 years old. She keeps the rifle her entire life. Yet over her lifetime, she — like most gun owners — engages in dozens of firearms "transfers." She brings the unloaded rifle to a friend’s house, for instance, because the friend is thinking of buying a gun and wants to learn more about guns. The friend handles the rifle for a few minutes before handing it back. Another time, the woman lends the gun to her niece, who takes it on a camping trip for the weekend.

While the woman is out of town on a business trip for two weeks, she gives the gun to her husband or her sister. If the woman lives on a farm, she allows all her relatives to take the rifle into the fields for pest and predator control — and sometimes, when friends are visiting, she takes them to a safe place on the farm where they spend an hour or two target shooting, passing her gun back and forth. At other times, she and her friends go target shooting in open spaces of land owned by the National Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management.

Or perhaps the woman is in a same-sex civil union, and she allows her partner to take her gun to a target range one afternoon. Another time, she allows her cousin to borrow the gun for an afternoon of target shooting. If the woman is in the Army Reserve and she is called up for an overseas deployment, she gives the gun to her sister for temporary safekeeping.

One time, she learns that her neighbor is being threatened by an abusive ex-boyfriend, and she lets this woman borrow a gun for several days until she can buy her own gun. And if the woman becomes a firearms-safety instructor, she regularly teaches classes at office parks, in school buildings at nights and on weekends, at gun stores, and so on. Following the standard curriculum of gun-safety classes (such as NRA safety courses), the woman will bring some unloaded guns to the classroom, and under her supervision, students will learn the first steps in how to handle the guns, including how to load and unload them (using dummy ammunition). During the class, the firearms will be “transferred” dozens of times, since students must practice how to hand a gun to someone else safely. As a Boy Scout den mother or 4-H leader, the woman may also transfer her gun to young people dozens of times while instructing them in gun safety.

Under S. 649, every one of the above activities would be a federal felony, subject to precisely the same punishment a person would receive if he had knowingly sold a firearm to a convicted violent felon. S. 649, like other Bloomberg-model bills, has a few exceptions to the ban on transfers, but none of them apply to the situations described above.

by Chad D. Baus

On Friday, Dayton's FOX affiliate reported that Jerome McCorry had planned to stage another protest outside the Bill Goodman Gun & Knife Show at Dayton's Hara arena. What they did not report, as is frequent in news coverage of similar protests staged by McCorry in the past, is that McCorry is a convicted rapist.

Quite obviously, we believe that part of McCorry's past should be a key part of any article that is done covering his actions to "fight violent crime," especially since those actions are focused primarily on taking away the ability of law-abiding citizens to purchase guns for self-defense.

In response to the announcement of the planned protest, we published an article on Friday noting the FOX 45 article had once again failed to note the fact that the gun control extremist planning the protest is listed on the sex offender registry.

We suggested that readers email or send messages through Facebook or Twitter calling on the news station to report on this fact.

We are please to report that the actions of our readers not only resulted in getting some much-needed news coverage of this problem, but also in forcing the organizer to cancel the protest.

by Chad D. Baus

WRGT (Dayton FOX) is reporting that a protest is being planned for Saturday's Bill Goodman Gun and Knife Show at Hara Arena.

The article reports that protest is being organized by Rev. Jerome McCorry. What the article fails to report, as is all too common with Dayton media outlets, is that McCorry is a registered sex offender.

From the article:

"We'll be out on Saturday to march and hold prayer meetings." Rev. Jerome McCorry said. McCorry said he and 30 others from Ceasefire Dayton are concerned about what goes on at gun shows.

"Guns are being sold off the floor at Hara, and they are being sold out of trunks of cars. " he said.

Hmmmm........Can anyone think of a reason why this man, a convicted rapist, doesn't want law-abiding citizens to have the ability to defend themselves with firearms?

To ask Dayton's FOX 45 why they failed to report on the fact that the man who is protesting law-abiding citizens' activities at gun shows is a registered sex offender, click here, inquire at their Facebook page or tweet your inquiry to @ABC22FOX45.

Using 20-year-old data, President Obama recently claimed that as many as 40 percent of gun purchases take place without a background check (Remarks by the President, March 28, 2013). He suggested that requiring background checks for all gun purchases will reduce gun violence by keeping dangerous people from acquiring firearms.

To determine if the 40 percent estimate is accurate today, Think22three, a Lebanon, OH- based gun, crime and public policy research organization, surveyed more than 300 individuals actively involved in the firearms market to determine where they purchased their two most recent firearms and whether or not a background check was conducted. The result? Most firearms are purchased from licensed dealers who conduct background checks. A much smaller percentage of firearms are purchased privately without a background check. This is particularly important when considering the types of firearms typically involved in crime.

"Policy makers aren't looking at current data," states Jeff Monroe, Ph.D. and president of Think22three.

When asked about their most recent two firearms purchases, 89.7 percent of gun-owning survey respondents stated that they purchased their firearms from a dealer that conducted a background check.

"Separating the data by the type of firearm purchased clarifies firearms purchases further. Shotguns, for example, are far less likely than revolvers, pistols and rifles to be purchased from a dealer conducting a background check," states Monroe. They are also less likely to be used in a crime.

According to Monroe, nearly 26 percent of shotguns are acquired from family members, friends or private sellers a type of sale not currently subject to background checks.

"When we look at purchases of semi-automatic pistols, a type of firearm used more often than a shotgun to commit a crime, we know that nearly 93 percent of respondents who purchased pistols used a background check," says Monroe. "This is consistent with prior research that shows that background checks do not decrease gun violence.”

Jeff Monroe points out that, as a policy matter, it is interesting that shotguns are the most likely to be purchased without a background check and the least likely type of firearm to be used in a crime.

Monroe states that "there is no evidence that requiring background checks for all gun purchases will reduce gun violence." A universal background check system may make it more difficult for potential offenders to acquire firearms because they would no longer be able to purchase from gun owners that wish to remain law-abiding. "There is every reason to believe" Monroe says, "if background checks are required on the secondary market, motivated offenders will find a tertiary market ready and able to supply them with their wares."

by Chad D. Baus

The Canton Repository recently visited three of the ten Stark County, Ohio companies licensed to manufacture firearms, and published an excellent follow-up article.

From the article:

Inside a plain-looking single-story green building near Meyers Lake, Dennis DeVault and his employees have outfitted competitive trap and clay shooters across the country for 23 years.

From the street, few probably realize what DeVault Industries makes or sells. Using an array of hand tools and machining equipment, his crew transforms blocks of hardwoods into custom rifle stocks, which sell for $3,000 or more; a full custom-made single-barrel shotgun goes for $13,000.

"We try to keep it low-key," DeVault said.

DeVault is one of 10 companies in Stark County licensed by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to manufacture guns. That means they not only sell, but also make firearms, whether it's from scratch, assembling or modifying.

[UPDATE: Sen. Rob Portman joins 31 Senators voting against moving the bill to the floor. Filibuster attempts proved unsuccessful, however, as 16 other Republicans including John McCain voted with the anti-gun rights majority. Portman said he hasn't seen the specific language of the Toomey-Manchin amendment described below, and thus could not yet say whether or not he could support it.

by Chad D. Baus

Last week, Sen. Rob Portman released an op-ed ensuring gun owners that he could be counted on to oppose efforts to pass a "universal" background check (UBC) gun registration scheme, and for that we expressed our thanks. The announcement of a "compromise" deal in the Senate this week by Sens. Pat Toomey and Joe Manchin, seems to indicate that the UBC gun registration scheme may be dead, at least for now.

However, being offered in it's place under the name of "compromise" is yet another long-held goal of Sen. Chuck Schumer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the rest of the gun ban lobby - a ban on private sales of firearms at gun shows and via the Internet.

That's right - despite the fact that there is no indication that private sales at gun shows or online had anything to do with the horrific attack at Sandy Hook, and despite the fact that studies have repeatedly shown that criminals do not obtain their guns at gun shows, politicians in Washington, so anxious to "do something," are trying to convince the American public that this is an appropriate response to these types of mass killings.

Gun ban groups like Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns like to claim that "a loophole in the law enables criminals to avoid these checks if they buy from gun-sellers who don't have licenses. Often operating at gun shows, these unlicensed sellers give criminals the opportunity to sidestep the background check system and easily purchase guns."

But under current federal law, it is already illegal to "engage in the business" of "dealing in firearms" without a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Engaged in the business" means buying and selling firearms as a regular business with the objective of profit. Violations carry a five year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. It is also unlawful in Ohio to recklessly sell, lend, give, or furnish any firearm to any person who may not possess a firearm.

The truth is, the goal behind the effort to ban private sales at gun shows isn't to solve a crime problem. Rather, these extremists want to end gun shows forever, because they know gun shows are as much a place for like-minded people to gather and exchange information as they are to exchange guns.