There probably isn’t an agenda in this story. ABC cites research that says, surprise, guns are effective at killing at a close range, especially when the target is holding the gun and wants to die. Weird:

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens’ ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation’s nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There was nothing unique about that year — gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

The anti-gun vitriol is just dripping off of those paragraphs. It is really sickening to see this passed off as “news.” They are trying to connect the presence of a gun with the desire to kill yourself. Read that last paragraph again and tell me they aren’t. The presence of a gun does not equal suicide.

Look at the facts. According to this article, “Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation’s nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005…” That’s 17,050 people who took their life with a gun.

Wow. That is a big number. Now, how many guns are there in America? According to the National Rifle Association, there are 250,000,000. Hmmm. Well, how many gun owners? 70,000,000 to 80,000,000. There are more than 70,000,000 gun owners in America, and because 17,050 people decided to use a gun to end their life, we should be against guns.

I know I’m not the only one seeing the absurdity of this article.

More than 90 percent of suicide attempts using guns are successful, while the success rate for jumping from high places was 34 percent. The success rate for drug overdose was 2 percent, the brief said, citing studies.

“Other methods are not as lethal,” said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore.

The high court’s majority opinion made no mention of suicide. But in a dissenting opinion, Justice Stephen Breyer used the word 14 times in voicing concern about the impact of striking down the handgun ban.

“If a resident has a handgun in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a handgun in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence,” Breyer wrote.

So what? Really, what does that have to do with anything? You can take the term gun out, replace it with anything, and it is true. Look, it works:

• “If a resident has a butcher knife in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a butcher knife in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence,”
• “If a resident has a screech owl in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a screech owl in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence,”
• “If a resident has a cherry cheesecake in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a cherry cheesecake in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence,”
• “If a resident has a complete set of the X-Files DVDs in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a complete set of the X-Files DVDs in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence,”
• “If a resident has a Hillary Clinton photo in the home that he can use for self-defense, then he has a Hillary Clinton photo in the home that he can use to commit suicide or engage in acts of domestic violence,”

Who cares? If a person wants to kill himself, the lack of a gun isn’t going to stop him. Perhaps we need to ask WHY 17,050 people killed themselves, rather than HOW they killed themselves. But, the anti-gun folks have become very desperate and are using their deaths to try to advance their agenda. Pitiful.

I did an interview for the Savage Nation for my article “Ten Big Accomplishments in Less Than Ten Years.” When I finished the interview, they said it would be on the third hour either tonight or tomorrow night.

I have been a fan of Michael Savage for years, and was honored to be his guest. You can find a station to listen to on one of my favorite website, StreamingRadioGuide.com. Click here for the News/Talk channels.

I plan on having the audio up here when I get it. Be sure to stop by if you miss it live.

UPDATE:

Looks like my interview will be on tomorrow.

What is the chief threat to the American way of life? What is there that could possibly destroy over 200 years of history, could change the mindset of the American, could bring the strongest country in the world to its knees?

Is it Islamic terrorism? There are so many groups out there now, killing in the name of Islam. Chief among them is Al-Qaeda, who has succeeded in attacking the United States on many different occasions. Aside from Al-Qaeda, there is Hamas, Hezbollah and others almost too numerous to mention. Are these organizations the number one threat to America?

On their best day, they have killed thousands, only to unify the country against them. If they ever acquired a nuclear weapon, I do not doubt they would use it. They would happily destroy any major United States city in one fell blow. But that would not destroy America.

Every time they hit us, we hit them back, harder than they expected. And while they can kill thousands of our countrymen, they cannot kill our country. Islamic terrorism is a grave threat that needs addressed, but it is not the number one threat to America.

Is it China? The giant country is growing in military power and has so many spies working against the United States, some have claim it to be the biggest threat to America. But in a toe-to-toe, knock down drag out fight, the United States could soundly defeat China.

The left would have us believe that global warming is the issue of our generation. They have one doomsday scenario after another, describing the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We are told that already the world’s most important crops are suffering because of the increased heat, and if we don’t stop belching tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the glaciers will melt and our coastlines will flood. Yet those who preach the life of sacrifice for Mother Earth live in ways that consume more energy than you and I do in years, and are making millions off of the greatest scam in history.

There are other threats brought up each day. The bird flu is going to kill us any day now, and SARS is without a doubt going to cause world wide chaos. Blowhard Hugo Chavez is clamoring about cutting off our oil supply from Venezuela and for some reason Russia keeps sending bombers over our air craft carriers. By themselves each is a threat, but they are not the biggest threat to America.

If it is none of the above, what is left?

Socialism.

Americans are finding it easier and easier to turn to the government for support. Home-owners who bought into loans bigger than they afford look to the government, and the government responds with a $300 billion bail out that “more than half of the Senate favors” and some are saying is already too small.

The Congress also passed a $300 billion dollar Farm Bill, which funded $200 billion worth of “domestic nutrition programs, aka food stamps, over ten years.

Meanwhile, Americans donated over $300 billion to charity. In one year.

The left, aka the socialists, continue to clamor for government run health care. The Canadians have have a program like this, which Michael Moore touted in his crockumentary “Sicko.” The architect of that program recently said it is a failure. Unaffected by the facts in Canada, and a worse situation in Great Britain, the liberals demand equality in heath care, i.e. equally poor treatment for everyone.

Both candidates for president this election are calling for a cap and trade plan, which is nothing less than socialism in action. The whole system depends on taxing the most industrious, most successful organizations and turning the money over to companies that are not as big. McCain and Obama both feel this income redistribution is a good solution for the climate crisis, leading one to believe that they would not hesitate to join the Kyoto Protocol.

From the baby steps taken by FDR, to the giant leaps made by LBJ, the population of American continues to march down the road to serfdom. Every day we spend more money that we do not have, teaching every generation more dependence on a government once limited, but now limitless. Every issue that Americans face is grounds for a new government program.

This country isn’t great because of government programs. It was built because of individual Americans who were free to achieve whatever they felt without the government limiting their success through fines, fees and taxes. It is great because people were not taught to feel guilt for their success, but to be admired because of them. It is great because of the government’s lack of presence in each American’s life. These ideas are being smothered today by a government that is more focused on preserving and expanding its power than it is in respecting the Constitution.

Americans can take care of themselves, and they will take care of each other. As noted above, we gave $300 billion in charity last year, on top of all the taxes we paid. Given the opportunity, the private sector would perform all the programs the government currently performs, just better.

However, we are not given that choice, and it is that willing surrender of property that foreshadows our demise. The continuing growth of the government, combined with the continuing dependence of the people is the one thing that could destroy America.

It is America’s greatest threat.

Chalk up another conservative blogger who refuses to support the candidacy of John McCain. Sonlit Knight at A Newt One has upset his readers and listeners by standing up for his principles.

Funny how that tends to upset some folks:

The Conservative coalition is torn on this question- some strongly supporting me and some in strong opposition. I have no doubt that they all have the best interests of the troops, their country and their conscience at heart. With the left wing, we already know that that isn’t the case. The left is filled with heterophobic, America hating, treasonous, self loathing, foaming at the mouth hypocrites who need to be silenced.

Silenced, not pacified.

My long lonely journey to truth has led me to a cold and bitter conclusion. That conclusion is that a John McCain Presidency will do nothing to move our cause forward. A John McCain Presidency will do nothing to move our country forward.

John McCain is tiny in the shadow of greatness of George W Bush who has withered a hurricane of venom from the radical left and their willing accomplices in the media. He has stood his ground, fought the good fight and, through his efforts, secured the victory in Iraq. I firmly believe that victory in Iraq is now a fait accompli. The Iraqi military has stepped up and so has it’s fledgling government. Left wing attempts to sabotage that effort have failed.

Just as John McCain is wholly unworthy of succeeding his predecessor, George HW Bush was equally unworthy of his. In 4 short years, HW- easily one of the biggest idiots in American history- dismantled the Reagan revolution. He wrecked our economy with a huge, destructive tax increase. He wrecked our stature worldwide, and postponed inevitable conflict, by pulling out
of Iraq and watching the Kurds get massacred. banned oil exploration off shore and he gave us David Souter.

Worse yet, He gave us 8 years of the Clintons who did so much catastrophic damage to our country that it is still being calculated. Among the carnage of the Clintonistra regime was the policy that caused 9/11 and two of the idiots in black robes- Ginsberg and Breyer- who weep for terrorists and child rapists.

All of that damage was avoidable. Reagan handed Bush a country that was strong and an economy that was sound. All 41 had to do was keep it between the buoys. Could he do that? No. Why? because he was a moron.

Now, I hear that I am to go to the polls in November and vote for a far grander moron- John McCain. John McCain who, more than almost any other “Republican”, is responsible for helping to sabotage the Bush Presidency and the larger Conservative agenda.

When Bush was trying to revive a sagging economy with tax cuts and incentives, there was McCain, knifing him in the back. When Bush and Rumsfeld were prosecuting the war on terror, there was McCain, going on the Sunday talk shows, attacking them and accusing them of torture.

It matters little that McCain was right about the surge because McCain was one of the chorus of hyenas that made the surge necessary by his constant public criticism.

McCain was also one of those who told us that we would swallow the amnesty bill and like it. He is, likewise, trying to force Kyoto down our throats. Despite $142 oil and $4 gasoline, McCain still opposes drilling in most of America.

We should not be in this position.

In January of 2005, we had 29 Republican governors, 232 Republican House members, A President re-elected with 62 million votes, holding a 55% approval rating and 55- yes FIFTY FIVE Republican Senators.

How did we lose it?

In large part, because of turncoat demagogues like John McCain telling us that we can’t drill in a god forsaken ice bowl called ANWR, that we cannot hurt a terrorist’s feelings without being accused of torture and that we were xenophobic racists because we have the gall to expect our borders to be protected.

and you want to reward him for such monumental sabotage, by handing him the Presidency?

um. No, thanks.

John McCain doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and he considers John Kerry and Hillary Clinton friends. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

Further, I am sick to the point of nauseia at the free ride the libtards have gotten. For 7 1/2 years they have been able to hurl their green vomit on our troops, our President and our country. Yet, who does America blame for all our problems? That’s right, the Republicans.

I say let’s give America just what they want. My friend Snooper claims the mantra “Take our Country back”. Well, Snoop, here is our chance. After we are done beating on Obama for 4 years, the leftists won’t get 20 million votes in 2012. With strong majorities across the board and a Conservative President, we will have another opportunity to make America the great Country it once was.

All John McCain offers us-at best- is a porous and weak firewall against marxism. I expect better and I’m determined to get it.

~Sonlit

Well said, Sonlit. Well said.

John McCain is not owed my vote, merely because he is the Republican candidate. He has to earn my vote. And there is very little that compels me to pull the lever for John McCain. While he has his good points, as noted above, they are overshadowed by his contempt for my conservative/libertarian beliefs. He demonstrates this daily and does not apologize for it. Therefore, no apology is necessary for not supporting him.

But what then, does a conservative do? By not voting, you are helping to create an Obama presidency, right? No doubt, but that does not equal the end of America. A conservative votes down ticket, supporting REAL conservatives, who will vote according to what the Constitution says, according to the ideals of freedom, conservatives who will stand in Congress and reject the socialist ideas that come down from on high, not embrace them as McCain has does.

He not only embraces them, he seeks them out, touts them as victories and slaps conservatives in the face with them, expecting us to fall in line and carry his water.

No sir. Not for me. Not for Sonlit Knight. Not for many conservatives in America.

You can still influence the direction of the federal government on a local level by supporting candidates who will oppose the policies of a left wing candidate, whether they come dressed in red or blue. But there is no reason for an individual to lend his vote to a candidate he does not support. I’m still free to vote for who I want.

Not my words, kids. Those are the words of the the illustrious ex-president, William Jefferson Clinton, according to a “senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton.” From the Telegraph:

It has long been known that Mr Clinton is angry at the way his own reputation was tarnished during the primary battle when several of his comments were interpreted as racist.

But his lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: “He’s been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn’t. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who he’s been in contact with and he is mad as hell.

“He’s saying he’s not going to reach out, that Obama has to come to him. One person told me that Bill said Obama would have to quote kiss my ass close quote, if he wants his support.”

Now what does Bill have to be so upset about? I mean, it was just a reputation, right? I mean, just because the race card was dropped squarely on his head, every time he made a statement even remotely related to race, what is he so upset about?

Phil Gramm could teach Barack Obama a thing or two about how the economy works. He left Congress to go work for UBS, and has been out of politics since 2002. Six years later, he’s still a limited government, free market Republican, who understands what happens when there is too much meddling in the market:

“It used to be that it was a sign of your importance in the world to be listed on the big board,” he warns. “Now many of the largest IPOs in the world are occurring on other markets. In the six years that I have been a banker, I have seen decisions made to open functions in London rather than New York because of a better regulatory climate. Every American should worry a lot about this. We have benefited enormously from New York being the financial capital of the world because we had a more efficient regulatory structure than other nations did.”

He fingers the U.S. corporate income tax as another competitiveness killer: “We can’t possibly compete with a 35% corporate tax rate that is so punitive that if a company opens a plant in Ireland it costs them a billion dollars less than in the U.S. over 10 years because of the difference in corporate taxes.” Mr. Gramm urged Mr. McCain to add a corporate income tax cut (to 25%) as part of his economic package.

“Why is America the richest country in the world?” he asks. “It’s not because our people are more brilliant; it’s because we have a better free-market system. Why has Texas created 1.6 million jobs in the last 10 years whereas Michigan has lost 300,000 jobs and Ohio has lost 100,000 jobs? Because governance matters, taxes matter, regulation matters. Our opponents in this campaign are so dogmatic in their goal of having more government because they love the power it brings to them that they’re willing to let it impose costs on the working people that they say they want to help. I am not.”

For those who don’t know, Phil is working for John McCain. He says McCain is right for America now for three reasons:

First, he will win the war against terrorism; second, he will get runaway federal spending under control; and third, he will steer America away from the course of trade protectionism that the Obama Democrats favor.

As I was reading this, I was thinking “Cap and trade, man…ask about the cap and trade plan.”

I remind Mr. Gramm that Mr. McCain supports the multitrillion dollar cap-and-trade global warming tax, which contradicts much of what he says on shrinking government. It is comforting to learn that Mr. Gramm is not so comfortable with that McCain position. He agrees that this legislation would be “one of the largest interventions of government into our economy in my lifetime and could do lasting economic damage. We can’t allow Congress to spend any of the revenues from selling these carbon allowances.” One Gramm idea would be to claim the revenues to allow “real private investments that are owned by Social Security recipients.”

This could really screw things up, but let’s do it and pretend like we can keep Congress from pissing this money away too. Get real. Just the like Maverick himself, just when I am starting to warm up to Gramm, he goes and says this and just puts me off my breakfast.

The last thing the American economy needs right now is a new set of taxes on the biggest companies in the country. Who do you think is going to pay for those?

Proponents of single payer health care systems or universal health care systems or whatever euphemism they are using these days will tell you that this is the only way to get everyone covered. But, Claude Castonguay, known as “the father of Quebec medicare,” says it’s a failure in Canada:

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

When the government controls something like health care, you end up with shortages. After shortages, you get rationing. When you can’t get what you want via rationing, you have to go outside the system. Here is how that works in Canada when you are sick:

Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.

Years ago, Canadians touted their health care system as the best in the world; today, Canadian health care stands in ruinous shape.

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

And you can’t have a story like this without an example of the cold, faceless entity known as bureaucracy:

The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires’ case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn’t properly filled out a form. At death’s door, de Vires should have done her paperwork better.

We do not have a perfect system. We will never have a perfect system as long as it is designed by humans. But the idea that giving government control of your health care is the solution to our woes is not only ignorant, but dangerous. Canada and Great Britain are shining examples of that point.

Canada isn’t the only country facing a government health care crisis. Britain’s system, once the postwar inspiration for many Western countries, is similarly plagued. Both countries trail the U.S. in five-year cancer survival rates, transplantation outcomes and other measures.

The problem is that government bureaucrats simply can’t centrally plan their way to better health care.

A typical example: The Ministry of Health declared that British patients should get ER care within four hours. The result? At some hospitals, seriously ill patients are kept in ambulances for hours so as not to run afoul of the regulation; at other hospitals, patients are admitted to inappropriate wards.

If you want to make America’s health care system better, more government is not the solution. Less government is.

Al Garza is upset. He’s upset that the DNC is broadcasting it’s convention in both English and Spanish:

Al Garza is the Executive Director of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

He says he’s of Hispanic descent, and he’s outraged. “I speak English, and I don’t watch anything in Spanish… This is a nation that was founded and based on English.”

But Damon Jones with the Democratic National Convention says they’re doing it for good reason. “Spanish is the primary language for more than 35-million people in our country and more than 300-million people around the world. So, we think it’s a great message to share and a great step forward at being as inclusive as possible.”

Garza counters that the democrats should focus instead on the second and third generation Hispanic population, who assimilated into society.

We are allowing ourselves to be divided by language. Teddy warned of this so many years ago, before the Knights of Columbus:

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

Where is the allegiance of the DNC?

Update

: Podcast was canceled because of a BTR glitch. We will try to reschedule the interview for another day.

Guy Midkiff has agreed to host tonight’s podcast. Guy has been a frequent guest of the podcast, discussing the Second Amendment and the Constitution. He writes the blog Concealed.wordpress.com, a blog focused on concealed carry issues and the Second Amendment.

Guy will be talking with David Hardy, author of the website, “Of Arms and the Law.” A little info on the guest:

David T. Hardy has practiced law since 1975. He was born in Phoenix to an old-line Arizona family: his great-grandfather was Nat Hickman, a gunslinging outlaw who took the alias of Charles W. Hardy when he fled to the Arizona Territory in 1872. There he married an Indian, and was elected the first JP of Cave Creek, A.T.

Hardy served as Associate Editor of the Arizona Law Review, and was on the moot court team which took first place in the Regional competition and competed at the Nationals in New York City. He was also on the team which won the statewide American College of Trial Lawyers competition for best jury argument.

Since then he has handled cases up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and won a death penalty appeal in the Arizona Supreme Court. From 1982 to 1992 he worked in Washington at the Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Department of the Interior, mostly representing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Hardy has five books and thirteen law review articles in print; one of the articles has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and eleven of the thirteen U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Should be a very good discussion on the results of this historic case. Listen to it live here, tonight at 9 pm CST.

Oklahoma State Representative Charles Key wants a very clear message sent to Washington D.C. The message is: “You are outside of your Constitutional authority. Back off!”

“The more we stand by and watch the federal government get involved in areas where it has no legal authority, we kill the Constitution a little at a time,” he said. “The last few decades, the Constitution has been hanging by a thread.”

Specifically, Resolution 1089 says the following:

“The State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

The resolution resolves that Oklahoma will “serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

The bill passed the OK House 92-3, but there is an even split in the Senate, and the Democrats are holding it up. Um, what exactly is there to hold up? Do they want more federal intrusion on their state? Are voters in Oklahoma aware of this?

Key said his bill “is making a difference” in the way legislators in Oklahoma are talking and thinking about state’s rights. “I think it will make even more of a difference,” he said, “when I bring it up again.” He vows to put the pressure on Oklahoma’s Senate to pass a resolution like 1089, and he plans to begin communicating the cause with legislators around the country, urging them to bring up the issue in their states.

That sounds like a great idea.