Archive for January, 2013

Americans never give up your guns

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013
 Original Story Via: Pravda.ru

 

Americans never give up your guns

28.12.2012 12:15

By Stanislav Mishin 

 

These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one’s self and possessions.

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington’s clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lying guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.

To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere….but criminals are still armed and still murdering and too often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.

While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or “talking to them”, it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

 

Stanislav Mishin

The article reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina

Дмитрий Судаков

Copyright © 1999-2013, «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru’s editors.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/

Brothers campaign for gun rights in tiny Mexican town

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Original Story Via: AZStarnet.com

Only criminals are armed now, they complain

LeBARON, Mexico – The LeBaron brothers, Alex and Max, walked outside their sprawling ranch and pointed to the spot where they traded fire with gunmen who pinned them down until both sides reached a truce.

“Had we not been able to defend ourselves that afternoon with our own weapons, I don’t know that we’d be standing here today,” said Alex LeBaron, a state legislator who is leading a campaign to allow residents to arm themselves.

“Without our guns, we stood no chance,” added Max. “We would have been like sitting ducks at target practice.”

It turned out the gunmen were actually soldiers. These days, it’s hard to tell, because just about everyone in this crime-ridden area is heavily armed – everyone, that is, except for regular residents. That makes the town of LeBaron an appropriate place for a gun debate, particularly after the school shootings in Connecticut.

This community in the foothills of the Sierra Madre, whose residents have been victims of extortion, kidnappings and murder, is at the forefront of a movement to press the federal government to change laws that ban citizens from owning weapons unless they belong to a registered gun club. Currently, citizens who want to own a gun must buy it from the military, a long, bureaucratic process, or on the black market.

The LeBaron brothers were armed that day because they belong to a gun club and because they are members of a government-sanctioned militia set up to protect the community after a rash of crimes.

This community of about 1,000, just three hours from the Texas border, is home largely to Mormon farmers, many of them bilingual and dual citizens of the United States and Mexico. Many are related to one another through blood ties that go back decades.

Mexico has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, but an overwhelming arsenal of illegal guns is readily available to drug cartels battling federal forces and rival criminal groups. The drug war has left more than 60,000 people dead and 25,000 missing since former President Felipe Calderón sent federal troops to reclaim territories from drug traffickers shortly after taking office in 2006.

Few communities have been harder hit than this region, home to chile, apple and pecan growers and cheese makers – and a smuggling route, coveted by traffickers, that leads into the United States through Texas.

“We don’t have a problem with jackrabbits,” Max said. “We have a problem with sicarios – hit men. People show up here in fake police, soldier uniforms. You shoot first and then ask questions.”

“The right to bear arms is the best thing Americans have going for them,” said cousin Brent LeBaron Jr. “And here in Mexico, we have high hopes that we, too, can someday defend ourselves from traffickers armed to the teeth.”

Members of an offshoot of the traditional Mormon church, these farmers are like everyday Mexicans anywhere. They drink beer, curse and enjoy long greetings and goodbyes. Yet vestiges of their American ancestry remain intact, including their determination to hold the government accountable – something considered rare in this country until recently – and the right to bear arms.

Three years ago, cousin Benjamin LeBaron stood up after his younger brother was kidnapped and extortionists demanded $1 million. Benjamin led a peaceful movement through the streets of Chihuahua state, calling on authorities to do more to protect residents from what he called madmen who had empowered themselves across the country.

One morning, gunmen came to his home and threatened to rape his wife and harm his children unless he gave them his guns, but he didn’t have any. They took him away. Benjamin and Luis Widmar, a brother-in-law who tried to intervene, were beaten, and their bodies were later found, shot in the head.

Their killings led many in the community to take a stance similar to that of Second Amendment advocates in the United States, but there is another side to the debate here. Many blame the U.S. gun and drug culture for the mayhem in Mexico and are adamantly opposed to more guns. Nearly 70 percent of guns seized in Mexico originated in the U.S., according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“I don’t want to run around like Pancho Villa – bang, bang,” said Ricardo Paisano, who owns a fruit juice stand in LeBaron. Paisano once lived in Arizona and described the scene there as the “the wild, wild West, where everyone was armed like crazies. We need more jobs, not more guns.”

Others, like Daniel Madrid Mendoza, 28, a member of the gun club near Casas Grandes, disagreed.

“I like guns because I like hunting,” he said. “But also I don’t think it’s right that only the bad guys have access to guns. We should all have the right to defend ourselves.”

Alex LeBaron, a 32-year-old Chihuahua state congressman with national aspirations, is haunted by the memory of his cousin “Benji” and of his own father, who was killed in a carjacking. Alex was educated in New Mexico and served in the U.S. Navy. Giving Mexicans the right to bear arms is among the issues he is most passionate about, one that he says will make Mexicans more individualistic.

“When Benji was killed, the first thing you think is, ‘We gotta get out of here,’ and yet at the moment, I realized I had nowhere to run, nor did I want to go anywhere else,” he said. “This is home. This is where I was born and will one day die.”

Russia to toughen gun laws?

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Original story via:  Voice of Russia

Russia’s government is prepared to toughen gun laws after a Moscow lawyer Dmitry Vinogradov killed six of his colleagues in the Rigla office shooting spree.

Opponents to the new legislation claim that it will make life difficult for law abiding citizens but will not stop potential shooters.

Eighteen year-olds are too young to carry guns, even traumatic pistols, believe police and MPs. Russia’s Interior Ministry has prepared a draft law increasing the age for carrying a gun from 18 to 21, banning traumatic guns in public places and making a bullet casing database for all types of civilian arms, not only rifles.

The law also envisages tougher handgun permit procedure. Russia’s Duma deputy-speaker Sergey Zheleznyak believes that the measures will reduce the number of crimes involving guns but they still need reinforcement.

“We should also boost police and public security services and use the Safe City monitoring system and CCTV. More attention should be paid to extremists statements in social networks and blogs. That Vinogradov published a manifesto before the rampage where he wrote that hates all humankind.”

However, some people claim that Russia’s gun laws are already strict enough and new measures are odd and unlikely to prevent crimes similar to the Rigla shooting as Vinogradov wasn’t a youngster but a 30-year old who was carrying a long rifle which is actually banned.

International experience shows that gun bans don’t stop killers but deprive people of self-defense measure, says Gun Rights activist Maria Butina

“We know of dozens of massacres without fire arms. There were kitchen knives in China and lighters in Korea. If a criminal wants to, he can use anything. What I find wrong is to deprive law abiding citizens of self-defense.”

Rights to carry guns as well as migration and multiculturalism issues will be wrangled over forever. Its supporters and opponents refer to culture, traditions and statists. The latter says that legal gun owners commit a petty number of gun crimes.

However, everyone shares one stance – legal responsibility for illegal use of any firearms should be toughened.

Germany compiles nationwide gun register

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

Original Story Via: DW.DE

Germany has compiled a national register of firearms for the first time. Figures previously held by a multitude of local authorities have been centrally pooled as part of efforts to curb gun violence.

Germany’s new national firearms registry established that there were 5.5 million legal guns in private ownership nationwide.

Figures compiled in what has been described as Germany’s first reliable nationwide firearms count also showed there were 1.4 million registered owners – an average of approximately four weapons per listed individual.

The information is being collated in a national database that will allow police to keep track of the buying and selling of legal guns across the country. Records were previously kept only at a local level, with some 551 different authorities holding the information.

As the figures were published on Friday, Interior Ministry spokesman Philipp Spauschus said the registry would make a “concrete contribution to public safety.”

All European Union countries are required to set up such a registry by 2015.

The issue of gun crime has once again gained prominence in the German media following the US gun massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in which 26 people were killed including 20 children.

Germany has also suffered from mass shootings, the most notable recent example being the Winnenden school shooting in 2009, in which 16 people died. The perpetrator of that incident, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer, used a legally-owned firearm belonging to his father.

rc/ccp (AP, dpa)

Indian bus rape: Delhi sees rush for guns

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

Original Story Via: The Guardian

in Delhi

Hundreds of women in Delhi have applied for gun licences following the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman by six men in a bus in the city last month.

The news underlines the widespread sense of insecurity in the city, deep before the incident and deeper now, and the lack of faith in law enforcement agencies.

The ashes of the victim of the attack – who died on Friday after 13 days in hospitals in India and Singapore, and was cremated in Delhi in a secret ceremony under heavy security on Sunday – were scattered on the surface of the Ganges river, sacred to Hindus, in northern India on Tuesday.

The case has provoked an unprecedented debate about endemic sexual harassment and violence in India. Tens of thousands have protested across the country, calling for harsher laws, better policing and a change in culture.

Politicians, initially caught off-guard, have now promised new legislation to bring in fast-track courts and harsher punishments for sexual assault. The six men accused of the attack are to be formally charged with murder later this week and potentially face execution.

Indian media are currently reporting incidents of sexual violence that would rarely gain attention previously. In the last 24 hours these have included a teenager fleeing repeated abuse by her brother, who was allegedly assaulted on a bus by a conductor, a 15-year-old held for 15 days by three men in a village in Uttar Pradesh and repeatedly assaulted, an 11-year-old allegedly raped by three teenagers in the north-eastern city of Guwahati and two cases of rape in the city of Amritsar.

One case reported on Tuesday involved a woman, also in a village in Uttar Pradesh, who suffered 90% burns after being doused in kerosene, allegedly by a man who had been stalking her for months.

There were signs that a further taboo was about to be broken when one of India’s best-known English-language television presenters asked viewers who had experienced abuse from a family member to contact her.

The rush for firearms will cause concern, however. Police in Delhi have received 274 requests for licences and 1,200 inquiries from women since 18 December, two days after the woman and a male friend were attacked in a bus cruising on busy roads between 9pm and 10pm.

“Lots of women have been contacting us asking for information about how to obtain licences. Any woman has a threat against her. It’s not surprising. There are fearless predators out there,” said Abhijeet Singh of the campaign group Guns For India.

Delhi police received around 500 applications for the whole of 2011, up from 320 the previous year.

Hundreds of women had come in person to the police licensing department in the city, the Times of India reported.

“We had to patiently tell them that one needs to have a clear danger to one’s life to be given a licence. However some … said that with even public transport no longer safe in the city they just cannot take chances,” an unnamed official told the newspaper.

There are estimated to be 40m guns in India, the second highest number in the world after the US. Licences are hard to obtain and most are illegal weapons, many manufactured in backstreet workshops. Official ownership levels remain low – three guns for every 100 people – but in recent years the number of women holding arms has risen. Most are wealthy and worried about theft or assault.

There are fears the attack will lead to further restrictions on women in India, who already suffer significant constraints.

Elders in Matapa, in the poverty-stricken Indian state of Bihar, banned the use of mobile phones for teenage girls and warned them against wearing “sexy” clothes. They claim the move will check rape cases and restore “social order”. Other villages nearby are planning similar bans, locals said.

One member of parliament in Rajasthan, the north-western state, also called for a ban on skirts for schoolgirls to keep them away from “men’s lustful gazes”. Banwari Lal Singhal said private schools allowing students to wear skirts explained increased sexual harassment locally.

Matapa is in southern Bihar’s Aurangabad district – the region from which one of the Delhi gang-rape accused, Akshay Thakur, comes. The order was issued after a formal meeting with villagers, council officials and school teachers on Sunday. “Almost every villager pressed us to ban the mobile phones use by the schoolgirls saying they are proving quite dangerous for the society and corrupting traditional values,” the local village council head, Sushma Singh, told the Guardian on Tuesday.

Protesters were angered by the news. “Our sister will have died in vain if all that is happening after is our fear is greater and ladies are more unfree,” said Deepti Anand, a 21-year-old student in Delhi who has attended demonstrations most days in recent weeks.

Additional reporting by Manoj Chaurasia

U.N. approves new debate on arms treaty opposed by U.S. gun lobby

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

(Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Monday to restart negotiations on a draft international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global trade in conventional arms, a pact the powerful U.S. National Rifle Association has been lobbying hard against.

U.N. delegates and gun control activists have complained that talks collapsed in July largely because U.S. President Barack Obama feared attacks from Republican rival Mitt Romney before the November 6 election if his administration was seen as supporting the pact, a charge U.S. officials have denied.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/25/us-arms-treaty-un-idUSBRE8BO00B20121225