If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!”

This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association adopted in the 1970’s. It was then that owning a gun became an absolute right endowed by God and the Constitution. A blessing passed down by our forefathers to obliterate game and protect our property. The NRA was founded in 1870 and for its first hundred years it was for gun control and didn’t mention the Second Amendment as their cause.

Adam Winkler points out in his delicious book, “Gun Fight,” what we call the “wild west” had some of the strictest gun control laws we’ve seen as a nation. The shoot out at the OK Corral took place, after all, because Wyatt Earp was trying to disarm the outlaw Cowboys in accordance with a Tombstone ordinance. The KKK was among other things, a gun control organization. They were trying to keep guns out of the hands of newly freed slaves … but still gun control.

The part of the Second Amendment omitted from the NRA’s slogan is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” Yes, well regulated—it’s in the Constitution!

Now, to some, guns are as sacred as scripture. If you ask, again, this typical hyper-political gun owner why they need to stockpile assault rifles, you will get an answer much like Pat Flynn’s, a recent candidate for a Senate seat in Nebraska. "Really, we have our guns to protect ourselves against the government, number one," Flynn said in a debate right before the primary. "Hunting's number two. But protecting us against our government is number one." Remember Flynn was trying to land a job in the government (he didn’t win his party’s nomination, by the way).

The idea is that we have to be just as armed as our government in order to be safer or have more liberty (or something). The U.S. government has unmanned drones armed with supersonic laser-guided anti-armor Hellfire missiles, “bunker busters,” and nuclear weapons. Are far-right politicians saying we need civilians to have shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles “for protection?” Of course they’re not. They actually do want limits on ownership.

And if you ask the most vehement gun rights advocate why Everyman Gun Owner shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, I’d bet you’d get the same answer as to why we don’t want every country to have the capability: “Because they could get into the wrong hands.”

So weapons-grade plutonium should be limited. But the ever-handy semi-auto Glock pistol with a 30-round high-capacity magazine is an absolute right?

A recent gun buyback drive in Los Angeles resulted in someone turning in a rocket launcher. Comforting.

So we’re not actually talking about limited vs. unlimited. We are talking about degrees of weapon ownership.

Guns fall into the wrong hands all the time. More guns and fewer requirements for ownership doesn’t curb this. George Zimmerman was the wrong hands. Zimmerman, a Florida man now infamous for shooting an unarmed black teenager at close range after a 911 operator told him not to engage the alleged suspect and wait for police to arrive, is now being defended by said hyper-political gun owners. There’s no reason a Neighborhood Watch captain should be patrolling his block with a criminal record and a pistol. Zimmerman was a catastrophe realized. Even in the wake of new evidence about this case, the fact remains if Zimmerman didn’t have a gun, 16-year-old Trayvon Martin would be alive.

The United States is number one in the world in civilian gun ownership. And since we’re not last in gun violence (we’re the 14th highest in deaths—way higher in just injuries) it’s safe to assume that increasing the number of guns doesn’t decrease the number of gun deaths. Just like cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue—making gun ownership unlimited doesn’t make us safer. It’s a lie. A fairy tale of the gun lobby. Completely unsupported by data or logic. A falsehood.

So unless you think all Americans should get Daisy Cutters this Christmas—you believe in regulations as to who gets a weapon, what kind and where they can have it.

Gun control laws are not tyranny—as the family of Trayvon Martin can testify to—a de-regulated militia is.

The purpose of the Progressive Information Project is to more widely share resources and information created to advance progressive causes. A lot of good work is being done, but the average progressive often doesn't learn about it or know what is available. This series is designed to help alleviate that problem.

Attached is a spreadsheet that lists the amount of spending the National Rifle Association did in each of the states in the 2008 and 2010 cycles. In recent years, the NRA has spent lots of money trying to influence state legislatures to pass "Stand Your Ground," aka "Shoot First" or "Kill-at-Will" laws. Lobbyists like Marion Hammer in Florida write and try to pass these laws and once they are passed, they push for more extreme laws, like those that Hammer helped pass in Florida that prevents doctors from asking parents about guns in the home when examining the risks that children face.

The data in the spreadsheet could be correlated to the push for pro-gun laws in various states, although I haven't seen anyone who has done that work yet. The data includes:

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Seeing a connection between the so-called "Shoot First" laws passed with the support of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the National Rifle Association, a group of progressive organizations is calling upon ALEC's funders to dump the conservative group before more harmful laws are passed. Crooks and Liars previously reported on the connection between "Shoot First" laws and ALEC and the NRA.

The story of Trayvon Martin is, first and foremost, a tragedy for his family, and our hearts go out to them. It’s also about things that need to change, including how powerful interests use their superior resources to distort the processes of government — in this case a well-funded private group, fueled by donations from big corporations: the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

We want to know why major U.S. corporations support ALEC, which, working with the National Rifle Association, helped write and promote around the country the law that might allow Trayvon Martin’s killer to go free. So Republic Report, along with Color of Change, the Center for Media and Democracy, and Van Jones’ organization, Rebuild the Dream, just sent those companies a letter asking them to stop supporting and financing ALEC.

The corporations the letter was sent to include:

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Earlier this week it happened again. We don't know all the details, but what we do know is this. A young man named T.J. Lane walked into high school—here in my home state of Ohio—approached a table full of kids and started shooting.

By the time the smoke cleared, three kids were dead. Three tragedies of unfulfilled dreams, unrealized potential, and abrogated Constitutional rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," their "general welfare" not protected by the state. More accurately, sacrificed on the altar of the arms industry's puffery and profit-driven deceit.

Like with any tragedy such as this, there were many handmaidens. Certainly, chief among them was the violence this young man bore witness to regularly, in a household reportedly filled with it. His parents, both charged with domestic abuse and other violent behavior in the past, seemingly helped nurture a disturbed and dangerous kid.

But it's also been reported that the killer's grandfather—from whom Lane accessed the gun used—had so many weapons lying around that he couldn't figure out a gun was missing until afterwards. Read that sentence again.

Teaching a child that violence solves everything and giving him access to an arsenal. That should make his family criminally liable—although, current Ohio law will not allow that to happen.

Perhaps, if Ohio state lawmakers hadn't been so busy letting fetuses testify or extending concealed-carry permits to drinking establishments (shots and shooting! Two pastimes that go hand-in-hand like crack cocaine and boating!), they could've found some time to work on that one.

Because, make no mistake, it's a love affair with guns by an obsessive and loud minority and the resulting lax regulation, which are key reasons these things just don't happen on a regular basis in any other Western country. While TJ Lane had easy pickings among a bevy of unaccounted-for weapons, the state of Virginia—under its culturally-Ragtime-Era governor—was removing a law that limited buyers to one handgun purchase per month.

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Down in the depths of the Conservative Political Action Conference are the booths showcasing the sponsors, co-sponsors and exhibitors. In perhaps the most prominent position, just to the left as you enter the exhibit hall after taking the escalator down, is Google's booth.

The booth sits next to NewsMax Media, a Republican news site, and across from the Heritage Foundation. Just to the right is a Tea Party booth. To get to Google's booth you have to walk by a large display put up by another sponsor, the National Rifle Association. Google is the only major American corporation that paid the $20,000 fee to be full sponsors.

I went up and spoke to to a couple of the young men that were operating the Google booth on Friday morning.

"I wasn't a part of the process," said Zachary Yeremian, when I asked him why Google had chosen to sponsor CPAC instead of just buying a less expensive co-sponsor or exhibitor booth, "We have no idea," he said. Yeremian said the booth was being used to show conference attendees how to use Google Plus and also to promote their new election page google.com/elections.

For its part, Google issued a statement saying the event was attractive because half the audience was under 25 and heavy users of technology. Yeremian gave me the Google representative's email who arranged the sponsorship, but she didn't respond to my questions.

Yeremian was careful not to weigh into the possible public relations issues Google's presence at CPAC may cause.

"We're not trying to advocate for anything," said Yeremian, "We're just here to promote google.com/elections and Google Plus."

There were only a few other major corporations that sponsored booths at CPAC: Koch Industries and Altria, the holding company that owns Phillip Morris, were listed as specialty sponsors and AOL and Microsoft/ElectionMall had bought a $5,000 co-sponsorship booth, according to the list of sponsors.

The majority of the other sponsors and co-sponsors were attending CPAC to push forward their ideological issues or companies. Co-sponsors included Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, Christians United for Israel, FreedomWorks, The American Petroleum Institute, Tea Party Patriots and the New York State Conservative Party.

But in the way back of the hall, at the exhibition booths, there were some real characters. Back there I found a mannequin adorned with body armor and a fake m-16. There was a booth selling books by Glenn Beck, Scott Rasmussen and Herman Cain. A second amendment advocate told me, "guns are the civilian defense weapon." A student at the Students for Life of America booth told me he didn't support abortions for women who were raped, "Two wrongs don't make a right, even though the rapist is a criminal, the child is still innocent."

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To quote Lawrence O'Donnell from his show back in February, Wayne LaPierre is "Washington's lobbyist in favor of murderers' rights, always to use the gun of their choice." There is no better summary of a man who ensures his $1.27 million salary every year by being a paid serial liar in defense of arms dealers, which groups such as the Violence Policy Center have made clear again and again.

So it should be no surprise that when faced with the rights of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or those of Mexican Drug Cartels, he comes down squarely on the side of the latter, as pointed out by Media Matters:

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has been on a media blitz trying to defend an NRA lawsuit that attempts to block an executive rule aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of cartels and criminals. The new rule would require gun stores along the border with Mexico to report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) when a person purchases multiple long guns, such as the cartel favorite AK-47.

ATF agent and Fast and Furious whistleblower Peter Forcelli, whom the NRA has previously cited as an expert on tactics, disagrees with LaPierre. Forcelli told Political Correction that the "vast majority of ATF agents support the reporting requirement, because they know how it works."

Of course it works. It is common sense that it would work, except manufacturing doubt--from the oil companies to the tobacco pushers to the gun runners--is what these guys do. Common sense and science are their enemies. They might save a few lives, but then LaPierre might only make $1.1 million per annum.

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*Conservatives from The Weekly Standard and The Daily Caller admit to host of The Big Picture, Thom Hartmann, that closing the gun show loophole would be a good idea.

Somehow, between breathless fanboy posts alerting his readers to the every movement of Rick Perry (he sure is dreamy!), The National Review's Kevin Williamson found time to prostrate himself (not once, but twice) before National Rifle Association (NRA) talking points, support the interests of al-Qaeda, and fit multiple lies all into one little screed.

Pretty impressive work, especially when you factor in his limited availability. I mean, those Rick Perry posters aren't going to just stare at themselves.

In these pieces, al-Qaeda Tool Williamson did what gun fetishists and NRA apologists always do when inconvenient truths about the blood already on their hands, or yet to come, are presented to them: He threw out random vituperation (even attacking one of his colleagues at NRO who happens to have more common sense than he could ever possess--he must be an absolute joy to work with!), and some misdirection that would make Houdini proud.

My problem, of course, is that I don't much like wannabe-bullies. Especially those who view the NRA like David Vitter does a lady-of-the-night with extra Huggies in hand, even more so when they lie and attack my friends at Media Matters on an issue I work on and care about, with Bachmannian reasoning to boot. So I thought I might respond, you know, for fun.

The crux of our story is that Adam Gadahn, the American-born al-Qaeda spokesman, made a statement that was 90% correct about the easy availability of firearms for terrorists in the US (because of people like Williamson and the NRA), so this al-Qaeda Tool, of course, chose to focus on the 10% that wasn't accurate. Here is our own David Neiwert's explanation of what set off this jack-in-the-box originally:

That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for al-Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on -- through the gun-show loophole

So what do you do when you're a shill for the NRA and have to explain why you don't support the simple common sense of 69% of NRA members and 85% of Americans, (in a poll conducted by known liberal Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns) all of whom want to close the Gun Show Loophole? The one that Al Qaeda thug Gadahn spoke about. The one that has allowed everyone from Hezbollah to Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell to the Columbine killers to arm themselves--and provided a nice source of income for Timothy McVeigh. The one that sadly, as the thug Gadahn points out, would allow any Ayman al-Zwahiri to walk into a gun show in the 33 states that have not closed it, and buy a gun from "private sellers" without any kind of background check.

What you do is lie of course, and portray private sales of firearms as "Uncle Bubba," deciding "to swap his deer rifle to Otis for $100 and a case of Bud."

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There is simply no understanding the prevalence of gun violence in America - as evidenced by the recent attempted assassination of a congresswoman during a mass shooting - without discussing the nefarious role played by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Once an organisation primarily concerned with the education and training of sportsmen, in a coup that came to be known as the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977, hardliners took over the leadership and believed that any gun regulation would take us down a slippery slope to Khmer Rougism.

In the years since, unlike the US in the wake of the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy - or for that matter Australia after the Port Arthur Massacre - the response to senseless gun violence has been to discuss everything from the rhetoric on our airwaves to the weather outside.

But any public conversations regarding restricting who has access to guns has been considered verboten (although, thankfully, this time some cracks are beginning to show).

This is largely because the NRA's duping its own members, which we'll discuss below, and coming to the realisation that the real money was in actually protecting the rights of gun manufacturers, which we'll discuss in Part II of this series.

If the NRA leadership is not radical, they certainly see the benefit in playing radicals on TV in order to enrich their financial benefactors who produce and sell the weaponry of death.

In the 1990s, in a climate of fear and paranoia that produced the Oklahoma City bombing, they were all too happy to refer to the government authority that tries to enforce gun laws, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms (ATF), as "jack-booted thugs". This led former president George H.W. Bush to resign his membership.

They then decided to up the ante by accusing former president Bill Clinton of murder and saying he "had blood on his hands" - all for the crime of supporting background checks at gun shows - which is among the many legislative proposals to reduce gun violence that they have repeatedly blocked.

Others include a ban on high-capacity magazines, banning sales to those on terrorist watch lists, and fully funding the aforementioned ATF (think about the latter when they say they want to "strengthen existing gun laws" after each new tragedy).

In fact, just a few days after the mass shooting in Tucson it was reported by Ryan Reilly from TPMMuckraker that a "jihadist" in America who was... "a moderator and contributor on Islamic extremist web forums, posted songs praising suicide bombers, discussed his jihad fantasies in the open..." was able to get an AK-47, no questions asked.

Emerson Begolly, the "jihadist" in question, responded when queried about this with laughter and facetiously exclaimed that "someone at the FBI showed up to work drunk". Perhaps, but if they were, it was only because the NRA forced them to do keg stands.

More...

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Why does this annoy me so much? According to Mother Jones, there's been a positive breakthrough in Congress' effort to roll back parts of the Citizens United decision and put light on funders of advertising and direct mail campaigns by outside groups.

House Democrats today reached a deal with the National Rifle Association that would roll back parts of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, the widely disdained legal precedent that opened the floodgates to corporate-funded political ads. The Dems' deal would require groups like the US Chamber of Commerce to disclose the top funders of their political ads, but would create loopholes for the NRA and other membership groups.

According to Politico, the deal would exempt any organization with over one million members in existence for more than ten years with members in all 50 states. They'd also have to raise less than 15% of their funds from corporate sources.

Assuming these requirements were met, they would not have to disclose the funding source behind the ad.

I realize that unions fall into the definition, but the NRA has not exactly been a shrinking violet when it comes to astroturfed campaign efforts. Giving them a pass bothers me almost as much as giving the US Chamber of Commerce a pass.

I can also imagine about sixty different ways for the US Chamber to walk around these exemptions. They're already putting a full-court press on small businesses to become part of the organization. Most small businesses are not incorporated. While I'm certain it will take awhile for that 15% funding requirement to be met, I'm not at all certain the US Chamber wouldn't find a way to meet it.

There is a little voice in my head which gets louder with every passing day. It screams this: There really isn't much excuse for any entity who is so passionate about political issues and candidates that they're willing to spend millions to elect/defeat them to actually STAND UP AND SAY SO.

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Sarah Palin takes her circus act back in the road and hits the NRA for yet another bronco busting vitriolic act.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin warned NRA members Friday that President Barack Obama wants to gut the Second Amendment and told a separate gathering that "mama grizzlies" will help Republicans win this November, sweeping away the Democratic agenda.

Palin, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, told National Rifle Association members during their annual meeting that the only thing stopping Obama and his Democratic allies from trying to ban guns is political backlash.

"Don't doubt for a minute that, if they thought they could get away with it, they would ban guns and ban ammunition and gut the Second Amendment," said Palin, a lifelong NRA member who once had a baby shower at a local gun range in Alaska. "It's the job of all of us at the NRA and its allies to stop them in their tracks."Gun enthusiasts have trumpeted fears that their rights would erode under a Democrat-led White House and Congress, but President Barack Obama has largely been silent on issues such as reviving an assault weapons ban or strengthening background checks at gun shows. Obama also signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks... read on ...

This is just what we need: Another Republican flamethrower sending messages to gun cranks and anti-government paranoids. Has she started reading the news yet? If she did, then she could have come across a freedom fighting gun lover like Richard Poplawski, who executed three police officers in Pittsburgh. His delusions are driven by right-wing gun fanatics spewing lies which manifested itself in murder because, as he saw it, "Obama wanted to take away his guns."

Richard Andrew "Pop" Poplawski's ex-girlfriend said he dragged her by the hair and threatened to shoot her. He slept with a gun under his pillow in a basement room filled with firearms and ammunition, convinced that Jews controlled the media and President Obama was scheming to take away his arsenal, friends and relatives said Saturday

She included so many other lies in her speech, but I don't have the energy to debunk them all. Who does?

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