Showing posts with label Josh Horwitz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Josh Horwitz. Show all posts

Friday, May 15, 2015

NRA ADMITS ILLICIT FUNDRAISING


The "Mouth," AKA Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Assn., was caught with his hand in the black powder. I first blogged on this the end of April. Josh Horwitz, Executive Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, reports that the NRA admits doing it but blames it on the fact that it was "Convenient, unexplained 'coding and clerical errors.'" Only Wacky Wayne would think he could get away with this and it's possible that he will unless a gutless Congress finds some balls. Now this is the man who weaseled out of going to the Vietnam War by getting his family physician to claim he had a nervous disorder. That could account for some of the incredibly imbecilic things he has done in the last few years.

Here are the charges:
  • For a period of four months in 2014, online donations made to the NRA's Institute for Legislative Affairs (NRA-ILA) were deposited in violation of federal law into the account of the group's PAC, the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF). The NRA claims this was because of a “coding error.”
  • The lobby failed to report its political expenditures (such as fundraising on behalf of the PVF) to the IRS for the years 2008 to 2013, as required by law. The NRA describes this omission as “a clerical error.
CSGV is pressing for a full investigation by the FEC and IRS and need your help with their efforts.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Catching up on gun nonsense and pandemonium

Ted Nugent
Back in April, out-of-date rocker Ted Nugent threatened President Obama and promptly received a visit from the Secret Service.  Nugent is a celebrity—although some question that status—gun nut that reminds me of the lunatic Charlton Heston in his famous tirade waving a musket over his head.  It seems that the NRA is constantly recruiting has-beens that are really not that good anymore at their day job.  Nugent is a NRA board member.


Wacky Wayne LaPierre
Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence says that although National Rifle Assn. (NRA) CEO Wayne LaPierre wants us to believe gun guys make the rules, the Founding Fathers “ratified the Constitution to obviate the need for political violence.”  What wacky Wayne and his lackeys have turned this into is a drive to put guns in the hands of anyone who wants them and allow them to carry their weapons anywhere they want.  This keeps gun nuts like Nugent happy.


James Holmes

Along the lines of unrestricted gun power, there is the fact that the purchase of ammunition online is essentially unregulated.  Firearms cannot be bought online except, of course, in Arizona.  But ammunition can be ordered online and shipped to the buyer’s address.  James Holmes, who killed 12 and injured 58 in the Aurora, Colo. movie shooting, purchased 6,000 rounds of ammunition online.  If regulated, this purchase would have certainly alerted police.

Arizona is one of the few states allowing the purchase of guns over the Internet, although they do restrict the sale of tobacco products.  KPHO CBS5 in Phoenix says, “Policy makers in Arizona can now rest easier, knowing that while no one is purchasing tobacco over the internet, every convicted felon and his brother can purchase guns online to kill or maim their local Congressman.”  The latter refers to the severe wounding of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson.

Back in August after the recent rash of gun massacres had died down, A CNN poll was taken finding that 50% of respondents favor no or minimum restrictions on gun ownership compared to 48% for major restrictions.  But 96% favor background checks and 91% support laws that will prevent felons or the mentally ill from buying guns.  That’s a start and if we added closing the gun show loophole and banning assault weapons we are on the way to gun sanity.

I base my opinion, above, on another CNN report on gun statistics in America:









CSGV asked National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) General Counsel Larry Keane if he felt that individual Americans had a right to shoot and kill government officials in response to what they personally perceived as ‘”tyranny,” Keane tweeted back at us plaintively, “Just like the Jews in the ghettos of Warsaw? The South Sudanese? Kurds? The American colonists?”  That pretty much says it all for the gun nuts.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Gun nuts claim gun control advocates espouse an American Holocaust

This charge comes from a site called Front Porch Politics who says they believe in America.  Maybe, but as it turns out in this post and others like it, it appears to me that they believe in a dark America shaded by radical conservative causes.  As an example, another recent post was, “Barack Obama’s Lawyer Admits Birth Certificate is forged.”  I Googled the title and came up primarily with a bunch of wacko sites that appear to have little credibility.  Sites like TeaPartyTribune.com.

The blame for this accusation goes to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) and its Exec. Dir. Josh Horwitz who is quoted as saying: “The concept of a ‘monopoly on force’ might sound foreign or even frightening to Americans that take great pride in our revolutionary beginnings, but it is the fundamental organizing principle of any political entity, including the United States.”  What could anyone find wrong with that with even a minimum trust in government?

But the Front Porch fanatics do by calling Horwitz’s statement “foreign” and “frightening,” then proceeding to rewrite the Revolutionary War to show why every individual in America should be allowed to own and carry a gun, anywhere they want, and with absolutely no training whatsoever.  With the gun worshippers it always comes down to that.  Don’t you brain dead people understand that we are no longer fighting for our freedom.  Like the Civil War, it’s over.

However, the National Rifle Assn. (NRA) has managed to embed in these peoples’ minds the fact that we are once again fighting the U.S. Government in a 21st Century reenactment of the Revolutionary War.  We aren’t.  As an example, FP compares Josh Horwitz’s citing of Max Weber, a German political economist and sociologist as an example of extreme right politics because of Weber having been associated with Karl Marx.  So has Barack Obama which is also absurd.

If you want to see who Max Weber was, see it here on Wikipedia.  According to Wikipedia, Weber is often cited, with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx as one of the three principal architects of modern social science.  The gun craze phenomena can certainly be considered an integral part of modern social science.  Horwitz is focused on his belief that if the Constitution is working, and we must admit it is except when we consider Congress, peaceful means should be used.


Arizona immigration sweeps

Horwitz’s opinion was in answer to a tweet that asked the question: “So govt rounding up citizens based on relig/ethnic id would not warrant armd resistance if courts bless as constitutional”  They do this every day in Arizona, at least pertaining to Hispanics, and so far I don’t see the gun lobby’s militia coming to their defense.  FP, quoting an Examiner.com writer by the name of Kurt Hofmann, would have Latinos in Arizona take up arms to fight their battle.

Arizona’s anti-immigration mess is tragic, but at least so far they have elected to take the peaceful way.  And that is in spite of the Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s and Russell Pearce’s who alone could provoke a revolution.  FP states that we have a “sacred” duty to check our government; there goes that biblical connection again.  We do and if we don’t like what it does, we vote to change things.  That’s where the Constitution works and if you don’t like it, change it. 

And of course no article about guns could be complete without waving the 2nd amendment in our faces.  FP says, “we possess a Second Amendment for a reason and it isn’t for hunting. It is for self preservation, for the protection of life and property and to keep tyrants in check.”  The last time I looked, we had a police department and the U.S. military to do that.  And where I come from they do it very well.

But here is a Front Porch statement that is alarming: “When they step outside of their bounds we must hold them accountable.  This is not that we take up arms against them every time they violate the Constitution. On most occasions, we simply seek to do it peacefully at the ballot box.”  It almost sounds like the initiation speech for a group of militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. Government.  Probably not but they bear watching.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Michigan gun rights fanatic denigrates recent high school gun massacre

A day in the life of gun violent America
Seventeen year old
T.J. Lane
fired 10 rounds into a group of teenagers in the Chardon, Ohio high school cafeteria, eventually killing three.  Lane didn’t know the people he shot, didn’t even go to Chardon high school; he attended Lake Academy, a school for students with academic or behavioral problems.  Just the day before the shooting, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran an article on how legal concealed carry licenses in Ohio had doubled in the past three years.

Now this may have no direct relationship to the Chardon shootings but does point out once again just how many more guns are on the streets of America.  Where did Lane get the gun?  It has been reported that it was his grandfather’s, taken from his barn and
Thomas Lane
did go looking for it after he found it missing.  The next question is why didn’t grampa report it missing?

These are the kinds of questions about gun violence that go unanswered on a daily basis.  Meanwhile, the gun worshipping National Rifle Assn. and its gang of gun nuts go on their merry way, supporting laws to put even more concealed guns in the pockets of yet more gun bubbas.  The reasoning is bizarre. 


CSGV's Josh Horwitz

But Josh Horwitz, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), takes the dilemma one step further.  He points out the arrogance of the pro-gun movement in his article on Huff Post, “When Buying a Gun Becomes Easier than Voting.”  Along with daily shootings throughout the U.S. and now what seems fairly regular gun massacres like Virginia Tech, Loughner’s Tucson, the Chardon High incident, the gun freaks want to just rub our noses in it.  Here’s the story.

It was only one day after the Chardon High mass shooting, Feb. 28, when Nicholas Looman in Grand Rapids, Michigan, walked into his voting place, also a public elementary school, blatantly carrying a loaded handgun.  Horwitz says, along with placing his vote, “…he also ‘wanted to make a point that he should be allowed to carry’ a gun while voting.”  Looman was asked to leave after voting and that apparently hurt the poor baby’s feelings.  The idiot asked for an apology.

CSGV’s Exec. Dir. comments: “His rights? Let's be clear... The landmark Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment from 2008, District of Columbia v. Heller, found that the right to keep and bear arms is about individuals protecting ‘hearth and home.’ And that there certainly is no right to carry firearms wherever and whenever one wants -- much less at a school or voting site. The idea that there is a right to ‘vote and carry’ would be laughable if it did not expose a dangerous ideology that, if left unchecked, will fundamentally change our democratic system.”

Wow!  That is powerful stuff and helps confirm one of my most serious beliefs that these cowboys do not have the right to walk all over town with their concealed weapons, not even holstered guns that we can see.  I live in Arizona; yes, the loosest gun laws in the country, and our hair brained Governor and GOP legislature are trying to make them even looser. 

Looman would have a field day in this state; not only would they not ask him to leave, they would welcome him and his gun totin’ friends to hang around and discuss setting up a gun show once voting was over.  

Horwitz continues: “Our Founders drafted our Constitution explicitly to prevent force -- or the threat of force -- from influencing the political system. ‘Freedom’ was understood as the ability of the government to abide by the rule of law without interference from an unelected monarch or a frothing mob. In fact, the duty of the Militia, as defined in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, is to ‘suppress Insurrections,’ not to foment them. Carrying a gun into a polling place or a legislative body turns that history on its head by making the statement that The guys with the guns make the rules. Our country declared its independence under the banner of political equality. We must have the freedom to exercise our right to vote without being exposed to a show of force by someone who might disagree with us politically. And it's entirely possible that Looman's behavior alarmed and/or intimidated other voters on Tuesday.”

But voting is getting harder, according to Horwitz, with bills introduced in both Virginia state houses that make it harder for people to vote without government-issued identification.  It was called “Old South” and a return to the Jim Crow era by Benjamin Chavis, former director of the NAACP.  Horwitz says:

“And Virginia is not alone... Many GOP-controlled state legislatures across the nation are now moving to implement voter suppression laws before the 2012 elections. Of the eight states that require residents to show photo identification before voting -- Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kansas, Indiana and Wisconsin -- all allow residents to purchase firearms through private sales without undergoing any type of background check or showing any form of identification. These sales are cash and carry, and no paperwork is required. 23 other states require residents to produce some form of identification before voting (though not necessarily a photo ID). Of those 23, only Rhode Island prohibits all private sales of firearms (Connecticut requires background checks for private sales of handguns only). Finally, in a development that may or not be coincidental, some states are now allowing residents to use a concealed handgun permit as an acceptable document to verify identity when voting, but not a student ID card issued by a public university.”

Horwitz finishes: “Seriously, when you can buy a trunk-load of AK-47s without government-issued identification but you can't vote - something is seriously wrong with our democracy.”

Think about it.

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