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How the US Has Crushed the Youth Resistance

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.  

Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.  

How exactly has American society subdued young Americans? 

1. Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. There was no tuition at the City University of New York when I attended one of its colleges in the 1970s, a time when tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. While those days are gone in the United States, public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.

Today in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. While average undergraduate debt is close to $25,000, I increasingly talk to college graduates with closer to $100,000 in student-loan debt. During the time in one’s life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life. 

2. Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance. In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, “Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.” Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.”

Many of America’s greatest activists including Saul Alinsky (1909–1972), the legendary organizer and author of Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals, would today certainly be diagnosed with ODD and other disruptive disorders. Recalling his childhood, Alinsky said, “I never thought of walking on the grass until I saw a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass.’ Then I would stomp all over it.” Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010); a major reason for this, according to theJournal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other disruptive disorder (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients). 

3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy. Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.” A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.

The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don’t care about, and that they are impotent to affect their situation. A teacher can lecture about democracy, but schools are essentially undemocratic places, and so democracy is not what is instilled in students. Jonathan Kozol in The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home focused on how school breaks us from courageous actions. Kozol explains how our schools teach us a kind of “inert concern” in which “caring”—in and of itself and without risking the consequences of actual action—is considered “ethical.” School teaches us that we are “moral and mature” if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.  

4. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” The corporatocracy has figured out a way to make our already authoritarian schools even more authoritarian. Democrat-Republican bipartisanship has resulted in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, NAFTA, the PATRIOT Act, the War on Drugs, the Wall Street bailout, and educational policies such as “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top.” These policies are essentially standardized-testing tyranny that creates fear, which is antithetical to education for a democratic society. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of test creators; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and challenging and resisting illegitimate authority. In a more democratic and less authoritarian society, one would evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher not by corporatocracy-sanctioned standardized tests but by asking students, parents, and a community if a teacher is inspiring students to be more curious, to read more, to learn independently, to enjoy thinking critically, to question authorities, and to challenge illegitimate authorities. 

5. Shaming Young People Who Take Education—But Not Their Schooling—Seriously. In a 2006 survey in the United States, it was found that 40 percent of children between first and third grade read every day, but by fourth grade, that rate declined to 29 percent. Despite the anti-educational impact of standard schools, children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning. That was not always the case in the United States. Mark Twain famously said, “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” Toward the end of Twain’s life in 1900, only 6 percent of Americans graduated high school. Today, approximately 85 percent of Americans graduate high school, but this is good enough for Barack Obama who told us in 2009, “And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”

The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they are of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class. In the 1880s and 1890s, American farmers with little or no schooling created a Populist movement that organized America’s largest-scale working people’s cooperative, formed a People’s Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892 presidential election, designed a “subtreasury” plan (that had it been implemented would have allowed easier credit for farmers and broke the power of large banks) and sent 40,000 lecturers across America to articulate it, and evidenced all kinds of sophisticated political ideas, strategies and tactics absent today from America’s well-schooled population. Today, Americans who lack college degrees are increasingly shamed as “losers”; however, Gore Vidal and George Carlin, two of America’s most astute and articulate critics of the corporatocracy, never went to college, and Carlin dropped out of school in the ninth grade. 

6. The Normalization of Surveillance. The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. While the National Security Agency (NSA) has received publicity for monitoring American citizen’s email and phone conversations, and while employer surveillance has become increasingly common in the United States, young Americans have become increasingly acquiescent to corporatocracy surveillance because, beginning at a young age, surveillance is routine in their lives. Parents routinely check Web sites for their kid’s latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, are monitoring their children’s computers and Facebook pages. Some parents use the GPS in their children’s cell phones to track their whereabouts, and other parents have video cameras in their homes. Increasingly, I talk with young people who lack the confidence that they can even pull off a party when their parents are out of town, and so how much confidence are they going to have about pulling off a democratic movement below the radar of authorities? 

7. Television. In 2009, the Nielsen Company reported that TV viewing in the United States is at an all-time high if one includes the following “three screens”: a television set, a laptop/personal computer, and a cell phone. American children average eight hours a day on TV, video games, movies, the Internet, cell phones, iPods, and other technologies (not including school-related use). Many progressives are concerned about the concentrated control of content by the corporate media, but the mere act of watching TV—regardless of the programming—is the primary pacifying agent (private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards).

Television is a dream come true for an authoritarian society: those with the most money own most of what people see; fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities; and regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, transforming them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. While playing a video games is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this “virtual potency” is certainly no threat to the ruling elite. 

8. Fundamentalist Religion and Fundamentalist Consumerism. American culture offers young Americans the “choices” of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist consumerism. All varieties of fundamentalism narrow one’s focus and inhibit critical thinking. While some progressives are fond of calling fundamentalist religion the “opiate of the masses,” they too often neglect the pacifying nature of America’s other major fundamentalism. Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A fundamentalist consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulations, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulativeness, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form democratic movements. Fundamentalist consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult for the solidarity necessary for democratic movements.  

These are not the only aspects of our culture that are subduing young Americans and crushing their resistance to domination. The food-industrial complex has helped create an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. The prison-industrial complex keeps young anti-authoritarians “in line” (now by the fear that they may come before judges such as the two Pennsylvania ones who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated). As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed: “All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.”

 

How Safe Do You Feel After More Than $8 Trillion In Spending?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/16

The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did.  And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a “doomsday mechanism” for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year’s even larger military budget.

None of this should surprise you.  As with all addictions, once you’re hooked on massive military spending, it’s hard to think realistically or ask the obvious questions.  So, at a moment when discussion about cutting military spending is actually on the rise for the first time in years, let me offer some little known basics about the spending spree this country has been on since September 11, 2001, and raise just a few simple questions about what all that money has actually bought Americans.

Consider this my contribution to a future 12-step program for national security sobriety.

Let’s start with the three basic post-9/11 numbers that Washington’s addicts need to know:

1. $5.9 trillion: That’s the sum of taxpayer dollars that’s gone into the Pentagon’s annual “base budget,” from 2000 to today.  Note that the base budget includes nuclear weapons activities, even though they are overseen by the Department of Energy, but — and this is crucial — not the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Nonetheless, even without those war costs, the Pentagon budget managed to grow from $302.9 billion in 2000, to $545.1 billion in 2011. That’s a dollar increase of $242.2 billion or an 80% jump ($163.6 billion and 44% if you adjust for inflation).  It’s enough to make your head swim, and we’re barely started.

2.  $1.36 trillion: That’s the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars by this September 30th, the end of the current fiscal year, including all moneys spent for those wars by the Pentagon, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies. Of this, $869 billion will have been for Iraq, $487.6 billion for Afghanistan.

Add up our first two key national security spending numbers and you’re already at $7.2 trillion since the September 11th attacks. And even that staggering figure doesn’t catch the full extent of Washington spending in these years. So onward to our third number:

3. $636 billion: Most people usually ignore this part of the national security budget and we seldom see any figures for it, but it’s the amount, adjusted for inflation, that the U.S. government has spent so far on “homeland security.”  This isn’t an easy figure to arrive at because homeland-security funding flows through literally dozens of federal agencies and not just the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A mere $16 billion was requested for homeland security in 2001.  For 2012, the figure is $71.6 billion, only $37 billion of which will go through DHS. A substantial part, $18.1 billion, will be funneled through — don’t be surprised — the Department of Defense, while other agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion) and the Department of Justice ($4.1 billion) pick up the slack.

Add those three figures together and you’re at the edge of $8 trillion in national security spending for the last decade-plus and perhaps wondering where the nearest group for compulsive-spending addiction meets.

Now, for a few of those questions I mentioned, just to bring reality further into focus:

How does that nearly $8 trillion compare with past spending?

In the decade before the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon base budget added up to an impressive $4.2 trillion, only one-third less than for the past decade. But add in the cost of the Afghan and Iraq wars and total Pentagon spending post-9/11 is actually two-thirds greater than in the previous decade.  That’s quite a jump.  As for homeland-security funding, spending figures for the years prior to 2000 are hard to identify because the category didn’t exist (nor did anyone who mattered in Washington even think to use that word “homeland”). But there can be no question that whatever it was, it would pale next to present spending.

Is that nearly $8 trillion the real total for these years, or could it be even higher?

The war-cost calculations I’ve used above, which come from my own organization, the National Priorities Project, only take into account funds that have been requested by the President and appropriated by Congress. This, however, is just one way of considering the problem of war and national security spending. A recent study published by the Watson Institute of Brown University took a much broader approach. In the summary of their work, the Watson Institute analysts wrote, “There are at least three ways to think about the economic costs of these wars: what has been spent already, what could or must be spent in the future, and the comparative economic effects of spending money on war instead of something else.”

By including funding for such things as veterans benefits, future costs for treating the war-wounded, and interest payments on war-related borrowing, they came up with $3.2 trillion to $4 trillion in war costs, which would put those overall national security figures since 2001 at around $11 trillion.

I took a similar approach in an earlier TomDispatch piece in which I calculated the true costs of national security at $1.2 trillion annually.

All of this brings another simple, but seldom-asked question to mind:

Are we safer?

Regardless of what figures you choose to use, one thing is certain: we’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. And given the debate raging in Washington this summer about how to rein in trillion-dollar deficits and a spiraling debt, it’s surprising that no one thinks to ask just how much safety bang for its buck the U.S. is getting from those trillions.

Of course, it’s not an easy question to answer, but there are some troubling facts out there that should give one pause.  Let’s start with government accounting, which, like military music, is something of an oxymoron.  Despite decades of complaints from Capitol Hill and various congressional attempts to force changes via legislation, the Department of Defense still cannot pass an audit. Believe it or not, it never has.

Members of Congress have become so exasperated that several have tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to cap or cut military spending until the Pentagon is capable of passing an annual audit as required by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. So even as they fight to preserve record levels of military spending, Pentagon officials really have no way of telling American taxpayers how their money is being spent, or what kind of security it actually buys.

And this particular disease seems to be catching.  The Department of Homeland Security has been part of the “high risk” series of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) since 2003. In case being “high risk” in GAO terms isn’t part of your dinner-table chitchat, here’s the definition: “agencies and program areas that are high risk due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are most in need of broad reform.”

Put in layman’s terms: no organization crucial to national security spending really has much of an idea of how well or badly it is spending vast sums of taxpayer money — and worse yet, Congress knows even less.

Which leads us to a broader issue and another question:

Are we spending money on the right types of security?

This June, the Institute for Policy Studies released the latest version of what it calls “a Unified Security Budget for the United States” that could make the country safer for far less than the current military budget. Known more familiarly as the USB, it has been produced annually since 2004 by the website Foreign Policy in Focus and draws on a task force of experts.

As in previous years, the report found — again in layman’s terms — that the U.S. invests its security dollars mainly in making war, slighting both real homeland security and anything that might pass for preventive diplomacy. In the Obama administration’s proposed 2012 budget, for example, 85% of security spending goes to the military (and if you included the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that percentage would only rise); just 7% goes to real homeland security and a modest 8% to what might, even generously speaking, be termed non-military international engagement.

Significant parts of the foreign policy establishment have come to accept this critique — at least they sometimes sound like they do. As Robert Gates put the matter while still Secretary of Defense, “Funding for non-military foreign affairs programs… remains disproportionately small relative to what we spend on the military… [T]here is a need for a dramatic increase in spending on the civilian instruments of national security.” But if they talk the talk, when annual budgeting time comes around, few of them yet walk the walk.

So let’s ask another basic question:

Has your money, funneled into the vast and shadowy world of military and national security spending, made you safer?

Government officials and counterterrorism experts frequently claim that the public is unaware of their many “victories” in the “war on terror.” These, they insist, remain hidden for reasons that involve protecting intelligence sources and law enforcement techniques. They also maintain that the United States and its allies have disrupted any number of terror plots since 9/11 and that this justifies the present staggering levels of national security spending.

Undoubtedly examples of foiled terrorist acts, unpublicized for reasons of security, do exist (although the urge to boast shouldn’t be underestimated, as in the case of the covert operation to kill Osama bin Laden).  Think of this as the “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you” approach to supposed national security successes.  It’s regularly used to justify higher spending requests for homeland security. There are, however, two obvious and immediate problems with taking it seriously.

First, lacking any transparency, there’s next to no way to assess its merits. How serious were these threats? A hapless underwear bomber or a weapon of mass destruction that didn’t make it to an American city?  Who knows?  The only thing that’s clear is that this is aloophole through which you can drive your basic mine-resistant, ambush-protected armored vehicle.

Second, how exactly were these attempts foiled? Were they thwarted by programs funded as part of the $7.2 trillion in military spending, or even the $636 billion in homeland security spending?

An April 2010 Heritage Foundation report, “30 Terrorist Plots Foiled: How the System Worked,” looked at known incidents where terrorist attacks were actually thwarted and so provides some guidance.  The Heritage experts wrote, “Since September 11, 2001, at least 30 planned terrorist attacks have been foiled, all but two of them prevented by law enforcement. The two notable exceptions are the passengers and flight attendants who subdued the ‘shoe bomber’ in 2001 and the ‘underwear bomber’ on Christmas Day in 2009.”

In other words, in the vast majority of cases, the plots we know about were broken up by “law enforcement” or civilians, in no way aided by the $7.2 trillion that was invested in the military — or in many cases even the $636 billion that went into homeland security. And while most of those cases involved federal authorities, at least three were stopped by local law enforcement action.

In truth, given the current lack of assessment tools, it’s virtually impossible for outsiders — and probably insiders as well — to evaluate the effectiveness of this country’s many security-related programs. And this stymies our ability to properly determine the allocation of federal resources on the basis of program efficiency and the relative levels of the threats addressed.

So here’s one final question that just about no one asks:

Could we be less safe?

It’s possible that all that funding, especially the moneys that have gone into our various wars and conflicts, our secret drone campaigns and “black sites,” our various forays into Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and other places may actually have made us less safe. Certainly, they have exacerbated existing tensions and created new ones, eroded our standing in some of the most volatile regions of the world, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the misery of many more, and made Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, potential recruiting and training grounds for future generations of insurgents and terrorists.  Does anything remain of the international goodwill toward our country that was the one positive legacy of the infamous attacks of September 11, 2001?  Unlikely.

Now, isn’t it time for those 12 steps?

A Parting Shot. My Final Words. (for now)

Also constitutionally suspect are restrictions on magazine size. There is no question that a limit of 10 rounds (as the president has proposed) or seven (as enacted by New York state last month) would impair the right to self-defense. A magazine with 10 rounds may provide adequate protection against a single nighttime intruder. But it may not: What if there are two intruders?

Further compounding the constitutional problem is the fact that the benefit of such limits is questionable. For a practiced and calm shooter, swapping magazines takes no more than a couple of seconds. And a swap may not even be necessary if the shooter has multiple guns, as in several mass shootings in recent years.

While some limit on magazines may be constitutionally permissible, one that falls below the capabilities of guns in common usage for self-defense is probably not. The most popular guns for self-defense take 15 or so rounds in their default configurations. Given the uncertain benefit of restricting magazine size, not to mention the tens of millions of “high capacity” magazines in circulation, something near that number may be a constitutional minimum.

And while there is no question that procedural requirements like background checks are permissible, that does not mean that the government may place an undue burden on the right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves. Excessive waiting periods, registration fees and the like are all subject to scrutiny, lest they infringe on constitutionally guaranteed rights.

At bottom, the Constitution requires that any firearms regulation be sensible and effective so as to respect and uphold this most fundamental right. Policies motivated by nothing more than discomfort with firearms, often born of a lack of experience, fall far short. ©

What A Wish List. Sheesh!

HOUSE PROPOSAL EMBRACES OBAMA WISH LIST

Just before press time for this issue, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s “Gun Violence Prevention Task Force,” chaired by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., released a proposal parroting the Obama administration’s gun control wish list.

The Pelosi-Thompson task force calls on Congress to ban millions of commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and magazines; criminalize private firearm transfers; ban common hunting and sport-shooting ammunition; waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective gun ^“buyback” programs and flawed government studies aimed at promoting further gun control laws; and remove legal protections of sensitive law enforcement information.

“The 4.5 million men and women of the National Rifle Association and our tens of millions of supporters across the country strongly oppose this effort to enact the Obama gun control agenda,” said Chris W Cox, executive director of the NRA  Institute for Legislative Action. “The last thing America needs is more failed solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems. Congress should instead focus its energies on the things that will actually keep our families and communities safer—prosecuting criminals who misuse firearms; securing our schools; and fixing the broken mental health system that keeps dangerously ill people on the street”

NRA RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA’S GUN CONTROL PROPOSALS

I’m Wayne LaPierre, and here’s what they didn’t tell you today…

Throughout its history, The National Rifle Association has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership. Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority.

The NRA  will continue to focus on keeping our children safe and securing our schools, fixing our broken mental health system and prosecuting violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law. We look forward to working with Congress on a bipartisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset— our children.

Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected, and our children will remain, vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy. ©

Media Gets It Wrong. AGAIN. So Tired Of The Samo, Samo

THE MEDIA GET IT WRONG.  AGAIN:

Just where did the “mainstream” media get the idea that the majority of NRA members—at times cited as 74 percent—support a ban on semi-automatic firearms? Clearly not from actual members as the NRA  doesn’t sell its lists. As a survey conducted by the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA) found, NRA members are nearly unanimous in opposition to that and on a wide range of related issues.

Key findings:

– 89 percent oppose banning semi-automatic firearms, often mistakenly called “assault rifles”

– 91 percent of NRA  members support laws keeping firearms away from the mentally ill

– 92 percent of NRA  members oppose gun confiscation via mandatory buy-back laws

– 93 percent oppose a law requiring gun owners to register with the federal government

– 92 percent oppose a new federal law banning the sale of firearms between private citizens.

ONCE AGAIN……………………………………………………………….. MORE MEDIA  LIES!

WRONG. AGAIN!

HOUSE PROPOSAL EMBRACES OBAMA WISH LIST

Just before press time for this issue, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s “Gun Violence Prevention Task Force,” chaired by Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., released a proposal parroting the Obama administration’s gun control wish list.

The Pelosi-Thompson task force calls on Congress to ban millions of commonly owned semi-automatic firearms and magazines; criminalize private firearm transfers; ban common hunting and sport-shooting ammunition; waste taxpayer dollars on ineffective gun ^“buyback” programs and flawed government studies aimed at promoting further gun control laws; and remove legal protections of sensitive law enforcement information.

“The 4.5 million men and women of the National Rifle Association and our tens of millions of supporters across the country strongly oppose this effort to enact the Obama gun control agenda,” said Chris W Cox, executive director of the nra  Institute for Legislative Action. “The last thing America needs is more failed solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems. Congress should instead focus its energies on the things that will actually keep our families and communities safer—prosecuting criminals who misuse firearms; securing our schools; and fixing the broken mental health system that keeps dangerously ill people on the street.

NRA RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA’S GUN CONTROL PROPOSALS

I’m Wayne LaPierre, and here’s what they didn’t tell you today…

Throughout its history, The National Rifle Association has led efforts to promote safety and responsible gun ownership. Keeping our children and society safe remains our top priority.

The NRA will continue to focus on keeping our children safe and securing our schools, fixing our broken mental health system and prosecuting violent criminals to the fullest extent of the law. We look forward to working with Congress on a bipartisan basis to find real solutions to protecting America’s most valuable asset— our children.

Attacking firearms and ignoring children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation. Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected, and our children will remain, vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy. ©

The ‘Save One Life’ LIE – AGAIN!

The Administration’s “Save One Life” Lie

A favorite saying of both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden is that more gun control laws must be instituted because “even if just one life was saved, it would be worth it.”

This statement is not only, disingenuous (Biden has even said he knows such laws won’t stop mass slayings or reduce crime), but also dangerous—to you, to me, to our children and to our grandchildren.

When it comes to “saving one life,” what about those lives saved by legal firearm ownership? Shouldn’t those lives, which you seldom hear about in the so-called “mainstream” media, also be important to those in charge in Washington, D.C.?

Each month, MANY law-abiding Americans saving lives with firearms. And, trust me, if I had the space, I could list many, many of them.

Wasn’t the young mother from Georgia, who saved herself and her 9-year-old twins by shooting a home intruder, a life worth saving? And what about the lives of the twins?

Apparently Obama and Biden could care less about the lives of law-abiding American citizens saved by the use of firearms.

What about Bryan Lee, the pharmacy owner from Madera, Calif., who saved both himself and his mother by shooting an armed gunman who came in, guns blazing?

Or Rafael Lantigua of Lawrence, Mass., who ran off armed robbers with his own gun without ever firing a shot; Clint Lowery of Port Angeles, Wash., who used a gun to save himself and his 2-year-old daughter from a home intruder, again without even firing a shot; or Roger Mundell of Amherst, Mass., who used a gun to save himself and his nephew from a rabid bobcat that had already wounded them both?

If just one life was saved by not further infringing on our Second Amendment rights, shouldn’t we immediately stop even considering these measures that do nothing but harm innocent, law-abiding gun owners?

Apparently Obama and Biden could care less about the lives of law-abiding American citizens saved by the use of firearms. Neither has ever acknowledged that lives are saved thousands of times a year by good people using privately owned firearms.

I believe they simply do not care. Besides, if they acknowledged the lives saved by the use of firearms, their gun-ban agenda would completely derail. Each instance of them ignoring an example of defensive gun use is further proof they 11 do anything within their power to ban guns, even if it costs you, me or any other law-abiding
American his or her life.

So I ask President Obama and Vice President Biden this question: Since more than “one life” will be saved by not implementing further gun control measures, shouldn’t you immediately stop promoting such bans?

The Fight is Now ON!

In a follow-up hearing on Feb. 12, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights heard testimony on “Protecting Our Communities While Respecting the Second Amendment.” Testimony at the hearing ranged from the scholarly—by former Assistant Attorney General Charles J. Cooper (who has long represented the NRA in major constitutional cases) and Harvard Law School’s professor Laurence Tribe, a gun control supporter—to the dramatic, with an appearance by former Texas state representative Suzanna Gratia Hupp. Rep. Hupps entry into politics was sparked by the 1991 mass murder at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, where she saw her parents murdered while her handgun was tragically out of reach in her car, in compliance with Texas law.

Once again, the subcommittees ranking Republican, Sen. Cruz, and South Carolina’s Sen. Graham deserve credit for standing up for Second Amendment rights. (Video and written testimony are available online at www.nraila.org/2ahearing.)

At press time, an additional Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was scheduled for Feb. 25. But all these are just the opening act; what happens next will be crucial. Second Amendment opponents are pushing for action as fast as possible, and by the time you read this article, we may well be in the midst of an all-out floor debate in the u.s. Senate.

Wherever things stand at that point, one thing is certain: the NRA will continue to oppose new restrictions on our freedoms, NRA members must stand up now and be heard. Let your elected officials know you will not be blamed for the actions of criminals or the dangerously mentally ill. ©

TYPICAL. SO WHAT ELSE IS NEW? The ‘Chicago’ Way!

PLEASE TAKE A STAND BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!

And The Survey Says…………

Survey Finds NRA Members United

To rebut bogus surveys by pollsters on the payroll of anti-gun groups, the NRA-ILA conducted a national scientific poll of NRA members and found near-unanimity among NRA members on a wide range of issues involving mental health reform and firearm rights.

Gun control advocates including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as various media outlets, have released surveys claiming to show that NRA members support gun control—despite the fact that none of those conducting the surveys had access to the NRA’s membership list. The NRA survey of 1,000 randomly selected NRA members across the country is the only legitimate survey of NRA members on these issues.

The results of the survey make clear that NRA members are united in their desire for Washington to focus on keeping firearms from the mentally ill, while rejecting gun control measures that infringe on Second Amendment rights.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s claims that gun owners are divided is totally false. They are nothing more than an attempt by anti-gun activists to further their longstanding political agenda,” said NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W Cox. “American gun owners and Second Amendment supporters are ready for Washington to put politics aside and come together to fix our broken mental health system.”

Key Findings:

91 percent of NRA members support laws keeping firearms away from the mentally ill.

92 percent of NRA members oppose gun confiscation via mandatory “buy-back” laws.

89 percent oppose banning semi-automatic firearms, often mistakenly called “assault rifles.”

93 percent oppose a law requiring gun owners to register with the federal government.

92 percent oppose a federal law banning the sale of firearms between private citizens.

Methodology—The national survey was conducted by OnMessage, Inc. Telephone interviews were conducted January 13-14. This survey consisted of 1,000 NRA members and was stratified by the state to reflect voter distribution in the 2012 presidential election.The margin of error for this survey is +/- 3.09 percent.

Even The Sheriffs’ Stand Up For The Second Amendment

Sheriffs Stand Up For The Second Amendment

Since the December murders in Newtown, Conn., state houses and the u.s. Congress have been awash in gun control proposals from those seeking to exploit the tragedy. In stark contrast to this anti-gun hysteria are the sober actions taken by numerous sheriffs and sheriffs’ associations across the country that have made it clear they will oppose attacks on their constituents’ rights.

Taking their message straight to the top, on Jan. 17, the Utah Sheriffs’ Association sent a letter to President Obama outlining its members’ position and calling the ongoing demonization of firearms “foolish and  . prejudiced.” Displaying not only a respect for guns, but also an understanding of their constitutionally protected purpose, the sheriffs noted that “lawful violence must sometimes be employed to deter and stop criminal violence. Consequently, the citizenry must continue in its ability to keep and bear arms, including arms that adequately protect them from all types of illegality.” And in a stern warning to President Obama, the sheriffs conclude the letter by stating, “We will enforce the rights guaranteed to our citizens by the Constitution.”

Likewise, the County Sheriffs of Colorado (csoc) offered a detailed position paper that contained a rundown of the legislative proposals being offered by state and federal politicians. Highlighting the impracticality and civil liberties implications of outlawing private firearm transfers, the csoc explains, “Private sales to friends, neighbors or loved ones would become illegal, effectively turning law-abiding citizens into criminals. Local and state law enforcement do not have the resources to stop private sales of firearms nor to investigate such transactions making this law unenforceable. Forcing citizens to sell firearms through a federal firearms dealer is the first step towards gun registration and a national database of gun owners.”

And in defense of magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds of ammunition, the csoc notes, “Law enforcement officers carry high capacity magazines because there are times when 10 rounds might not be enough to end the threat. County Sheriffs of Colorado believe the same should hold true for civilians who wish to defend themselves.”

Among the other groups voicing concern for the Second Amendment are the Florida Sheriffs Association, the Georgia Sheriffs’ Association, the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association, the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association and the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police.

Joining the large state organizations are hundreds of individual sheriffs who have registered their disapproval with the raft of current gun control proposals and emphasized their constituents’ right to self-defense. One such sheriff, David Clarke Jr. of Milwaukee County, Wis., drew the ire of his notoriously anti-gun mayor, Tom Barrett, for suggesting that citizens exercise their rights. In a radio public service announcement, Clarke stressed to Milwaukee residents the importance of the citizen-police partnership to public safety, stating, “Simply calling 9-1-1 and waiting is no longer your best option. You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back.      But are you prepared?