Feel-Good Second Amendment Story of the Day

Let's hear it for concealed carry permits. A shame every state doesn't have them.

A bank robber in Palm Bay couldn't get away from a bank Thursday, because a customer of the Space Coast Credit Union on Malabar Road had a gun and a concealed weapon permit. The customer used his gun to stop the robber.

Police identified the suspect as 23-year-old Floyd Francis. He's facing robbery charges.

The man who stopped him, Ruben Torres, actually had his gun in his car in the parking lot. He had enough time to go out to his car, get his gun and then go back in and hold Francis for police.

"Me, being from New York, I’m always on alert," Torres explained.

Of course had this robbery taken place in New York, Torres would have been at the mercy of the criminal.

Torres went to the Space Coast Credit Union to pick up some cash for a cruise this weekend and was on his way out when he noticed a man walk in, give him a weird look, pull out a Walmart bag and put it on his head. It was the first sign it wasn't going to be just any visit to the bank.

"It's not Halloween. You don't walk in and put a bag over your head unless you’re going to do something," Torres said.

Torres, a trained, professional security guard with a concealed weapons permit said he didn't even think twice about what he was about to do. He went to his car, grabbed his handgun and went back inside.

Francis was sitting, waiting for the cash he was trying to steal. Another teller confirmed for Torres that Francis was trying to rob the bank and, when Torres saw an opportunity, he drew his weapon.

"As he was walking out, I put him down with the gun in the back of his back," Torres said.

The Palm Bay man said Francis didn't fight back or try to run. Torres said he was never scared, just a little nervous, and was surprised to hear what Francis had to say.

"He apologized to me and I said, 'That doesn't matter now,'" Torres described.

Palm Bay police arrived moments later. Police said, while they don't encourage people to take matters into their own hands, they said what he did was appreciated and courageous.

Good News: Media Now Has a Word To Describe State's Rights Advocates

It looks like a new style sheet has come out which dictates that any conservative cause or issue can now be described by adding the suffix -er to the end of the issue name.

First it was birth-ers, then Tea Bagg-ers, and now it is tenth-ers.

What are tenthers? It is used to describe people who advocate for state's rights as outlined in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

The movement is garnering attention and several states have passed resolutions expressing support of their rights, and not just from the south for all you that want to immediately scream racism.

Their message is loud and clear: Big government is out of control; states need to take back their constitutional rights.

A movement has been growing over the past two years of urging states to exert their rights under the 10th Amendment. The Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

A number of states have passed resolutions that assert their rights. While the resolutions have no legal teeth, they're intended to carry a message: States' rights are being trampled on.

The CNN article spends a lot of time focusing on the matter in Georgia and uses a column written by an AJC columnist named Jay Bookman.

The basic thrust or tone is to paint a picture of how support of state's rights is a prelude to another civil war.

After the Georgia Senate's move in April 2009 for sovereignty, Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman wrote that this push has a "particularly nasty legacy."

"It helped precipitate the Civil War, and in the 1950s and early '60s it was cited by Southern states claiming the right to ignore Supreme Court rulings ordering the end of segregation," he wrote.

Right, Jay. It was actually New Hampshire that got the ball rolling on this movement. To date 37 states have introduced or voted on their own resolutions affirming state's rights, with Alaska and Tennessee actually getting their governor's signatures on the legislation.

It is more then state's rights being trampled on, it is out and out blackmail. The federal government learned long ago that they could threaten states by withholding funds if states didn't agree certain federal laws. You know, like the 55 MPH speed limit. If your state didn't play ball then they got no money from the transportation budget.

The counter argument is that states can make the hard choice to refuse the money, which is true to a point. At what point can a state tell the federal government that since they are getting no return for the tax dollars that their citizens are sending in, they have directed their citizens to quit paying any federal tax, or better yet, just step in and intercept those funds and prevent them from going to Washington.

How long before the Treasury Department agents descend upon the state? A lot quicker then you would see Homeland Security coming in to do a sweep for illegal aliens, I bet.

How many parts of the Bill of Rights have the liberals now come out in opposition to?

We have the First Amendment they are trying to overturn in wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding campaign finance.

They have always been against the Second Amendment.

Now the Tenth Amendment.

Faced With Plummeting Approval Ratings; Supreme Court Finally Issues Coherent Decision

How's this for coincidence? On the morning they awoke to a 26% approval rating, the Supreme Court finally issued a decision that doesn't fly in the face of all logic and decency.

For the first time in U.S. history, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that individual Americans have the right to own guns for personal use, and struck down a strict gun control law in the U.S. capital.

The landmark 5-4 ruling marked the first time in nearly 70 years the country's high court has addressed whether the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, rather than a right tied to service in a state militia.

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Second Amendment protected an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

You suppose them giving rights to terrorists had anything to do with their 26% approval? Of course it does. I surmise if you poll them again after yesterday's decision on the child rapists it would be even lower.

Curiously, after today's ruling on the Second Amendment, the country's leading proponent of gun control--the unctuous Charles Schumer--is unavailable for comment for the first time in his life.

Hmmm.

Still, what's disturbing is there are still four idiots on the high court who don't believe in the Second Amendment. They should be thankful five of their brethren saved them from facing an armed insurrection in this country.

How McCain Can Lose the South

In two words: Michael Bloomberg.

There are rumors, which I don't take very seriously, but if the worst-case scenario came true and he did pick Bloomberg as his VP pick he can just about kiss off the south.

Why?

Nanny-stater Mayor Bloomberg sent some of his goons down to Georgia a while back to make some fraudulent gun purchases and then turned around and filed suit against all of them. We have one gun shop owner in my county who is challenging him, at great expense.

Wallace's store was one of 27 named in two 2006 federal suits that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg brought against gun shops in states with weaker gun laws. Bloomberg's suits said Adventure Outdoors and the others did little to ensure they were making only legal sales and, as a result, those weapons were used in crimes 900 miles away.

Adventure Outdoors is one of three shops that hasn't settled, been dropped from the case or gone out of business. Its case goes to trial first, on Tuesday, while the other two are set for September.

The whole thing was a scam carried out by officials of New York City. They sent people into the gun shops to purchase the guns and then took them out of state or transferred them to other people not authorized to possess hand guns. Once the gun leaves the store the seller cannot be held responsible for what happens. The store did its due diligence and ran all required checks and had the undercover people sign and initial all the documents required by law.

This was nothing but a publicity stunt pulled by the mayor of NYC at the expense of honest gun store owners in Georgia, and with the money that his office has he has forced most of the wrongly accused to either settle out of court or go out of business.

I hope this guy can continue the fight, but it is despicable what he did.
New York City needs to clean up it owns house and quit coming down here and crapping in our yard.

I hope that in the countersuit Mr. Wallace takes the city of New York for everything they've got for this wrongful and illegal prosecution.

An apology, an explanation,and finally some news

First off let me start by apologizing for not posting here much in the last week. In way of explanation let me say that I do have a day job. Well that day job turned into a day and night job last week when a big project I was working on went to hell in a handbasket because one person didn't do their job. In todays' corporate world where the bottom line is the most important metric upon which a company is judged, and payroll is the biggest expense, many companies like the one I work for all too often trim the personnel roles so thin that there is just one person for a position, which makes it all the more critical that everybody do what they are supposed to do. So we went to work day and night to fix in one week what this one person was supposed to have been testing and evaluating for over 3 months. The best thing I can say about my job is the pay ain't so great but the hours are more then you handle!
So enough of the whining let's get on to something that you visit this site for, my insightful, witty, and definitive take on the news you can use. That is why you stop by ain't it?

First up a picture that is just begging for a caption.

U.S. President Bush and Russian President Putin meet in Sochi, Russia
U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin take a sunset walk on a pier along the Black Sea during a visit by the President and First Lady Laura Bush to the President Putin's summer retreat, Bocharvo Ruchey, in Sochi, Russia on April 5, 2008. (UPI Photo/Eric Draper/White House Press Office)

In Georgia they reaffirmed the 2nd Amendment by granting more latitude in the carrying of a concealed weapon.

Among the public places where holders of concealed gun permits would be able to take a weapon under the altered bill are Georgia restaurants, public transportation and state parks.

The newspaper said public parking lots, churches and sporting events, which previously were among the proposed sites where gun owners could legally carry concealed weapons, were not included in the final version.

Which begs the question, if I can carry a gun on public transportation how do I get it from the public parking lot to the public transportation?

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) has some straight talk for the House Democrats led by Mama Nancy Pelosi.

"For a majority party that never wavered in its promises to wean America off foreign oil and put us on a path toward energy independence, these figures from the EIA are absolutely striking. Not only have Democrats failed to end our reliance on the Middle East for essential energy, they've actually helped grow that dependence to historic and dangerous new levels -- all because of their doctrinaire refusal to allow responsible energy production here at home.

"The result is a level of dependence on OPEC and the Middle East that we've simply never seen before -- not even in the darkest days of the Carter administration. But instead of working with Republicans to approach the energy issue from common sense perspective, this majority remains tied to a dogma that insists responsible energy development and sound stewardship of our environment are mutually exclusive endeavors.

Until they let us really pursue all of the various energy options available to us in this country this is only going to continue. Allow drilling in ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico, allow nuclear energy, build refineries and pursue the various alternative energy sources such as wind. Drilling and refining oil locally buys us time to develop the other alternative methods, and make no mistake about it, nobody nowadays wants to continue our dependence on an oil only energy policy and will work to replacing oil with other sources, but we need to make sure until such time as this is accomplished we can lessen our dependence from countries such as Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

And lastly scan down this blog entry to the portion that is a Q&A with a military spouse. The author of this piece is LTC Michael Baumann, a member of the Vets for Freedom. The National Heroes Tour is in its final days and they will be taking their message to the steps of the capitol on April 7 and 8 ahead of Gen Petraeus briefing congress.

Question #13

13. 'Well in my opinion.....'
Stop right there. I didn't ask for you your personal political opinions. Hey, I love a heated political debate, but not in the grocery store, not in Jamba Juice, not at Nordstrom, not in a bar when I'm out with my girls trying to forget the war, and CERTAINLY NOT AT WORK. We tell co-workers about deployments so when we have to spend lunch hours running our asses off doing errands and taking care of the house, dog, and kids, they have an understanding. We do not tell co-workers and colleagues because we are giving an invitation to ramble about politics or because we so eagerly want to hear how much they hate the resident, esp. while we're trying to heat up our lean cuisines in the crappy office microwaves.

GA State Senate Passes Concealed Gun Bill

The NRA made a trip down here to support this legislation. There is a provision that would allow people to keep a gun in their car while at work. The Chamber of commerce didn't like it. The compromise is that those who have a concealed carry permit can.

ATLANTA -- A bill that would expand the rights of Georgians to carry concealed weapons sailed through the state Senate on Thursday, over the objections of some law enforcement groups.
The bill would allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry their weapon in a state park or historic site. And drivers legally eligible to obtain a gun license could also have a weapon in their car, under the legislation.

It passed 41 to 15.

And this is my favorite part of the legislation.

The bill makes it a felony to send "straw purchasers" to attempt to buy guns in Georgia. That was intended as a loud rebuke to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who sued several Georgia gun dealers after they sold pistols to undercover investigators as part of a sting operation.

...the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

This is today's headline.

Georgia gun bill pits business against national gun group

Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association, made a rare appearance in Atlanta to push for passage of a bill that would protect the rights of employees to leave a licensed firearm in their cars while at work. The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is pushing back hard, arguing that companies should be able to set their own policies when it comes to weapons on workplace property.

This was the headline in 1999.

9 dead in Atlanta offices; 3 found dead in suburb
July 29, 1999
I work in one of the buildings shown in the picture.

The Nuge Explains the Second Amendment

A brilliant dose of common sense from Ted Nugent.

Check out the reaction of the guy in the smart glasses.

Via Maggie's Farm.

H/T: Daphne.