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-Land of the Free
Hand over your weapons
2017-11-14
By David Scharfenberg

IN THE AFTERMATH of the Texas church shooting last week, Democratic lawmakers did what they always do: They skewered their Republican colleagues for offering only “thoughts and prayers,” and demanded swift action on gun control.

“The time is now,” said Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, “for Congress to shed its cowardly cover and do something.”

Trouble is, it’s not clear the “something” Democrats typically demand would make a real dent in the nation’s epidemic of gun violence. Congress can ban assault weapons, but they account for just a tiny sliver of the country’s 33,000 annual firearm deaths. And tighter background checks will do nothing to cut down on the 310 million guns already in circulation.

In other words, the proposals aren’t just difficult to enact in the current political climate; their practical effects would also be quite limited. On occasion, though, leading Democrats will make oblique reference to a more sweeping policy change: seizing a huge number of weapons from law-abiding citizens.
The second step in the one-two dance of confiscation.
At a New Hampshire forum in the fall of 2015, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke approvingly of an Australian gun buyback program that collected more than 650,000 weapons — a buyback that, she neglected to mention, was compulsory.
"Buyback" is a false term. It suggests that private property paid out of private pockets somehow belong to the government in exchange for printed money. It is also false because, paid or not, it was confiscation. Inasmuch as the constitution mandates the government sufficiently compensate individuals when taking their property, it first says shall not be be infringed.
And just a few months earlier, then-President Barack Obama offered coded support for the same confiscatory approach. “When Australia had a mass killing — I think it was in Tasmania — about 25 years ago, it was just so shocking, the entire country said, ‘Well, we’re going to completely change our gun laws,’ and they did,” he said.
Bully for them.
Democrats have even let the word “confiscation” slip out, on occasion. After the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. in 2012, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a radio interview that when it came to assault weapons “confiscation could be an option, mandatory sale to the state could be an option.”
New York has mandated AR registrations, to which New Yorkers responded enthusiastically with one out of 20 actually registering their ARs. The law is being open flouted, as it should be, with 95 percent of gun owners refusing to play the left's game of registration, the first step in the one-dance dance of confiscation. The law is a spectacular failure.
It was an option Cuomo didn’t pursue. But five years after that slaughter of schoolchildren — and with fresh tales of murdered kids on the floor of a Texas church — might gun-control advocates expand their agenda?
Please, be my guest, expand your agenda to include theft of property no rightly belonging to the state. It fits your criminal views of the relationship of the government to the individual.
The logic of gun control lies, at bottom, in substantially reducing the number of deadly weapons on the street — and confiscation is far and away the most effective approach. Is there any conceivable turn of events in our politics that could make confiscation happen? And what would a mass seizure look like?
I suspect that popcorn futures would go through the roof. This criminal advocate should know that some of us are prepared to defend our rights through every means at hand, including active and passive resistance.
ON APRIL 28, 1996 a deranged man named Martin Bryant used a semi-automatic rifle to slaughter 12 people in 15 seconds at the Broad Arrow cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, a popular tourist spot on the site of a former Australian prison colony.

He killed eight more in the gift shop, and several others in the parking lot. And as he drove away, he came across Nanette Mikac and her two daughters fleeing the scene.

Bryant told Mikac to get on her knees and as she wailed, “Please don’t hurt my babies,” he blew a hole through her forehead and fired several shots into her 3-year-old, Madeline. Alannah, 6, ran into the woods and Bryant gave chase. When he found her curled up behind a tree, he put his gun to her neck and fired.

Bryant, who killed 35 people that Sunday afternoon, shocked Australia into action.
A terrible act by a hostile individual, to be sure.
It took just 12 days for conservative Prime Minister John Howard to announce a full slate of gun restrictions in a nation with a long tradition of frontier firearms. There was a ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons and shotguns, an extensive registration system, and a 28-day waiting period between getting a permit and buying a gun.
Not noted is the fact that only about 20 percent of firearms were actually turned in. Despite stampeding their legislators into an act of government overreach, Australians flipped off the law and the people who conceived of it.
But the centerpiece was the mandatory buyback, with a temporary tax financing the multimillion dollar purchase of hundreds of thousands of weapons deemed illegal under the new law.
A national government using its sovereign power to print money to aid in their criminal act of theft of private property.
Some feared resistance. Howard, at one point, wore a bulletproof vest during a speech to a group of gun rights supporters. But the buyback went forward peacefully, and it claimed an estimated one-fifth of Australia’s gun stock — one of the largest gun confiscations in modern history.
SMFD
The seizure and the other gun control measures seem to have had a significant effect. Since passage of the law, the country hasn’t seen a single mass shooting — defined as a killing of five or more people, not including the gunman.
So, despite the twisting of phrases there have been mass shootings since.
A study by researchers at Australian National University and Wilfrid Laurier University found a 59 percent drop in the firearm homicide rate and a 65 percent decline in the firearm suicide rate in the decade after the law was introduced. And while critics have noted the firearm death rate was already declining before passage of the legislation, the data show it dropped twice as fast afterward.
Statistics
Here in the United States, interest in large-scale gun buybacks — both voluntary and involuntary — has mounted with each mass shooting. Matt Miller, a journalist and onetime senior fellow with the left-leaning Center for American Progress, has proposed what he calls a “massive, debt-financed” buyback.

The idea is to supersize the small-scale, voluntary buybacks that happen in American cities — offering hundreds of dollars more per weapon in a bid to make them more effective. “Instead of $200 a gun, Uncle Sam might offer $500,” Miller wrote, in an opinion piece in the Washington Post after Sandy Hook. “After all, overpaying powerful constituencies to achieve public policy goals is a time-honored American tradition; we do it every day with Medicare drug benefits and defense contractors, to name just two.”
Welfare, public broadcasting and the arts to name two more.
John Rosenthal, co-founder and chairman of Massachusetts-based Stop Handgun Violence, says it may be time to embrace a mandatory buyback — the relentless tide of mass shootings leaving weary activists with little choice.

“I am so struggling right now to find the strength to keep going,” he said earlier this week, a day after the Texas church shooting. “And guess what, I have been thinking a lot about Australia. They had that one horrific event, with 35 killed, with an assault weapon. They banned them, they bought them back — and there hasn’t been a mass shooting since.”
John, you should seek counseling. It sounds like you need it badly.
It’s a model the Aussies themselves have been touting to any Americans who will listen — suggesting it could succeed in the United States with a little political courage, especially on the right.
No need t worry about the right going along. They have been playing the outraged conservative role so much, you'd think they'd get an Oscar for their performance. No need to worry about the right. You'll get, at the very least, a number of golden throats and writers on the right going right along with such a scheme.
In Australia “many farmers resented being told to surrender weapons they had used safely all of their lives,” wrote Howard, the former prime minister, in The New York Times a few years ago. “Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair. Many of them had been lifelong supporters of my coalition and felt bewildered and betrayed by these new laws. I understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative.”
You'll notice he let his feelings get in the way of doing the right thing.
THE TROUBLE WITH all of this is that America is not Australia.
First thing the writer has gotten right so far.
As Howard himself has noted, Australia is a more intensely urban society than the United States, meaning there is a larger natural constituency for gun control Down Under — and a smaller rural opposition.

The Australian gun lobby, moreover, is not as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association. And the Aussies don’t have a constitutionally protected right to bear arms.
Wow, second thing the writer has gotten right. He's on a roll.
While the Second Amendment isn’t absolute — no less than conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that it’s “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose”— it would undoubtedly serve as the basis for a robust legal challenge to any involuntary buyback program. And the courts would not be the only site of resistance.
Courts as a site of resistance. Please. They have been driving on the wrong side of the road on guns since my own recent memory. They'll be like the right. Theft and murder? No problem! We'll sign off on it.
Gun culture runs especially deep in a country born of violent rebellion. And over the last couple of decades, firearms have become one of the most important fault lines in American culture. It is hard to overstate the devotion — or if you prefer, the fanaticism — of the 3 percent of the population that owns half the guns in circulation.
Circulation. And not all guns, either, assuming the statistics are correct, which I will not concede.
Many of those hard-core gun owners see their weapons as a guard against government overreach. And sending government agents to claim them could end very, very badly. An NRA article on the specter of Australian-style confiscation coming to the United States is subtitled “There Will Be Blood.”
It's called cost and it will be borne by both sides.
Part of the problem is the sheer scale of the enterprise. An operation on par with the Australian buyback — claiming one-fifth of American guns — would mean tens of thousands of police officers collecting some 60 million guns. It is, on some level, simply unimaginable.

But perhaps gun-control advocates can propose something smaller — something more targeted.
Targeted. Good one.
Before Elliot Rodger killed six and wounded 14 in a shooting spree in Santa Barbara, Calif. in 2014, his mother and a social worker raised concerns with the police. But because Rodger had broken no law, there was nothing law enforcement could do.

After the rampage, California lawmakers passed a measure allowing family members to seek court orders seizing guns from disturbed people before they can hurt anybody. Similar laws are in place in Washington, Indiana, and Connecticut. And legislators in 18 other states, including Massachusetts, considered so-called “extreme risk protective order” legislation this year, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Laura Cutilletta, legal director for the Giffords Law Center, says Devin Kelley, the Texas church killer, would have been a “perfect candidate” for an order of this kind. “People knew that there was something going on with him,” she says. “He was sending threatening messages to his mother-in-law. . . . He had [committed] domestic violence and animal abuse.”
What is not mentioned is that the order can be ex parte. Who remembers the heady days after the Lautenberg Amendment, when protective orders were given out on mere accusation with little basic for fact, and when sanctions were applied to incidents that happened decades ago. It hit another common law principle. Ex post facto. Gone by merely signing a law into effect. In the new order, the individual subjected to the order will have no recourse and no day in court. A woman can just go to the courts, lie like a rug, and boom, instant revenge, all sponsored by the state. It is "perfect" because it hits all the right buttons the left wants to hit. Destruction of the family, destruction of the individual's rights, and gun confiscation. And the best part, 20 years on, the right cheerily supports the latest madness.
Cutilletta says restraining orders and other measures designed to deprive the most dangerous people of guns — like background checks and tighter restrictions on domestic abusers — are more politically viable, and legally defensible, than gun confiscation. And they can have an impact, she says: States with tougher gun laws have fewer firearm-related deaths.
Not the way I heard it. But I guess the writer got the quote he wanted. Well done.
Still, even if we find a way to keep guns out of the hands of people who have engaged in disturbing or violent behavior — no small task, given all the stories of the troubled shooters who slipped through the cracks — it will only get us so far.

The United States’ astronomically high rates of firearm violence aren’t rooted in some unique American propensity for derangement and delinquency. Studies show our levels of mental illness and basic criminality are on par with other wealthy countries.
Whatever happened to pure evil? You can't tell who is crazy, but you can tell who is evil. And the best way to prepare for evil, either from an individual or from a government high on printed money.
Other common explanations, like the social fissures created by our racial diversity, have been debunked by researchers, too. The only explanation left — an explanation borne out by a number of careful studies — is the sheer size of the American arsenal. There are 310 million handguns, shotguns, and semi-automatic weapons in American homes, garages, and waistbands.
Rookie numbers. We can do better.
Ultimately, if gun-control advocates really want to stanch the blood, there’s no way around it: They’ll have to persuade more people of the need to confiscate millions of those firearms, as radical as that idea may now seem.
Link


Down Under
Thousands of Guns Handed over in Australia Amnesty
2017-08-09
[AnNahar] More than 6,000 guns have been surrendered in Australia's most populous state in just one month, police said Tuesday, after fears of terrorism and an influx of illegal firearms sparked a national amnesty.

The government said in June it believed there were as many as 260,000 illicit weapons on the streets, and with the threat of bully boy attacks and a spate of gangland shootings, it wanted to minimise the danger.
Australia has six states and two mainland territories, so that averages 36,667 illegal weapons in each.
Among the weapons handed over in New South Wales were four SKS assault rifles, a 9mm homemade sub-machine gun, a Colt AR-15 rifle, M1 carbine and a .44 calibre magnum revolver, state police said.

In total, some 1,700 rifles, 460 shotguns and nearly 200 handguns were surrendered to police and dealers, while thousands of others were handed in for registration.
So really, 2,360 guns were turned in, while somewhat more than 3,640 were registered.
"We've also received more than 110 prohibited weapons including samurai swords, knives, and other edged weapons," Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Hoffman said.
...plus 110 other weapons not included in the count, unless we're really going for total illegal weapons, in which case it's 2,470, or 6.7% of what's out there. And of course, they were turned in by the law-abiding, who won't be committing acts of terror.
No official figures have been announced yet for other states and territories.

The amnesty runs from July 1 until September 30, allowing people to hand in unregistered or unwanted firearms with no questions asked. Outside that period people face fines of up to Aus$280,000 (US$222,000) or 14 years' jail.

Gun control measures continue to have strong public support in Australia.

The national firearms amnesty is the first since the 1996 Port Arthur mass shooting that claimed 35 lives. More than 600,000 weapons were destroyed in the aftermath of that attack, during a gun buy-back in which compensation was offered.
Best case scenario is that 18,800 guns will be turned in for destruction this time, or 7.2% of what is believed to be out there, while the crime syndicates will happily and illegally import more.
Then-prime minister John Howard also enacted tougher gun laws, including bans on certain weapons such as rapid-fire rifles and shotguns, a minimum ownership age and licences.

All guns in Australia must be registered, but many arrive illegally from overseas through organised syndicates.

Australian officials have grown increasingly concerned over the threat of bully boy attacks and have prevented 13 on home soil since September 2014.

Several terror attacks have taken place in Australia in recent years, including a Sydney cafe siege in 2014 which saw two hostages killed.
Link


Home Front: Culture Wars
This Week in Books - May 1st, 2016
2016-05-01
Pegasus Bridge
Stephen Ambrose
Simon and Schuster, 1988

An informative, exciting, short book chronicling The Ox and Bucks capture of Pegasus Bridge in the opening moments of Operation Overlord. I will let Mr. Ambrose explain why he chose this topic: (Pages 11-12)

The third bridge (he mentioned Remagen and Arhem - ed), Pegasus, remains better known in the United Kingdom than in the United States, even though it was a featured section of the movie version of Ryan's The Longest Day and is covered in every extended account of the invasion. But no book-length account has appeared.

I first became attracted to the story on June 7, 1981. I was at Pegasus Bridge with a group of American veterans and their wives, leading a tour of World War II battlefields. We had examined the bridge, marveled at the skill of the glider pilots, visited the small museum. I had just got the group back on the bus and was ready to move out - behind schedule as always - when a white haired man, leaning on a cane, stopped me as I boarded the bus and asked, "I say, are any of you chaps from the British Sixth Airborne Division?"

"No, sir," I replied, "we're Americans on this bus."
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be sorry," I answered. "We're all rather proud to be Americans. Were you in the Sixth Airborne?"
"I was indeed," he replied. "I'm Major John Howard."

Mr. Ambrose builds an understanding of the participants using interviews of the, at that time, living survivors of this action, including Major Howard. Chapter 2 is titled, "D-Day Minus Two Years", so we really have a chance to get to know the people - soldiers, glider pilots, tug pilots - and what they had to do to prepare themselves for Operation Deadstick. As D-Day approaches, the accounts begin to take on tension. (Page 65)

"The capture of the bridges will be a coup de main operation depending largely on surprise, speed, and dash for success," the orders read. "Provided the bulk of your force lands safely, you should have little difficulty in overcoming the known opposition on the bridges. Your difficulties will arise in holding off an enemy counterattack on the bridges, until you are relieved."

Turning specifically to the subject of counterattack, Poett's orders continued, "You must expect a counterattack any time after" 0100 hours, or within an hour of landing. "This attack may take the form of a battle group consisting of one company infantry in lorries, up to eight tanks and one or two guns mounted on lorries, or it may be a lorried infantry company alone, or infantry on foot." The most likely line of approach for the counterattacking force would be from the west.

After landing, all hell breaks loose in one of the opening actions all along Normandy; this part is famously represented in the movie The Longest Day: (Pages 93-94)

Back in the Benouville whorehouse, Private Bonck had just unlaced his boots. On the bridge, Private Romer had just passed his fellow sentry at the midpoint and was approaching the eastern end. Brotheridge and his platoon came rushing up the embankment. As the shot aimed at Howard broke the silence, Romer saw twenty-two British airborne troops, appearing so far as he was concerned literally out of nowhere, in their camouflaged battle smocks, their faces grotesquely blacked, giving the most eerie sensation of a blending of savagery and civilization, the civilization half of it represented by the Stens and Brens and Enfields they carried on their hips, ready to fire.

They were coming at Romer at a steady trot, as determined a group as Romer thought he would ever encounter. Romer could see in a flash, by the way the men carried their weapons, by the look in their eyes and by the way their eyes darted around, all white behind the black masks, that they were highly trained killers who were determined to have their way that night. Who was he to argue with them, an eighteen-year-old schoolboy who scarcely knew how to fire his rifle.

The accounts of the next 24 hours is amazingly detailed, sometimes minute by minute and play by play. There is violence, of course, but I would not say it is anything compared to D-Day, and Mr. Ambrose is not writing a sick-out book, just letting individual soldier's accounts tell the story. (Page 134)

By 0700, the British 3rd Division was landing at Sword Beach, and the big naval gunfire had lifted to start pounding Caen, en route passing over D Company's position. "They sounded so big," Howard says, "and being poor bloody infantry, we had never been under naval fire before and these damn great shells came sailing over, such a size that you automatically ducked, even in the pillbox, as one went over, and my radio operator was standing next to me, very perturbed about this, and finally Corporal Tappenden said, 'Blimey, sir, they're firing jeeps.' "

It is a short book, with the epilogue ending on page 183, and with Mr. Ambrose's easy style, Pegasus Bridge can be a rather quick read. The pictures are appropriate, mainly focused on the characters and then the bridge and various equipment. I would recommend this book to mature youngsters who have or may have an interest in such subjects, as well as to adults of all ages. Pegasus Bridge is also a good introduction to Mr. Ambrose's works as it is not as overwhelming as some of his other works.

**Looks at Movies - Bonus Movie Review**

The Admiral: Roaring Currents
CJ Entertainment, 2014

This is a Korean movie based upon the Battle of Myeongnyang, 1597. I thought it well acted, if a bit too stylized for my liking towards the beginning. The stylized acting grew on me as the movie progressed, leaving no doubt that this was good guys versus bad guys.

As far as its historical accuracy, I must defer to others, though the movie and the wiki blend well enough. Of course the film must take a few liberties, but I saw no real deal breakers. The rowing vessels are sped up or we would have hours of nothing but rowing, so there are cinematic flow liberties.

Navy fights in film tend to be a bit disappointing. Ben Hur was basically building tension, Master and Commander tried its best to keep up the tension. The Admiral really gets into it, giving an account of navy fighting in the age of oar and cannon. In fact, The Admiral convinces me that something like Lapanto can be replicated in film. "But nobody would do that, it might tickle someone's sensitivities." Not true, as I will show in the next Looks at Movies.

At any rate, The Admiral is a tense, action-packed, not-for-kids movie. What I saw was in Korean with English subtitles. The subtitles were well done with good grammar, and did not distract from the visuals; I have had some practice with subtitles so they quickly disappeared for me.

(Link is to Amazon's Pegasus Bridge)
Link


-Land of the Free
This Week In Guns, October 10th, 2015
2015-10-10


By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

Housekeeping note: The quarterly ammunition summaries are posted, albeit a week late.

It has been some week in the wake of the Umpqua Community College massacre. It seemed that at least three anti-2nd Amendment opinion pieces per day were being published in nationwide publications, and I would bet ten times that many in local news outlets. I tried my best to fisk as many as humanly possible.

A lot of poor thinking was expressed by leftists who want to seize firearms, very poor recitation of Constitutional intent written by people who are supposed to be the top people.

I am not immune to that problem as well. In one opinion piece the author cited the "successful" Australian gun confiscation effort, specifically in this article. The author wrote:

After a 28-year-old man killed 35 people at the Port Arthur historic prison colony in Tasmania, Australia, a popular tourist destination, Prime Minister John Howard and his right-wing Liberal Party banned the importation of all semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns, instituted a mandatory national buyback program for such guns, and convinced state governments to ban the weapons outright. In total, about 650,000 weapons — 20 percent of the country's total arsenal by some estimates — were seized and destroyed.

My remark was this:

Every Australian who believes in liberty and freedom should be ashamed by what happened in 1996.

Do you see the problem? Reading it for the first time you may not. Took me a coupla days to find it. The Australians defied the mandatory gun buyback in spectacular fashion. Their act of defiance was only marginally worse than Connecticut when their AR registration law went into effect. I said at the time their compliance rate was about 18 percent based on Connecticut's own data. 80 percent of the firearms extant in Australia were not turned in for destruction, an incredible statement on human freedom.

Lesson learned: the next time a leftist/fascist writer writes glowingly about the Australian mandatory gun buyback program, you can say the program was a massive failure. My assumption at the time I wrote my response was to believe that the program was a success. It was no such thing. The Australian people defied the government edict to turn in their firearms. Now if they can only get their government to admit it and repeal the law.

A recent data compilation at Weapons Man blog presented a summary of every gun massacre since the spring of 2009. The facts are that 124 individuals were killed in 14 incidents. What stands out is that the laws intended to keeps guns out of the hands of criminals were observed in all but two of those incidents, and in those two, the guns were stolen.

The two most popular calibers used were the 9mm Parabellum and the .40 Smith & Wesson. Semiautomatic rifles in the AR-15 pattern were used in just two of the incidents.

If you take the number of incidents and divide by the number killed, you find that almost nine people were killed per incident, which in my mind means that magazine limits do not work. Some of the shooters brought extra ammunition with them to limited or no effect.

Listening to Mark Steyn on Rush earlier in the week, Steyn recounted the incident in Canada which led to their failed gun registry law. The way he described it was incredible:

In 1989 in École Polytechnique in Montreal, a gunman entered a classroom, separated the men from the women and ordered the men into the hall, which they obediently did. The shooter, Marc Lépine then shot and killed 19 women, then, according to Steyn, then went into the hallway where the men were, and walked right past them. The description was of men who were so cowed that they could do nothing the the face of abject evil.

I have discussed such an incident with meat space company. In the event of being held at gunpoint, you are going to get shot. Or someone is going to get shot. As Steyn said, in such an incident you have only a few seconds to decide whether you are going to get shot on your knees or get shot trying to stop evil.

Not trying to trivialize it, but as the character Dillon in Alien 3 said:

You're all gonna die. The only question is how you check out. Do you want it on your feet? Or on your fuckin' knees... begging? I ain't much for begging!

No word yet on the protest in Roseburg against President Barak Obama's visit to push gun confiscation.

Loads.

Rantburg's summary for arms and ammunition:

Prices for pistol ammunition were mostly unchanged while rifle ammunition prices were mostly steady.

Prices for used pistols were mixed and prices for used rifles were mixed.

The AR-10 pattern .308 NATO rifle again hit a new low in average price nationwide. It is hard to see how much lower the price can go.

New Lows:

.308 NATO (AR-10 Pattern Semiautomatic) Florida: DPMS Oracle RFLR: $500

Pistol Ammunition

.45 Caliber, 230 grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (4 Weeks)
(From Q2, 2015: .27 per round, -.02 Each)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Quality Made Cartridges, Store Brand, RNL, Reloads, .25 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Quality Made Cartridges, Store Brand, RNL, Reloads, .25 per round (From Last week: Unchanged (6 Weeks))

.40 Caliber Smith & Wesson, 180 grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
(From Q2, 2015: .24 per round, -.01 Each)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Freedom Munitions, Store brand, FMJ, Reloads, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Freedom Munitions, Store brand, FMJ, Reloads, .21 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (6 Weeks))

9mm Parabellum, 115 grain, From Last Week: +.01 Each
(From Q2, 2015: .17 per round, +.01 Each)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Bud's Gun Shop, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Cased, .18 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Ammo Clearance, Store Brand, FMJ, Reloads, .16 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (6 Weeks))

.357 Magnum, 158 grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2Q, 2015)
(From Q2, 2015: .28 per round, Unchanged)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel cased, .28 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 1,000 rounds: Surplus Ammo, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel cased, .27 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (9 Weeks))

Rifle Ammunition

.223 Caliber/5.56mm 55 grain, From Last Week: -.02 Each
(From Q2, 2015: .23 per round, -.02 Each)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Midsouth Shooters Supply, Tulammo, steel cased, FMJ, .21 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, steel cased, FMJ, .21 per round (From Last Week: -.01 Each After Unchanged (8 Weeks))

.308 NATO 150 grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
(From Q2, 2015: .45 per round, -.06 Each)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, steel cased, FMJ, .39 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Cheaper Than Dirt!, Tulammo, Steel Cased, FMJ, .36 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (9 Weeks))

7.62x39 AK 123 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
(From Q2, 2015: .24 per round, -.01 Each)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Ammunition Depot, Wolf WPA, steel case, FMJ, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: SG Ammo, Wolf WPA, steel case, .23 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (1Q 2015))

.22 LR 40 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
(From Q2, 2015: .09 per round, -.03 Each)
Cheapest, 20 rounds (10 Box Limit): Natchez Shooters Supplies, Federal Champon, RNL .06 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: MunireUSA, CI Raptor, RNL, .08 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks))

Guns for Private Sale
Rifles

.223/5.56mm (AR Pattern Semiautomatic) Average Price: $476 Last Week Avg: $476 (=) ($616 (26 Weeks), $476 (2 Weeks))
California (267, 265): Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Sport: $500 ($650 (36 Weeks), $400 (5 Weeks))
Texas (299, 306): Mixed Build: $500 ($700 (31 Weeks), $350 (26 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (180, 184): Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Sport: $450 ($700 (25 Weeks), $300 (13 Weeks))
Virginia (207, 206): DPMS (Bull Barrel): $550 ($750 (31 Weeks), $500 (35 Weeks))
Florida (409, 399): DPMS: $380 ($650 (16 Weeks), $380 (28 Weeks))

.308 NATO (AR-10 Pattern Semiautomatic) Average Price: $820 Last Week Avg: $840 (-) ($1,359 (24 Weeks), $820 (CA: $829 (2 Weeks)))
California (52, 50): DPMS: $1,050 ($1,700 (39 Weeks), $850 (9 Weeks))
Texas (59, 66): DPMS: $800 ($1,500 (45 Weeks), $800 (9 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (34, 37): DPMS: $800 ($1,500 (31 Weeks), $700 (2 Weeks))
Virginia (56, 52): Palmetto State Armory: $950 ($1,650 (15 Weeks), $900 (45 Weeks))
Florida (72, 78): DPMS Oracle RFLR: $500 ($1,500 (46 Weeks), $500 (CA: $600 (1 Week))

7.62x39mm (AK Pattern Semiautomatic) Average Price: $528 Last Week Avg: $520 (+) ($626 (27 Weeks), $450 (14 Weeks))
California (46, 44): I.O: $590 ($700 (30 Weeks), $320 (41 Weeks))
Texas (73, 74): Saiga: $600 ($750 (29 Weeks), $350 (47 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (47, 46): Century RAS-47: $400 ($750 (36 Weeks), $375 (21 Weeks))
Virginia (48, 43): Palmetto State Armory: $550 ($625 (32 Weeks), $350 (34 Weeks))
Florida (118, 120): CAI: $500 ($650 (25 Weeks), $300 (45 Weeks))

30-30 Winchester Lever Action Average Price: $375 Last Week Avg: $360 (+) ($489 (33 Weeks), $296 (15 Weeks))
California (9, 8): Marlin 336W: $399 ($500 (8 Weeks), $180 (15 Weeks))
Texas (15, 17): Marlin: $425 ($550 (34 Weeks), $300 (39 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (17, 16): Mossberg 464 SPX: $325 ($450 (35 Weeks), $250 (40 Weeks))
Virginia (11, 11): Mossberg 464 SPX: $400 ($450 (19 Weeks), $350 (37 Weeks))
Florida (21, 19): Mossberg 464 SPX: $325 ($500 (31 Weeks), $250 (17 Weeks))

Pistols

.45 caliber ACP (M1911 Pattern Semiautomatic Pistol) Average Price: $445 Last Week Avg: $405 (+) ($450 (33 Weeks), $350 (6 Weeks))
California (159, 164): Taurus 1911: $425 ($600 (33 Weeks), $300 (11 Weeks))
Texas (237, 234): Springfield: $575 ($600 (44 Weeks), $325 (7 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (143, 143): Girsan: $325 ($550 (23 Weeks), $300 (17 Weeks))
Virginia (124, 130): Rock Island Armory: $450 ($550 (25 Weeks), $250 (42 Weeks))
Florida (367, 369): Rock Island Armory: $450 ($475 (16 Weeks), $250 (31 Weeks))

9mm (Beretta 92FS or other Semiautomatic) Average Price: $276 Last Week Avg: $291 (-) ($336 (28 Weeks), $268 (6 Weeks))
California (148, 152): Kahr CW9: $325 ($450 (33 Weeks), $250 (38 Weeks))
Texas (263, 268): Hi Point: $225 ($355 (32 Weeks), $200 (5 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (206, 215): Diamondback FS9: $250 ($350 (4Q 2014), $200 (12 Weeks))
Virginia (179, 182): Smith & Wesson SW9VE: $300 ($400 (26 Weeks), $250 (12 Weeks))
Florida (432, 431): Beretta Egyptian M1951: $280 ($375 (42 Weeks), $220 (5 Weeks))

.40 caliber S&W (Glock or other semiautomatic) Average Price: $327 Last Week Avg: $350 (-) ($368 (22 Weeks), $300 (48 Weeks))
California (95, 92): Smith & Wesson SW40VE: $280 ($425 (7 Weeks)), $250 (39 Weeks))
Texas (101, 106): Stoeger Cougar 8040F: $350 ($425 (43 Weeks), $275 (25 Weeks))
Pennsylvania (92, 90): Smith & Wesson Sigma: $350 ($350 (14 Weeks), $250 (34 Weeks))
Virginia (87, 94): Smith & Wesson SW40VE: $315 ($450 (22 Weeks), $275 (38 Weeks))
Florida (174, 173): Beretta PX4 Storm: $340 ($400 (32 Weeks), $200 (7 Weeks))

Used Gun of the Week: (Missouri)
Ruger GP-100 Chambered in .357 Magnum

Chris Covert writes for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com and on Twitter
Link


-Land of the Free
What no politician wants to admit about gun control
2015-10-08
President Obama is clearly fed up. His speeches after mass shootings — speeches that have become a bit of a morbid ritual, given how regularly the shootings occur — have grown angrier, more emotional, and more disgusted at America's gun violence problem and Congress's unwillingness to do literally anything to stop it. "This is a political choice that we make," Obama declared Thursday night, after the 294th mass shooting of 2015, "to allow this to happen every few months in America."
I saw a graphic that points out that under Obama, mass shootings are on the rise. Is there a correlation? Dunno.
But let's be clear about precisely what kind of choice this is. Congress's decision not to pass background checks is not what's keeping the US from European gun violence levels. The expiration of the assault weapons ban is not behind the gap. What's behind the gap, plenty of research indicates, is that Americans have more guns. The statistics are mind-blowing: America has 4.4 percent of the world's population but almost half of its civilian-owned guns.
Woo hoo! Arsenal of democracy, baby. That's America!
Realistically, a gun control plan that has any hope of getting us down to European levels of violence is going to mean taking a huge number of guns away from a huge number of gun owners.
I am sure federal and state security forces will get right on that.
Other countries have done exactly that. Australia enacted a mandatory gun buyback that achieved that goal, and saw firearm suicides fall as a result. But the reforms those countries enacted are far more dramatic than anything US politicians are calling for — and even they wouldn't get us to where many other developed countries are.
The writer wants to turn America into a penal colony like Australia, a road which we are fairly well along.
Think about it this way. In 2013, the US had 106.4 gun deaths per million people. In 2011, the last year for which we have numbers, the UK endured 146 gun deaths total — or 2.3 gun deaths per million people.

To get to UK levels, we'd need to reduce gun deaths by nearly 98 percent. Even if we wanted to reach the same levels as Finland — another developed country with a relatively high rate of gun deaths — we'd need to drop from 106.4 deaths per million to 35 — more than a 67 percent reduction.
Forgive my interjection, but, seriously, who gives a flying f*ck how many Finns or Brit are killed by other Finns or Brits? As a matter of fact, who cares about government statistics, which are routinely twisted into a meaningless pretzel which has lost all resemblance to its original form, like our Constitution and how it should be interpreted.
And here's the truth: Even the most ardent gun control advocates aren't pushing measures that could close the gap. Not even close.

Plenty of research has found a strong correlation between the amount of guns in an area and its gun homicide rate. Countries with more guns have more gun homicides. States with more guns have more gun homicides. Individuals with guns in the house are likelier to be killed or to kill themselves with guns.
As I have said repeatedly, the more guns that are in the hands of people the higher the criminal instances of their use. It's just demographics. Freedom is messy and dangerous, and it always has been. You want to turn America into Nerf World, where no one ever gets hurt and everyone pulls down $40k per year without lifting a finger. Good luck with that.
So Australia's 1996 gun control was based on a simple idea: They took away a bunch of guns.
And Australia is a lesser nation for it.
After a 28-year-old man killed 35 people at the Port Arthur historic prison colony in Tasmania, Australia, a popular tourist destination, Prime Minister John Howard and his right-wing Liberal Party banned the importation of all semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns, instituted a mandatory national buyback program for such guns, and convinced state governments to ban the weapons outright. In total, about 650,000 weapons — 20 percent of the country's total arsenal by some estimates — were seized and destroyed.
Every Australian who believes in liberty and freedom should be ashamed by what happened in 1996.
Evaluations after the reforms suggest that they saved lives. A study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University estimated that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people led to a statistically significant drop in firearm suicides — 74 percent, in fact, with no parallel increase in non-firearm suicides. While gun control opponents have tried to rebut those results, those responses have been riddled with methodological flaws, and even some of the study's critics have conceded that the laws likely cut down on suicides.
I won't rebut those claims, except to say those claims are, or at least should be irrelevant to a free people. A suicide only matters if it is someone close or a relative, and even then, I don't demand a hostile government take away firearms as a response.
Determined suicides will choose the most congenial of those methods available to him. If guns are unavailable, other methods will be found. In Japan they regularly jump off mountains and in front of trains.
The results on homicides were a little less clear. Leigh and Neill found that the buyback resulted in a 35 to 50 percent decline in the gun homicide rate, but because of the low number of homicides in Australia normally, this change wasn't statistically significant. Supporters of Australia's policy often argue that no mass shootings have occurred since, which is only true for a certain restrictive definition, as last September a man shot himself, his wife, and their three children in a murder-suicide in rural New South Wales.

There have also been a number of non-gun massacres in the years since the Port Arthur massacre. This past December, a mother in a suburb of Cairns, Queensland, allegedly stabbed to death seven of her own children and one niece. In 2000, a man burned a backpackers' hostel to the ground in Childers, Queensland, killing 15.

But the homicide and mass shooting results are almost beside the point.
First thing this author got right.
Nearly two-thirds of gun deaths in the US are suicides. If we can reduce them by 74 percent, we'd be saving more than 15,000 lives every year. That doesn't get us to where most developed countries are, but it gets us in the ballpark of Finland.
If you like Finland's ball park, plane tickets are cheap, I hear.
The NRA's Wayne LaPierre, a prime reason Australian gun laws could never fly here.
So could it happen in the US? The legal scholars I talked to suggested that an Australia-style program would probably pass muster. If we went further than Australia and also banned handguns, that might cause problems; the Supreme Court struck down Washington, DC's handgun ban in 2008. But Australia's actual system is probably constitutional.
A lot of unconstitutional garbage has been signed off by American courts since 1996 (Obamacare and same sex marriage to name but two), so much so, that their approval of laws that fly in the face of the Constitution makes the laws themselves meaningless.
"Courts have consistently upheld bans on military-style semiautomatic rifles because other firearms are equally useful for self-defense," Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA and author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, says. "Gun control isn't stalled because of the Second Amendment. It's stalled because elected officials won't pass effective new laws to reduce gun violence."

Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas Austin and author of the landmark article "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," concurs: "If such an extraordinary law actually got through Congress (meaning with necessary Republican support), then I find it impossible to imagine that there would be five votes on the Court to say no," he says. "But the real problem, of course, is that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of Congress actually passing any meaningful legislation re guns, let alone this kind of quite radical legislation."

And there's the rub. President Obama occasionally cites Australia in discussions about gun control, but proposals he and congressional Democrats have put forward stop far, far short of what Australia's done. Obama's plan to tackle gun violence focuses on universal background checks for gun sales, banning assault weapons again, and increasing criminal penalties for illicit gun traffickers. That's nowhere near as dramatic as taking 20 percent of America's guns off the street.
But no more dramatic than the image of the bodies littering the homes of people who try to take those guns.
Australia provides strong evidence that a form of gun control can save lives. But it's a form of gun control that's too dramatic for most mainstream American politicians to embrace.

Background checks aren't enough.
Milder, easier-to-pass changes would probably also save lives. But the effect sizes are, unsurprisingly, smaller, and vary considerably depending on the study you're looking at.

For example, researchers have found that:

After Connecticut passed a law requiring gun purchasers to first obtain a license, gun homicides fell by 40 percent and suicides fell by 15.4 percent.
Again, irrelevant. The loss of freedom is a far more important measure than gun registration laws, which are being ignored by gun owners.
When Missouri repealed a similar law, gun homicides increased by 23 percent and suicides increased by 16.1 percent.
Both firearm homicides and overall homicides are lower in states that check for restraining orders (13 percent fewer firearm homicides) and fugitive status (21 percent fewer) before selling guns, and firearm/overall suicides are lower in states that check for fugitive status (5 percent fewer), misdemeanors (5 percent fewer), and mental illness (4 percent fewer).
All meaningless because of the loss of basic rights that are supposed to be guaranteed in the Constitution.
The national assault weapons ban did not decrease gun deaths in the US, though if it had existed longer it might have made certain shootings less lethal. The end of the assault weapon ban did meaningfully increase homicides in Mexico.
A Maryland law banning cheap, crummy handguns might have reduced gun homicides, but this effect was offset in part by customers rushing to purchase the guns before the ban took effect.

There are a few promising items there, especially when it comes to gun licensing. But taken together, this doesn't look like an agenda that can get the US to European rates of gun deaths.
More drivel using statistics that do not address the loss of personal freedoms and liberty. This comes down to resources. The writer wants to government to take as much as they dare: money, guns and lives in order to help growing the size of government; the loss of liberty means nothing...
Link


-Land of the Free
The conservative evasion on guns
2015-10-05
More gun grabbing garbage, this time from E.J. Dionne.
President Obama spoke some of the most important words of his tenure last week in response to the mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore. “This is something we should politicize,” the president said. “It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic.”
And so Obama has. Just saw a graphic from an award winning short story writer about killing anyone with an NRA sticker on their vehicle. Obama's politicization has had the intended effect.
This is something we should politicize. His statement was remarkable for violating the etiquette as to what a leader should say after another slaughter by a deranged gunman and the conventional wisdom about how politicians have to pretend that they are not engaged in politics.
Puleez. Obama has been violating "etiquette" for incidents that should be out of his purview since he took office. The Upmqua massacre was just another show for the cheap seats.
But Obama was forcing us to face reality. It’s politics that has rendered our nation powerless in the face of butchery. There have been at least 142 school shootings since the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, and Congress has done nothing. It’s politics, as Obama said, that makes the U.S. “the only advanced country on Earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months,” and politics that leads our learned legislators to pass laws barring the government from “even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths.”
We reduce gun deaths by having armed citizens. The cops can't be everywhere, but an armed individual can be.
“Politicize” is the right word for another reason: We will not act until politicians start losing elections for opposing even the most modest gun safety measure. We will not act unless political parties that block action lose their majorities. Yes, I am talking about a Republican Party that has completely aligned itself with the interests of gun manufacturers and gun fanatics.
E.J, no one gives a sh*t about gun safety. Your customers -- the left -- want to kill gun owners, and everyone else are doing everything they can to get armed in the face of such incipient hostility of the government and their supporters.
I have criticized timid Democrats for doing the NRA’s bidding, and they need to be challenged in primaries, even if this means putting some of the party’s seats in Congress at risk. But it is the GOP that is institutionally tied to those who insist that gun rights supersede all of our other rights. And I cordially invite House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to prove me wrong.

Engaging in politics also means unmasking rationalizations that may sound plausible but are merely intended to justify pathetic pandering to the forces of evasion and inertia. The most debilitating dodge is to claim that nothing can be done, that nothing works. The gun lobby specializes in isolating a given incident and declaring sagely that this or that particular solution would not have prevented it.
And the gun lobby is arguably correct.
News flash: No law will ever solve every problem or create heaven on Earth. But it is a straight-out lie to assert that stronger gun laws make no difference. Here is the conclusion of a study released in August by National Journal: “The states that impose the most restrictions on gun users also have the lowest rates of gun-related deaths, while states with fewer regulations typically have a much higher death rate from guns.” State laws could be even more effective if they were matched by federal laws that made it harder for guns to get into the wrong hands.
Guns are already difficult to get into even serfs' hands. The last two massacres were from young men who abided by the law, I.E. they were law abiding citizens with evil in their hearts. The laws did not prevent a massacre, but something else: they should never prevent anything. The law is for prescribing punishment for illegal deeds; not preventing illegal or evil acts.
Politicians who go on about American greatness should be ashamed of saying that the United States is the one and only nation that can’t act effectively to solve a problem every other free and democratic country has contained.
Every other "free and democratic" nation has its own unique sets of circumstances. Ours is that the United States is the arsenal of democracy, filled with armed citizens the grand majority of which would never consider an armed and hostile act perpetrated on the unarmed.
Conservatives might usefully listen to former Australian prime minister John Howard, who has noted that he led “a center-right coalition” whose parties represented “virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country.” In other words, his party is a lot like our Republicans.
Spineless?
After a psychologically disturbed man killed 35 people in Tasmania, Howard championed state bans on the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons by Australia’s states, along with a federal ban on their importation. He also sponsored a gun buyback scheme that got almost 700,000 guns — the statistical equivalent of 40 million in the United States — off the streets and destroyed. “Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control,” Howard wrote in the New York Times shortly after the Newtown killings.

Politicizing this struggle means being unrelentingly candid in calling out an American conservative movement that proudly champions law and order but allows itself to be dominated by gun extremists who deride every gun measure that might make our country a little bit safer — no matter how many mass killings we have.
E.J, I will bet you twenny bucks that nearly every "conservative writer -- because that is who we are speaking about -- has never touched nor owns a firearm of any kind. They just know that more firearms laws will not work, even if they had merit, which they do not. Gun laws only makes government safer with all the armed thugs they have on their side. It does nothing for the average serf.
Conservatives all over the world are aghast at our nation’s permissive attitude toward guns. Is a dangerous and harebrained absolutism about weaponry really the issue on which American conservatives want to practice exceptionalism?
Link


Down Under
Aussie ex-Gitmo prisoner seeks to clear his name
2013-11-08
David Hicks, the former Australian Muslim convert held for years in America's notorious Guantanamo Bay prison, will try to clear his name through an appeal against his conviction for providing material support for terrorism. The crime did not exist at the time of his arrest and did not come into force until five years later. The legal team representing Hicks also alleges he was tortured.

Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by Northern Alliance troops and sold to United States forces for $1000. He was held for more than six years at Gitmo before being returned to Australia, where was treated as a pariah by former Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal government and called a "traitor" in the media.

Unlike Britain and the governments of other nationals held in the prison, Australia made no efforts to free Hicks or demand an early trial, accepting the US position without question. Howard said, "He knowingly joined the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I don't have any sympathy for any Australian who's done that."

Hicks, who renounced Islam at Gitmo, is now challenging his conviction in the US Court of Military Commission after a Court of Appeals ruling last year that the charge could not be applied retrospectively. His lawyers also said in court documents that Hicks' guilty plea had been forced by his extended detention, torture and abuse.

The documents said, "Over the course of more than five years, Mr Hicks was repeatedly beaten, sexually assaulted, threatened with deadly violence, injected with unknown substances and subjected to an entire arsenal of psychological gambits ... that had as their aim the destruction of his personality. He was stripped naked, deprived of sleep for extended periods, cast into solitary confinement, contorted into shapes that no human body should be forced to assume, and told that he would never again set foot on his native soil."
Link


Down Under
Buddhist leader in Australia calls for deportation of hate cleric
2013-08-26
An Islamic preacher in Adelaide who called for the death of all Buddhists and Hindus should be kicked out of the country, says the head of Australia's Buddhist community.

Australian Buddhist Councils Federation president Kim Hollow said that comments in a video sermon by Sheikh Sharif Hussein urging Allah to kill Buddhists and Hindus "to the very last one" were deplorable and incited hatred and retribution. Hollow said most Muslims in Australia were "peace-loving people" - but urged officials to apply the maximum penalty if the sheikh was charged for the statements.

He said, "Whatever remedies are available through the law should be applied. People who cannot peacefully coexist in this country . . . should be deported. We condemn it, it's totally unacceptable . . . these comments are just as hurtful to the community as physical crimes. We encourage peace-­loving Muslims to deal with these people seriously and try to shut them down."

The South Australian Islamic Society has repeatedly condemned the comments and tried to distance itself from the sheikh. The society's treasurer, Waleed Alkhazrajy, said, "The virtue of tolerance and acceptance of people from different religious and political affiliations will always guide the efforts of the Muslim community in their endeavour to continue to contribute to and be an essential part of the wider Australian community." .

This week by the Middle East Media Research Institute published footage showing the Tunisian-born preacher calling Australian soldiers "Crusader pigs" and attacking Jews, former prime minister John Howard and US President Barack Obama.

Police are investigating a video of his sermon for potential "hate crimes". Friends claim it was a heavily edited recording taken from several sermons and "grossly" misrepresented him.
Hmm. Where have I heard that before?
Police visited the sheikh on Thursday and told him they have concerns for his safety. The father-of-six used to preach at the Park Holme Mosque, which in 2007 the Australian government blocked from receiving $250,000 in Saudi Arabian funding.

The Islamic Da'wah Centre was critical of coverage of the issue. A statement on its website said, "We . . . do not condone or support any form of violence or hatred against any group of people whether in Australia or abroad. We condemn any form of sensational fearmongering which is passed off as journalism in the mainstream media."

The Sunday Mail will pay for a one-way ticket back to Tunisia for the sheikh if he calls us on 8206 2000.
Link


Afghanistan
No pattern to rogue Afghan attacks: Australian PM
2011-11-22
[Dawn] Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday said Australia would not abandon Afghanistan, despite suffering a spate of deadly attacks by rogue Afghan troops.

In an address to parliament on the decade-old conflict, Gillard said there was no evidence to suggest the attacks, in which four Australians have died this year, were part of a pattern.

In the worst of three incidents this year, an Afghan opened fire on a parade in October, killing three Australians and wounding seven others.

In May, an Australian lance corporal was rubbed out by an Afghan with whom he was sharing guard duties at a patrol base in the Chora Valley, and earlier this month an Afghan soldier opened fire on Australians, seriously wounding three.

The attacks have prompted renewed debate about Australia's involvement in the war, to which it was first committed in late 2001 by then-prime minister John Howard. It withdrew and then redeployed in 2005.

Delivering her annual statement on Afghanistan, Gillard insisted progress was being made and that the 1,550 troops based mostly in the southern province of Uruzgan were on track to hand over the lead role on security by 2014.

"Australia will not abandon Afghanistan," she said.

Australian troops are training the Afghan National Army's 4th Brigade and Gillard said the timing on completely handing over to Afghan forces in Uruzgan "may well be complete before the end of 2014" given progress being made there.

While this would lead to a drawing down of Australian forces in the country, she repeated her stance that Canberra would be engaged in Afghanistan through this decade at least.

Gillard said she had discussed a long-term partnership with Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai
... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use...
 during their meeting in Kabul last month, adding the government would consider keeping Special Forces troops there beyond 2014.
Link


Down Under
Australia ex-PM: We went too far accommodating Muslims!
2010-09-30
Australia's former prime minister John Howard has attacked "multiculturalism" in English-speaking nations, saying that some sectors have gone too far in accommodating Muslim minorities.

The blunt-talking conservative, who led Australia for 11 years before losing 2007 elections, said Tuesday on a visit to Washington that the "Anglosphere" needed to take greater pride in its values and achievements.
According to the Kos Kiddies, we don't have any ...
"This is a time not to apologize for our particular identity but rather to firmly and respectfully and robustly reassert it," Howard said at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

"I think one of the errors that some sections of the English-speaking world have made in the last few decades has been to confuse multiracialism and multiculturalism," Howard said.

Howard pointed in particular to Britain, whose Muslim community came under a spotlight after the 2005 bombings on the London transport system.

"I am a passionate believer in multiracialism. I believe that societies are enriched if they draw, as my country has done, from all parts of the world on a non-discriminatory basis and contribute, as the United States has done, to the building of a great society," he said.

"But when a nation draws people from other parts of the world, it draws them because of the magnetism of its own culture and its own way of life," Howard said.
Something about a 'melting pot' ...
"People want to live in the United States not because of some futuristic ideal of multiculturalism, but because of what they regard as the American way of life and American values," he said.
Sometimes those immigrants value the American way and American values more than do the folks who were borne here ...
While in office, Howard faced criticism from his opponents that he aggravated anti-Islamic sentiment through tough anti-terrorism laws and tighter immigration controls, including a test on "Australian values."

Howard said he welcomed Australian Muslims and hailed the recent election of Ed Husic, the son of Bosnian migrants, as his country's first Muslim member of parliament.

But Howard, who enthusiastically supported former US president George W. Bush's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, warned that Islamic radicalism posed a real threat.

He criticized those who would make cultural identity "mushy and unclear and undistinct," rejecting the "assumption that the way to win favor from extremism is to make yourself a little more attractive to that extremism."
Sorta like Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, they always demand that you step over one more line ...
Howard hailed what he called the values of political freedom and rule of law of five "Anglosphere" nations -- Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.

Howard said that India shared some characteristics with the group. He also called for greater cooperation with Indonesia -- which he hailed as an emerging model for moderate young Muslims -- and Japan.

But Howard said that the "Anglosphere" clearly held different values than China. Howard's Labor Party successors have sought to expand relations with China, a major consumer of Australia's raw materials.
Expanding relations is fine; just remember the Chinese have a different view of the 21st century, and who is to rule it ...
Howard said his government maintained strong ties with China but added that the key to the relationship was to focus on business and "not to obsess about our philosophically different approaches to the challenges of the world."
Link


Down Under
Aussie PM backs snapping ties with British monarchy
2010-08-18
[Arab News] Australia should drop its ties to the British monarchy after Queen Elizabeth's reign, the prime minister said Tuesday, raising the contentious issue of a republic just days before tightly contested national elections.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose center-left Labor Party has long held that the country should dump the British monarch as its head of state and become a republic, said Australians have "deep affection" for Queen Elizabeth but that she should be Australia's final monarch.

"What I would like to see as prime minister is that we work our way through to an agreement on a model for the republic," Gillard told reporters. "I think the appropriate time for this nation to move to be a republic is when we see the monarch change. Obviously I'm hoping for Queen Elizabeth that she lives a long and happy life, and having watched her mother I think there's every chance that she will." The queen is 84, and her mother lived to age 101.

Many Australians are British immigrants or descendants who feel strong loyalty to Britain and the queen, but younger Australians especially view the idea of a foreign royal being the country's highest power as anachronistic.

The British monarch is formally Australia's head of state, and its representative, the governor general, swears in the government and signs legislation into law. Australian coins bear the queen's profile. Governing power, however, resides with the elected government.

Many members of the opposition Liberal Party are monarchists, and its leader, Tony Abbot, said he sees no need to change the status quo. "I think that our existing constitutional arrangements have worked well in the past and I see no reason whatsoever why they can't continue to work well in the future," Abbott told the National Press Club.

"So while there may very well be future episodes of republicanism in this country, I am far from certain - at least in our lifetimes - that there is likely to be any significant change." Opinion polls indicate Saturday's election may be Australia's closest in decades, and both sides are focusing their campaigns on a handful of districts held by small margins. The comments by Gillard and Abbott are likely to influence some voters.

Gillard's party wants to replace the governor general with a president. Parliament would retain its power to rule, with the president a largely symbolic figure.

During national debates in the 1990s, the issue divided Australians. Replacing the monarchy with a president elected by Parliament was voted down in a 1999 referendum.

Some critics accused then-Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch monarchist, of ensuring victory for the "no" side by including the method of the president's election in the question. Many republicans wanted the president chosen by popular vote instead of by Parliament.
Link


-Obits-
RIP Richard Todd, War Hero, Star Of The Dam Busters and The Longest Day
2009-12-04
Richard Todd, the actor, who died on December 3 aged 90, was one of the first British officers to land in Normandy in advance of the main D-Day landings and went on to become Britain's highest-earning matinee idol of the post-war years; his most memorable role was that of Wing Commander Guy Gibson, VC, in The Dam Busters (1955), a film he carried with the help of Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis.

Handsome, blue-eyed and with an erect military bearing, Todd enjoyed the unusual distinction of appearing in films about D-Day in which the role of his wartime self was played by other actors.

As an officer in the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion, he had not only been one of the first to land in Normandy, he had also been among the first to meet the glider force, under the command of Major John Howard, defending Pegasus Bridge, a scene memorably recreated in two epic films in which Todd later starred. In D-Day, the Sixth of June (1956), he played the commanding officer of his unit who vies for the affections of Dana Wynter with his Yank rival Robert Taylor.

In The Longest Day (1962), which was based on the book of the same name by the Telegraph special war correspondent Cornelius Ryan, Todd took the role of Howard, performing one scene opposite the actor playing himself (a role he turned down because "I did not do anything special that would make a good sequence").

"I was, in effect, standing beside myself talking to myself," he noted.
Link



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