by Bob Barr | Jun 10, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller In a move to burnish his already well-known anti-firearms credentials, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has unveiled a list of gun control measures he will press the commonwealth’s legislature to adopt in a special session as early as late June. Predictably, his proposals miss the mark widely. While Northam’s announcement came within days of the May 31st shooting rampage in Virginia Beach by a former municipal worker, the proposed measures reflect steps that already could have been taken by government officials, or consist of proposals that would not have prevented the murderer’s actions. Unsurprisingly of course, facts and substance took a back seat to political and emotional triggers. Unlike the mass murderer in Parkland, Florida last year — who exhibited clear evidence of mental problems and of an intent to commit murder by firearms — Virginia Beach killer DeWayne Craddock appears to have had no known or visible history of violence or of intent to engage in such horrific acts as he did. The “red flag law” Northam demands — which seriously undermines fundamental guarantees of due process as embodied in the Bill of Rights — would not have been applicable to Craddock. Northam predictably includes mandatory “universal background checks” among the proposed solutions to mass murders such as committed by Craddock. However, by all accounts, there was nothing in Craddock’s background that would have prevented him from legally acquiring — as he did — the pair of handguns that were the instruments of his evil. The governor takes aim also at “high capacity” magazines and “silencers” (one of which apparently was used by Craddock) among the...
by Bob Barr | Jun 5, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com We defenders of the Second Amendment are no stranger to disinformation and ignorance by the Left when it comes to issues regarding firearms in America. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” routinely manipulates gun violence statistics to fit its narrative. The mainstream media still appears willfully ignorant about what is an “assault weapon,” even though they use the term amply in their reporting. And, who can forget Virginia state Delegate Joe Morrissey’s inane rant against gun violence while holding an AK47-style rifle as fellow members pleaded with him to remove his finger from the trigger (a basic rule of gun safety). Yet, an editorial from the Washington Post last weekend sets a new standard for mind-boggling superficiality when it comes to the Left’s lack of understanding about firearms. The editorial itself is a laughably weak criticism of sound suppressors like the one used in last week’s tragic mass murder in Virginia Beach; but one paragraph in particular truly catches the knowledgeable reader’s eye. The author is Juliette Kayyem, a faculty chair of the homeland security program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; and she writes, “In terms of death-to-time ratio, single-shot weapons are preferable to multi-round handguns and handguns are preferable to the semiautomatic, and the favorite of mass shooters, the AR-15.” Say what? In no way whatsoever does this text make any sense; not mechanically, not factually, and not even grammatically. Still, Kayyem doubles-down on her polemic by boasting on Twitter that her critics were simply “mansplaining” firearms to her because she “know[s] something about guns.” Her editorial suggests otherwise. However, the incoherence of Kayyem’s screed and the smugness with which it...
by Bob Barr | May 29, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com When America’s first red light camera system was installed in Jackson, Mississippi in 1992, it was hailed as the beginning of a program that would save lives, improve driving skills, and free police officers from having to monitor busy intersections. The devices sprang up at intersections in cities large and small across the country; fueled by the huge amount of money the devices generated for local governments (and for the private companies that actually owned and operated the cameras and the accompanying software). Defense lawyers, civil libertarians and privacy experts raised serious concerns about the constitutionality of the devices and questioned the manner by which fines were being levied on owners of vehicles nabbed by the electronic cameras. Many complaints focused on the fact that the devices were designed more to generate revenue than for safety. Not surprisingly, however, when questioned about the propriety or legality of charging drivers with expensive traffic offenses, local officials would claim with straight faces that revenue was not the primary – or even a secondary – reason for installing and using the devices; and the money kept rolling in. But something odd was happening at many of the intersections monitored by red light cameras. Even as the number of citations issued for running a red light at such locations increased dramatically, so too did accidents. Studies of this counter-intuitive phenomenon revealed that at camera-monitored intersections, accidents were occurring because drivers – fearful of being caught on camera slipping through a light just before it changed from yellow to red – were slamming on their brakes, and either rear-ending the vehicle in front...
by Bob Barr | May 28, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller You can’t be tried twice for the same offense. The concept of being free from “double jeopardy” is a right that has been recognized in law for thousands of years. The ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish legal systems incorporated the principle of double jeopardy in their judicial codes. So fundamental has this right been viewed, that it survived even the ravages visited upon the rule of law during the Dark Ages. The right of a person to be free from being “twice put in jeopardy of life or limb” found its way into the core of our Bill of Rights. Now, in the latest example of a liberal state government placing its hatred of President Trump above respect for long-standing legal tradition, the New York General Assembly has decided to weaken the protection against double jeopardy heretofore enjoyed by those within its borders. First, a note of background. In our federal system of governing, power is shared between the federal and the several state governments, with each constituting a separate and legal “sovereign” empowered and entitled to enforce its code of criminal law; even if doing so places an individual at risk of a successive prosecution for the same offense. Notwithstanding what appears on its face to be an exercise in “double jeopardy,” the U.S. Supreme Court has long permitted the practice (but a case currently before the High Court for decision could change that). However, recognizing the fundamental unfairness resulting from this application of “dual sovereignty,” many states, including New York, have enacted laws that prevent state prosecutors from bringing criminal charges against a person...
by Bob Barr | May 22, 2019 | Uncategorized |
Townhall.com Since 1926, the SAT has served as the standard of scholastic assessment for college-bound students. Each year, some two million high school students pay at least $47.50 to take the exam, which is virtually mandatory for acceptance into any competitive college or university in the United States. Although never meant to be a perfect barometer of college success, the SAT has been a well-regarded instrument for helping to identify high achieving students for nearly a century. Until now. Some Brainiac, or a committee thereof, has decided that in order to remain “relevant” (or something), the test must broaden its platform to calculate more than a student’s ability to master scholastic problems involving math, language and other subject areas heretofore considered a relevant measure of academic performance. It will now be designed to measure the “adversity” in which the test-taker lives or has lived. If that sounds nonsensical; it is. The College Board, which is the private non-profit organization that developed the SAT and oversees its administration, announced it would be adding a special “bonus” score in addition to the standard scores for math and language; factors unrelated to the test taker’s raw test results. Resembling more an exercise in alchemy to divine a student’s true, intrinsic ability as distinct from their actual test results, the “adversity score” will be based on a concoction of circumstantial factors such as family income, neighborhood crime and poverty levels, and housing environments. As Inside Higher Ed notes, this data will come from the College Board’s own databases containing information on U.S. high schools and surrounding areas; though it is problematically unclear from where the...
by Bob Barr | May 16, 2019 | Uncategorized |
The Daily Caller Late last month, President Trump signed an executive memorandum officially notifying the United Nations that the United States was withdrawing its support for a United Nations-backed treaty former Secretary of State John Kerry signed in 2013. With this action — “un-signing” a treaty document — Trump sent a clear, unambiguous, and long-overdue signal to the domestic and international gun control movement, that since 2001 had been pressing for a U.N. foothold to regulate firearms use and possession within our country: “Back off!” In signing this document, Trump drove a stake into the heart of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT); and our Second Amendment is the stronger for that action. Oh, the outcry from the left! New Jersey’s Bob Menendez, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wailed that in taking this “disturbing” action, Trump was “[jeopardizing] U.S. security.” Rachel Stohl, managing director for the Stimson Center in the nation’s capital, somehow concluded that the president’s action will “harm the American economy.” The common catchword by these and other globalists in describing the ATT that is now dead to the United States, was — as always for the gun control movement – “common sense.” In fact, there was nothing “common sense” about this document and the ongoing process to make it the operative mechanism for international gun control. Always seeking relevance and power since it was established in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the U.N. has worked for nearly two decades to shoehorn gun control into its “world peace” mission. In this, it has been strikingly successful, with some 130 countries signing the ATT and over 100 actually...
