Newest piece at Fox News: “Hidden consequences of Washington State's gun background check Initiative 594”

My newest piece at Fox News that starts this way:

Let’s say a stalker is threatening a female friend of yours. She asks you if she can borrow your handgun. She is trained and has no criminal record. Should you loan her your gun? 

If you live in Washington State, loaning her your gun may soon make you a criminal and will likely land you in prison. 

Suppose you are a Boy Scout leader. Once a year, the scouts take a trip to a local farm where the boys earn their firearm merit badges. If you continue to stick with this annual ritual you may soon find yourself in prison. 

Those two examples illustrate just a couple of the hidden consequences for ordinary citizens if Washington State voters pass Initiative 594 on Tuesday -- the biggest gun control initiative on any state ballot this year. 

Gun control advocates are putting a huge effort into winning passage of the initiative. With $9.5 million from billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg, the initiative’s supporters are spending half as much as the NRA is spending on allpolitical campaigns and initiatives across the entire United States. 

Yet, despite a huge money advantage, gun control advocates are still using totally inaccurate claims to make their case to voters. 

Mark Kelly, who heads one of the organizations spearheading the initiative, made a very common claim for the initiative recently on CNN. He told host Jake Tapper: “right now 60 percent of all gun sales go–occur–with a background check. Why do we allow the 40 percent, the other 40 percent, to happen?” But even the normally anti-gun Washington Post has noted this claim is false and given it three out of four Pinocchios on its fact checker blog. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

News media does what it can to help out Jeanne Shaheen in her Senate against Scott Brown

Hopefully the damage to Scott won't make the difference in this close race, but even a discussion on MSNBC noted that people will remember the charge more than they will remember the reporter's apology.  Hot Air has a discussion describing what happened as a failed "gotcha moment."

Democrats using race and Stand Your Ground laws to drive black voter turnout

“Tillis even led the effort to pass the kind of ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws that caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.”
The Washington Post has this evaluation of the campaign ad:

It is telling that Senate Majority PAC does not bother to offer any defense of this radio ad. Perhaps it hoped it could slip this past reporters asking too many questions. . . . .

Even if Harry Reid isn't defending the ad, Alex Wagner on MSNBC is defending it.

Illegal aliens being encouraged to vote in North Carolina

After watching this video does anyone doubt that there is significant levels of vote fraud occurring because of illegal aliens?

Newest piece at Fox News: "‘Lone Wolf’ terror attacks: We're sitting ducks and Americans with guns are last line of defense"

John Lott's newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

The recent spate of “lone wolf” terrorist attacks both here and in Canada seem to have come out of nowhere. And it’s clear that they have left Americans and Canadians as sitting ducks. 

Simply by using the Internet, ISIS has encouraged “lone wolf” individuals. These “wolves” have initiated attacks on their own with no planning or coordination with others and without leaving a trail of clues about their intentions. Law enforcement authorities and our government are not well suited to defend against such individual terror strikes. As Israel has learned about such attacks, there are just too many targets to defend. 

So what can be done to protect public safety? When police and the military can’t be everywhere, the last line of defense is having more citizens carry guns. 

Just look at the alleged lone wolf attacks in the last few months. A clear pattern seems to be developing: from the beheading a month ago in Oklahoma to last week’s car attack in Quebec, the shooting at the National War Memorialin Ottawa, and the hatchet assault in New York City. 

Jerusalem last week also experienced a similar Jihadist attack, with a terrorist driving his car onto a crowded sidewalk. 

The announcement Wednesday that the federal government is beefing up security at federal buildings misses the real problem: as we’ve already seen in the last month, there are an uncountable number of targets. Publicly announcing beefed up security at federal building simply makes it more likely that other targets will be hit. 

After the attack on Parliament, Canada rushed to give more detention and surveillance power to security agencies. Not only is such a move more costly, . . .

The piece is continued here.

Penn Gov. Tom Corbett signs a pro-gun law barring local restrictions

Tom Corbett has consistently been one of the best governors in the country on gun control issues.  His signing the new law that ends the patchwork quilt of local gun regulations is just one example of that.  It is interesting that gun-control advocates who keep pushing state and Federal gun control laws support letting local gun control laws when it gets them what they want.  Unfortunately, Corbett has been unjustly beaten up over other issues, such as privatizing state liquor stores or introducing some competition to public schools.  Unions are taking a big stand against him.

From The Blaze:

The bill specifically would prevent local governments from passing gun laws that are more restrictive than the state gun laws and basically erases existing local gun laws. 

The bill signing could rally support from gun owners for Corbett in the final stretch of his campaign where he trails Democratic candidate Tom Wolf by double digits in most recent polls. 

The National Rifle Association called the bill, “the strongest firearms preemption statute in the country.” . . .

Testimony today on gun control before the Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee

A notice of the public hearing before the Australian Senate later today (5:30 PM EDT US) is available here.

A copy of my testimony is available here.

KFC employee uses gun to stop armed robbery: Police say "employee's quick action could have meant the difference between life and death"

From Alabama's WVTM TV in Birmingham:

. . . Around 6:30 Sunday night, two men walked into KFC in Ensley and they were armed. At the time, there were no customers inside the fast food restaurant but it was filled with employees.  One of those employees was forced into action.  

"He wanted to flee for cover. So in the process of fleeing he was shot and after he was shot he grabbed his weapon and returned fire,” Lt. Sean Edwards with the Birmingham Police Department described.  

That employee shot one of the suspects in the stomach before both suspects fled the scene. 
The injured suspect eventually turned up at a local hospital for his injuries. The second suspect is still on the loose.  . . . 

What happened at KFC is unusual and the response is not something law enforcement recommends.  But in this situation, Birmingham police say this employee's quick action could have meant the difference between life and death. . . . .

Thanks to Michael Wahl for this link. 

A death spiral for Obamacare: Some numbers that point to big Obamacare insurance premium increases

The difference in price between Obamacare plans and these alternative ones provides strong evidence that Obamacare increased insurance costs and that the higher premiums are due to all the new regulations.  In any case, this death spiral implies even greater increases in insurance premiums.  From Fox News:

A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral. 

The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans learn they are required to get health coverage. The catch -- that the policies only last for a year -- is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can always sign up for ObamaCare if their short-term coverage is not renewed. 

“Applications rose 30 percent compared to last year,” eHealthInsurance.com Enrollment Specialist Carrie McLean told FoxNews.com. 

Other providers said they also see rapid growth in the plans, which have a typical monthly premium of just over $100, compared to traditional plans that cost an average of $271. 

“It’s because the product is typically half the cost of ACA plans, and you can chose any doctor or hospital,” Health Insurance Innovations CEO Mike Kosloske told FoxNews.com. . . .

This article was written by my son, Maxim. 

More voting machines in Illinois changing Republican votes to Democratic ones

This video is from the Quad City Times about voting at the Moline Public Library.

Similar problems have also been discovered yet again in Maryland (see here for a story by the Baltimore CBS affiliate).

UPDATE: "Nearly 70 percent of voters will be casting ballots by hand on Tuesday"  From The Hill newspaper:

States have abandoned electronic voting machines in droves, ensuring that most voters will be casting their ballots by hand on Election Day. 

With many electronic voting machines more than a decade old, and states lacking the funding to repair or replace them, officials have opted to return to the pencil-and-paper voting that the new technology was supposed to replace. . .

The Weather Channel co-founder announces "Man-Made Global Climate Change is a Myth"

So Democrats claim that Obamacare isn't pushing us to a part-time labor force?: 122 colleges force faculty and students to be part-time

From EducationViews.org:

Since the launch of Obamacare, at least 122 colleges and universities across the nation have cut student and faculty work hours to skirt the federal law’s mandate requiring employers to provide healthcare for people who work 30 hours or more per week.
Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.
A long and growing list of 450 companies, school districts, colleges and institutions that have slashed and capped work hours to comply with the employer mandate – which goes into effect next year – has been compiled by Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily, whose tally chronicles employers both public and private. . . . .

More concealed handgun permit data

Following the CPRC study showing that there were about 11.1 million concealed handgun permits by the beginning of the year, I then showed that the number of concealed handgun permits in just seven states had increased by over 400,000 from the end of 2013 to July 2014.  Since then Florida's permits have increased by another 50,000, Alabama's by almost 100,000, Utah's by 31,000, Minnesota's by about 2,800, and Illinois by about 50,000.  It is my understanding that California's permits have increased by about 20,000 to over 50,000.  That adds another over 250,000 permits from just four states.  Taken together all this adds up to to well over 11.8 million permits.  There is no doubt that other states have also seen a significant increase over the same period of time.  Again, these numbers do not include the six states where people can carry without a permit nor do they include the numbers for a couple of other states that don't report their information.

Unfortunately, last week's attack on the Canadian Parliament seems to have doomed some simple long needed reform of gun control

The Huffington Post is quite happy about this:

The Conservative government appears to be quietly shelving its controversial “Common Sense” gun bill in light of Wednesday’s shooting.  

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan’s office was silent Friday about the future of Bill C-42. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s office refused to comment, directing inquiries to Van Loan. The Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act was scheduled to be debated for the first time on the day of the shootings, with three days set aside for discussion. It no longer figures on the government’s stated agenda. 

But NDP Public Safety critic Randall Garrison told The Huffington Post Canada on Friday that he understands why the government might want to shelve this bill for the time being. 

“I think it’s obvious that the climate where firearms were used to murder a member of the Canadian Forces and to bring an attack into the House of Commons means that the climate for a discussion on a bill that would loosen, in any way, restrictions over the licensing of firearms is unlikely to be something the government wants to do right now,” he said. . . .

Unfortunately, these restrictions are the exact opposite of what they should be doing.