General firearms news, starting with Rep. Hank Johnson

being called out and called a number of unpleasant things(all of which fit).
I won’t begin this with letter with the salutation “Dear,” because I only have contempt for you, and the disgusting responses you gave to The Daily Caller when they asked you about the Congressional investigation into the Fast and Furious “gunwalking” international criminal conspiracy (see article for video--Examiner.com does not accomodate the html code to embed it here).
And it continues from there.



Second,
Blocked funding for ATF's planned shotgun import ban already paying dividends
Last November, the "Fiscal Year 2012 Agriculture, Commerce/Justice/Science and Transportation/Housing/Urban Development Appropriations bills" omnnibus was signed into law. One provision of that law blocks funding for a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) plan to ban the importation of certain shotguns, based on their not being sufficiently suited to "sporting purposes."
And I want to see that AKDAL shotgun; that looks really interesting.


On Gunwalker and media:
In re new media, I believe Gunwalker is a milestone of sorts, because it truly is a major story that had to be brought to the networks and newspapers, and they still resist reporting on it at all, let alone not embedding their reporting with their own agenda. I believe it shows the monolith press is no longer the sole gatekeeper for information, as the internet has given us a way to bypass them. I've documented time and again how Mike and I have beaten them, with all their resources, to the punch, and also how they have acted more like collaborators than journalists.

That they still are trying to be the ones to set memes in motion is evident by the APs list of top ten stories for 2011: Fast and Furious didn't make the cut. That led me to observe:

There’s another big story the Fourth Estate Fifth Columnists missed for 2011: Their growing, self-created irrelevance, and how in spite of their deliberate indifference, coupled with agenda-driven manipulation, they are no longer the sole gatekeepers of information.

So leave it to them to put a positive spin on the fact that they’re overwhelmingly distrusted. And welcome to the dawning of the age of the “unauthorized journalist.”

Issa has some words for Holder & Co.:
House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa told The Daily Caller that Attorney General Eric Holder owes an apology to the Mexican government and to the families of Operation Fast and Furious victims south of the border.

“Justice has blood on their hands,” Issa said Wednesday during an exclusive interview with TheDC, referring to the U.S. Department of Justice.

“The attorney general, as the head of Justice, has to explain that to the families of survivors,” Issa said. “Yes, he should find a way to make it very clear to our neighbors to the south — at least to the government and at least publicly — that there needs to be deep regret for what happened and there needs to be reassurances that it never happens again.”
Something I'll add: the article notes At least 300 people in Mexico were killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. I'd change that 'were killed' to 'have been killed so far, that we know of'.


Oh boy, just found this:
“Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa demanded in [a] letter to Attorney General Holder that the Justice Department make Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office Assistant United States Attorney Michael Morrissey available to speak with Committee investigators about his role in and knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious,” a release issued moments ago by the committee reveals:

His supervisor, Patrick Cunningham, has stated he will exercise his Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer any questions pertaining to Operation Fast and Furious – such an assertion is extremely rare and suggests possible criminal culpability on the part of a high ranking Justice Department official. Morrissey, who reported directly to Cunningham’s and was intimately involved with Operation Fast and Furious.

“Since August, the Department has identified Patrick Cunningham as the best person in the U.S. Attorney’s Office to provide information about Fast and Furious to the Committee,” Issa said in his letter to Holder. “The Department has refused to make Michael Morrissey and Emory Hurley, both Assistant United States Attorneys supervised by Mr. Cunningham, available to speak with the Committee, citing a policy of not making “line attorneys” available for congressional scrutiny. Mr. Morrissey, however, was Mr. Hurley’s direct supervisor, and an integral part of Fast and Furious. Importantly, both Morrissey and Hurley are unique in their possession of key factual knowledge about Fast and Furious not readily available from any other source.”

The Chairman also reiterated that the Justice Department still has not complied with the subpoenas issued to date, including subpoenaed documents from Cunningham, Morrissey and Hurley.

...

Further, Cunningham’s decision to invoke a self-incrimination refusal was the subject of a letter sent by Issa to Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday, in which he wrote:

The implication that Mr. Cunningham may have engaged in criminal conduct with respect to Fast and Furious is a major escalation of the Department’s culpability. The significance of these developments cannot be overstated, and this assertion raises many questions about ongoing criminal cases currently pending in federal court in Arizona—including prosecutions related to Fast and Furious.

As to the "We never let guns walk!" lie,
Witnesses have reported that AUSA Hurley may have stifled ATF agents’ attempts to interdict weapons on numerous occasions. Many ATF agents working on Operation Fast and Furious were under the impressions that even some of the most basic law enforcement techniques typically used to interdict weapons required the explicit approval of your office, specifically from AUSA Hurley. It is our understanding that this approval was withheld on numerous occasions...We have further been informed that AUSA Hurley improperly instructed ATF agents that they need to meet unnecessarily strict evidentiary standards merely in order to temporarily detain or speak with suspects.

More at the link. LOTS more.



A post at Sipsey on the subject of what calls for confiscation actually mean:

Three Death Penalties for Prohibited Arms Possession.

A special German court in Zamość [near Krakow] sentenced to death 19 year-old Franciszek Pokrywka of Powieki, 27 year-old Iwan Zilnyk and 35 year-old Paweł Huzar, both of Ułazów, for prohibited possession of firearms as well as for violating the duty to report possession of firearms.

Pokrywka had an automatic pistol with six cartridges and, despite the universally-known order about surrendering the arms, he did not give it up. Sometime later he sold the pistol to Zilnyk, who a few days after that offered the firearm for sale to Huzar, who, though he did not buy it, still failed to fulfill his duty to report it to the proper authorities.

The above-mentioned death sentences have already been carried out. -- Nowy Kurjer Warszawski [New Warsaw Courier], Jan. 22, 1941, quoted in Stephen Halbrook's Citizens in Arms.

I've been scanning a lot of Stephen Halbrook's work lately, trying to find the right chapter heading quotes for Absolved. Particularly impressive is his The Swiss & The Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich.

In the process I encountered the dry newspaper announcement above. You know, I have been criticized mightily across the political spectrum for my response to an an impatient gun grabber, "If you try to take our firearms, we will kill you." But the thing is, those who propose to take our liberty and our property have already decided -- in their ignorance of the unintended consequences -- that it is worth it to them (or, at least, inconsequential) if we are killed in the process.

As I observed in my call to break Democrat Party headquarters windows in advance of the passage of the tyrannical Obamacare mandate:

Nancy Pelosi's Intolerable Act is within days of passage by devious means so corrupt and twisted that even members of her own party recoil in disgust.

This act will order all of us to play or pay, and if we do not wish to, we will be fined.

If we refuse to pay the fine out of principle, we will be jailed.

If we resist arrest, we will be killed.

They will send the Internal Revenue Service and other federal police to do this in thousands of small Wacos, if that is what it takes to force us to submit.

This arrogant elite pretends that this oppression is for our own good, while everyone else understands that this is about their selfish, insatiable appetite for control over our liberty, our money, our property and our lives.

All gun confiscation proposals come from the same motivation. Thus, if we say, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you," it is important to remember that this is a threat of defensive violence to counter their original threat of offensive violence.

Properly formulated, shorn of all bushwah and pretense, what these people are saying to us first is this:

"We will take your firearms if we have to get the government to kill you to do it."

Such people will be insulted if you call them National Socialists, but is there a functional difference in the exercise of their demands?

You could ask Franciszek Pokrywka, Iwan Zilnyk and Paweł Huzar -- three human beings executed for the knowledge and possession of just one pistol -- if they thought so. Oh, that's right, they're long dead, killed by the exercise of that "government monopoly of force" that the gun grabbers of CSGV are so proud to advocate.

And last,
The shooting happened about 7:45 a.m. at 301 Kendra Drive where an armed man kicked in a door of the home. Inside, a growling dog alerted the homeowner who grabbed a gun and fired one shot after confronting the burglar. Police say the suspect was rushed to the Midwest City hospital where he died.