—–Original Message—–
From: [email protected] [[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 12:41 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Stacked NAS Gun Study Begins

August 30 Neal Knox Update — A government-backed National
Academy of Sciences study on “new … control strategies” for
firearms, put together by the Clinton Administration, has its first
hearing today and tomorrow.

It’s a stacked deck committee that will give us — and the
Bush Administration — grief in the months and years to come.

Prolific Second Amendment researcher Dave Kopel discusses it
in detail in his National Review Online column this week
(www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel082901.shtm).

Dave points out that not one researcher who has questioned
existing gun laws — like Dr. John Lott, Gary Kleck or I would add,
James D. Wright and Dave Kopel — is on the panel. It’s composed
of more or less neutral scholars that don’t much about the issue
spiked with some well-known anti-gunners.

The staff-circulated papers say not one negative word about
the failures of existing laws — even including one ludicrous study
claiming the D.C. gun ban reduced crime.

Someone in the Bush Administration better pay attention,
because the NAS study — funded by the Centers for Disease Control
and groups like the anti-gun Joyce Foundation — is going to hand
them a hot potato.

——————–

With Congress out of town all month, it’s been pretty quiet on
the gun front, but both sides are gearing up for the battles that
start as soon as Congress gets back next week.

Main vehicle: the Justice and Treasury appropriations bills
pending in the Senate. Main legislation: Amendments to “Close the
Gun Show Loophole.” For openers.

——————–

Gore Vidal, the hard-leftist writer who has been looking up
the government’s skirts on Waco and Ruby Ridge for some years, was
invited by Timothy McVeigh to witness his execution.

Vidal wasn’t able to attend the execution but in the September
Vanity Fair he tells of his correspondence with McVeigh, his
conviction that the Oklahoma City Bombing was a military-type
counter-attack, and the “overwhelming evidence” that the government
refused to investigate hard leads to others involved with McVeigh
– who he suspects were government informants or infiltrators.

In the article Vidal calls the Oklahoma City Bombing “the
greatest massacre of Americans by an American since two years
earlier, when the federal government decided to take out the
compound of a Seventh-Day Adventist cult near Waco, Texas.”

Vidal tells that he was interviewed about McVeigh by ABC’s
Charles Gibson on satellite hookup from Italy, and how — as soon
as Vidal mentioned Waco — Gibson claimed they were having
audio trouble and shut him off.

The network’s audo man told him the sound was working
perfectly.

An optically scanned (typo-filled) version of the article is
on the conservative-leaning Waco web page at
http://wizardsofaz.com/WacoTragedyNews/tim.htm.

The article is a classic case of the furthest right and
furthest left political elements meeting on common ground.

———————-

Sen. Zell Miller (D-Ga.) progenitor 25 years ago of Georgia’s
first modern “shall issue” carry law, slapped around Democratic
National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe in an op-ed in the
Washington Post this week.

He took strong exception to the DNC chief blasting Senators
who voted for President Bush’s tax bill, which included over a
dozen Senate Democrats, nine of them up for re-election.

Sen. Miller noted that McAuliffe had implemented the
Democrats’ “Rural Strategy” — a much-heralded retreat from the
Clinton-Gore push for ‘gun control’– by hiring a man from
Massachusetts to run it.

———————-

I was pleased to accept Michigan Brass Roots “Brass Cajones
Award,” a rather striking item also received by Rep. John Dingell’s son,
Sen. Chris Dingell, who has been a stalwart in the Michigan legislature.

—————

There was an amazingly even-handed article a few days ago in
the virulently anti-gun Christian Science Monitor
(http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0822/p14s1-lihc.htmlt). It talks
about an Oregon woman who religiously carries a concealed gun — to
the great appreciation of her non-gunowning lady friends.

Like most advocates of personal protection, she’s never had
to draw it.

She reminds me of another gun-toting grandmother I know. That
one hasn’t drawn hers either, but she made her .38 S&W Bodyguard
visible once, which caused a sudden change in attitude of some
fellows joshing with her and a lady friend about becoming rapists.