The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB), or Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, was a subtitle of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law in the United States that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, so called “assault weapons”. The 10-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day.

The following took place in 1997 – Three Years After The Ban:

JOLLY JIHADING – Could the release of “Zero Dark Thirty” provoke violent protests against the U.S. in response to the film’s searing depictions of “enhanced interrogation” — the coercive, super-secret and bitterly debated methods used by the CIA against al Qaeda terrorism suspects?

Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow’s acclaimed docudrama about the pursuit of Osama bin Laden opened Wednesday at five theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

The film, an early Oscar favorite, graphically depicts coercive CIA interrogation techniques, including the waterboarding, domination and psychosexual humiliation of a detainee, who is, variously, collared and leashed like a dog, stuffed into a cramped “confinement box” and stripped naked for questioning in the presence of a female investigator. (more…)

The recent on-air explosion of CNN’s Piers Morgan regarding his rabid demands for severe gun restrictions would be silly if it were not broadcast on one of the most dangerous media networks around.

As written in Commentary Magazine:

[Piers] Morgan embodies an attitude that we’re seeing more and more on the left. It’s a nasty combination of supreme self-righteousness and reflexive demonization. Piers Morgan can’t accept that people of good will and decency might hold views that are very different from he does on gun control. And so it’s not enough to say Pratt is wrong; he has to be portrayed by Morgan as moronic and a moral monster. This act is lovely coming from those who from time to time, and when it’s convenient, lecture the rest of us on the importance of civility in public discourse.

But the issue is bigger than one ridiculous ideologue, much bigger.   Remember “Susan Kelly“? (more…)

No, this is not a spoof.   Facing desperate financial struggles, a pending fiscal cliff, the first ever Bond Rating downgrade – which might soon become the first of two – no federal budget for the past four years, dead ambassadors in Benghazi, the middle-east in flames, North Korea launching ICBM missiles, and an innocent Marine sitting in prison in Mexico because the Mexicans are pissed at Obama for illegally and intentionally sending guns to arm their drug lords…but this is a priority?   Since when did the role of government become to control ethnic diversity in chosen professions…think about it.

I kid you not, this has all the earmarks and tell-tale signs of another Pigford Fraud – Just replace “farmers” for “healthcare workers” and switch the “Dept of Agriculture” for “National Institute of Health” and ……    line up for your free checks folks…..  Unreal.

WASHINGTON DC – While the U.S. government commits senseless acts like skimping on consulate security in violent North African countries, it spends $500 million to help minorities—especially blacks—enter biomedical research fields where lack of diversity is “disturbing and disheartening.”

The grand plan was announced this month by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency. As part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH doles out north of $31 billion annually to hundreds of thousands of researchers at thousands of universities and institutions around the globe. (more…)

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Americans believe more action to treat mental health issues will do the most to prevent incidents like last Friday’s school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-seven percent (27%) think stricter gun control laws will do the most to prevent such shootings, while 15% put the emphasis on limits on violent movies and video games. Ten percent (10%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The National Rifle Association, while staying mostly quiet in the immediate aftermath of the mass shooting in Connecticut, has registered an average of 8,000 new members a day since the tragedy, an NRA source told Fox News.

While this broadly aligns with trends seen after similar incidents in the past, the surge in membership this time is said to dwarf past trends.

The source, based on his access to an internal memo prepared by the organization’s membership division, said both the number of individual contributions to the NRA and their average amount have risen significantly in this period. (more…)

Wal-Mart Runs Out

(BloomBerg)  With President Barack Obama endorsing sweeping gun restrictions in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, prices for handgun magazines are surging on EBay (EBAY) and semi-automatic rifles are sold out at many Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) locations.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, said yesterday that it would continue to sell guns, including rifles like the one used at Newtown, where 26 people, most of them children, were killed on Dec. 14. By contrast, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. (DKS) suspended sales of similar guns at its more than 500 stores. (more…)

You know how pandered President Obama is by the media when even the simplest of appropriate questions makes Dear Leader get miffed. How dare you ask Supreme Leader anything actually pointed. “where have you been“?

Perhaps because I have tuned out the TV but I was unaware the students were NOT in Kindergarten, nor was I aware of this report of a single surviving student from the Sandy Hook elementary school class.   Many people questioned why no survivors.  Well, apparently, one little girl was able to survive:  (*Note, is this old news?)

The children in the photo, top row from left: Catherine Hubbard, Ana Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Josephine Gay; Middle row from left: Noah Pozner, Jack Pinto, unidentified survivor, Chase Kowalski, Madeleine Hsu; Bottom row, from left: Jessica Rekos, Daniel Barden, Charlotte Bacon, Benjamin Wheeler and Caroline Previdi. (more…)

(NewsBusters) CNN’s Piers Morgan has been on a rabid anti-gun rant since July’s Aurora, Colorado, shootings that has gotten even more venomous after Friday’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

On Tuesday, he rudely and disgracefully tore into guest Larry Pratt, the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, calling him “an unbelievably stupid man” who’s “dangerous,” concluding the interview by saying, “You shame your country” (transcript available here):

Imagine for just one minute that George Bush, or any Republican was in the White House, and this exact same report was released……   “Leadership failures” at the State Department, but Hillary’s all good…. unreal. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management and leadership failures at the State Department led to “grossly” inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi.  (full report here)

“Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the panel said.

The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in Eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. (more…)