Second Amendment

The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear a case filed against a citywide ban on handguns in Chicago. Analysts say the case, McDonald v. City of Chicago, has relevance well beyond the right to bear arms, however, arguing that it will review a longstanding legal posture that has seen all kinds of individual rights infringed [...]

Last week’s Government Accountability Office report on the trafficking of U.S. guns to Mexico has inspired quite a backlash from gun enthusiasts who contend it’s “being deliberately misinterpreted by gun prohibitionists to push a gun ban agenda,” according to one voice representative of the outcry.

A record crowd gathered to thumb their collective noses at the encroaching “nanny state” and listen to the words of Sam Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, Saturday at the Independence Institute’s annual Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms Party.

Revelers made their way about an hour east of Denver to the Kiowa Creek Sporting Club outside Bennett, where an estimated 225 supporters gathered to shoot clay pigeons, imbibe potent potables and puff on cigars at the Golden-based think tank’s annual fundraiser, dubbed “the most politically incorrect event of the year.”

You know by now that in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, an elderly white supremacist and anti-Semite named James W. von Brunn allegedly walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a .22-caliber rifle and killed a security guard before being brought down himself. He’s 88 years old, with a long record of hatred and paranoid fantasies about the Illuminati and a Global Zionist state. How bitter the bile that has curdled for so many decades.

One month after successfully tucking an amendment into the credit card reform bill that expanded gun rights, a small number of Senate Republicans are looking at the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as another chance to score a victory for the Second Amendment.

The plan — to add an amendment that would allow gun owners to carry their weapons from one state to another in accordance with concealed carry laws. The possible rationale — to defend gay rights.

Independence Institute honcho Jon Caldera is wooing Joe the Plumber to attend the conservative think-tank’s summer Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms gathering, dubbed “the most politically incorrect event of the year,” Denver Post gossip columnist Bill Husted notes. Caldera “says he’s this close to closing the deal to have Plumber (a.k.a. Samuel Wurzelbacher) as the speaker” at the shindig, Husted reports.

A poison pill amendment to simultaneously weaken a consumer-friendly credit card reform bill and reverse a hold on a controversial Bush Administration rule to allow concealed guns in national parks won U.S. Senate approval late Tuesday.

Colorado Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet and Mark Udall backed the measure introduced today by ultra-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., following a weekend compromise by Senate Banking Committee members that further watered down some consumer protections but still not to the liking of the lobbyist-heavy financial industry.

Not to be outdone by Joe-the-Plumber’s recent rant about not letting “queers” near his children, former U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave has penned a fiery letter promoting her new gig at “Votes Have Consequences.”

“We will spread the truth about their destructive agendas, drag down their approval ratings, force them to publicly defend socialism, authoritarian gun-grabbing, gay marriage, infanticide and everything else they vote for in Washington, and ultimately, on November 2, 2010, we will take their jobs away from them.”

In recent weeks more than 60 people — including seven police officers — have been killed in multiple-death shootings from coast to coast.

U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey — the unlikely Democratic newbie from Colorado’s 4th Congressional District — seems still fresh enough in her politics to actually be acting from conviction.

This week she made news for unabashed strong stances on two controversial issues: She defied the president and attorney general by publicly opposing the reintroduction of an assault weapons ban. Then she defied the business lobby and co-sponsored the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).