Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois
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Sangamon
County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights Springfield, Illinois |
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 Sad Stories from the Political
Front
Tom Shafer SCRA Meeting, June 4, 2007 July 2007 GunNews Shafer had a few sad stories to tell everyone so he told us to get our crying towels out if we wished. Cindy Sheehan quit! The dreadful thing is that she suffered a terrible loss that she couldn't deal with. Her son was killed in the war. He died by IED explosion years ago. She took it to the national media and was crying on every major network about how it was George Bush's fault. Everything she said was an anti-Bush rant and they gave her all kinds of coverage because of course that's the national media's big push right now, to bash the president over the war in Iraq. So they pimped Cindy Sheehan out. She was kind of like they owned her politically on this issue and they took her all over the country. Then she started running with the leftist crowd which was the anti-Bush democrats. They took her into the fold and they're a bunch of loonies, mostly based over in California. Then she pitched a tent in a ditch over by Bush's camp in Texas. Apparently there are some loony liberal democrats down there. She ran with them for a short while and then got tired of them. Next she went over to Hollywood to what Shafer considers the valve of the heart of the liberal left. They ran her around and she got a little taste of their lifestyle, values and their moral system. Finally, she said, "I'm quittin this whole deal. I'm gettin away from you people totally and I'm going back home." Shafer is playing his violin for Cindy Sheehan. She just got used, abused and cast right out of the bottom of the liberal democratic machine. Shafer is sure that her book is coming. She is probably thinking about when she is going to write it. You know that they'll publish it and it will be about everything that she learned about the loony liberal left after the loss of her patriotic son. If you keep down the slide of the loony liberal left, the communists are there, the dictators are there, the despots are there, the East African Banana Republic dictators are there, they all slide the same way which is total control over a once free people. Our illustrious former Governor, George Ryan, is now currently free on appeal from his six and one half year conviction on 22 felony counts. A final appeal has been handed down now that he is not going to get any of his state pension. Now when Shafer writes to him he is going to have to send stamps because Ryan is going to be broke. Ryan was a pharmacist for a short time. The rest of his entire life was spent in politics on our dime. His pension started out at $190,000 before his conviction on 22 federal felonies. Then they said he couldn't have any of that while he was Secretary of State and Governor because that's when he was corrupt. That's when he was convicted of corruption and his reelection campaign was convicted of being a corrupt organization. So he couldn't keep any of that money. So that knocked off about $140,000 of the $190,000. He was left with a little less then $60,000 for time while he was a county board member and a state representative. He said he wasn't corrupt then so could he keep that pension? The courts finally just the other day said no on that one as well. Shafer brought a copy of Senate Bill 1007, the magazine ban. It passed the Senate, went over to the House, and got out of the Executive Committee. That's where several of us went, to testify before the House Executive Committee. It's stacked with anti-gunners from urban Chicago. Burke is the Chairman, Ed Acevedo, the leading anti-gunner, is on that Committee, several others, Molero is on that Executive Committee. The deck was stacked against us. You knew going in that they had enough votes that they were going to get it out of that Committee. That meant that it goes to the House floor and is now currently on third reading. Before we went into this overtime session that meant it required 60 votes from a 117 member house to pass. It only had 50 so they never called it on third reading. Now that we are in overtime session it requires a 3/5th vote which is 71 votes and they don't have that either, they still only have 50. The ban is dead as written. Its a horrendous bill. Firearms are like a three part system, there are the guns themselves, the magazines that hold the ammunition for those guns and there is the ammunition. That's a triad. If you take away any triad you have no gun collection, you have no ability to shoot, your guns are powerless if anyone of those three is taken away and you have nothing. These anti-gunners are diabolically clever people. These realize a tax on ammunition would take away your gun collection eventually because you could not afford to buy the ammo to shoot your firearms collection. A ban on magazines, which all the modern firearms now are detachable magazine technology, and if they can ban the magazine or limit the magazine legislatively, there goes your gun collection. Your gun collection is now diminished because of their law. People who don't shoot, don't own and don't understand the first thing about self-defense are now shooting your gun collection for you in essence because any legislative body that can make a 10 round ban and let it stand could make a 9 round ban, a 4 round ban, or a 2 round ban. There's no difference legislatively. It's an arbitrary number that they've set without your input and it has no basis in reality. It goes to that question that you never have to answer but they ask all the time. "What do you need that for?" Shafer thinks that it is his decision as to whether he wants to be a gun owner or not under the rights that were given to him years ago. "What do I need to have this gun for? What do I need this magazine for?" You can never tell an anti-gunner your need that he would ever believe. That's not good enough. In any other question, the needs based question never comes up. " What do you need that for?" There is very little that a person actually needs, food , air, water and shelter are the only four needs that you ever really have. Everything else is a kind of want from your freedom in this country. Once they get around to that need question, if you get into an argument with an anti-gunner, you've already lost. Say, "It's because that's what I want!" Let them answer as to your wants. Restricting your freedom is what they are doing. If the needs based question comes up, don't ever try to answer, it's an impossible question. Getting back to the Committee, they had several people who had suffered dreadful losses at the hands of criminals for which we already have criminal laws, courts, police, prisons, appeals courts plus all the tax money that has gone to fighting crime. They put a crime victim up there first and say because they have gang crime in New Jersey, you can't have a gun collection. That's another argument that is absolutely outrageous on its face. There has been crime since before Shafer and Rocky Shoenrock were even born, in places where they have never even been, and Rocky has been all over. That type of ridiculous argument is what came before the committee, where they had several people who couldn't be spoken to logically since they were irrational with grief because of their tremendous loss. So they said because of these people and their terrible feelings and their emotional loss, we're going to limit you to a 10 round magazine. Shafer was in the front row, and Brian Smith was sitting next to him. The Chicago media was there of course and when this poor gal said her husband was murdered, everyone gave Shafer the dagger eye. Shafer just sat there absorbing it all and thought, Boy, it's tough to be an activist, to just not stand up and start laughing and say, "You people are a bunch of idiots, you know that?" That's exactly the way he felt, but you just sit there and take it when they distort everything in the Chicago media. When you have an anti-gunner like Burke who is the chairman of the Committee, Shafer is surprised that Valinda Rowe got in at all. It's their committee and it's like a little fiefdom. They can pretty much make up the rules as they go along. All the victims get plenty of time, plenty of time for photos and plenty of time for their media interviews. However when it comes time for our turn, the other side, the balancer of all this horrendous distortion, outright fabrication and nonsensical arguments, you are limited to one minute. Your entire group gets only one spokesperson and you'd better hurry up because they've almost done. Everybody's got to leave. Then all of a sudden all the anti-gun reps find somewhere else they've got to be while the NRA reps are testifying because they don't want to have any photos taken where they are even listening to the NRA guy. They all flee the room and they return when its time for the vote. Shafer has seen it fifty or more times because he has been going up there for twenty years. He knows all the tricks. Of course they've been there forever with these entrenched incumbents in the legislature and they know all the tricks as well. So we end up doing this same dance over and over. It's a farce but it's serious. You'll notice that when it passed in the Senate, the only votes that SB1007, the magazine ban got were urban, urban, urban, Chicago. So thats the battle, where its really at is downstate, republican or democrat it doesn't matter, we're pro-gun downstate. Urban Chicago, dominated by democrats, is viciously, horribly anti-gun. Its a dance Shafer is familiar with, they dance it every legislative session. That's just the most recent tune that was called the other day. SB1007 is dead, it doesn't have 71 votes, it's not going to be law. Sitting there enduring the stares, the dagger eyes and the mean comments from people who have been victimized from far, far away from Shafer, people who he will never meet, he noticed that none of them ever said if the perpetrator of these horrendous crimes was ever caught and punished. It was more like they were mad at Shafer's gun collection than the guy who murdered their husband. Shafer would have thought they would have first been mad at the perpetrator!!! Yet in their grief and the irrationality over their loss, they veered around, way around past the criminal, all around to Shafer, the outspoken gun owner. Shafer will never understand it nor will he ever accept it. He will never accept being put upon as some type of victimizer when all he is doing is standing up for his rights, a legitimate obvious cause, the Second Amendment, that he can and should do, and yet they find every means, fair and unfair, to try and dissuade him from that chosen path. That's the dance of the legislature, Shafer finds it a fascinating process. Most people don't endure it because they make it so difficult with their timing and scheduling. Most people who have a job or a life can't do it. You'd never even know when it is, "When is that?". They hide their agenda, they hide the calendar, they call it at their whim, usually when we're not around. If 500 of us showed up they'd postpone the meeting which Shafer has seen done often. If gunowners assemble hugely they all leave and say, "That meeting has been postponed." "When are you going to hold it?' "When you all leave." So it's an unfair process at the outset but one that Shafer still finds fascinating. Chuck's Gun Shop is a vocal, pro-gun, outspoken person in the Chicago area, right on the outskirts of Chicago so that he can operate because Daley and his anti-gun policies and zoning has run all of the gun shops out of Chicago. Chucks is just over city line in the suburbs of Chicago which are vast. The suburbs go on for miles in every direction except out into the lake. Chucks Gun Shop is in suburban Chicago but now the urban Chicago people and their vicious anti-gun bias have targeted Chucks Gun Shop. He must be a good gun seller as everybody goes to him. He's been targeted by the Chicago police, the CAGE unit and by this Father Flieger who seems to relish the limelight of being quoted in the Chicago Tribune, a headline hound and a publicity hound. Fleiger is up on some questionable conduct for finances. He runs some kind of an organization in Chicago where someone has been dipping into the til. Shafer intends to find out who has been doing the dipping and he will let us know at a later date. During his boycott of Chuck's Gun Shop, Father Fleiger was quoted as saying, "He's going to snuff you out." He's definitely a zealot. There was another headline grabber whose name Shafer was unable to recall, a zealot for abused children's issues. He was finally found out to be a pervert, publically exposed, tried and convicted, jailed and vanished. There has been another one lately, Bob Greene, for the Chicago Tribune. He was a very popular columnist who wrote these heart wrenching columns about this poor woman and her poor childhood, 17 columns about her. Everybody in Chicago was bawling and come to find out, he was using his position as a journalist in Chicago at the Tribune to date these young women, youuuung women!! When the editor of the Chicago Tribune found out that it was all the truth, Greene was fired, out on his ear. Greene wrote a bawling book about how he was mistreated. These people, not all of them, some are well meaning, genuine and heartfelt, God bless them, Shafer does not want to mix them in with the bad ones. Some of them have a penchant for the limelight, "Look at me, how wonderful I am." They have a lot of skeletons in their closets. They're not all they're cracked up to be, they have a hidden life and it comes out all the time. Rostenkowski, was one of them, Mel Reynolds was one of them and come to find out, George Ryan was one of them, although not with the sexual dalliance with children. It's not only men but it's mostly men. It's a male flaw. It's the gambling, or the women, or the boozing, or the money. They have something that they cannot control that facet of their life and it just goes haywire, all the way into criminal. William Jefferson, nine term congressman from Louisiana, it was on the news tonight, a 16 count indictment. If found guilty on all counts he faces 235 years in federal prison. A few years ago they investigated him, a five year federal investigation. They went all the way over to Africa where he had been bribing some African dictators to put all kinds of stuff in their country with kickbacks. They raided his federal office and both republicans and democrats just went berserk, "How dare you FBI raid a congressman's office?" Well they did raid his office and they served a search warrant at his house where they found $90,000 dollars wrapped in aluminum foil in his freezer. Maybe he found it in the back of a taxi cab but Shafer doesn't think he did. Now he's under indictment and the US Ethics Committee is going to expel him from the US House of Representatives. Fortunately he's not from Illinois although we've had our share here in Illinois. Mel Reynolds and Rostenkowski come to mind immediately. But there have been several, Jefferson is the most recent. Everyone was saying in the right-wing journals, "When are they going to get this Jefferson guy, they found 90 grand in his freezer for gosh sakes?" And he's on tape collecting $100,000 in bribe money from a federal sting operation. Traditionally these tapes cases, they cannot beat them in court. So we'll see how much time he does, we'll follow it of course, and Shafer will send flowers which he always does. But first Shafer is going to find out Jefferson's voting record on firearms. If this Jefferson fellow voted against Shafer's gun rights. See before if Jefferson was crooked, Shafer really didn't care, but if he voted against Shafer's gun rights as a US congressman, now Shafer doesn't like him! So if he's convicted and he's an anti-gunner, he's a democrat from Louisiana, Shafer will check because the voting records are all on record. The assault weapons ban, the Brady Bill, the Lautenberg Amendment, 18 years he's been in there. Through all of it he's been in there. Shafer is going to check his voting record which he already knows what it is, it's bad. Then Shafer is going to remember him now that's its come the wet ass hour, trial time, sixteen federal felonies! Shafer said his dad was a working guy, raised four children in a small house on the east side of Springfield. He never in his life saw $90,000 in cash. To see these arrogant, elitist, political types that talk down about you and me and about our gun collections, "You're just one of them hunter guys, you're just one of them gun guys!" And he's corrupt to the bone for this money deal. Like Shafer said, a guy flaw, his flaw was money. He extorted through his congressional position these tyrant dictators over in Africa, they named the two countries but Shafer could not recall them at that moment, $6.3 million for him and his family. Only in it for the money. Your rights, your self defense, your Second Amendment means absolutely zero to this guy. $6.3 million he wanted for him and his family. And Shafer is supposed to get his crying towel out for this gomer. Shafer doesn't think so. Shafer says he is going to have to start keeping a score, a list, a program, that's what it is. You can't find one crooked congressman without a program. So Shafer will keep the program and let us know. It'll be a real public trial and we'll see what he gets, how much time he does. Shafer says it's a wonderful country we live in where you can access all the modern electronic media stuff that we've got. The federal courts have a system that Shafer is a member of. It's free to join, you just have to go down to your district court clerk and sign up. Its an acronym for public federal records free access. Then you can get on your computer, log in your password and pull up any federal case from anywhere in the whole federal system, civil and criminal. A lot of these cases like asbestos laws can be a $40 million dollar case but it's not a criminal case. It's an injury case, a civil case. But its in the federal system and you can access it and Shafer is a member of it. Its public record and our tax dollars that made it public so Shafer is only accessing a system that he has certainly paid for. It lets you know anything thats going on in the federal courts all the way across the country. Until next time, keep your powder dry. From the Capitol Index Return to SCRA Home Page |