The Gang That Won’t Shoot Straight

The Gang That Won’t Shoot Straight
By Janet M. LaRue
4/16/2011

Hollywood and Washington are rife with elites opposed to the right to bear arms for folks in flyover country “who cling to guns or religion,” as their champion in the White House described us.

Some notable exceptions include Tom Selleck, who supports the Second Amendment. He stars in the Jesse Stone film series. Selleck snuffing bad guys—what’s not to like? Jesse’s advice: “In a fight—front sight.”

In the premiere episode, Jesse’s weakness, besides drinking too much, is for a liberal city attorney who sounds like the only bar exam she passed was for mixing martinis. She looks at a photo of a shortstop diving to catch a line drive, and asks, “That would be baseball?” But the clincher is when she asks Jesse if he’s ever killed anyone. His affirmative answer prompts her to ask why he couldn’t just shoot to wound. She gets Jesse’s “Shooting for Dummies” lecture:

“He had a machete.”

It may have been his appearance on Rosie O’Donnell’s TV show in 1999 that prepared Selleck to play opposite an anti-gun twit so well. He was on the show to plug his latest movie, but O’Donnell ambushed him about his association with the NRA and big, bad guns.

First of all, no straight woman I know would sit next to Tom Selleck and deliberately annoy him. Secondly, I don’t know any woman who rails against the Second Amendment while employing armed guards to protect her home and her children.

O’Donnell is included among Handgun Control, Inc. members George Lucas, Jerry Seinfeld, Harrison Ford and Ed Asner, according to Robert Ito, writing for Los Angeles Magazine (Aug. 1999, p. 30). Ted Szajer, co-owner of L.A. Guns “and arms dealer to some of Hollywood’s most famous shooters,” told Ito:

“I’ve had many [celebrities] in my store buying guns from me that have been very vocally anti-gun in the past.”

“A quick scan of police reports,” according to Ito, “turns up Christian Slater, Al Pacino, Harry Connick, Jr. (concealed weapons charges), Martin Lawrence and James Caan.”

Sharon Stone, according to Ito, “got the LAPD to make a highly publicized house call to dispose of her cache of firearms.” If a woman in Texas did that, the cops would take her in for a mental health evaluation. In Texas, if you ask women if they enjoy shooting, they don’t hyperventilate or call the cops. You’re more likely to hear about the handgun/ rifle/shotgun range on their property and their conceal/carry license.

Hollywood elites, who fly in private jets, ride in chauffeured limos, own numerous palatial estates, hire armed guards, carry guns and tell the rest of us to go green and turn our Glocks into plowshares, support congressional elites like Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who hasn’t met a gun control law she doesn’t love.

According to a leading expert on guns and violence, John R. Stott:

•Among celebrities who hold concealed-handgun permits are Bill Cosby, Cybil Shepherd, U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, Howard Stern, Donald Trump, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger of The New York Times. (More Guns Less Crime, John R. Lott, Jr. p. 15.)

•When asked by the media “how it looks for a senator to be packing heat,” Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell answered, “You'd be surprised how many senators have guns.” (More Guns Less Crime, p. 15.)

During her testimony before U.S. Senate hearings on terrorism held in Washington, D.C. on April 27, 1995, Feinstein said:

“I know the urge to arm yourself because that’s what I did. I was trained in firearms. I’d walk to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me.”

Feinstein was one of 16 Democrats in 2006 who voted against legislation that prohibited confiscation of guns during an emergency or major disaster, which is what happened during Hurricane Katrina when New Orleans officials “pursued a policy of seizing lawfully-possessed firearms from law-abiding residents.”

Feinstein was highly critical of the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in Heller v. District of Columbia upholding the right of an individual to keep and bear arms as secured by the Second Amendment. According to The Democrat Daily, a progressive Web site. Feinstein said:

“I guess I didn’t really think that they would do this. I think it opens this nation to a dramatic lack of safety. … And I happen to believe that [the] Second Amendment does relate to the keeping of a militia. And I happen to believe that this is now going to open the door to litigation against every gun safety law that states have passed – assault weapons bans, trigger locks, and all the rest of it.”

According to a Zogby poll taken after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 19 others in Tucson, Ariz., “60 percent of those surveyed said the shootings should not lead to stronger gun control laws, and 71% doubt stricter laws will be enacted.”

As usual, Feinstein disagrees and said she “was exploring the idea of reviving a law to limit the size of ammunition clips,” according to Lott’s Web site, Jan. 16, 2011. On Feb. 1, Feinstein asked “the President to tighten restrictions on semi-automatic rifles,” according to the NRA.

That brings us to H.R. 822, “The National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011, co-sponsored by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.). It would enable millions of conceal/carry permit holders to exercise their right to self-defense while traveling outside their home states. The bill has 163 co-sponsors in the House.

A survey taken by the National Association of Chiefs of Police (NACOP) in 2006 “shows that the nation’s top law enforcement officers believe that average citizens can be trusted to responsibly own firearms; that criminals ignore gun control laws; and that concealed carry laws reduce crime.”

If integrity, public safety, and the Constitution mattered, Feinstein would be chief sponsor of a Senate version of H.R. 822.