I will be on the Far Right No Apologies radio show tonight to discuss Western Shooting Journal and the Second Amendment

If you haven't yet heard what Western Shooting Journal is all about, tune in tonight at 5:15 p.m. PST (7:15 p.m. CST) to the Far Right No Apologies radio show, co-hosted by Roger Dorn and Jennifer Lexon. We will also also discuss the latest gun control efforts and how the NRA convention went last weekend, where I got to meet co-host Roger and his lovely wife Shawn. Click here to listen when it starts. Check out their website New Guards here.

$52 million in raises/bonuses for City of Phoenix government employees - but what about pledge to repeal food tax?

Phoenix Budget Bombshell City staff confirmed Tuesday in the proposed budget for 2013-14, there are $52 million in raises and bonuses - $29.9 million in new merit and longevity increases (in the private sector, those are called pay raises and bounces) and $23 million in continued restoration pay increases from last year.  Yes, over $29.9 million in NEW raises. It is unconscionable government employees getting these pay raises while the City continues to collect the food tax.  The public would find this more palatable if Phoenix followed through with its pledge to repeal half the tax by January 2014. At the City Council meeting, I asked the following: ·    How many police officers could be hired with $52 million? ·    How many Fire fighters could be hired? ·    How many after school programs would $52 million fund? ·    How much longer could libraries be opened with $52 million? ·    How many senior programs could be restored with $52 million? It’s a question of priorities. The investigation by the Arizona Republic reported employees get walk away money, a “golden parachute”, ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to $100,000 or more. Some received close to $1 million. You and your families are my priority and you have sacrificed enough. You have my commitment to keep fighting for you and get Phoenix to follow through on ending the food tax. My best to you and your family, Sal DiCiccio City of Phoenix Councilman, District 6 602-262-7491 council.district.6@phoenix.gov

Western Shooting Journal stops by the NRA annual convention in Houston

We had a great time at the NRA's annual convention last weekend, met lots of new people and reconnected with many in the industry. Saw so many new products and organizations I couldn't possibly remember them all, but here are a few photos of some of them below. The city of Houston was very accommodating and friendly, and the conference went smoothly. The speakers were more on the political side, whereas the exhibits were more the nuts and bolts side of guns. An Alabama lawyer named James “Jim” W. Porter II replaced David Keene as NRA president (bet you thought Wayne LaPierre was the president! He's the executive vice president and CEO) Porter's father was a prior president of the NRA and Porter has served as first vice president and second vice president. The Daily Mail has a list of the 10 most interesting guns that were at the convention.

We were thrilled to see Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty hanging out with our friend Linda Powell from Mossberg at the Mossberg booth.

The NRA logo on the outside of the George R. Brown convention center was stunning. (photo courtesy of Trijicon)
 
My favorite gun at the entire convention was this beautiful gold-plated 1911, which American Legacy Firearms custom-made for the Second Amendment Foundation. $1700 if you bought it at the convention.
We got to meet top archery shooter and hunter Whitney Isenhart, representing Franchi. She was very gracious. Hope to feature her in the magazine soon! http://whitneyisenhart.com/
Magpul, the gun manufacturer that is leaving Colorado over its new gun control laws, was in-your-face with perhaps the largest and most spectacular gun spectacle at the conference, a Dillon Aerospace 7.62 M134 minigun, mounted on a vintage VW microbus. Their booth was one of the busiest at the convention.
We've never seen so many cool gun and knife-related gadgets.
Western Shooting Journal's Associate Publisher Dick Openshaw with Amy Prevear from Sig Sauer.
Remington was celebrating the Model 1100's 50th anniversary.

All work and no play? No way! We could not resist photo ops like these.
Zombies were everywhere at the convention....Hornady sells zombie ammunition.

Pink is always the easiest way to distinguish women's gear from men's!
The NRA store was HUGE, and keeps expanding every year.

10 to 20 foot tall posters like this were everywhere.
Bet you didn't know Karl Malone was on the NRA board of directors!
Northwest Territorial Mint makes the most beautiful genuine silver mock rounds, in 50 cal and 20 mm.
Beautiful commemorative NRA knives from Northwest Territorial Mint.
We like how one commenter describes Krieghoff shotguns: Krieghoff is to shotguns as Lamborgini is to automobile.

I got to check out a Trijicon scope mounted on a John Browning-designed .50-caliber military machine gun. The gun and scope were so popular at the Trijicon booth that you had to wait your turn to try it out.
High-end rifles made by Franchi.

Western Shooting Journal's Associate Publisher, Dick Openshaw (center), with the Second Amendment Foundation's Dave Workman and Rosemary Silano from American Legacy Firearms.
We never saw more than 3-4 protesters across the street the entire time we were at the convention, although we heard there were as many as 12.

Submit the best reader photo with a gun and win an AmmOMug!

We love these AmmOMugs so much we are awarding one to the Western Shooting Journal reader who submits the best photo of themselves with their gun for our June issue. The deadline for submitting a photo (or two) is May 1st. These stainless steel mugs are great for hot or cold beverages. I have one and love it (and in fact everyone who sees me with it, wants it). There are at least 28 designs to choose from; the winner gets to choose. So send me your photos now, or go take some more! Email photos to me at ralexander@media-inc.com

  

Watch Buckley the cat fetch just like a dog!

ACLU, GOLDWATER INSTITUTE TEAM UP ON FREE-SPEECH CASE

Unlikely alliance between organizations highlights case's importance to fundamental freedoms


The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Goldwater Institute's appeal in Korwin v. Cotton, a free-speech challenge to Phoenix's transit advertising standards that were applied to remove 50 "Guns Save Live" advertisements from the city's bus shelters.

"This case has profound implications beyond whether Appellants can post their proposed advertisement on City of Phoenix bus shelters," the ACLU's brief argues. "It involves the scope of the Arizona Constitution's grant to all persons the right to freely speak, write and publish on all subjects."

The City's policy forbids non-commercial advertising on city buses and transit shelters. In 2010, plaintiff Alan Korwin and his company, TrainMeAZ, purchased 50 transit shelter ads designed to drive business to their gun-training website. The ads pictured a large heart with "Guns Save Lives," followed by the group's website.

Even though the ads were commercial in nature, the City removed the ads, despite approving "Jesus Heals," Veterans' Administration, and water-conservation advertisements that did not appear to propose a commercial transaction.

"The City's arbitrary decision-making is exactly the type of censorship the U.S. and Arizona Constitutions forbid," said Clint Bolick, Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute, who characterized the City's policy as "we sort-of know it when we see it."

The Maricopa County Superior Court (a lower court) upheld the City's actions in a 2012 decision. The case is now before the Arizona Court of Appeals.

"This odd-couple alliance between the Goldwater Institute and the ACLU highlights the importance of the case to our fundamental freedoms," said Bolick.

The case is expected to be argued in the Court of Appeals later this year.

A copy of the ACLU amicus brief can be found here under "Case Documents": http://goldwaterinstitute.org/article/korwin-v-cotton-bus-shelter-ads-case

To arrange an interview, please contact Lucy Caldwell, Communications Director, at 602-633-8986 or lcaldwell@goldwaterinstitute.org.

###

"I am thrilled to see the ACLU get behind this case," said Alan Korwin, the Appellant in the case and an ACLU member for decades, "It is the right thing to do. Phoenix was out of its mind to tear down our bus-stop ads in the middle of the night without notice. http://www.trainmeaz.com/news-room/

I have supported many of ACLU's efforts on free speech, and they figured prominently in my 12th book about things you're not allowed to say, Bomb Jokes at Airports. http://www.gunlaws.com/BJAA.htm

"This case is about free speech, which is central to everything I've been doing as a writer and publisher for nearly three decades," he said. http://www.bloomfieldpress.com "It is particularly gratifying though that the substance here is gun safety, at a time when the national scene is dominated by efforts to restrict gun rights for the public."

TrainMeAZ.com is a non-partisan, statewide, joint educational effort to teach gun safety to everyone, backed by many of the state's firearms-industry leaders. President Obama, in his 7th executive action plan to reduce gun violence, seeks to "Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign." (Source: The White House). At least in this, we find common ground. Take a gun-safety class for the benefit of yourself and your community. http://www.trainmeaz.com

Arizona's gun laws guy, Alan Korwin, tells us what got him interested in this area and what you need to know about it

My interview with Alan Korwin from the March 2013 issue of Western Shooting Journal.

I think it's time for a new iPhone case....

I found all of these on eBay, mostly ranging from $4 to $20. How can you decide??? Might as well get several!

Click here to see 18 more cool cases

Empty shelves of ammunition at Walmart

Thanks to Obama and the Democrats gun control efforts, ammunition shelves have looked like this for months.

The sign says 3 boxes per customer per day, as if there are actually 3 boxes available of the kind of ammo you need.....

Fair Play for Divorced Dads

Despite the fact that 80% of those surveyed would like both parents to have equal time with their children, instead of a preference for the mother, politicians refuse to change parenting laws. The amount of family law litigation caused due to this, and the high costs of family law attorneys, is out of control.

by Barbara Kay

Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has commissioned a report aimed at overhauling Canada’s family-law system. Its recommendations, which will be officially released later this month, reportedly include strategies for streamlining the legal process, encouraging mediation and reducing litigation.
The report will note that the number of self-representing litigants in family-law cases has climbed to above 70%, largely due to the exorbitant cost of lawyers. That statistic suggests the economic hardship that fractious breakups impose, but not the heartbreaking human costs imposed on parents — especially fathers, who often find the deck stacked against them in court.
Efficiency, reduced costs and diminished litigation are worthy goals in a system notorious for being out of control in all these areas. But a more fundamental reform also is needed: The establishment of equal shared parenting as the default in custody after marriage breakdown.
In most contested cases, mothers are awarded sole — or effectively sole — custody over children, with fathers relegated to the role of visitors, an unsatisfactory situation for them and for their children. Even unlitigated cases are settled “in the shadow of the law” — meaning that fathers often are advised by their lawyers to settle for whatever they can get, as they know the deck would be stacked against them in court.
Equal shared parenting — a minimum of 40% of time spent with children by each parent — has been federal Conservative party policy in theory since 2002, following an exhaustively researched landmark federal study in 1998, “For the Sake of the Children,” which recommended equal parenting as the presumptive custodial arrangement in the absence of abuse.
But in spite of its own avowed, reiterated position — and polls showing 80% of Canadians support a strong role for both divorced parents in the lives of their children — Stephen Harper’s government has failed to enable MP Maurice Vellacott’s repeated motions to that end. As a result, fathers often continue to be unjustly marginalized in family court.
We know much more about the effects of enforced separation from fathers on children than we did even a decade ago. Yet anti-father myths persist, such as: that infants and toddlers have only one primary “attachment figure”; that overnighting away from mothers causes anxiety or maladjustment in all infants and toddlers; that children prefer living with only one parent, and shared parenting isn’t worth the hassle; that shared parenting works only in the case of harmonious divorces; and that the quality of children’s relationships with their fathers is not related to how much time they spend together.
Dr. Linda Nielsen, professor of Adolescent and Educational Psychology at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, debunks such myths in a recent feature article published in The Nebraska Lawyer, “Parenting Time and Shared Residential Custody: Ten Common Myths.”
In her study, a meta-review of 64 articles published in peer-reviewed journals, Neilsen concludes that “infants form strong attachments to both parents at roughly the same time. Whatever preferences infants might have for one parent disappears by 18 months of age.” She found seven studies that have assessed overnighting of preschoolers, and “none of them found statistically significant differences in instability or other measures of maladjustment.” Also: “The vast majority [of children] who have lived in shared residential parenting families say the inconvenience of living in two homes was worth it,” and “most children in shared residential custody and those who see their father frequently are better off on measures of well-being even when their parents have ongoing conflict.”
Most importantly, she concluded that “fathering time, especially time that is not limited mainly to weekends or to other small parcels of time, is closely associated with the quality and endurance of the father-children relationship. This kind of fathering time is highly correlated with positive outcomes for children of divorce.”
Justice McLachlin’s goal of encouraging mediation and settlement is a noble ideal. But unless the unlevel playing field of family-law litigation is corrected, her proposals will prove merely cosmetic — both for Canadian fathers and for the children who desperately need to spend time with them.
This article originally appeared in The National Post (Canada)

Phoenix gun buyback money could be put to better use

by Alan Korwin

A publicity stunt, designed to give the impression that Phoenix officials are "doing something" about psychopathic murderers, will spend $100,000 buying mostly junk and rusted, inoperable guns (if past performance is any gauge), from savvy residents interested in getting $100 grocery cards for the trash in May.

"We've seen this before in cities nationwide and here in our own state," said Charles Heller, spokesperson for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, the state's most active firearms civil-rights group, who was not asked to comment on The Arizona Republic's front-page publicity for the event.

"At least the paper admitted this time that the stunt will have little if any effect on crime," he said. "Criminals won't turn in $700 guns for a cheap grocery card. Only idiots would stage such a stunt and imagine it's crime control."   The program is falsely called a gun "buyback," but obviously, you can't buy back something you never owned.   Read the rest of Alan's article on AZCentral

I wil be on the Austin Hill Show Wednesday morning to discuss the latest draconian gun control efforts

If you're up early Wednesday morning, I'm going to be talking to Austin Hill about Connecticut's new drastic and comprehensive gun control legislation.  It would turn power over to the state to choose who can buy guns and ammunition, basically requiring an "ammunition eligibility certificate." More than 100 guns will be banned. We'll also discuss California's bills to regulate and tax ammunition, and an attempt by Congressional Democrats to impose a $10,000 fine on gun owners who don't have insurance. If there's time, we'll discuss a new law passed by a city in Georgia which requires the head of each household to own a gun. Finally, we'll look at the new United Nations treaty being voted on that would effectively ban guns in the U.S. Listen to my interview as editor of Western Shooting Journal on Austin Hill's Idaho show. 7:05am PST (10:05am EST) ......click here to listen to NewsRadio KINF 99.1 FM live. Click here to check out Western Shooting Journal and subscribe (only $1.89/mth online). Use the discount code "Editor" and get 25% off a hard copy subscription.

Magpul considering relocating to Arizona due to new Colorado gun control legislation

Duane Liptak, Director of Product Management and Marketing for Magpul, told Gateway Pundit, “We’ve talked to some states, visited some, and we’ve got a lot more to get to. Some of the initial round of states that we’re looking at are Wyoming, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Montana, Idaho and Arizona but there are others in consideration.”

Read the full article here

Memorial Service for Politico Mafioso's Jeff Vath will be April 5th

The Memorial Service for our friend Jeff Vath will be Friday, April 5th, 10 am at the Deer Valley LDS Chapel 2939, W. Rose Garden Ln., Phoenix, AZ 85027. Please join the family for a luncheon immediately after the service.

R.I.P. Politico Mafioso

One of our most well-known fellow Arizona political bloggers passed away last night, Jeff Vath of Politico Mafioso. Jeff was quite the character; in my opinion the most colorful blogger in the state. He was only 53. He had struggled with his weight for years, but he had started to make progress over the past couple of years, losing 88 pounds. Surrounded by family and friends last night, I believe he died of a perforated ulcer that led to heart failure.

When he first appeared on the Arizona blogging scene a few years ago, I didn't know what to

Jeff with his hero, Senator John McCain

think of him. He was a diehard Republican, but he never seemed to like any of the candidates I liked; didn't like the conservative Pachyderm Coalition. He frequently supported liberal Republicans in the primaries (but to be perfectly honest, some of the conservative candidates he opposed were not the greatest candidates and prone to gaffes). 

I got along with him though, because as our mutual friend Charles Jensen (Politics on the Rocks) liked to point out, Jeff always looked out for the underdog. When Jeff saw his friends getting beat up in the media or in politics, he was never afraid to come out and blast their attackers on his blog. He truly was the Politico Mafioso, afraid of nothing. He broke many stories that were picked up by the mainstream media.

Jeff was a big fan of Senator John McCain, and things really heated up between him and I when I became social media director for the JD Hayworth senatorial campaign against McCain. Jeff would attack us on his blog, but things usually didn't get too mean; most of his attacks consisted of the funniest pictures of us. Shane Wikfors of Sonoran

Politico Mafioso's photoshop of JD Hayworth, Rob Haney, Shane Wikfors, CQ and I

Alliance was the field director for the Hayworth campaign, and it became all out war between the two blogs for awhile! Jeff was very talented with graphics. During the campaign he appropriately added the title "Leader of the McCain Mafia" to his blog.

When my older brother passed away in 2009 of leukemia, Jeff was there for me, and he got to know my sister whom he also consoled, much like an older brother. They remained good friends until he passed away.

It was just one month ago that I posted the photo of his new decked-out car with "Politico Mafioso: Leader of the McCain Mafia - The GOP's Bad Ass Blogger" plastered on the side, which he drove to Politics on the Rocks. 

I will deeply miss him. His wife Mary Anne is a retired schoolteacher, and past president of the local retired schoolteachers' association. My mom was also a schoolteacher, and Mary Anne reminded me a lot of my mom; witty, fun and a truly decent person. My heart goes out to her at this time.

R.I.P. Jeff Vath. I know you're up there in heaven looking down at us shaking your head at how the Republican National Committee doesn't have a clue with its efforts to modernize the party, and the Maricopa County GOP chair's latest remarks about Brewer getting him into hot water with Andy Tobin and other Republicans. But I know you're smiling because at least we got Robert Graham in as state party chair!