Finally! The Truth About Guns

Glenn Beck – Control: Exposing The Truth About Guns (Mercury Radio Arts/Threshold Editions)

I remember the conversation vividly. The national director of one of the nation’s largest gun control advocacy groups was in town for a second straight year to appear on at a local college campus to preach the need for gun control.

It was at a time when guns were a hot issue, with a spate of school shootings ranging from Pearl, Mississippi to West Paducah, Kentucky and Jonesboro, Arkansas had hit home with the shooting death of local Edinboro teacher John Gillette. As with all high profile incidents, the push was on for new, allegedly tougher, gun control measures to be put in place to “prevent this tragedy from ever happening again.” You never want to let a good crisis go to waste.

I had desperately tried to get the gun controller to appear on my show to debate the issue. On his first pass through town I got no returned phone call from his DC based office or from the local folks at the college. I had debated a wide range of folks on the issue of gun-control; capped I thought by a discussion with children’s book author Stan Berenstain, who had authored one of his Berenstain Bears books entitled No Guns Allowed; during which my responses to his silly points so enraged the author that he gutlessly slammed down the phone, leaving me to finish the debate with a dial tone.

On his second trip through Erie, the gun controller choose a different venue, where I had better contacts and while I still got the cold shoulder on him appearing on my show, I did manage to get in the same room with him prior to his appearance. When I asked him why he would appear on my show, he took my arm and took me to an empty corner and quietly said to me, “I’ve heard you debate the issue and I know I can’t win, so I won’t do [the show] it.”

And that is truly the cornerstone of the debate over gun control for me and the basis of Glenn Beck’s new bestselling book; Control: Exposing The Truth About Guns. Beck cites example after example after example of how gun controllers frame their case for more laws and more control based on fiction, half-truths and outright lies. It’s as if they borrowed a page from Joseph Goebbels, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

I can see the impact that the repetition of the lies has had on family and friends. At a holiday gathering shortly after the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, the inevitable discussion of “doing something to put a stop to this” came up. While I try to keep things on the lighter side with family, the hockey lockout was still in full effect so I could avoid the discussion. I may have let my blood pressure slip just a bit when I heard the standard lines about “assault weapons” and the need for background checks; I calmly (or so I thought) asked exactly what my family member thought an assault weapon was? Like most clueless members of the media, I received a blank stare and a shrug of the shoulders and a limp, “like the kid used in Newtown.”

I’d like to personally thank Glenn and his team for saving my familial relationships and my blood pressure! Now instead of trying (!!) to remain calm and explaining the where my family and friends have been mislead, I simply visit the truck of my car, take out another copy of Control: Exposing The Truth About Guns, hand it to the misguided individual with the promise that I will gladly discuss guns and gun control with them after they have finished reading the book. If I ever have the opportunity to cross paths with the likes of sniveling Piers Morgan or Rachel Maddow (that guy really pisses me off!) I plan to slug them in the nose for all the money they have cost me for these books!

One little addition I would make for those who end up arguing with idiots on gun control that truly stops these gun control nitwits in their tracks; ask them if they truly are so set against guns if they would be willing to post a small sign outside their home stating “NO GUNS ON PREMISIS.” It would show how strong their beliefs truly are and act as an open invitation for bad things to happen.

Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America (Threshold Editions)

The impending death of the Republican Party will have been caused because they did nothing to staunch the bleeding caused by thousands of tiny knife wounds inflicted by a well entrenched army of the left and the fact that the limp wristed, wuss leaders of the Party (see John Boehner) did nothing to fight back.

Ben Shapiro’s book Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America is a call to arms and a call to action for conservatives. Shapiro lays out chapter and verse, example after example of how the left has built a multi-faceted approach not only to politics, but to power.

It’s reads like something out of Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu the way the left has steadily built a power base in institutions like the media, the education system, Hollywood, and the non-profit world and utilized that power to beat down (in the case of union thugs, sometimes literally) the opposition.

Republicans and conservatives have been cowed to silence for fear of being labeled racist, homophobe, or anti-this that or the other thing. In the process the Left has so thoroughly changed the face of our culture that what once would have been deemed outrageous is now seen as somehow normal.

Shapiro’s call to action is that conservatives are at a tipping point (to use a cultural buzzword) where they charged with deciding if they want to fight or switch. Do they want to stand up and fight back on behalf of the Republican Party, which all too often bails on conservatives, or do they want to build something new to challenge the status quo. In may boil down to the ages old conundrum of the “devil you know…”

Shapiro’s best point is that conservatives can no longer be silenced by the Left’s tactics. It won’t be easy to withstand the withering assault that will come your way if you choose to take on the ingrained machine of the Left. I think that Shapiro really exposed how weak the Left really is when they get confronted head on during his recent interview with snotty Brit, CNN’s Piers Morgan. When confronted head on Morgan shows what a sputtering moron he really is; it is a clear case of an merciless beat down by Shapiro. It is that kind of gloves off response that is long overdue from conservatives.

I laughed out loud at the irony when Shapiro quotes failed Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who was talking about Obama’s approach to fixing the economy when he said “When you have an enterprise in trouble, the number one rule is focus, focus, focus.” Perhaps that is good advice for the Republican Party; clearly they have an enterprise in trouble, the question is what will their focus be? Clearly Ben Shapiro has laid out a strong case for how to bounce back.

CNN's Piers Morgan Get Smacked Like a Rented Mule

In what I can only describe as one of the clearest beat downs in recent television history Ben Shapiro, editor at large for Breitbart, slapped CNN's Piers Morgan around like a rented mule in a debate over gun control.

Shapiro was relentless in his chock full of facts debate style. So flumoxed was snotty Brit that he clearly had no ammunition to respond to Shapiro so he began to feign outrage which was slapped aside with a calm, cool that made Morgan look even more unprepared.

Check out the festivities for yourself.