Obama and Bloomberg Use December 14 to Promote Gun Control

Google "Organizing for Action" (OFA), supposedly a non-partisan, grassroots group, and you get www.barackobama.com. Likewise, click on the preceding link, and it takes you to the Organizing for Action website. Despite OFA's innocuous-sounding name, the Chicago-based group is an arm of the Obama political machine, the successor to a similar Obama store-front put together after his 2008 election, Organizing for America. Whatever the group's name happens to be at a given moment, fulfilling the president's goal of "fundamentally transforming America" remains its mission.

On Monday, Obama's current operation sent an email to supporters urging them to hold events advocating gun control on December 14, the one-year anniversary of the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut.

Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg's euphemistically-named group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, along with Moms Demand Action, are releasing a 60-second version and a 30-second version of a TV ad portraying a person approaching an elementary school with a duffel bag, as students observe a moment of silence for the victims who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary. The obvious implication is that the gun control laws that one or both groups support could prevent the type of crime committed at Sandy Hook.

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Feinstein Uses Brady Bill Anniversary to Push for "Universal Checks"

Last Saturday was the 20-year anniversary of President Bill Clinton's signing of the Brady Act into law, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) used the occasion to urge readers of the San Jose Mercury News to go along with requiring background checks on private transfers of firearms.

A "groundbreaking gun-safety law," she called the Brady Act. "Background checks on gun purchases work," she said. Repeating a false claim that earned President Obama Three Pinocchios from the Washington Post's Fact Checker earlier this year, Feinstein said that background checks should be imposed "on the estimated 40 percent of gun transfers made between private parties."

Gun control supporters have certainly changed their tune in one respect, at least.

Army Officer Insults Supreme Court for Heller Decision; Calls for Gun Bans, Turn-Ins, and More

To say the least, some of the characters who have appeared on the national scene in recent years have demonstrated some enormous egos and used some pretty ill-tempered language in their efforts to turn this nation into something we wouldn't recognize. But Army Lt. Col. Robert Bateman is challenging them for top dishonors in that regard, with an over-the-top rant in Esquire magazine this month.

You pretty much know what's coming when a guy begins by claiming, "My entire adult life has been dedicated to the deliberate management of violence. . . . My job . . . is about killing. I orchestrate violence. . . . I am really good at my job."

Real warriors don't brag, of course. They let their actions speak for themselves. And real warriors support the Second Amendment and oppose gun control, as indicated by a letter signed by over 1,100 current and former Army Special Forces soldiers in January.

Bateman's self-adulation was just the beginning, however.

Super Bowl of Hypocrisy: NFL Ad Policy Stiff Arms Daniel Defense

Here at the NRA, we love football. This is America, after all.

But, let's face it. There aren't too many sports more violent than one in which men weighing well upwards of 300 pounds repeatedly and deliberately crash into one another at speeds that most avid runners can only dream about, and slam each other to the ground. Football is a physical sport.

And there's no attempt to downplay the violent nature of the sport. After all, the team with the ball is called "the offense," a long pass downfield is referred to as a "bomb," and players who get too aggressive are penalized for "unnecessary roughness."

So, we're a little confused by a National Football League policy against accepting TV advertisements featuring "firearms, ammunition or other weapons."

U.S. Ammunition Industry to Survive Closure of Lead Smelter

We previously reported on the closure of the nation's last primary lead smelter due to tightened EPA standards on ambient air quality. As the date for closure of the smelter approaches, there has been a significant amount of speculation concerning the effect of the smelter's closure on the availability and price of ammunition.

According to the United States Geological Survey, lead usage in ammunition makes up only about three percent of lead consumption in the United States. Lead-acid batteries make up the vast majority of U.S. lead consumption, and these batteries are readily recycled. This recycled lead, which will still be able to be smelted in the United States at secondary smelters even after the Herculaneum smelter closes, is the type most often used by ammunition manufacturers.