web1_TTL062916nicks.pjas_.jpg

St. Nicholas St. Mary’s School wins honors at PJAS State Competition

web1_Guns.jpg

Letter to the Editor: Require mental health exam for buyers of certain guns

<p>Henry Ford defined &#8220;psychological crime&#8221; as &#8220;the crime of bringing men to act from the highest and sincerest motives of self-sacrifice, and then using that high spirit for the lowest purposes.&#8221; Then he added the well-deserved consequences of getting caught: &#8220;There is nothing that heals so slowly and hurts so long as wounded faith.&#8221;</p><p>The anti-Second Amendment camp repeatedly has misled the public with fraudulent information and, most recently, Katie Couric&#8217;s and Stephanie Soechtig&#8217;s promotion and sale of &#8220;Under the Gun&#8221; as investigative journalism rather than dramatic fiction.</p><p>The Million Mom March, in which Hillary Clinton played a major role, diverted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt money to support House candidates and presidential hopeful Al Gore in 2000. It liquidated in 2001 after I and others blew the whistle on this abuse of charitable donations. The organization also solicited donations and volunteer time on the grounds that firearm misuse kills 12 or 13 children per day. Almost all of the &#8220;children&#8221; in the Million Moms&#8217; statistics were legal adults (18 to 19 years) and older teenagers in a very high-crime age group rather than toddlers who find unattended guns.</p><p>The Million Moms then filed a highly creative Form 990 tax return for 2000 in which they told the IRS that they made no efforts to influence legislation or public opinion regarding any legislation, even though their openly stated mission was to lobby for restrictions on firearms. You can verify this by downloading the organization&#8217;s 2000 tax return from GuideStar, after you create a free account.</p><p>A press release from Handgun Control Inc. (now the Brady Campaign, also tax-exempt) claimed that &#8220;a person who purchases a handgun is 57 times more likely to commit suicide within a week of buying the weapon than the general population as a whole.&#8221; This is not a good argument to make in the presence of a quality engineer whose job is to distinguish between causes and effects.</p><p>People once believed, for example, that body lice prevented disease because sick people did not have lice. Lice thrive at body temperature but decamp quickly in the presence of fever, so good health (and not bathing) were the causes, rather than the effects, of lice. The desire to commit suicide results similarly in the purchase of a handgun (or a rope, or alcohol and sleeping pills), as opposed to the handgun purchase resulting in a sudden desire to check out. Brady&#8217;s political action committee also was fined by the Federal Election Commission for failing to disclose expenditures intended to defeat then-Congressman Pat Toomey in 2000.</p><p>If there is any remaining doubt about the dishonesty and bad faith of the anti-Second Amendment camp, consider Couric&#8217;s and Soechtig&#8217;s &#8220;Under the Gun: Mass Shooting &amp; Gun Rights.&#8221;</p><p>Soechtig fabricated the following story to support her claim that it is too easy to buy firearms without background checks. &#8220;We sent a producer out, and he was from Colorado. He went to Arizona, and he was able to buy a Bushmaster and then three other pistols without a background check in a matter of four hours. And that&#8217;s perfectly legal. &#8230; He just met somebody in a parking lot in Wendy&#8217;s and bought a Bushmaster legally.&#8221;</p><p>It is absolutely illegal for a resident of one state to buy a firearm in any other state unless the transaction goes through a licensed gun dealer, who must perform the background check that Soechtig says her producer evaded. The fact that nobody has been arrested despite Soechtig&#8217;s claim to have orchestrated a federal gun felony suggests that she, her producer (if he even exists) and Couric never performed the experiment in question. This fabrication also is being offered for sale as a documentary rather than a work of fiction.</p><p>Friends don&#8217;t lie to friends, much less take their money in exchange for phony documentaries. &#8220;Under the Gun&#8221; proves clearly that the enemies of the nation&#8217;s law-abiding firearm users are the enemies of their own rank-and-file supporters as well.</p><style>
.neFileBlock {
	margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
	margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
	border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
	padding-bottom: 5px;
	padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
	font-size: 85%;
}
</style>
<div class='neFileBlock'>
<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/guest-commentary.png">
<div class="neCaption"></div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/guest-commentary.png</photo0><caption0></caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>William A. Levinson</p><p>Guest columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>William A. Levinson, of Wilkes-Barre, is the author of &#8220;The Expanded and Annotated My Life and Work: Henry Ford&#8217;s Universal Code for World-Class Success&#8221; and other books on Henry Ford&#8217;s world-class business systems. He also holds professional certifications in industrial quality and statistics.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

William A. Levinson: Anti-gun zealots undermine their cause when caught in lies