Video: A Colorado Sheriff Responds To President Obama

[bsteadman]

Video: A Colorado Sheriff Responds To President Obama

Published on April 3, 2013 by ecso2027

View the video at:

http://youtu.be/mlwgZzeq8oI


President Obama visited Denver on April 3, 2013 to push his excessive gun legislation. Not one sheriff in the state of Colorado was included in the event. The sheriffs of Colorado representing 62 counties were kept out of the event because their legislative needs were not useful to the president. Obama's purposeful shunning of the state sheriffs could not silence them. Listen as Sheriff Shayne Heap from Elbert County Colorado responds to the president's comments.

[bsteadman]

Colorado Law Enforcement to Obama: Stop Using Our Cops as Props

Fox News
4/4/2013

Excerpt:

OBAMA: I want to say thank you to the Denver police for having me here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many of the officers were stating that, as police officers, we should be neutral on these very hotly contested issues. We shouldn't be seen or perceived as taking sides. We're being unfairly portrayed, what I would even say is exploited, for one political party's agenda over another.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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VAN SUSTEREN: Well, you just saw today in Colorado, President Obama using Denver police officers as a backdrop for his gun control speech. Cops as props? A lot of police officers were not happy with the president, including Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith. He joins us. Good evening, sir.

JUSTIN SMITH, LARIMER COUNTY SHERIFF: Good evening, Greta.

VAN SUSTEREN: Nice to see you. And Sheriff, presidents from both sides of the aisles have been doing it for decades, using people as props for their points. Today, it's sort of cops as props and -- what do you think about it?

SMITH: You know, I agree with the line-level. Denver police officers that I spoke with that it was completely inappropriate. These officers have a job to do. They should be on the street protecting their community, not used as political props. The officers I talked to were disgusted that they had been coerced and cajoled into trying to get them on to be on stage.

VAN SUSTEREN: You know, some of the police officers didn't show up today, or didn't stand by the president. Is that in part because of the very sort of controversial new gun control law in Colorado? Is that what is sort of distressing some police officers or members of law enforcement?

SMITH: Absolutely, Greta. That's what really went over the edge. I personally spoke with some officers that came out to the rally that the sheriffs and I -- Colorado sheriffs held, and they told us that they were adamantly opposed to these gun-grabbing measures that the president's pushed on Colorado, and they were really disgusted by the idea of being pushed up there.

They let us know in no uncertain terms. They weren't allowed to stand with the sheriffs standing up for their community, but we're told it was in their best interests to be at the Denver Police Academy in uniform, trying to represent his views.

VAN SUSTEREN: So did police officers actually feel pressured to be there, police officers and law enforcement who didn't want to be there?

SMITH: Absolutely, Greta. I talked to two officers that didn't wish to be identified. In addition to the stories you've already heard, they told me personally -- one of them said he told his superior he'd call in sick before he would come in and represent views that he thought truly were very wrong views out there. I also heard that the Aurora police department got messages from their chief wanting them to show up in uniform, as well.

View the complete article, including video, at:

http://nation.foxnews.com/gun-contro...our-cops-props

[bsteadman]

Obama: Government Tyranny Impossible Because 'Government Is Us'

Breitbart / Big-Government
Ben Shapiro
4/3/2013

Excerpt:

In his big pitch in Colorado on Wednesday for further gun control, President Obama made an astonishing statement about gun rights advocates’ fears of governmental gun seizures. He said that such worries would just feed “into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: ‘I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.’ The government’s us. These officials are elected by you … I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.”

There are two odd angles to this statement. The first is Obama’s overarching theme: government violation of rights is impossible because “the government is us,” and we can’t violate our own rights. Were this true, we could do away with the Constitution altogether. We would also never have to worry about democracies turning tyrannical, or electing tyrannical rulers. In this odd vision, Germany, Italy, and Spain remained liberal democracies throughout the twentieth century, World War II never happened, and Egypt, the Gaza Strip, and Turkey are all thriving centers of freedom.

The government is most assuredly not us – at least not all of us – which is why our system of government is designed to protect the rights of minorities while still allowing majorities to legislate without violating those rights. Obama’s defense to charges of incipient tyranny is that tyranny can never happen here. Which, of course, makes it more likely that tyranny will happen here.

Truth be told, even Obama does not believe that the “government is us.” If he did, he would never worry about pro-life legislation (he does, and would challenge such legislation in court), heterosexual marriage legislation (he does, and challenges such legislation in court), or anti-Obamacare legislation at the state level (he does, and will likely challenge such legislation in court). Even in Obama’s vision of rights, populism is limited, although his vision of rights is skewed.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...ion-constrains

[bsteadman]

4 More Ways Obama's Gun Control Speech Sows Mistrust -- Reason.com, Jacob Sullum

4 More Ways Obama's Gun Control Speech Sows Mistrust

Reason.com
Jacob Sullum
4/4/2013

Excerpt:

As I noted earlier today, President Obama professes to be worried about a lack of trust and empathy in the gun control debate, even as he accuses his opponents of blocking life-saving legislation out of sheer partisan perversity. Here are a few other ways in which Obama's speech in Denver sows mistrust:

He conflates a failed background check with stopping a criminal from obtaining a gun. "Over the past 20 years," Obama says, "background checks have kept more than 2 million dangerous people from buying a gun." That claim is based on two faulty assumptions: 1) that everyone who fails a background check is dangerous, which plainly is not true, given the ridiculously broad categories of people who are legally barred from buying firearms, and 2) that a criminal intent on obtaining a weapon will give up if he cannot get it over the counter at a gun store, rather than enlisting a straw buyer or turning to the gray or black market.

He falsely equates "assault weapons" with military guns. Obama inaccurately calls one of the guns used in the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, massacre an "assault rifle," which is a military weapon capable of firing automatically. He calls the guns he wants to ban "weapons of war," again implying that they fire continuously, when in fact they fire once per trigger pull, like any other semi-automatic firearm.

He says there is no logical connection between "universal background checks" and gun registration. "We're not proposing a gun registration system," Obama insists. "We’re proposing background checks for criminals." But there is no way to enforce a background-check requirement for every gun transfer unless the government knows where the guns are. Federally licensed gun dealers are readily identified and can be required to keep sale records. Individual gun owners who might dare to sell their property without clearance from the government cannot be identified unless the government compiles a list of them. Hence Obama's assurances amount to saying, "Don't worry. We will make a big show of passing this new background-check mandate, but we won't really enforce it."

He pooh-poohs the idea that there could ever be anything adversarial about the relationship between Americans and their government:

You hear some of these quotes: "I need a gun to protect myself from the government." "We can't do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away."

Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. (Applause.) They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It's a government of and by and for the people.

One of the constraints on the federal government is the doctrine of enmuerated powers, which says every act of Congress must be justified by a specific constitutional grant of authority. Where is the clause that empowers Congress to say how many rounds you can put in a magazine or whether your rifle can have a barrel shroud? Furthermore, as Obama surely has heard by now, there is this thing called the Second Amendment, and it is hardly frivolous to argue than an arbitrary and capricious piece of legislation like the "assault weapon" ban Obama supports would violate the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Yet to Obama's mind, anyone who makes such an argument is one of those "people who take absolute positions" and therefore can be safely ignored. After all, the government is us.


View the complete article at:

http://reason.com/blog/2013/04/04/4-...trol-speech-so