Firearms Coalition

Would the Real Dave Vann Please Stand Up…

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 8:27 PM

Would the Real Dave Vann Please Stand Up…
By Jeff Knox

FirearmsCoalition.org

Manassas, VA --(Ammoland.com)- I wasn’t surprised to see the name David Vann in one of David Codrea’s always excellent Gun Rights Examiner columns.

Dave Vann has been a good friend and fellow freedom fighter for decades.

But then I read David Vann’s suggestions for responding to the threat of campus shootings and I knew there was something very wrong in the world. This Dave Vann was advocating for the banning of all handguns, because they’re “made to kill people.”

Obviously this was a different Dave Vann. This Dave Vann is not a retired police officer with an addiction to advanced firearms training and a deep abiding interest in, and knowledge of, firearms, criminology, US History, and the Constitution. This Dave Vann is a creative writing teacher in San Francisco who has written a somewhat sympathetic book about the 2008 Northern Illinois University murderer, and is so mistrustful of his fellow US citizens that he spends most of his time in New Zealand. (Someone might wish to educate Mr. Vann about the widespread gun ownership in that island nation.)

Dave Vann the retired police officer has a simple solution for mitigating the destruction caused by suicidal mass murderers: Stop disarming the potential victims so those who choose to can respond to such assaults with something more immediate and effective than a cell phone.

David Vann the creative writing teacher has a somewhat less simple, four-point solution for universities to “limit shootings,” which he admits really won’t work, but which should be implemented anyway because, he says, not applying his admittedly ineffective solutions is “insane.” What he suggests is that college’s, universities, high schools and middle schools must:

Group together to fight the NRA and push for gun control, including the elimination of all handguns, since handguns are made to kill people.
Require mental health background checks (apparently on all students, faculty, and anyone wishing to own whatever guns are still allowed, going back their entire lives, not just 5 or 10 years).
Flag anyone who has served in the military or been in the prison system. (Mr. Vann does not specify whether he is referring only to those who have been incarcerated or guards and prison service workers as well.)
Use metal detectors, more police at campus borders, etc.

Mr. Vann (the creative writing teacher) says that these measures will all help to guard against campus shootings, but that they are “expensive and almost entirely incapable of preventing a swift attack.” So he suggests that the “best that universities can do,” in his opinion, “is to invest in fighting the pro-gun lobby.” (Read the full interview with him here.)

It is clear that this “intellectual” David Vann is missing a few important points that I’m confident would never be overlooked by the less erudite, retired cop, Dave Vann. For instance, Dave Vann the cop understands that it is illegal and immoral for state colleges and universities to use taxpayer dollars to lobby against the rights enumerated in the US Constitution. He also realizes that the “pro-gun lobby” is not some small group of political specialists sitting around in a smoky room phoning instructions to politicians and writing massive campaign checks from the bottomless pockets of their firearms industry masters. He knows that the “pro-gun lobby” is a coalition of regular Joe’s and Jane’s who care deeply about their rights and donate their time, money, and talents to protecting those rights. He understands that the power of the “powerful gun lobby” comes from the 80 to 90 million Americans who own guns and oppose useless, ineffective infringements on their rights. Dave Vann the retired cop and rights activist, co-founder of www.USRKBA.org and www.GunLeaders.com, knows that restricting the rights and invading the privacy of 300 million people for fear of what less than a dozen people might do, is the very definition of paranoia and irrationality.

Dave Vann the creative writing teacher’s paranoia and irrationality sees threats from military veterans and anyone subscribing to a libertarian political philosophy. Dave Vann the retired cop sees veterans and libertarians as fellow workers in the cause of freedom.

Perhaps both of these men can stand up as being the real David Vann, but only Dave Vann the retired cop and rights activist can stand up as the real American, the real patriot, and the real man.

Here’s what Dave Vann has to say about the matter:

Meeting Your Doppelganger – David Vann v David Vann
by Dave Vann on Oct.12, 2011
A doppelganger is described as a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune. When Jeff Knox and David Codrea emailed me and informed me that David Vann had written an anti-gun book and was a professor at the University of San Francisco, I knew I had found mine.
One David Vann is on the right coast, a former law enforcement officer, RKBA supporter, Co-Founder of Gunleaders.com & USRKBA.org who believes in the absolute right of individuals, including military personnel, to defend themselves, the other, on the left coast, is a virulently anti-gun professor who writes about those who commit mass murder, teaches at a liberal college, doesn’t trust military personnel to own firearms and believes handguns should be totally banned because, he says, they are only used to kill.
What to do? I’ll follow conventional and traditional wisdom and confront the beast. So, David Vann, meet David Vann.
I saw exactly what you propose. I saw a handgun ban at work from 1976 forward in Washington, D.C. I witnessed the body count rise, steadily, each and every year, as this social experiment continued to fail. I cringed at the battered, bloody bodies of women who had been raped, robbed, beaten and murdered and had no way to defend themselves. I heard stories of business owners who were so terrified of being robbed and killed that they were willing to break the law themselves and obtain firearms on the black market rather than risk being shot and killed by robbers, an all too frequent event when D.C. became known as the “Murder Capitol” of the Country.
Gun control advocates have an explanation to all this that is far too simplistic. “Well, they keep selling guns elsewhere”. Yes, they do, however, law abiding D.C. residents could not simply go somewhere else and buy a handgun and bring it back to the city, a fact you and others conveniently forget to mention. Criminals, however, steal guns and laugh at all laws.
As for handguns being only used for killing, every law enforcement officer in this country should be sending you a message loud and clear that if that was the case the body count would be astronomical. Police officers do not carry handguns to kill people Mr.Vann, they carry handguns to protect lives. Occasionally it becomes necessary to use that handgun to save an innocent life. Are you going to object to a police officer using a handgun to save your life from someone who is intent upon killing you? If you are, please let the police know so that they can avoid responding to your address, putting their lives in jeopardy, when you really don’t want to be saved.
The courts have ruled that the police have no obligation to protect the individual (Warren v District of Columbia), therefore it falls upon the individual to act responsibly in that regard. A handgun protects the innocent and saves lives every day. Forty eight States now have licensing for concealed carry and the consistent drop in violent crime attests to the fact that criminals are well aware that it’s becoming dangerous for them to ply their trade, except of course in cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago and a few other holdouts.
Is there aberrant behavior in our society that goes undetected? Of course, just as there are journalists and writers who present one-sided rants. Should we require them to register their computers and undergo a mental exam to determine if they are fit to fill the papers and academia with all the garbage we are subjected to today? It might be tempting but the First Amendment is protected by the Second so we all remain free to express our opinions no matter how far from the truth some of them may be.
You rail against the NRA yet fail to acknowledge that the NRA is the chief training organization for Police nationwide and has developed more educational programs for firearms safety than any other group in this Country.
As a doppelganger you truly are a malevolent entity that seems bent on destruction of our most cherished freedoms; freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I reject you and I cast you out.

Dave Vann – The real one

About:
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition is a project of Neal Knox Associates, Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org

Tags: David Codrea, Examiner.com, Firearms Coalition, Jeff Knox

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New Acting Director of ATF Has Ties To The Inception Of Fast & Furious

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 9:04 AM

New Acting Director Of ATF Has Ties To The Inception Of Fast & Furious
Don’t be fooled again.

FirearmsCoalition.org

Manassas, VA --(Ammoland.com)- Was the new Acting Director of ATF involved at the inception of the criminal gunwalking scandal known as Operation Fast & Furious?

The appointment of B. Todd Jones as Acting Head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) hasn’t caused much of a ripple – in the media or in the ATF.

By most accounts Jones is a stand-up guy, ex-Marine, and in a refreshing change of pace, apparently not known for ignominious bouts of bad judgment. But who your friends are generally says a lot about you and Todd Jones is a long-time friend and confidant of his boss, Eric Holder.

That’s got some gun owners uneasy and asking for more information about the new chief gun control enforcer.

While Jones hasn’t publicly demonstrated the anti-gun bias of Holder or Obama’s pick for a permanent ATF Director, Andrew Traver, there are legitimate reasons for concern. Along with Jones’ close associations with Holder – going all the way back to the Reno Justice Dept., when Holder was in charge of the official DOJ whitewash of the Waco fiasco – there is also strong evidence that Jones was actually involved in Operation Fast & Furious from the very beginning.

Researchers at The Firearms Coalition, the grass roots rights organization my father founded in 1984, have uncovered what appears to be a redacted reference to B. Todd Jones in attendance at the first meeting of Eric Holder’s “Southwest Border Strategy Group.” This group included people at the highest level of ATF, DOJ, FBI, and other agencies, including virtually all the people implicated in F&F to date.

This organizational meeting is likely where Operation Fast and Furious was conceived.

For months the Justice Department has stonewalled and withheld information from congressional investigators regarding this group’s genesis, its members, and any strategies it generated, including requests for minutes or details of this specific meeting. Among the thousands of useless and heavily redacted documents which were turned over several months ago to Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) Government Oversight and Reform Committee were emails about this meeting. Our researchers noticed that the “Chair, Attorney General’s Advisory Committee – (AGAC)” was listed among the member attendees. The name was redacted, but that position was held by B. Todd Jones at that time. It is also interesting to note that Jones, who will continue as US Attorney for Minnesota, quietly resigned from the AGAC chairmanship position when Holder appointed him to take the helm at ATF – so quietly that there were no reports of it.

So not only has Holder appointed a trusted friend and confidant to head the agency at the center of an international scandal, that same friend and confidant appears to have been directly involved in the inception of the scandal itself. If this is indeed the case, then B. Todd Jones has a serious conflict of interest and, either way, Eric Holder has some explaining to do.

Since his appointment as Part-Time, Interim, Acting Director of ATF, Jones and his chief deputy have made some disturbing comments about the Fast and Furious debacle which indicate complete ignorance of, disregard for, or intentional obfuscation of the known facts.

“There were mistakes made, but it doesn’t justify the ATF being kicked while they are down,” said Jones, “They have a tough mission, but the politics of guns won’t let it succeed.”

Shortly after Jones’ appointment his chief deputy made a trip to the Phoenix ATF office where he declared that the congressional inquiries into the matter were simply politically motivated smear campaigns. He was speaking to agents – some of whom are the very whistleblowers who raised initial questions about the operation, which led to its exposure and condemnation.

Agents posting at www.CleanUpATF.org complain that there have been no changes in agency operation since Jones was appointed on August 30 – no dismissals, reassignments, or shakeups at ATF Headquarters or in the leadership of field agencies – and Jones has not taken the trouble to reach out to field agents at all.

His initial “Glad to be here – new day at ATF” announcement video that was streamed to field offices via the internet – went out with no audio, so agents only received reports about the comments, but could not hear what he actually said. Jones is scheduled to hold a “Town Hall” meeting with agents in the Phoenix area, but pessimism among agents at the Clean Up ATF website runs high. They say that nothing short of a dramatic revamping of the agency’s power structure at headquarters can produce serious improvements.

They complain that lawyers in the powerful Chief Counsel’s Office at ATF Headquarters run the show and are at the heart of the agency’s problems. They don’t buy the idea that another outside attorney, like Jones – especially one working on a part-time, interim basis – is likely to institute any meaningful changes in the organization and its cronyistic hierarchy.

Meanwhile the evidence mounts that the ATF, FBI, and DOJ intentionally violated numerous federal laws and engaged in an active cover-up of some aspects of Fast and Furious from the day Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down by Mexican Bandits using guns from the F&F operation.

Evidence was recently uncovered indicating that there was a third Fast and Furious gun recovered from the Terry murder scene and that this gun’s connection to the operation was intentionally deleted from official reports to protect an FBI operation or informant. There has also been growing evidence that at least one prime target of Fast and Furious was actually a paid FBI informant who used FBI funds - that is, taxpayers’ money - to finance his gunrunning for a drug cartel.

This news raises questions of an even broader conspiracy with possible implications to the White House and the State Department. While full details have not been disclosed, a mention of $70,000 from a cartel member to purchase guns was included in ATF Chief Bill Newell’s testimony.

Since early June, I have been calling for a special prosecutor to investigate this scandal. That call has been echoed by every major firearms rights organization, most conservative political organizations, and some in Congress, but the call needs to be much, much louder. A special prosecutor was assigned to investigate what happened under Bill Clinton’s desk. A special prosecutor was assigned to determine who told reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA. Why hasn’t a special prosecutor been assigned to investigate criminal operations of the ATF and DOJ which led directly to the death of BPA Brian Terry and scores of Mexican nationals?

I encourage readers to contact their elected servants in Washington and demand that an independent, special prosecutor be empowered to get to the bottom of this mess.