From BlackVoices

“View” co-host Sherri Shepherd appeared on Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends” and told the hosts why she planned on purchasing a gun. Last month, the alarm system in Shepherd’s house went off in the middle of the night. Shepherd was so freaked out that she decided to purchase a gun. “We have two dogs and they didn’t bark,” Shepherd said to the “Fox & Friends” hosts.

“And immediately my husband jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. And I ran to my son Jeffrey’s room. And I never wanted a gun in my house but the sight of my son laying there saying, ‘Mommy I’m scared.’ That’s when you realize all you got is a wicker trash basket between me and anybody that comes in this room. And it was a scary thought.”

Read More at BlackVoices.com

Source: rawstory.com

Guitarist and “activist” Ted Nugent is another popular figure in hot water for his comments about the Obama administration during an NRA convention in St.Louis. According to the Associated Press, during the convention last week, Nugent toted the Obama administration as the “evil, America-hating administration.” While that’s not the worst insult I’m sure you’ve heard about, the rocker took things up a notch by comparing the administration to coyotes who needed to be shot, and urged NRA members to “to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November.” And the icing on the cake was when he told the crowd what he would do if the president was re-elected: “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” Word Ted? WORD?

I’m guessing the secret service wasn’t feeling this, because Ted is slated to meet with them on Thursday to explain his comments. He told his buddy Glenn Beck (your other favorite person) that after he talks with the secret service, it will be pretty clear that he wasn’t threatening the president whatsoever. But despite what he says, a lot of people are still calling the comments threatening, and for those who have guns but don’t have sense, it might be the words they need to hear to act a fool this fall. And yes, Nugent is endorsing Mitt Romney with all his might.

It’s funny how just last week people were getting in Hilary Rosen’s behind because she made comments about Mitt Romney’s wife being a stay-at-home mother who really hadn’t worked a day in her life after Romney said he looked to her as a guide to women’s economic struggles. Yet this fool gets in front of the gun-toting NRA, talking about the President and his administration and calling them evil, comparing the November elections to a battlefield, even saying he’ll be dead or in jail if President Obama is re-elected, and folks are on the hush this time around.

Writer Leslie Marshall at US News World & Report said that despite people’s views on the President’s record or positions, folks still need to have and show a lot more respect to him. Why? Because he’s the damn president! Hello!!!!

“Although I’m not that old a broad yet, I am seeing a growing number of Americans disrespect not only the man in the Oval Office, but the office of the president. It seems the older I get, the less respect Americans have for our commander in chief.

Some will say this is just Nugent being a loudmouth, he isn’t really threatening the president. Perhaps that is true, but what about the idiot who will follow Nugent’s words and make a true threat or attempt to carry out such violent rhetoric? Have we learned nothing from the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords?!  When will the use of such  language stop?! And the disrespect!”

AMEN! People throw the worst forms of shade and disrespect at our president as though everything he’s dealing with and trying to work on during his presidency is something he created alone. From immature governor’s pointing their fingers in his face, to folks calling him boy, sending rude emails about his wife, and now this big dummy (*in Fred Sanford voice*)  encouraging trigger happy individuals to take matters in their own hands when it comes to dealing with the president and his administration in the fall, this stuff has to stop. He might not really be telling people to hurt the president, but as Marshall said, after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, he should have known better. Sure, President Bush had a few shoes thrown at him during trips to Iraq, but the disrespect President Obama gets from his own people here at home, GROWN PEOPLE who should know better, is despicable. If President Obama were a Republican, trust, the outcry would be immense (with Bill O’Reilly at the helm). Just as Rosen was held fully accountable for her words, so should this man. I’m telling you, if incidents like this don’t make you want to swarm the voting booths in November, I really don’t know what will…

More on Madame Noire!

• Nicki Who? 7 Female MCs Who Could Be Coming For Nicki Minaj’s Spot
• Does Cohabitation Set A Bad Example?
• Think Like A Man Cast Tells Madame Noire Why Folks Need To See This Film
• Please, Baby Baby Baby, Please: 6 Things Men Say and Do When They Want You Back
• Tuesday Talk: Lamman Rucker Discusses Forplai, For Play And Foreplay
• NEW EPISODE: “Ask A Black Man” Episode 4: The Marriage Episode
• Just Like His Big Bro: Usher’s Little Brother Has Custody Drama
• The Pros And Cons Of Dating A Male Virgin

Source: gallery-directory-stars.blogspot.com

The legendary comedian made several appearances on television last week, including stopping to do “Press Pass” (an extension of “Meet the Press”) with David Gregory, and also sat down for an interview with CNN. For both interviews, he talked about his thoughts on the murder of Trayvon Martin, among other things, and let it be known that the real problem in this situation is gun violence in general, not racism and racial profiling.

While on “Press Pass,” this is what he had to say on the topic:

“It’s about the gun. It’s about this gun. Guns in this country…When you have a gun, you may not realize it, but you put it on your person and you mean to pull this and kill somebody. That’s what you mean to do…You provoke with a gun. You have this power. You have this thing on you. It heightens what you’re supposed to be looking for.

You’re going to profile anyway, if you’re going to profile. But if you have this, it provokes a feeling.”

And when he sat down with CNN, he let it be known that he feels a gun in the wrong hands is what is responsible for this young man’s death, and calling Zimmerman a racist doesn’t change anything.

“When a person has a gun, sometimes their mind clicks that this thing will win arguments and straighten people out. In the wrong hands and the wrong mind, it’s death…What is solved by saying, ‘He’s a racist. That’s why he shot the boy.’ What solves that?”

And while he’s not trying to take away anyone’s rights to have a licensed firearm, he believes those who want to own guns need to be trained beforehand on how to use them and be “checked” out. Clearly, not everyone is capable of handling one and being responsible with said firearm.

“You’ve got to protect yourself in your own home, but I also believe that when you tell me that you’re going to protect the neighborhood that I live in, I don’t want you to have a gun,” Cosby said. “I want you to be able to see something, report it and get out of the way.”

After Cosby shared his comments earlier last week, some folks weren’t feeling them. They felt saying the race equation needed to be taken out of the picture was irresponsible, especially since a lot of evidence seems to point to the fact that Martin’s race was why Zimmerman found him to be suspicious. Writer and television personality, Touré, who says Bill Cosby is “rather misguided about the black community,” went on MSNBC recently and said that Cosby’s comments were very dangerous.

“Trayvon Martin was clearly profiled as a criminal black man…that’s why he [George Zimmerman] pulled his gun and used it on Trayvon. When a person of Bill Cosby’s stature comes out publicly and says it’s not a race issue, it’s a gun issue, it gives fuel to all those who misunderstand the situation…And he’s giving fuel to those people to say, “See look, even Bill Cosby agrees with us.”

But Cosby might have a point. Of course, racism is still an issue in this case, but I think we all know guns, both illegal and legal, are doing more harm than good these days, making them a huge problem as well.  And Cosby knows the effects of gun violence, as his son, Ennis, was shot and killed while trying to change his tire in a robbery attempt in 1997. Guns make the weakest people brave, as was the case with Zimmerman. He thought he was going to be able to handle the situation, despite the dispatcher saying NOT to follow Martin, but if he hadn’t had the gun, how would this incident really have turned out?

Do you agree with Cosby or do you agree with Touré in saying that Mr. Cosby has it backwards? Check out clips from their performances below:

Cosby on “Press Pass.” Fast forward to around the 11:30 mark:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On CNN:

Touré on MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

More on Madame Noire!

• Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind the Making of “Boomerang”
• Asymmetrical Hair Styles: 7 Celebs That Are A Cut Above The Rest
• Can You See Me? 6 Signs You May Be An Attention Seeker
• Will You Watch? Jim Jones and Chrissy Lampkin Snag VH1 Spinoff
• He’s Baaack: Larenz Tate Starring in New Film, ‘Gun Hill’
• Why There’s No Hope For The Real Housewives of Atlanta
• Too Soon? SNL Spoofs Trayvon Martin Coverage
• Nicki Minaj’s Family Says She Exaggerated Her Father’s Abuse

Last week, I read a provocative piece from Thembi Ford of Clutch Magazine, called “Is It Okay to Own a Gun?”

Ford writes that she felt compelled to pose this question after an incident where a close friend of hers was forced to brandish a gun at a lurker outside of her first floor apartment window. Ford writes, “She waved the man off, yelled for him to go away, and put a stern look on her face. That didn’t work, so she pulled out her gun and pointed it at him. That still didn’t make him leave (she ended up calling the police, who escorted him away), but it scared me plenty.”

Yeah that would scare me too.  I thought this was interesting because just the day before reading it, I was on the phone with my younger brother, who asked me if I wanted to apply for a permit to carry.  This, of course, was coming from my brother, who just a year ago would have sworn off guns completely.  However that was before our hometown (Philadelphia) began to lead the nation in per capital murders. I could hear the angst in his voice as he recounted the tale of the teenage son of a cop, who had been murdered in a suspected gang initiation just feet away from his job.  My brother, who is a father of three boys and a little girl, worries constantly about the prospects of having a gun in the house. But that day, he began to ponder their safety without a gun in the house.  I worry too – not just only about my brother, his wife and my niece and nephews but my own security.

Many people, particularly women, fear guns. The perception is that only criminals, street gangs and white male patriotic right-wing nuts want to own a gun. Black women, as a whole, seem entirely absent from the gun discussion.  In fact, Tyler Perry’s Madea only pulls her piece for comic relief. Prior to Zoe Saldana big gun-toting in Columbiana, the only other time I can remember seeing a Black woman packing serious heat in popular movies was Pam Grier in Coffy and Foxy Brown.  And when Rihanna sung about shooting down the guy that sexually assaulted her, that image was demonized and completely banned from television.

However, women, particularly women who live alone, don’t have the luxury of fear.  I remember being a teenager in Philadelphia, coming home from work at night; I got off the bus at the corner, which dropped me off around the corner from my house.  I was met and accosted by a guy, who smelled of a mixture of weed and liquor. He pulled out a gun, stuck it in my side and pushed me into the shadows, away from public view.  And as I pulled off my rings and necklace and emptied my change purse for the little bit of cash I carried, the perpetrator went on about how he normally doesn’t like to stick up “sistas” but he really needed the money now. I can still feel the brisk Fall wind on my sleeveless arms as he snatched my leather bomber and then ran off like a literal thief in the night.

That robbery occurred almost two decades ago. Reading the newspaper and watching the local news of home invasions, subway near death beatings and women being brutally attacked in their homes, I am certain that my own personal fear is grounded and shared by a collective conscious of many women, who truly don’t feel safe in their environments. According to statistics from both the Violence Policy Center and the National Organization for Women (NOW), somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes. In 2009, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner, which averaged to around three women per day.  And of all the women murdered in the U.S., about one-third was killed by an intimate partner.Young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape, with African-American women facing higher rates of domestic violence and murder than white women.

Yet, conventional wisdom says that owning guns doesn’t necessarily make you less of a target for domestic violence, rape and murder. Even using our best preventive measures we learned as young girls, you cannot predict or even stop a perpetrator hell bent on causing harm. Likewise, women victims of domestic violence living with a gun in the home were three times as likely to be murdered as women who were not. Not to mention that from 2001 through 2007, over 4,900 people in the United States died from unintentional shootings, with 8% of such shooting deaths resulting from shots fired by children under the age of six. That’s why the decision to carry or have a gun in the household should not be taken lightly. And whether it’s a gun, martial arts, pepper spray, or learning how to stop a perpetrator by jamming the biggest key on your key ring in his/her eye, our self-defense is something that every woman shouldn’t take for granted neither.

And it appears that women are becoming a little more conscious to their safety concerns.  A 2009 study has found 70 percent of shop owners are seeing more female buyers than ever before, as reported by the Washington Times. As of right now, I am not among those women, although I plan on owning a gun in the near future. Recently I found a letter stuffed into my mailbox from our district police department alerting us residents to a series of home burglaries in our neighborhood.  The letter wanted us to be aware and take prevention measures. I will not say for sure that owning a gun would prevent someone from breaking into to my house when I’m not there however I really don’t want to be home alone in the house without a gun if a break-in happens too. It’s all about options, you know?

And while I am not a official gun owner, my brother and I have been going to the range since my 34^th birthday to both practice target shooting and familiarize ourselves with firearms. This has given me a newfound respect for guns. Not necessarily because I feel powerful holding a pistol or revolver but because I now realize the immense responsibility that comes from being a gun owner.

Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.

(Washington Post) — A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday upheld the District’s authority to impose a system of handgun registration and rejected a challenge to the city’s ban on semiautomatic assault rifles and large-capacity ammunition clips.  The 2-to-1 decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District leaves in place the gun-ownership regulations passed by the D.C. Council after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2008 ended the city’s decades-old handgun ban.  Calling the ruling “an important victory for the District of Columbia,” Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) said it “upholds our government’s authority to pass reasonable gun laws.”  “It supports the registration requirements as well as the bans on assault weapons and large magazines — each of which are key components of the District’s battle against violent crime,” the mayor said in a statement.

Read More…

(New York Daily News) — The Rev. Al Sharpton blamed a “barbaric” criminal element – in part – for the accidental shooting death of a beloved Brooklyn matriarch last week.  Sharpton called on the NYPD Saturday for a definitive ruling on whether a police bullet killed the innocent woman.  Denise Gay, who would have turned 57 on Friday, was struck down by a stray bullet while sitting on the front stoop of her Crown Heights home, as cops engaged her ex-con neighbor in a gun battle. ”There was a crime they were responding to,” Sharpton said of the police. “But to those who act thuggish in our community – with your barbaric disregard for our lives – you make us vulnerable, too. You put us in a position we should never be in.”

Read More…

(Chicago Tribune) — The Chicago City Council isn’t done tinkering with gun-control measures it hastily approved last summer after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a decades-old handgun ban.  The council’s Public Safety Committee on Tuesday recommended approval of a tweak that would cut in half the licensing fee to open up a shooting range. The cost would be $2,000 for two years.  The city also would reduce the minimum distance a gun range would have to be located from homes, parks and houses of worship to 500 feet from 1,000 feet.  The changes would make it easier to put a gun range in Chicago, but another provision of the ordinance would complicate record keeping at such facilities.  It would require gun range owners keep records of everyone who used their facilities after ensuring each patron has a state firearm owner’s identification card and city firearm permit.

Read More…

(AP) — Some city residents wondered Tuesday if it’s time to pull the plug on the gaudy West Indian Day parade after three people, including a woman sitting outside her home, were shot to death just blocks from its route.  ”I was saying to myself a while ago they probably should shut it down,” said Winston Thomas, a 66-year-old who moved from Jamaica to Brooklyn, site of the annual Caribbean-themed Labor Day parade, 40 years ago. “If you create this kind of atmosphere where you’re killing people all the time, it don’t make sense. … I stay away from it.”  Mayor Michael Bloomberg blamed illegal handguns for the shooting that killed three people and wounded two police officers near the parade route shortly after the parade ended Monday night, saying federal officials have not had the “courage” to take steps to control gun use.

Read More…

By J. Smith

The District of Columbia fancies itself an arms dealer, apparently. Just like when the United States supplied arms to future enemies in the Middle East, the Washington, D.C. government would like to sell guns to city residents (and, I assume, use the money to combat gun violence some day). The only gun shop within D.C.’s borders has been temporarily closed since April, and apparently the ability to buy a gun righ this second deserves “emergency legislation.”

“In a twist for the District, which once banned the weapons before its rules were struck down by the Supreme Court, Councilman Phil Mendelson is sponsoring emergency legislation that would make D.C. a licensed firearms dealer. Under the legislation, gun owners who want to bring handguns into the District would have their guns shipped to government offices to get the stamp of approval to carry them within D.C. borders. D.C. needs the law, Mendelson said, because the only licensed firearms dealer in the District is temporarily closed for business as of April. That amounts to a de facto ban on handguns, since no one can now legally bring a gun into the District,” The Washington Examiner reports.

I am immediately struck by how quickly the government can move on things that serve its interest most. Guns are clearly a priority within the local government, so much so, that it is willing to become the catalyst for the commerce they generate. Much of the government is reluctant to get involved in selling affordable insurance to the poor, but selling guns is ok?

Imagine the tangled webs beginning to mat under the thought of guns being issued by the state. Regulation already sounds like a nightmare, and the timing of the issue couldn’t be worse, with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in hot water because of a botched operation involving – you guessed it – the government’s handling of guns. Stop the madness, D.C., and let the local gun market regulate itself.

(Chicago Tribune) – Gov. Pat Quinn sought to stall a push to allow concealed carry in Illinois, saying Tuesday that he would veto any measure lawmakers sent him that would allow citizens to walk around with loaded guns in public.  ”I don’t think we’re in the business of trying to increase danger to the people of Illinois. We want to work with our law enforcement and prevent bad things from happening,” the governor said at a morning news conference.  The threat of a veto from Quinn did little to deter supporters who have been emboldened by last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that tossed out Chicago’s long-standing gun ban.  Hours after Quinn announced his opposition in Chicago, a House committee recommended approval of the latest version of a concealed-carry measure. Illinois and Wisconsin are the only states without some form of such a law.

Read More…