“I’ve decided to have guns in the house.”

Those were the simple words of Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell, after fending off an armed intruder in his house.

His wife, daughter and grandson were about to hit the sack late Saturday, when the thug broke in, attacking his daughter.

The wily 77 year old tried to stop him, but it was Boswell’s grandson’s loaded shotgun that caused the punk to flee in the opposite direction.

Yep, if there’s one thing you can learn from a shotgun: you never run at one.

Now, publicizing tales like these do nothing but good, for they remind the common thug of a key life or death question: what house would you rob, if you could?

One in which the owner is armed, or not?

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Larry McMurtry is a national treasure, the man responsible for literary classics like Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show.

His op-ed skills, alas, need some fine tuning.

McMurtry took to the pages of The Washington Post this week to share his thoughts on the Tucson shooting and the ensuing cultural debate. He’s a longtime Tucson resident and felt he had something to add to the conversation.

“Brokeback Mountain” screenwriters Larry McMurtry, left, and Diana Ossana with director Ang Lee

On second thought …

His rambling essay contained the usual liberal bromides spelled out in convoluted fashion. And, worst of all, he apparently has serious misgivings about the free and unfettered political debates in this country. Why would an artist who makes his living with words fear a spirited body politic?

After a quick attack on Arizona’s lax gun restrictions – a subject wholly relevant to the matter at hand – McMurtry brings out his big guns.

Oh, sorry. Is that hate speech today?

He applauds Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for blaming heated political rhetoric for the killings, even though the entire civilized world now knows there isn’t a microscopic scrap of evidence to bolster Dupnik’s case. (more…)

Michael Moore is a greedy, lying, hypocritical sack of ferret excrement. Tell you something you don’t know? Alright. Even worse, it now appears that he’s an unintelligent man.

It’s no secret that I’ve never been a fan of Moore’s, but I’ve often said that the last thing I’d call the man is “stupid.” Afterall, a man who cons Americans into paying $9.99 at the local Cineplex only to watch him sermonize on the evils of capitalism must be one of rapier wit. One would think that either he’s a clever graduate from the school of Andy Kaufman, or he’s the embodiment of pure evil held back a grade from the kindergarten of Michael Meyers.

As it seems now, he’s neither of those.  It’s becoming more and more glaringly apparent that the man is dumb. Pure and simple. In a recent interview with MSNBC’s Richard Maddow, Michael Moore stated that people own guns because they are racist. He prefaced his comments with this:

“Everybody’s packing there… everybody has guns. Yet they all said that we have a very low gun murder rate here in Tuscon.  So why do you have a gun then?”

Ummm… How about, so that the gun murder rate remains low?

I’d never pictured Michael Moore as being so dense that he could answer his own question without tasting the irony. Gelatinous yes, but dense a good filmmaker does not make. (more…)

So apparently New York City is proposing new criteria for would-be gun-owners – banning folks from having weapons if they happen to be lousy drivers, been fired from a job due to bad character, or in possession of serious debt.

According to council-member Dan Halloran, these changes give police more power to reject licenses, in order to counter a possible upswing in gun ownership caused by new, lower fees.

Now I’m all for keeping guns out the hands of bad people.

But I’m also for getting guns into the hands of good people.

But I must ask: how does being a bad driver, make you a bad person? And getting fired? I’ve been canned three times – does that mean I can’t have a glock? I mean, I shouldn’t have a glock – but not for that reason. There was an incident in Shreveport that ended that dream.

As for being in debt? That eliminates everyone here on this set. And also John Gibson – who still owes me $1300 for that lost weekend in Cancun.

So yeah, these new restrictions seem pretty vague. (more…)

The script of the upcoming remake of the infamous America-conquered-by-Commies movie Red Dawn (1984) raises an intriguing question – can Hollywood actually still produce a movie where it takes America’s side?  The answer is “Sort of.” 

“Wolverines!”

There are some welcome ideological surprises lurking within the script’s 104 pages.  Shockingly, Hollywood actually seems to accept the premise that if the Chinese and Russkies invade the United States we are justified in fighting back with hot lead instead of teach-ins and choruses of Kumbayah.  But the script also displays a bit of the moral illiteracy we’ve come to expect from the Hollywoodoids – naturally, the script has to imply that we kinda brought the invasion on ourselves and that resisting tyranny somehow means becoming just as bad as the tyrants.

The re-imagining of Red Dawn will be released later this year and does very little actual re-imagining of the original’s simple plot.  We first meet some all-American teenagers.  They play high school football, party, and talk and look like CW series cast members – not real bright, but pretty (the pretty part in the script).  For some reason, the Soviets (replaced here by the Chinese with a Russian assist) invade America and seize their hometown.  Their town’s tactical significance appears to be that invading it advances the plot.  Anyway, the teenagers go up into the mountains, score some of the firearms our prescient Founders ensured we’d always have the right to keep and bear despite the best efforts of those gun control-loving wusses, and launch a bloody guerrilla war against the invaders.  (more…)

I must have missed the groundswell of support and the public clamor for the return of Rosie O’Donnell to the daytime airwaves.  It seemed that her time in the cultural spotlight had passed following her notorious 2008 variety show failure (It was hailed by one merciful critic as “dead on arrival”) and her exile to a daily Sirius XM radio show that caters to creepy shut-ins and those unlucky listeners who can’t figure out how to tune-in to Howard Stern.  But like some sort of loudmouthed, frumpy, left-wing vampire who just won’t stay in the ground, she is threatening to rise again with a terrifying plan to replace Oprah once the Queen of Daytime TV retires in 2011.  Someone in Hollywood, please – break out the garlic.

Of course, I’m hardly Rosie’s daily television show target demographic.  I work for a living instead of sitting at home staring slack-jawed at the succession of Sham-Wow commercials and ads for shyster lawyers promising big payouts for the imaginary injuries of their deadbeat clients that fill the time between inane segments of mindless yak.  And while the social parasite demographic seems to grow larger after every freebie, hand-out and pay-off the Administration and its Congressional flunkies issue in favor of their employment-averse constituents, Rosie O’Donnell still seems like a bad economic bet.

This is no longer the same country as it was back in 1999 when Rosie was honchoing her first daytime gabfest and hassling Tom Selleck over his support for the Second Amendment of the Constitution.  It’s not even the same country as it was in May 2007, when the former “Queen of Nice’s” anti-conservative bile culminated in her slandering American fighting men and women as terrorists on The View: (more…)

Has “Burn Notice” gotten new writers? They used to have some very insightful comments about guns and crime (e.g., see the episode in season 2 entitled “Lesser Evil”). Yet, now one needs a scorecard to keep tracks of all the errors in some of the shows. Take some of the errors in the most recent show, “Partners in Crime,” posted on Hulu.

At 10:10 into the episode, Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) explains to Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) that an individual who they are checking up on in Florida, “Owns a gun, but it is registered.” The only problem is that Florida, where the show is said to be occurring, and the vast majority of the rest of the US, doesn’t have gun registration. Indeed, only four states require the registration of handguns and one state requires the registration of all long guns (several other states require the registration of so-called “assault weapons.”

At 16:20 Sam Axe says: “The cops are probably matching ballistics right now even without your gun.” Ugh? Now I concede there’s possibility that this comment might have been geared solely to freak out Tim (the suspected thief”, but given the previous conversation about guns being registered between Weston and Axe, I am not so sure. And there are never any knowing winks between the main characters to indicate that they are in on some joke they’re playing on the bad guy. (more…)

An Ethiopian Jewish woman soldier takes aim. Both men and women serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. Thus, there is a weapon in almost every Israeli home.

Before our son Ariel Chaim ZT”L passed away, age twenty-two, in 2003, we spent a good deal of time discussing the Second Amendment, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Ariel was amazed that so many American Jews—overwhelmingly liberal and secular—aligned themselves with the advocates of gun control, in reality a movement to banish the private ownership of guns by lawful citizens.

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In the 1930’s, when world audiences were asked to name the capital of the U.S.A., one answer was high on the list: “Hollywood.” That was the location listed at the end of every amazing movie: “Made In Hollywood.” How could such magic not come from America’s capital?

Such is the power of a single word.

That power has not diminished but only increased with an ADD, multi-channel, hyperactive media-centric world. The silver screen has long given us immortal dialogue which now blends so deeply into the culture that people may not know their origin, but we know the meaning.  A wise man I know said, “Image creates perception, perception creates reality.”  It couldn’t be more true in the film business.

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In a media-centric world, from motion pictures to internet to phones, we are pounded with images, forming our perceptions and then creating our reality. How fast did the Internet meme “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys” become a daily reference at the coffee klatch, in your email, or on phone calls?  Not long.  We forget how powerful words can be when written in a clever and pithy way.  The masters of dialogue like Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, and the Epstein brothers, knew irreverent and immortal lines.  And as producers, writers or just Americans who appreciate a good, nimble turn of a phrase, we should excel at creating phrases that demonstrate the values we hold dear.  Don’t understand?  “What we have here is a failure to communicate!” (more…)

A week ago, a horrendous crime took place in a nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina.  Seven innocent lives were taken by an unhinged dirtbag apparently upset at his ex-wife.  Fortunately, a brave police officer answered the call, engaged the perpetrator in a gun fight, and though he took three rounds to the legs, managed to deliver a center-mass hit onto said dirtbag, dropping him in his tracks.  This courageous officer kept his head, and, with bullets pounding around and into him, kept his muzzle on target long enough to bring to an end a tragedy that may have been a whole lot worse.

A few days ago, an even more egregious travesty upon the innocent occurred in upstate New York.  A disgruntled man blocked off the exit to a community service building with his car, then went around front and entered the building firing a high-powered rifle.  Before the rampage was done, fourteen souls were gone, including the shooter’s.   

Predictably, there surfaced immediately the usual suspects who painted this tragedy as further evidence that more comprehensive and restrictive gun laws are needed, now more than ever.  (more…)

“Thing is, he’s going to kill me.”

“Have you gone to the police?”

“Yes, of course I have.”

“And what happened?”

She shakes her head from side to side, wraps her arms protectively around her chest.

“I got a restraining order against Ned, that’s my ex-boyfriend. But you know what good that is, don’t you?”

“Tell me.”

She inscribes a big zero in the air. (more…)

“There is an iron river of guns that flows South into Mexico [from the United States] to supply criminal organizations on the border,” says Tom Mangan, senior special agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in Phoenix. “They are in the market for machine guns, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles,” he continues. That’s right. The drug gangs can’t buy that and other military stuff like the 40MM grenades (the silver things in the upper left) and the rifles with launchers shown in the photo below in Mexico, so they drive to the United States and purchase them from American gun dealers at retail. Isn’t that the story you’ve been told?  Well, congratulations. America’s First Amendment protected propaganda ministry has punked you on another important issue — this time on behalf of dissembling officials and gun confiscation advocates.

For the benefit of those who may not know, machine guns (not the same thing as the demonized “semi-automatic”), hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other such military items are illegal to possess by US civilians, which means they are not for sale in gun stores. OK, in the interest of extreme accuracy for anyone in need, there are some civilian owned machine-guns in America, but they all have to have been registered with the ATF by 1986 as evidence that a special Treasury tax has been paid and the owner’s residence state has to approve the possession. What’s more, none of these arms has ever been involved in a crime, to my knowledge, and all are considered very pricey collectors items. That means they are not for sale to or in the hands of Mexican drug goons. (more…)

If I could wave a magic wand and change anything about the good old U.S. of A. tomorrow I wouldn’t fix the economy or get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I wouldn’t wish away the Obama budget or Nancy Pelosi. I wouldn’t even mystically make our borders secure or stop the assault on the sanctity of human life. The one thing I would change is to give everyone in the country a massive dose of critical thinking skills. I would make it the number one priority of things to be taught in schools. I believe if I could fix this problem all the others would fix themselves.

Let me give you an example. On Sunday I was watching Fox News and one of the newsreaders was doing a piece on the drug war on our southern border. Part of this story was a short interview with the liberal New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey. Ms. Lowey hates the fact that you have the right to own a gun. Of course, she never came out and said that. Instead Ms. Lowey was faithfully reciting the administration talking points about the Mexican border drug war which includes the idea that the problem on our southern border is largely due to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. (more…)

The season finale of “Burn Notice,” entitled “Lesser Evil,” involves Michael Weston (Jeffrey Donovan) trying to keep both himself and Madeline Weston, his mom (Sharon Gless), safe from some angry spies. Madeline and Sam Axe (Bruce Campbell) are surrounded by those bad spies and Madeline makes what to many may seem like an obvious suggestion.

Madeline Weston: Should I call the police?

Sam Axe: No, that would make it way too easy for them. Cops take us to the station — they know where we are and they know that we are unarmed.

The segment reminded me of an even even more politically incorrect show: “The Rifleman.” The episode entitled “The Anvil Chorus” aired on December 17, 1962, and is summarized this way: (more…)

Guns have figured frequently in “Boston Legal,” with Denny Crane (William Shatner) using them defensively from time to time.  Recently, in episode 3 of season 5 (“Dances with Wolves“), Denny fired a gun to defend himself from a robber who also had a gun. The robber was not really threatening, and as Denny’s friend and fellow partner Alan Shore (James Spader) asked him: ”Did you absolutely have to shoot [the robber]? Three times? In both feet?”  Obviously the answer to all three questions was, “No.”

I don’t mind the humor in these shows. In fact, I laugh along with everyone else, but it would be interesting if those on the anti-gun side of this television firm (which is everyone else) would have similar fun poked at their own gun control views. Is it just not possible to think of similar jokes? (more…)