by Erin Marshall

The United States Coast Guard motto is "Semper Paratus" which means "Always Ready." The Boy Scout motto is "Be Prepared." What does it mean to be ready or prepared? I am not talking about stockpiling MREs and canned foods. I'm not talking about building a bomb shelter or hoarding ammo. I am talking about the state of being ready or being prepared. I believe there are two main parts to being ready. There is a mental part and a physical part.

Why do you need to be ready and what do you need to be ready for? It seems like the past few years we've been seeing more and more natural disasters. Blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, and thunderstorms can strike and leave you in a tough spot. If a large storm knocks out power for millions do you have water, food, or warmth for your family while you wait for them to restore power? If you must evacuate due to a storm do you have a plan, a meeting place, somewhere to go, a way to get there? If there is a dangerous situation in your neighborhood and you are told to stay inside can you do so with essentials for your family? We also need to take financial hardships into account. If you lose your income can you feed your family if money runs short? Having some food stored away could be helpful in the wake of the stress of losing a job.

Think about our dependence on technology. Do you have maps if your GPS or your phone aren't working? Do you have cash on hand in case you can't use a card to get gas while trying to evacuate an affected area? Do you have important phone numbers or addresses written down? The world we live in continues to be unpredictable. Over the past year we've seen events both natural and manmade that have caused people to have to evacuate their homes or stay in them for several days. Hurricanes, blizzards, sinkholes, tornadoes, or other dangerous situations can derail your plans. During the hunt for the bombers of the Boston marathon they locked down neighborhoods. There are increasing reasons to be ready and aware and to be able to get out of a dangerous situation or stay in to avoid one.

COLUMBUS, OH - Ohio's wild turkey hunters checked 18,391 birds during the 2013 spring hunting season, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR).

The state total is a 4 percent increase from 2012, when hunters harvested 17,646 birds. The 2013 harvest total is a combination of the youth turkey season and the spring turkey season, April 20-May 19. Ashtabula County again led the state in the number of wild turkeys killed during the four-week season with 766.

The ODNR Division of Wildlife estimates that more than 70,000 people hunted turkeys during the spring wild turkey season. Prior to the start of the spring hunting season, ODNR Division of Wildlife biologists estimated the wild turkey population in Ohio to be 180,000 birds.

Wild turkeys were nearly eliminated in Ohio before being reintroduced in the mid-1950s by the ODNR Division of Wildlife. Ohio's first modern day wild turkey season opened in 1966 in nine counties, and hunters checked 12 birds. The total number of checked turkeys topped 1,000 for the first time in 1984. Spring turkey hunting opened statewide in 2000.

by Chad D. Baus

WHIO-TV (CBS Dayton) is reporting on a lawsuit that has been filed against the City of Riverside after an incident involving the arrest of a man who was open carrying a firearm.

From the article:

Advocates of "open carry" of weapons are testing police on their knowledge of state laws and then posting the results on the internet.

The most recent case involved a Tipp City man, Roy Call, who walked into a Speedway gas station at 3201 Valley Pike in Riverside at 4:30 am on August 28, 2012 with a gun holstered on his hip in full view by anyone in the store. A customer alerted a police officer who happened to be in the store parking lot. When the officer asked Call who he was and what he was doing, Call said he was exercising his Second Amendment rights and initially declined to identify himself. The officer arrested Call and charged him with obstructing official business.

by C.D. Michel

She went home from the gun store to endure a ten day cooling off period before she could take her new gun home. But her estranged husband, the subject of a restraining order, was not cooling off about their pending divorce. That same evening she was raped, beaten nearly to death, and their son was almost killed by the man he once called "Daddy."

Every law has unintended consequences. Many have perverse intended consequences. Nowhere are the perverse results more horrific than with gun control laws, because laws relating the legal acquisition of firearms often harm no one except those who are inclined to obey such legislation.

Oddly, it is the most vulnerable among us who are most harmed by ill-conceived gun control laws. According to criminologists, guns are used to prevent violence about six times more often than commit it. In the absence of efficacy as a crime deterrent – a conclusion reached by the National Academy of Science – we should accept that gun control laws endanger people. And disproportionately so.

Disempowering Women

by Jeff Knox

Gun control advocates are compulsive liars. They have to be because the truth doesn't support their agenda. Even the names of gun control groups – suggesting "violence policy," "violence prevention," and "gun safety" – are all lies. And the term "gun control" itself is a lie. Virtually everything coming from gun control advocates today is a lie.

I'm not talking about simple distortions or cases of "my statistics are better than your statistics." These are intentional, calculated, bald-faced deceptions, foisted on the American public by ideologically motivated zealots trying to force an agenda of citizen disarmament and government control. That's not to say that everyone who supports gun control is driven by the same ideology, or that there are no honest, passionate, idealistic, true believers among the ranks of gun control advocates. There are some very good, honest, sincere people who promote gun control, but unfortunately these misguided souls are steeped in emotion and inculcated with the never ending lies of the professional gun haters.

Let's dissect some of the lies:

Hell hath no fury like an anti-gunner who doesn't get her way on gun control.

The Star-Ledger reported last Friday that after a closed-door hearing on gun control in the New Jersey Senate the previous day, three state senators--believed to be Democrats Loretta Weinberg, Sandra Cunningham and Linda Greenstein--were caught on tape, complaining that bills introduced in the Garden State--including one that would require mandatory training to possess a firearm--don't go far enough.

First, a voice is heard complaining, "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate." Then, the trio apparently focuses its ire on gun control opponents who say that the way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is to throw the book at them.

Weinberg, willing to have no part of it, says "They want to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad guys, but they don't have any regulations to do it." Cunningham then snipes, "They don't care about the bad guys. All they want to do is have their little guns and do whatever they want with them," and Greenstein chimes in that enforcing existing law is "the line they have developed."

Knives are one of mankind's oldest and most commonly used tools. Elsewhere in the world, many of the knives sold and used daily in the United States are illegal or severely restricted and the restrictions are growing every day.

Even in the U.S., efforts to demonize knives and to place more restrictions on knives are becoming more commonplace. Without a dedicated grassroots organization to protect our knives, they are an easy target for those who seek restrictions on our freedoms.

Knife Rights is a dedicated grassroots organization that works to defend your knife rights.

While our knives are primarily tools, ultimately our right to own and carry these tools is enshrined in the Second Amendment. The fight to protect our knives is the Second Front in Defense of the Second Amendment. The two pillars upon which Knife Rights stands are "Essential Tools - Essential Rights." We cannot retain the former without the latter.

Win knives, guns, and more - over $100,000 in prizes!

As we reported last month, on April 2, the United Nations General Assembly voted 153-4 to pass the Arms Trade Treaty, with the United States voting in favor and several countries abstaining. The vote in the General Assembly pushed the treaty process forward after negotiations twice failed to deliver on the goal of developing the treaty by consensus. The Obama Administration is expected to sign the treaty soon after it is opened for signature on June 3.

According to a May 16 Amnesty International article, a senior US diplomat--Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman--has confirmed the U.S. government will be quick to sign the new treaty. According to the article, Countryman said on Wednesday that the United States would sign the ATT "in the very near future."

If the deeply problematic treaty is signed, the fight will move to the U.S. Senate, where the Obama administration would need to find 67 senators to ratify the treaty.