Posted on 10/31/2007 9:01:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last week, Sturm, Ruger & Company (NYSE: RGR) stock took a licking in the marketplace after Ruger officials admitted their revitalization plan wasn't quite on the rails the way they had envisioned. Yesterday, Smith & Wesson Holding Company (SWHC) received a similar spanking after earnings came in below analysts' expectations of 12 cents a share. Notice there were earnings, they just weren't the earnings the market analysts expected. Rather than 12 cents, earnings were a nickel less. In exchange, Smith & Wesson Holding Company took a big tumble, losing nearly 40% (39.67) in heavy volume with more than 14 point seven million shares changing hands.
The fall began at the opening bell, with the first trade at $13.75, quite a change from Monday's close at $20.09. Smith & Wesson officials say the cut in expectations were due to lower than expected demand for rifles and shotguns. Since the acquisition of Thompson/Center Arms last year, Smith & Wesson has been more dependent on consumer markets, with the company's progress over the past year having already doubled the stock price.
With yesterday's news, however, analysts say a slowdown in hunting and consumers postponing sales will continue to hurt the stock value. Market followers say the "adjustment" to Smith & Wesson's near runaway performance over the past year was inevitable, and long-term the company's health is not in question.
Meanwhile, presidential hopeful Fred Thompson is making his bones with the firearms community. He has issued a statement regarding his position on the United Nations and their campaign to regulate "small arms" globally. We don't have a favorite in the Republican primary candidates, but it would seem former Senator Thompson from Tennessee has taken a page from the playbook of another plain-spoken Tennessean Senator, Senator Davy Crockett. Rather than paraphrase, we'll let you read Thompson's comments for yourself. FYI, we'll run the comments from other candidates when (if) they ever make a definitive statement on firearms, the Second Amendment and litmus-test issues with shooters.
That having been said, Senator Thompson:
"Last year, the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights declared that international human rights law requires all nations to adopt strict gun control laws. These "minimum" provisions are much more restrictive than any of those on the books anywhere in the U.S. and would almost certainly violate the Second Amendment of our Constitution.
Besides concluding that all nations are obligated under international human rights law to control the small arms and light weapons to which its civilian population has access, the UN report remarkably denied the existence of any human right to self-defense, evidently overlooking the work of Hugo Grotius, the 17th century scholar credited as the founder of international law, who wrote, "It is to be observed that [the] Right of Self-Defence, arises directly and immediately from the Care of our own Preservation, which Nature recommends to every one. . . ," and that this right is so primary, that it cannot be denied on the basis that it is not "expressly set forth."
There is another disturbing aspect to this call for international global gun control. Throughout modern history, the forced disarmament of people by its government has often been accompanied or followed by that government's commission of often massive human rights abuses. In fact, no genocide in the 20th century occurred when the victim population still possessed small arms, legally or illegally, with which to defend themselves.
So now the UN wants to disarm civilians? Where was the UN when the massacres in Rwanda occurred? What did the UN do to protect the victims of ethnic massacres in Bosnia? Disarming civilians under the guise of international human rights law will only lead to more such genocides by ensuring that civilians can never defend themselves! It would be funny if it weren't so perverse.
Thankfully, the Framers of our Constitution recognized this potential peril to our liberty, and enshrined in our Second Amendment the more basic right of self-defense. The U.N. can say what it likes about other countries' citizens' possession of small arms being a violation of human rights law, but so long as the United States is a sovereign nation governed by its Constitution, its words will have no effect here. And I am glad for it."
As always, we'll keep you posted. -- Jim Shepherd
And if those "smelly rag heads" (wonderfully racist of you (FOG), by the way) manage to get their hands on a nuclear device, as their obvious intention is to do?
Don’t worry.. we won’t care because the US government will have turned us all into lampshades by then.
No pork obviously...
Damn, just damn...
Touche. But they are still bigoted.
The German people were not them either. It only took a few nefarious leaders to make what happened there. In a country where Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner for the Presidency and Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the house, how can you say that could never happen here (regardless of your feelings about Ron Paul or the comparative threat posed by the Islamists)?
OUR GOVERNEMT BET THOSE GUYS... Why, because WE ARE NOT THEM.
We "bet" (sic) those guys in the '40s; however, the USA has been racing down the slope to socialism ever since. Gun control, wealth redistribution, estate tax, all right from the Marxist handbook Komrade. And if you're too blind to see it, then you're the one who needs to wake up and look at the 21st century.
Your patronizing idiocy is entertaining at best.
Your pompous and militant ignorance is not in the least entertaining - just a sad commentary on the lack of thought in the general populace.
I freely admit to being prejudiced against islamic terrorists - so what?
The Council on Foreign Relations has all kinds of folks in it; those considered liberals and those who are conservatives. All kinds of ideas are presented by its members, and from what I can tell, there is no consensus among them about any sort of 'global government', though I'm sure there are some members who would approve of such a thing.
Whatever
The forces that drove the Nazis were nationalistic in nature. The thing people forget is that while we are indeed one nation, we are many nationalities. We are not just German people or Serbs or Pols or Italians. Read on the motivating factors not the results.
That distinct identity tends to drive that level of rabid and blind obedience.
I is also a big leap from the social ideals of the left to dictatorship, despite the fact socialism is distasteful in any form.
Funny, it seemed like you were ridiculing anyone who took said terrorists as a serious threat. Did I misread your intent?
The government will reach as it has, then that reach gets smacked back. We are a Republic made of of may parts and ideas, that happens. It does not mean we are on the road to a Fourth Reich...
Equating the USA with Hitler in the Nazis, indeed using that for any argument puts you dead center in the middle of Godwin's law.
Hundreds of important people of every political pursuasion are members for a variety of reasons.....political, business and social contacts, varied and notable first-class speakers at the CFR meetings, keeping up-to-date on what's going on in the world and what one's ideological enemies are doing.....etc.
This reminds me of years ago when four of us conservative women in our local Republican Womens Club decided to join the leftist League of Women Vipers as infiltrators, so to speak. We were members for about 6 months when we couldn't take it (or the snooty vipers) anymore. We also had a lot of fun pulling off our little inside job.
However, what we learned about this organization from the inside was invaluable. I was able to write an article about our experiences for a national conservative newsletter I was putting out at the time.
For instance "women voters" has nothing at all to do with the membership itself of this national group. There's no voting in the League, just "concensus"......a favorite liberal ploy. As in....."prominent scientists around the world are in concensus that global warming is human-induced".
If I lived in DC, I'd join the CFR myself just to mingle with the enemy and become informed on what they're up to. Their regular luncheons are undoubtedly tasty, also.
Leni
That’s what she said.
“Global gun control”....it is chilling to see those three words strung together.
Ya think? OK answer this. Do you have to ask the government's permission to exercise a right, or is a right something that you have the inherent ability to do. If you answered that you have to ask the government's permission to exercise a right, then you're hopeless anyway, but if you said that a right is something that you can exercise at will, then I have another question for you. When you buy a gun do you have to ask the government's permission to do so? If you haven't bought one in the last 13 years, I'll tell you that the answer is yes. You must get the government's permission to buy a gun. SO if you have to ask and obtain the government's permission to exercise the right is it still a right or has it been turned into a privilege?
No one is sneaking out in the dead of night and killing off NRA members or anything.
Not yet, but remember what happened to gun owners in New Orleans
The government will reach as it has, then that reach gets smacked back.
But every time it reaches further and get's smacked back less. Where do you think all of the gun control regulations we have today came from that is government reaching and NOT getting smacked back
It does not mean we are on the road to a Fourth Reich...
All governments would like to be the fourth Reich. You think that president Hillary or president Rudy would look at us and say by gosh we're taxing them too much and we've put too many restrictions on them? ha ha.
Equating the USA with Hitler in the Nazis,
Actually I didn't - I used them as one example of many where governments went to the logical end result of unlimited government power. Cambodia is another Russia is another. What do we have that they didn't. Answer - nothing.
I'll explain even though you took a rather insulting tone to start with. Although terrorists are a threat, the risk they represent has to be put into perspective. The much greater threat to our lives and liberty comes from people like Joe Biden, Charles Schumer, Teddy Kennedy, Diane Feinstein, Rudy Guiliani, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, etc. These people will do far more harm and cost far more money and freedom than any number of terrorists hiding in holes in Afganistan.
I don’t understand why his statement to the UN does not answer your question. What is ambiguous?
As was mentioned in the article, the other candidates have not issued statements about the UN on this issue. So if he is the only one speaking out on this, I guess you have a lot of choices. Someone who speaks clearly, and others who don’t speak at all [about the UN and the 2nd Amendment].
“FYI, we’ll run the comments from other candidates when (if) they ever make a definitive statement on firearms, the Second Amendment and litmus-test issues with shooters.”
As far as background checks and all that I have no problem with it, too many wackos today and we have the means to track them. I have purchased 25 guns in the last decade and have yet to have an issue, I walk in and walk out, gun, bullets and all. I would want the hood down the street to have an issue though.
As far a New Orleans, yes, and look at the backlash...
Hillary and Rudy, despite all their many many flaws are not Hitler, that is ignorant hyperbole. Besides how far do you think they could really go in that direction before the outcry grew. People will take a little but not a lot. It is the apples and oranges bit again. Nationalism drove the Nazis and others, there is no such appeal here. Too many differing voices.
I don't want socialism but I am not going to look like an idiot saying these guys are bringing on the next Nazi Germany. That is crazy talk to 95% of the population and will make you out as a nut job, branding anything you say as such. Do you think that works in favor of conservative thought?
You post pictures and statements about Nazi Germany and our country so the equivocation is there, you imply it again in this post. You act smart, even you can see the lines of logic even if you never made it just one statement.
What do we have that they didn't, an operational Federal Republic in an age of instant information.
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