Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

So argues David DeGrazia who is a professor of philosophy at George Washington University.

There is no absolute right to self-defense; the right is qualified or limited. When the limits to this right are in view, the ground beneath gun ownership rights appears shakier.

Suppose I live in a country with useless law enforcement and know that an assassin is trying to kill me. Surely I, an innocent person, may defend myself. But if the only effective means is by blowing up a crowded building, killing not only the assassin but dozens of innocent people, I may not proceed. My act of self-defense would be disproportionately harmful to innocent others and would violate their rights. My right to self-defense is limited by the means I may take in exercising it.

Perhaps, then, people have a right to take effective means to defend themselves so long as these measures don’t wrongly harm or violate the rights of others. Yet this isn’t quite right either.

When others threaten your security or rights, certain measures may be necessary to protect you. But it doesn’t follow that you may take those measures if another party has assumed responsibility for taking them on your behalf. As Thomas Hobbes argued centuries ago, when we leave a “state of nature” and enter civil society — which features the rule of law rather than anarchy and vigilantism — we transfer some rights to a government whose job description includes protecting us from various common threats. For example, the police, an arm of the government, are permitted to pursue criminals, forcibly apprehend them and bring them to justice. As private citizens, we generally lack the authority to perform these actions.

So it is questionable whether we have not only a right to forceful protective measures but also a right to take those measures ourselves. If the right to do so has been delegated to the police and, in case of foreign invasion, to the military, then our right to self-defense is further qualified. We have, in fact, partly delegated the job of protecting our security to the police and military in the interest of a well-ordered society. So the qualified right to self-defense comes to this: a right to defend oneself when doing so (1) does not wrongly harm others or violate their rights and (2) is necessary to protect one’s security and/or rights because such protection isn’t otherwise forthcoming.

Does the qualified right of self-defense support gun ownership? Presumably, this right concerns the freedom to use effective means to defend oneself — subject to the two qualifications just stated. So, it must be asked: Are guns effective means? Are they necessary for one’s protection? And does gun ownership steer clear of harming others and violating their rights?

These questions raise complicated issues in the social sciences, political philosophy and ethics. In this short space, I can only offer a few brief notes of skepticism.

First, in our current American milieu of minimal gun control, gun ownership is associated with an increased likelihood that someone in the household will die a violent death. Assuming the spirit of “self-defense in the home” includes defending not only oneself but other household members, this evidence-based generalization suggests that gun ownership, on average, is not an effective means to personal security; rather, it tends to be self-defeating.

Second, is gun ownership necessary in the event of an attempted break-in? That is uncertain. Some evidence suggests that calling the police and hiding are more frequently sufficient for a good outcome than is brandishing or using a gun.

Third, does gun ownership avoid wrongly harming others or violating their rights? Not if, as I believe evidence suggests, gun ownership more often leads to injuring or killing innocent persons than to appropriate defensive use.

Well, this is a strange set of arguments indeed.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it (at least put together like this in such a disjointed, disconnected set of passages).  Let’s unpack this is a bit.

David displays a childish understanding of Western law, or any law in the world for that matter (Asian, Middle Eastern, etc.).  Let me rehearse the reality where we’ve addressed this sort of argument before.

In the 1981 decision in Warren v. District of Columbia the D.C. Court of Appeals concluded that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”  In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court declined to expand any requirements for protection and ruled that the police cannot be sued for failure to protect individuals, even when restraining orders were in place.

Mr. Hubbard knows these decisions, and also knows that even if it was commonly accepted that the police were required to protect individuals, it would be impossible.  They cannot be there all of the time, and they cannot even promise any particular timely response to your calls.  The police can literally eat popcorn and watch while a woman is raped, as long as they effect an arrest after the fact.  They may be fired for failure to follow a department procedure, but they will not be charged with a crime.  “To protect and serve” is a sweet campaign slogan for Sheriffs who are running for office, but it’s a lie – it’s always a lie …  The police are there for stability operations and security of the government.  Understand that.

It may be a sweet bedtime story for all the little collectivists and their children to believe that the government is in some sort of contract to protect them and bring utopia to earth, but it just isn’t true.  No court in America recognizes such a contract.  David is engaged in propagating myths and fairy tales.

Next, he disconnects rights from any mooring or foundation and thus leaves the notion of rights meaningless.  Not once does the author, who is supposedly a professor of philosophy, anchor his “rights” in a larger system of philosophy with the requisite epistemology, cosmology, metaphysics, ethics and so on.  He does throw in a reference to Hobbes (and here I should mention that I consider Hobbes to have been an extremely weak thinker and his philosophy full of problems), but he says too much by using Hobbes as a reference because Hobbes believed in the right of revolt.

Next, he takes an even further turn into the bizarre by becoming a tactical advisor.  He would counsel people under threat call the police and hide.  Hide!  But concealment isn’t cover, and dry wall doesn’t stop any handgun round known to man, much less rifle rounds.  If anyone listens to his counsel, you are risking your life and the lives of your loved ones.

Next, he conflates the damage done by criminals with the good done by innocent victims, regardless of the weapon (and here one can substitute hammers, knives, etc.).  He has divorced volitional intentionality from the use of tools (here substitute cars, truck loads full of fertilizer, and many other things that can be used to harm man but which can also be used for good).  He even throws in a derogatory term for good measure, i.e., “brandishing,” which has nothing whatsoever to do with behavior in one’s own home, and everything to do with threatening or menacing behavior with a weapon in public.  No respected tactical trainer to my knowledge has ever suggested that someone “brandish” or wave around guns at home invaders.  You should shoot them, just like this woman did who recently used a handgun in self defense.

Finally, he is recommending the abdication of individual rights of innocent men because of the damage done by criminals, as if removal of the liberty of peaceable men will affect criminal behavior.  He gives absolutely no justification for the rationality of this belief, or why it should be taken as properly foundational and basic.  It isn’t rational, and it isn’t properly foundational and basic.

Regular readers know the true foundation of the Western principle of self defense, and it extends beyond mere self defense.  The basis for this principle is found in the Decalogue.

I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying.  As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue.  Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

And concerning John Calvin’s comments on this subject:

We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden.  There is no one who doesn’t concede this.  That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment.  Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned.  But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify.  For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice.  We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds.  Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so.  Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).

I have further observed that “If you’re willing to sacrifice the safety and health of your wife or children to the evils of abuse, kidnapping, sexual predation or death, God isn’t impressed with your fake morality.  Capable of stopping it and choosing not to, you’re no better than a child molester, and I wouldn’t allow you even to be around my grandchildren.”

You’re the equivalent of the child predator if you reject your duty of self defense and defense of the little ones.  I haven’t one ounce of respect for you.  Mr. DeGrazia has done a pitiful job of arguing against the principle of self defense.  And with his unseemly deference to the state, he has also given us no reason to conclude that he would have been willing or able (or armed) to save Christian lives in the Armenian genocide or Jews in the Holocaust (both of which were predicated on gun control).  Mr. DeGrazia is in bad company.

This incredible paragraph appeared at Jacobin:

A few things are clear: guns are a murderous problem; the NRA is racist and reactionary; and liberals are deluded if they believe that sentencing more black men to prison for gun crimes will do anything other than send more black men to prison. Government must disarm America, including NRA members, including the police. And it is government too that must end the war on guns.

Daniel Denvir, the writer of this pitiful piece, is so confused one wonders if they have any editors at this web site and how they let such a paragraph slip through.  A good editor might have thought to ask the writer, “So how are we going to disarm America is we disarm ourselves, and who will do the disarming, since, if government disarms itself they won’t have the necessary arms to disarm anyone?  And as for that matter, how does creating such a war end a war?”

But they apparently don’t have good editors.  At least you can give this to the author.  He’s honest about his confusion, to the point that he is willing to embarrass himself writing about it to the world.  The folks at Bloomberg – not so much.

The NRA is not suggesting that every aspiring gunslinger become an expert. Quite the contrary. The organization talks a lot about gun safety and runs training programs. But its priorities lie elsewhere — such as its demand that virtually every American have immediate access to firearms, without training or qualification or cause or background check, and that they be authorized to carry those firearms in public no matter how unskilled or reckless they may be. That’s one reason that there are countless cases of accidental shootings, rage-induced homicides and alcohol-fueled attacks for every rare instance of a good guy with a gun stopping a killing.

It’s always dangerous to read too much into a slogan, even a catchy one. Still, it bears repeating: A guy with a gun and good intentions is not enough to stop a bad guy with a gun. As Jason Falconer showed, it also takes a guy who’s good with a gun.

The writer is being dishonest, and he knows it.  The catalog (even at this web site) of the awful muzzle and trigger discipline and behavior with guns is staggering: wrong home raids, pulling shotguns on a ten year old, pointing a pistol at a seven year old, being known as dog butchers, abusive treatment of innocent victims during a botched raid, dangerous gun play with other cops, lack of knowledge of the state of their weapons, negligent discharges, negligent discharges in an airport, killing dogs for sport, negligent discharges in police precincts, shooting each other while cleaning their weapons, hitting people on the head with guns, 600 rounds discharged in a rolling gun battle through the inner city, mistakenly shooting a gun instead of a taser, killing a man, firing a gun on a junior high campus, more negligent discharges in police stations, accidentally killing each other, shooting men in the back during raids, killing innocent men because of negligent discharges, throwing flash-bangs into baby cribs, pointing guns at city councilmen during meetings, firing rifles in court, negligent discharge of an AR-15, losing guns, 23 police officers firing 377 rounds at two men with no guns, losing machine guns, shooting each other while trying to kill dogs, and in the author’s own city, shooting 84 rounds at a man, missing with 83 of them.

The author isn’t calling for the disarming of cops, just others.  That’s how you know he’s lying.  He is advocating the collectivist belief in monopoly of force.  He just doesn’t want you to have a gun.  I did quite well the last time I was at the range, and I’ll put my ability with weapons up against most cops any day.  Either way, it’s a lie to say that people who haven’t been trained in stress management can’t defend themselves.  The author knows it.  The author of the editorial just isn’t being as honest as the Daniel Denvir, who admitted to us that he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Here’s something else about which the author(s) should be honest.  Attempting to confiscate guns or even place further controls on them risks bloody civil war.  If they didn’t know that before, they do now.  They’ve been told.

Uncle gives us his usual quick take on what Rubio’s proposal.  Go and read it for yourself.  TCJ reader Fred comments on this, but I want to focus on one comment in particular from Sean Sorrentino who is himself a blogger.

Sorry, Uncle, but you’re wrong on this one. This is a great move on his part. It offers the lying shitweasel Dems everything they *say* they want without giving them anything they *actually* want.

They say they want to ban terrorists from buying guns. This would do it. It gives the AG the power to prove, in court, that a person is a terrorist, and stop him from buying a gun. I’m totally cool with this. Who wouldn’t be? And they only get three days to get the paperwork in. And if they fail in court, they have to pay ALL reasonable attorney fees and costs. So you know that every ambulance chasing dickhead in the nation will show up to defend the little terrorist jerk. Or me, if it’s me.

But the shitweasel Dems can’t just randomly declare that every person who buys a “Don’t Step on Snek” flag is a terrorist and make them fight to get their rights back.

This is why Rubio’s opponent is screaming about this like someone just raped him with a running chainsaw. He realized that they just got outmaneuvered. They just got fucked over.

“Oh, you want to ban terrorists? Here you go. ACLU would buy in on this process. Why are you angry? It’s everything you SAID you wanted?”

But gun owners are too busy screaming “MUH RAHTS!” instead of finding new and interesting ways to screw over our enemies …

Horrible.  Just horrible.  Who wouldn’t be okay with your option, Sean?  I wouldn’t be.  You give far too much deference to the corrupt court and the corrupt officers of the court for my tastes, and you’ll be sorry for this approach one day if they seek a declaratory judgment for folks who believe in second amendment remedy for tyranny to be right wing terrorists.  They’re either there already or not far away.

Hey, I have a much better idea, Sean.  How about if they can prove to a jury of our peers (even here I’m skeptical given the idiots that make up juries these days) that a person is a terrorist – you know, has actually perpetrated some act of terror – they jail him or deport him?  Or put him to death?  In fact, if a person isn’t a citizen and believes in the application of Sharia law in America, they should deport him too!  I can give you all kinds of suggestions for how to close the border.  I’ve thought about this a good bit.  For example, let’s deploy the U.S. Marines along the Southern border to shoot “mules” who transport people across.  See?  I have lot’s of worthy ideas.

If a person is really a terrorist, we should do a lot more than prevent him from purchasing a gun.  He can get a car and kill far more people, or a truck load full of fertilizer and kill even more.  You see Sean, you’re chasing after Red Herrings and misdirects.  It’s how they want their underlings to behave.

That’s what the progs want us to do.  As for Rubio, he is an open borders freak.  I’m not surprised he wants to help folks chase after misdirects rather than focus on closing the borders.  It took Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Dave Brat, Mike Lee and Jeff Duncan to shut that crap down when he tried to do it as part of the gang of eight bill before.  Don’t help the little weasel keep the borders open by chasing after this misdirect.  Be smarter than that.

UPDATE: Ken Blanchard has a very good analysis of this.

The Age:

The notion that a military-grade weapon could be in the hands of local criminals is shocking, but police have already seized at least five machine guns and assault rifles in the past 18 months. The AK-47 was not among them.

Only a fortnight ago, law enforcement authorities announced they were hunting another seven assault rifles recently smuggled into the country. Weapons from the shipment have been used in armed robberies and drive-by shootings.

[ … ]

Despite Australia’s strict gun control regime, criminals are now better armed than at any time since then-Prime Minister John Howard introduced a nationwide firearm buyback scheme in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

Shootings have become almost a weekly occurrence, with more than 125 people, mostly young men, wounded in the past five years.

[ … ]

Crimes associated with firearm possession have also more than doubled, driven by the easy availability of handguns, semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and, increasingly, machine guns, that are smuggled into the country or stolen from licensed owners.

These weapons have been used in dozens of recent drive-by shootings of homes and businesses, as well as targeted and random attacks in parks, shopping centres and roads.

“They’re young, dumb and armed,” said one former underworld associate, who survived a shooting attempt in the western suburbs several years ago.

“It used to be that if you were involved in something bad you might have to worry about [being shot]. Now people get shot over nothing – unprovoked.”

Sounds rather like Chicago, yes?  But wait.  I predict that they’ll try to make a new set of laws that makes it illegal to disobey laws already on the books.

In response to the violence, it can be revealed the state government is planning to introduce new criminal offences for drive-by shootings, manufacturing of firearms with new technologies such as 3D printers, and more police powers to keep weapons out of the hands of known criminals.

They’re all the same everywhere, these collectivists.  The law abiding citizens turned in their weapons, and so now they are defenseless against the criminals.  What they need is to rearm peaceable men and women to shoot the criminals and Melbourne will regain a sense of peace.  The police can’t stop this.  No police anywhere can stop this.  Since that’s the only option that will work, they will studiously avoid it.

Breitbart:

The CT Post quoted Murphy saying:

In an era where anti-government positioning is a hallmark of the modern right, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that increasingly Republicans are absolutist in their views on the right of citizens to own guns. They want to preserve the right of revolution as a means of showing how much they truly hate the current government, administered by President Barack Obama.

Interestingly, Murphy has been bashing claims that gun rights are “God-given” for some time; this is not a new issue for him. In fact, when the Senate rejected new gun controls in the wake of the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, an angry Murphy reacted by assuring Second Amendment supporters that gun rights were not “God-given.” He told MSBNC’s Rachel Maddow, “The Second Amendment is not an absolute right, not a God-given right. It has always had conditions upon it like the First Amendment has.”

Breitbart is a strange animal indeed.  They have Milo Yiannopoulos as an editor, who wouldn’t have anything to do with claiming that rights of any sort are granted by God, but then they will post an article like this basing the right to own firearms on God’s law.  They can’t have it both ways.

It’s easy for me, and hard for them (or easy if they don’t care about logical consistency).  Murphy is confused, or simply a disbeliever in God.  God doesn’t simply grant the right of self defense to men, He commands it as a duty.  It is based on the Decalogue, and since that is based on His character, it is immutable.

The right of revolution doesn’t exists as some sort of perfunctory statement about how we feel about our current government, and Murphy is only saying that to insult men who believe in the second amendment.  The right of revolution is based on covenant law, eternal contracts, and the basis for this is to be found directly in the Holy writ.  It applies to all men, everywhere and in all times and epochs based on violations of agreements to live together under stipulations and within strict boundary conditions.  When the covenant is broken, it is no longer valid.

Courthouse News Service:

Gunmaker Remington has asked a judge to halt what it characterized as an unreasonable and unconstitutional demand by the Massachusetts attorney general for its customer information.

Remington Arms Co. filed the petition for injunctive relief on Aug. 29 in Suffolk County Superior Court, saying Attorney General Maura Healey’s civil investigation demand is “excessively burdensome” and tramples the Fourth Amendment rights of the company and its customers.

“The AG’s demand that Remington produce each of the Product Service files without redacting customer identifying information violates the privacy rights of its customers, chills lawful conduct in exercise of the Second Amendment, and substantially interferes with Remington’s business and customer good will,” the petition states.

Remington’s demand comes on the heels of a March 9 civil investigation demand by Healey, seeking a copy of each product service file Remington has for every one of its customers.

Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office, said the demand is part of an investigation into how often Remington’s guns had potentially dangerous defects.

“There are scores of public reports about defects involving firearms, including accidental firing, misfiring, overheating problems and low ‘trigger pull’ leading to horrific stories of accidental shootings by children,” Roy Gonzalez said in an email.

Lack of product-safety oversight in the gun industry makes demands like these critical, the spokeswoman added.

“Many years ago, the gun industry managed to exempt itself from federal consumer product safety oversight, resulting in no public access to consumer complaints about the guns they manufacture,” Roy Gonzalez said. “This lack of transparency is unlike nearly every other consumer product sold in this country. As the chief law enforcement office in Massachusetts, we are seeking that information to better inform our residents and to protect them from any safety or manufacturing issues with guns sold here. It’s unfortunate that these gun manufacturers have taken our office to court rather than comply with a simple request for consumer complaints and related information.”

Here is a test question for readers.  Where in the constitution of her state does it give SJW Healey the right to demand customer information over an investigation into product safety when no laws have been broken?  In case you missed that one, here’s an extra credit question worth 100%.  Where does the constitution of her state give the AG the right to spend taxpayer money to perform studies and inform citizens concerning her opinions on product safety, or to rank products according to her own criteria?

Every reader should have scored 200% on that examination.  It’s a shame that Remington has to petition the court for injunctive relief, rather than gathering some local gun owners, apprehending Maura Healey and using some hemp rope to hang her from the nearest lamp post as an example to other social justice warriors to mind their own damn business.

Prior:

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey Attacks Gun Manufacturers

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s Crusade Against Guns

The State:

COLUMBIA – S.C. residents will have four chances this fall to weigh in on the state’s gun laws.

A special S.C. Senate committee has scheduled public hearings on “gun issues” for Greenville, Charleston, Hartsville and Columbia. The hearings start Sept. 15.

State Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, the committee’s chairman, said the hearings could address a variety of gun-related issues, including expanding the waiting period to buy a firearm, currently three days.

Malloy and another committee member, state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, D-Charleston, unsuccessfully pushed to lengthen that waiting period during the 2016 legislative session. They say that change would give authorities more time to investigate potential red flags found in FBI background checks.

Malloy said he expects to hear plenty from both sides – 2nd Amendment advocates as well as gun-violence victims. Any legislation that can pass the GOP-controlled Legislature must balance the right of responsible residents to own guns and the protection of society from the dangerous and mentally unstable, he said.

Oh, there is a never ending stream of chances to do nefarious things to the rights and liberties of the people.  “Receptive to the issues of fellow South Carolinians” is shorthand for we want a bilateral committee to infringe on the free exercise of rights in the name of cooperation and collegiality.

Resist this temptation, folks.  Just don’t do it.  There shouldn’t be any more gun control laws.  No one elected you to infringe on their God-given rights and liberties, no matter what you were taught by your Marxist college professors.  Don’t try to be the family, church and state all wrapped up into one totem like Molech.  You cannot solve problems of morality by laws.  The state doesn’t have salvific powers.

But here is one bill we need to see come from your pens, as a committee, or individually, or from the pens of someone else in the Senate or House.  We need to see a bill legalizing open carry in South Carolina, like the vast majority of other states.  Reject that awful, racist, communist, Jim Crow legacy and finally bring South Carolina into the twenty first century.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is now known for fabricating gun control laws ex nihilo, just because she wants to, for no other reason than to be a bully.  So is Ms. social justice warrior finished?  Not on your life.  She’s just beginning, at least until someone punches back.

The Boston Globe:

Attorney General Maura Healey has launched a sweeping investigation into possible safety problems involving guns manufactured by at least two major companies, Remington and Glock, according to lawsuits filed by both firms, which are fighting Healey’s efforts.

The lawsuits reveal that this year, Healey invoked her powers under the state’s consumer protection law to demand that both companies turn over a wide range of documents, including safety-related complaints from customers and the companies’ responses.

The investigation is the second prominent battle Healey is waging against the gun industry. In July, she angered gun owners and manufacturers when she moved to bar the sale of military-style rifles that have been altered slightly to evade the state’s ban on assault weapons.

In her newly disclosed legal action, Healey argues Glock firearms are “prone to accidental discharge” and makes clear in court papers that she is concerned the company may have been warned about the problem and failed to act.

Responding to Glock’s lawsuit, she referenced news stories about a sheriff’s deputy accidentally firing a Glock pistol in San Francisco’s Hall of Justice, a Los Angeles police officer who was paralyzed from the waist down after his 3-year-old son accidentally fired his Glock pistol, and a Massachusetts man who was dancing at a July 4th party when his Glock handgun fired while it was in his pocket.

The attorney general said her ban on so-called “copycat” assault weapons is clear, enforceable, and already working.

A Healey spokeswoman said the attorney general is asking gun manufacturers to turn over customer safety complaints because firearms are one of the only products not regulated by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“As the chief law enforcement office in Massachusetts, we are seeking that information to better inform our residents and to protect them from any safety or manufacturing issues with guns sold here,” Cyndi Roy Gonzalez said. “It’s unfortunate that these gun manufacturers have taken our office to court rather than comply with a simple request for consumer complaints and related information.”

Both Remington and Glock have sued Healey in Suffolk Superior Court, arguing that she is abusing her authority by casting a broad net for documents, including those related to accidental discharges, past lawsuits, legal settlements, and product recalls.

Glock Inc.’s lawsuit asks the court to quash Healey’s inquiry.

The company, based in Smyrna, Ga., points to statements Healey has made calling gun violence a “public health crisis” and an “epidemic” to argue the “true purpose” of her investigation is “to harass an industry that the attorney general finds distasteful and to make political headlines by pursing members of the firearm industry.”

Healey responds in court papers that Glock’s contention that she is politically motivated is “both incorrect and irrelevant,” given the concerns she has about the company’s handguns firing accidentally. She also says the state’s consumer protection law clearly gives her the authority to investigate safety concerns about products, including guns, that are available in Massachusetts.

Glocks can be sold only to law enforcement officers in Massachusetts, because consumer sales are banned under state law. As such, Glock argues, Healey is misusing her investigative powers “for the ulterior purpose of harassing an out-of-state company that does not engage in in-state consumer sales.”

But Healey says that, despite the state’s ban, 10,000 Glocks were sold in Massachusetts between January 2014 and August 2015, including 8,000 to buyers who do not appear to be law-enforcement officers. She said the handguns ended up in the hands of Massachusetts consumers “irrespective of whether the sales were made legally or not.”

“The investigation is appropriate,” Healey’s office writes in its rebuttal to Glock, because Glock may have liability under the state’s consumer protection law for “product defects, misleading marketing, and for failure to honor warranties.”

Remington Arms Co., based in Madison, N.C., contends Healey’s investigation is “unreasonable and excessively burdensome” because she is seeking product files from every state and country, even though fewer than 1 percent of the files relate to Massachusetts customers.

Because Healey’s office “has provided virtually no information concerning the subject or object of its investigation, one cannot imagine what possible relevance product service files from Hawaii or Manitoba, Canada, could have on the AG’s investigation in Massachusetts,” Remington states in its lawsuit, filed Monday.

Remington is asking the court to limit the scope of Healey’s investigation and allow it to remove customer information from the documents it turns over.

If customer information is not removed, the company argues, its customers’ privacy rights would be violated, conduct protected by the Second Amendment would be chilled, and Remington’s business would be harmed.

Healey has not yet responded in court to Remington’s accusations.

Healey’s court papers, however, indicate that Remington and Glock are not the only gun makers she is targeting. Both are “part of a larger series of similar gun safety investigations,” Healey’s office wrote.

Healey, a Democrat who took office last year, has made reducing gun violence a top issue — a crusade that has won her support from national gun-control advocates and the ire of gun owners and gun rights groups.

In December, she warned the state’s 350 licensed gun dealers that they must obey the state’s strict gun laws and began investigating several dealers suspected of selling illegal firearms.

In May, she led a dozen attorneys general in calling on Congress to allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study gun deaths as a public health issue.

A day later, she spoke at a White House gun violence summit, where she decried the legal immunity Congress has granted to gun makers.

“This is the only product of its kind for which Congress has given the industry extensive freedom from liability,” she said at the White House. “That’s not right. The gun industry should be held to the same liability standards as the manufacturers and sellers of other consumer products.”

In July, she drew national attention when she moved to bar sales of so-called copcyat assault rifles that had been modified slightly to evade the state’s 1998 assault weapons ban.

Gun enthusiasts snapped up the rifles in a buying frenzy, and then protested outside the State House.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, meanwhile, said it would challenge Healey’s ban in court, arguing it hurt gun dealers and “made potential felons out of tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens.”

So we are reminded of a number of things in this report.  She (Ms. SJW Healey) is a moron.  “Accidental discharges,” discussed so pointedly here on the pages of this web site, result from people putting their fingers inside the trigger guard and pulling the trigger.  A machine manufacturer, i.e., gun maker, cannot be responsible for people intentionally pulling the trigger and then blaming the gun for discharging a round.  It’s what the machine is designed to do.  It would be like blaming a car for accelerating when you depress the gas pedal.  If it didn’t accelerate, the automobile maker would be responsible for loss of life due to failure of the car to respond to input by the driver.  Similarly, gun makers would be responsible for loss of life if they designed guns that didn’t shoot when the trigger was pulled.  The simple solution to this problem is to teach people not to pull the trigger if you don’t want the gun to shoot.  This was all put in simple terms that the idiot SJW can understand.

Second, she is a bully of the highest order.  She probably shoved other little girls around on the playground, and when she couldn’t do it to the boys, she talked other boys into doing her dirty work for her.  You see, she doesn’t really hate guns.  She wants her Lieutenant bullies to have them.  She just doesn’t want people she doesn’t like to have them.  She isn’t calling for disarming the police, just peaceable men and women who want to protect themselves.  Ms. SJW doesn’t want people to be able to protect themselves.  She wants to be head bully, meaning that people have to come to her for protection.  She is a bitch.

Finally (and there are actually many more lessons from this sad affair), people like this will be bullies until someone punches back, very hard.  If Glock or Remington kowtow to this bitch, they deserve everything they get.  Seriously,  I will have completely lost respect for any company that cooperates with this bully, and I’ll never do business with any of them, ever again.  Gun manufacturers will find that there is a high cost associated with complying this communists like this.  I suspect that the cost will be more than they can bear.

Note to Remington and Glock.  Do not comply.  Tell her to go to hell.  And ditto that for any other gun manufacturer she tries to tackle.

If you have two brain cells you’ve been watching the devolution of civil society in Venezuela.  Now we learn that the collectivists are going after guns.

Amid social and economic strife that threatens to topple the regime of Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan government is employing a favorite tactic of tyrants the world over, further gun control. Last week, Reuters reported that Venezuela Interior Minister Nestor Reverol is ramping up efforts to disarm the populace through a program of confiscation and gun turn-ins. The government also plans to mark and register all ammunition.

In June 2013, Maduro signed the “Act on the Disarmament and Control of Arms and Ammunition,” which severely curtailed the civilian ownership of firearms and ammunition in Venezuela. The legislation was reportedly an initiative of previous Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

The law grants licensing authority to the Venezuelan military, restricts the possession of most types of firearms, and only permits civilian ownership in narrow circumstances subject to government approval. Those found to be in illegal possession of a firearm face up to 20 years in prison. Describing the restrictions in 2013, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello said, “Any arm that is confiscated will be destroyed immediately … the sales of weapons and ammunition also ends.”

There are a number of important lessons from this.  First, leftists have always been about control, no matter what the hippies tried to tell you, always, only and forever.  Control.  They are control freaks.

Second, the ruling collectivists are more concerned about otherwise peaceable men and women than they are the criminals and warlords.  They know the warlords can be co-opted, but the peaceable men generally have scruples.

Third, the collectivists will do it to the people at the worst time, i.e., when means of self defense is needed most.  They will do it because they are more concerned about staying in power than they are the safety and health of the people.

Fourth, they do it when they think they can get away with it.  In this case, the people of Venezuela are effectively disarmed anyway, the peaceable ones, that is, and the military has been filled with sell-outs.  In this case, they probably will get away with it.

The reader is invited to fill in the blanks with more lessons learned from this horrible situation.  But think about it, learn from it, watch the events, and position yourself  based on what you learn.  The people of Venezuela won’t get their guns now, including those who always had intentions to do so but waited for whatever reason.  That window has closed.  It is closed.

Do you understand?

Time:

As General Stanley McChrystal noted in the New York Times: “In 2014, 33,599 Americans died from a gunshot wound. From 2001 to 2010, 119,246 Americans were murdered with guns, 18 times all American combat deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Nightclubs have become battlefields.

Schools have become combat zones.

Movie theaters have become theaters of war.

This should anger us. It should make us want to do better. And we can.

While our gun-violence crisis is complex, there is no doubt that our weak, gap-ridden gun laws help fuel the violence by making it too easy for dangerous people to access firearms.

Right now under federal law, felons, domestic abusers and the dangerously mentally ill have the option of buying a gun without a background check and with no questions asked. Even people who are considered by the the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be a known or suspected terrorist can pass a background check and legally buy a gun.

Extremist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS have long urged their followers to use our country’s weak gun laws to acquire deadly weapons and commit active shooter terrorism here in America.

So why has Congress refused to act to address these loopholes and to keep guns from falling into the wrong hands?

Congress in the grips of the Washington gun lobby.

There is a better way forward.

Earlier this year, I joined the Advisory Committee of the Veterans Coalition for Common Sense, a national initiative of distinguished veterans from all branches and ranks of the military who are committed to advancing commonsense solutions to gun violence here at home.

Some of us are combat veterans. Some of us are gun owners. All of us were trained in the responsible use of firearms and to have respect for their incredible power. All of us swore an oath to defend our Constitution and to defend the homeland. And we all agree on this: our country is in the grips of a gun-violence crisis.

We know there is no single policy that will prevent every gun tragedy here on our home soil, but we cannot afford to let perfect to be the enemy of good—not when innocent lives are at stake.

The policies we support—closing the loopholes in our background check system and prohibiting known and suspected terrorists from legally buying guns—are not controversial.

So apparently Chiarelli has joined the ranks of the gun controllers, or more probably he was always in their ranks and is of that particular ilk.  He invokes the emotional “terrorist watch list” card, but he knows that there shouldn’t even be any such thing as a terrorist watch list since it is concocted out of whole cloth by the unaccountable federal executive based on suppositions and conjecture.  He knows.  He just doesn’t care.

He has clearly aligned himself with the murderer Stanley McChrystal and adulterer David Petraeus.  Of these two I have made my own position clear.

… the irony is that McChrystal, who issued the most restrictive rules of engagement ever promulgated on American troops, waxes know-it-all on what it takes to keep our people safe.  He can micromanage the campaign, release a bunch of inept, bureaucratic, PowerPoint jockeys into highly protected mega-bases to command the troops under fire in the field, turn so-called general purpose troops into constabulary patrolmen, and become a laughingstock when his juvenile staff turned party-animal with Rolling Stone.  But he didn’t manage the campaign in such a manner as to keep our children in uniform safe in Afghanistan.  If he didn’t do that, why should I care what he has to say about anything else regarding my safety?

This is what happens when media stars think they know something about policy.  So here is a suggestion for Mr. McChrystal.  You go read the lamentations at this article from the families and widows of SFC Kenneth Westbrook, Gunnery Sgt Aaron M Kenefick, Corpsman James Ray “Doc” Layton, and others in the Ganjgal engagement.  You know the one I’m talking about, even if others have forgotten.  You and I will never forget.  The one where they left our men to perish without fire support because of your rules of engagement.  You sleep with this reality, if you can, you ponder on those men and their lives morning and night, and you lament with the widows and families.  And then you tell me why I should give a shit what you have to say about anything, much less what it takes to keep my children or loved ones safe?

… McChrystal, with his ROE, is a murderer.  I don’t give a shit what he says about anything.  As for Petraeus, he is an adulterer and that during deployment when men under his charge were suffering and dying.

I’m glad those are the best two men this ungodly bunch could come up with.  Those two men should be embarrassments to the gun controller crowd.  It gives me amusement and pleasure to have them as enemies.

Chiarelli is now part of the cool kids gang along with all of the other statists.  I’m glad to have him as an enemy.  But if he rationalizes his own adultery towards his oath to the constitution right after reminding us that he did in fact take such an oath, he makes matters worse by telling us that he has no respect whatsoever for those who served and suffered.  He invites veterans to break their oath as well.

My suspicion is that the ranks of veterans isn’t fertile ground for Chiarelli and his gang of cool kids.  But it should be enough that he thinks no more of you [veterans] than to surmise that you might be an oath-breaker just like him, and he would sooner see you sent to hell than lose his political fight to control other people and take their liberties.

What contemptible trash.  How sad that men such as him were in charge of any campaign at all.  They are all as bad as the corrupt politicians they serve, and dear veteran, if you side with them, you’re no better than they are.