Articles by Herschel Smith

Last Carbine magazine of the day, 50 feet, rapid fire, nine of fifteen shots in a one inch diameter circle.

It might have been part of his overall plan.  Mr. Obama has succeeded in spinning things up to the point that if he trots out anything less that full blown gun confiscation, people will say, “Oh thank God.  We can live with what he’s proposing.”

But be careful what you wish for.  The proposal that stands the best chance of passing happens to be the most insidious.

Hours before President Barack Obama’s official swearing-in to a second term, top Democrats predicted a victory for the broadest component of the White House’s push to change the nation’s gun laws.

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, N.Y., called legislation to institute universal background checks for gun buyers “the sweet spot.”

“In terms of actually making us safer and having a good chance of passing, this is it,” Schumer said on Sunday.

“I think you’re going to see [the very likelihood] in the next week or two a proposal that has broad support for universal background checks,” he added.

We’ve dealt with this issue before, how the phrase “gun show loophole” is a disingenuous invention of the gun control lobby, and how it would turn grandpa into a felon if he gifts his grandson with a .22 rifle under the Christmas tree.

Take careful note that there will be no more sales of firearms between hunting buddies, and no more exchange of guns between friends in church or at work, without paying a transfer fee to a federal firearms license.

It has been observed that a universal background check may be unenforceable.

There are 300 million guns currently in circulation and the federal government doesn’t have any data on who owns what. There’s no national registry for guns. All the federal trace data shows is who originally bought the gun from a licensed dealer.

“So let’s say a universal background check law passes and a gun I bought back in 2008 shows up on a Chicago crime scene a month from now,” says Ludwig. “The police show up at my door and ask who I sold it to. I say I sold it before the [universal background check] passed and at that time I wasn’t required to ask any questions.” There would be no way for police to know if he had complied with the law or not.

Relying on the notion that the federal government cannot ascertain whether you’re a felon because they lack the data is a horrible way to proceed.  Besides, as gun serial numbers are tracked by manufacturers, time goes by, and guns gradually go out of circulation, all it takes is a few executive orders to nationalize an electronic database of information from form 4473’s, and presto, there you have a national gun registry.

I firmly and unapologetically believe that all federal laws and regulations concerning firearms are unconstitutional.  But even if you don’t, and if you don’t fight the universal background check, remember the times.

Mr. Obama may very well get his desire for anti-gun legacy, and it may come as a Trojan horse, promising safety and security, but bringing onerous federal control that affects generations to come.

Leon Panetta:

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta joined the gun control debate on Thursday when he told troops at a military base in Italy that only soldiers needed armor-piercing bullets or assault weapons.

Asked by a soldier what President Barack Obama would do to protect school children from gun violence without infringing Americans’ right to own guns, Panetta said action was needed after the attack on a Connecticut school in December in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults.

He told members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team at Vicenza that there were areas where steps could be taken,

“I mean who the hell needs armor-piercing bullets except you guys in battle?”

Well, anyone who wants to protect themselves against a multi-man home invasion may decide that he needs “assault weapons.”  But one would think that the secretary of defense would have more important things to worry with, like the fact that we’re losing the campaign in Afghanistan.

But remember that this is the very same Leon Panetta who retains the services of body guards.  So here’s the deal, Leon.  Disarm your body guards or tell us that you’re a liar – that you really don’t believe what you say – that you know people need protection, but that you don’t care about that except for the really important people like you.

Then you’ll say in public what we all know to be true.  You’re a sniveling lackey just like Stanley McChrystal.

In order to demonstrate my good-natured and cooperative spirit concerning new firearms regulations, with Jay Carney and Mr. Obama I’ve come out strongly against High Capacity Magazine Clips, like this:

From National Journal, here is yet another potentially problematic feature of firearms that needs to be regulated.

It will also be tricky to determine just how many automatic bullets should be allowed in a rapid-fire magazine clip. Three? Ten? Twenty? Democrats in favor of restricting high-capacity magazines say that three bullets is enough to kill a duck or a quail. Fair enough, but gun enthusiasts say that 10 or 20 rounds makes more sense for people who possess firearms for self-defense purposes. How do negotiators strike a deal on that one?

I’ll tell you how.  We firearms owners stipulate that automatic bullets in rapid-fire magazine clips won’t be tolerated.  Now that I’ve compromised and met my detractors in the middle, be warned and walk with caution.

I won’t tolerate any more challenges to or infringements upon my second amendment rights and God-given duty of self defense.  And just to let you know that I’m serious, remember that I have guns and I’m willing to use them.  No, seriously.  I’m willing to use them to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Prior: High Magazine Clips And The Shoulder Thing That Goes Up

I was in Greenville, S.C., a couple of weeks ago, and stopped by the following stores: Allen Arms, Sharpshooters Gun Club And Range, Academy Sports, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Walmart.  Allen Arms had some handgun ammunition, as did Sharpshooters.  No 5.56 mm, no .30 Carbine (well, they did have Wolf, but I won’t put steel through my rifles).  The shelves at Academy sports, Dick’s and Walmart were bare, as if a tornado had made its way through the stores.

I have also recently stopped by Firepower (Matthews, N.C.), Hyatt Gun Shop (Charlotte, N.C.) and Walmart (Charlotte, N.C.).  Hyatt had some ammunition, but their stocks were way down.  I did pick up some .30 Carbine from Hyatt.  Firepower had some, but were down in stocks too, and 5.56 mm ammunition was higher than it was the last time I purchased it.

At Walmart I would have bought .38, .357 Magnum, .40, .45, .30 Carbine, 5.56 mm, and 22 WMR.  I’m not picky.  I need a lot of all sorts of ammunition.  Tonight here is what the closest Walmart ammunition shelves looked like.  A few oddball rifle cartridges on the very bottom.

Texas may soon get some company in its resistance to tyranny.  First, to Alaska.

President Barack Obama yesterday signed off on nearly two dozen executive orders meant to curb gun violence. These orders launch a gun ownership safety campaign, require the Centers for Disease Control to examine the causes of gun violence, and call for law enforcement officials to receive better training for active shooter scenarios.

He also called on Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons. But Alaska lawmakers have introduced a bill that would circumvent any stronger gun control measures.

The Alaska Firearms Freedom Act would make it a crime to enforce any federal prohibitions on things like assault rifles and high-capacity gun magazines. A previous version of the bill already passed the House in 2010, and similar legislation is being introduced in states like Texas and Wyoming.

Then to Missouri.

Introduced by Missouri State Representative Casey Guernsey, with 61 co-sponsors, is the Missouri 2nd Amendment Preservation Act. House Bill 170 (HB170) would nullify any and all federal acts, orders, laws, statutes, rules, or regulations of the federal government on personal firearms, firearm accessories, and ammunition.

The bill states, in part:

“Any official, agent, or employee of the federal government who enforces or attempts to enforce any act, order, law, statute, rule, or regulation of the federal government upon a personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is owned or manufactured commercially or privately in the state of Missouri and that remains exclusively within the borders of the state of Missouri shall be guilty of a class D felony.”

A class D felony in Missouri carries a prison sentence of up to 4 years.

While a number of states, including Wyoming, South Carolina, Indiana, and others – are looking to go head to head with the feds on specific issues under the 2nd amendment, the Missouri legislation is the strongest introduced anywhere in the country so far.

Good.  Then Texas, Alaska and Missouri can share operating experience in their opposition to tyranny.

Jesse Jackson:

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Hear that? It’s the sound of an assault weapon in the hands of a rogue individual, taking down an airplane flying overhead.

At least, that’s what the Reverend Jesse Jackson thinks assault weapons can do. The Reverend’s misinformed assertion that assault weapons are capable of shooting down airplanes came during a Fox News appearance yesterday.

“These semi-automatic weapons, these assault weapons, can only kill people, and in fact, they are threats to national security … the young man who did the killing in Aurora, Colorado … he could shoot down airplanes, so this is a matter of homeland security as well,” he said while speaking about gun control with anchor Martha MacCallum on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

How about a different challenge.  If anyone takes 800 meter shots trying to knock off that clown nose you’re wearing, instead of 5.56 mm ammunition with an AR (because we aren’t Travis Haley), it’ll be the boys with scoped .27 or .308 bolt action rifles.

What a parasitic moron.

That’s a phrase that you’ve doubtless heard recently, and will hear again.  As we’ve discussed, it’s a phantom.  It doesn’t exist.  It isn’t real – there is no gun show loophole.  That’s a fabricated phrase to make the legal transaction of firearms sound scary and evil.  What is legal in a home, or parking lot, or building, or anywhere else where firearms are legal, is also legal at gun shows.  A person-to-person transaction can occur without going through a Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer and paying a transfer fee.

But on to a commentary by Clayton E. Cramer at NRO’s Corner on this subject.

It is an article of faith that closing the “gun-show loophole” would make America a safer place. But that is what it is: faith. In 2008, three criminologists (one of them not at all friendly to guns) studied the effects on murder and suicide rates in California (which prohibits private sales without a background check) and Texas (which does not). They looked at homicide and suicide rates for adjacent ZIP codes for a week after gun shows. They found no change in suicide rates, and in Texas, which has no restrictions on private party sales, a small but statistically significant reduction in gun homicides.

This might seem surprising, and at first glance, it is. Except for one little detail: Criminals appear not to buy guns at gun shows, because guns are expensive.  It is so much cheaper to steal guns instead. At Newtown, the killer first murdered his mother to steal the gun. At Clackamas Mall in Oregon in December, the shooter used a rifle he’d acquired by stealing it from a friend. In April of 2007, David Logsdon of Kansas City, Mo., murdered his neighbor and stole her late husband’s rifle for a mass murder.

I do not have a serious problem with requiring all firearms sales to go through a background check. But I do have a serious problem with pretending that this is going to make much of a difference in murder rates. You want to do something about murder? Look at the typical murders — not the highly atypical ones.

What a strange commentary.  After demolishing the notion that person-to-person transfers have anything whatsoever to do with personal or public safety, the author acquiesces and says that he doesn’t have a serious problem with outlawing person-to-person transfers.

For the record, I have a massive problem with making person-to-person transfers illegal.  Forcing all transfers to go through an FFL (for which form 4473 is filled out) is the equivalent of a national gun registry.  It’s busybody meddling by the federal government into everyone’s business, and it would effectively turn grandpa, who wanted to gift his Remington 10/22 to his grandson under the Christmas tree, into a felon.

No, and a thousand times no.  Ignore the phrase, and resist further changes in the laws.  Don’t give the gun control crowd yet another unconstitutional victory over the second amendment.

Gun owners could soon find themselves paying a penalty for their weapons.  Witness the following thought experiment at San Francisco Chronicle:

Mandatory insurance needs to enter the post-Newtown debate about guns. Requiring gun owners to carry liability insurance, as many states require vehicle owners to do, is not a magic bullet to solve the problem that leads to 30,000 dead Americans every year. But it is a tactic that, for a number of reasons, could have significant beneficial impact.

First, a well-drafted state law requiring gun owners to show proof of insurance will raise the cost of gun ownership. But insurance companies will offer rates that take into account the risk posed by each gun and gun owner, just as there are differential premiums for young drivers and sports cars. Thus gun owners will have a financial incentive to think about and implement safety measures, some of which would surely be developed in response to insurance-cost-driven demand.

See a similar commentary by Isa-Lee Wolf.  It sounds like Marsha Cohen is all proud of herself, even though I’ve seen this idea floated several times in the last couple of weeks.  But there’s only one problem with this approach.  It runs squarely into the constitution.  Let’s rehearse recent history for a moment.  Right on the heels of the Supreme Court Heller ruling, the city of Chicago, still recalcitrant, forbade firearms ownership within its jurisdiction unless the applicant practiced and qualified at a range also within its jurisdiction, and then simultaneously regulated ranges within its jurisdiction out of business.  The Seventh Circuit didn’t like this very much, and Glenn Reynolds observes of this particular ruling, “The right to practice at a firing range, then, is at the very least one of the aspects of the Second Amendment right to arms that reinforces its core purpose.”  Glenn further observes that:

… punitive controls on ammunition, designed to make gun ownership or shooting prohibitively expensive or difficult, would be unlikely to pass constitutional muster. If firing-range regulations that impose burdens on target practice violate the Second Amendment, then restrictions with a similar effect—such as the dollar-per-bullet tax proposed by a Baltimore mayoral candidate—would also constitute violations, it seems. Making it “difficult to buy bullets in the city”—the avowed purpose of the tax—would seem to be precisely the sort of purposeful discrimination that would violate the Second Amendment. It might even be analogized to discriminatory taxes on newsprint, or the licensing of newsracks, both of which have been found to constitute excessive burdens on First Amendment rights.

And if this is so, then “punitive” regulations or discriminatory taxes or burdens (or insurance) would seem to fall under the same prohibition.  At the very least, it isn’t obvious that this would be acceptable to the courts, and it hasn’t been directly adjudicated.

Finally, State Farm has voluntarily considered such proposals.

Gun safety in the home hasn’t been discussed much in the recent national conversation on gun violence, but the head of the nation’s largest homeowners and auto insurance company acknowledges that it could be.

Edward B. Rust Jr., CEO and chairman of the board of State Farm Mutual Insurance Co., said this week that gun ownership “could be among a multitude of things” considered among the risk factors used by insurance companies to determine the cost of homeowners insurance policies. “But,” he added, “whether someone owns a gun doesn’t necessarily make them a risk. . . . The bigger debate is, Are people competent in gun ownership?”

This strikes me as silly as charging customers higher premiums if they happen to have a Doberman or German Shepherd in their home.  Actuarial mathematicians have more important things to worry with, and penalizing firearms owners also seems to be a bad way to start a boycott against your company.

Gun owners’ insurance.  An idea whose time has come – and gone – and never really was sensible to begin with.

Tonight I heard Jay Carney advocate, on behalf of the President, the banning of all high capacity magazine clips.  Heretofore I was under the impression that they wanted to ban high capacity magazines.  As long as we are discussing high capacity magazine clips, I will throw my full support behind the ban.  Who can say that I am not a cooperative and reasonable individual?