Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

WFMY:

GREENSBORO, NC – A Cabarrus County lawmaker introduced a bill Wednesday that would allow North Carolinians to carry a concealed handgun without a permit.

North Carolina is an open carry state. The current concealed carry law in North Carolina requires an applicant to take and pass a safety and training course that involves the actual firing of handguns and understanding of North Carolina gun laws. Prior to 1995, it was illegal for someone to conceal carry at all.

After news of the proposed bill broke, hundreds on social media voiced their opinions on House Bill 69.

We took some of those recurring comments on Facebook to Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes and Gary Lewallen, a certified firearms instructor and former Archdale Police Chief.

Barnes is a pro-second amendment advocate but doesn’t agree with the proposed bill. Lewallen is also a pro-gun and pro-second amendment, and was more neutral on the bill, with limitations.

Comment: If it is legal to open carry without training or a permit, why can’t a person conceal carry without training or a permit?

BARNES: “The CCW class, the concealed carry class, teaches you what and when you can use your gun.”

Barnes added the law requires someone to tell law enforcement they have a concealed weapon should an officer approach them. He’s worried if the proposed bill passes, people would no longer have to tell police they had a gun hidden on their body or in their car.

LEWALLEN: “They need to be able to understand their rights to carry and conceal as well understand when to use deadly force. There should be no reason why we can’t have an eight-hour class on your basic firearms and your rights to carry and conceal in North Carolina.”

Both Barnes and Lewallen agreed, they would like to see training classes take place prior to someone purchasing a gun in any situation, whether to open or conceal carry.

Comment: You already go through a background check to buy a gun, so why be redundant? A permit to conceal carry makes zero sense and it makes it zero percent safer.

BARNES: “When you open carry everyone knows you are carrying and you can avoid that person. Someone can also see if that person is violating the law while open carrying, say,  if they were to try and go into a location, such as a gun or store where they don’t want people armed.”

LEWALLEN: “It (open carrying) doesn’t prevent someone from calling the police or the sheriff and saying hey, I’ve got a person here and they’re making me feel uneasy, I’m in fear because of this gun on their side and they (police) have to come and investigate it.”

Well, there you go.  If this is the best among the “experts” this journalist could come up with, that station ought to be shut down.  As for the statement that “There should be no reason why we can’t have an eight-hour class on your basic firearms and your rights to carry and conceal in North Carolina,” hey, you don’t suppose that he stands to lose some business if constitutional carry passes in N.C., do you?  All of those concealed handgun permit classes he teaches?  I wonder how much he makes on all of that?

As for the awful Sheriff, this is just stunning.  He ought to be teaching his deputies that everyone is assumed to be carrying, all of the time.  Asking the question or waiting for someone to self identify is ridiculous and dangerous.  You understand that, right?  Only peaceable, law-aiding men and women will self-identify, whereas criminals will not, and this may lead the police into a false sense of security.  The law cannot be trusted.  If he isn’t teaching his cops that, he needs to be replaced with someone who has some common sense.

As for their idiotic comments on openly carrying, they are making this out to be something it isn’t.  North Carolina is a “Gold-Star” traditional open carry state.  I openly carry all of the time and have never had any problem from citizens or LEOs.  Women and children do not go running and screaming, and I’ve had many people stop me and chat about it.  Sending deputies out to “investigate” open carriers is a silly waste of time.  He ought to be telling the dispatchers to ask the caller what law is being broken.  “Ma’am, was he brandishing a weapon or threatening someone?”  “No?  Okay, then what he is doing is legal, and we don’t investigate legal use of firearms any more than we investigate mowing the lawn.”

In every state that has it, constitutional carry isn’t a problem, and the world doesn’t come to an end regardless of what these old timers have to say.  They’re stuck in the dark ages advocating Jim Crow laws that are bigoted and prejudiced.  Don’t be like them.

AP:

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Senate lawmakers approved bills Monday that would allow guns in the state Capitol and let people carry concealed handguns without a permit despite Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s threat to veto both proposals.

Daugaard’s opposition is a steep obstacle for lawmakers pushing the bills, neither of which received the two-thirds support required for a potential veto override.

The Senate voted 19-15 to send the Capitol carry bill to the governor’s desk. It would allow people who have an enhanced permit to bring concealed handguns into the Capitol if they register beforehand with security.

I like the proliferation of constitutional carry bills across the nation.  These are good things regardless of whether they end up as laws.

The upshot is that it causes all parties, from senators and members of the house to the governor and law enforcement, to go public with their views.

Then gun rights activists know who to target in the next election.  Here’s a note to politicians.  We’re watching you.  No, I’m not talking about the NRA, although they should be scoring each and every vote in cases like this.  The “we” is us, the gun-owning voters.  And we never forget.

David Codrea:

“LGBTQ people must fight for their safety against the epidemic of gun violence, just as hard as they have fought for equality,” they insist, citing a Southern Poverty Law Center anecdotal “report” on alleged harassment that says nothing about guns, but instead quotes from a handful of unsubstantiated and subjective accounts to smear Donald Trump supporters as intimidating haters.

These folks (SPLC, Everytown) and their ilk throw in virtually every progressive cause they can think of, and throw in gun control in order to connect it to the communities they are courting.  It’s their bread and butter.  They use people and then throw them away.

This particular community had better understand that their best bet is to buy guns, learn to use them, and oppose any and all connection with people and groups who would use them for gain.

And in that same vein, they should ask some Donald Trump supporters to teach them the proper use of guns.  My bet is that there would be many willing teachers.  Don’t disparage instruction.  Everyone needs it, regardless of how it feels to have to go to someone else for help.

In the gun community if you just avoid the know-it-alls who think they are God’s gift to tacticool, most folks are more than glad to help out new gunners.

Give it a try.

Eugene Volokh responds to the recent Florida Supreme Court decision on open carry.  He first cites part of the ruling.

Before the Fourth District, the State argued that by restricting how firearms are carried in public so that they may only be carried in a concealed manner under a shall-issue licensing scheme, deranged persons and criminals would be less likely to gain control of firearms in public because concealed firearms — as opposed to openly carried firearms — could not be viewed by ordinary sight.

Norman contends that the State has not produced evidence that Florida’s Open Carry Law reasonably fits the State’s important government interest. However, under intermediate scrutiny review, the State is not required to produce evidence in a manner akin to strict scrutiny review….

[W]hen reviewing under intermediate scrutiny Second Amendment challenges to laws regulating the manner of how firearms are borne, “courts have traditionally been more deferential to the legislature in this area.” This is especially so when considering that “[r]eliable scientific proof regarding the efficacy of prohibiting open carry is difficult to obtain.”

Therefore, we agree with the Fourth District and are satisfied that the State’s prohibition on openly carrying firearms in public with specified exceptions — such as authorizing the open carrying of guns to and from and during lawful recreational activities — while still permitting those guns to be carried, albeit in a concealed manner, reasonably fits the State’s important government interests of public safety and reducing gun-related violence.

He then responds with this.

Really? Open carry is being banned because, by being visibly lethally armed, open carriers are putting themselves at more risk of crime? Would a reasonable person, deciding whether to openly carry a gun, think, “I probably shouldn’t do that, since people will be more likely to target me because they see I have a gun”?

This strikes me as quite implausible. To be sure, we can imagine some situations in which open carry could make a person more vulnerable. Indeed, as the court points out, in some situations, an attacker “might be more likely to target an open carrier” because the “visibly armed citizen poses a more obvious danger to the attacker.” In others, open-carrying by a gang member onto another gang’s turf might be seen as especially provocative and might therefore lead to a shoot-out.

But those would be relatively rare instances, no? On balance, wouldn’t there be many more situations where a would-be attacker would try to steer clear of a visibly armed person than where the attacker would deliberately target that person first? And given that the government interest is in preventing crime generally, the question is whether the law would on balance reduce crime, not whether it could in some rare circumstances reduce crime but in more common circumstances increase crime.

True, I know of no empirical studies one way or another. But even under “intermediate scrutiny” (as opposed to the highly deferential “rational basis” scrutiny), one should have either empirical studies or at least an inherently plausible theory, rather than mere hypothetical and unlikely speculation. And here the theory that, on balance, being visibly lethal will draw attackers rather than deterring them doesn’t strike me as plausible.

Now perhaps open carry bans might be justifiable on other grounds, such as that open carry (even holstered, rather than brandished) causes law-abiding passersby to feel uneasy. The two dissenting justices discussed that theory, and here’s what they had to say:

[The majority’s] reasons may not be totally irrational, but they do not provide any substantial justification for the ban on open carrying. Such “speculative claims of harm to public health and safety” are “not nearly enough to survive the heightened scrutiny that applies to burdens on Second Amendment rights.” There is no substantial link between the ban and public safety, and the State’s speculation is no substitute for such a link.

The suggestion that someone committing a crime “might be more likely to target an open carrier than a concealed carrier” is subject to the rejoinder that a criminal confronted with the presence of an open carrier may be more likely to leave the scene rather than face the uncertain outcome of exchanging gunfire with an armed citizen. In hostile encounters between armed individuals, the outcome is seldom certain, and even criminals can understand that fact.

Many — admittedly not all — armed criminals will give a wide berth to someone they know to be armed. Likewise, speculating about the disarming of individuals who are openly carrying firearms by “deranged persons and criminals,” is a grasping-at-straws justification.

The reality is that it is highly unlikely that these feeble proffered justifications had anything to do with the adoption of the statute banning open carrying…. The ban on open carrying is best understood as the Legislature’s response to the public concerns swirling around adoption of the concealed-carry law…. [T]he Legislature decided that the sacrifice of open carrying was a necessary and appropriate response to the public opposition generated by the passage of the concealed-carry law. But the legal landscape has now dramatically shifted. Heller has settled that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. And Heller‘s historical analysis points strongly to the conclusion that the individual right includes the right to carry arms openly in public.

This truth should be acknowledged: opposition to open carrying stems not from concrete public safety concerns but from the fact that many people “are (sensibly or not) made uncomfortable by the visible presence of a deadly weapon.”

Of course, many people are made uncomfortable by the fact that others are permitted to keep and bear arms at all. But contemporary sensibilities cannot be the test. Such sensibilities are no more a basis for defeating the historic right to open carrying than for defeating the understanding that the Second Amendment recognizes the right of individuals to keep and bear arms.

This is a tangled web, yes?  So let’s break it down.  The Supreme Court deferred to the legislature on what keeps folks safe, having relegated this question to intermediate scrutiny.  They found plausible (or said they did) the notion that someone could snatch a gun from an open carrier and thus make the public less safe.

But here they leave unaddressed the question why the legislature doesn’t prohibit LEOs from openly carrying weapons as it merely provides opportunity for gun theft.  And if the answer to that is the function they expect LEOs to perform, the obvious answer must be that according to Tennessee v. Garner, LEOs cannot do any more with weapons than you or I, to wit, self defense.  If the open carry of guns is unsafe, then prohibit LEOs from doing it.

Furthermore, why must we conclude that the public is less safe with open carriers just because the possibility exists that open carriers might be targeted first in any confrontation or mass shooting?  Wouldn’t that make the public safer?  That’s been my argument all along.  That an open carrier is the first target is an awful, terrible, cowardly reason not to open carry.

There might be good reasons, but that you don’t want to be the first target is not among those reasons.  I would rather I face an attacker than any women and children who might be around me.  Otherwise, what use am I?  Why am I here on earth if I cannot honor God in this way (John 15:13)?  If openly carrying a gun makes you the first target, and if there are people willing to be that target, then it stands to reason that this is advantageous to public safety and health.

Finally, the dissent make clear the real issue, and it was legal concealed carry is a compromise for squeamish and childlike people who think that the lack of visible presence of a gun on your hip means that you’re not armed.  Truth telling by the justices is a good thing. In other words, it’s an appeal to myth and fairy tale.  Few criminals are going to advertise their intentions in this manner, which is the reason that concealed carry at one time in history was considered ungentlemanly and boorish.

Free Beacon:

A California man is in custody after unsuccessfully trying to light a gun owner and his home on fire Wednesday.

Maurilio Miranda, 48, is being charged with trespassing, attempted arson, and assault with a deadly weapon, Lt. Joe Gomez of the Fresno Police Department told the Fresno Bee. The charges stem from Miranda trying to burn down a house in the city. When the homeowner discovered Miranda pouring gasoline around the perimeter of the home, he confronted him with his semi-automatic handgun.

That’s when Miranda threw gasoline at the homeowner and flicked a lighter. In response, the homeowner fired a shot into the ground. That didn’t deter Miranda, the Fresno Bee reports. He then grabbed a board and threatened to hit the homeowner with it. The homeowner fired a second shot into the ground and threatened to shoot him which prompted Miranda to give up. Police then arrived on the scene and arrested Miranda.

Do not unholster your weapon unless your life is in danger.  Do not point in the direction of anything you aren’t willing to kill, and if your life is legitimately in danger, shoot the person or animal who is causing that danger.

Do not fire warning shots.  To the attacker, warning shots means you aren’t willing to use your weapon to defend your life.  Tactically, it delays the very response that could save your life.

Newstimes:

NEWTOWN – The 10 families whose lawsuit against the world’s largest dealer of AR-15 rifles was dismissed last year say their case should be reinstated, arguing that the Sandy Hook massacre was no accident.

“The notion that what happened at Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012, was unimaginable is a lie,” argues the families’ lawyer, Josh Koskoff, in 50-page brief submitted to state Supreme Court this week. “Sandy Hook was simply gratuitous, senseless proof of what was already known: preparation is no match for an AR-15.”

The families’ argument that Remington is liable for the massacre of 26 first-graders and educators by an AR-15-wielding 20-year-old named Adam Lanza was thrown out of Superior Court in October. The judge ruled that Remington is protected by federal law against claims when people misuse firearms.

The families are sticking to their argument that Remington was liable, saying the company ssly marketed the semi-automatic rifle to civilians.

Remington has until May 1 to respond to the brief. A court date to hear both sides of the appeal has not been set.

The families argue that the Remington rifle used by Lanza was developed “as a weapon of war so powerful, so accurate and so destructive to the human body, it vanquished the need for skilled hands or forgiving terrain.”

I’ll bet you didn’t know you were that good at close quarters battle just because you own an AR-15, did you?  Your purchase of an AR-15 has literally “vanquished the need for skilled hands.”  There is no need to go to the range and practice.  Your gun is magic.

Okay, let’s play this game one more time.  Here’s a note to attorney Koskoff.  Let’s start the discovery process by you producing all of the death certificates resulting from the Sandy Hook event.

I’m waiting.

Statesman:

Austin police announced on Wednesday they have made two additional arrests in connection with an Austin airport baggage handler who was stealing handguns from baggage that he sometimes traded for marijuana, police and the Justice Department said.

Austin police have charged Matthew Bartlett, 21, and Catronn Hewitt, 36, with felony possession of marijuana, police said in a news release.

Damn.  Come on guys.  This is just unacceptable and you shouldn’t tolerate such things among your employees.  Hire better and more honest workers.  We all pay for this sort of thing with our insurance.  Besides, it’s unlikely that with the deductible anybody’s going to get full replacement costs.

Here’s the asshole.

NPR:

“We don’t want to bother anyone,” Smith said, “but we’re not gonna let anyone come and break into our house at two in the morning and sit there and wait for the police to come, and get killed in the interim. We’re gonna protect ourselves.”

That belief seems to be gaining traction: According to a 2014 Pew Research study, the number of African Americans who believe gun ownership does more to protect people than endanger them nearly doubled in two years. And even as it urged its members to exercise their rights to keep “the thugs, gang bangers, illegal immigrants, the terrorists” at bay, the NRA broadened its outreach to ethnic communities. One of its spokesmen is lawyer and gun rights activist Colion Noir, who has become well-known for his appearances on NRATV.

Even if it’s legal to carry a gun, if you’re black, does having a gun actually make you safer? Stand Your Ground author Caroline Light isn’t so sure. “When you look at what really happens out in the world,” she said, “and the way that, especially, African-American men are treated when they’re armed, already the deck is stacked against people who are judged or perceived to be a threat. Particularly people of color,” she said. “Particularly men of color in the United States.”

After Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, the Tampa Bay Times conducted an investigation in which it noted almost 200 stand-your-ground cases, and cited their outcomes. In addition to finding that such cases are on the rise “largely because defense attorneys are using ‘stand your ground’ in ways states never envisioned,” the paper noted that defendants claiming stand your ground “are more likely to prevail if the victim is black.” Blacks who use stand your ground are almost 15 percent more likely to face a penalty for doing so than their white peers.

Ah yes, I hadn’t thought about all of those white boys going into South and West Chicago tearing into defenseless black folks and raiding their homes, and not only there, but inner city Atlanta and Birmingham, where house robberies and home invasions against black folks are primarily perpetrated by white folks.

Oh, wait.

This looks challenging.

The Fourth Circuit made a very good decision in the case of Nathaniel Black.  They didn’t seem to care about that decision and specifically violated their own precedents and showed they couldn’t care less about consistency in the case of U.S. Versus Robinson.  Now they have gone off the deep end.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s ban on semiautomatic guns with certain military-style features that the state passed after the 2012 mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.

The 10-to-4 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacates an earlier panel decision that cast doubt on the constitutionality of the ban that is similar to laws in seven states, including California, Connecticut and New Jersey.

The ruling from the Richmond-based court goes further than other appellate courts that have reviewed similar laws in stating clearly that “assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment.” The majority opinion, written by Judge Robert B. King, refers to the banned firearms as “weapons of war” that the court says are most useful in the military.

In a strongly worded dissent, Judge William B. Traxler Jr. said his colleagues have “gone to greater lengths than any other court to eviscerate the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.”

That they have, and they have also added language to both the second amendment and Heller that isn’t there.

“It’s unthinkable that people could say that those weapons of war are protected by the Second Amendment,” Frosh said Tuesday. “Especially when you look at the carnage at Newtown and elsewhere around the country.”

[ … ]

Like Maryland, Connecticut’s ban was expanded after a gunman used a military-style semiautomatic weapon to kill 20 students and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The 81-page opinion issued Tuesday opens with a detailed description of that day, including the number of rounds of ammunition fired, and goes on to describe mass shootings involving similar military-style firearms in a long list of other U.S. cities.

“We have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage,” King wrote in the 4th Circuit opinion, referring to the Supreme Court case known as District of Columbia v. Heller.

The court also found that Maryland lawmakers were justified in passing the ban in the interest of public safety because magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition “enable shooters to inflict mass casualties while depriving victims and law enforcement officers of opportunities to escape or overwhelm the shooters while they reload their weapons.”

Forget the fact that Charles Whitman used a bolt action long gun (Remington 700), that storied Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock used a Winchester Model 70 .30-06, that Marines initially in Iraq during the push to Baghdad used the same rifle for long distance shooting, and that Marines in Now Zad, Afghanistan, used 12 gauge shotguns for room clearing operations.  Left unsaid is why the laws don’t regulate assault hammers.  This is what happens when idiots try to make legal decisions who have no knowledge of the facts.

It’s also what happens when men and women who have no moral compunction about violating their oath of office get to make judgments that affect the rest of the country.  Recognizing the right of every citizen to have the weapon that best allows him to defend his own family isn’t an expansion of the second amendment.  And Heller said nothing about forbidding semi-automatic firearms from its scope, semi-automatic firearms having been around for more than a century when Heller was decided, in use by both civilians and the military.

This neat, clean bifurcation between civilian and military weapons is non-existent, an imaginary phantom concocted by judges to make themselves feel better for depriving citizens of their rights, pretend sociology wrapped up in legal language.  These are God-given rights, not subject to the whims or vicissitudes of judicial political leanings.

Here is the ruling.  Frosh said “It’s unthinkable that people could say that those weapons of war are protected by the Second Amendment … Especially when you look at the carnage at Newtown and elsewhere around the country.”  Well think it, collectivist hack.  I’m telling you flat out that weapons of war are protected by God, and included within the scope of the second amendment.

Whether citizens of Maryland choose to stay and fight or move to a free state, remember Matt Bracken’s advice.  “If you have eighteen guns and twelve of them are declared illegal, how many do you have?  Eighteen.  Your move.”