Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

The Salem News:

CHARLESTON, West Virginia — The West Virginia Legislature has approved legislation allowing residents 21 or older to carry a concealed gun without first obtaining a permit or undergoing training.

The measure, passed on a bipartisan vote Wednesday, now goes to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin for his review. He vetoed a similar bill last year.

Most states require concealed carry permits.

West Virginians between the ages of 18 and 21 could receive a provisional concealed carry permit and would be required to undergo training on proper use of guns.

Passed on bipartisan votes by both the state Senate and the House of Delegates, the proposed law includes a $50 tax credit for residents trained to carry a deadly weapon.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, said credit would cost the state $3 million.

The bill was opposed by the West Virginia Sheriffs Association and the West Virginia Association of Counties.

Of course the bill was opposed by law enforcement.  Of course it was.  Here’s a prediction for you (and if we can remember it a year from now and find adequate data on this, we’ll assess my prediction).  Nothing will happen.  The doomsday predictions the LEOs most assuredly made will not obtain.  There won’t be any discernible change in the number of firearms related crimes as a result of the elimination of permitting requirements.

Who wants to call me wrong on this?

By way of background for my readers, North Carolina has an antiquated system of laws for handgun purchases, based on Jim Crow era thinking, that requires the County LEO to pass judgment on the fitness of an individual to purchase a handgun.  For a concealed handgun permit, I had to submit to not only a background check, but also turn over my medical records to the County Sheriff (as if criminals will care about such nuisances if they intend to commit a crime with a handgun).  But with no fanfare, the NC Legislature slipped a new law past the citizens where a mere purchase of a handgun puts the individual through virtually the same hassle as a concealed handgun permit.  Thus we see reports like the following concerning the ridiculous effects of said law.

The Blaze:

Larry Hyatt, owner of one of the country’s busiest gun stores, has more than a quarter-million dollars worth of guns sitting in his store, just waiting for their prospective owners — and there’s a good reason.

Hyatt’s store is located in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina’s most populous county. The large number of firearms in “purchase queue” stems from a newly created firearms law passed by the North Carolina legislature in December requiring everyone who applies for a gun permit in North Carolina to undergo a mental health background check.

Larry Hyatt, owner of one of the country’s busiest gun stores, has more than a quarter-million dollars worth of guns sitting in his store, just waiting for their prospective owners — and there’s a good reason.

Hyatt’s store is located in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina’s most populous county. The large number of firearms in “purchase queue” stems from a newly created firearms law passed by the North Carolina legislature in December requiring everyone who applies for a gun permit in North Carolina to undergo a mental health background check.

Following the new law’s passage — and combined with December’s terror attack in San Bernardino — the number of gun permit requests in Mecklenburg County began to skyrocket. This put the county’s sheriff in an awkward position. That’s because the new law gave him only 14 days to approve or deny a permit request, despite the fact that it normally takes much longer than two weeks to thoroughly screen the mental health background of a permit applicant.

But according to WCNC-TV, the time constraint hasn’t stopped Mecklenburg County Sheriff Irwin Carmichael from erring on the side of safety and approving permits beyond the 14-day limit — even if it means he’s breaking the new law in order to arm people who are ultimately cleared to have the permits.

“So [the new law] kind of puts us in a dilemma,” he told WCNC. ”Do we go ahead and issue permits and let everyone know in 14 days or wait till we get all of this medical information back? I’m always going to err on the side of safety.”

Carmichael added, “We want to make sure the guns are in the right people’s hands and that’s why we have to have these checks.” According to WCNC, what the sheriff is really trying to say is that his department is breaking the new law in order to keep the public safe.

The Sheriff seems arrogant, perhaps even proud of the fact that he is making the choice to break the law because, in his own words, he wants to “keep the public safe,” as if it’s within the latitude of a law enforcement officer to decide which laws he will follow and which ones he will not.

But is this what happens with mental health checks?  Is that what the Sheriff is doing, and is this what the Legislature intended?  It seems all the rage now, to ensure that mental health screening is part of gun purchase requirements, along with forcing parties in separation or divorce proceedings to relinquish their firearms (to see a sad, depressing testimonial of the abuses of these regulations by multiple men, see this reddit/firearms discussion thread).

First of all, notice that the law is more onerous than previous, with increased regulation, more intrusion and more government interference in the lives of peaceable men and women.  And this was sponsored by a man with Republican assigned to his name in the Senate.  Is it any wonder that there is such upheaval in the current election cycle?  What has the North Carolina Legislature done recently to make gun laws, or any other laws, less intrusive and less malleable to an increase in government power?  Gun permitting, which by the way is still not the regulatory scheme in the majority of states, is a means to increase local government control, put in place an approval system that is susceptible to corruption, and create a revenue stream that didn’t otherwise have to obtain if we had a system more conducive to liberty and God-given rights.

But now see what the new law has done!  It has superimposed yet another regulatory scheme that cannot possibly work, isn’t sustainable, isn’t funded, and leads to County LEOs who don’t care about obeying the law.  This is an awful commentary on stolid, dense and inefficient lawmaking and thinking by the Legislature.  The only option you have now is to supply a revenue stream to fund a gigantic new government program, for the purpose of governing men and women who follow the law rather than targeting those who don’t.  I simply cannot conjure up a more stupid waste of time and resources for the Legislature.

But what of this issue of mental health checks?  Do they accomplish anything?  Do people who would trigger a warning from mental health checks commit acts of violence out of proportion to their percentage representation in the population?

Fortunately, we’ve answered those questions before.  Let’s rehearse those answers.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish investigate a number of common beliefs about mental illness and gun violence, including the idea that “psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime before it happens.” They write that “legislation in a number of states now mandates that psychiatrists assess their patients for the potential to commit violent gun crime.” New York, for instance, “requires mental health professionals to report anyone who ‘is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others’ to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, which then alerts the local authorities to revoke the person’s firearms license and confiscate his or her weapons.”

However, they argue, asking psychiatrists to judge who’s likely to become violent may be the wrong approach. They cite research showing that most gun violence isn’t committed by people who are determined to have mental illness — and that most people with mental illness don’t commit violence. According to one study, “the risk is exponentially greater that individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness will be assaulted by others, rather than the other way around.”

There’s more:

Random gun violence is a terrifying fact of American life, because of both the violence and the randomness. Terror bred by violence does not really require comment; they are twinned. But terror bred by randomness does, especially when it leads people to accept as true a reasonable story that is false, when a myth functions as an explanation. And that is what is happening with the way we talk about mental illness and random gun violence. Thankfully, a just published report in the Annals of Epidemiology pulls together the facts we need to consider if we really want to adopt evidence-based policies to reduce random gun violence.

The article, “Mental illness and reduction of gun violence and suicide: bringing epidemiologic research to policy,” is a comprehensive, critical survey of the available data (and it is surprisingly accessible and  well-written for an academic treatise). It concludes that “most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness.”

[ … ]

Jeffrey W. Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine and lead author of the article in Annals of Epidemiology was quoted in the UCLA Newsroom saying ”but even if schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression were cured, our society’s problem of violence would diminish by only about 4 percent.”

That is not very much. When people with mental illness do act violently it is typically for the same reasons that people without mental illness act violently.

“We’re not likely to catch very many potentially violent people” with laws like the one in New York, says Barry Rosenfeld, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in The Bronx….

A study of experienced psychiatrists at a major urban psychiatric facility found that they were wrong about which patients would become violent about 30 percent of the time.

That’s a much higher error rate than with most medical tests, says Alan Teo, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and an author of the study.

One reason even experienced psychiatrists are often wrong is that there are only a few clear signs that a person with a mental illness is likely to act violently, says Steven Hoge, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. These include a history of violence and a current threat to commit violence ….

And finally this.

Jeffrey Swanson, a medical sociologist and professor of psychiatry at Duke University, first became interested in the perceived intersection of violence and mental illness while working at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in the mid-eighties. It was his first job out of graduate school, and he had been asked to estimate how many people in Texas met the criteria for needing mental-health services. As he pored over different data sets, he sensed that there could be some connection between mental health and violence. But he also realized that there was no good statewide data on the connection. “Nobody knew anything about the real connection between violent behavior and psychiatric disorders,” he told me. And so he decided to spend his career in pursuit of that link.

In general, we seem to believe that violent behavior is connected to mental illness. And if the behavior is sensationally violent—as in mass shootings—the perpetrator must certainly have been sick. As recently as 2013, almost forty-six per cent of respondents to a national survey said that people with mental illness were more dangerous than other people. According to two recent Gallup polls, from 2011 and 2013, more people believe that mass shootings result from a failure of the mental-health system than from easy access to guns. Eighty per cent of the population believes that mental illness is at least partially to blame for such incidents.

To see what Dr. Swanson concludes, you can read his conclusions for yourself.  I wouldn’t send you to the source if it didn’t substantiate my claims.  In summary, when it comes to predicting behavior, Psychiatry is mankind’s latest incarnation of the village witchdoctor.  People believe in it, but they don’t know why, and even the mental health professionals have told you that they have no hope of accurately predicting propensity to violent behavior.  It’s simply counterfactual to hold that a mental health screening can prognosticate or foretell acts of violence, an Orwellian tip of the hat to the awful movie Minority Report.  You’re making things up because it feels good to fabricate comfortable lies.

But we persist in the mistaken belief, and at what cost?  As pointed out by one commenter on these pages, “Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence.”

It feels neat and tidy to assign someone to be responsible for violence, like a mental health professional, or to blame it on inanimate machines, like guns.  But that just isn’t the way the world works.  When men are moral agents who can choose to commit acts of evil, the most dangerous assumption is the one that informs you that you can legislate control over those individual actions.  When the results of policies that ingratiate the inner city youth to the government and relegate them to fatherless families causes young men to search for leadership and meaning elsewhere, the most ineffective policy is the one that targets the law abiding and peaceable citizen.  And when the criminal can choose to violate the law in spite of your best intentions, the most dangerous place to be is a so-called “gun-free zone” (because we all know there is no such thing as a gun-free zone, don’t we?).

You have created a body of law surrounding handgun permitting that has its roots in bigoted Jim Crow law, that has no positive effect on violence (so says the mental health professionals), and that by nature and intent bypasses due process rights.  It is a means of social control without Due Process protections.

But you can choose to undo all of this, can’t you?

Sent to the following:

Rick.Gunn@ncleg.net
Andy.Wells@ncleg.net
Dan.Soucek@ncleg.net
Tom.McInnis@ncleg.net
Bill.Cook@ncleg.net
Erica.Smith-Ingram@ncleg.net
Bill.Rabon@ncleg.net
Terry.VanDuyn@ncleg.net
Tom.Apodaca@ncleg.net
Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net
Fletcher.Hartsell@ncleg.net
Norman.Sanderson@ncleg.net
Mike.Woodard@ncleg.net
Andy.Wells@ncleg.net
Valerie.Foushee@ncleg.net
Jim.Davis@ncleg.net
Warren.Daniel@ncleg.net
Jane.Smith@ncleg.net
Wesley.Meredith@ncleg.net
Ben.Clark@ncleg.net
Stan.Bingham@ncleg.net
Andrew.Brock@ncleg.net
Brent.Jackson@ncleg.net
Floyd.McKissick@ncleg.net
Mike.Woodard@ncleg.net
Erica.Smith-Ingram@ncleg.net
Paul.Lowe@ncleg.net
Joyce.Krawiec@ncleg.net
Chad.Barefoot@ncleg.net
Kathy.Harrington@ncleg.net
David.Curtis@ncleg.net
Bill.Cook@ncleg.net
Jim.Davis@ncleg.net
Don.Davis@ncleg.net
Trudy.Wade@ncleg.net
Gladys.Robinson@ncleg.net
Phil.Berger@ncleg.net
Angela.Bryant@ncleg.net
Buck.Newton@ncleg.net
Harry.Brown@ncleg.net
Louis.Pate@ncleg.net
Don.Davis@ncleg.net
David.Curtis@ncleg.net
Ralph.Hise@ncleg.net
Jeff.Jackson@ncleg.net
Joel.Ford@ncleg.net
Bob.Rucho@ncleg.net
Joyce.Waddell@ncleg.net
Jeff.Tarte@ncleg.net
Jerry.Tillman@ncleg.net
Michael.Lee@ncleg.net
Mike.Woodard@ncleg.net
Rick.Gunn@ncleg.net
Shirley.Randleman@ncleg.net
Tommy.Tucker@ncleg.net
Dan.Blue@ncleg.net
John.Alexander@ncleg.net
Josh.Stein@ncleg.net
Tamara.Barringer@ncleg.net
Chad.Barefoot@ncleg.net
Joyce.Krawiec@ncleg.net

David Codrea:

LTC Robert Bateman presumes to lecture us on the militia and the Constitution, choosing Esquire Magazine as his forum so that, near as I can figure, we can also educate ourselves on the latest fashion tips for men, join in “progressive” attacks on conservatives, and catch up on all-important information about pop star Prince and his surprise concert tour. Bateman’s bottom line: The militia is what the government says it is, and if you join with others to defend against criminal acts of usurpation committed against you by those with government titles, you’re committing treason.

[ … ]

The Second Amendment only protects a well regulated militia, he argues. “As of 1903,” he maintains, “the ‘militia’ has been known as the National Guard.”

Actually, the resulting United States Code also recognized the “unorganized militia” to include “members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia,” but Bateman dismissed that, claiming, “Weapons are there for the ‘well regulated militia.’ Their use, therefore, must be in defense of the nation.”

There are two problems with Bateman’s assertions in addition to the obvious one that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about: First, as the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate Ninety-Seventh Congress documented, “Congress has established the present National Guard under its own power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.”

There’s more.  Make sure you read David’s analysis.  We’ve run into Bateman before on issues of concealed (or open) carry, the offense he takes at seeing someone who carries, and his idiotic proposals for national gun control.  Finally, we’ve caught him lying about gun control during Operation Iraqi Freedom when my son explained what really happened there (I suppose Bateman didn’t believe anyone who was there would jump into the conversation to call him out).

Bateman has a long history of telling you he is good at everything and that he is a scholar and historian and that he’s special.  But Bateman fails miserably on what constitutes the militia, and David provides him a bit of teaching.  To see just how badly David spanks him, read David’s piece, which is both educated and educational.

Perspectives from down under:

On a recent trip to the US while filming Unplanned America, we visited three groups of what some may call extreme gun nuts. And for a group of anti-gun Australians, we found them surprisingly hard to argue with.

[ … ]

When I popped my cherry and shot the vintage “Sten” sub-machinegun, the rapid pop pop pop of the bullets down the indoor range was deeply satisfying and the action movie-loving eight-year-old boy inside me was in heaven.

But when the next weapon came out, s**t got real and kick-arse elation turned to sickening shock. Legend has it that the Geneva Convention bans the Barrett M82A1 from being shot at human targets, due to it being a war crime. And while this may not technically be true, the US Army does train soldiers not to shoot it at personnel.

We were speechless. So why does the weapon exist, we asked? Tony replied that it’s to shoot at “material”. Like a building or vehicle or army equipment — even military issued zippers or military issued glasses. And if a human happened to be attached to that equipment, well it might be the case that the massive 50 caliber bullets accidentally ensure that human becomes nothing more than “red mist”.

One by one we leant over the huge weapon and pulled the trigger, and each time everyone within a two meter radius felt a shock wave from the barrel like a punch in the chest. Boom! And the chilling thought of a cloud of red mist left behind was felt in the pit of my stomach.

So why do Americans love guns? Why the hell do they need them? Why do they take such joy in owning and shooting these things, when so many Australians would be terrified to even touch them?

The way Tony explains it is that due to the prevalence of violent crime in the US, and given the remote location of his own home, he’d be crazy not to have a gun. He says if an armed intruder broke into his house to kill his loved ones, by the time the county sheriff eventually got there, he would be trying to solve a slaying, not prevent one.

Secondly, Tony says there are so many guns in the US it would take a government generations to entirely rid the nation of them. And most gun owners would never agree to it, indeed many would respond in violence.

This point is key. Once you consider that the guns might be here to stay, the issue gets infinitely more complicated.

Let’s stop and assess what we’ve read so far.  First of all, self defense is a legitimate reason for weapons ownership, and it’s partly why I own them.  But it isn’t the basis for the second amendment.  Amelioration of tyranny is the reason, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Second, these authors need to get their information reviewed and checked before publishing it.  The Marine Corps Scout Snipers shoot the .50 rifle if needed, and some carry it as their primary weapon.  The Marines have two larger caliber rifles for this purpose, the .308 and the .50.  The Army uses a more filled out version of calibers, including the .300 Win Mag and the .338 (they also employ the .50 as needed, all calibers against personnel).  All of these calibers are used and have been employed for anti-personnel work, and the only reason the .50 is brought up as an anti-material round is because it is most effective for that type of work versus the .308.  Again, the authors need to get their stuff reviewed before publishing it.  Do they have editors in Australia?

The next group of presumed gun nuts we spent time with was the Virginia Open Carry group. Remarkably, in most states in the US it is totally legal to openly carry a firearm on your hip. Without a license of any kind. We could’ve even done it.

This immediately conjures up images of a lawless Wild West that has no place in a modern civilised society. But as we sat down for a lunch of BBQ ribs (what else) with the open carriers we found them to be intelligent and thoughtful in their views.

There was not a nut among them, but each was staunchly attached to their view and their gun and would never ever let them go. It’s the opinion of these guys that the tragic daily mass shootings in the US are the result of a mental health problem in America, not a gun problem and that the government misdirects the issue so they don’t have to tackle the more complex and expensive issue.

Where it gets tricky for our open carry friends however is that while they agree that psychologically disturbed people are the ones that carry out mass murders, they still believe they have a constitutional right to own a gun, and a God given right to privacy that means the government shouldn’t be allowed to dig into their backgrounds when they want to purchase a firearm. Tricky.

Stop it!  Just stop it.  Stop connecting violence to mental health.  We’ve discussed again and again and again and again how this just isn’t the case, so says mental health professionals.  It is counterfactual to say that when a shooter kills people, it was because of mental health issues.  And pimping this falsehood only leads to the conundrums that writers think they find in the gun rights community.  So just stop it.  Don’t do it any more.

The final group we shot the s**t out of a bunch of cans with were the ones we were most scared of before we met them. They were the Texas State Militia — a self-styled army consisting of ex-military men who have armed themselves to the hilt to protect the American way of life.

We were expecting racist rednecks, paranoid about Muslims and Mexicans taking over their country. This was far from the case. When we spoke to Matt, the young leader of the 1100 strong group we found an ex-soldier who feels deep guilt for the things he did in Iraq and thinks that the US wars in the Middle East are based on government lies.

His group for now however is still keen to work with the government like a terrifying Neighborhood Watch, until such a time where the government stops respecting the rule of law.

And herein lies the crux of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, the part that most Australians don’t understand.

All of those we spoke to believe that it is a citizen’s duty, as explicitly stated in the founding document of the United States, to be armed in order to keep the government in check. They say that the country was founded after their British rulers became corrupt and an armed uprising saved a whole nation from tyranny. They say it will happen again, and they’re ready to protect their freedom if and when it does.

And they might stand a decent chance, given there’s more guns that people in the US right now.

So we are at the crux of the issue, yes?  These folks explained why the second amendment exists, and why we will never give up our guns.  That would run contrary to the very justification for having them in the first place.  As to the soldier who feels guilty for his participation in the war, I wish I could talk at length with him and explain why he has no reason for such guilt.

If only they could find a way to stop turning their weapons on each other. Ending gun violence is one of the most serious and complex problems this country faces. And the most unique to the “land of the free”.

As a note to the authors, in case no one talked to you about this, the gun violence America faces is primarily an inner city black-on-black problem due to the breakdown of the family caused by entitlements (see here and here).  Guns aren’t responsible and bear no relation to the problem.

News from Massachusetts:

LOWELL — Police confiscated four replica guns from a 22-year-old Lowell man Saturday afternoon in the first instance of the new city ban on such weapons being enforced, according to police.

Officers were called to the area behind CVS at 1815 Middlesex St., Saturday at 2:53 p.m., after getting calls reporting a man who appeared to have a rifle, according to police.

Officers found Sharif Eltobgi and two females, whose identities were not released, on the train tracks that run under the Rourke Bridge, and Eltobgi had four weapons that are banned by the new ordinance, according to Capt. Timothy Crowley.

Police say what the rifle callers saw was actually a pellet gun, and that Eltobgi also had two BB handguns and a starter pistol that are covered by the ban.

“This incident is a prime example of the alarm that can be caused to the public when confronted with a subject armed with a replica firearm,” Crowley wrote in a press release.

The City Council passed the ban on replica guns with a 7-2 vote at its meeting on Feb. 9 to address police concerns about the confusion that can be caused by such weapons.

William Taylor is responsible for this, the very same one who wants to review your essay before approving your handgun permit.

This is the Lowell police at their finest, protecting the public from Islamic terrorism and Hispanic and Latino drug gangs.  Don’t you feel safer?

And how long is Smith & Wesson going to stay in this horrible state before relocating to America?

Via Uncle, 9mm is the best round for the 1911.

The 1911 is probably the most iconic handgun design ever. No pistol in history has done more – from battlefield to CCW to every single flavor of competition, there are 1911s. It’s just a great gun. It’s also at its finest when it’s chambered in a cartridge it wasn’t originally designed for: 9mm. Now, before you come burn my house down, hear me out because there’s a method to my madness. Yes, I know that it’s harder to make a 9mm 1911 run right than a .45. Yes, I know that the 1911 was originally designed for the .45 ACP cartridge, and that saying it’s better when chambered in 9mm is tantamount to heresy. But it’s heresy like Galileo’s heresy, because I’m actually right.

Let’s look at defensive uses first: we know for a fact that there’s no difference in terminal performance between .45 ACP and 9mm (cue the ballistards), so there’s no point in giving up 2-3 rounds of ammunition capacity, right?

We know that for a fact, do we?  So I didn’t preserve the original title of the post, which was 9mm is the best caliber for the 1911, since the definition of caliber is in units of inches (i.e., it’s English, not SI).  I corrected it for the author.

So wait, I hear the phone ringing.  Hello, [talky talk …].  Thank you sir.  Hey, that was John Moses Browning.  He said … ring, um, hold on.  Hello, [talky talk].  Thank you sir.  That was John Basilone.  Both Browning and Basilone said you’re wrong.

So there.

WFLA.com:

HOMOSASSA, Fla. (WFLA) — School officials have identified the owner of a gun that was found at Rock Crusher Elementary school Tuesday morning.

School staff and detectives found out the gun fell out of a man’s pocket while he was dropping his child off. Roy Caffera said it fell through a hole in his cargo shorts.

When parent Monique Guertin heard about the gun at her child’s school, she panicked. “Yeah, it’s very scary,” Guertin said.

Citrus County school authorities said the weapon was discovered sometime after 8 a.m. in the area where parents drop off their children for a pre-care program in the back of the school.

“A parent noticed the weapon, contacted one of the employees. They came out, secured the weapon. They thought the weapon was a pellet,” Asst. Superintendent Mike Mullen said.

A janitor fired the weapon, trying to discharge the pellets. That’s when he learned it was a pistol.

That’s what I do too when I’m not sure.  If I’m not sure whether it’s a gun, I just pick it up and pull the trigger to see if I can dislodge anything in it.  If it fires, we all laugh, and laugh, and laugh.  As long as no kids get hurt.

Bloomberg:

With Hopkins’s approval, I spend three days observing from behind the counter at Westside Armory, on the condition I won’t risk driving away customers by interrupting to ask to quote them by name. On the floor, I listen to the sales patter and consumer comments. I observe diligence, for the most part, about following the rules. And yet I also witness some troubling slip-ups, including one that leads to a visit to the store by two agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We’re not perfect,” Hopkins says.

Yea, that’s right.  A Bloomberg hack was allowed in the building to write his propaganda.  One thing that struck me was the nexus of memes.

The persistence of demand for firearms in the U.S. becomes the subject of a get-together at the store with Stuart Anderson Wheeler, a visiting fellow big-game hunter who runs an eponymous business in London that manufactures bespoke hunting guns. Anderson Wheeler finds American gun culture perplexing, especially the shrill tone of the National Rifle Association. “I mean, all the talk of terrorism and shootings—it’s pretty extreme. Can they be serious?” he asks.

“They know what sells,” says Hopkins.

“I’m all for guns,” Anderson Wheeler responds. “But how many does a person need?”

“You Brits don’t have our traditions,” Hopkins says. “To Americans, owning a gun is a connection back to the settling of the Western frontier: cowboys and Indians and all that.”

“And fear,” says Anderson Wheeler.

The store owner and a hunter (not just a Fudd, but a British Fudd), engage in a bit of condescending snark towards American gun owners.  “Fear.”  “Extreme.”  “They know what sells.”  That’s right, Hopkins.  It’s the extreme language of the NRA or the NSSF which convinces us to buy guns.  If it weren’t for them, we’d just park our ass on the couch and watch sitcoms at night and football games on the weekend.

Truthfully, it’s folks like these who don’t understand how the NRA and NSSF is being dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth first century.  They are even less informed than the progs, because at least the progs get the significance of their gun control schemes and why we buy guns.  Their (NRA and NSSF) irrelevance to the current trends is missed by the Fudds and the sellouts like Hopkins.

David Codrea noticed this (I couldn’t bring myself to read this far).

Like many FFL holders, Hopkins would have no objection to universal background checks for all gun transfers. 

David comments:

Anyone in the business who’s not leading in the fight against universal registration, especially now in the time of great need, and actually telling that to a Bloomberg reporter, deserves to have his business go belly-up as far as I’m concerned. And the FFLs who look forward to it as a new business opportunity are no better than damn kapos.

Yea, Hopkins just went from being a stooge to being an enemy.  Understand, Hopkins, that universal background checks will bring out the guns, and not in a good way, if you know what I mean.  That is a line that cannot be crossed by anyone.  It won’t happen, and your willing adultery with the Bloomberg position is most disappointing.  As for this particular shop, I would drive hours before I would do business with them.  I hope the good folks in Nevada read this article and adjust their business practices accordingly.

Springfield News-Leader:

Answer Man! I was sitting in Mr. Smith’s Fast Lube on Sunshine Street, waiting while I was getting my oil changed. A man entered with a holstered handgun on his hip. He was getting his oil changed, too, and sat next to me. He seemed nervous and I was concerned about the gun. Is this legal in Springfield? — Joey Pulleyking, of Springfield

The short answer, Joey, is that in Missouri the man had the legal right to openly carry a firearm into the business.

The answer is nuanced. Since there’s such great interest in guns in the Ozarks, I’m going to explore your question further, Joey. For example, I interviewed two Springfield men who openly carry. I’ll get to them later.

Over at Mr. Smith’s, I learned the owner is not a Mr. Smith. The owner goes by the name of Earl, although he is not an Earl, either.

His name is Scott Mather. When I walk into his business, he recognizes me: “Hey, Answer Man, need an oil change? Mr. Smith’s Fast Lube loves your car as much as you do.”

I tell him my car appreciates the love, but no thanks on the oil change.

Instead, I ask how he feels about customers bringing firearms into his business. In Missouri, you don’t need a permit or firearms training to openly carry (but you do if you conceal the weapon).

First, he says, rarely does he see anyone openly carry in one of his shops.

“If people want to do that, they can do that,” he says.

That’s why he does not post a “No Guns” or “No Firearms” sign at his businesses.

According to state law, business owners who don’t want guns on their property must post a sign at least 11 inches by 14 inches in a conspicuous place. The letters on the sign must be at least one inch in height. (Business owners cannot prohibit people from leaving their guns in their car in the parking lot.)

A business owner who prohibits firearms — and then spots a customer with one — must then ask the person to leave and return without the weapon. If the person refuses to exit, the owner can call police, and the person with the gun can be charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor.

[ … ]

Jim Arnott, Greene County sheriff, first wants to make something clear.

“I don’t want it to come out that I am against open carry,” he says.

He’s not. But … “I am a big advocate of concealed carry.

“If they open carry to defend themselves or to intervene in a situation — the first person that the bad guy is going to take care of is the guy with his gun on his hip.”

Arnott says most people he knows conceal carry to maintain the element of surprise.

“The coach of a football team is not going to give up his plays to the other team,” he says.

If you open carry, Arnott says, there’s also a chance people will see your firearm and quickly call police.

So with this in mind, I have a number of things puzzling me.  Let me get right to it.

First, I hear that all the time, i.e., this meme that the first person an active shooter will seek out is the person who is open carrying.  I monitor news reports all the time, as you can imagine of a gun blogger.  I have never seen a news report of an active shooter, robber, criminal, or other ne’er-do-well entering a building and seeking out people with open carry weapons.  You spoke with such authority on the matter, I assume you have some evidence of your claim.  Can you share that evidence with us?

Second, if you believe that, I assume that you have a department policy that your officers conceal carry and wear plains clothes, except for the badge on their belts so people can identify them?  I mean, so active shooters won’t seek them out and so they can hide their game plays?

Third, you say you aren’t against open carry, but in fact you seemed to spend a good deal of effort to dissuade folks in your area from openly carrying.  Why did you do that if you’re not opposed to open carry?

Fourth, is it a good thing if I ensure that I’m the last person an active shooter seeks out?  I have given it some thought in the light of John 15:13, and I have concluded that it would be fairly unseemly, cowardly and dishonorable of me to sit back and say, “Crap, I hope he takes out that woman or kid over there instead of me!  I wanted to watch that show on TV tonight!”  I’m not sure I could live with myself if I decided to slink away and retreat in the face of danger to women and children around me.  In fact, I’m not sure I mind the fact that I’m the first one he confronts, since I’m likely the only one in the vicinity who has planned for this and thought about it a great deal.  I try to keep my head on a swivel, as I’ve discussed many times before.

Do you agree, or would you advocate being the last one to die?

Via Uncle, this from Dearborn:

Khalil Abu-Rayyan, 21, was being watched by the feds since May 2015.

He was even having online conversations with an undercover FBI agent.

“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan posted. “It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced reloading and unloading.”

[ … ]

The complaint filed in federal court doesn’t specify which Detroit church he was allegedly planning to attack, only that it was close and could seat 6,000 members.

The complaint quotes Abu-Rayyan saying:

“It’s easy, and a lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church. Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. If I can’t do jihad in the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”

I’m not surprised that this almost occurred in Dearborn, but it could have occurred anywhere.  Folks, I’ve covered it until I’m exhausted covering it.  Search my religion category for the details of pastors who hate their flocks and would rather see them perish than allow they to carry in worship.  Forget that the jihadist doesn’t understand what a church is (the church is the people, the building they meet in is just that – a building, not a church).

This jihadist understands this much.  When you attend a worship service, in most liturgies, even ones which are atypical, you are a sitting duck, you and your whole family.

You are sitting down, with people in front of you, people behind you, and people to the side of you.  Means of egress, evasion and escape are limited to non-existent.  The attention of most people is focused on the front, on one man or a choir, or in the singing of Psalms, Hymns and spiritual songs, rather than on potential security threats.  This isn’t an argument for not going to worship.  This is an argument for going armed, with your head on a swivel.

And no, a few security people armed with BaoFeng UV-5R comms gear and acting ever so earnest cannot stop a shooter.  You need to carry in worship.  Please, please hear me when I say this.  You need to carry in worship.  If other people don’t, that heightens your responsibility.  If other people are preoccupied, you need to be extra diligent.  Please carry guns in worship.  And if this is disallowed, make your pastor understand, or do it anyway, or change churches.  It’s that important.