Continuing the rumor mill, Uncle reports that Remington may move operations to Tennessee. We’ve discussed a potential Remington move several times, but I’m not so sure it’s Tennessee.
Gov. Cuomo’s tough new gun law has put a target on the state’s gun makers.
Cities, counties and states from across the country have been making lucrative pitches to New York’s firearms companies, urging them to relocate. Their argument: They have a gun-friendly atmosphere, and New York does not.
“They receive solicitations . . . on almost a daily basis,” said Lawrence Kean, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group.
“CEOs have told me they could basically move their factories for free.”
Cuomo pushed his new gun law through the Legislature a month after the deadly shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn. The law broadened the definition of what is considered a banned assault weapon, and it reduced the size of permissible gun magazines to seven rounds, from 10.
Since then, the state’s remaining firearms companies, including major employers like Remington Arms in upstate Ilion and Kimber Manufacturing in Yonkers, have been wooed by officials from places including South Carolina and Texas.
Anthony Testa, general manager of Just Right Carbines in upstate Canandaigua, southeast of Rochester, said his company received at least a dozen offers from other states.
Just Right, which employs about a dozen workers and produces an assault rifle now banned under the state’s new law, has decided to stay put.
The owners, Testa said, have strong family ties to the region. “That’s the only reason they are not considering these things more seriously,” Testa said.
“You combine the high tax load along with the fairly restrictive and fairly anti-gun stance that the state has, it makes it difficult to do business selling a product that the state doesn’t like.”
Let’s be clear about this. Cuomo is a Putz, and New York is a totalitarian state. Furthermore, I haven’t said much about the union at Remington, but the workers simply can’t adopt collectivist practices and policies, forcing New Yorkers into collective bargaining agreements (as opposed to say, South Carolina which is a right to work state), and then gripe and complain because Cuomo institutes collectivist policies of his own. You must be consistent.
A pair of Democratic lawmakers are proposing steep new taxes on handguns and ammunition, and tying the revenues to programs aimed at preventing gun violence.
Called the “Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities Act,” the bill sponsored by William Pascrell, D-N.J., and Danny Davis, D-Ill., would nearly double the current 11 percent tax on handguns, while raising the levy on bullets and cartridges from 11 percent to 50 percent.
“This bill represents a major investment in the protection of our children and our communities, and reflects the long-term societal costs of gun and ammunition purchases in our country,” Pascrell said.
The lawmakers say the bill would generate $600 million per year, which would be used to fund law-enforcement and gun violence prevention.
Critics predicted defeat for the measure.
“What the anti-gun interests can’t ban, they want to tax it out of existence,” Alan Gottlieb, chairman for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, told FoxNews.com. “It’s nothing more than confiscatory taxation.
“I doubt this bill will pass, but we will lobby against it if need be,” he added. “This is simply another shot against gun owners in this country.”
The bill would exempt all federal, state and local agencies, including police departments, from paying the tax.
The bill would also increase the transfer tax on all weapons (except antique guns) covered under the National Firearms Act (which excludes most common guns) from $200 to $500 and index to inflation and increase the transfer tax for any other weapon from $5 to $100.
I don’t care much about the increase in fee for the tax stamp, since I will never, ever register a firearm with the ATF or pay a tax stamp. But the philosophy is that if we cannot beat them at an outright ban, then we can tax them to the point that they cannot afford to own weapons or ammunition.
This approach is both irrational and unconstitutional, not to mention immoral. But something must source the massive expansion of the federal Leviathan, and the Congress has figured out that we will not give up our guns or our shooting. Feed the beast, even if it makes use of what they loath so much – our freedoms. It sure must seem a Faustian bargain to them.
A manufacturer of a robustly popular product wants to capture what it perceives as missed-opportunity sales by opening a third production plant, this one in North Carolina.
The company is pledging to create hundreds of jobs and bring a renowned brand and sure-fire economic shot-in-the-arm to the community.
However, there are analysts skeptical of the expansion plans, saying the company already is facing saturation of its product in the U.S. marketplace amid formidable competition. They aren’t sure consumer demand will continue to outpace supply even though the short-term future is bright.
The company: Dell Inc., the world’s largest PC manufacturer. The time: summer 2004. The community: Winston-Salem.
Fast forward six years, and Dell is preparing to close its $110 million plant and finish eliminating the remainder of a workforce that reached 1,400 at its peak. The company is shifting production to third-party vendors after falling laptop prices eroded its market share for desktops and consumers proved increasingly indifferent to a customized product.
Fast forward another three years, and you find Rockingham County reveling in what local officials and residents consider as a godsend – an announcement that Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc. has chosen a 220,000-square-foot plant in Mayodan as its preferred site for a third firearms manufacturing plant.
If an unknown amount of local and state incentives are approved in August, local economic officials say they are confident Ruger will commit to spending $30 million on capital investments and hiring a workforce of 300 to 700 full-time employees. The plant would be expected to open by early spring.
It would be the first manufacturing expansion for the Southport, Conn., company since 1988. The company also has plants in Newport, N.H., and Prescott, Ariz. There are about 2,100 employees companywide.
Still, there are analysts who question whether opening a third Ruger plant is prudent. They wonder how many firearms gun buyers want or need before feeling fully stocked.
“While most industry executives believe this surge in demand should still have some steam left in the tank, it’s safe to say it certainly won’t last forever,” said Steve Symington, an analyst with The Motley Fool.
Yes, our “expert” is with The Motley Fool. Give yourself time to quit laughing and let’s cover what’s really happening here.
First of all, Ruger is having trouble meeting demand, and the U.S. is as in love with its guns as it has ever been. There is always a demand for good gun manufacturing, especially with firearms made in the U.S. (including every part and component).
But second, take note of the location of the home office. Connecticut. What this “expert” with The Motley Fool doesn’t understand is the loyalty of gun owners, or conversely, the wrath of their judgment wrought upon gun manufacturers disloyal to America. For a brief primer on this, consider the Smith & Wesson boycott.
Ruger is betting on expansion, but not just any expansion. They’re relocating South. Look for operations in Connecticut to decrease over time. If Ruger doesn’t take this step, they will go out of business, just like Remington in New York.
If firearms manufacturers stay in the North, they will become obsolete and eventually go out of business. If they relocate to the South, a welcome party awaits. So much for the “experts.” Ruger knows what they’re doing.
Nonprofit Quarterly recently carried a commentary on Lindsey Graham and his comments on AR-15s that took a detour into the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rick Cohen’s thoughts make for interesting reading.
Our impression of American behavior during disasters has been that people generally pull together, that adversity brings out the best in us. Sure, we know that people do very bad things, but the press often notes how people also go out of their way to help and protect their neighbors. In fact, that feeling of mutuality was what we thought undergirded the nonprofit sector in a democratic society.
It must be that we fell for some Panglossian view of America, if we are to believe Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Graham grilled Attorney General Eric Holder about the proposed ban on assault weapons. We haven’t seen the news reports that verify what Graham says happened—or sort of happened—to spark his support for carrying around military-style assault weapons:
“Can you imagine a circumstance where an AR-15 would be a better defense tool than, say, a double-barrel shotgun? Let me give you an example, that you have (sic) an lawless environment, where you have an natural disaster or some catastrophic event — and those things unfortunately do happen, and law and order breaks down because the police can’t travel, there’s no communication. And there are armed gangs roaming around neighborhoods. Can you imagine a situation where your home happens to be in the crosshairs of this group that a better self-defense weapon may be a semiautomatic AR-15 vs. a double-barrel shotgun?
I’m afraid that world does exist. It existed in New Orleans, to some extent up in Long Island [after Hurricane Sandy], it could exist tomorrow if there’s a cyber attack against [the] country and the power grid goes down and the dams are released and chemical plants are — discharges.
What I’m saying is if my family was in the crosshairs of gangs that were roaming around neighborhoods in New Orleans or any other location, the deterrent effect of an AR-15 to protect my family, I think, is greater than a double-barrel shotgun.”
As far as we can tell, Graham must be referencing a gang of white vigilantes in New Orleans’ Algiers Point neighborhood who, armed with shotguns and assault weapons, allegedly opened fire on African Americans “with impunity” after Hurricane Katrina; the militia was reportedly on the lookout for anyone who “didn’t belong” in the neighborhood, as reported by ProPublica and The Nation. If so, maybe Graham’s fears would have more of a basis in reality if he looked a little more like Holder and was facing a white militia armed with AR-15s.
It is in vogue to tell this revisionist history of Katrina. We’ll deal with this shortly, but before we do that and in order to set the stage for our response, we will now be the ones to take a detour into another crisis to watch how a nation behaved. We’ll address AR-15s, catastrophies and totalitarian governments, but for now let’s briefly revisit the fall of the Berlin wall, the role of one church, and the actions of the East Gernam Army.
OathKeepers has an interview with Lt. Colonel Gunter Spens, in which he describes the fact that the East German Army simply refused to obey orders to stop the protests at the wall and stayed on base. True enough for part of the story, and as much as I admire Oath Keepers, it isn’t as simple as this and there is more to the story. This is the church that brought down the wall.
In the GDR, atheism was the norm. Churches like St. Nikolai were spied on but allowed to remain open.
“In the GDR, the church provided the only free space,” Fuhrer said in an interview with Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. “Everything that could not be discussed in public could be discussed in church, and in this way the church represented a unique spiritual and physical space in which people were free.”
In the early 1980s, Fuhrer began holding weekly prayers for peace.
Every Monday, worshippers recited the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. Few came at first, but attendance grew as the Soviet Union began opening to the West.
The prayer service, Fuhrer said, “was something very special in East Germany. Here a critical mass grew under the roof of the church — young people, Christians and non-Christians, and later, those who wanted to leave (East Germany) joined us and sought refuge here.”
As a college student in those years, Sylke Schumann was one of the hundreds, then thousands, who joined the vigils in the sanctuary at St. Nikolai and then marched in the streets holding candles and calling for change.
“Seeing all these people gather in this place … from week to week and more and more people gathering, you had the feeling this time really the government had to listen to you,” Schumann said.
In October 1989, on the 40th anniversary of the GDR, the government cracked down.
Protesters in Leipzig were beaten and arrested. Two days later, St. Nikolai Church was full to overflowing for the weekly vigil. When it was over, 70,000 people marched through the city as armed soldiers looked on, but did nothing.
And even this report doesn’t tell the whole story. I was a member of a church during this time that received regular (underground) reports from East German churches about the events of that era. When society has rejected God and embraced totalitarianism, the men can become lovers of power or drunkards and whore chasers. Not all men do, but many succumb to this fate.
But oftentimes the women – mothers and grandmothers who want their children to be raised with a sense of morality and the knowledge of God – toe the line. Secretly they teach their children. Their children learn to love their mothers and the instruction, and like ticking time bombs that explode later in life, that instruction proves determinative.
And toe the line the women did. The crowds were heavily populated with mothers and grandmothers, and the boys who populated the East German Army remembered their instruction. They wouldn’t discharge their weapons at their own blood, and whether it was the instruction in underground churches or the simple fact that the boys wouldn’t kill their mothers or mothers of colleagues, no rounds were fired. It had little to do with orders to stay in garrison. If the East German Army had deployed (as some of them did), they would simply have watched as the wall fell without a shot.
Now, let’s return to the issue of New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. Except for the horrible racist, Aryan gangs who abused the black folk, it was a veritable Shangri La indeed. Except for the white folk everyone would have gotten along just swimmingly. White Aryan gangs in the middle of New Orleans. You simply can’t make this up.
Except that this isn’t reality. Revisionist doesn’t even begin to describe that view. That view is an outright fabrication and falsehood. A more accurate and honest accounting shows how rough the time was.
In the City of Vultures, a New Zealander is one of the few remaining police officers who has stayed behind to protect the helpless.
James Gourlie, 30, formerly of Christchurch, is one of six officers who have remained out of a district force of 200.
“This is my district. I will not abandon my district, my county, my workmates or these people,” he told the Herald On Sunday last night.
Mr Gourlie was speaking while preparing for another night patrol from the Hampton Inn, which he and fellow officers took over after their police station was overrun. For its single entrance, and the war zone outside, they have dubbed the hotel “The Fortress”.
It’s been six days and five nights of lawlessness since Hurricane Katrina hit. In the vacuum left by Katrina, anarchy has reigned. Human vultures have preyed on the helpless, pillaging homes and shops, committing murder and rape.
The decision to stay while hundreds of fellow officers fled has left them bitter. Mr Gourlie returned after getting his American wife Jennifer out of New Orleans.
When one fellow officer and friend pulled out for Texas on Friday, taking two automatic rifles and a shotgun, he earned his colleagues’ anger.
“They’re preserving their lives but they’re risking their friends,” said Mr Gourlie, of the “cowards” who have left. “You know what the New Zealand and Australian way is – and that ain’t the Anzac way. You sacrifice yourself for your mates.”
There are incidents every day involving weapons, although Mr Gourlie is thankful he has not yet had to shoot anyone. The times the officers have intervened, those desperate for help have wept and offered thanks.
A fellow officer was killed after warning looters away from a store. A looter pushed a gun against his head and pulled the trigger. “It was heartbreaking to see this police officer lying on his back, blood pouring out of his head.”
There are gangs of armed thugs in the convention centre. One young hood the officers pulled up was carrying a civilian version of a military M-16 rifle.
“There’s shooting. The thugs inside, they have come outside. They are running up and down, disturbing people with impunity. They know we can’t cross the road and engage them because we don’t know where their cohorts are. We are so vastly outnumbered, especially at night,” said Mr Gourlie.
There has also been murder and rape. In one awful case, a 15-year-old girl had suffered both, her body stuffed into an oven with her throat slit.
“I would expect something like this in a war zone in the Middle East. You’d be stupid not to be afraid. It’s how you face it that counts.”
The gangs in the centre have now destroyed the generators, and last night was the first Katrina’s survivors have spent without light. “That’s one of the reasons why people are so afraid today.”
I am certainly no admirer of Lindsey Graham. His criticism of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul over their filibuster was petulant, and his friendship with John McCain shows that he wants to stay in power rather than hold government accountable. But from the mouth of the unexpected sometimes comes wisdom, even if by accident.
Unfortunately like the author says, Ameica is indeed like this concerning violence and danger, even if his intended target – white gangs – is a fabrication of his imagination. And during this period of peril for the citizens of New Orleans did the National Guard keep order? No, to their everlasting shame they spent their time confiscating weapons from law abiding citizens.
And yet, the National Guard had no evidence that New Orleans wouldn’t devolve into something like the L.A. riots, leaving people helpless and defenseless.
America as we have know it is dead. It is no more. The cities are violent and the government totalitarian. America is more bifurcated than it has ever been in history. Ninety million people are out of the labor force, and something approaching half of America pays no income tax. Keynesian economics has failed like a star burning out. The first medium size city has gone bankrupt, taking with it nearly one billion dollars in pensions for state workers. Note that this doesn’t include Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment payments, welfare, social security or any other federal program. One billion dollars – just on state pensions, just with one medium size city.
While the states are going down, the federal government is working hard at making itself more totalitarian than before.
The ATF doesn’t just want a huge database to reveal everything about you with a few keywords. It wants one that can find out who you know. And it won’t even try to friend you on Facebook first.
According to a recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the bureau is looking to buy a “massive online data repository system” for its Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII). The system is intended to operate for at least five years, and be able to process automated searches of individuals, and “find connection points between two or more individuals” by linking together “structured and unstructured data.”
Primarily, the ATF states it wants the database to speed-up criminal investigations. Instead of requiring an analyst to manually search around for your personal information, the database should “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches” such as social security numbers (or even just a fragment of one), vehicle serial codes, age range, “phonetic name spelling,” or a general area where your address is located. Input that data, and out comes your identity, while the computer automatically establishes connections you have with others.
Many other specific requirements are also to be expected for a federal law enforcement agency: searching names, phone numbers, “nationwide utility data” and reverse phone searches. The data will then be collected to help out during investigations and provide “relevant information and intelligence products.”
To do this and similar things they are spending the wealth of your children and children’s children. Ben Bernanke is trying ever so hard to keep hyperinflation under control and interest rates low in order to keep the deficit from exploding, but sooner or later America’s unfunded liabilities will come due and no amount fiat money will suffice. Fractional reserve banking will prove to people when hard times hit that their money doesn’t exist and cannot be withdrawn from their accounts. It’s just a waiting game, because the system cannot be saved.
The American experiment – subtended by wealth redistribution, race baiting, totalitarianism and the creation of taker class that leeches off of workers – is over. It has been replaced by Fabian socialism. But all is not lost. America will be reborn in a different form. Hard times are approaching, and there are some salient and hard questions that are a function of those hard times.
Will police, soldiers and Marines raise their weapons against American civilians? The Louisiana National Guard did. To each and every officer, soldier and Marine I tell you, you’d better not. God will condemn you for it. Your orders must be legal and moral to require your fealty, and notwithstanding the [il]legality of such an order, it would be immoral. Will you confiscate weapons if so ordered? You’d better not – God will condemn you for it. Each man lives his appointed days, and then he will face judgment. Do not face God having removed means of legitimate protection of the family. And do not face God having been the stooge for a tyrant. It matters little how long you live. It matters much how you live, and how you perish.
To parents, you must teach your children and instill in them a reverence for and love of liberty. Even for the old among us, you may very well end up training the very men who would otherwise be your tyrants, but who will remember their upbringing instead. Mothers and grandmothers, you essentially saved the day in East Germany. Don’t underestimate your role. Teaching the children is the most important job on earth.
Men, don’t be naive. God apparently granted a special dispensation to East Germany for a bloodless coup. It won’t happen that way anywhere else. The National Guard in many states has already shown that they will assist totalitarianism. The race riots in Los Angeles were nothing compared to what it will be like in the event of an economic collapse in America.
Teach the children. Defend the family. It isn’t just a right, it’s your God-given duty. And never, ever relinquish your weapons. That would be as immoral as the actions of totalitarians in confiscation. You shall not cooperate with the totalitarians and be approved by God. Never give up. God is on your side.
Pathetic rag The Raw Story on Mike Huckabee on Obama and guns:
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) declared on Wednesday that President Barack Obama and gun control advocates are possibly planning on confiscating the nation’s privately owned firearms and imposing a Nazi Germany-like “dictatorship” in this country. According to Media Matters, Huckabee made the remarks in response to a caller on his radio show.
“I’m very concerned,” said the caller, “it seems like there’s so many people who have not read and do not understand how quickly Germany was turned into, it was a democracy, then turned into a dictatorship by everyone having to register their guns and then they went door to door and collected them.”
Rather than correct the caller that in 1938, the Nazi Party loosened gun regulations that had been imposed by the Versailles Treaty in the wake of World War One, lowered the age limit for gun ownership and de-regulated the possession of shotguns and rifles for everyone but Jews, Huckabee chose instead to stoke the caller’s fears.
“People do forget that,” said Huckabee. “And by the way, know that when you bring that up you get people who get crazy on us, and they’ll start saying, ‘Oh there you go comparing to the Nazis.’ And I understand the reaction, but it’s the truth. You cannot take people’s rights away if they’re resisting and if they have the means to resist, but once they’re disarmed and the people who are trying to take over have all the power, not just political, not just financial, but they have the physical power to domesticate us and to subjugate us to their will, there’s not a whole lot we can do about it other than just plan to die in the course of resistance.”
I’m delighted that Raw Story brought up this issue about correcting the record. No, not correcting Mike Huckabee, but correcting this unserious Harcourt study. The comprehensive study by Stephen Halbrook is much more honest, and points out that at least the following weapons features were banned for everyone: silencers, tactical lights on weapons, detachable high capacity magazines (more than five rounds) and telescoping stocks. Does this list sound familiar? Halbrook also remarks concerning Nazi gun control:
… the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state.
As I’ve said before, no one has ever claimed that Nazi gun regulations didn’t benefit the totalitarians in Nazi Germany. Someone always has the guns. The issue is who, and under what circumstances, and for what purpose?
That Harcourt would publish such an unserious study is embarrassing for him whether he knows it or not. It’s probably not possible for The Raw Story to be embarrassed about anything. But take careful note of the argument that is repeated in the silly article. It’s not really gun control if it only affected the Jews. Can you imagine a more racist, bigoted position than that?
Ever to be late to the debate and wrong with the facts, Fluffington Post discusses Hitler and guns.
When the president of Ohio’s state school board posted her opposition to gun control, she used a powerful symbol to make her point: a picture of Adolf Hitler. When a well-known conservative commentator decried efforts to restrict guns, he argued that if only Jews in Poland had been better armed, many more would have survived the Holocaust.
In the months since the Newtown, Conn., school massacre, some gun rights supporters have repeatedly compared U.S. gun control efforts to Nazi restrictions on firearms, arguing that limiting weapons ownership could leave Americans defenseless against homegrown tyrants.
But some experts say that argument distorts a complex and contrary history. In reality, scholars say, Hitler loosened the tight gun laws that governed Germany after World War I, even as he barred Jews from owning weapons and moved to confiscate them.
Advocates who cite Hitler in the current U.S. debate overlook that Jews in 1930s Germany were a very small population, owned few guns before the Nazis took control, and lived under a dictatorship commanding overwhelming public support and military might, historians say. While it doesn’t fit neatly into the modern-day gun debate, they say, the truth is that for all Hitler’s unquestionably evil acts, his firearms laws likely made no difference in Jews’ very tenuous odds of survival.
“Objectively, it might have made things worse” if the Jews who fought the Nazis in the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising in Poland had more and better guns, said historian Steve Paulsson, an expert on the period whose Jewish family survived the city’s destruction.
It’s difficult to imagine how it could be worse than gas chambers and ovens to commit genocide, but they aren’t reluctant to cite an absurd comment like that because it’s a failing organization. It’s a wonder anyone will write for or talk to them.
… the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state.
… control over weapons that have collapsible or telescoping capabilities, easy take-down and modularity, lights, no so-called “sporting purpose,” and magazines more than a pre-determined amount has its roots in Nazi Germany.
Again, the record is clear. Today, potential enemies of the state includes everyone except law enforcement, and the controls that the current administration advocates are to be found in Nazi Germany.
No one has ever claimed that either the Obama administration or Adolf Hitler wanted the disappearance of all guns. They just want guns in the “right hands.”
Our customers are unusually brand-loyal. In many cases, they personally identify with the firearm brand they choose. Although our Connecticut heritage has historically enhanced our brand, that will change overnight if we ban the modern sporting rifle.
As a result Colt, as well as other Connecticut manufacturers such as Mossberg and Stag Arms will see immediate erosion in brand strength and market share as customers migrate to manufacturers in more supportive states. This will have consequences for dozens of Connecticut companies and thousands of workers. Connecticut will have put its firearms manufacturing industry in jeopardy: one that contributes $1.7 billion annually to the state’s economy.
Like every other precision manufacturer in Connecticut, Colt is constantly approached by other states to relocate, but our roots here are deep. Colt is and always has been an integral part of a state characterized by hard work, perseverance and ingenuity.
I know, however, that someday soon, I will again be asked why we fight to keep well-paying manufacturing jobs in Connecticut. I will be asked why we should continue to manufacture in a state where the governor would make ownership of our product a felony.
I will be asked these questions and, unlike in the past, there will be few good answers.
He’s right. Some of the customer base will be faithful, but this issue runs deep, and many will abandon them. We’ve also discussed how many will abandon Remington, too, for staying in New York and focusing almost exclusively on a new military contract. It won’t work out well for Remington.
But the CEO will likely have to decide whether this is bluster or serious-speak. The State of Connecticut won’t listen to him and will probably pass their ban. When they do that, Colt will have to decide whether it is a Remington or a Magpul. The choice is theirs, and no amount of posturing in local newspapers will delay or change things.
On February 26, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Center for Human Rights issued a white paper on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which concludes that “the proposed ATT is consistent with the Second Amendment.” This conclusion neglects important facts about the treaty and the processes surrounding it, which we have explored in this four-part series.
We have shown that while we agree with several of the ABA’s contentions, it ignores the fact that the ATT—like many treaties—is not designed for a nation with a federal structure like the U.S. The ABA also ignores the fact that the ATT goes beyond import restrictions on firearms by requiring signatories to prevent the domestic diversion of imports. The treaty may also invite the executive branch to take executive actions to restrict and control the import of firearms into the U.S., imports which comprise about 35 percent of the new firearms market.
Finally, the treaty raises broader concerns about the application of transnational law to the U.S. These concerns are heightened by the fact that both foreign nations and some prominent legal scholars have identified treaties like the ATT as a mechanism to pressure the U.S. to change its domestic policies, and even to change the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment.
The question, then, is what the U.S. should do about this. The U.S. is sensitive to allegations that it is failing to fulfill treaty commitments, and it rightly takes its treaty obligations seriously. Because the ATT is a process that is designed to evolve and grow, it is impossible to know where it will lead.
A new ATT conference begins today in New York, and we will be blogging from the conference.
Supporters of the ATT frequently defend it as entirely unrelated to the Second Amendment. Some opponents of the ATT criticize it as a nefarious plot against the Second Amendment. The truth is more complicated …
Listen carefully. No, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty isn’t really that complicated. It is a nefarious plot against the second amendment.
We’ve covered this in detail before. All that rubbish and claptrap about the treaty excluding civilians because it excludes civilian arms is a ruse. What it does is what Feinstein and Obama want to do within the framework of U.S. law, and distinguish between so-called “military weapons” and “civilian weapons.” Again – it doesn’t distinguish between you and a member of the professional military, it distinguishes between military arms and civilian arms.
It would make illegal all sorts of firearms currently in circulation, as well as subject you to a set of rules, licensing and governmental checks that would make what Obama has proposed look like free utopia.
Some things really are as they seem. Can Heritage at least try to get it right next time? Otherwise, it’s just wasted space and bandwidth.
The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.
This will split our fiber backbone signals and dump every 1 and 0 that transverses it into government computers. Every detail of life of all citizens is now subject to inspection and assessment by government overlords who can and will make decisions as to so-called “terrorist activity,” which could be al Qaeda or perhaps unorganized militia who prepare for any threat against the U.S., foreign or domestic.
This knowledge should be coupled with another stunning intrusion into our God-given rights we learned about today. Bob Owens has a report for us.
Chuck Schumer’s S. 374, the Orwellian “Protecting Responsible Gun Sellers Act of 2013,” has been an empty shell… until he slipped in Amendment ALB13180 (PDF) today, which shows the “teeth” of the bill. It is an extremely aggressive attempt to destroy the Second Amendment by isolating and criminalizing extremely common behaviors among gun owners.
If you leave home for more than 7 days and leave anyone at home, that becomes a felony illegal transfer. 5 years in prison for each of you.
if you take a friend shooting and allow him to fire your gun, that is a felony illegal transfer. 5 years in prison for each of you.
If you have a gun lost or stolen and don’t report it within 24 hours, you’ve committed a felony. 5 years in prison.
If you lend a gun to someone for to try out at the range, provide a loaner for a student in training, let your son shoot a rifle you purchased while hunting, or provide a gun to a woman for self-defense, you’ve committed a felony. 5 years in prison for each of you.
Bob ends his assessment with the following almost desperate interdiction.
See also reaction at WRSA. It’s possible, of course, to forestall such an eventuality, even if unlikely. For example, the states who are currently considering or have passed laws against enforcement of federal gun laws could actually take their state laws seriously.
If such a federal law were to pass, a state could decide to confiscate and immediately destroy all form 4473s in all FFLs in their state, and warn FFLs to contact state police if any ATF agents enter their premises. State police could arrest any federal agents who attempted to enforce federal gun laws and place them into the general prisoner population in state penitentiaries. Threats to arrest state police or stop these actions could be met with National Guard troops to further effectuate the arrest of federal agents and enforce a cease and desist action to all federal employees, including federal judges who moved against such actions.
But this would have to happen all across the nation for it to be effective, and I find it unlikely that a governor would take these actions, regardless of the posturing that we currently see by the states. The concept of States’ rights has fallen too hard and too far, and federalism has lost its appeal in the U.S.
Short of something like this, I am becoming increasingly pessimistic about a possible recovery of our national character. When the people demand cradle to grave security and overwatch, the state responds with cradle to grave demand for omniscience for itself and cradle to grave compliance by the people. It’s a deal with the devil for our soul, and America has made it a long time ago.
If this sounds judgmental, then I plead guilty. Based on religious doctrine, which the epistemologists might call strongly held truth value, or incorrigible beliefs, I hold that gun control is evil.
The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.
Gun control is like control over everything else. The key word here is control. It is at one and the same time a function of wicked rulers and a benchmark, or barometer or gauge, to measure their wickedness. God doesn’t cede or relinquish rule over His creation for mankind, and totalitarian governance usurps the authority He demands over the actions of mankind. God will not be mocked – He does the mocking.
God sits in the heavens and laughs and scoffs at the designs of man (Psalm 2:4). Here is a warning to totalitarian rulers. “Do homage to the Son, lest He become angry, and you perish in the way.” Judgment will come, here or in the hereafter, and perhaps sooner and more unexpectedly than you think.
The only explanation for Senator Schumer’s totalitarian dictates is that he believes that Americans will go along with it. To be sure, there are many who will … who will take measure of the situation and decide that they value peace and security over measurements of right and wrong.
But there are many who will not go along with such laws. They will not allow themselves or their children or their friends or loved ones to be imprisoned for failing to take their weapons to a public armory when they go on trips, or loaning a rifle to their son to learn to shoot at the range.
We have covered this ground before. Bob reacted the way he did because he understands in a way that the totalitarians and wicked rulers in Washington do not. These measures will not stand. They will fall, one way or the other.
Will our wicked rulers turn back before it’s too late? Only God knows, but only time will tell us. Here is a final warning: do not cross lines from which there is no return.
In the mean time, this isn’t your father’s country. Welcome to Amerika!
Ammoland has two extremely depressing reports. We already knew that Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan were pretend conservatives with plans to cave on universal background checks. This first report makes it sound even worse.
[The] Republican Majority Leader is leading the charge to cut a deal with President Obama.
The following are just some of the threats to innocent school children and our God-given 2nd Amendment liberties that Republicans are about to shove down our throats:
1.The NRA is cutting backroom deals to centralize gun owner data collection into the Obama/Holder massive government data base.
A centralized system is less costly to fight and far more lucrative for the NRA to appear to be “fixing“.
Like all establishment political lobbies the key to their job security is assisting in making problems they end up being called upon to “fix“.
2. Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor is leading the charge to give Obama and Holder what they want in exchange for appearing to be “fixing” the problem of innocent children being butchered in our public and private schools.
3. Newly appointed Republican Judiciary Chairman, Bob Goodlatte R-VA 6th District, is providing political cover for the sneaky back room gun control deals and gun grabbing sell outs that his political masters – – John Boehner and Eric Cantor – – are cutting with Obama and his corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder.
Political insiders have confirmed to me, that Goodlatte earned his brand new chairmanship by ignoring the constitutional demands and grievances of every Republican Unit Chairman in his own 6th district.
You might think that with Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives there would be no way ANY gun control legislation could reach the floor.
But sadly we are already beginning to see so-called “conservative champions” folding to pressure from the anti-gun media to sell-out gun owners.
Former Vice Presidential candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan, has stated that he would support legislation that bans private sales at gun shows.
In the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, along with the help of Rep. Scott Rigell (VA), Patrick Meehan (PA) and others, have stated openly that they will work together with anti-gun Democrats from Maryland and New York to tighten restrictions on private firearms sales and expand background checks.
Possibly even more upsetting has been Senator Tom Coburn’s willingness to work alongside anti-gunner Chuck Schumer (NY) to propose “bi-partisan” anti-gun legislation in the Senate.
Make no mistake, so-called “expansion” of background checks is little more than a blatant attempt by anti-gunners to register all firearms and gun owners in America.
That is why Representatives Steve Stockman (TX-36) and Paul Broun (GA-10) have drafted a letter to Speaker Boehner and the Republican leadership urging them to require the support of the majority of Republican members in the House before bringing any anti-gun bills to the floor.
This so-called “Hastert Rule” would mean that 117 Republicans would have to support a particular bill before it had any chance of getting a floor vote, not just the support of the anti-gun elitist in leadership.
Such political ploys would be unnecessary if the GOP weren’t filled with such weasels. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these reports, but I have followed Cantor and Ryan for a while now on firearms freedoms and gun rights, and it doesn’t surprise me in the least.
It’s fascinating that the GOP leadership would be willing to sacrifice their careers on the altar of political correctness. And it will cost them their careers. I don’t know how else to say it other than to keep repeating myself. The gun owners who recently waited in lines for three or more hours to pay exorbitant prices for guns were not repeat buyers (long time gun owners like me already had most of the firearms we wanted and so we are purchasing ammunition now). They were first time buyers.
I’ve watched them at the ranges. I have overheard their conversations, I have watched them at the gun stores and gun shows. I have heard their relatively ignorant questions (not ignorant because they’re stupid, but because they’re in the process of learning). They are not us. We already have guns. These are new gun owners. The polls they are trotting out to show the number of gun owners decreasing are all lies.
I don’t know whether the questions aren’t being honestly answered or what other source there could be for the error. But the polls are in error. Don’t believe them. And as for older gun owners like me, and even the newer gun owners like I have monitored for the past half year, we have made it clear with our voices and wallets. No new gun laws. None. Period. Not one more inch. Not one.
Is this so hard to understand? Note to legislators. Tread carefully. Don’t cross lines from which there is no return.
UPDATE: Sebastian believes that this is weak tea. Whatever. Look, I said that I could not vouch for the source of this information. What I did say is that Cantor and Ryan are essentially dead to me. They have both advocated universal background checks before, and that fact is undeniable. Coming to their defense is strange and not at all something I would do. What I also said is that the general thrust of the reports doesn’t surprise me based on my previous work to follow these two sellouts (and I do mean to say that Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are sellouts – you simply cannot convince me otherwise because you don’t have the evidence). Also, not that I dislike Breitbart.com, but I have never read anything they had to say about this issue. What is the source behind the Ammoland reports? They will have to answer that. Finally, I note that Sebastian didn’t interact with me on this issue, just Ammoland.
11 years, 9 months ago
