Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Charlotte Observer:

Rather than weaseling out with the excuse that this deal (and who knows how many more) was already in the works, Bank of America must pull out of this agreement and deal with the consequences. The bank can use this moment to show true corporate leadership and create a template for bringing about real change in a post-Parkland world.

[ … ]

There is a reason this editorial was sent to The Charlotte Observer and they printed it.  The Charlotte Observer is progressive, and BoA executives all live in this area since the BoA home office is in Charlotte.

It’s never enough, is it?  A progressive corporation who hates liberty deals a blow to gun manufacturers, and yet the controllers want more, and more and more, until BoA is illegally reneging on contractual obligations, banning all gun makers, and purveying bigotry towards gun owners as well.

You see where this is going, do you?  Semi-automatic weapons is just the latest boogey man.  They want them all, bolt action rifles, handguns, everything.  Everything.

This particular controller is being a little impatient, but he wants to strike while the iron is hot.  Even if it doesn’t work out for him, it’s just another lesson in the fact that there is no point of intersection for us, no point at which we can compromise, nothing in common, and nothing worth giving away to the controllers.

This is all-out war with them.  See it that way, whether you want the war of not.  It has come to your doorstep.

David Codrea:

Uncontrolled degenerate control freaks like Mel Reynolds have no say on my rights and never will.

Well yes, I grok the sentiment.  Oftentimes, control freaks are morally degenerate in all kinds of ways since in order to be a consistent control freak, one must jettison belief in God and His moral law.  The statist god is the collective, which ultimately finds itself in “the one” (as I’ve said, for the best study on this, see Rousas J. Rushdoony, “The One and The Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy”).

But the fact is that there are also control freaks out there who aren’t quite so morally degenerate as Mr. Reynolds, at least to the naked eye, and yet they are just as dangerous as Reynolds.  Being a control freak is a morally malady, a sin-sickness that finds its rivers of evil in the soul.

So it is with all controllers – gun controllers, tax-and-spenders, war-mongers, proponents of state medicine – all of them.

Guns.com:

Ohio-based MKS, whose products include Hi-Point Firearms and Inland M1911s, have announced they won’t sell to Dick’s and their affiliates on Second Amendment grounds.

MKS said the recent move by Dick’s to hire a government affairs group for the purpose of gun control lobbying, coupled with the big box retailer’s past choices to destroy their existing inventory of AR-15s and refuse firearm sales to those under age 21 put the two companies at odds when it came to the right to keep and bear arms.

“In recent months, Dick’s Sporting Goods and its subsidiary, Field & Stream, have shown themselves, in our opinion, to be no friend of Americans’ Second Amendment,” said Charles Brown, MKS president. “We believe that refusing to sell long guns to adults under age 21, while many young adults in our military are not similarly restricted, is wrong. We believe that villainizing modern sporting rifles in response to pressure from uninformed, anti-gun voices is wrong. We believe that hiring lobbyists to oppose American citizens’ freedoms secured by the Second Amendment is wrong.”

I doubt MKS sells that much inventory to Dick’s.  But this next one hurts.

NORTH HAVEN, CT – O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc., a leading American firearms manufacturer, announced today its decision to discontinue selling products to Dick’s Sporting Goods, and its subsidiary, Field & Stream, in response to their hiring of gun control lobbyists in April 2018.

Effective immediately, O.F. Mossberg & Sons will not accept any future orders from Dick’s Sporting Goods or Field & Stream, and is in the process of evaluating current contractual agreements.

“It has come to our attention that Dick’s Sporting Goods recently hired lobbyists on Capitol Hill to promote additional gun control.” said Iver Mossberg, Chief Executive Officer of O.F. Mossberg & Sons. “Make no mistake, Mossberg is a staunch supporter of the U.S. Constitution and our Second Amendment rights, and we fully disagree with Dick’s Sporting Goods’ recent anti-Second Amendment actions.”

I have written a note to Mossberg Media Relations as follows.

I have no doubt my readers will ask about whether this decision is determinative and controlling, or just applies to firearms ordered from Dick’s bypassing distributors.  Or another way to ask the question is this.  Will Mossberg enforce this decision with distributors too, requiring them to refrain from selling to Dick’s?

As of this writing I have not received a response.  But it appears as if these two manufacturers aren’t so worried about “a conspiracy in restraint of trade.”  What is Dick’s going to do – fight the lawyers from every gun manufacturer in America?

Good for MKS and Mossberg.  Let’s keep piling it on with other gun manufacturers.  I hope Mossberg’s lawyers can work out not supplying them with existing contracts.

CNBC:

A group of nuns and other faith-based investors won a shareholder vote at Sturm Ruger & Co. requiring one of the nation’s largest gun-makers to prepare a report about the risks of its business.

Ruger’s CEO, Christopher Killoy, said at the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday that the company will comply and prepare the report. “Shareholders have spoken,” he said.

But, he added, the winning proposal “cannot force us to change our business,” and “cannot change what Ruger is about and what we stand for.”

Well, they apparently had enough shareholder power to force this action, which is not good.  I’ll tell you what.  Corporate Ruger had better evaluate massive share buys in the near future in order to prevent even worse things from happening.

Via WoG, this:

Santa Ynez business owner Gabriele Santi was left frustrated and bewildered when his local bank branch abruptly closed his accounts.

He said he walked into his local Rabobank branch recently and was handed a letter stating that the bank was terminating the accounts for his business, the Second Amendment Gun Shop in Santa Ynez.

I have never had an incident with Rabobank and this came as a shock, quite literally. I am usually a loud guy, but I was quiet, Santi said.

According to the bank’s letter, we are required by federal law to exercise due diligence and understand the financial transactions of our customers. When we are unable to meet the standards imposed by law, we have to take appropriate action to reduce risk to the bank.

I literally have no idea what that means. I haven’t broken any laws. In fact, I supply most of the local law enforcement with their guns and ammunition, and this decision is just political, Santi said.

Here is what it means sir.  Federal law doesn’t require them to close your account.  They voluntarily chose to do that because they don’t believe in your rights or liberties.

Gentlemen, cut your ties to corporate America.  It hates you.

As seen on Facebook:

This is why Facebook is stupid.  Yes, I know the hazard of saying something like that is that there are so many reasons Facebook is stupid that someone may point out the reductionism of the assertion This is why Facebook is stupid.  Nonetheless, this is why Facebook is stupid.

No one has apparently asked her to change the subject to something like automobiles.  ” … You’re already stating that having car insurance and ambulances means that cars are dangerous and a threat to those nearby.”  Consistency is only the Hobgoblin of small minds in American schools.

About the only thing you can say to something like that (because she’s not teachable) is “Shut up, go to the kitchen and make me a sandwich.”

If you have a Facebook account, delete it.  You’re stupider every day you have it.  It’s amazing that Zuckerberg actually makes a living with this crap, a testimony to the stupidity of the American people.

Trump spoke at the NRA convention in Dallas to a hero’s welcome.  David Codrea has other thoughts.

No one is expecting the president to exceed his authority or the proper bounds of federalism, but the office does come with a bully pulpit and, depending on your point of view, the man is either famous or notorious for issuing public statements through Twitter. If we’re to believe the “assault on [our] Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” what kind of statements would it be reasonable to expect when states are infringing on a right articulated in “the supreme Law of the Land”?

Donald “Ban the bump stocks take the guns first” Trump was heralded at the NRA convention, but by my calculus he has given us (a) a progressive Ninth Circuit judge, (b) a bump stock ban, (c) Fix-NICS, (d) more funding for the CDC to pump out anti-gun garbage.

Tim Harmsen, whom I like and whose videos I enjoy, was interviewed by NPR.  Normally I’d say as I always do, “The first rule of gun club is don’t talk about gun club.”  But NPR did a fair job.

The National Rifle Association’s annual meeting begins Friday in Dallas, and some members of the organization plan to voice their discontent with the positions the NRA has taken in the past year.

Lifetime member Tim Harmsen, the owner of Copper Custom Gun Shop in Valparaiso, Ind., and the creator and host of the Military Arms Channel on YouTube, says he’s bringing boxes of T-shirts that reflect his disappointment.

“The shirts say ‘NRA: Not Real Activists.’ So, we’re not happy with the direction that [NRA leaders] Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox have taken,” Harmsen says. “They think that the resolution to all that ails the country is constant compromise on our constitutional rights, and there’s a growing number of us who are dissatisfied with that.”

They constantly negotiate our rights away. And my opinion is this — that in a compromise, it’s assumed that both parties will get something of equal value, and that’s not what happens. We don’t really compromise — we surrender our rights, endlessly trying to appease the factions that simply want to erase the Second Amendment as though it never existed….

Two issues that they’ve recently pushed through with the assistance of Trump is their NICS fix, which is an expansion of the NICS background check system, which has about a 97 percent false positive rate. … The NRA originally wrote the bill during the Clinton administration, and then they had President Trump expand it, which is a de facto waiting period for most Americans. It inaccurately flags most people.

Then, the second thing that they did is bump stock regulation. It’s really poorly written, and it goes so far as to tell you how to get around the regulations change.

I’m going for two reasons: First of all, I’m a voting member, and I plan to vote — and we keep trying to vote in a board that more reflects the opinions of the membership, which is myself and a large number of NRA members. If you get online and look, go through the discussion forms (sic) and the pro-Second Amendment forms (sic), you’ll see what I’m saying is true….

You’d think that NPR could at least get the word forum right.  As I said, I like Tim, but I don’t believe in compromise.  The problem is not just that we don’t really compromise and the other side gets everything.  The fundamental problem is that when God has spoken and decreed rights, man has no business stepping in to intercede in that right.  Man usurps the position of God, and it makes Him angry.  It also makes men who love God angry.

The problem with the bump stock ban isn’t that it is poorly written, or that it’s a slippery slope, or that we didn’t get anything in the compromise.  If it was well written and we got something in the give-and-take, it’s still wrong.

All gun control is wicked.  Compromise is evil when God has spoken and dictated the terms and conditions of our existence.  But always remember what Trump said in the debates, and what I’ve rehearsed here on these pages many times.

“Everything is negotiable.”

Writing in USA Today, Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California’s San Francisco Bay area, is co-chair of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.

Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.

Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.

I think he underestimates the scope, difficulty, magnitude, and danger of his project.  I suggest proof of principle.  Start in South Carolina.  Send FedGov agents of all kinds to Traveler’s Rest, Pickens, Spartanburg, Boiling Springs, and Marietta, and tell them to go door to door confiscating weapons.

Make sure you drop by that boy’s home who drives the loud truck with the Confederate flag waving.  He has a Molon Labe sticker on the back windshield.  Yes, yes, I know there’s a lot of them.  That’s not my problem.  This is your project, not mine.

Write me a note and tell me how that goes.

Citizen Times:

“I don’t think we’ll take up gun legislation of any type,” said state Rep. Chuck McGrady, a Henderson County Republican first elected to the General Assembly in 2010, the same year Republicans established control of the body.

“To get to a different place on guns, you’d have to have a different mix of legislators — it’s a pretty conservative state,” McGrady said. “I do anticipate we’ll be putting some monies into the school safety issue.”

That would revolve around “hardening” schools — adding security, police officers and other physical measures that would make schools more difficult for a shooter to attack — not measures designed to make it harder to buy guns.

State Rep. Brian Turner, a Democrat who represents part of Buncombe County, said it’s unrealistic to expect the Republican-dominated legislature to impose rules making it harder to get guns when the body opens the 2018 session May 16.

“If we do see something, I would imagine it would probably be along the lines of the hardening of schools and adding additional resource officers,” Turner said. “I think the focus would be less around firearms specifically and more about deterrence and prevention.”

A gun owner and hunter himself, Turner is far from anti-gun. But restrictions on “Title 2 weapons,” such as short-barreled shotguns or suppressors, might make sense, he said.

While North Carolina elected a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, in 2016, it also went overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump, a Republican. On gun issues, the Tar Heel State is reliably conservative, according to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University.

Cooper acknowledged Florida’s legislature raised the age to buy an AR-15 to 21 after the school shooting, as the shooter was 19, but he said “it’s unlikely we’ll see a lot of movement” in North Carolina.

“I think there was a policy window that opened briefly, but it appears to be closing,” Cooper said. “Florida had a little bit of movement, and people are talking about the issue, but I don’t think there’s a lot of persuasion going on. Even though people are talking about it more, I think both sides are drawing people more firmly into their own camps.”

Gun control legislation is “a particularly tough sell in North Carolina,” which has a strong tradition of hunting and gun ownership.

“We’ve looked to be to the left of some of the country on some issues, but gun rights is not one of those issues,” Cooper said.

Restrictions on suppressors might make sense to State Rep. Brian Turner because he is an idiot.  If he is a hunter like he says he is, he would understand the value of hearing and how much damage can be done to it.  So I think he is lying.  I don’t think he’s a hunter at all.

Moreover, hunting has nothing whatsoever to do with gun rights or the second amendment or the constitution of North Carolina.  So I think he just threw in hunting to bolster his creds thinking that we’d buy it.  I don’t.  I don’t buy any of his claptrap.  I wish people would stop mentioning hunting in the context of gun rights.  It’s stupid and it makes the person saying it look like an imbecile.

But what I do buy is that the NC legislature will do nothing to enact further restrictions on firearms freedoms without a huge fight.  For the sake of everyone, this isn’t a bridge Turner or anyone else wants to cross.  The only gun legislation I want to see is constitutional carry and repeal of the CLEO permitting process.

CNBC:

Another community group, Majority Action, is organizing retail investors to push big fund companies like BlackRock and Vanguard, Sturm Ruger’s biggest shareholders, to assert their voting power. The group organized about six weeks ago, seeing now as a crucial moment for changing the gun industry.

“We were looking at how you enable everyday investors to access the levers of power when it comes to holding companies accountable,” said James Rucker, its co-founder, who is on the board of directors of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But even before these recent demands, controversy was certain to erupt at Sturm Ruger’s meeting, scheduled to take place May 9 at a resort in Arizona thousands of miles from its Connecticut headquarters. The company has a factory in the area.

Wednesday’s vote will be the first test this year of a proposal by a faith-based shareholder group urging the nation’s gun industry to act after recent extreme examples of gun violence.

Specifically, that proposal, backed by the Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment, asks gun makers like Sturm Ruger to prepare a report about the financial and reputational risks associated with their business. The coalition plans to introduce a similar proposal on the proxy of American Outdoor Brands, which typically holds its meetings in the fall.

Two major shareholder voting advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, have thrown their support behind the coalition’s proposal, Sturm Ruger’s board, on the other hand, is advising shareholders to vote against it. “We believe that firearms safety is a laudable and appropriate goal,” it said in the proxy. “However, we also believe that adequate safety practices and procedures are available.”

BlackRock said in a note to clients in March that it is time to take action on gun violence, adding it could use its position as a large shareholder to vote against boards and management and back shareholder proposals management doesn’t like. But it won’t comment about how it plans to vote its 2.8 million shares next week.

Several companies connected to the gun industry have changed their policies in recent weeks in response to the upswell of protests after a shooting in a Florida high school in February left 17 people dead. Major retailers such as Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods put limits on gun sales, and banks like Citigroup said it would restrict gun sales by business partners.

Fund managers like BlackRock and State Street said they would start a dialogue with gun makers about what they are doing to promote safety. BlackRock has even rolled out new funds that specifically remove stocks of gun makers and sellers.

Amalgamated wants the gun maker to publicly endorse universal background checks, funding for government to to crack down on illegal distribution, and funding for government research into gun safety and public health. They also want a commitment to responsible distribution contracts, monitoring of distribution chains and investments in gun safety technology and commercialization.

Froman, 68, is a lawyer and long-time gun industry supporter. The Southern Poverty Law Center found her name in a 2014 member directory of a secretive ultra-conservative group called the Council for National Policy. Tax forms from 2015 and 2016 filed by that organization list her as treasurer.

The year she became president of the NRA, the gun lobby won a crucial legal battle in the form of a new law limiting liability claims against gun makers. That same year, a donor program for the NRA launched and, as reported by Bloomberg in 2012, took in nearly $15 million from gun-related companies.

Froman has pointed to Smith & Wesson’s decision in 2000 to voluntarily comply with certain gun safety measures as its downfall. Grassroots gun supporters forced the company into bankruptcy after it made that “deal with the devil,” she has said.

“The grass roots is a powerful force that the government can’t control and can’t fight,” she said in a speech in 2011 to a group that supports knife ownership. “Just look at what’s happened with the rise of the Tea Party movement. Most of the battles that NRA has won have been won by sheer political power.”

Oh, okay.  Things make a little more sense now.  The Southern Preposterous Lie Center is after her, and for very good reason.  She believes that S&W made a “deal with the devil.”  Because they did, and she’s right.  She stands in the way of forcing Ruger to make that same sort of deal, although to be quite honest, I think the other board members as well as 100% of Ruger employees see things the same way she does.

The article is lacking in detail just like all preceding articles on this – we still don’t learn the relative shareholding power of these gun controller forces within Ruger stock.  But it sure will be interesting to follow this through and see how well or poorly the controllers do with this effort.

Prior: Amalgamated Bank Pressures Ruger To Support Gun Control Measures