Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

WBNG.com:

While the deadline for gun owners to renew their permits was Wednesday at midnight, New York State Police officials said they will continue to collect admissions.

The New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, otherwise known as the SAFE Act, makes people recertify their pistol permits every five years to keep track of them throughout the state.

Not only will state police allow recertifcations to be submitted past the deadline, the Public Information Director, Beau Duffy, said there also won’t be penalties on those who fail to do so.

David Codrea:

But wasn’t that one of Tancredo’s strengths? Hasn’t he been a champion of “America first” and “conservative” values?

Yes and no.

He’s been pretty good on “immigration,” to the point where domestic Marxist media tars him as a “xenophobe.”

But he’s got some unreconciled past sins on guns to atone for that he never genuinely has.

Gun owners have a very long memory.  We never forget, and we seldom forgive.  Here’s a note to politicians.  Be careful what you do and say about guns, how you vote, and what you preach about.  It would actually be easiest for you if you believed in a God-given right to the ownership and bearing of arms, and didn’t have to lie about it (Rep. Thomas Massie is a good example for you to follow).

NJ.com:

A Republican assemblyman believes you’ll feel safer if the worshiper in the next pew is carrying a concealed weapon.

Ronald Dancer is sponsoring a measure that would allow churches, synagogues and mosques to select what he calls a “qualified person” to bring a concealed handgun into services.

What could possibly go wrong?

The lawmaker, whose district covers parts of Burlington, Middlesex, Monmouth and Ocean counties, points out, correctly, that places of worship are a terrorist target.

But he’s way off base in his proposed solution.

Dancer introduced his bill following two mass shootings at U.S. churches in the past three years: the killing of 26 people by a gunman at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, last November, and the slaughter of nine congregants at a black church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

State Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) had a classic response to the misguided proposal: “Oh my god, you’re kidding me.”

With all due respect to the NRA’s Wayne “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” LaPierre, introducing guns into our state’s (or any state’s) sacred places does not decrease the threat of bloodshed. It multiplies it.

Evidence is growing that adding more firepower to an active shooting scene, with all its attendant confusion and mass hysteria, only increases the odds of innocent people being killed in a hail of bullets.

In the Texas tragedy, for example, more than 40 people were shot before an armed neighbor intervened.

One has to wonder what universe they live in?  Did they not think it sounded strange to say that innocent people die in a “hail of bullets until an armed neighbor intervened” in the context of claiming that an armed person would cause more deaths?

Their solution is never proffered, but one assumes that it’s nothing at all.  Too bad for the churchgoers in New Jersey.  Hey, I wonder how many people on the editorial board of the Times of Trenton Editorial Board even attend church?

Hey, I was also wondering how New Jersey was coming with that problem of assassins and hit men?  I’m not trying to make any connection here, mind you.  In any case, we can all assume that the New Jerseyans don’t want to be saved by armed neighbors if churches are attacked.  They’d rather see innocent men, women and children perish.  And with that kind of attitude, attacked they will be.  It’s only a matter of time.  All they will be able to do is men and women cover the children with their bodies and hope they live.

David Codrea:

“On December 13, 2006 … ATF … reclassified bump-fire systems like the Akins Accelerator as a machinegun, because it was equipped with a ‘coiled spring’ and initiated automatic fire with a single trigger pull,” the report states. “In an unpublished decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld ATF’s decision.”

Conversely, “Other manufacturers submitted modified ‘bump-fire’ or ‘slide-fire’ stocks that did not include a ‘coiled spring’ or similar mechanisms to the ATF for classification,” the report notes. “From the ATF rulings discussed above, it appears that bump-fire stocks with ‘coiled springs’ and that initiate automatic fire with a single trigger pull are regulated as firearms under the NFA; however, modified stocks without any ‘automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs’ are not similarly regulated.”

David is citing from a FAS report to which we were not privy.  Nice.  So let’s get this straight.  Because there are other precedents that infringe on our God-given rights, agreed to in the second amendment, and because a judge said it was okay, then the ATF can do it again?

Okay, got it.  I’ll remember this.  Folks, any time you even see an ATF agent you should spit on them, or at least tell them what you think of them.  They’re trash.  That’s the way I see it.  If you disagree, elaborate and show your work.

David Codrea:

Yet another citizen is facing criminal charges for not realizing that gun laws vary from state to state.  Hayley Leach, a Colorado woman, was arrested when she attempted to check her gun in at Albany Airport for her return flight home, News 10 ABC reported.

[ … ]

It’s reminiscent of earlier similar cases, including that of Donna Marie Gracey, the Florida woman with a concealed carry permit who was arrested last month for having it in New Jersey, or the ordeals of Shaneen Allen and others. None of them had criminal intent.

I don’t fly to states where I can’t carry a gun.  I don’t visit them in any way, including driving to or through them.  I try not to send my money there either (Kimber, S&W, Mossberg, etc., are you listening carefully to what I’m saying?).  In fact, I will not even get on board a flight where it’s possible that I’ll have a layover or exigent landing for weather or some other reason in a state where I can’t carry a firearm.

You shouldn’t either.

By the way, you are aware, aren’t you, that the great land of gun control, New Jersey, has a sordid and wretched  history with hitmen, and a not so great history of allowing people to defend themselves from such people?

Guess that gun control stuff hasn’t worked out so well after all.

Lizzy’s Law.  It would require certain things of S.C. gun owners.

“In the autumn of 2006, Elizabeth “Lizzy” Hafter, a 22-year-old graduate student, was shot twice in the head while she studied on a mountain overlook in Virginia. The man behind the trigger had stolen the murder weapon and the car he was driving from his roommate in Georgia, the first act of a multistate crime spree that left several people dead across the South. The roommate did not report the thefts to police for nearly a week, precious time lost to investigators.

“He could have been stopped if the gun owner had only reported the gun and car stolen,” Hafter’s mother, Joanne, wrote in a letter to a lawmaker in the years after her daughter’s death.

The letter was part of Joanne Hafter’s shoe-leather crusade to hold gun owners accountable for failing to promptly inform police about the theft of their weapons.”

She is imagining that.  She just made it up.  She doesn’t know if anyone doing any particular thing that day could have been stopped.  But the controllers want you to know they’re watching you.

On the other hand, there are hearings on constitutional carry in S.C.

On Tuesday, January 30^th, the South Carolina state Senate Judiciary Committee will be hearing Senate Bill 449 to enact constitutional carry.  Please contact committee members today and urge them to SUPPORT this legislation.  Click the “Take Action” button below to contact committee members.

Sponsored by Senator Shane Martin (R-13), S. 449 would allow law-abiding adults to legally carry a firearm without first needing to obtain a Concealed Weapons Permit (CWP).  Self-defense situations are difficult, if not impossible, to anticipate.  Accordingly, a law-abiding adult’s right to defend themselves in such situations should not be conditioned by government-mandated time delays and taxes.  The CWP will still be available for those who wish to take advantage of reciprocity agreements when traveling to other states.

Okay, this is all well and good enough.  But where is open carry in all of this.  WHERE IS OPEN CARRY IN ALL OF THIS?

Has it fallen off the radar, and if so, why?  Are citizens in South Carolina letting their senators forget about open carry?  Because it will piss me off if this goes yet another session without approval by the senate and house.

The Washington Times:

TV host Mike Rowe likes to illustrate how attitudes have changed over the years by recalling the time he and a classmate brought a gun to his high school in Baltimore — not just any gun, but a sniper rifle.

“We walked in the school, had the gun over my shoulder, walking down a crowded hall and the principal saw me and said, ‘Hey, what do you have there?’ And I handed it to him and said, ‘It’s a Mauser. Check it out. It’s an old German sniper rifle,’” Mr. Rowe said.

The principal was impressed with the firearm and their plans to tinker with it in metal shop, he said.

“He said, ‘Bring it by the office when you’re done. I’d love to look at it when you’re finished,’” Mr. Rowe recalled. “That’s 1979 or 1980. Where I grew up, we saw the guns in the back of the truck. They were there in the gun racks in the high school parking lot.”

“I think most things are down to mental health. I think a lot of giant issues get missed because we confuse the cause with the symptom,” he said, adding that the basic issue behind shootings is “terrible judgment.”

After properly and correctly observing that the culture and morals of the country have changed for the worse, Mike then proceeds to unravel his whole argument.  I’ve often said that if you want to truly understand what you think the root cause of something is, pose your remedy to ameliorate the condition.  Then you’ll be able to backtrack to your real problem.

Mike’s problem is that he feels that there are mental health issues, and I guess he wants a gigantic psychiatric program run nation-wide to figure out who is the one who will make “terrible judgments.”

Not one word about evil, sin, moral choices or a country that has rejected God.  Because apparently he doesn’t believe in such things.

You can keep your gun-control psychiatrists, Mike.  I don’t want them or need them.

Kirkland Reporter:

A proposed bill would add harassment to a list of domestic violence crimes for which someone can have their firearm rights revoked.

SB 6298, sponsored by Senator Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, adds harassment crimes in a domestic violence setting to existing law. The bill was heard on Tuesday.

Under both existing law and the Dhingra’s bill, a person must be convicted of a domestic violence felony or gross misdemeanor to have their firearm rights revoked.

Harassment, which is a gross misdemeanor, not a felony, would be included under the bill. Harassment includes physical threats or threats that instill reasonable fear and are likely to be carried out.

“We can’t ignore that these threats are promises to a victim,” Chris Anderson, director of the Domestic Violence Unit for the Seattle City Attorney’s Office, said.

Protective order cases, he said, often show patterns of domestic abuse, threats, and harassment that can be more serious than individual incidents reported in 911 calls.

“The most statistically significant thing we can do is remove firearms from the situation,” he said.

Anderson also said that because felony level domestic violence cases are sometimes hard to prove, the court might settle for a plea-bargained misdemeanor. Including misdemeanors, the bill would more accurately represent a perpetrator’s past history of violence.

Washington state already has a law prohibiting those convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun. That includes felonies like assault, stalking, death threats, or violating a protection order. When someone is convicted of a crime, he or she must surrender any firearms to the court. In 2014, the legislature enacted a law that someone must surrender their firearms to the court when there is a protection order issued against them. He or she can, however, petition the court to restore those rights.

Here is what she wants you to think is going to happen.  A man and woman separate, and the man calls his wife up and says something like this.  “I’m going to find myself a sniper’s hide and take you out when you walk out the door.”

In reality, it will be applied like this.  The word of the woman is all that will be needed.  No evidence beyond this will be required.  Furthermore, it might be something like this.  “I’m going to pick up my things because I need them.”

But Manka Dhingra is a social justice warrior.  It will pass in Washington because it’s just California North.  So goes the great Western American redoubt.

Via reddit/r/firearms:

I’m a female in my early 30’s in a european country where guns are absolutely forbidden.

Whenever I talk to my friends and express my opinion about firearms they get ballistic and enraged about my views, calling me all sorts and seeing me as a paranoid monster who contributes with my views to gun related deaths and crimes. I think it makes them feel more sophisticated to hate arms.

The general ideology here is that guns are bad and it’s good they are forbidden for own sake.

But I don’t understand why I don’t have the right to protect myself should anything happen. Forks can also be used as a deadly weapon, and you don’t see them banned or made illegal. It’s about common sense. But why can a burglar get in my house to rob me and I can’t have the right to a gun for basic protection? How many women, and men, could have saved themselves had they had a gun? How many people raped could have shot their attacker had they had the right to own a gun?

Having a gun doesn’t mean I’m gonna use it lightly or gonna shoot someone in an argument or in the heat of the moment.

I just want a weapon to protect myself and my loved ones.

About 2 years back, while working in a bar, someone came in to rob us, yielding a knife, it was a very scary experience but luckily a couple of boys from the local rugby team were there for drinks and could manage to stop him, we called the police but the guy got away.During the chaos he repeatedly threatened to rape and kill my coworker and I and said he’d come back to get us.

The police didn’t do much since the guy got away, they just drove around in their car to see if they could find someone matching the description we gave.

And he indeed came back another day after closing the bar at night when we were alone, but my coworker saw him before he could get in and closed the bar doors, then called the police.

Until the police arrived he stayed outside throwing tables and chairs on the terrace against the bar window, banging on the door, screaming he was gonna rape and kill us and detailing how, calling us names, saying he had followed us home and knew where we live.

Again the police came with the sirens on, so the guy run away again. We told the police we feared he’d do something to us and they saw we had a few huge kitchen knives placed all over the bar counter for protection, they advised against it and said we could get in big trouble if we actually used the knives, so we asked if we could buy a couple of pepper sprays for protection, but the police informed us they were illegal to use and could again get us in trouble. Same with teasers or any other weapon for protection.

We went and bought a couple of pepper sprays anyway, we had to give our ID in the shop where they registered we had bought them, because they are legal to buy but illegal to use.

During the next weeks we were lucky to have friends who would stay in the bar with us at closing time and would walk us home. Both my coworker and I quit a couple of months later for unrelated reasons, but I’ll never forget what is like having to go to work fearing some crazy weirdo would attack or rape us. I didn’t mention he was identified by the rugby guys as one of the members of a local gang, which made it scarier. We felt real fear for our lives.

That’s when I started feeling more passionate about guns and the right to protect myself. How come some weirdo can come to rob us, threaten to kill and rape us, and our only protection measure is calling the police and hoping they catch him?

We couldn’t even protect ourselves with a pepper spray, how outrageous it is that someone could hurt me and I have to let him because I have no other means to protect myself? So, I very much envy other countries where people can feel safe should anything bad happen, they have the means to protect themselves and their families.

Now I carry a 5 inches pocket knife and a pepper spray in my purse at all times, even knowing if I got attacked and used it to defend myself, I could potentially end up in legal trouble. I’d also get in trouble if I’m randomly searched by the police, since it’s illegal to carry a knife. But I rather pay a fine than being raped and not having a weapon to defend myself. Again my friends think I’m dramatic and should I get raped or attacked that’s why we have a judicial system, to put them people in jail. And then they say you can’t live like a paranoid, living in fear. But don’t see it that way, I acknowledge crimes happen and to me, the logical measure is to have protection, I don’t think I’m a ‘paranoid’ I think I’m aware of the world I live in and my right to have protection should be respected and encouraged.

As as side note, someone in my town who also had a bar and lived above it, got robbed one night, when he heard noise downstairs and realized he was being robbed, he got a crowbar, went downstairs and beat the shit out of the thief, seriously damaging him, I don’t remember the details but the guy got sent to the hospital badly injured. Now guess who ended up in jail for a long time? The bar owner, for using excessive force and bludgeoning him. Nothing happened to the thief, nothing, no time, nothing!

The system is f***** up in my country and I am being denied the right to protect myself. The system is in favor of all the wrong people, giving them advantage by depriving us the right to own firearms.

Now, I’m not a gun fanatic, when I speak about this people compare me to gun fanatics and stereotype me. Now, I lean towards the left (if any), I respect everyone, I pay my taxes and do everything by the book, I work, pay my bills, you have your opinions, I have mine, mine are not better than yours, just mine. You have the right to believe what you want, so do I, but we both have the right to protect our family and loved ones.

Being pro-gun doesn’t make me a kkk hillbilly with no teeth.

The entire continent has lost its soul.  They cannot even construct an argument for defense of their lives as being made in God’s image.

David Codrea links this Ammoland piece by Jeff Knox.  Boy is this some disturbing reading.  I cannot possibly rehearse all of the dirty laundry there, but there is this titillating little fact that may catch your interest.

Heston won that election by four votes, and immediately left the meeting to jet back to LA and appear on a radio talk show, during which he repeatedly stated that it was inappropriate or civilians to own AK47 type rifles. He eventually learned his script better, and the following year stepped up to become President of the NRA.

Embarrassingly, I didn’t know that.  Well then, Charlton Heston was a traitor, clear and simple.  I need no other evidence.  Jeff also discusses Adam Kraut, whom he supports for the board, and after reading his response to Marrion Hammer, I do too.

As for me, you could easily guess my own position.  Marrion Hammer can go traffic in her lies and misdirection somewhere else.  I’m not impressed in the least.

There is a deep, dark problem within the NRA.  Their history is a divided one, and their traitorous actions (e.g., the Hughes amendment) have harmed the firearms community, and I might also point out something I have before.  By outlawing the manufacture of machineguns after 1968, which the NRA didn’t fight, and also by the existence of the National Firearms Act, the engineering and design of open bolt firearms essentially ceased within the United States.  This has weakened the U.S. military and possibly lead to deaths of service members on the field of battle.

I cannot cipher the NRA willingness to hop in bed with traitors unless they are in fact traitorous themselves.  Let’s assume for a moment that the NRA actually chose to wield their power on Capital Hill.  Let’s assume for a moment that the this forthcoming bump stock ban wasn’t the NRA’s idea.  Let’s assume for a moment that they informed every Congressman and Senator that they expected a vote on this, and that the vote would be tallied and scored, with NRA money behind their efforts to primary enemies of the second amendment.

In other words, let’s assume that the NRA was doing its job.  Wayne Lapierre could be literally one of the most powerful men in Washington.  The red carpet would be rolled out for him everywhere he goes.  Who wouldn’t want that?  But instead of this, we see that the board is so discombobulated that it cannot accomplish anything of value or worth, and Wayne and Chris continue their deconstruction of the second amendment unabated.  Note this comment on Adam’s piece by Rob Pincus.

The Board of Directors is far too large and almost completely powerless, but voting out the Status Quo Old and voting in the new is what it needs.

Creating a large board and hamstringing their efforts with rules is the surest way to render them powerless.  What happens if the NRA sells us out over bump stock bans and other future gun control laws (I also suspect Marrion Hammer is the reason we don’t have open carry in Florida)?  Well, the gist of various comments from TTAG sums it up nicely for me.  If the NRA doesn’t do an about-face, and that, very soon and very quickly, and without any more of our money, they need to be destroyed.

They need to be finished as an organization.  They can turn their board over to the Fudds for gun control, or some other such nonsense group, and go broke for all I care.  But if they don’t do a U-turn, they will have no more of my money or attention.  This war needs to get ugly, and fast.  I realize that many of my readers have already come to the same conclusion long ago.