Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Newsbusters:

But there is still an awful lot we don’t know about guns in Minnesota.  For example, we don’t know exactly how many gun owners there are.  We don’t know the number of total guns in Minnesota.  And Frank, we also don’t know how much ammunition is bought every year, and how much is kept by gun owners.

The horror!  The elitists and “journalists” don’t know how much ammunition is being kept by gun owners.  Well get used to it, dick head.  You’re never going to know – we’re going to make sure of that.  You don’t have a right to know how much ammunition I have, any more than I have a right to know what your car payment is.

Robert Verbruggen:

My skepticism of banning assault weapons has always primarily relied on the questionable nature of the distinction. These are not fully automatic military weapons that spray bullets when you hold down the trigger (though “bump stocks” can now make them behave like that, and we should do something about that); they fire once per trigger pull, just like many hunting rifles, and in fact often use smaller-caliber ammunition. Capping magazine size might allow someone to tackle a shooter while he’s reloading, and would apply even if he’s using a handgun instead of a rifle, but it also restricts people’s ability to defend themselves against more typical acts of violence (police do not limit themselves to ten rounds), and extremely high-capacity magazines jam more often.

These data don’t eliminate that skepticism of mine, but they’re worth noting and considering.

Eh, tet-a-tet, tit for tat, this and that, blah blah blah, yammer, yammer, yammer.

This fellow is the Deputy Managing Editor of National Review, and has argued for a bump stock ban and is willing to listen to another “assault weapons” ban based on the fact that the military “sprays” bullets and we do not.

So in addition to being an ignoramus concerning the use of firearms and anything like suppression or directed fire, he cavorts with gun control.

Which is why given the control of the beltway and Northern elitists have over National Review and the apparent desire they have to analyze their way to any conclusion based on what they perceive to be the “data,” the National Review has become irrelevant and meaningless.

You do realize that’s why they hate Trump and the revolution to overthrow the establishment, don’t you?  It upends their own self-appointed role of arbiter of the data and creator of policy that comes from the GOP.  By bashing the establishment in the face you’ve gotten into their stuff, and they don’t like it one damn little bit.

David B. Kopel:

As the amicus brief explains, a key reason that a decade-long political dispute between Great Britain and American colonies turned into a war was the British government’s attempt to suppress arms commerce. Royal governors illegally seized merchants’ gunpowder and firearms. King George III embargoed the import of arms and ammunition into America. Americans vehemently objected, describing the prohibition of arms commerce as an effort to enslave the Americans, by leaving them no means of resistance to tyranny.

Americans did everything possible to defeat the British suppression of arms commerce. Benjamin Franklin masterminded arms and gunpowder imports from other countries. All forms of domestic production were strongly encouraged.

Then on April 18, 1775, King George renewed the embargo. On that same day, Royal governor Thomas Gage dispatched Redcoat soldiers to seize a large cache of gunpowder in Concord, Massachusetts. Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott rode to raise the alarm. Forewarned, Americans were forearmed. At Concord Bridge, they fired the shot heard round the world. Swarms of armed Americans harried the Redcoats all the way back to Boston, nearly wiped them out, and besieged the city. The War of Independence had begun. Rather than let a government effectuate a prohibition on arms commerce, Americans started a war against the most powerful military in the world.

The above story is told concisely in the amicus brief, and in more detail in my article, How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution, 38 Charleston Law Review 283 (2012).

Go get ’em David.  Kick them in the ass.  Always remind everyone who will listen that gun control started the war against King George and his band of controllers in the states.

The only reason it hasn’t precipitated yet another war of independence is the longsuffering nature of the American people.  That will eventually wear thin and break.  When it does there will be hell to pay.

NRA:

There is a general consensus that uniformed and ununiformed current and former law enforcement officers should be allowed to carry a firearm for the public benefit. That is why in 2004 Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed the Law Enforcement Officer’s Safety Act (LEOSA). Under LEOSA, current and former law enforcement officers who meet certain basic criteria, such as carrying qualified identification, are permitted to carry a firearm throughout the country. 

Showing the strong bipartisan support for this measure, the original legislation, H.R. 218, had 297 co-sponsors in the House of Representative and passed the Senate unanimously. Subsequent changes that have been made to increase the number of officers able to take advantage of this protection have been similarly popular.

I’m not sure where this “general consensus” comes from, but I’ll bet it’s not among my readers.  In other news, a SAPD officer just about killed a colleague.

A San Antonio Police Department officer was suspended for three days without pay after he accidentally fired his personal AR-15 inside a police station and injured another officer, according to police records.

Officer Jordan Ramirez accidentally fired a round from his AR-15 on Nov. 1 inside the SAPD Street Crimes Unit office, according to suspension records obtained by mySA.com.

Other people were inside the office with him and a bullet fragment or flying debris hit an officer, causing minor injuries.

Gosh I do hate it when that happens to me.  But leave it to the NRA to miss the opportunity to make the point that this has nothing whatsoever to do with LEOs and everything to do with the policy itself.

Times Union:

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of state regulations that prohibit many gun owners from carrying their firearms in public areas without judicial authorization.

Buoyed by a recent federal appeals court decision that dismantled strict gun-control laws in the District of Columbia, the lawsuit filed in Albany this week seeks to open up a court challenge on whether constitutional rights under the Second Amendment extend beyond the home.

“We’re going to try to get the courts, particularly in New York, to look at the Second Amendment as a right that extends to everybody no matter where they may be, with some restrictions,” said Tom King, president of the roughly 35,000-member Rifle & Pistol Association.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Albany this week on behalf of Robert Nash, whose application for a conceal-carry permit was rejected two years ago by state Supreme Court Justice Richard C. McNally, Jr.

Bless your heart.  Is that what you’re going to try to do?  Then there is New Jersey.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs announced February 5 that it has filed suit in federal court to overturn New Jersey’s draconian restrictions on carrying a handgun outside the home for self-defense. Under New Jersey law, a permit to carry a handgun may be issued only to those citizens who show that they face a unique need for self-defense—such as specific, documented death threats or actual attacks. Ordinary citizens are barred from carrying a handgun outside the home for self-defense, under threat of up to 10 years in prison. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit contend those restrictions violate the Second Amendment. Click here for a copy of the complaint.

I wonder if they planned this together?  At any rate, this comes right around the time Glenn Reynolds recommended against relying on the courts to secure gun rights.  If this goes to federal court, it’s already been decided by Judge Cathy Seibel, who ruled that “individuals do not have a constitutional right to carry a concealed handgun in public. The decision was rendered in the case of Kachalsky, et.al v. Cacace, et.al in the Southern District of New York.”

I wish them success, but I predict abject failure.  It’s really too bad.  I fear that the Northeast is too far gone to save.  The only option at that point is relocation to the South or West.  Entrusting the black-robed tyrants with your liberty has proven to be a bad strategy.

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.