Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Via David.  Posted under “gun control,” because that’s what it is, plain and simple.

I had covered this act (H.R. 38 and H.R. 4477) here, albeit briefly.  I was skeptical.  Now I’ve read the bill, and I’m even more skeptical and I have begun to trust my initial inclinations on things like this.  I’ve covered gun rights and politics long enough to know a turd pile when I smell it.

This opinion will place be squarely out of accord with 99% of gun writers and analysts, and much of the gun community, but I’m okay with that.  We’ll see who was right, and if I’m wrong I’ll say so when proven so.

Reddit/r/firearms is simply giddy over this, as are most in the gun community as best as I can tell.  The active thread is here.  I actually read the bill before recent amendments, and the bill as passed can be located here.  Not much has changed with the amendments.

The first thing I’ll observe is that meeting the stipulations of the alleged “fix” of the NICS will be onerous and detailed, and will absolutely required a huge bureaucracy along with a permanent electronic system of prohibited persons managed and adjudicated by bureaucrats.  The details are too numerous to outline here, but go read the bill for yourself and make your own decisions.  I don’t like this aspect of the bill.

NOTE: [David Codrea sent me a note and asked me, “Where is the bump stock wording?”  My answer: It was apparently removed by amendment.  It is in the draft bill.  Thanks to David for the correction.  I missed its removal.  I’m trying.  It’s difficult to keep up.]

The second thing I’ll observe is that they throw bump stocks under the bus.  I neither have a bump stock nor am I inclined to purchase one, but if I did want one in the future, bump stocks will (I suspect) either be illegal or an NFA item.  The bill requires the attorney general’s office (he’ll assign it to lawyers in the DoJ) to study bump stocks and report back on why they shouldn’t be controlled like machine guns.

I said earlier that “I do not support any bill, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason whatsoever, that includes more gun laws.  I do not believe in compromise.”  I maintain my position, and I oppose “throwing anything under the bus” or sacrificing anything else to the god of the state like pagans sacrificed children to Baal.

Perhaps the most problematic thing to me about this whole effort is the way it reads straight out of the gate.  Consider the following language.

‘‘(a) Notwithstanding any provision of the law of any State or political subdivision thereof (except as provided in subsection (b)) and subject only to the requirements of this section, a person who is not prohibited by Federal law from possessing, transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm, who is carrying a valid identification document containing a photograph of the person, and who is carrying a valid license or permit which is issued pursuant to the law of a State and which permits the person to carry a concealed firearm or is entitled to carry a concealed firearm in the State in which the person resides, may possess or carry a concealed handgun (other than a machinegun or destructive device) that has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, in any State that—

(1) has a statute under which residents of the State may apply for a license or permit to carry a concealed firearm

Think hard about this.  Why is it necessary to include the language stipulating that this is for states that have a statute under which residents of the state may apply for a license or permit to carry a concealed firearm?

The answer of course is that it isn’t necessary.  They could have stopped without even including that stipulation.  You mark my words on this.  This will be the subject of endless court deliberations, endless contradictory bureaucratic rulings, endless AG interpretations, and endless arrests of concealed carriers across state lines.

So how many permits to carry have been issued in Hawaii?  How many permits to carry have been issued in New York, Connecticut or Massachusetts to holders who weren’t retired LEOs?  Is it possible for Maura Healey to decide that if her state doesn’t really do that sort of thing for regular people, you know, the peasants like you and me, then her state isn’t subject to this law?

You bet it is, and it will happen.  But the language is there, right up front, and it didn’t have to be.  It could have been omitted entirely and still have accomplished everything it needed.  And it will go through endless appeals, and the SCOTUS will not – I repeat, WILL NOT – take up the cases.  This will all lead to endless fund raising emails and flyers from the NRA to fight the good fight in endless court battles.  Speaking of the NRA, they have really staked out an awful position with their name calling and the ugliness with which they are treating fellow gun groups.

“We are in the thick of the legislative process and a so-called ‘pro-gun group,’ which is nothing more than a fundraising entity, is spreading lies about the FIX NICS legislation that was attached to the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act,” Lars Dalseide, a spokesperson for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Their talking points are nothing but lies. Unfortunately, they are misleading well-meaning members of Congress with these false and inaccurate talking points.”

Differences of opinion and different interpretations aren’t lies, sir.  Are you calling me a liar?  Or stupid?  I have very strong opinions on this piece of legislation, and I’m willing to say I’m wrong if proven so in the future.  I’ve never once heard that from the NRA.

I suspect that no one who is permitted to carry in North Carolina or Texas will ever legally carry in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut or Hawaii under this bill.  That is, if the Senate passes such a bill, which I doubt.  It may pass something worse, and deliberations in committee may even water down what little good is there about the right to carry on federally controlled lands.

I appreciate your visits to this post.

I’m glad that you got a chance to hear me say that “I do not support any bill, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason whatsoever, that includes more gun laws.  I do not believe in compromise.”

As for my readers, it helps to make comments.  HoR and other readers got a chance to hear Fred say this.

Violating the 2A to fix ‘smaller’ state violations of the 2A is retarded.

Maybe burning DC to ground and hanging everyone from the neck until dead isn’t the way to go. Maybe, we need to start with the ‘gun rights’ groups.

Weigh in with robust opinions in the comments section.

Philly.com:

Sixteen of the nation’s top retired military commanders are urging Congress to pass gun control legislation, arguing that there are many steps that can be taken to curb gun deaths that do not violate the Second Amendment.

In a letter they plan to send to Congressional leaders, the retired commanders, including Army Gens. Wesley Clark and Michael Hayden, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, Air Force Lt. Gen. Norman Seip and Marine Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney, argue that Congress is “no longer speaking or voting for the majority of Americans, including gun owners” when it comes to the issue of firearms.

“There is no acceptable excuse for our elected leaders to avoid addressing this as a national crisis,” they write.

The group is part of the veterans coalition of a gun control group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. They laid out their arguments in a letter they plan to send to Congressional leaders.

[ … ]

The letter comes as a House panel this week voted to advance a measure that would expand the ability to carry concealed firearms across state lines. Under the bill, known as concealed carry reciprocity, a person with a concealed-carry permit and a photo identification would be able to have a concealed weapon in any state that allows them. The gun owner would still have to follow state and local laws regarding where and what type of weapons can be carried. The National Rifle Association has called the bill its “highest legislative priority in Congress.”

The legislation is scheduled for a House vote next week. Its sponsor, Richard Hudson, R-N.C., said in a statement that the bill is extremely popular and “momentum, common sense, and the facts are on our side.”

Giffords said the bill weakens public safety, and Retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal said he agrees.

“In the aftermath of two of the country’s worst mass shootings, it’s an affront to both our safety as a nation and the common sense of its citizens that Congress would consider actually weakening our gun laws,” McChrystal said. “Untrained and potentially dangerous people have no business carrying guns in our communities, but the concealed carry bill in the House would allow exactly that.”

Well isn’t this special?  A list of traitors self identifies – again.  We knew this about some of these men, such as Petraeus and McChrysytal.  We also knew that Petraeus is an adulterer and McChrystal is a murderer (of the men at Ganjgal).  I’m not certain whether we also knew that about the other signatories to this abomination, but if not, then welcome to the party.  You’re on our very own list now.

At least with people who haven’t sworn to uphold and defend the constitution (some people grow up hating liberty and never once utter words of commitment to anyone or anything but themselves), urging gun control wouldn’t be out of character, even though still contrary to duty and righteousness.

But these are men who have taken the oaths they have, and then behave contrary to everything to which they have agreed.  Oh well, Petraeus did that with his wife too, and McChrystal did that to the men at Ganjgal.  Men who can’t be trusted … can’t be trusted, ever.  They prove it in all of their ways, in all of their words, and in all of their actions.

The military is rife with such men just as is law enforcement.  You cannot use exterior accoutrements as an indication of quality of character.

Statement from GOA:

Springfield, VA – Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA) Erich Pratt made the following statement after the House Judiciary Committee’s actions on concealed carry reciprocity and background check legislation:
“Over 1.5 million law-abiding Americans who make up Gun Owners of America commend the House Judiciary Committee for reporting H.R. 38, the concealed carry reciprocity bill.

“GOA applauds the committee passage of H.R. 38 and encourages the House leadership to take up the bill right away. This legislation will allow decent Americans to carry in any state in the country with confidence that they would not become entrapped by the fascist gun laws of anti-gun states.

“GOA also sends special kudos to Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who shot down an attempt by Democrats to delete the Constitutional Carry protections in the bill.  Gun Owners of America opposed the amendment that sought to only limit concealed carry reciprocity to permit holders and was happy to see that provision go down to an inglorious defeat.

“Finally, Gun Owners of America condemns the committee’s approval of the ‘Traffic Ticket Gun Ban’ (H.R. 4477).  This deceptive legislation would add hundreds of thousands of additional names into the NICS system, thus blocking thousands of lawful gun owners from purchasing guns for offenses as slight as unpaid traffic tickets. Not only that, it would lay the groundwork for an anti-gun administration to troll every government health and welfare program for the purpose of imposing gun bans on recipients with PTSD, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s — the latter would jeopardize the inheritance of many valuable gun collections.  The Obama administration already tried to do this with Social Security disability.  In the future, there may not be a pro-gun Congress to disapprove similar moves or a pro-gun president to sign it.”

But then there is this from reddit/firearms.

From The Military Arms’ Channel page:

I have spoken to GOA again today and here is an email as of about 15 minutes ago.

“Tim,

To clarify several things.

First, recent gun politics has been a very fluid situation, with a lot of different statements from different people on the Hill.

On the combination of reciprocity and fix NICS – currently, we do expect the House Rules Committee to combine the bills Tuesday.

On the YouTube video you sent. I believe this YouTuber mistook the markup transcript (this document) for what was actually passed by the Judiciary Committee. That document, which is over 300 pages in length, is the a transcript of the hearing, not what was passed by the Judiciary Committee. The two amendments that were added, (here and here) are not certainly 300 pages in length, nor are they killer amendments. The standalone reciprocity bill is still a clean bill.

Again, this is a very fluid situation, why don’t we talk tomorrow for a game plan?

Thanks for your activism!”

In the end, what came out of the committee is a pretty clean HR 38. They added two amendments which aren’t “poison pills” in the view of the GOA.

Now for the bad news.

GOA does now expect the House Rules Committee to combine the bills on Tuesday. It’s not done yet, but at this time it does look like Massie’s concerns are valid as the GOA are now saying they expect the HRC to try and merge them into one bill.

If this does happen, sadly, we will have to defeat the legislation. It will be another Hughes Amendment at that point. Since Bill Clinton was on the only U.S. President to have “line item veto” power for a short time before it was ruled unconstitutional in 1998, Trump won’t be able to fix a broken bill… just like Reagan couldn’t. And just like with Reagan, the NRA will likely tell Trump to sign the bill into law if it makes it to his desk as they’re strong advocates for the NICS system (they wrote the original law for Clinton).

If we pass a combined bill, we will have to accept the fact that NICS will get a whole lot worse and you can expect a whole bunch more delays and denials coming out of the NICS system.

If you ever talked to your doctor about being depressed, you’re not able to own a firearm. If you have been diagnosed with ADHD, you’re no longer eligible to buy a firearm. Have you sought help with your finances before? You’re no longer eligible to own a firearm. Are you over 65? You may no longer be eligible to own a firearm. Hell, if you have an unpaid traffic ticket, you’re no longer eligible to buy a firearm under HR 4477.

Sooo…

Blow up the phones on Monday. I’ll see if I can get a stream going with the GOA to talk about it Monday. We’ll have to do what we can to try and stop the House Rules Committee from merging them. The reality is, there’s little we can do given how fast and fluid this process has been. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

Then there are the reddit commenters who call BS on the GOA take on things.

As for my own take, I have none at the moment.  I will offer up two remarks on this and in fact any other bill that comes to my attention.  First, I absolutely do not support any bill I haven’t read in its entirety.  I have not read this one.  Second, I do not support any bill, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason whatsoever, that includes more gun laws.  I do not believe in compromise.

If readers have spent more time studying this than I have, please feel free to weigh in via comments.

David Codrea:

Pelosi also has no problem ignoring due process when it comes to enacting citizen disarmament edicts. Case in point, she’s a big supporter of so-called ”No Fly/No Buy” to deny guns to Americans who have not even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one.

Then there is this remark, with which I agree.

And she’s absolutely inconsistent and hypocritical in defending Democrat Conyers, Al Franken and Bill Clinton while calling Republican Roy Moore “a child molester.”

And the comment of the day goes to American Patriot, who says, “If I talked like her after being pulled over by an officer I’d be in cuffs & hauled away for DUI without being tested [f]or drinking for that matter.”

Trying to reason with Pelosi is like trying to teach my dog calculus.

Houston Public Media:

State Attorney General Ken Paxton suggested on Fox News that good people with guns might stop the bad ones.

“If it’s a place where somebody has the ability to carry there is also the opportunity that the gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many people,” Paxton said.

But how often does that happen, that a bystander saves the day with a gun?

That question was just one of many we wanted to look into. For some answers we talked with Ashraf Mozayani.

“Very very low number you are looking that somebody protects themselves with the gun,” she said.

How would Mozayani know?

For years, she saw the result of gun fire first-hand when she worked at the medical examiner’s office.

“I have been the lab director and chief toxicologist for Harris County Institute of Forensic Science or at that time we called the medical examiner’s office from 1996 to 2012,” she said.

If someone died in Harris County and required an autopsy, Mozayani was a part of a team analyzing the report.

“In any medical examiner office every morning you usually sit at the table and see every case that comes to the office,” she said.

Mozayani said she rarely saw a report of a fatality where someone used a gun in defense.

Here’s a quick note to Marissa Cummings of Houston Public Media.  Congratulations on winning the stupidest MSM article of the month award!  You should be very proud.

For proof that guns are rarely used in self defense, you turned to a ME who examines dead people.  Of course, you leave out the instances where a person has been shot and lives (which the ME wouldn’t see), and instances where no round has had to be discharged (which the ME wouldn’t see), and also instances where a gun was simply safely carried by someone if needed for self defense and it never had to be used (which law enforcement and the ME wouldn’t see), but could have been used for its intended purpose.

This last category is most important, because it exists for the amelioration of risk, which as we have all learned, is the product of probability and consequences.  Assault is a high risk evolution because the consequences are so high.  Carrying a weapon and being prepared to deploy and use it ameliorates that risk.

Merissa, sit back, get a stout cup of coffee, and think about these things for a while.  Try again later after intense study.

The Post and Courier:

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson on Tuesday urged Congress to pass legislation that would make states recognize one another’s concealed weapon permits, arguing every citizen’s right to self-defense is at risk without it.

With Wilson’s signature, South Carolina signed onto a letter with four other states — Missouri, Alabama, Louisiana, and Montana — in asking Congress to pass either the U.S. Senate’s Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 or the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, a House bill.

The bills would require states to recognize the permits of other states, including ones with less-stringent laws.

“States should not be able to deny citizens of other states the basic constitutional right to self-defense,” Wilson said in a statement. “South Carolinians who have gone through the process of getting concealed weapon permits shouldn’t have to worry about whether they can protect themselves and their families when they travel in other states.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Seneca, is among the Senate bill’s 38 co-sponsors. The House bill is backed by the National Rifle Association. All six of South Carolina’s Republican congressional representatives are among the House bill’s 213 cosponsors.

Well isn’t this just rich?  Ms. Lindsey Graham wants to glom onto a gun rights issue.  As for Wilson’s position, I didn’t hear him speak up when open carry was before the S.C. legislature.  Let me say that again and add a little to it.  If you say nothing when open carry rights come up in the state house and senate, you have no right to open your mouth when some other state doesn’t like your version of infringement.

An infringement is an infringement is an infringement.  They’re all the same to me.

And Wilson is a hypocrite.

David Codrea:

The real question here is why is John Cornyn so eager to give the gun-grabbers a victory, teaming with the likes of Chris Murphy and Dianne Feinstein to “Fix NICS”? After all, we’re talking about a politician that the NRA, which gives him an”A+,” says “has always defended our gun rights in Congress!”

And it’s not like there’s any delegated Constitutional authority for the national government to impose prior restraints on firearms transfers in the first place. So why give citizen disarmament leaders something to crow about, especially since no one but a useful idiot believes expanding infringements is aimed at any but the law-abiding?

For whatever reason – I consider it to be a moral deficiency – this isn’t any different than what we’ve seen for years with him.  He pushed mental health checks two years ago with bureaucrats getting the say over whether someone was “mentally defective.”

This does go to show one useful thing in particular: NRA scoring is meaningless.  Don’t ever trust it for anything.

NBC News:

Experts say it is difficult to know what to do in those situations, but Dr. James Fox, an expert on gun violence and author of “Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder,” said it’s dangerous to assume that the mentally ill tend to commit these shootings.

“There’s not really a correlation,” said Fox, who maintains a database on mass shootings. “We like to think that these people are different from the rest of us. We want a simple explanation and if we just say they’re mentally ill, case closed. Because of how fearful dangerous and deadly their actions are, we really want to distance ourselves from it and relegate it to illness.”

Of course, he’s telling us things my readers already know.  Or said another way, he’s trying to teach his granny to suck eggs.

USA Today:

Appearing on the PBS NewsHour the day after the shooting, Deborah Epstein, co-director of the Domestic Violence Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center, claimed there is a strong correlation between domestic violence and mass shootings.  “If you look at all the mass shootings that have occurred on U.S. soil,” said Epstein, “the vast majority of them have been committed by people who have perpetrated domestic violence against an intimate partner, a series of intimate partners, or are in the process of dealing with domestic violence.”

In a one-week follow-up story about the church shooting, a headline in the San Antonio Express-News read, “Are mass killings and domestic violence linked? It depends who you ask.” You’d think such a determination would be a matter of fact, not opinion. Unfortunately, in the media version of the children’s game of telephone, the message is easily misinterpreted as it gets repeated from one news source to another.

“There is an obvious link between mass shootings and domestic violence,” suggested Susan Higginbotham, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She at least cited her evidence: “A study last year by Everytown for Gun Safety, which used FBI data and media reports to analyze mass shootings from January 2009 to December 2016, showed that 54% of the perpetrators of these horrific mass killings had a history of domestic or family violence.”

Higginbotham was only partially correct, misconstruing the most important point. The Everytown study did indeed find that 54% of mass shootings involved intimate partners or family members as victims. In this majority, however, the domestic violence was the mass shooting of family members, and not necessarily a history of previous domestic violence.

Everytown’s case summaries of 156 shootings from 2009 through 2016 (in which four or more victims are killed), reveal 85 incidents in which a gunman murdered at least some current or former intimate partners or family members. Of these, 41% were preceded by other acts of domestic violence. Among the entire pool of mass shootings, only 25% revealed any indication of prior domestic violence.

Even if a majority of mass shootings were preceded by violence against intimate partners or family, that still would hardly serve as a reliable predictor of mass murder. There are, unfortunately, at least 10 million incidents of domestic violence every year, according to estimates reported by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. By contrast, there are, on average, about 22 mass shootings annually with at least four fatalities. Were we to predict mass murder on this basis of domestic violence, we would be wrong well more than 99% of the time.

Just in case you missed it, the author, James Alan Fox, the Lipman Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern University, just completely demolished the Everytown argument.  It is history.  They should bow their heads and hide in shame.  Everytown is a fake, a fraud and a sham.  Their arguments are flimflam and claptrap.

So what is a controller to do when she runs out of ostensibly legitimate excuses?  Why, just go ahead and admit that you want the state to have a monopoly on violence, that you’re controllers, statists and collectivists, and an armed citizenry is an impediment to your statists dreams.

Go ahead and admit it.