Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Dave Hardy at Of Arms and the Law links a very in depth and insightful commentary and analysis of the National Firearms Act (NFA).  Dave comments concerning SBRs.

In 1934, they were treated as gangster weapons, although I don’t ever recall hearing of gangsters using them. They tended to have their fights at pistol or shotgun range, not at 100+ yards. Originally the minimum barrel length was 18″; then the government discovered it had sold millions of M-1 carbines as surplus, and they had 16.5″ barrels. So the minimum length was reduced to 16″. Which did a nice job of showing how arbitrary it was.

If you follow the link you’ll get to the scholarly paper (PDF), and I highly recommend it to you.  It would be nice if my readers would tackle this document and make some salient points.  There are a lot of observations I could make but just don’t have the time or energy.

One thing I will observe is that on PDF pages 500 and 521, it’s noted that a “pistol” is defined as follows.

[A] weapon originally designed, made, and intended to fire a projectile (bullet) from one or more barrels when held in one hand, and having (a) a chamber(s) as an integral part(s) of, or permanently aligned with, the bore(s); and (b) a short stock designed to be gripped by one hand and at an angle to and extending below the line of the bore(s).

While some shooting instructors may invoke off-hand or one-handed shooting as a small part of their efforts because of possible hand-to-hand combat situations, reaching for reloads, attempting to keep an attacker from taking the slide out of battery, or other reasons, this is usually what we might call “beyond design basis.”

No instructor in his right mind today would actually teach that it’s appropriate or preferable to shoot a pistol or revolver with a single hand.  That’s how much the science has evolved since passage of the NFA.

It’s an old, antiquated, worthless, useless, tangled, self-contradictory, laughable abomination, and the more the Congress and Senate (and by extension, the ATF) hang on to this ridiculous document, the more absurd they look.

As usual, reader remarks concerning the study are welcome.

No, not you.  I’m talking to Jeff Sanders writing for PJM.

I have just completed the ALICE training course on dealing with an active shooter situation. If your business has not gone through this, you need to get them on board. Immediately. This is simply some of the best training I have ever been through. And it does not involve using firearms at all.

We have all heard about the tragedies at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Virginia Tech where an active shooter massacred people. Sadly, this sort of thing is probably not going away any time soon. How should people caught in this situation respond? Not everyone is going to carry a gun. (I am a concealed carry weapons instructor and strongly support the 2nd Amendment. But let’s face it, many people simply are not going to carry, and many should NOT carry a firearm.)

Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat. There is training, however, that uses our natural God-given abilities that even children can use, and it’s in the ALICE training seminars.

“ALICE” is the acronym for a series of responses: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. You do not need to do all of these responses, or in the order spelled out in the acronym. You do whatever your situation demands at the moment.

Oh good Lord!  I’m so tired of hearing this claptrap I don’t know what to do except call it out for the bullshit it is.  It’s effective bullshit for the masses, just witness the comments at the linked article, or the link that sent me there to begin with.  Let me explain what this is all about.  Security contractors know that the progressive heads of corporations won’t allow their employees to carry firearms for self defense, but those same employees also know that run, hide and fight is ridiculous and sets them up to be sheep led to the slaughter on the altar of those progressive dreams of utopia.  What to do?

Enter, “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.”  It sounds so much better, right?  Except there is no difference since employees are unarmed and helpless.  The money quote is this: “Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat.”

That’s a lie and the writer knows it, as does every security contractor who purveys this bullshit (or if he actually believes it he has poor judgment).  We’ve seen otherwise, from the young lady who had a gun to her head, reached down, unholstered her firearm, and shot the assailant.  Or consider the elderly folk who have acted in self defense, most of them essentially untrained.  I’m not advocating getting no training.  What I am advocating is that it’s possible to defend your life without the supposedly super Ninja warrior stress control training that infantry goes through.

And the notion that the police are trained to that standard is absurd.  Most police never discharge their weapons in self defense.  Neither, for that matter, do Soldiers and Marines who aren’t infantry.  That is a myth.  The bottom line is that if you are left unarmed by your employer, you are left as sheep to be slaughtered on the altar of the progressive utopian dream.

And every security contractor who teaches corporate security knows it.  Every … single … one.

American Spectator:

Gun-rights activists often express the view that Americans will not easily give up their rights to gun ownership even if the laws eventually outlaw — or at least greatly restrict — the freedom of individuals to own firearms. The scenario they depict is bleak but simple: When armed agents come to their doors to confiscate people’s arsenals, some of those people can be expected to fight back.

Advocates further assume widespread public support for private gun ownership and expect prominent Second Amendment organizations and Republican legislators to raise hell whenever gun regulations start approximating confiscation.

The experience in California, in particular, suggests an entirely different scenario.

From what I’ve seen, the public often will support aggressive new restrictions. Gun owners will meekly hand over their weapons to agents. Gun-rights groups will quietly protest, but have little sway. Republican legislators will make things worse as they try to prove their commitment to taking guns out of the hands of “criminals.” The erosion of our fundamental gun rights will take place so slowly that few will protest too much.

The latest example involves Proposition 63, a statewide initiative that mandates background checks for ammunition purchases and prohibits the possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines. The state already banned the sale of magazines that hold more than ten ammo rounds in 2000. As a federal judge explained in a recent ruling, starting July 1, “any previously law-abiding person in California” who owns such a magazine “will begin their life of crime.”

[ … ]

I’ve called this the “infrastructure of confiscation.” Law-enforcement officials are mostly for it, of course. They want to know who owns guns when they are called to a home for a disturbance. “The presence of a legally owned possessed firearm bought to protect the home may get totally innocent people killed by the police who casually use SWAT for drug search warrants especially if they register,” said the late Joe McNamara, the former San Jose police chief and fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

After that tragic Connecticut shooting, the state passed a far-reaching firearms registration law. TV stations reported that gun owners lined up around the block to comply with the new requirements. Of course, that’s so. Most gun owners, myself included, are law-abiding folks, who almost certainly and properly would peacefully follow any new laws that were passed.

Well, he’s certainly right about the infrastructure of confiscation.  Note that if the fedgov knows you have a firearm in the house, any police attention, spurious or not, will most certainly result in danger for you and a dead dog, if you have one.

But as for lining up to turn in weapons, I’m not so sure this analysis is correct.  While some people did, the whole regulatory scheme in Connecticut and New York (SAFE Act) was so onerous that they saw massive non-compliance.  I suspect that the SAFE act will always be used after the fact to add other charges when they have arrested someone for another crime, not for the purpose of door-to-door gun confiscations.

What do you say?  Is this analysis in the American Spectator accurate, or has he missed the boat and failed to understand the resolve of the remaining patriots among us?

Rekha Basu:

Of course if you have a mental condition you never sought treatment for, there’s no way to know about it without doing an evaluation, which isn’t required. And though lying on the form is a Class-D felony, by the time the lie is discovered, it could be too late.

Well, everyone has a mental condition.  It’s whatever condition you happen to be in mentally.  What the writer is really suggesting is that people suffering from mental illness should not be qualified to own firearms.

But since we’ve demonstrated that mental illness has nothing to do with propensity to violence, the writer is a prejudiced bigot.  Were you raised that way Rekha, or was this just part of earning your progressive creds so that the other staff writers respect you?  Are your fellow writers as bigoted as you are?

Oh, and I see where you’re going with this.  Anyone who believes in the second amendment and a God-given right to bear arms is to be found as “mentally ill” by doctors who have been trained in Freud and Derrida.  Nice try.  No.  Your turn.

David Codrea:

“Today the Oregon House approved one of the most dangerous, hateful and mean spirited pieces of legislation ever introduced,” Oregon Firearms Federation alerted members Thursday. “SB 719 A, the product of Republican Senator Brian Boquist’s collusion with the most militant anti-gunners in the legislature, will now allow the police to come to your home and confiscate your firearms and ‘deadly weapons’ with no accusation or conviction of a crime.

Got a pissed off former spouse?  I don’t, and I’ll never know what that’s like.  But some people suffer through that.  Or perhaps someone else in your family wants to hurt you.  Now there is no waiting, no due process, no hearing, no deliberations, no jury, no nothing.  Just do it.  Get those guns.

The sponsor is a former Special Forces officer.  I don’t care.  That means nothing to me.  Nor does his high approval ratings from gun rights groups.  Gun rights groups are wrong and should take more concern over their accuracy.  People can lie, and they can turn.  It isn’t clear which he is – a liar or traitor.

You guys in Oregon are looking more and more like the folks in California.  At what point do we just write all of this off as a loss and move on?  I’m asking honestly.  I want reader feedback.  How long should we wage the fight in the progressives’ back yard instead of y’all just relocating to free states and working to make sure they stay free?

News from Iowa:

JOHNSTON, Iowa  —  New gun laws go into effect on Saturday that include changes to Iowa’s stand your ground law.

The new law effectively eliminates the duty to retreat before turning to deadly force, and while most gun owners support the law as a whole, there are some concerns over Iowa’s more relaxed training laws.

“It can be a slippery slope because initially Iowa law does not require you to ever hold or handle or learn to shoot a gun to even get a permit to carry a gun to start with,” said CrossRoads Shooting Sports Owner Tom Hudson.

That leads to concern over untrained gun owners not being familiar with self-defense laws.

“Nowhere in the permit requiring process does it require you to learn legal code in Iowa,” said Hudson.

One gun owner expressed concerns that people can reapply for permits without any refresher courses or tests.

“If you don’t know how to use it, there’s no point in having it. You’re putting yourself and everyone else around you in danger. I’ve actually had a buddy accidentally shot himself, killed himself because he didn’t know how to use the gun. He had his permit to carry and everything. So yeah, totally against that,” said gun owner Kurtis Spaur.

Hudson says the changes to the law puts more responsibility on shops like his.

“It does absolutely place a responsibility on us to help educate people. Just before you walked up I was helping a young couple select their first firearm for her, that she may want to carry here soon, so that then makes it our duty, and a shop owner’s responsibility, in my opinion, to turn around and say, ‘okay, if you’re going to actively carry, let’s talk about additional resources,’” said Hudson.

Hudson’s shop offers training classes on the ins and outs of the stand your ground law, and says anyone who carries should go through it because there are serious consequences whenever a gun is un-holstered.

“If you choose to use deadly force, if you choose to brandish your weapon, to present your firearm, it should only be because there is absolutely no other choice necessary other than defend your life. You can’t retreat, you can’t de-escalate it, you can’t pick up a rock and try to just knock him out of the way and neutralize them to the point of getting away. There should be so many other steps that should be going through your mind. And while this is going to unfold in a matter of seconds, your mind needs to be prepared to operate that quickly. If not, put your gun away and leave it at home, you don’t need to be carrying it.”

So after leaving the question unaddressed why we should pay any attention to him at all considering the fact that he stands to lose money if this passes in Iowa, he argues with the utmost passion that residents of Iowa should have to pay him money to exercise a right.  Then he closes with this amazing bit of analysis.

If you choose to use deadly force, if you choose to brandish your weapon, to present your firearm, it should only be because there is absolutely no other choice necessary other than defend your life. You can’t retreat, you can’t de-escalate it, you can’t pick up a rock and try to just knock him out of the way and neutralize them to the point of getting away.

Read it again, and closely.  He places beating the assailant with a rock as an option along with retreat and de-escalation.

If this person actually believes something like that he is placing his students in a position for a beating themselves, or a slashing attack with a knife.  And for the female students, rape.  This advice is as bad as I’ve ever seen from anyone on self defense.

Evasion, egress, escape.  That’s after not placing yourself in positions where you don’t need to be.  Then when your life is in danger, do not use a rock.

According to Josh Marshall:

Earlier I noted that events like this remind us that America is a uniquely violent society when judged against societies and states which have had relative political stability over the last two centuries. As I noted, four of 45 US Presidents have been murdered in office and more than that number again have survived serious assassination attempts. No other countries which have comparable histories over the same period come even close.

But I got an interesting email from TPM Reader VB in Germany.

I still think the overall point holds up well. But VB notes a pretty telling detail. He listed off five attempted or successful assassinations of German politicians or high ranking government leaders since 1990. (He actually noted six but I think the sixth is better termed a government employee.) They weren’t heads of state. They ranged from prominent national politicians to people running for Mayor. Only one of the five died.

The key is that 3 of the 5 attempted killings were stabbings. Those three survived. Of the shootings, current Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble survived a 1990 assassination attempt but was permanently paralyzed. Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, then in charge of privatization of East German state assets, was assassinated by the Red Army Faction in 1991. That was arguably more successful because it was the work of an organized paramilitary group rather than a single assailant.

It is hard to draw too general a conclusion. But it does seem like at least a significant part of the equation is the prevalence of guns. Just to state the obvious, stabbings tend to be easier to survive.

[ … ]

These observations don’t have immediate or obvious policy solutions which seem at all feasible or realistic in anything like our current political reality. Most European countries radically constrain the ability of private individuals to own guns, especially for self-defense. Gun ownership is tightly regulated in Germany. But firearms ownership is actually widespread – mainly for competitive shooting and hunting.

The basic fact is simple and obvious. The widespread presence of guns dramatically magnifies the lethality of the range of mental illness, political dispute, personal vendetta and untethered anger that is more or less universal in modern societies and frankly the human condition. Certainly this would all be different if firearms were not so widespread in the United States, easy to acquire and so deeply imbedded in American culture.

Supposedly an easy analysis if you don’t roll in sin as the reason for misuse of the weapon to begin with, combined with violence perpetrated by the government (because only the government has weapons) such as Stalin’s purge, Idi Amin’s genocide in Uganda, Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia or the Armenian genocide.

Gratuitous and self-serving too.

The Hill:

New York County District Attorney Cy Vance in an interview aired Sunday blasted a GOP plan that would allow qualified owners to carry concealed handguns in other states that allow individuals to carry concealed firearms.

Speaking to radio host John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York, Vance argued that the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act introduced earlier this year would only put New York City at risk of violence.

“If that bill passes, I believe the safety, and the greater safety we have achieved will be at risk,” he said.

The bill, which was introduced in the House by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) and a version in the Senate by Sen. John Cornyn , would allow concealed carry owners to carry in any state that permits the practice as long as they qualify to concealed carry in their home state.

Vance argued that the bill would allow people to bring guns from states with lax gun laws to New York, where gun restrictions are much tighter.

“It would be completely legal for a person to bring a loaded gun or guns in New York as long as it was legal to possess them in the person’s home state,” Vance explained.

“A guy from Idaho, where there’s no permitting requirement whatsoever, could carry his gun into New York city loaded, into Times Square.”

The district attorney warned lawmakers that they were “playing into the hand” of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorists, pointing to ISIS publications describing the ease of buying guns in some American states.

“This bill is supported, I’m sure, by ISIS,” Vance said.

So according to Cy Vance, ISIS has been waiting in the wings for national carry reciprocity so they can legally carry weapons into New York to perpetrate acts of terror.  There is celebrating in Raqqa tonight.

Cy Vance is of the school of thought that goes something like this: “If you don’t know what else to do, just make up some shit and say, ‘The boogey man is gonna getcha!'”

Boo! Hold me uncle Bob!  I’m askeerd! Boo!

Codrea:

I’m in favor of the right to bear arms, even though they don’t apply in Australia, but when making the argument against gun control being ineffective you must consider that the countries in this world aren’t completely isolated entities and the freedom one allows for firearm ownership can impact the ability for another to enforce a stricter control.

In a perfect world, I believe we would all be best served with an international standard minimum level of registration …

Hold it right there.  The reader David quotes has just run off the rails.  It wasn’t intentional, there was no malice of forethought.  But he’s off the rails nonetheless.

This is a well done commentary by David and a heavily commented one.  It’s worth your time to read it all, including the comments.  David points out in his column that rights don’t come from the government, but I must emphasize that only by understanding that the very basis of your existence, and certainly of your rights, depends upon the only sovereign God in heaven, can one understand that gun control is wicked.

At its root, gun control is usurpation, a replacement of man’s right with God’s right to dictate the terms of our existence.  It is a corollary of what caused the fallen world to begin with, i.e., the man who would be like God.

David Kopel:

In the early 20th century, the most influential advocate for banning many firearms and accessories was William T. Hornaday, director of the Bronx Zoo. Using the resources of the Bronx Zoo and others for conservation, Hornaday helped save the American bison from extinction.

Hornaday’s 1913 book, “Our Vanishing Wildlife: Its Extermination and Preservation,” warned that over-hunting was wiping out American wildlife. According to Hornaday, one problem was that modern guns were too accurate. Also, hunters now had better scopes and binoculars. In Wyoming, hunters were using silencers so one shot didn’t frighten away other game.

Even worse, in Hornaday’s view, was who was hunting. Namely, lower-class Americans and immigrants. He urged new laws to “prohibit the use of firearms by any naturalized alien from southern Europe until after a 10-years’ residence in America.” Wildlife was vanishing because “the Italians are spreading, spreading, spreading. If you are without them to-day, to-morrow they will be around you. Meet them at the threshold with drastic laws, thoroughly enforced.”

In the South, Hornaday argued, the problem was hunting by “poor white trash” and blacks. In an earlier time, black Americans “were too poor to own guns.” But “the time came when . . . single-shot breech-loading guns went down to five dollars a piece. The negro had money now, and the merchants . . . sold him the guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the South.” Hornaday favored an Alabama proposal for an annual tax of at least $5 a year on every firearm, to prevent poor people from owning inexpensive guns.

Hornaday argued that all pump-action guns should be banned, as should all semi-automatics and all “silencers.” Some of Hornaday’s proposals did become law, in attenuated form. For example, states did not ban hunting by immigrant citizens, but they did enact laws against hunting or firearms possession by legal resident aliens. North Carolina enacted a statute (later repealed) that required a license for purchasing a pump action gun. (These laws are described in my article in the Harvard Journal on Legislation, Background Checks for Firearms Sales and Loans: Law, History, and Policy.)

The National Firearms Act of 1934. In 1934, Congress enacted the National Firearms Act, which used the tax power to set up a tax and registration system for certain arms and accessories. As enacted, the NFA applies to machine guns, short-barreled shotguns and rifles, “silencers,” grenades, mortars and various other devices.

Kopel has done a very nice job of outlining the history and technology of suppressors.  I would never actually recommend that someone visit The Washington Post and push traffic their direction except for The Volokh Conspiracy when writing about gun rights.  But this one is so well done it’s worth it.

Prior: Revisiting The National Firearms Act