Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

The Daily Signal:

The stories of two businessmen who recently were denied banking services because they sell firearms suggest a secretive government program called Operation Choke Point still affects industries across the nation that the Obama administration considered undesirable.

In one case, a large bank in New England denied a line of credit to a former police officer who started a gun and tactical business in Monroe, Conn., saying it “no longer lends to firearms dealers.”

In the other case, a branch of a North Carolina bank refused to set up a new payment service for a firearms seller in Tryon, N.C., because of the nature of his industry, the business owner said.

The Daily Signal talked to both businessmen, who say they are being punished for their line of work despite efforts in Congress to end discrimination by banks against gun sellers.

Some experts believe that banks’ decision not to do business with gun sellers stems from Operation Choke Point, a Justice Department program that, according to government officials, aimed to “attack Internet, telemarketing, mail, and other mass market fraud against consumers, by choking fraudsters’ access to the banking system.”

Rich Sprandel, an 18-year police veteran, had to retire in 2011 from the force in Seymour, Conn., after being hit by a drunk driver while on duty in his patrol car. Sprandel, who is married and has two children, opened an online firearms and tactical business.

“I have a retirement pension, but it’s not 100 percent of my pay, so I need to make a living to support my family,” Sprandel, 48, who owns Blue Line Firearms & Tactical in Monroe, Conn., said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

On March 7, he got a voicemail message from a vice president at People’s United Bank in Fairfield, Conn., regarding his request for a new line of credit.

[ … ]

Another firearms dealer, Luke Lichterman, told The Daily Signal that HomeTrust Bank denied banking services to him March 11 because of the “high risk nature” of his business, Hunting and Defense, in Tryon, N.C.

Lichterman, a Columbus resident, said he was trying to open an automatic clearing house payment service with HomeTrust, where he had maintained accounts since 2012.

But, he said,  a treasury management sales officer at the Asheville branch of the bank denied his request on March 11 because of his line of work.

“He explained that he’s terribly sorry, but the banking industry is tightly regulated by the federal government and we cannot approve your [payment service] because of the high risk nature of your business,” Lichterman said. “I said, high risk? What risk? What’s the problem?”

Lichterman, 75, said the banker then said, “I’m sure your business is fine, but it’s your industry that we feel is too risky.”

It was supposed to be a dead program, this idea of Operation Choke Point.  But it isn’t, and there is only one place to point the finger of blame.  No, not Obama.  He is like most presidents – he would subsume too much authority and power to himself as a king of other men without the proper checks and balances.  The proper checks and balances in this case is supposed to be the House of Representatives and the Senate.

You see, they could easily shut down the government if they wanted.  They could pass a bill firing the people in the executive branch responsible for this, and when not signed by Obama, they could withdraw all funds for continued operation of any department.  They have the ultimate power.  They are the ultimate authority.

But they won’t do it because they believe in what’s happening.  They are culprits along with Obama.  You can point the finger of blame directly at your elected representatives for this outrage.  And no, don’t tell me anything about how much such draconian tactics would hurt this group, that group, national defense, the elderly, the young, education, and on and on and on go the tear jerker stories.  I’m uninterested.  I don’t jerk tears any more.  Shut it all down, or tar and feather them in the streets.  I’m fine with either option.

In order to draw as much traffic away from Gawker as I can, I am using the same post title as they did.  In order to enable you to read the entire commentary, I’m reposting it here in full so you don’t have to visit their URL unless you want to.  From the depths of the sewer that is his mind, Hamilton Nolan gives us this.

We live in scary times: sharia law, foreigners, and rape gangs haunt the streets of this once great nation. Some old people believe that they must arm themselves in order to find peace and safety.

Wrong. Old people. Wrong. Want to find safety? Can you even “find [the] safety” on the handgun you’ve purchased? Probably not very quickly, with your poor eyesight and fingers ravaged by arthritis.

The Wall Street Journal reports that interest in guns among retirees is booming. In just the last five years, more old people are buying guns, training with guns, and cupping their hands over their ears to try to hear whether the instructor at their gun safety course said “Shoot” or “Stop.” In this day and age when you have Obama, ISIS, and Chief Keef, you—an elderly American—are thinking seriously about getting yourself a gun, for protection.

Might as well get yourself a dragon, or a unicorn trained to be your bodyguard. That would help you just as much.

When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak. Pretty much any healthy young person can beat you up. Is a gun gonna even things out? Nope. In order for that gun to work you have to pull it out and aim it in a moment of crisis. While you’re fumbling to do that, all slow, a young person is just pushing you on the ground. And taking your gun out of your feeble hands.

Leave the guns to the young nuts, oldie.

Smoothly drawing a gun from a holster, aiming it quickly, and firing it accurately despite the kickback require a level of strength and dexterity that you just don’t have. I’ll lay 5-1 odds that any street criminal can kick you in the knee and chuckle as you roll around on the ground, grasping for the gun you dropped, as they rifle through your purse and then steal your gun, too. That gun you bought will end up in a pawn shop before you ever get to blow a hole in one of these disrespectful young menaces. Were you to somehow squeeze off a shot in the course of being attacked it’s as likely as not that you’d shoot yourself in the knee replacement as shoot the bad guy. It’s time to wake up and realize that though your irrational age-induced fear of the outside world may be here to stay, so is your physical inability to defend yourself. And where are you going anyhow that’s so scary? The grocery? Those teens may be delinquents but they probably aren’t a stickup gang. Please return that Beretta to the nice gun dealer before you mistake a stray rap lyric for a death threat and put a bullet in some poor C student cutting class. Yes, yes, Have Gun Will Travel was one of your favorite shows, but you’re no Paladin and there ain’t any bandits on horseback in your subdivision. Stop watching cable news so much. All it does is scare you. Failing to take your medication is the greatest threat you need to worry about now.

Your reflexes are faded as hell so you might as well just learn to get along with people. Who do you think you are, Charles Bronson? More like Charles Osgood. Stop acting crazy.

This is Hamilton Nolan.

Yes, that’s really him.  He makes this too easy, yes?

So this commentary is such sewage that it’s difficult to know where to begin, and I won’t offer a complete commentary on his evil antics.  Ignore for a moment what a steaming pile of shit Gawker is.  Ignore the falsity of this premise on guns and the elderly.  Those of us who do gun news searches every day, multiple times per day, know how much guns have helped the elderly and how they need them in an era of increased crime (especially in gang infested areas).  Getting into the details of his premise is what he wants you to do.  I want you to understand the boy, Hamilton Nolan.

How could such a monster exist, you ask?  Well, I am reminded once of a group of Deacons at a church (not mine) whom I overheard at work, and they were having to assist a divorcee woman whose husband left her because he wanted to screw around with a younger woman.  Their assistance involved moving furniture because she could no longer afford the home, repair to the home so that it could sell, and all manner of things families do when they are together.  They didn’t begrudge it, mind you, but every minute they spent doing this was a minute they couldn’t spend doing the same thing for their families.

They decided that they were going to track down this dude and whip his ass for what he did.  There are no longer consequences, they believed, and there had to be some.  No-fault divorce was for the piss ant court system.  They found fault, and they were going to enforce their punishment.  I don’t know what ended up happening.  In a way, Hamilton is like that adulterer husband.  Honoring your father and mother is one of the ten commandments too.  And recall what we’ve discussed regarding the ten commandments – it is called constitutional law, or the moral law.  All sorts of case law and other principles come from it.  So for example, we are told to “rise before the hoary head” in respect for our elders (Lev 19:32, or “stand up in the presence of the aged”).  Boy-Hamilton needs to have someone take him out behind the building and whip his ass.  It won’t happen of course, and that goes to show you how morally corrupt America has become.  In a morally upright America, Hamilton would get his ass whipped for disrespecting his elders.

The final thing I want to leave you with is just what kind of boy Hamilton is.  Hamilton lives in a very dark world, where he sees himself aging (even though apparently at his age he still has acne, he will one day grow old).  He doesn’t want to age because he probably believes that when you die, your body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end.  Hamilton probably never had a spanking as a child.  His mommy and daddy – if he had one – let him do whatever the hell he wanted to do.  He had no boundaries.  He needed boundaries.  He probably begged for boundaries.  But his parents probably listened to the progressives on family health.

The awful public school system taught him to hate everything and everyone, including himself.  His hatred is so intense, so sweeping and so ubiquitous that he hates the very predecessors who brought him into being.  He hates his elders because he hates who he is and wishes he didn’t exist, even though he wants the monster inside him to keep on living.  He wears effete, metrosexual clothing as an act of self deprecation, and his writing consists of venom to be spewed towards anything that gets in the way.

Hamilton is a sad, sad boy.  Don’t be like Hamilton.

Inquisitr:

Senator Coleman Young II introduced Senate Bill 851, which is a bill to amend the insurance code of 1956, to the Michigan State Senate this month. The bill would add a new chapter to Michigan’s 1956 PA 128 that would require Michigan firearm owners to purchase firearm liability insurance if they want to legally own guns.

Coleman Young II is the son of former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who was booted from the UAW, according to Powerline, for being too radical. Sen. Coleman Young II is a Michigan State Senator for the 1st District in Michigan. Opposition to SB 851 in Michigan note that one of the state senator’s biggest campaign donors is the insurance industry, which donated over $11,000 to Young over the years. Young also recently made the news when he introduces a bill that would eliminate exemptions that allow lawmakers and the state’s governor from being subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

SB 851 would also establish a Firearms Claims Association as an unincorporated, nonprofit association. According to the terms of the proposed amendment, an insurer that would provide the firearm liability insurance required by Michigan firearms owners would be required to be a member of the Firearm Claims Association. The Firearms Claims Association would establish procedures by which insurers would report claims that would involve the Association paying out insurance.

Additionally, in Michigan, a Firearms Authority would provide financial support to the Department of State Police and to local law enforcement agencies for the creation of illegal firearm enforcement teams that would work to reduce the number of illegal firearms. It would also provide financial support to local prosecutors for programs that are designed to reduce the number of illegal firearms in communities. It would also provide financial support for educational programs about firearm safety and firearm insurance.

This is all the rage now among the statists, i.e., raising revenue on the backs of gun owners.  We’ve just recently seen with the bill in Oklahoma to remove permitting requirements for open carry that the singular objection in the legislature appears to be that the permitting revenue stream will be lost, thus necessitating a hard look at the future employment of those doing the permitting.

In this case, the statists are going for all the marbles.  Not only does the state itself stand to gain from this, but crony corporatism is alive and well in Michigan.  Can you imagine the astronomical cost associated with insuring gun owners, how much the corporations stand to gain from this, and how little gun owners will benefit?  What would an insurer do – assure a gun owner of never being charged with a crime?  Of course not.  This is a money laundering scheme run by the best criminals in the business, the government.

And it’s all on the backs of gun owners.  The statists kill two birds with one stone.  They raise largesse, and they enact gun control without calling it gun control.  What do you want to bet the NRA won’t even score this or take a stand on the issue?

Say what you will about the NRA and failure to score the things they should about politicians (and I’ve said plenty), but American Rifleman fields a great article from time to time.  Hence, they have come through with Guns Of The Easter Rising.

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, scattered groups of men of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army, as well as women of the nationalist auxiliary organization, the Cumann na mBan, assembled at their mustering points throughout Dublin. Most of them were unaware that, instead of meeting for a routine maneuver, they were embarking on an armed uprising against the British Crown. Due to a series of mishaps and intrigues, only a fraction of the Volunteers’ nominal strength actually reported for duty. While some were in the green uniforms of the Irish Volunteers or the Citizen Army, the majority of them were in civilian clothes, and they carried an amazing assortment of firearms.

The Easter Rising of 1916, or as it is sometimes known, the Easter Rebellion, marked a significant shift in Irish-British relations, and is considered by many to be the first stroke of the popular uprising that severed Ireland from the British Crown in 1922. Time and space here do not allow a detailed discussion of the causes of the Rising, but a short introduction is necessary to understand the reasons for the variety of small arms carried in this battle.

A few years before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the British government pledged to return a semblance of Home Rule to Ireland, after a hiatus of more than 100 years. The northern province of Ulster, populated mainly by Presbyterians who had emigrated from Scotland some 300 years earlier, feared domination by the other three overwhelmingly Catholic provinces, and pledged to oppose Home Rule by force, equating it with “Rome Rule.” In a daring smuggling operation, the newly formed Ulster Volunteer Force armed itself with modern Austrian Mannlicher rifles, obsolescent German Model 1888 “Commission” rifles, and obsolete Italian Vetterli rifles.

The Irish Volunteers (pledged to fight for Home Rule), who had been smuggling in small lots of arms, followed suit when they landed two small boatloads of antiquated Model 1871 German Mauser rifles in Ireland. Arms smuggling on both sides continued right up to the point when Great Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, resulting in a wide array of shoulder arms and handguns coming into Ireland. Under a mutual agreement, the Home Rule controversy was temporarily shelved for the duration of the war, and both the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers (immediately renamed the “Irish National Volunteers”) volunteered en masse for service with the British Army. However, a small number of the original Irish Volunteers (retaining their original name) refused to fight for the government they considered as oppressors.

The article goes on to discuss both the history and the guns used in the Easter Rising.  It concludes thusly.

The wide variety of arms in the Easter Rising was a result of a disarmed populace trying to end foreign domination by using whatever firearms it could find. This same motley array of armament would plague the men and women who would fight another war, just three years later, in their successful attempt to make “Ireland, once a province, be a nation once again.”

There are many observations we could draw, but my job is to send readers their direction and let you comment here, because what you say will undoubtedly be better than what I could say.  But my oh my, what I wouldn’t give to shoot some of those old guns, the Mauser, Lee-Enfield, etc.

They weren’t properly armed.  And they’re not properly armed now either.

While homicide rates at least started to decline over the past decade in England and Wales, there is little sign of any such trend in Ireland at this time.

Ireland has a long history of highly restrictive gun control laws, many of them justified on the grounds of combating the IRA and similar organizations. Gun control was stepped up in the early 70s when new legislation was introduced, accompanied by a large-scale gun confiscation operation that occurred when police asked for guns to be turned in “temporarily” for inspection. The guns were never returned by police.

Since then, the homicide rate in Ireland has increased significantly, and in recent years, Ireland has adopted numerous additional gun control laws in the face of growing homicide rates.

Source: Graph 9.4 (Retrieved by Google Cache from Central Statistics Office of Ireland.) and this report.

So there you have it.  Seldom will you find a more telling pictorial depiction of the stolid commitment to presuppositions (i.e., we can control violence by confiscating the firearms of peaceable and law-abiding citizens) than here.  They keep pressing confiscation and increased gun regulations, it keeps having the opposite effect of what they claim they want, and they keep doing it.

Or at least, a reduction in violence is what they claim is the reason for gun regulations.  Perhaps that’s just a pretext, yes?

Uncle:

He doesn’t like free speech.

The Second Amendment Foundation and The National Rifle Association oppose his appointment to the court.

He supported a hearing to ban handguns in DC.

He supported a gun registry.

And back in 2008, Dave Kopel ran down his record on guns.

Okay, so here’s my take.  We can accept this bastard now, which is absolutely loathsome and objectionable, or we can wait until, in order, (1) Trump is nominated, (2) Trump loses to Hillary, and (3) Hillary appoints someone as bad or worse.

I’m not suggesting that we accept the bastard.  If the Senate caves and has hearings on him, they all ought to be tarred and feathered.  I’m merely placing bad and worse in juxtaposition to make a point.  Terry McAuliffe and the power of the vote in northern Virginia will give Virginia to Hillary.  I guarantee it.

In know North Carolina because I live here.  Folks around these parts are horrified at Trump’s antics.  Listen to me.  Embarrassed and horrified.  North Carolina will go for Hillary, I guarantee it.  Florida will be reliable democrat territory.  Colorado is too dominated by Denver, Vail and Aspen, with too few blue collar workers, to go GOP this time, especially with so little difference between the two candidates.  The key swing states will go for Hillary.

Trump has won his states with less than a majority of the GOP voters.  Of the voters left, many of them are conservative Christians who will never vote for someone who supports abortion (not to mention socialized medicine, the two things to which we said we would never agree – remember?).  I said I won’t vote for Trump, and I won’t.  I won’t throw away my vote on yet another least bad option, one who supports abortion, supports a single payer health care system, has a squishy record on gun rights, and is a proven hypocrite on foreign workers and immigration (my four no-compromise issues).  The GOP voters won’t turn out for him like they turned out for the primaries, the party is too fractured.  It will not become fractured, it already is fractured, like a light bulb thrown down on the floor.  Totally busted.  Not in the future, but right now.  It’s over.

Trump cannot win a general election, and virtually all of the polls say that.  So Hillary will be the next president.  The biggest issue we might face will be that Hillary wins with a single party vote with voters pulling a single “lever,” thus ushering in democratic control of the senate and house.  This would give Hillary everything she needed for an assault weapons ban, national gun registry, control over sales of ammunition, and justices on the supreme court to back it all up.

The long and short of it is this.  Prepare for what’s coming.  Steel yourself.  Or better, I hope you are already prepared and putting the finishing touches on your preparations, mental and otherwise.

Ammoland:

Kailua, HI -(AmmoLand.com)- The Senate Public Safety Committee, Chairman Senator Clarence K. Nishihara, will hold a public hearing on HB2632 March 17, 2016.

Please click on the bill number above for bill information and to send testimony.  HRA OPPOSES.

Deadline to submit testimony, 1:45 pm Wednesday March 16.

Requires the county police to seize all firearms from any person who is a danger to self or others due to mental health reasons and requires emergency hospitalization. Good idea! But where’s the due process?

The bill language in the present draft is unclear as to whether a judge’s order is required to seize guns. HPD thinks they won’t need one.

HRA remains STRONGLY OPPOSED unless the bill is amended to specify that a court order must be obtained for the hospitalization before firearms can be seized, as required under the 2nd and 4th Amendments and Hawaii State law: capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/Vol06_Ch0321-0344/HRS0334/HRS_0334-0061.htm.

MAHALO,

HARVEY GERWIG, LEGISLATIVE LIAISON and PRESIDENT, HRA

For more information, visit: www.hawaiirifleassociation.org.

Ah, mental health again.  So tell us, Senator Nishihara, all about the awful things you’re going to stop with this additional power and bureaucracy?  Remember that we’ve got mental health professionals on record stating that mental health maladies do not constitute propensity to violence, and that they cannot be predictors of violence with their profession.  So with that in mind, tell us all about how you’re going to stop awful things from happening?  We’re listening.  Tell us all about your scholarly prowess in mental health and how you know more than the professionals.

I’ve exchanged email with Harvey Gerwig.  Nice guy, and I hope Hawaii gun owners are able to wrap their arms around the problem of this terrible, totalitarian state government.

News from S.C.:

Sen. Floyd Nicholson, D-Greenwood, expressed a more general view of concealed-carry practices.

“Carrying weapons? I’m totally opposed. It’s just my personal opinion. I don’t own a gun. I am not a hunter, and I have nothing against those individuals who hunt. But just carrying a weapon around? I think we’re going back to the Wild Wild West,” said Nicholson. A portion of his district borders the Savannah River, and stretches across parts McCormick, Greenwood, Saluda, and Abbeville counties.

“Give everybody a holster and a gun and let them go, like they’re doing in Texas? I’m just opposed to this.”

We’ve already seen another of the jerk-offs in S.C., a communist by the name of Larry Martin.  It sounds like South Carolina voters have their work cut out for them.  They should stock up on tar and feathers.

Times Higher Education:

At the beginning of this year, the University of Texas began permitting guns on its campus, including in the classroom. In response, I’m beginning a personal boycott. I will not accept invitations to speak at any university where guns are allowed in class – and I’d like others to join me.

I have in the past given talks in US cities where guns may be carried, and sometimes where murder rates are high. Many Americans say that they feel safer when carrying a gun. There is ample statistical evidence that they are not. Being in the vicinity of a gun immediately increases your chances of being shot. I’ve been willing to take that risk to visit the US, but once one crosses the threshold of a university campus, one should be in a place free of weapons and any threat of violence.

There are a number of reasons for this. Some of them are practical. I would not want to speak to an audience whose members may carry guns. Academic debate can become heated. A good lecturer challenges the audience, pushing people out of their comfort zones. The presence of guns would almost certainly change that dynamic. Suppose I get a stupid question, delivered in an arrogant or aggressive way. The thought that the questioner might be carrying a weapon might well affect how I respond. Perhaps I would just let it go. But then my academic integrity and freedom to give an honest reply has been compromised through fear.

Even if I’m not provocative, I am still not safe in a university with guns. For a variety of reasons, people are sometimes dangerously unstable. The threat of violence is hugely increased if handguns are available. And any such threat falls disproportionately on the most conspicuous person in the room: the lecturer speaking at the front of the class. If anything did go wrong in the mind of a gun-carrying audience member, I could well be in the line of fire, no matter how polite my talk.

These safety concerns might or might not be empirically well grounded. But the bigger reasons for my boycott are philosophical; I might even say metaphysical. Guns and universities simply should not mix.

The most important role of the university is as protector and nourisher of civilisation and culture. This is in direct opposition to the idea that physical violence solves anything …

Balderdash.  Violence solves a lot of things.  Violence overthrew the Third Reich when collegial debate would not have sufficed.  Violence repels rapists and murderers, and without responding with violence in self defense, Christianity in Mesopotamia is now no more, with Christians on the run or perishing throughout the middle east and North Africa.

The writer is a professor of Metaphysics at the University of Nottingham, but rather than believe he would get a stupid question from a student, I’m inclined to believe based on this article that he might be the one who poses stupid propositions.  And I’m not sure The University of Texas has lost much if Mr. Mumford cannot find it within himself to lecture there.  After all, they could always get Paul Helm, Alvin Plantinga or Nicholas Wolsterstorff to perform a visiting lecturer series.  It would probably be much better anyway.

But since we’re on this subject of metaphysics, and since Mr. Mumford has posed a number of problems associated with visiting the University of Texas, I have a little quiz for him.  He has pointed the finger of blame at the gun (presumably he wouldn’t also point to the reliability of the crystalline structure in the metal of the knife in the case of poor Lee Rigby – or would he?).  So what, Mr. Mumford, causes a person to pull the trigger?  Why would you be in any more danger around someone with a gun that any other time?  You may invoke the concept of immediate causes, secondary causes, or even launch into a discussion of evil, predestination, volition and theodicy if you feel froggy.

We’re waiting to grade the essay.

David Codrea:

For the second year in a row, West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin vetoed a bill that would recognize the right of citizens 21 and over to carry a gun concealed without permission from state bureaucrats, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Tomblin was flanked by “dozens of police officers and deputies,” there to provide PR support and imagery intended to “legitimize” the governor’s flouting of “shall not be infringed.”

What a putz.  I had covered this bill as if it had become law (I assumed that the legislature had overridden his previous veto), and I was clearly mistaken.  I hate that.  I hate it for the folks in West Virginia, and I hate it for the prediction I made.  I would love to use WV constitutional carry as a test case and flout my prediction (and resultant data) in front of the anti-gunners.

The Salem News:

CHARLESTON, West Virginia — The West Virginia Legislature has approved legislation allowing residents 21 or older to carry a concealed gun without first obtaining a permit or undergoing training.

The measure, passed on a bipartisan vote Wednesday, now goes to Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin for his review. He vetoed a similar bill last year.

Most states require concealed carry permits.

West Virginians between the ages of 18 and 21 could receive a provisional concealed carry permit and would be required to undergo training on proper use of guns.

Passed on bipartisan votes by both the state Senate and the House of Delegates, the proposed law includes a $50 tax credit for residents trained to carry a deadly weapon.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, said credit would cost the state $3 million.

The bill was opposed by the West Virginia Sheriffs Association and the West Virginia Association of Counties.

Of course the bill was opposed by law enforcement.  Of course it was.  Here’s a prediction for you (and if we can remember it a year from now and find adequate data on this, we’ll assess my prediction).  Nothing will happen.  The doomsday predictions the LEOs most assuredly made will not obtain.  There won’t be any discernible change in the number of firearms related crimes as a result of the elimination of permitting requirements.

Who wants to call me wrong on this?