Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

The New Yorker:

Away from the world for August, in a house without Internet or television and only spotty, the-satellite-must-be-passing-over phone reception, I was, until Wednesday, thinking more or less benign thoughts about gun owners, if not guns. As I chronicled last year, I have only just learned how to drive, and, license in hand, or in glove compartment, I’ve been driving for the first time on the little winding roads of the beach town where we’ve spent vacations for the past thirty years. Despite having been anti-car and ostentatiously pro-bike for all those years, I have to admit that I love being in the driver’s seat. The overwhelming rush of freedom and possibility, the sense of autonomy—no need to request a lift, no UBER app to press—is overwhelming. You get in, and you go.

This in turn made me realize, a little more empathetically, what I had only intuited before—that guns, for many Americans, are a sort of secondary, symbolic car: another powerful symbol of autonomy and independence. The attachment to them that so many Americans show—unique among the civilized peoples of the world, and at a cost so grave that the rest of that world often turns away, appalled—is nonetheless understandable to anyone who comes late to driving: to have potentially lethal power within your grasp is an immensely empowering drug. Cars are obviously in a different category, because their benign use is so much greater than their lethal one. But they are tools of the same country, of which I am now a citizen.

[ … ]

For the deeper truth is that cars are not, or not only, symbols of autonomy. They are, in every sense, vehicles of it. Guns, however, have an almost entirely symbolic function. No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled; the dense and hysterical mythology of gun love has been refuted again and again.

The few useful social functions that guns do have—in hunting or in killing varmints, as a rural man such as my father has to do—can be preserved even with tight regulations, as in Canada.

Good heavens.  What a child.  Take note: killing varmints is the only legitimate function for guns.  Here’s a fact for Adam – modern game management practices increases herd size and health.  Period.  But in order to comport with his world view, he would rather see herds suffering and starving and the herd unhealthy.  Hunting anything but varmints is anathema to him.

But that’s not the most significant illogical leap he makes.  If you took note before, take careful note now.  “No lives are saved, and no intruders are repelled.”  Adam knows.  Forget that lives are saved every day and intruders repelled on a regular basis because men and women have guns.  And forget that whether something has utility isn’t a stipulation for rights and liberties.  Adam knows better than you and (in yet another flaw in his thinking) wants the bad men in government with guns to enforce his idea of “better.”  At heart, collectivists are control freaks.

Their utility is denied because he starts there as a pre-theoretical commitment.  He presupposes that to be the case, and in logical or rhetorical parlance, it’s called presupposing the consequent.  He reasons in a circle, and most collectivists make the equivalent or some related error.  But of course, Adam is cocooned inside a world of his own making, sure to suffer himself if society breaks or even falters.  That car and newfound freedom he adores won’t save him.  My guns won’t save me either if God calls and it’s my time.  But at least I will have attempted to effect my moral duty of self defense.

Please remember my oldest son Joshua in your prayers.  He’s having a rough go of it from back surgery.

Via David Codrea:

A college student was sexually molested at LaGuardia Airport by a uniformed TSA agent who demanded she go into a bathroom with him after she got off a flight so she could be searched for a weapon, sources told The Post.

As I’ve said before, “the TSA is filled with goobers, hicks, pedophiles, perverts and criminals.”

David Codrea:

In other words, “gun control” doesn’t stop the bad guys and only serves to give them a killer advantage over the “law-abiding”?  Who knew?

In this case, surviving train passengers are lucky there were some men on board who would not go down without a fight. And the defenders are lucky their bravery, instincts, training and skills were enough to overcome all of their assailant’s advantages.

It would have been better and much easier if someone had been armed other than the criminal.  This could have ended far differently.

Via Mike Vanderboegh, black activists call for lynching white people and cops.

“Find a mother f**ker that is alone. Snap his ass, and then f***in hang him from a damn tree. Take a picture of it and then send it to the mother f**kers.”

Maybe everyone should start carrying guns, huh?

Defense News:

The Pentagon’s top weapons tester confirmed to a small group of reporters on Thursday that his team will pit the full-up F-35 joint strike fighter against the A-10 Warthog and potentially other aircraft during comparative tests slated to take place in 2018.

Because the A-10 is awesome and the F-35 sucks.

The National Interest:

For decades, naval architects have concentrated on building ships that, by the standards of the World Wars, are remarkably brittle. These ships can deal punishment at much greater ranges than their early 20th century counterparts, but they can’t take a hit. Is it time to reconsider this strategy, and once again build protected ships?

That fifth generation warfare thing not working out so well for you, boys?

I had missed it when it happened, but the LA Times reminds us on one incident with the Stockton Police Department that ought to calibrate your expectations concerning police.

The more than 600 rounds that Stockton police fired during a rolling gun battle with bank robbers last year that left a hostage dead by officers’ bullets was “excessive” and “unnecessary,” an independent review found.

The Police Foundation, a research group based in Washington, D.C., released a detailed report Monday on how Stockton police responded to the July 16, 2014, armed robbery of a Bank of the West branch, where three gunmen took three women hostage and fired at officers from a speeding SUV.

The group found that 32 officers unloaded more than 600 rounds during the hour-long rolling gun battle, which spanned three counties, 63 miles of highway and reached speeds of 120 mph. One of the hostages, Misty Holt-Singh, was killed when she was struck by 10 police bullets, authorities said. The two other hostages jumped or were thrown from the vehicle during the chase and survived.

Police officials said they fired on the vehicle to potentially save lives because the men in the car were shooting indiscriminately. The gunmen disabled 14 police cars with gunshots, the report stated.

[ … ]

The report said that a few officers engaged in “sympathetic fire,” in which officers fired their weapons because others were shooting.

In some cases, officers opened fire while colleagues were in front of them. The report highlighted an example during the final standoff, in which one officer lay prone on the ground and did not shoot while an officer next to him, standing, fired “round after round.”

“‘What’s your target?’ the prone officer yelled, thinking he was missing something,” the report stated.

“‘The car!’ responded the officer,” according to the report.

Good Lord.  This is even worse than the New York Police in the empire state building three years ago.  600 rounds, indiscriminate shooting, lack of muzzle awareness and discipline, rolling gun battle in a urban and suburban settings, lack of awareness of their backstop, lack of precision fire, and the list could go on.

Ridiculous.

From reader Mack, in other news, the anti-gun movement’s intellectual elevator runs a few floors short of the top.

Lori Haas, director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence’s Virginians for Responsible Gun Laws campaign, says that requirements for a concealed carry permit are too lax, especially compared to the hundreds of hours of training required for police officers.

“We feel that the current regulations regarding concealed handgun permits in Virginia are woefully inadequate in regard to training,” said Haas, referencing online concealed permit classes that count toward a permit. “The notion that someone can sit in front of a computer and learn about firearm safety and be considered able to physically, actively handle an active shooter situation is fantasy.”

Uh huh.  Well, no more so that believing the police will protect you.  Apparently it was safer for the hostages in the Stockton gun battle to jump out of moving cars than be around when the police got busy.

But okay, I’ll bite.  So if Ms. Haas wants you to have more tactical training, then get more tactical training.  No, not training she or the state approves, but training you think you need to do the job of self defense.  And collectivist Haas can kiss our collective asses.

Independent Mail:

CHARLESTON – A Charleston state senator says he will introduce gun-control legislation in response to recent gun violence in his home city.

Democratic state Sen. Marlon Kimpson said the June 17 shooting at the Emanuel AME Church and more recent gun violence show the need for tightening restrictions on gun ownership.

Reading about gun violence in the newspaper regularly, Kimpson said he hopes the state Senate will give his proposals serious consideration when they return to work in January.

“I don’t think there is any dispute that there is a direct correlation between weak gun laws and violence,” Kimpson told The State Monday. “It is within our power to do something about it.”

Kimpson’s proposals would:

• Require background checks to be conducted through the State Law Enforcement Division and the federal system before a gun sale can be completed
• Ban assault weapons, defined as semi-automatic firearms designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use
• Close a three-day loophole that allows some S.C. gun purchasers to buy and take home a gun before a background check has been completed. That rule, and other errors in the federal background check, allowed alleged Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof to purchase a gun.
• Require reporting of lost or stolen guns
• Require state registration and permitting of all guns

The gun control proposals likely face an impossible uphill battle.

[ … ]

But Kimpson said the Charleston church shooting that killed nine African Americans including a state senator has “opened people’s minds to doing things in the State House that have never been done before.”

Perhaps Kimpson isn’t thinking what I’m thinking when he talks about people “doing things … they have never done before.”  At any rate, this bill stands a snowball’s chance in hell of passing in South Carolina.

But let’s recall collectivist Larry Martin of Pickens.  The boys in South Carolina have work to do.  You need to handle Larry, and then you need to pass constitutional carry.  Kimpson can stand back and watch in irrelevance.

David Codrea on Trump on immigration.  So I’ll tell you now what I think.  He will do an about-face in order to keep all of that cheap Hispanic and Latino labor because business likes it (given that we are supplying corporations with welfare by allowing them to underpay their workers and send them to hospitals as their primary care physician).  What he’s saying is well crafted to fool.  At any rate, my prediction is that he will disappoint you if you put yourself in his camp.

David Codrea on the threats to military members:

“the brothers don’t need to attack them in military bases or secured buildings. they can now turn up in their houses. in their homes. this is war, what did you expect? u think u can bomb the islamic state and we don’t do nothing back? soon, very soon you will see.”

Bring it.  I look forward to putting a .45 230 grain fat boy in your stomach.  And your buddies too.

Mike Vanderboegh on the new Pew poll concerning gun control so-called “conservatives” support.  Yea, I saw this too, and I’m not sure what to make of it.  Either the poll was a well crafted lie because of the way the questions were posed, or a majority of Americans really do support universal background checks and registration.  Either way, it doesn’t matter, which is why I hadn’t posted on this.  I agree with Mike.  Come and get ’em.  Are you prepared for civil war?

The surgeon general stands by his comments on guns being a health issue.  That’s okay.  I think he should stand by what he’s said.  I stand by what I said as well.

The problem is that Mr. Murthy isn’t a real doctor.  He may have passed his boards, but that doesn’t mean anything.  I know a few engineers who passed the engineering boards and who are a hazard to the safety and health of the public because they’re incompetent.

Mr. Murthy hasn’t spent his life like my family physician, diagnosing prostate cancer and high blood pressure, dealing with the health issues men and women face, watching the elderly die in his care, and working a full day at the office only to work until midnight at home because of the obscene Obamacare paperwork (like my doctor does) our totalitarian president has heaped upon him.

I’ve explained what I would do with one of these doctors who ask questions with which they have no business, but that sidesteps the real issue here.  The issue is that if Mr. Murthy was a real doctor he would treat patients and sit by their bedside as they pass away, find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, or some form of cancer.

Mr. Murthy is just another collectivist who looks exactly like the one who nominated him.  We know his stripe, we’ve seen a thousand just like him in this administration.  In the end it doesn’t matter what post he holds or doesn’t hold.  He will pass from the world having done no good for mankind, in spite of the title “doctor.”  He will not weep over patients, he will not cure disease, he will not pray over their suffering.  He has sold his soul.

He’s just a little boy.  Nothing more.

Via Uncle, switching calibers.  Dude.  I don’t care what caliber you shoot.  Learn to hold the gun the right way and lock those elbows.  And just to think, I’m not even a SWAT member and know this!

The Des Moines Register:

States should take a closer look at how people with mental health issues are flagged in a federal background check system required for firearms purchases, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday.

Jindal was speaking during the last stop in a five-day trip to Iowa — his first since a man opened fire in a Louisiana movie theater, killing two women before turning the gun on himself.

“There was a shooting in Lafayette and the shooter in that case, I believe, should’ve been involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital and shouldn’t have been able to buy a gun,” the Republican candidate for president told the Westside Conservative Club at the Machine Shed Restaurant in Urbandale.

In 2013, Jindal signed off on two laws that improved Louisiana’s reporting requirements to ensure the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check system was receiving information when a person lost their gun rights due to a mental health issue. He said other states should follow Louisiana’s example.

“I’m not for taking any rights away from law-abiding citizens,” Jindal said. “Those that were involuntarily committed, those records were supposed to be going into the national background check. That wasn’t always happening.”

My goodness he has a lot of faith in the “mental health” profession and system for someone who isn’t trying to take rights away from law abiding citizens (and I like the word “peaceable” better than “law abiding”).

As I’ve said before, “As for those who believe in the so-called mental health “sciences,” you may as well believe in voodoo and bow down and worship totem poles or cut your wrists like the prophets of Baal for a god who isn’t there.  The mental health “sciences” is the refuge of collectivists and scoundrels.”

Thanks for outing yourself as a collectivist, Bobby.  It’s always easier when y’all self-identify.

AL.com:

A group of Alabama sheriffs said Tuesday that current state gun laws limit their discretion in granting concealed carry permits and proposed legislation could further complicate their ability to confiscate weapons from potentially dangerous people.

Louisiana movie theater shooter John Russell Houser was denied a concealed weapons permit in Russell County in 2006. However, Sheriff Heath Taylor said Houser likely would have been given one under legislation passed in 2013 that says sheriffs “shall issue” concealed carry permits instead of sheriffs “may issue” them in cases involving applicants without felony convictions or other outstanding circumstances.

Taylor told a press conference in Phenix City that current law allows sheriffs to deny applications if they can provide reasons to support the denial in the interest of public safety. But he noted that law enforcement decisions may be overruled if the officials can’t provide strong enough documentation or details despite personal knowledge of an applicant’s past behavior.

Republican State Rep. Ed Henry of Decatur said law enforcement officials must simply provide reasons in writing for denying concealed carry permits.

“There’s nothing in the law that says the sheriff has to issue a permit at 18, there’s nothing in the law that removes their discretion, period,” Henry said. “What they can’t do — and what they loved to do before — is deny a pistol permit and not give a reason.”

A portion of the state’s concealed carry law says a sheriff must consider how much time has passed between a questionable incident and the date an application is made. Sheriffs who deny applications are required to provide written statements and evidence unless disclosing those details would interfere with an ongoing investigation.

I didn’t know this about Alabama law.  AL.com makes it sound much like North Carolina where Sheriff’s have a right to deny purchase permits – a throwback to Jim Crow laws that helps the Sheriff’s department raise revenue.  There isn’t much one person can do about it, since we are unfortunately controlled by Charlotte and Raleigh, two hotbeds of liberalism.  Alabama can do better.

So Alabama Sheriff’s have too much control over gun permits (when there shouldn’t be any such thing as a gun permit at all), and they want even more!  Totalitarians don’t just live up North.  They ensconce themselves wherever they’re allowed, and Alabama had better nip this in the bud.  You don’t need boys like that hanging around causing trouble.

Why won’t Scott Walker say Obama is a Christian?  Um, well, you know, because he’s not.  He’s a Marxist  A man cannot serve two masters.

David Codrea:

No.  Your move.

More David:

A Washington DC “Democrat media consulting firm” affiliated with Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (and a host of anti-gun politicians) is offering Oregon gun dealers $1,500 to allow them to film an on-location “public service announcement,” Oregon Firearms Federation announced Friday. The filmmakers need a gun store as a backdrop for an actor to tell viewers how “easy” it is to comply with form requirements …

Uh huh.  They’d better not.

Mike Vanderboegh:

… and twist old Chris Christie’s 2nd Amendment titty.

Now that’s something we’d all like to see.  By the way, I’m not sure I could name a single person with whom I went to High School.  Honestly.

Military Times:

Following the recent fatal shooting of four Marines and a sailor in Tennessee, Defense Secretary Ash Carter is ordering the military services to consider new policies that would enhance security for troops at home, including potentially arming more personnel.

In a memo released Thursday, Carter urged top military officials to “develop action plans to improve the security and force protection of DoD personnel.”

His memo noted that current Defense Department policy authorizes the arming of additional “qualified DoD personnel (not regularly engaged in law enforcement activities) based on the threat and the immediate need to protect DoD assets and lives.”

Carter also urged military officials to “consider any additional protection measures including changes to policy and procedures that protect our force against the evolving threat,” according to the memo.

Another key aspect of the “action plans” should be identifying ways to “improve off-installation site security, including practical physical security upgrades and procedural improvements.”

Carter’s memo also calls for a new assessment of “mass warning notification systems and regional alert systems” to identify any problems or gaps.

Well, perhaps.  It isn’t clear that the DoD will authorize weapons in recruitment centers.  They still work for the current administration, after all, and the administration is as anti-gun and anti-personal defense as any we’ve had in our history.

This whole debate reminds me of the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.  It split the conservative community.  Fight terrorists wherever they are, said some.  Others, like me, said don’t ever allow the President or anyone else the authority to kill citizens.  This power can be turned on gun owners and patriots of all stripes (or anyone else who happens to be out of vogue).  The debate would be muted if we actually trusted the government.

For the record, I advocated allowing Marines to arm themselves with personal weapons, although not issuing arming orders for them on U.S. soil.  This simple solution would, if adopted, solve all of the issues.  But I also pointed out the current Marine Corps Commandant orders via a MARADMIN that prohibits even personal weapons in personal homes of Marines except under very strict conditions (which would prevent their actual use in an emergency).

This question of arming Marines is a fake problem created by the gun controllers (some of who live in the military), which has real world consequences.  Solution: let the Marines arm themselves.  They’ll do a fine job.  They don’t need your help.

The Advertiser:

Retired Gen. Russel Honore’, Louisiana’s most well-known 21st Century military hero, said America is mired in a state of denial about its gun culture that’s harming the country.

“As a country we’re in a state of denial because we’ve confused the right to bear arms with the right to carry arms all the time anywhere or anyplace you want,” Honore’ told Gannett Louisiana on Monday. “We have to have a different kind of conversation in America and be prepared to speak about the politically unspeakable.”

Honore’ said the string of recent mass gun murders — culminating with the tragic movie theater shooting in Lafayette Thursday in which two victims died — should provide a wake up call.

“It breaks my heart to see that happen in my home state or anywhere in America,” he said. “We’ve got a problem in this country, and at some point the politicians have to get down into the community and find some answers to this problem.”

Honore’ had considered running for governor this fall but decided against making the race earlier this summer.

The retired army general, best known for his role leading the Hurricane Katrina recovery in New Orleans, said during his time in the military soldiers “were required to clear their weapons and turn them in as soon as they came in from the field.”

“The best place for weapons when you’re not in the field is to be locked up in the garrison,” Honore’ said. “Our biggest problem before Desert Storm was (soldiers) accidentally firing their weapons, and they’re trained.

“I’ve been around guns all my life, but when I was growing up they were locked in the cabinet unless you needed them for hunting.”

Honore’ also said he disagrees with those advocating for military men and women at recruitment offices to be armed. Some armed civilians have taken it upon themselves to stand guard at recruitment locations since the mass shooting at a Tennessee office this summer.

One such civilian accidentally fired a round at an Ohio recruitment office last week. Nobody was injured.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to arm military at the recruitment offices or to have civilians there with guns,” Honore’ said. “That’s the job of law enforcement. On our bases, yes, we guard our gates and our bases, but not at the recruitment offices.”

Field training with weapons owned by the armory and civilians with personal weapons.  I think he is conflating very simply different issues.  Moreover, if his Soldiers were “accidentally firing” their weapons, it was no accident (we’ve learned on the pages of TCJ that there are no accidents and that negligent discharge is a much better phrase), and they apparently weren’t well trained as he is claiming.

But his uneducated, simpleton ideas aside, take note of the claim.  He is perhaps Louisiana’s most well known war hero of the 21st century.  The Times-Picayune also has information on Honore.

“We’ve got to rethink and re-set our thoughts about guns,” said Honore who played a key role in post-Katrina recovery. “We have to focus less on ideology and more on practicality.”

Aside from the civil war he wants to start, there’s that assertion again: ” … who played a key role in the post-Katrina recovery.”

It’s obvious that he’s running for something, or is trying to bolster his collectivist credentials for some consulting or political gig.  But I want to know more.  As readers know, I have submitted Freedom of Information Act requests asking who issued the arming orders for the National Guard troops who were in the field post-Katrina?

My intention was not only to learn this information (the merit of such knowledge is obvious), but use it to lead to other information, such as who issued the order to confiscate personal weapons from civilians post-Katrina?  The courts slapped down such unconstitutional antics, but it was a long time before everyone recovered their weapons.

Who issued the arming orders for General Honore, and who ordered the general to confiscate weapons?  Is this something he did of his own volition, or does the chain of command go yet higher in culpability?

General Honore knows something, and I have not yet given up on finding the truth, even though the government never intends to honor my request or federal law concerning the FOIA.  And if the reporters who wrote all of this about the general cared about real reporting rather than just parroting collectivist talking points brought to them by the handlers, they would help me find the truth.