Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Raw Story:

Minnesota Rep. Rick Nolan (D) on Wednesday defended his call for gun safety laws by joking that his Republican opponent might need a military-style assault rifle to shoot ducks, but he didn’t.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Nolan had told CBS News that an assault weapons ban was just “common sense.”

Nolan’s opponent, Stewart Mills, and the Minnesota Republican Party have pointed to the statement as evidence that the congressman wanted to limit gun rights.

“Stewart, what I said on CBS Face the Nation was that I don’t need an assault rifle to shoot a duck,” he explained at a debate for Minnesota’s 8th District on Tuesday. “And I don’t. Perhaps you do. Maybe you should spend more time at your shooting range.”

“The fact is, right now, you can only have three shells in your gun when you’re shooting ducks,” Nolan continued.

On Face The Nation, Nolan said:

… an assault weapons ban is “common sense legislation.”  “I’m a hunter. Believe in second amendment rights. But you know what? I don’t need an assault weapon to shoot a duck,” Nolan said. “And I think they ought to be banned, and I think we need to put a ban on the amount of shells you can carry in a magazine, and I think we have to strengthen our background checks.”

So I’m doubting that Mr. Nolan is really an avid hunter like he says.  In fact, given the duck hunting with assault rifles, shells in magazines and so forth, I’m concluding that Nolan doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

Someone named Carla Axtman is celebrating (perhaps prematurely) the potential passage of I-594 in the state of Washington.  With the gun control money pouring into the fight, this piece of legislation poses a real danger.

And the commentaries by the leftists are virtually breathless.  Consider what Alexander Zaitchik says at Salon.

Gottlieb’s controversial bill is a direct response to another initiative on the ballot, 594, which expands background checks to include sales at gun shows and over the Internet. It is polling high and expected to pass. If Washington votes “yes,” it will join the growing list of states that have taken gun policy into their own hands in the wake of Newtown. Both the NRA and Gottlieb’s organization oppose 594. But Gottlieb has done more than just denounce it. He has raised more than a million dollars to promote an alternative bill, 591, which would prohibit the state from ever ”requir[ing] background checks on the receipt of a firearm unless a uniform national standard is required.”

Can you spot the offending language? It’s this: “unless a uniform national standard is required.”

For Jeff Knox and much of the gun-rights movement, to even accept the future possibility of federal background check legislation constitutes apostasy. Some of the groups represented at the GRPC are the ones that, along with stalwarts like the NRA and Larry Pratt’s Gun Owners of America, mobilized in April 2013 to torpedo the Manchin-Toomey Senate bill, which would have closed background check loopholes across the country. After looking at the polling data, Gottlieb initially supported Manchin-Toomey as a way for the movement to get some “goodies” (such as relaxing laws on interstate gun sales) while supporting something that he thought was going to pass anyway. (Gottlieb later dropped his support when Chuck Schumer stripped the bill of Gottlieb’s prized “goodie.”)

Gottlieb’s early support for the Senate bill earned him names like “sellout” and “traitor.” But it’s now looking like he understood something his critics did not. Steadfast opposition to a federal background-check bill would give rise to a growing and well-funded movement for background-check referenda in the states. In Washington, the coalition behind 594 is supported by a group of wealthy donors, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, the head of the gun violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety. In his newsletter, Gottlieb describes their efforts as the “Billionaire’s Club war against freedom.”

So when Knox asked Gottlieb to defend the language of 591 at this year’s GRPC, attendees sat up in their seats. After a weekend filled with enough policy weeds to replant the Everglades, the confrontation amounted to high drama.

With his comb-over, pencil mustache, and brightly colored bowties, Alan Gottlieb has the presence of a harried, slightly eccentric accountant. But the Queens native is no dutiful CPA; he’s a convicted tax felon who does not flinch easily on questions of strategy, let alone challenges to his commitment to the Second Amendment. In the 1970s, while still in his twenties, Gottlieb began organizing the legal workshops that grew into the brain trust that won the landmark Supreme Court rulings of Heller and McDonald, which enshrined gun ownership in the home as an individual right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. At the podium in Chicago, Gottlieb welcomed the chance to deliver a blunt message to the background-check dead-enders who had been calling him a traitor since Manchin-Toomey.

“The bottom line is that” the background check issue “is different” from other gun gun policy debates, Gottlieb explained, pointing to public opinion. “What issues do you find that get 70 to 90 percent of the people to agree on anything?”

After Knox asserted that he doesn’t believe polls showing support for background checks, Gottlieb responded, “You may not believe the number, but I’ve seen well over 500 polls all across the country over the last six years on background checks. They all say the same damn thing. They’re not wrong, believe me.”

Knox countered with another reality: Many gun groups, especially those in the referendum states of the Southwest, are never going to sign off on background checks, ever, at any level. In Arizona, “I wouldn’t be able to get our members to proactively concede anything,” said Knox. His hardline solution is to “let them go ahead and deal with the consequences.”

By “them,” Knox means the feds. In the purist view, the best way to deal with any gun law is to dig in, take the hits, and ignore the law, forcing the government to “deal with the consequences.” Knox said he wished the NRA had taken that approach with the 1934 National Firearms Act, which regulated machine guns and banned short-barrel rifles.

To Gottlieb, that’s a doomed strategy. In any case, he stressed, “the Bloomberg people” know gun groups will never support background-check legislation, so they can “knock our teeth out and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He later added, “They’ve got us hogtied because they know we’re not going to change. I’m being honest with you. I’m not expecting you to change, but that’s why we’re going to lose.”

I’ve quoted extensively from the article (normally bad form, but it’s Salon so I don’t really care), so let’s deal with a few facts now.  First of all, good pollsters could get the vast majority of the American public to agree with the assertion that the man in the moon stayed alive by eating the green cheese the moon is made from.  Please stop citing polls to me.  Just stop.  Second, when posed this way, what percentage of the public would be in favor: “Would you favor background checks for all gun sales even if it involved bloodshed and possible civil war when warrants were served on otherwise peaceable Americans for selling guns person-to-person?”

As for Gottlieb, I always knew that the “stupid” act he played after support of Manchin-Toomey was a ruse.  He has a deep character flaw that enables him to support totalitarian measures.  We all have our flaws, but this one runs deep and dangerous.  In fact, read again his excuse for supporting universal background checks.  Basically it boils down to this: if you don’t voluntarily agree to it, they will do it anyway.  Or by way of analogy, if you don’t give a pick pocket you money, he’s just going to take it anyway.

Someone please try to convince me that isn’t what he is saying, because it looks to me like it is.  And that’s puerile and childish reasoning, and in this case I think he advances it not because he really believes that it is logically compelling, but because he is frightened, or a publicity hound, or something dark.  As I said, I don’t know exactly what, but the character flaw runs deep in Alan.

Queue it up, all of the polls, and money, and voters, and whatever else you want.  I will not submit to universal background checks and/or its corollary evil cousin a national gun registry.  We know why they want it.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

The writer at Salon has it all wrong, and Alan has it equally wrong.  Passing a bill is the easy part, and it isn’t the first in a string of compromises.  It will be the last straw.

David Codrea:

“That is nonsense,” he responded to the contention that arms are needed to defend freedom, revealing just where he stood (still stands?) on citizens resisting the tyranny he now warns against. “If the government wants to take your rights away or imprison you for whatever reason, your owning an assault rifle is not going to stop it.

Trying to take away my guns would be a very messy and ugly affair, and notice how Savage doesn’t say who exactly is going to do the taking.  Advocates of gun bans never consider that they advocate putting someone else in harm’s way.

Mike Vanderboegh has a long and interesting post on Ralph Peters’ book “Wars of Blood and Faith.”  Mike remarks:

Peters’ eye is focused on the world picture of 2007, not the American domestic reality as we experience it now after 7 years, most of them reflecting the neo-tyrannies of the Obama regime. Yet Peters’ description of the elites of both parties and of the permanent Mandarin bureaucracies that serve them is even more accurate today. And the disconnect between their collectivist ideologies /slash/ godless-religion and the deeply held beliefs of those of us who still revere the Founders, seek liberty, and worship the God of Abraham, Moses, David and the Christ could not be any more stark than that between us and the beheading savages of the Islamic State.

As I have observed before, we are a nation divided along the answer to the existential question, “Does the government serve the people or do the people serve the government?” This is a political question, yes. It is an intellectual question. It is a question of competing and mutually exclusive world views. It is thus also a moral question. It is a religious question. It is a question of blood and belief, to use Peters’ words.

I enjoyed Peters’ book and can always take away something from his interviews.  But I don’t always agree with him, and one specific black mark on his book is its tendency to lump all religious view into the same category.

But I too disagree with Peters and his diagnosis of the malady.  I must unfortunately wax philosophical for a moment and recommend that you read the first chapter of Gordon H. Clark’s “Religion, Reason and Revelation.”  Clark utterly demolishes all attempts to define religion by showing how those who would do so set out boundary conditions for the definition that reason in a circle (or assume the consequent).  It’s best to discuss these matters in terms of world view, or philosophical systems.  Christianity is a system, or world view, as much as Dewey’s instrumentalism, Mill’s utilitarianism, communism or any other ‘ism.  It just happens to be the truth, but that is beside the point.

The point is that communism is a faith as much as Christianity is a faith, and it is much of a world view as Christianity is a world view.  As far as Islam is concerned, it is a political faith more than anything else, and a totalitarian one at that.  There are many manifestations of evil, but the most prominent one in politics is totalitarianism.  Separating Islamists from communists isn’t a very useful or meaningful bifurcation, and I think Peters has missed the boat on this one.  Yesterday it was the communists, today it’s Islam, today and tomorrow it’s the contemporary manifestation of communism in America.  They are different faces of evil.  But “there is nothing new under the sun,” as the wise man said.

Salon:

Black men are routinely shot down by police in the country, that’s the bottom line. And while it’s certainly admirable for open carry advocates to stick to their principles and defend John Crawford’s right to carry a toy gun around Wal-Mart, it’s failing to see the forest for the trees. John Crawford, Michael Brown, Kajieme Powell, Levar Jones were all unarmed black men killed shot by police in the last few months. It wouldn’t have helped them to actually be carrying guns, real or otherwise.

Surely these open carry people, however well intentioned, should realize that nice white men and women openly carrying firearms on the street aren’t being gunned down on sight by police officers. The worst thing that happens to them is they are forced to show their ID. It’s unarmed black men (and unarmed mentally ill people of all races) who are being gunned down on sight by police officers. Are they agitating for their right to shoot cops? I doubt it. Nor should they be.

The problem isn’t that people don’t have enough guns. The problem is that police are too often using the guns they have. That won’t be solved by a bunch of average suburban white people wandering around public spaces with their rifles slung over their backs. Those aren’t the people most likely to be shot by police –whether they’re armed or not. They’re missing the point entirely.

In addition to confusing the Ohio stop and identify statute, which is oriented towards a legitimate “Terry Stop” rather than just any happenstance desire for the police to know someone’s identity (meaning that the Ohio police didn’t really have a right to stop the open carriers), the author is the one that misses the point.

Read her logic again.  Because – in her estimation – blacks are “gunned down” by police more than whites, the silly practice of open carry by whites is a meaningless contribution to liberty.  It misses the problem of over-zealous cops.  And while we can agree with the author about the over-zealous cops, we simply cannot agree on the notion that carrying weapons is a meaningless exercise of liberty and self protection.

The author would deny it, but her conclusion and end result is as racist as the Jim Crow laws in so many counties where the Sheriff reserves the right to deny gun ownership regardless of liberties and rights recognized by State Constitutions.  They are all racist and need to go the way of the dinosaur.

Another example of racism came up today in Disqus comments that drove a little bit of traffic to this site.

I can’t decide whether these comments were left by a feminist Sophomore international studies student at Dartmouth or scrawny boy in his mommy’s basement who has no job.  I’ll assume for former for the sake of argument.

First of all, the only reason that someone would invoke the issue of race is because she is thinking about it.  The only reason someone would think that gun owners and gun rights advocates would care about race is that they assume we are as racist and bigoted as they are.

For the record, I know his skin color.  The man has as much right to defend his life as anyone else, and in Texas he has a right to defend life and property.  Moreover, I don’t even care if the man was guilty of the crime of which he was charged (drugs).  If he thinks that someone is breaking into his home in the middle of the night, he has a God-given right to defend his life and the lives of his loved ones.  In fact, he has the duty to do so.  What you will find if you peruse this and similar sites is a consistent objection to thuggish and overbearing police tactics.  You will also find consistent support for the right to self defense regardless of race.  Consider David Codrea.

I addressed that question in principle many years ago, on the pioneering (and long-discontinued) GunTuths.com website in an essay titled “What the Panther Taught the Eagle: A Modern Folk Tale.” It involved about 50 armed members of the New Black Panthers who were counter-demonstrating against the Ku Klux Klan in Jasper, Texas, after James Byrd, a black man, had been kidnapped by three racist whites, chained to the back of a truck, dragged for miles down a country road and decapitated upon hitting a culvert.

“The Panther’s historic affinity for Marxist dogma notwithstanding, their stand demonstrates the true meaning and power behind the Second Amendment’s guarantee that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” I wrote at the time. “The truth is, the Panthers applied the right to bear arms in exactly the way it was intended to be – in defense of their lives and their rights. Their presence deterred violence against them. They did not engage in unwarranted violence. Their stand should be applauded as an example by all who believe that this is a right of all free people.”

Consider also Kurt Hofmann:

What Sugarmann did not point out then, and is certainly not pointing out now, is that the vast majority of the murderers of African-Americans are also black (91.1% then, 89.4% now). In other words, Sugarmann makes an issue of the fact that almost 57% of black homicides are committed with handguns, while pretending to ignore the vastly stronger correlation of race. If the focus for reducing black homicide, then, “must” be on “reducing access to firearms,” then whose access must be reduced?

“No guns for negroes,” all over again, right in line with the shameful history of American “gun control.”

And shameful it is.  All Jim Crow laws should fall.  I am told that the opposition to open carry in South Carolina by powerful state senator Larry Martin was because those horrible Negros down around Charleston might open carry and thus affect the tourism industry in South Carolina.  Larry Martin is an enemy of liberty.

Now on a personal note.  As to being a “wingnut” blog and my readers being “zoo critters,” let me tell you something deary.  I chew through people like you like I chew through a tenderloin.  I enjoy it.  You feel free to step into my back yard and run with the big dogs any time you feel froggy.  Be warned, though.  We play rough.

And drop the racism.  It betrays an evil heart.  Oh, and by the way, thanks for the traffic today.

Fox News:

Australian counterterrorism forces detained 15 people Thursday in a series of suburban raids after receiving intelligence that the Islamic State militant group was planning public beheadings in two Australian cities to demonstrate its reach.

About 800 federal and state police officers raided more than a dozen properties across 12 Sydney suburbs as part of the operation — the largest in Australian history, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Andrew Colvin told the Associated Press. A sword was removed as part of evidence at one of the homes.

Separate raids in the eastern cities of Brisbane and Logan were also conducted.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the plan involved kidnapping randomly selected members of the public off the streets in Sydney and Brisbane, beheading them on camera, and releasing the recordings through Islamic State’s propaganda arm in the Middle East.

[ … ]

A second man was charged Thursday night in connection with the raids. The 24-year-old, who police didn’t name, was charged with possessing ammunition without license and unauthorized possession of a prohibited weapon. He was released on bail and ordered to appear in court next week.

Most readers probably pondered how ISIS was able to infiltrate a country and the awful acts they were prepared to perpetrate.  I didn’t.  My thoughts ran immediately to the fact that at least one of the individuals had a “prohibited” weapon and ammunition.  As with all gun control, law abiding citizens are unarmed and unprotected, while the criminals have their weapons.

Australia has some of the most restrictive gun control laws on earth.  We’ve discussed this before.  An Australian farmer lost his fight to obtain a handgun to shoot feral hogs because he couldn’t satisfy the woman heading the “administrative tribunal” that he really needed the gun.

The response to the ISIS members in Australia points out several important things.  First of all, gun control doesn’t apply to those in charge.  Law enforcement will always have their weapons.  Second, when law enforcement acts, they do so in order to secure the hive, or the collective.  Their concern isn’t and wasn’t for any particular individual who may have been (or will be) targeted by ISIS, because if it was, they would allow people to be armed for purposes of self defense.  But actions directed against the collective is a threat to their command and control, and will not be allowed.

So do the ordinary people feel threatened?

Is D.C. finally finished fighting the supreme and appeals courts and the constitution of the United States?

Within weeks, civilian gun owners could be free to apply to carry a concealed weapon in the nation’s capital for the first time in decades, after a federal judge’s ruling prompted city leaders to create new firearms law.

The proposed law, set to be unveiled at a Wednesday afternoon news conference, was drafted by city officials after the city’s long-standing ban on carrying firearms in public was declared unconstitutional in July.

D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), who played a lead role in developing the gun-carry proposal and spoke about it ahead of the news conference, said the emergency legislation put together in recent weeks will be scheduled for a council vote on Tuesday.

The bill, Mendelson said, will permit city residents who own duly registered handguns and non-residents who hold state carrying licenses to apply to the D.C. police for a concealed carry permit. So-called open carry, such as the wearing of a weapon in a holster, will not be allowed under the proposed law, he said.

D.C. carry permits will be issued on a “may carry” basis, giving great discretion to D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier on who will be allowed to carry firearms in the city. Applicants will have to state a reason for seeking a permit, Mendelson said.

So things are not so well in D.C. after all.  “May issue” states become no issue states in practice unless they are forced by law to be otherwise.  The wealthy, politically connected and powerful get their permits, while others have to demonstrate why they need one to the approval of the top cop, as if self defense isn’t good enough and the constitution doesn’t speak loudly enough on the issue.

There is more from The Washington Times: “People who have a “good reason” to feel threatened — for example, stalking victims — would be able to seek a concealed carry permit for a legally owned handgun under a new D.C. law proposed Thursday. But those with generalized fears, such as apprehension about living in a neighborhood with high crime, would not be considered eligible for such a permit, officials say.”

I sense yet another court case – or cases – coming for D.C.  Apparently they haven’t given up being totalitarians.  They like their control and aren’t ready to share it yet.

Someone named Amanda Gailey drones on and on and on about all sorts of unrelated anti-gun propaganda at Salon (does anyone really still read Salon?), and I became rather bored rather quickly with the profuse gushing.  But something wonderful happened in the comments.  This is the summary.

Xanthro:

So, if you have a firearm in your pocket, and 100 people decide to randomly attack you in the Kroger’s parking lot, you being scared in that situation is a sign of mental issue in your mind?

GrantS:

You effin moron. We call that a civilized society. If you are afraid of society, use your gun and take yourself out of it.

Some people!! Do you think up of fantastically unrealistic scenarios on a daily basis?

If one person had the gun, and nobody else did, the one with the gun will scare everyone else. They are usually the nutjob.

But this collectivist piling on commenter Xanthro wasn’t enough.  There had to be another.

RationalGuy:

Thinking that it might happen is a sign of mental illness.

RationalGuy wasn’t being too rational at the time of his reply.  Xanthro responded this way.

It didn’t might happen, it actually happened in early September.

You must feel pretty foolish right about now.

I’m sure they didn’t feel foolish at all.  They just probably went on to the next shouting match.  Of course, Xanthro was talking about the recent mob attack in the parking lot of a Kroger in Memphis.

I read the anti-gunners so you don’t have to.  I read Salon so you don’t have to.  But just occasionally this job ain’t so bad.  Just occasionally something rich and wonderful happens.  When collectivists humiliate themselves in front of others, it’s always nice to watch.  Salon gives us plenty of opportunity to do so – which is the only reason to read Salon that I can find.

Herald Tribune:

You’re at the range.

A longtime friend comes over and asks if he could try your handgun, as he’s contemplating buying one.

Of course you agree. That’s what gun owners do.

If this scenario occurs in Washington State after the passage of Initiative 594, both of you have broken the law.

Initiative 594 would classify this as a transfer — something that would require paperwork, fees, a waiting period and if it involves a handgun, government registration.

The proposed legislation doesn’t even recognize a loan among family members.

A dad couldn’t loan a shotgun to his son on opening day without the proper paperwork.

I am not kidding.

It’s a registration scheme disguised as  “Universal background check” legislation.

I-594 is perhaps the most ill-conceived ballot initiative I’ve ever seen. Sure, there are gun laws that have been more harmful, such as those with “ban” in the title. Few, however, are so poorly thought out.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of money rolling in to support the ballot initiative. Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates have donated millions.

NRA and other gun groups are getting involved.

Washington gun owners are pushing back hard.  They have created a must-read website, and are getting the word out via social media.

Their handy “pocket guide” explains the bill very clearly.

Well, there are many bad gun laws, and it’s hard to pick out the worst one.  But it’s seems true that the recent surrender on the assault weapons ban by the anti-gunners is a misdirect.  It isn’t what they’re really interested in.  This is what they really want.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

All gun control is wicked, but perhaps the most wicked is the government desire to catalog all gun owners and their weapons.  Fight it, never surrender.  Never give one inch.  Never compromise.  Never.  Don’t even consider it.  Ever.

David Codrea:

Rejecting calls for more federal gun laws by the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union, a dozen rabbis have issued a joint statement rebuking the position of those groups, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership announced Monday in a member alert and press release.

Offering their statement “in support of Jewish law, Jewish life and Jewish self-defense,” the dissenting rabbis refuted justifications given by the religious groups for promoting disarmament edicts … “Jewish history supports self-defense,” the rabbis declared. “It is remarkable that the RCA and OU have ignored the long Jewish history of persecution.

Of course it does.  My Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense relies on Biblical law – including O.T. law – for the case for self defense.  Jews are like “Christians” (I use quotes), in that some folks who call themselves Christians are not (perhaps a lot of folks), and while being Jewish is an ethnic thing, believing Biblical law isn’t.  There are many Jews who would sell out their own people.  Jews they are not.  Remember, I’ve talked to one.

Mike Vanderboegh on the hidden hazards of MRAPs.  Yea, that’s not all.  Watch over time and see just how many police forces will give them back or let them rot and rust in the fields or parking lots, unable to pay the thousands of dollars to buy a new tire when one goes flat, or send them back for maintenance because no one around them knows how to work on them.  This is especially true given the unfunded liabilities America faces, helping along the process of telling police that their retirements are in jeopardy (like Memphis had to do), or telling the Miami-Dade police they may no longer have jobs.

Shreveport Times:

Many assume police officers are rigorously trained before being allowed to patrol the streets.

But drive through rural Louisiana and it’s possible to be stopped by a law enforcement officer who’s never experienced a day of police academy and instruction on use of force, stressful scenarios and physical fitness that comes with it. Sometimes, an eight-hour firearms training and on-the-job guidance is all an officer gets before starting work as a salaried, gun-toting, arrest-making officer.

Due to a permissive aspect of state law, a hodgepodge of different standards can crop up from one small agency to the next. It’s a pattern experts say puts police departments, and the public, at risk.

You mean that cops aren’t trained as much as I am, and as much as I pursue on a regular basis for requalification with my firearm?  Actually, I’m not so much convinced that the problem is with training.  The problem stems from seeing themselves as something other than peace officers who are servants of the people.

The U.S. Army is worried about too few black officers and thus is making plans to increase said minority in the officer corps.  And the diminution of the armed forces continues unabated.

Daily Mail:

Islamist police in Saudi Arabia have stormed a Christian prayer meeting and arrested its entire congregation, including women and children, and confiscated their bibles, it has been reported.

The raid was the latest incident of a swingeing crackdown on religious minorities in Saudi Arabia by the country’s hard-line Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. 

The 28 Christians were said to be worshipping at the home of an Indian national in the eastern city of Khafji, when the police entered the building and took them into custody. They have not been seen or heard from since, raising concerns among human rights groups as to their whereabouts.

To all such Islamists: May God bring your plans to naught.  May your families revile you, may you lose your women and children, may you become sick and perish in ignominy.  Before you perish, may you watch as your country diminishes to ashes, may you see your belongings stolen from under your nose, may your children curse and strike you, and may your weeping be loud so that your countrymen can hear your lamentations.

And if you ever try that here, I will shoot your ass off and your intestines out of your stomach and leave your body for the vultures to consume, right after pouring swine innards over your open wounds.

ProPublica:

The morning after the Sandy Hook shootings, Shannon Watts, a mother of five and a former public relations executive, started a Facebook page called “One Million Moms for Gun Control.” It proved wildly popular and members quickly focused on renewing the federal ban on military style assault weapons.

“We all were outraged about the fact that this man could use an AR-15, which seemed like a military grade weapon, and go into an elementary school and wipe out 26 human beings in less than five minutes,” Watts said.

Nearly two years later, Watts works full-time as the head of the group, now named Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is a significant player in a coalition financed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But while polls suggest a majority of Americans still support an assault weapons ban, it is no longer one of Watts’ top priorities.

“We’ve very much changed our strategy to focus on public safety measures that will save the most lives,” she told ProPublica.

It’s not just that the ban proved to be what Watts calls a “nonstarter” politically, gaining fewer votes in the Senate post-Sandy Hook than background check legislation. It was also that as Watts spoke to experts and learned more about gun violence in the United States, she realized that pushing for a ban isn’t the best way to prevent gun deaths.

A 2004 Justice Department-funded evaluation found no clear evidence that the decade-long ban saved any lives. The guns categorized as “assault weapons” had only been used in about 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. “Should it be renewed,” the report concluded, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

With more information, Watts decided that focusing on access to guns, not types of guns, was a smarter approach. She came to the same conclusion that other gun control groups had reached even before the Sandy Hook shootings: “Ultimately,” she said, “what’s going to save the most lives are background checks.”

So in other words, we (the control freaks) lost, we were wrong, and we admit it.  Or perhaps we don’t admit it so much as we have to give a reason for our “pivot” to universal background checks.  But we all know why you’re interested in that.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

But you’ve tried that one too.  You lost.  And you’ll lose again, and even if you won, it wouldn’t have any more effect than does your much heralded assault weapons ban.

Because this isn’t about guns and safety and you know it.  As for your pivot, bring it.  ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.