Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

One person thinks they know the mind of Jesus concerning weapons.  “Guns are only allowed in bars if the person carrying the weapon doesn’t drink. Jesus and the disciples didn’t carry in church because no one else did.”

This is what happens when idiots write letters.  Guns didn’t exist in the time of Jesus, but swords did, and Jesus told his disciples to carry them.  As for church, I think his ninja use of the whip (Matthew 21:12) was enough to convince most people of his seriousness.  And just to emphasize the point concerning people who refuse to consider their role in protecting the little ones, I said:

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.

Those who want to worship hippie Jesus should move to the corner of Haight and Ashbury – and stop writing idiot letters.

Religious Herald:

Nearly 200 interfaith religious leaders — including at least a dozen Baptists — took out a full-page ad in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Feb. 26 to oppose a bill in the Georgia legislature which would lift restrictions on guns in houses of worship and bars.

So in other words, nearly 200 “pastors” in the Atlanta area believe that God answers to the state.  This is a precursor to a new featured article I have coming (but is not yet ripe).  The totalitarians are among us.  They don’t live inside the beltway, they mooch off of hard workers, they cast their lot with the state, they worship the collective, and they live near and around you.  You know them.

To this article on Chuck Hagel, one commenter says “Hey Chuck, why don’t you have three more scotches and pass out on it, maybe you will change your mind if you can remember what you said yesterday.”  It appears that Chuck is a well known Washington drunk.  Another commenter says “If a grenade happened to be tossed in a room with Chuck Hagel and myself, I would have to do the right thing and push him on top of it.”  It would be a fitting end, no?

Kurt Hofmann:

I’m beginning to wonder whether we have any idea about what’s at stake when we give civilians the right to walk around with a gun.

No, that’s not Kurt.  Kurt is quoting someone who allegedly sells guns, and if he feels this way, he is violating his conscience and sinning against God and man.  On top of that he is a hypocrite and thug trying to make money doing things he thinks is bad.  He is nothing more than a whore.

David Codrea:

In the wake of public unrest where the government used deadly force against protestors, the Ukrainian Gun Owners Association has proposed an amendment to the nation’s constitution …

Finish reading the proposal at David’s place.  And there you have it.  The difference between free men and slaves.

Mike Vanderboegh has crafted an open letter to the tyrants in Connecticut responsible for the obscene gun law, and this is well worth the read.  Mike has also published a list of the names of all legislators who voted for the Connecticut gun law along with their addresses, and Mike has published their list of email addresses here.  Visit Mike’s site, take a few minutes and do what you know needs to be done.

But I have a few words for Mike, and then a few for the communists in Connecticut.  Mike says the following.

Indeed we are all His sons and daughters, and I am grateful for Paul’s prayerful reminder to me of Who I serve. However, you may conclude from my opening that I am struggling with that “diplomacy” part …

It’s okay Mike.  Cease your struggling.  While I do admire and respect you so very much, I disagree profoundly on this point.  We are most certainly not all sons and daughters of God.  The fact that we are all made in His image only heightens their guilt and highlights the distinction.

People tend to remember what they want to hear.  So for example, at Christmas people remember this: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace …,” and that’s about it.  What the passage really says is this: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”  Jesus also said to the Pharisees “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44).

And God is not pleased with the men and women of Connecticut who voted in favor this this law.  God hates totalitarians of all stripes, all persuasions, in every form and manifestation and at all times in history.  Notice that I didn’t say He hates totalitarianism but loves totalitarians.  He does not.  He hates them both.  Satan is a totalitarian.

Speaking of totalitarians, David tells us once again what it looks like.  It means putting the lives of animals above humans who are made in God’s image.  We’ve seen this before, haven’t we?

So I’m not saying what I would and wouldn’t do to help my brothers in Connecticut, and this post isn’t dedicated to outlining my actions or lack thereof.  That would be stupid.  But here is one thing I can start with.  And this prayer applies to Senator Larry Martin of Pickens, Bobby Timmons of Alabama, and the legislators of Connecticut.

“Oh Lord, the last time I prayed an imprecatory prayer it was against Arlen Specter who was soon diagnosed with cancer, so I do this with much thought and trepidation.  All of the legislators who have voted the recent gun laws into effect in Connecticut have voted to inhibit man’s ability to defend and protect himself and his little ones.

Thus they have offended the Almighty, the most high God, the only sovereign and only potentate.  You have said that it would be better for a millstone to be hung around their necks.  So I pray that you would visit your wrath on them and their families to suffer for the sake of the little ones.

Teach them to obey your laws, teach them the value of human life, teach them that it is their duty both to defend their own little ones and help men and women to do the same.  If they refuse to learn, bring condemnation upon them, bring their means and ends to complete ruination, and inflict them with the reputation forever of being haters of God and haters of children.

Let their progeny remember and think of their lives for generations to come, throughout the lives of the children’s children’s children, and let them remember that their predecessors were evil men and women who would rule with a harsh hand and bitter tongue.

Bring the designs of their lives to naught, bring their aims to nothing, and bring their power down low where it is once again possible in Connecticut to defend families as God designed.

Amen.”

The Week:

Or, as one member of the range put it, “When it comes to gun laws, there’s the whole country, and then there’s New York.” While that may be a slight exaggeration, New York is indeed the polar opposite of lax states like Utah, Alaska, and Arizona, and is arguably the toughest in the country to own a gun. Here, no one is actually entitled to possess a firearm, at least not until the police give the go-ahead.

“Your right can never be taken away from you,” continued Leung, “but your privilege can be revoked at any given time. The NYPD is the licensing entity. They can add any kinds of stipulations they want. And they don’t have to explain why.”

It makes sense to keep guns on a short leash, Leung acknowledges, because “you want people to realize this is not a toy …

As we were talking, a middle-aged man in a grey suit who was carrying a black plastic case sat down at the table next to us. He unlocked it, removed a 9mm Beretta and nonchalantly placed the pistol on the table. Then he took out a box of bullets and started loading them into a magazine, one by one.

First a comment about putting a “box of bullets” on the table and filling his magazine.  They weren’t “bullets,” they were cartridges.  Second, this is extremely bad form.  No magazines get loaded until on range, with weapons pointed downrange.  This is true of everywhere I shoot, many places.  They have no concept of range safety.

Second, this range owner is a sad testimony to the mentality of pitiful New Yorkers who unwisely rely on the police for protection they cannot (and have no intention to) provide.  The police have usurped God’s authority, who commands the ability of self defense and defense of the little ones.

If the police have usurped God’s authority, the people have abdicated their responsibility and duty before the Almighty.  They will answer for that one awful day, along with collectivists who put them in that position to begin with.  Evil with the one doesn’t obviate the other.  I’m sorry for my New York readers who are good, honest folk and who don’t live in NYC.  But if you’re like this range owner, you deserve everything you get.

Hell will freeze over before I ever abdicate my God-given rights to own guns to a cop or judge.  Oh, and since I haven’t mentioned it in a few weeks, to Remington, Kimber and any other gun manufacturer in the empire state: why are you still there?

What will it take with you?  My most recent rifle purchase was a Winchester Model 70 rather than a Remington 700.  My Model 70 will be made right down the road from me in Columbia, S.C.

In Idaho, “Republicans resurrected a measure to punish Idaho law enforcement officers who help confiscate federally banned firearms, fearing President Barack Obama’s administration could try to take their guns … Hagedorn says this year’s measure is “much friendlier” to law enforcement, though it calls for a civil penalty of $1,000 for those found guilty.”  A fine is “weak tea” for a true nullification law.

Attention in Kansas is focused down the food chain rather than the other direction.  “A Kansas House committee is taking up legislation stripping cities and counties of any power to regulate guns or block the open carrying of firearms.”

Finally, a bill has made its way through the Senate in Missouri (again) on nullification.  “Missouri senators endorsed legislation on Tuesday that seeks to nullify U.S. gun restrictions and send federal agents to jail for enforcing such laws, though the measure would likely face a court challenge if it gets approved in the state.”

This is just as I’ve recommended (State prison time for federal agents), although if it goes to federal court and is overturned (as it would certainly be in federal court), then it was never really a nullification law at all.  Federal court rulings would have to be ignored in order to meet the definition of a nullification law.

But now from the factual to the comical.  If you live in one of these states or if you endorse such an idea, Adam Weinstein thinks you’re a redneck.

Since the time of John Calhoun in South Carolina, nullification doctrine—the fancy-bred, college-educated stepbrother of those mental deficients, the militia and sovereign citizen movements—has held that America’s several states have the right to nullify federal laws that infringe on their constitutional liberties. Unless we’re talking about the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment rights of minorities in these nullificationist states, in which case their freedom is totally treading on our freedom, dude.

But no matter. Liberty-loving bears of small brain have found a five-syllable word, and it must necessarily lead to their promised land. Kansas and Alaska have already passed gun nullification laws, while Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Missouri have been pushing. Nine states, led by Montana, have passed laws asserting that gunmakers in their states are exempt from federal regulations, and so they can make all the full-auto machine guns and assault weapons they want.

The real fun comes when local politicians and law enforcement officers get in the nullification game: Nearly 250 sheriffs from Oregon to California to Arizona to Minnesota have written open letters defying federal gun laws and threatening to arrest U.S. government officials working in their jurisdictions. One rural Florida sheriff even beat prosecution last fall for releasing (and destroying evidence related to) a suspect who’d illegally held a concealed weapon.

It’s fun times in America when libertarians and John Birchers are openly praising law enforcement officers for picking and choosing which laws they’ll enforce, you know, to protect the good, law-abiding folk from federal interference. What could go wrong?

Right after that are pictures of blacks being brutalized over civil rights protests.  What else would you expect out of Gawker, right?  A false analogy between civil rights and a supposed right to take weapons away from the citizens, eh, so what?

To Adam, it’s all about invoking emotion rather than making any kind of rational argument.  It’s okay if the argument is self defeating because Adam happened to ignore the fact that gun owners are fighting for their rights too.  As long as Adam can hurl an insult, it was a good day.

One commenter makes the following remark:

Yes, they’ve been trying this on every law they don’t like

They should all be informed that the FBI will be paying them a visit, with swat (sic) teams if necessary should they pull this.

It’s reall (sic) time we joined the civilized world and eliminated state government. They’re always howling that were one nation under god. Well, one nation has one set of laws. At the same time we remove gerrymandering. Put in place huge restrictions with huge penalties to, (sic) prevent it happening again. And add additional senators to strip the power of the rednecks to obstruct and abuse.

The south (sic) was never punished for the civil war. Hardly a man even was out on probation for their treason, and that’s why we have the problems we have today. It’s a good tine to start. And it’s a better time to stop,folimf (sic) lawsuits, and arrest, arrest, arrest.

Another commenter remarks:

I guarantee you that these are the same knuckleheads that also vote for laws that allow teachers to lead prayers in schools under the guise of “freedom from religious persecution.”

Concerning the second commenter, not necessarily.  For instance, I strongly advocate home schooling (partially) in order to avoid indoctrination into statist, collectivist thinking like yours.  You never got the chance to decide on prayer in my school and I didn’t have to convince your ilk of anything.  I had my own school.

Concerning the first commenter, this is a bit more serious.  He is unabashedly advocating open, unmitigated war.  I never did and still do not believe that firearms owners or patriots will fire the first shot.  But if the second is fired in self defense, it won’t be just one shot by one person.

And it won’t come from just one gun.  The commenter may want to reconsider armchair generalship, and think hard about issuing orders he wouldn’t obey himself because he is a coward, while he sends tens of thousands of men to their deaths.  To be sure, it would be a bloody war.  The collectivists are advised to consider the costs.

ABC News:

In 1996 the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to pull millions of dollars out of government-funded firearms research. This has resulted in essentially a 17 year moratorium on major studies about gun injuries, which claim the lives of more than 1,000 children a year in the United States.

This is a candidate for the dumbest paragraph I’ve ever seen written in the Main Stream Media.  Note it’s obviously progressive position.

The fact that the government isn’t funding silly studies with liberal university professors or the CDC isn’t simply the market deciding what it will sustain and what it won’t.  It isn’t simply letting people and their dollars and cents sort out what is worth something and what isn’t.

No, lobbying Congress to stop funding ridiculous studies amounts to a “moratorium” on major studies.  That’s right.  It’s now somehow prohibited, illegal, or banned.

I don’t know of any particular subject that is banned, and certainly not guns or gun statistics.  But to the progressive, pulling funding dollars from our tax money is justification enough to throw around a word that means something is banned, or in other words, it’s justification enough to lie.

Caitlin Dickson at The Daily Beast:

“Gun control has never been about guns. It’s about control,” declared Jan Morgan, gun rights activist and head of a group called Armed American Women. At a South Carolina Tea Party convention earlier this month, Morgan promoted the thoroughly debunked theory that gun control allowed Hitler’s rise to power. “In the twentieth century folks, 170 million people have been annihilated by their own governments after being disarmed,” she claimed. “So, don’t let anybody tell you that disarming America is going to make us a safer place.”

We’ve discussed this before, and no one to my knowledge has ever alleged that gun control generally had anything to do with Hitler’s rise to power or the Nazi machine within Germany.  It had to do with gun control specifically.  Or in other words, it wasn’t gun control that was the problem.  It was gun control as applied to so-called enemies of the state, while the Nazis had all the guns they wanted.

But read Caitlin again.  This idea hasn’t just been debunked.  It has been “thoroughly debunked.”  And her source?  Why, Salon, to be sure.  That’s what happens when ditzy girls who write for The New Republic and The Daily Beast become … ahem … researchers.  Fringe factor indeed.

There is movement on the issue of mental health and gun ownership, but we’ll get to that in a moment.  First in order to set the stage, Michael Hammond writing at The Washington Times has done a good job of explaining the stakes.

The 1968 Gun Control Act bans guns for anyone who is “adjudicated as a mental defective or … committed to a mental institution.” Unfortunately, under 2008 NICS Improvement Act, drafted by Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, and its regulations, that “adjudication” can be made by any “other lawful authority.” This means a diagnosis by a single psychiatrist in connection with a government program.

In the case of nearly 175,000 law-abiding veterans, the “lawful authority” has been a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist, who, generally, will take away a veteran’s guns by unilaterally declaring him incompetent and appointing a guardian over his financial affairs. Certainly, the findings can be appealed, but most veterans don’t have the tens of thousands of dollars to hire lawyers and psychiatrists to do so.

Although the problem hasn’t yet been as apparent in other areas, police and firemen on Social Security disability for post-traumatic stress disorder, Medicare seniors with Alzheimer’s, and people who as children were diagnosed under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act program with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder will ultimately face the same fate. Even a subsidized Obamacare policy might now make Americans participants in a federal program.

In fact, that process of expanding gun bans has now begun:

One gun owner in a virulently anti-gun state was placed on the gun-ban blacklist because many years ago, police, without the approval of any court, put him in a mental facility overnight. The facility found nothing wrong with him, but that didn’t stop his state from recently turning him in to the FBI for a lifetime gun ban.

In another case, a gun owner in an anti-gun state lost his guns because of a prescription for a psychiatric drug.

Bob Unruh explains how this happens with veterans.

And just a few days ago Mike Vanderboegh provided strong evidence that this is happening on a wide scale.  Returning to Bob’s article, he asks the important questions.  “As with most things, the devil is in the details. What is mental illness? Who is mentally ill? How mentally ill must one be to warrant revocation of a fundamental human right? Who makes that determination? Who is ‘normal,’ and how ‘normal’ do they have to be to own guns?”

Now to what David Codrea reported just today about the movement afoot to make the problem even more sweeping in scope.

In a chat session this month with the liberal magazine Texas Monthly, Cornyn revealed he and Lindsay Graham will introduce a bill strengthening the NICS federal gun owner registration database and place more Americans on lifetime gun ban lists.

There are no doubt good people who believe that such a thing is good for public safety.  Cornyn and Graham aren’t among that crowd.  They know better and would sell the souls of their own mothers if it would be beneficial to their careers.  It isn’t to them that I speak.  Nothing can change them, and so the only remedy for us is to change their jobs.

We’ve dealt with this before, this notion that the mental health profession is like any other, that it can pull the right levers, punch the right buttons, and administer the right drugs to fix mankind.  But listen to them in their own words.

Dr. J. Michael Bostwick, Mayo Clinic: “We physicians generally do not know enough about firearms to have an informed conversation with our patients, let alone counsel them about gun safety.”  He continues by arguing:

• Even if every mentally ill person in the country were registered, the system isn’t prepared to handle them — and only about half of the states require registration.
• Only about 10 percent of mentally ill people are registered — and these are people who have been committed, they’ve come to attention in a way that requires court intervention.
• Literature says the vast majority of people who do these kinds of shootings are not mentally ill — or it is recognized after the fact.
• The majority of mentally ill people aren’t dangerous.

Dr. Richard Friedman: ” … there is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that the vast majority of people with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts. Only about 4 percent of violence in the United States can be attributed to people with mental illness.”

Dr. Barry Rosenfeld: “”We’re not likely to catch very many potentially violent people” with laws like the one in New York.”

Dr. Steven Hoge: “One reason even experienced psychiatrists are often wrong is that there are only a few clear signs that a person with a mental illness is likely to act violently.”

And National Journal notes the following.

Perhaps most important, although people with serious mental illness have committed a large percentage of high-profile crimes, the mentally ill represent a very small percentage of the perpetrators of violent crime overall. Researchers estimate that if mental illness could be eliminated as a factor in violent crime, the overall rate would be reduced by only 4 percent. That means 96 percent of violent crimes—defined by the FBI as murders, robberies, rapes, and aggravated assaults—are committed by people without any mental-health problems at all. Solutions that focus on reducing crimes by the mentally ill will make only a small dent in the nation’s rate of gun-related murders, ranging from mass killings to shootings that claim a single victim.  It’s not just that the mentally ill represent a minority of the country’s population; it’s also that the overlap between mental illness and violent behavior is poor.

I won’t continue since we’ve covered this in detail before.  To my readers who believe that this has anything to do with public safety, you need to be dissuaded from such foolishness.  This has nothing to do with the decreased rate of forcible admissions to mental health facilities, and nothing to do with an increase in mental health problems, and nothing to do with the availability of guns.  And it has nothing to do with turning out patients from the asylums, no matter what you’ve been told.

Crime is a moral choice.  I know this is uncomfortable for some of my readers, because it forces you to think about things like value judgments and the roots of morality.  It all has such a deontological ring to it, and it suggests that mankind may not just be the product of primordial slime – that there is someone to whom we must answer.

But I don’t care one iota about your discomfort.  The mental health profession simply cannot sustain the weight of burden you wish to place on it.  It cannot tell you who will do what, or give enough medications to fix what ails mankind.  It cannot control individuals who are moral agents making their own choices.

And those who would rule us know this too.  They know that the mental health profession cannot function in this role, and yet the sweep of the proposed rules keeps increasing, the dragnet keeps expanding, and the Senators keep going along to get along.  So what does this tell you about why they want to expand the mental health dragnet?  When will you be adjudicated mentally defective because you believe that being armed is the surest way to ameliorate tyranny in America?

NJ.com:

Gov. Chris Christie continues to support New Jersey’s gun-control laws, a spokesman said today, even as his attorney general declines to defend one of the toughest laws of all in a major case before the state Supreme Court.

Twice last year, the Republican governor’s administration did not defend a state law on handgun permits that was being challenged in state appellate courts, attorneys in the cases and court officials told The Star-Ledger today.

Instead, Christie left it to county prosecutors to defend the state’s handgun law against constitutional challenges — a legal move that experts say is rare in New Jersey.

One of the cases, a lawsuit brought by Richard Pantano of Monmouth County, is now pending before the state Supreme Court. Christie’s attorney general — who usually defends all state laws in civil cases — is not participating in that case.

A spokesman for the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office today confirmed they will defend the law instead of the attorney general.

In a separate case decided Monday, an appeals court upheld two gun-control measures and noted the attorney general “regrettably” declined to defend the state’s laws despite being the state’s “chief law enforcement officer.” The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office defended them instead.

“The governor supports New Jersey’s already tough gun laws,” Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said today …

Pantano’s case is probably the most important gun rights case ever brought in New Jersey, and concerns the state of New Jersey being a may-issue state and whether a citizen must prove to the CLEO that there is documented peril before getting a concealed carry permit.

Absent.  That’s where Chris Christie’s attorney general is.  Absent without leave, or if you wish UA (unauthorized absence).  Oh, the attorney general has the approval from Christie to be absent, but not the electorate.

Remember, this is the man who would be running for President of the U.S.  He supports New Jersey’s strong gun laws, but he doesn’t want to show the rest of red state America that he does by giving the progressive media a chance to highlight his gun grabber credentials before the world.

He is a coward, and his cowardliness doesn’t change the fact that he is a gun grabber from way back.  He made is fame in New Jersey pushing tough gun laws.  America should remember his duplicity when it comes time to enter the voting booth.

Prior: Chris Christie On Guns Tag

We’ve already discussed a couple of horrible embarrassments uncovered in the ruling on the New York SAFE Act gun ban recently issued by Judge Skretny, but more on that in a moment.

My brother Keith is a graduate of Emory Law School and practicing attorney in Georgia, and clerked for a federal judge.  I know that he has fealty to scholarship and takes his commitment to study, hard work and defensible and logical prose very seriously.  That said, lawyers take it on the chin, and properly so, and my brother once told me the best lawyer joke I ever heard (“99.99% of all lawyers give the rest of us a bad name”).  We’ll come back to this later.

David Codrea is covering John Lott’s analysis of the ruling by Judge Skretny, and has some excerpts and observations that warrant our attention.

“The decision relied heavily on testimony by George Mason University criminology professor Chris Koper, who argued ‘that the criminal use of assault weapons declined after the federal assault-weapons ban was enacted in 1994, independently of trends in gun crime,’” Lott wrote. “But Koper’s two studies on the 1994 federal assault-weapons ban don’t support his claims.”

They state:

“[T]he evidence is not strong enough for us to conclude that there was any meaningful effect [of the weapons ban],” the initial study reported.

“[W]e cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence,” the second study concluded. “And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

John Lott and I had an odd run-in several months ago, and he has with Mike Vanderboegh as well.  But not being trifling or holding grudges, let’s observe that Lott’s analysis is important.  So one important feature of the analysis is that the very studies cited by the Judge do not bear out the claims.  But then there is this gem.  The ruling also cites the online magazine Mother Jones.  Just so that you heard that, let’s repeat it.  Judge Skretny’s ruling uses information from … Mother … Jones!

Earlier we learned from Kurt Hofmann that there is logical contradiction in the ruling.  The very logical process the Judge uses to deem the magazine cartridge limit in the SAFE law “arbitrary” isn’t applied to the guns themselves, and should have been.  Furthermore, we’ve seen that the Judge Skretny’s ruling invokes the ridiculous and laughable notion of spray firing from the hip (for semiautomatic weapons, no less) to rule pistol grips on long guns to be legitimately within the sweep of the law, ignoring (or simply not learning) that no one, not military or civilian, spray fires from the hip, and such a practice would not only be the most ineffective thing a rogue shooter could do, it would get you permanently kicked out of every range in America, and for very good reason.

So the list of silly, ridiculous, sophomoric stunts in the ruling is growing.  First, there is the notion of pistol grips and spray firing from the hip; second, the failure to consistently apply the same logic to guns as he does magazines; third, misinterpretation of the very studies he cites to support his conclusions.  Finally, the use of anything from Mother Jones in a legal ruling certainly must be a tacit admission of bankruptcy of thought and ability to do analysis (and for the record, even with my admittedly incomplete assessment of mass shootings, I do take issue with the completeness of the Mother Jones assessment which leaves out the Hartford Beer Distributors shooting, the Geneva County massacre, the Texas Tower shooting [Charles Whitman, who used bolt action long guns] due to the dates of inclusion, and others).

The ruling is quickly becoming a laughingstock.  I am wondering if these Judges just turn over their hardest work to juvenile clerks who get their news from Jon Stewart, Daily Kos and Mother Jones?  So returning to the joke my brother told me, there is sometimes profound truth in humor, no?

Related:

Guns And The Mentally Ill: A Professional Assessment

New York, Pistol Grips And Spray Firing

Kurt Hofmann, In Upholding NY’s SAFE Act, Judge Makes Surprising Inadvertent Admission

David Codrea, Federal Judge Upholding SAFE Act Gun Ban Relied On Unsupported Assumptions

NBC:

The Obama administration is proposing two more executive actions that it says will help prevent individuals who are prohibited from having a gun for mental health reasons from obtaining a firearm.

The Department of Justice, arguing that current federal law contains terminology about mental health issues that is too vague,  proposed a regulation that would clarify who is ineligible to possess a firearm for specific situations related to mental health, like commitment to a mental institution. “In addition to providing general guidance on federal law, these clarifications will help states determine what information should be made accessible to the federal background check system, which will, in turn, strengthen the system’s reliability and effectiveness,” the administration said in a fact sheet distributed to reporters.

The second executive action, proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, would allow some medical organizations more leeway to report “limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands” to the federal background check system. “The proposed rule will not change the fact that seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm,” the White House added.

Because, you know, mental health professionals can use their skills so well as a predictor of propensity to violence, oh, er, uh, because mass shootings are a function of mentally unstable people who just suddenly snap, oh, er, well, whatever.  Everybody just shut up.  At least they’re doing something about something.  And that’s what we all want our government to do, right?  Something?

Eugene Volokh:

Laws that ban so-called “assault weapons” often define them with reference to various features, such as a rifle’s having a bayonet mount or “a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon” (to quote the New York assault weapon ban upheld by N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Cuomo (W.D.N.Y. Dec. 31, 2013)). One reason given for focusing on rifles with such pistol grips is that, in the words of the court, this “feature[] aid shooters when ‘spray firing’ from the hip.” … I’m not an expert on firearms tactics, but I’m very skeptical of this.

Eugene isn’t merely asking the question in a vacuum.  It’s right there in the ruling:

But for the contested features, like a pistol grip and thumbhole stock, New York points to evidence that these features aid shooters when “spray firing” from the hip. (Bruen Decl., ¶ 19); see Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1262–63 (quoting Siebel Testimony, supra). As the Second Circuit has held, “This factor aims to identify those rifles whose pistol grips are designed to make such spray firing from the hip particularly easy.”

Eugene is skeptical because that’s one of the stupidest things I have ever read anywhere, not just in a legal ruling.  Spray firing from the hip.  And the ruling seems to rely on that explanation – and not just for real assault rifles (the formal definition of which we have discussed, including selective fire), but for semi-automatic weapons.  Semi-automatic weapons!  Spray firing from the hip.

This is not intended or taught in any tactical maneuver in any branch of the military that I’m aware of, including and most of all Marine Corps squad rushes.  It would be a stupid, juvenile waste of ammunition and would get people killed (friendly more than anyone else).  Furthermore, a rogue shooter in America wouldn’t hit anything (except by accident) with such a tactic.  It would be the least effective thing a rogue shooter could possibly do.

The Weapons Warrant Officer for Marine Corps 2/6 wouldn’t allow their deployment to Iraq in 2007 (where my son was a SAW gunner) without the SAWs being equipped with optics.  And this judge relied on the notion of “spray firing” to make his ruling, marking one of the dumbest things ever to go down in the annals of legal history.

Moron.  Next time just ask somebody who knows this stuff.