Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

David Codrea:

“Apparently Square is joining several other payment processors and financial institutions and are now refusing to do business with anyone who has anything to do with guns, ammo or other weapons,” the Guns Save Lives blog observed, adding “Paypal has long had a standing policy of refusing to business with any gun related business, including for things as innocuous as gun magazines. GE Capital, one of the largest lenders in the US recently announced they would no longer work with the gun industry as well.”

“We may decide not to authorize or settle any transaction that you submit to us if we believe that the transaction is in violation of this Agreement,” Square warns its users.

David is covering financial companies who refuse to do business with firearms buyers and sellers.  This is one reason we have tried to close out our bank account with Bank of America.  We’re about there.

Kurt Hofmann:

At the state level, exploiters of murdered children have over the last few months parlayed the Sandy Hook Elementary atrocity into magazine and “assault weapon” bans–in some cases confiscatory bans–and have castigated Congress for not following the same unconstitutional path at the federal level. 3-D printing has already spelled the doom for the effectiveness of such bans, as well as background check requirements and other restrictions on “assault weapon” sales.

We will ultimately win, and I think that’s Kurt’s point.  As for this whole 3D printing issue, I am thus far not impressed enough to do anything more than distribute the files if someone sends them to me.  I’ll stick to what I’ve got and what I plan to get until further advancements in technology (and those advancements will come).  But the paranoia made me more interested than I otherwise would have been.  If the government forbids having the files, I want them.  If you can’t distribute them, I want to be a clearinghouse for them.

Via Say Uncle, another New Yorker will be prosecuted for the ridiculous law.

An upstate man was arrested under the state’s new gun law when troopers found him with a legally registered pistol that had a magazine that held nine bullets – two more than the new statute allows, state police said.

Troopers from the New Lebanon barracks in Columbia County stopped a car driven by Gregory D. Dean Jr., 31, of Hopewell Junction, around 9:45 p.m. Sunday on Route 22 because the vehicle’s license-plate lamp was not working.

While interviewing Dean, troopers noticed a handgun on the front seat, partially covered by a sweatshirt.

The troopers determined the gun, a .40-caliber pistol, was legally registered and possessed. However, when the troopers inspected the pistol, its magazine contained the nine bullets – New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Actonly allows seven bullets per magazine.

Police charged Dean with unlawful possession of certain ammunition feeding devices, third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation,both misdemeanors, plus vehicle infractions, police said.

Ah, there we go again calling a cartridge a bullet, and New York’s finest spending time shutting down violent gangs on tax money … er uh … harassing gun owners on tax money.

Dave Hardy:

Maryland Shall Issue has filed a lawsuit against the State Police. The gist of it is that the police are taking an average of 55 days to issue permits, while the statutory command is that they do so within 7 days.

But Dave.  They’re the police.  They can do what they want to.  If they can shoot innocent people in SWAT raids, no one will care if they don’t issue carry permits when the law says they must.  By the way, Maryland is one of those states through which I will not drive, and over which I will not fly.

David Codrea:

The Department of Defense Trade Controls has “requested” Defense Distributed to remove files associated with its Wiki Weapon Project, an announcement posted on the DEFCAD website today announced …

This development is occurring mere days after the announcement that a complete working 3-D printed firearm, the Liberator, had successfully been built, and follows speculation from earlier today when a “temporarily unavailable” message appeared when trying to access the downloadable files.

Read also David’s War On Guns post about this subject.  Now take a quick look at what Mike Vanderboegh says, and take note that if anyone has files they would like to send to me I’ll take possession and distribute them like Mike.

Totalitarians will be totalitarians.  But they will not win.

UPDATE: The thought occurs to me that Holder is several days late (and if he was one second late it’s game over).  Bit torrent sites will have the files forever now, encrypted.  So it’s game over.  There’s nothing Holder can do about it.

Senator Tom Coburn cooperated with Senator Manchin (and Schumer) for a while on “expanded” (universal) background checks before he pulled out of the negotiations for whatever reason.  He was simply indignant when Senator Reid later pushed him around.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Thursday blasted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) as a “failure” and said the Democratic leader broke his promise to allow him an amendment on last month’s gun control bill.

“Harry Reid is a nice guy. I like him. But I think he has been a failure as a majority leader for the Senate in terms of keeping the history of the Senate and the progress of the Senate in line with what it was intended to be by our founders,” Coburn said.

The Oklahoma Republican was appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to explain why he had attempted to attach an amendment to a water resources and infrastructure bill that would have allowed gun owners to carry firearms into recreational areas.

“They were very good to allow me an amendment, and the reason they did is because Harry [Reid] denied me an amendment on the gun bill on one that would have passed and solved the problem, which he promised to give me,” Coburn said.

“He has been dishonest with me, not truthful, not kept his word,” Coburn continued. “He’s played games, you know? We’ve done our own damage to that in response to it. So what we have is people pointing fingers at each other.”

Coburn’s amendment to the water and infrastructure bill would have allowed states to decide whether visitors to areas controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — including many of the nation’s campsites and trails — would be allowed to carry weapons. The amendment failed Wednesday in a 56-43 vote, four short of the 60 necessary to proceed.

More specifically, Coburn’s proposal would have opened up lands heretofore prohibited from weapons as well as begun to make DHS accountable for it’s ammunition orders.

The Senate has rejected an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act that would have repealed a ban on carrying guns on land managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The amendment, by Sen. Tom Coburn, was defeated 56-43, falling four votes shy of the 60 needed to defeat a Democratic-led filibuster. Coburn withdrew a second amendment that would require annual reports from federal agencies on ammunition and gun purchases and firearm thefts.

Democrats said it could “threaten critical facilities like dams and flood control projects.”  So in addition to .22 LR shots potentially adversely affecting the nation’s energy grid, we now have rifle or handgun shots that can take out a dam.  The power of small projectiles is storied and amazing, to be sure.

The real lesson in all of this isn’t the amendment, which was sure to fail, or the moronic Democrat response to it, but that Coburn offered it.  He is feeling heat from his cooperation with the totalitarians on gun control, and he’s trying to shore up his pro-gun credentials.

It won’t work.  Gun owners never forgive, and never forget.  Like wicked men chasing after whores, the politicians in Washington chase after the next feel-good measure rather than act on principle.  But when you sleep with the enemy you contract their diseases.  Coburn is damaged goods.

As for guns on federal land (specifically, guns in national parks), my FOIA request proves that the predicted apocalypse of gun crime after weapons were made legal didn’t obtain.  To the surprise of the Brady campaign, gun owners are responsible people.

There is an increasing number of charges that the recent gun control legislation was rejected because of slippery slope arguments.  One such charge was leveled by the loser himself, Joe Manchin.

Think gun control failed in the Senate because of gun-clutching extremists? Or because of fanatical radicals who want to abolish the Second Amendment? Senator Joe Manchin, who’s been at the heart of the effort, says it’s nothing of the sort. In fact, the central problem really has nothing to do with firearms at all — it’s about trust.

When he speaks to gun owners, “they’re scared this is the first step” in a massive government overreach, said Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. He made the remarks during an interview with Margaret Carlson at the New York Ideas Festival, a daylong conference sponsored by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute.

“When you say universal background check, the first thing that comes in the mind of a gun owner is that means registration, and registration means confiscation. ‘I haven’t broken the laws, why do you want to know everything?'” he said. According to Manchin, even in gun-loving West Virginia, constituents he spoke with repeatedly told him that if the bill did only what it said it does, they would wholeheartedly support it. (“There’s a lot the NRA likes in this bill,” he added.) The problem is, they’re skeptical that the bill will in fact go farther than it claims. That means the effort to pass it on a second try will require emphasizing, for example, the harsh penalties associated with keeping records past a certain period.

He portrays gun owners as pitiful sheep, “scared” of anything and everything.  The reality is much different.  But then there is Cass Sunstein, who thinks he is much smarter than we are.  You can read his entire piece, but this is the money quote.

Illuminating though it is, Hirschman’s account misses an especially pernicious example of the rhetoric of reaction: the slippery-slope argument. According to that argument, we should reject Reform A, which is admittedly not so terrible, because it would inevitably put us on a slippery slope to Reform B, which is really bad.

But the problem is that this criticism neglects to consider – or maybe intentionally ignores – the real presence of intentionality.  I have never made the case that the proposed gun control law should have been rejected because it is a slippery slope and could lead to more pernicious or onerous things.  I don’t know another gun rights blogger who has made that case.

The case that I have made, and repeatedly so, is that a system of universal background checks is a precursor and necessary prerequisite to a national gun registry.  I have never charged that it would be some accidental feature of overbearing governance.  I have charged that it would be intentional, and that universal background checks would have no effect on gun crime.

Furthermore, I have pointed to progressive arguments for that very system, showing that this is the real goal of every progressive.

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.

In the end, Manchin’s proposals were rejected because the people didn’t like his ideas, and Cass Sunstein isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.  Gun control laws such as universal background checks may in fact end up a slippery slope because the federal government is a micromanager and even if there is opposition to a national gun registry one may develop anyway.  But the reason to oppose them has more to do with intentionality, not accident.

Finally, there is another reason to have opposed Manchin’s proposals.  We simply didn’t like what he proposed.  Or in other words, we like the idea that we can buy and sell guns to each other without having to go through a federal firearms license and pay a transfer fee, and we like the idea of gifting guns to each other without telling the federal government about it.

Examiner:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told Kansas Governor Sam Brownback that the legislation he signed titled the Second Amendment Protection Act, SB 102 will be ignored by the federal government and the Obama administration will enforce firearm confiscation regardless of state laws, the New American reported yesterday.

The Kansas governor signed the Second Amendment Protection Act, SB 102 last month that strengthens the constitutionally protected rights of Kansans to keep and bear arms but it appears that the Obama administration and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder want nothing of it, claiming that the federal government has sole-rights over states rights when it comes to the second amendment matters.

This is good.  It’s a positive sign that Holder is acknowledging the coming conflict.  Kansas and all of the other states who are enacting nullification laws had better listen to me – and listen carefully.

You had better not enact such laws unless you intend to enforce them.  Don’t enact them as emblematic measures, or legislative actions to send a message.  This is a silly way to send a message.

If you don’t intend to enforce them, your own state residents will see you – the lawmakers and law enforcement officers – as a bunch of wind bags who fold like a cheap tent in the slightest wind.  Also, if you plan to appeal this to any of the federal courts, you will lose.  The Marbury versus Madison ruling forever ensures that the totalitarians in Washington will have friends in the judiciary.

No, if you plan to enforce your nullification laws, you had better plan to arrest some federal law enforcement officers and throw them in the state penitentiary with the general prison population – the rapists, pedophiles and murderers.  You will have to be the ones to ignore federal laws and judicial rulings, orders and decisions.  You will have to be prepared to use the power of the state and local law enforcement, unorganized militia and possibly the state national guard.

If you do not currently plan on doing this, just don’t bother.  This isn’t a game folks, and Holder is the one who launched the first shot across your bow.  He’s already fully engaged.

NBC News:

President Barack Obama vowed Thursday during a trip to Mexico to continue pushing for new, tighter gun control rules in the United States, saying his proposals’ recent defeat in Congress was “just the first round.”

Speaking following a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, whose country has been ravaged by gang violence supported in part by gun trafficking into Mexico, Obama vowed to return to the issue of gun control in the United States.

“The last time we had major gun legislation, it took 6, 7, 8 tries to get passed,” Obama said at a press conference following his meeting with the Mexican president. “Things happen somewhat slowly in Washington, but this is just the first round.”

Any time you feel froggy, big boy.  We won the first round, we’ll win the next one, and the next, and the next.

Local Connecticut News:

NEW BRITAIN, CT (WFSB) – One Connecticut gun maker said it would move out of the state if lawmakers expanded the ban on assault weapons, but now that same company is taking a look at modifying the AR-15.

Before some of the toughest gun laws in the country were passed, officials with the Stag Arms in New Britain said further modifications to the AR-15 would make it impossible to sell in Connecticut.

Eyewitness News has learned that the company is working on making a modified assault weapon to fit the ban.

“We are carefully looking at the new law and there are some things we interpret to be legal,” said Stag Arms owner Mark Malkowski. “We have gotten a lot of feedback from our customers and they have given us ideas for changes.”

Malkowski said the company is putting together a prototype, which they plan to show the weapons unit at the state police on Friday.

Officials with Stag Arms sells AR-15s, the only product it produces, all over the United States and to other countries, but less than 5 percent of its sales are made in Connecticut.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy supported the ban, but did met with the gun manufacturers because he does not want them to leave, especially since the industry creates hundreds of jobs.

“It says gun companies will do anything to sell guns,” Malloy said when recently asked about the topic. “I can’t prejudge something that I haven’t seen or analyze. People make things to sell them.”

As for leaving Connecticut, officials with Stag Arms said it is still an option. Last week, Malkowski said he met with the governor of Texas and next week, the governor of Kansas.

I’m surprised that Stag Arms got anyone in the gun owner community to contribute to this bastard firearm.  And by the way, it doesn’t comport with the notion of peaceful law breaking and smuggling to defy unconstitutional laws.

I’m not sure what will happen to Stag Arms.  If they stay in Connecticut they will waste away as a viable firearms manufacturer.  But I’m certain what will happen to this ridiculous, bastard firearm.  It will be a laughingstock, the embarrassment of the gun range.  No one who has it will be a proud owner of this long gun.  Why do it?  Why not smuggle and get real AR-15s?  Why acquiesce to the totalitarians when you can do better?

After the draconian gun laws that the Connecticut Legislature and Governor just enacted, even though firearms manufacturers are threatening to leave Connecticut, it’s still an open question what will come of the gun makers.  Only a small part of Colt has left for greener pastures in Texas.  After showing their hand on both the state and national stage, two Connecticut Democrats have put an interesting twist into gun politics.

In a move that an antigun group calls “lousy timing” and “bizarre,” Connecticut lawmakers are pushing to create a national park out of the historic former site of the Colt firearms plant in Hartford, just 50 miles from the site of the school shooting massacre in Newtown.

“If you want to glorify a gun maker, there’s other ways to do it, other than to create a new national park,” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a group made up of 47 organizations and associations.

Two Connecticut Democrats, Rep. John Larson and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, reintroduced the legislation this year to create the “Coltsville” National Historical Park on the site, which includes the Colt Armory and other buildings that were part of the 19th-century industrial enterprise founded by Samuel Colt. The entire congressional delegation supports the legislation.

But while some might say the effort is inappropriate in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting on Dec. 14–and perhaps out of step with gun-control efforts in Congress that both Larson and Blumenthal have supported–the lawmakers say they see nothing untoward.

“The senator does not see a connection” between his efforts to get the national historic park established and his efforts at gun control, said a Blumenthal spokeswoman.

Rather, both he and Larson argue that the Coltsville complex is a “historic treasure” that they say enshrines Colt’s role in advancing the industrial revolution and manufacturing in Connecticut and nationwide.

Indeed, there is no disputing the role that Colt played in the history of Connecticut and the United States. Samuel Colt founded his Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in the mid-19th century. It wasn’t long before its Peacemaker six-shot revolver revolutionized personal firearms.

[ … ]

While family members of victims of the Newtown shootings have remained quiet on the park issue, Ron Pinciaro, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, said that it has crossed his mind that one motivation for elected officials to rally behind the national park effort could be to show that Connecticut values and wants to retain major companies in the firearms industry.

This is just rich – American politics at its best, or worst.  We know that there have been untold number of Connecticut citizens who have told the political authorities that they intend to ignore the most recent Connecticut gun laws.  We know that Colt has threatened to leave Connecticut.  And we now know that gun control fizzled at the national level, so political alignments of convenience in supporting gun control don’t look like such a good plan in retrospect.  Is this Blumenthal’s attempt to stay relevant in Connecticut?  Is he simply trying to prevent manufacturing from leaving and taking jobs and revenue with them?  Does he really believe that there is a distinction between the legendary single-action revolver and an AR-15 in the recent violence in Connecticut, given that the shooter had no opposition due to schools being gun free zones?  Does he really believe that others will believe such a thing?

Ah.  The questions are so promising, the potential discussion so pregnant, textured and rich.  And I welcome the remarkable hypocrisy with open arms and a joyful heart.

David Codrea:

Citing an observation in Politico that “Immigration reform could be a bonanza for Democrats [and] cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily,” Gun Owners of America warned members and supporters yesterday against S. 744. The bill, introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, prompted GOA to predict that if it passes, “by 2035, the American electorate will have changed so fundamentally that California-style gun control could become a very real possibility in this country!”

Read it all at Examiner, and then return here for some additional analysis.  There are reasons why amnesty has always been pushed by the progressives and crony capitalists, and reasons why amnesty empowers the progressives in perpetuity.

Regarding the issue of crony capitalists, I have explained that before.

The use of illegal immigrants (migrant workers) is a form of price supports for the agri-industry.  The employers who “hire” them do not supply them with medical insurance or pay them enough to afford automobile insurance.  When these workers become sick or injured, they do not forgo medical care – they go to the local hospital.  Our medical bills and insurance coverage premiums pay for these services to the illegals.  Similarly, our uninsured motorist coverage pays for the insurance that the illegals should be purchasing.  These are merely two examples (a legion of examples could be given) that show that the employer is receiving a form of corporate welfare at the expense of the middle class in America.  The employer is in favor of the use of illegals to do work because it is beneficial to their purse, not because it benefits America.  The employer will always favor the reassignment of financial burden to someone else in order to help the “bottom line.”  But the bottom line for the employer and the bottom line for the taxpayer and ratepayer is not necessarily the same bottom line.  The free market argument to support the hiring of illegals is a smokescreen.  America had a free market before the advent of illegal immigrants and migrant workers.  The existence of illegals is not essential to the existence of the free market.

The reason that progressives want open borders should be clear enough, although I have also discussed this issue.  … “for historical reasons to do with the nationalisation of the land under Lázaro Cárdenas and the predominant form of peasant land tenure, which was “village cooperative” rather than based on individual plots, the demand for “land to the tiller” in Mexico does not imply an individual plot for every peasant or rural worker or family. In Mexico, collectivism among the peasantry is a strong tradition … one consequence of these factors is that the radical political forces among the rural population are on the whole explicitly anti-capitalist and socialist in their ideology. Sometimes this outlook is expressed in support for guerilla organisations; but struggle movements of the rural population are widespread, and they spontaneously ally with the most militant city-based leftist organisations.”

One of the reasons for this reflexive alignment with leftism has to do with the the mid-twentieth century and what the Sovient Union and allied ideologies accomplished.  South and Central America was the recipient or receptacle for socialism draped in religious clothing, or in other words, liberation theology.  Its purveyors were Roman Catholic priests who had been trained in Marxism, and they were very successful in giving the leftists a moral platform upon which to build.  This ideology spread North from South and Central America into Mexico, and thus the common folk in Mexico are quite steeped in collectivist ideology from battles that were fought decades ago.

GOA is correct.  Open borders would cause (and has already caused) a tilt towards collectivist ideology in America, and it is a tilt from which there is no return.  Grandparents teach it to parents, parents teach it to children, and those children grow up to teach it to their children.  Collectivist ideology is inimical to freedom and gun ownership.  Take whatever position you wish, but realize that the politics of control doesn’t want you to know the truth.

There is one other player I should mention in this debacle, and that is the American church, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.  My readers know about my lamentations over the ignorance and stupidity of the church.  The ignorance of the church doesn’t stop with pacifism, but extends as well to advocacy for broken borders in the name of compassion.  This compassion conflates personal morality with national identify and security, but don’t try to explain that to the pacifists.  Just know that this problem exists.

If you care about freedom and liberty for your family, you should care about firearms and preparing for the coming national difficulties.  In order to understand the context for the difficulties, you should assume that politics isn’t ever really about compassion.  It’s always about control.

Prior:

Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment

Mexican Cartels: Warlords

Changes In The Mexican Border Strategy

Counterinsurgency On The U.S, Southern Border

The Baltimore Sun:

Besides drinking beer, there are two other pastimes that Bavarians love: driving and sport-shooting, including hunting. Bavarians build BMW’s “Ultimate Driving Machines.” Bavarians’ national dress is hunter green. No one who visits Munich is likely to miss the German Hunting and Fishing Museum in the middle of the main shopping street. When in Munich, I saw the world’s best-known opera devoted to shooting and hunting, Carl Maria von Weber’s “Der Freischütz” (“The Marksman”), with its unforgettable Hunters’ Chorus singing, “What on earth can equal the pleasure of hunting?”

Nationwide in Germany, there are hundreds of Schützenvereins (shooting clubs) with thousands of members. At fairs and festivals, members march through village streets sporting their weapons. In the 19th century, German immigrants brought Schuetzenvereins to the United States, including one in Baltimore in the 1850s; some of the descendants of those immigrants are core supporters of shooting and hunting. At brewing beer, driving cars and shooting guns, Bavarians are world class.

When individual Bavarians want to own and operate Ultimate Driving Machines, they don’t think twice about getting licenses to drive and registrations to own these vehicles. They don’t think twice that they have to be of the legal age to drive, have to show that they know the traffic laws, have to show that they know how to operate these machines safely and have to present liability insurance in case their Ultimate Driving Machines injure anyone.

It’s no different in America. Those who want to own and operate a car are not troubled that they must show that they are of legal age, must demonstrate that they know the traffic laws, must show that they can operate cars safely and must maintain liability insurance on the cars they own. They do not think of licensing as a limitation on their freedom but as a protection for us all against potentially dangerous use of driving machines.

Just as Bavarians accept that they must be licensed to own and operate their Ultimate Driving Machines, so too do they accept, without objection, that they must be licensed to own and shoot firearms. What are these requirements? They are similar to those for cars.

Applicants must show that they are of legal age. They must show that they are “reliable,” i.e., that they have not recently been convicted of certain crimes. A background check is required. Applicants must have “personal aptitude” — they are not mentally ill or substance abusers. They must pass a test that shows that they have “specialized knowledge.” They must maintain liability insurance.

Sounds oh so reasonable, right?  Wait for the next part.