Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

David Codrea.

… Assemblyman David Chiu, resurrected a gun-grabber dream list priority, microstamping, a requirement for firearms to mark an identifier on ammunition casings, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Disregard for a moment that professional reporter Alexei Koseff and his editors seem confused at times and tell readers the “unique imprint [will be left on] on bullets that are fired.”

That’s not what it’s about anyway, since, after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (warned ya!) signed microstamping into law in 2007, manufacturers stopped introducing new models …

It seems to be happening with regularity in places that aren’t otherwise amenable to God-given rights of self defense.  Concern for Coronavirus patients isn’t his primary concern.  Control of people is.

I’ve said it before, the desire to control others is the signal sociopathology of the wicked.  And I hate to say it again, but if you waited until now to get your firearms and ammunition, you waited too late.

From reading reddit/firearms and other sites, it’s obvious that run-of-the-mill progs (i.e., the ones not in charge) who are hunting for weapons at the moment, first of all seem to have given up on their anti-gun fetish (it only takes a pandemic to jettison foolish ideas).

Second, they are finding that it isn’t as easy to get them as they had been told, are having to wait, and are paying higher prices than if they had jettisoned those beliefs long ago.  Finally, they’re finding that there is no ammunition.

So sorry.  We told you.

Give a controller an inch, they’ll take a mile.  Give them an opportunity, they’ll take more control of your lives.

David Codrea.

What about gun stores?  If we’re talking that which is essential, what is it the Founders deemed “necessary to the security of a free State”? How is that not relevant in this situation that has developed into what we are being told is a national and global state of emergency? We’ve already seen government has been utterly incapable of protecting the populace, and it appears things are only going to get worse and resources more strained. What do we do if civil order collapses, those resources are triaged and most areas are essentially left to fend for themselves?

[ … ]

But after customers lined up around gun stores in several counties Tuesday — including outside the Bullseye Bishop in San Jose — San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo declared that “gun stores are non-essential.”

What’s essential is a function of what people are demanding at the time, not what a pol thinks.  Tell me, how many fully stocked ammo shelves have you seen lately?

Tyrants.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell (D) has joined Champaign, Illinois Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen in exploiting the Coronavirus crisis to ban the sale and transfer of firearms.

GPM reported earlier this week that Feinen had issued an executive order declaring a coronavirus emergency in the city she governs and which has not confirmed a single case of the virus. The ordinances, The New York Post reports, “let (Feinen) ban the sale of firearms and ammunition as well as booze.”
Feinen told WAND-TV:

“So many of those powers, I have had from the beginning. All we have done is enumerate them and now the public is aware of them. So, I am the liquor commissioner. I can shut down bars yesterday, I could have shut them down two years ago. Nothing has changed with respect to that, it is just that we have laid it out, so people are aware of that. In respect to the other items that are listed in the attachment, they have been listed in the city code for 15 years.”

In a similar move, Cantrell announced she is “empowered, if necessary, to suspend or limit the sale of alcoholic beverages, firearms, explosives, and combustibles.”

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), however, is telling Cantrell, “We sued once, we’ll do it again.”

Yea, they really care about your jackass lawsuit, SAF.  They’ll only be dissuaded from their tyrannical ways when free men disobey and/or cops get shot trying to enforce unconstitutional laws.

Ammunition will be rolled in with firearms and explosives.  But I also have to comment that if you waited this late to buy firearms and ammunition, you waited too late.

What is wrong with that city anyway that they keep electing horrible people like this?

This account (from reader Fred) is told from the perspective of the police.  Here’s a better report.

Sandler said Lemp’s grief-stricken family is traumatized. Their statement says they intend to “hold each and every person responsible for his death.”

“We believe that the body camera footage and other forensic evidence from this event will support what Duncan’s family already knows, that he was murdered,” the statement says.

Lemp worked as a software developer and was trying to raise money for a startup company, according to friends and co-workers.

“He was a talented, smart guy. Super nice. Didn’t deserve to get shot,” said Samuel Reid, whose Canadian software company employed Lemp as an independent contractor.

Tsolmondorj Natsagdorj, 24, of Fairfax, Virginia, said he met Lemp in 2016 and bonded with him over their shared interest in cryptocurrency. They also talked about politics. He described Lemp as a libertarian who frequented the 4chan and Reddit message boards, sites popular with internet trolls.

“Duncan was a young guy with a bright future as an entrepreneur,” Natsagdorj said. “He was working on things to change the world.”

On social media accounts that friends said belonged to him, Lemp’s username was “YungQuant.” On an internet forum called “My Militia,” someone who identified himself as Duncan Lemp, of Potomac, and posted under the username “yungquant” said he was “an active III%’r and looking for local members & recruits.” That’s an apparent reference to the Three Percenters, a wing of the militia movement. The group’s logo, the Roman numeral “III,” has become popular with anti-government extremists, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

On his Instagram account, Lemp recently posted a photograph that depicts two people holding up rifles and included the term “boogaloo,” slang used by militia members and other extremists to describe a future civil war in the U.S.

Well there you have it.  Reddit is a place for trolls.  Some of the best and quickest news you’ll ever find is over reddit.

“Boogaloo” … “militia” … III’per … that’s why he was shot.  And until I see evidence that he shot at the police first, I’ll assume the police executed him.  In fact, I wouldn’t have had any problem with him shooting the police.  After all, they invaded his home.

I’ve seen speculation that he had an unregistered SBR, a bong in one of his pictures, or whatever.  Note: I don’t believe in the righteousness of the NFA, and I don’t believe in the war on drugs.  I don’t use drugs, as my faith has a lot to say about that.  But I don’t care if you do.

Recall the case of the NJ security guard arrested for carrying PD ammunition?  Well, there’s a development.

New Jersey prosecutors dropped a felony charge against a security guard who was pulled over for driving with tinted windows and then charged with violating gun laws, prosecutors informed Newsweek on Friday. Roosevelt Twyne’s case illustrates how the state’s intricate gun restrictions can ensnare residents, multiple experts said.

Roselle Park police officers stopped Twyne, 25, in early February as he was returning home from work in his personal vehicle because, they said, he was driving with tinted windows. Twyne, a black man who works for the Brinks armored car company, was also transporting a handgun he believed he was legally permitted to carry for his job under the state’s restrictive licensing laws.

However, officers charged him with two gun-related offenses: One violation of the state’s firearm transport ban and another pertaining to hollow point bullets. The latter charge was dropped after Union County prosecutors decided the ammunition Twyne was carrying was not illegal. Until Friday, prosecutors were seeking an additional charge on the transport ban.

“I was simply a block away from getting home after work,” Twyne told Newsweek. “I never thought I would be arrested, charged and have my life turned upside down over New Jersey’s convoluted gun laws, especially when I was a fully licensed, trained security officer.”

The prosecutor’s office said Friday it concluded that his alleged breach of the law was not intentional.

“This Office has elected to exercise its prosecutorial discretion and has administratively dismissed all charges pending against Mr. Twyne,” the office said in a statement to Newsweek. “It is not in the interests of justice to continue his prosecution.”

They should have said that there was no “breach of the law” and that their police officers are idiots and they should try to improve hiring practices to focus away from sociopaths.

Instead, they said they are electing to exercise “prosecutorial discretion.”

Like I said before, New Jersey is a hell hole.  I wouldn’t travel there (or even fly over the state) if it was the last place on earth.

From Ammoland.

Every one of these bills is as affront to good men in Virginia, but this one stands out to me.

SB 64 – makes a group of two or more individuals brandishing with the intent and purpose of intimidating others a felony.

Of course, it’s up to the LEOs whether you’re intimidating others, or maybe it’s left up to the one making the call to the LEOs.  After all, calls to the police render and report a perfect state of mind, just like when a person makes a red flag call, there is never a mistake.  Because women.  Or children.  Or something.

So the Virginia legislature is telling Virginians that Richmond rally day was a once in a lifetime event for them.  The elitists won’t allow that any more.

And note the word “brandishing.”  This is problematic, because there is no distinction between open carry and brandishing.  They want it that way.  It’s legal to openly carry in Virginia, but if you do it along with someone else, it’s “brandishing.”  And you know they’ll prosecute it that way.

Jeff Minick.

As I write these words, a reproduction of the 1897 Sears Roebuck Catalogue, published in 1968 by Chelsea House, sits at my elbow.

The fat catalog is a casual reader’s delight and a historian’s treasure trove. Here are medicines like laudanum, herb tea, and castor oil. Here are tools, bobsleds, gasoline stoves, windmills, bicycles, clothing and footwear, valises, books, clocks and watches, fountain pens, banjos and snare drums, furniture and cutlery, buggies and wagons. (The price of most surreys is under $100, a belt is fifty cents, a child’s high chair a dollar, a ball room guide for gentlemen twenty-five cents.)

And in the Sporting Goods Department we find 28 pages of guns, ammunition, and accessories.

Here we have weapons ranging from the Daisy Air Rifle to “Our $1.55 Revolver,” from shotguns for $7.95 to Marlin Repeating Rifles. Sears, Roebuck & Company also sold ammunition, pistol holders, reloading tools, and cleaners for these weapons.

No one was monitoring these sales. The government had no part in regulation. No one conducted background checks on the buyers. Indeed, Sears brags that it is “the headquarter for everything in guns,” that their prices are below all others, and that “we will send any revolver to any address.”

Yikes, right? Even a common laborer, for three or four days wages, could order a Saturday night special from Sears. With guns and ammo so easily available, we might guess that the streets of every American city and town were running red with blood every day of the week. Mass murder surely occurred on a weekly basis. Assassination and terrorist attacks must have happened so regularly that no one blinked an eye.

We might guess so, but we would be wrong.

In 1900, the number of murders and “non-negligent homicides” in the United States was approximately 1 in every 100,000 inhabitants (This figure and the others in this paragraph include all murders, not just those by firearms.) In 1980, that figure was close to 11 murders per 100,000 people. Since then, that figure has declined to between 4 and 5 murders per 100,000. (For a deeper analysis, see here.) Bear in mind too that unlike today, a gunshot wound in 1900 frequently resulted in death.

These statistics contrasted with the easy availability of guns should raise some questions. Why in 1900, when firearms were so readily accessible, were murders so infrequent? Why are murders today quadruple what they were in 1900? Based on what gun-control activists tell us, shouldn’t we expect the exact opposite?

He has his answers, but in my opinion they are all connected and symptomatic of the higher order issue, which we all know as a rejection of God and His law.  It’s a cultural issue, not one of hardware.

Recall that one crud, vulgar, obscene Putnam County Sheriff’s Deputy violated a man’s rights guaranteed under the second and fourth amendments by an illegal and unconstitutional detention?

Also recall that we covered the violation of the fourth amendment by Putnam County Deputies about three weeks ago?

The lawyer in these cases has a new video up with more than we linked in the last video.  Watch it entirely.

His name is John H. Bryan, and he’s doing God’s work.  His web site is thecivilrightslawyer.com, and he has a new post up on the current status of the open carry case.

The judges in this case were very dismissive of the Fourth Circuit decision in Black because they just don’t care about the constitution, but I hope he carries this all the way to the Supreme Court if needed.

Further, I’ll say one more time, it never even needed to get to the point of citing Black.  West Virginia is not a “stop and identify” state, and this wasn’t a “Terry Stop.”  The state courts should have struck this all down and reprimanded the Sheriff’s department.

I’ll also say once again that Sheriff Steve Deweese should resign in shame, and remember his contact information: sdeweese@putnamwv.org.

Also remember this man.  prosecutingattorney@putnamwv.org (Mark A. Sorsaia, Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, Putnam County Judicial Building).

The deputies, crooks and thugs they are, are merely following the leadership set before them.  Followers always behave like their leaders.  To the Sheriff, you need to get up in front of your church, beg for forgiveness, ask to be placed under the discipline of the leaders of your church, resign your post, and do something you’re qualified to do, like dig ditches while serving your time in prison.

Jacob Sullum writing at Reason.com.

The allegations against Kevin Morgan were alarming. They described just the sort of circumstances that Florida legislators had in mind when they approved that state’s “red flag” law in 2018, three weeks after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Morgan’s estranged wife, Joanie, claimed he was depressed, suicidal, and obsessed with the apocalypse, which he thought was imminent. She said he was stockpiling food, gold, guns, and ammunition in anticipation of the end times; that he talked about seeing, hearing, and wrestling with demons; and that he had performed a ritual that involved rubbing “oils” on their children and the walls of their house. She reported that he was abusing the drugs he had been prescribed for chronic pain, had talked about dismembering his former wife, had intimated he would do the same to her if she ever disrespected him, and had threatened to kill her with succinylcholine, a paralytic agent used during surgery and intubation.

Oooo … sounds awful, doesn’t it?

On the strength of such claims, Joanie Morgan obtained a temporary domestic violence protection injunction, an involuntary psychiatric evaluation order under the Florida Mental Health Act (a.k.a. the Baker Act), and a temporary “risk protection order” under the red flag law, which authorizes the suspension of a person’s Second Amendment rights when he is deemed a threat to himself or others. All three were ex parte orders, meaning they were issued without giving Kevin Morgan a chance to rebut the allegations against him.

But when it was time for a judge to decide whether the initial gun confiscation order, which was limited to 14 days, should be extended for a year, Morgan got a hearing, and the lurid picture painted by his wife disintegrated. By the end of the hearing, in an extraordinary turn of events unlike anything you are likely to see in a courtroom drama, the lawyer representing the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office, which was seeking the final order, conceded that he had not met the law’s evidentiary standard, and the judge agreed.

But why?

In the affidavit supporting her petition, Montgomery said she responded to a complaint from Joanie Morgan alleging that her husband had violated the temporary domestic violence protection injunction by returning to the house in Citrus Springs they used to share and retrieving clothing, medications, “several firearms,” and his Ford Mustang. Montgomery paraphrased the claims Joanie Morgan had made in her petitions for the injunction and the Baker Act examination: that “the respondent has had a decline in mental stability over the last four months” and “has displayed irratic [sic] behaviors to include making threats to dismember a former paramour and threats to kill his entire family while yielding [sic] a vial containing a paralytic agent.” She added that “the respondent has purchased several firearms and ammunition during this time period.”

He purchased several firearms.  Horrible man, but let’s continue to see just how horrible he really is.

At this point, Montgomery later testified, she had done no investigation beyond talking to Joanie Morgan and reading her petitions. Montgomery said she subsequently discovered there was no basis for the claim that Kevin Morgan had violated the injunction by visiting the house. “I determined that it wasn’t him that had gone to the house,” she said. “It was actually a pool maintenance worker that had been by the house.” Furthermore, “the firearms had been transferred prior to his risk protection order” in response to the domestic violence injunction, meaning there were no guns for Morgan to retrieve from the house.

Montgomery did read the Baker Act petition that led to Morgan’s court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, but she did not mention the outcome of that evaluation. On September 13, 2018, police handcuffed Morgan and took him to The Centers, a mental health facility in Ocala, where he spent the night. The next day, a psychiatrist determined that he did not meet the law’s criteria for involuntary treatment. A discharge form dated September 14, 2018, described Morgan as “alert and oriented” and “calm and cooperative.” It explained that “Kevin was evaluated by the psychiatrist and it was determined that Kevin does not present as a danger to himself or others.”

Joanie Morgan’s testimony was tearful, highly emotional, scattered, and frequently vague. She reiterated her earlier allegations and added a few more. But when Blackstone asked whether she had any evidence to corroborate what she claimed her husband had said and done, she admitted that she did not.

There were no witnesses to confirm his alleged threats and no photographs of oil on the walls, of the hypodermic needles he allegedly had stashed away to inject the succinylcholine, or of the food, gold, weapons, and ammunition he allegedly had accumulated in preparation for the end times. Nor had police ever visited the house to confirm any of those details. Blackstone also noted that, despite Joanie Morgan’s portrait of her husband as dangerously deranged, she was planning to build a new house with him on property they had purchased together in April 2018, and she had left her children overnight with him that August, in the midst of his supposed breakdown, to attend a conference in Tampa.

Joanie Morgan’s mother, Susan Harper-Clements, tried to back up her daughter’s portrayal of Kevin Morgan as dangerous, but the evidence she offered fell notably short. For example, she mentioned “conversations” after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. “Kevin had told me that the NRA…was all into this gun thing and that you couldn’t even buy the bullets you wanted, because people were stockpiling,” she said. “And he said, ‘When they’re all through with this, you won’t be able to buy guns and ammunition.'” On cross-examination, Blackstone noted that such comments hardly proved homicidal intent. “He has never threatened anyone in your presence, has he?” he asked. “No,” Harper-Clements replied.

Kevin Morgan’s demeanor at the hearing was as Montgomery and the staff at The Centers had described it: calm, polite, and cooperative. He denied seeing demons, making threats, or obsessing about the apocalypse. He denied that he had recently been stockpiling guns, saying he had acquired his collection of roughly 40 rifles and handguns over the course of more than two decades. The only guns he had acquired recently, he said, were three black-powder pistols he had bought the previous spring and summer—antique replicas ill-suited for the end times.

What about the mostly empty vial of succinylcholine that his wife had presented to sheriff’s deputies as evidence of Morgan’s deadly designs? Morgan recalled that his wife, a nurse who had worked at two local hospitals, had once accidentally brought home just such a vial, saying she had put it in her lab coat pocket after participating in the treatment of a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest. Morgan, who also has a nursing degree, had managed the emergency room at one of those hospitals, but he left that job in January 2015 because of a disability caused by spinal stenosis. After that, he no longer had access to drugs such as succinylcholine. Given the expiration date on the vial that his wife gave to police, Morgan said, it was clear he could not have been the person who had obtained it.

Okay, there’s much more at the link but I’ve heard enough, and congratulations to Jacob for doing such an outstanding job of reporting this.  Go read the rest of it here.

Let me tell you what happened in this case.  She got together with her mom, who clearly doesn’t like him very much, after the wife had an argument with him of some sort.  She was in too deep to back out, so they concocted this ridiculous set of tales.

So he was embarrassed, had his God-given rights violated, and had his belongings confiscated, all without even a hint of real investigative work by the police.

So goes red flag laws in America, the best thing since sliced bread according to nearly every politician on the planet.