Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Raleigh News & Observer.

A group that spent millions of dollars in Virginia to help flip the legislature is planning to spend money in North Carolina aimed at the General Assembly and gun laws.

All 170 seats in the state House and Senate are up for election this year.

The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, the political arm of Everytown for Gun Safety, is spending $250,000 on a digital ad campaign to pressure the General Assembly to pass gun safety legislation like a red flag bill proposed in the 2019 session by Democratic state lawmakers.

Everytown for Gun Safety PACs spent $2.5 million on campaigns in Virginia in 2019. The group is affiliated with Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg. Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which was co-founded by Bloomberg, is also part of Everytown, as is Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Students Demand Action.

The first ad, called “North Carolina: On Notice,” will run on Facebook and be targeted to suburban women and African African women voters. It notes that 1,300 people die by gun violence each year in the state.

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control showed that there were 1,430 firearms deaths in 2017 in North Carolina. In 2016, it was 1,409 deaths, and in 2015, 1,289 deaths.

Any changes in North Carolina’s gun laws has so far been supported by Democrats and opposed by many Republicans. In January, 50 members of the Republican House Caucus signed a letter supporting counties that declare themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” and are opposed to any new gun regulations.

Everytown also released poll results from Global Strategy Group that shows majority support for stricter gun laws. The poll of 602 likely voters found that 79% supported red flag laws and 54% supported stronger gun laws. The poll also showed that 64% of respondents agreed it is “possible to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous people while also protecting the rights of gun owners.”

An N&O fact-check showed that most Americans support stricter gun laws, including an increasing number of Republicans. In North Carolina, a poll by the conservative policy group Civitas Institute showed 58% of likely voters said laws around gun sales were not strict enough.

Everytown and Moms Demand Action criticized state lawmakers who went to Virginia for a gun rights rally in January in their announcement Monday.

“Everytown, Moms Demand Action, and Students Demand Action volunteers are now calling on the legislature to act by passing gun safety measures, including extreme risk legislation,” the groups said in a news release.

Democrats proposed two gun regulation bills in the 2019 session, but they did not make it out of committee in the Republican-led General Assembly. House Bill 454, a “red flag” bill, would allow family members or law enforcement to petition a judge for what is known as an extreme risk protection order, which would restrict a person’s access to firearms if there was evidence of them posing danger to themselves or others.

With the wrong mix of people in power, Bloomberg and Everytown will bring everything they brought to Virginia further South, including whatever they don’t manage to get passed in Virginia.

Here’s a note about North Carolina.  Mecklenburg and Wake counties control the state.  They are the behemoths, and if we don’t stand strong, we’ll be run over by them.  I fear that North Carolina is actually more fertile ground for Bloomberg’s plans than Virginia.

The controllers never stop, are well resourced, and are tireless.  We must match them.  If you’re a North Carolina reader, please don’t focus on football jerseys, stupid games and parties.  You must be in the fight.  I expect to be involved in the same armed rallies in North Carolina that we saw in Virginia.

If you’re not a North Carolina reader, we’ll soon need your prayers and participation in rallies.

Can we count on you?

Via David Codrea, this ridiculous report.

MARION (WSIL) — A proposed bill in Springfield aims to curb gun violence in Illinois with a new tax.

The Assault Weapon Retailers Tax Act, or Senate Bill 2468, proposes a 10% tax on assault weapons and magazines with more than 10 rounds. The bill defines assault weapons as “guns that accept large capacity ammunition feeding devices.”

Randall Gustafson, a salesman a Pro Gun & Indoor Range in Marion, says all guns have the potential to be labeled assault weapons under the proposed bill. “Just about every gun out there is going to have the capability to hold more than 10 rounds.”

Some lawmakers think the tax could lead to an increase in private purchases, but Gustafson believes gun owners are going to pay the tax eventually.

“As [guns] become worn or used, you want to refresh it and make it new. So you’re going to hit up a store,” Gustafson said. “You’re going to end up having to pay this tax one way or the other.”

The revenue will go into a Firearms Tax Fund to boost programs preventing gun violence in state-owned buildings and schools. Gustafson says he’d support the bill if he knew which programs are being funded.

“What are these programs actually going to spout off about?” Gustafson asked. “Are they actually going to teach children what firearms are used for?”

You’ll support the tax?  So you believe that government has a right to hold the RKBA hostage to the king’s ransom?

He ends with a tip of the hat to teaching the children.  So this is all “for the children.”  At the buyer’s expense, not the taxpayer, or the parents of the student being taught.

That doesn’t make it okay with me.

GunHub.

Similar to the United States, firearms laws are set at the State level, with an additional layer of laws at the Federal level. With the States in Australia generally working closely together, there is only a small range of differences in laws between States, compared to the US.

To own any firearm in Australia you are required to apply for a firearms licence. Licences are broken up into several classes which you can qualify (each State has slightly different variations for names/categories), which are segmented into types of firearms – rimfire, centrefire, semi-automatic/pump action shotguns etc. A separate and more onerous class of licence is required for pistols which requires proof of ongoing membership within clubs, attendance of events and restrictions on the number of calibres of pistols owned at a time.

The application process is intentionally drawn out, with paperwork taking several months to be ‘processed’ (read: sit in a tray indefinitely). Should you pass the relevant background checks, training courses complete and fees paid, you can then apply to buy your first firearm. Each firearm purchase also requires approval and registration with the police – with the owner having to provide a justification of why they need to own the firearm. (and no, self-defence is explicitly noted as not a legal justification) You will be restricted with your options for firearms depending on what State you live in, with huge restrictions and effective bans for most of the population on many types of firearms including semi-automatics, automatic rifles, pump action shotguns, smaller framed pistols and a wide range individual firearms which the police have classified as unacceptable. (the common theme being anything scary looking, but can also include such benign things as many types of air rifles and even many childrens toys)

You are required by law to store your firearms with a safe – with laws differing slightly by State but in general you will need to have this mounted to the floor and walls of your home. The police can and will decide to inspect your property at their discretion to check the safe and its contents – but I’ll go into that more later.

In using your firearm you’ll either need to stick to the firing range or if you’re lucky on your or a friends rural property – but don’t upset your neighbours. Laws regarding the usage of firearms here mean that if you ‘scare’ nearby individuals (which can be as little as them hearing a gun firing) can potentially lead to your firearms being seized.

These laws overall are the most benign frustrations for firearms owners in Australia – which may be surprising for US firearms owners who enjoy much more protection of their freedoms. I’ll outline now what I see as the even more insidious part of firearms and laws on defence in Australia at this time which have come hand in hand with gun control.

Every State and Territory in Australia has provisions to allow for self-defence in varying degrees with some States in particular give reasonable protections which allow escalating force if someone is on your property etc. Sounds pretty reasonable? Not exactly. These self-defence provisions are only enforceable if you do not use a firearm (or other banned/restricted self-defence devices). If you use a firearm to defend yourself, your family or your property you’re likely to instead see yourself having your firearms seized, firearms licenced cancelled and a strong likelihood of criminal prosecution put against you.

This isn’t based off speculation either – we’ve had this happen repeatedly to legal firearms owners in Australia. In 2017 is a prime example – where a farmer used an unloaded .22 rifle to defend his young family from an intruder who was under the influence of drugs and wielding a knife. For his efforts to defend his family, his firearms were confiscated by the police and restrictions put on his wife’s licence denying her the ability to keep her own firearms on their property. Thankfully due to strong community push back and lobbying by the industry, David Dunstan was able to have his firearms returned. Unfortunately that end result isn’t the case for everyone however with David being fortunate to have not pointed the firearm at the intruder or firing any rounds making it easier to make the case against criminal prosecution for his efforts – those who have to defend themselves and use their firearms are more likely to potentially see jail time.

This absurdity means that under the gun control environment in Australia, if an armed intruder entered your home whilst you were in the middle of getting ready for a day at the range and firearm in hand, that you would be required to put down said firearm and instead face a significant disadvantage at protecting your life.

This extends to beyond firearms now in Australia, with almost every jurisdiction making it illegal to own pepper spray/mace/stun guns/tasers – leaving our most vulnerable at extreme risk of physical harm.

Of course, this happens when you hate God and thus hate mankind who was made in His image.  It’s a death cult, with the preference being to see men perish, women raped, and children fatherless.  It is the epitome of wickedness.

And again I’ll say it.  People tend to see controllers as merely wanting to control other men for the sake of state safety, or in other words, so that the state has a monopoly on violence and can therefore propagate itself and its progeny.

There is some truth to this, but this truncates the explanation.  The rest of the story is that most lawmakers are vipers and live in a den of sin.  They want to see death and destruction, chaos and anarchy.  They are of their father, the devil.  You should see gun control in the same vein as the desire to see children sacrificed to Molech in modern society, i.e., abortion.

To them, the destruction of God’s image is an act and experience of worship.  They aren’t really interested in anyone’s safety.  They want to see human sacrifice.

David Codrea.

As for the NFL, it’s hostility to the Second Amendment is no secret to Americans who care more for the right of the people to keep and bear arms than they do for bread and circuses. League gutlessness, on the National Anthem and in its “Standard of Conduct” mandating player defenselessness, tells us all we need to know. The hiring of ex-ATF honcho and Fast and Furious cover-up king B. Todd Jones as special counsel for player misconduct tells us a bit more.

I didn’t know that’s where Jones ended up.  The NFL and Jones are a match made in hell.

And as for that matter, NASCAR has gone the way of the NFL.  Good riddance to both of them.  Not that I watched anyway.

News from Virginia.

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s Senate Judiciary Committee passed several gun control bills Monday morning.

Those bills tackle everything from universal background checks (S. B. 70- Background Checks), one gun a month limit, (S.B. 69- One-Gun-a-Month Limit), red flag laws, firearms and ammunition to be controlled by localities (S.B. 35- Local Authority), as well as firearms being restricted at public events.

Each bill was brought before the committee and discussed at length with some amendments included. For five minutes opposers and supporters were able to speak on the bills.

For five minutes.  The best argument against it is that it violates God’s laws.  The simplest argument they can understand is that there isn’t an army big enough to enforce any of it if Virginians are determined in their opposition.

Apparently, the AWB is struggling a bit.

Several Senate Democrats have already said they are unlikely to back the governor’s ban on so-called assault weapons, such as the popular AR-15-style rifles – a key part of Northam’s gun-control package. The House version of the bill has also not advanced.

The assault weapons legislation has drawn the fiercest pushback, as gun-rights advocates accuse Democrats of wanting to confiscate such rifles from current gun owners. Northam has said he has no interest in doing so.

An estimated 8 million AR-style guns have been sold since they were introduced to the public in the 1960s. The weapons are known as easy to use, easy to clean and easy to modify with a variety of scopes, stocks and rails.

Oh my.  Eight million is a very low estimate.  I would guess twice that number.  Anyway, reader Fred makes a good point when he says that the most dangerous thing to come out of the controllers is the red flag laws.

And listen to this statement of one communist from Arlington.

“For too many years this body has put the convenience of gun owners above all else,” said Democratic Del. Patrick Hope.

Change the wording a bit.

“For too many years this body has put the convenience of Christians above all else, allowing them freedom of speech, unmitigated access to worship and their Bibles” said Democratic Del. Patrick Hope.

How does that strike you?  They are both God-given and constitutionally recognized rights, yes?

Via reader Roger and also David Codrea, news from S.C.

David says this.  “I don’t like the idea of anyone claiming authority to infringe, but this is a necessary defensive maneuver.”

For me, I would put it a bit differently.  I’m in favor of preemption when it protects liberty and God-given rights, and against it when it infringes upon liberty and God-given rights.  So for example, I will oppose such a move if Virginia does this sort of thing against second amendment sanctuary counties, and I will support it when S.C. does it to the communist mayor of Columbia.  Therefore, I’m consistent.

Here is the paperwork (02195868).  I would have been more impressed if they had just sent the state police to throw him in prison.  And I’ll be happy if the county Sheriffs and local militia arrest Virginia state police if they try to confiscate firearms.

I dare a communist to prove me inconsistent.  Try it.

But it’s a big one.  David LaPell writing at Ammoland.

The bill (S7065) (A01589) would make it mandatory that every gun owner in the state of New York get a mental health evaluation before they could purchase a firearm. This wouldn’t be a one-time thing, this would be for every gun and of course, these evaluations would have to be held at a location of the state of New York’s choosing and would be at the expense of the person looking to purchase the gun.

[ … ]

There is also a larger and much more sinister motive to think about here. New York passed its own version of a Red Flag law last year, and unlike other states, it allows schools and just about anyone else to petition the courts to get an ERPO and have someone’s firearms taken away. Now can you imagine every gun owner now having to be subjected to a mental health exam, over and over again, where one wrong question, one misconstrued answer or even the bias of the doctor could not only prevent someone from legally buying the gun they were looking to get, but also lead to the police coming to the house and taking the rest and with a doctor’s word versus the citizen’s in court, the gun owner, soon to become the former gun owner, wouldn’t stand a chance legally.

This is a page right out of the communist playbook.

Not even mentioned is the fact that mental health professionals don’t want to be involved in such things, don’t believe that their trade can accurately predict those predisposed to violence, and certainly don’t want the liability and professional risk.

Always remember what reader Menckenlite said.

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

The communists never sleep.  We can’t either.

David Codrea.

Despite things not working out the way the governor ginned up all that fear for, reality hardly stopped his political allies from doing what they do best, springboarding off his lie and adding whoppers of their own.

“Annual gun lobby day protest in Richmond drew large numbers of white nationalists, militias, and racist conspiracy theorists this year,” the ever-odious Rep. Don Beyer tweeted. “Neo-Nazis tried to use this rally to launch violent attacks. Trump’s symbolism and memories of Charlottesville are vivid in many minds today.”

Taking their cue on what to amplify, NBC was representative of the rest of the DSM (Duranty/Streicher Media), breathlessly planting seeds like:

“On far-right corners of the internet, some have said the rally will accelerate a ‘race war.’”

No one I know said something like that.  Being a bit dramatic, are we?  Open carry is legal in Virginia (it won’t be if the communists get their way), so no law was broken, no fights broke out, no violence ensued, and not a single negligent discharge occurred out of 30,000 firearms (it would be good for the police to take a page from their book).

Don’t you know the progs just hate that?

Are you committed to counter their moves?

CA at WRSA sends these links.

WRSA Link #1

Democratic Redistricting

Engineering a Permanent Democratic Majority

Eric Holder’s Involvement

They’re Coming After North Carolina

They’re Coming After Georgia

Virginia was only the beginning.  So here’s the question.  Are patriots going to fondle their rifles, hide behind nom de guerres, and claim they’re going to do something about this, while they’re really preparing to be picked off one by one, or are they going to involve themselves in the local, county and state political process?

Against the many, loud, repeated claims that politics yields nothing of any benefit, I once again note that politics is war.  See it that way or be run over.  Apparently, the progs know it as war, and they think it’s worth their energy and effort.  Do you?

The only saving grace in all of this is that the NRA Wine Club is rocking!

Another perspective on Richmond from a collectivist.

The guy in Richmond with the “fifty-cal” assault rifle, along with many other dress-up warriors in battle fatigues, was at the Virginia State Capitol building to challenge Governor Ralph Northam and the new Democratically-controlled General Assembly’s proposal to enact a universal background check system and a ban on assault weapons and bump stocks.

[ … ]

Reports of the protest said that, unlike in previous years at the VCDL’s Lobby Day, many of the usual counter-protestors sat this one out. The heavily armed activists succeeded in scaring off their very threatening challengers: mothers who are terrified of gun violence in schools, and the survivors of shootings. “Ooh rah,” as the Marines say. What a tough bunch—intimidating a bunch of unarmed parents and children certainly requires a full complement of assault rifles of both the handheld and siderail-affixed variety.

Perhaps the saddest part of the gun-rights demonstration was how unnecessary it really was. The most extreme advocates among them would have us believe that any restrictions on gun sales or ownership will bring us one step closer to the government seizing every gun. But the fifty-cal is a far cry from a revolver in the drawer of your bedside table. It’s difficult to imagine how it would prove useful in quickly thwarting a home invasion unless one keeps it mounted and loaded on the kitchen counter. Imagine an America where you pull up to a stop light and the mini-van next to you isn’t sporting the latest Swedish luggage rack but two semi-automatic machine guns with laser scopes and night vision.

[ … ]

My fear is that this is exactly the kind of America the guy with the fifty-cal wants. That’s why he is the perfect posterchild for the very reasonable gun-safety laws making their way through Virginia’s legislature. There is not one Democrat in the Virginia General Assembly, not one member of Moms Demand Action, maybe not even one victim of gun violence who could make the case better. He is one of the most potent reminders that average citizen should not have military assault rifles.

Still, a tiny minority, backed by the powerful lobbying force of the National Rifle Association, has effectively prevented a nationwide restriction on civilian ownership of weapons of war. That needs to change. Otherwise, all of us will continue living in danger of seeing a fifty-cal up close and in action even if we’re nowhere near a battleship.

A thorough fisking of this commentary just wouldn’t be possible without a lot of time.  But a few things can be pointed out.

As with most commentators, she knows nothing about guns.  She says, “semi-automatic machine guns,” of which there is no such thing.  There is also no such thing as a .50 caliber assault rifle.  Assault rifles, by their very definition, use intermediate cartridges, not large bore cartridges.

But getting to the issue of world and life view, her true value judgments soon become clear.  “He is one of the most potent reminders that average citizen (sic) should not have military assault rifles.”  And she mentions the revolver in the drawer.

But what if the head of the household believes that a revolver in the drawer isn’t the best firearm for defending his home?  What if he has a multi-person home invasion to deal with?  According to Ms. Weeldreyer, you’re limited by whatever she thinks.

And what she thinks is that you, as the average citizen, have no right to any kind of weapon you want.  You’re limited by the state, because, according to her, the state has a monopoly on violence.  But you see Ms. Weeldreyer, states with monopolies on violence behaved like Uganda (under Idi Amin), Turkey (in the Armenian genocide), Cambodia (under Pol Pot), the Soviet Union (under the Bolskeviks), and Germany (under Adolf Hitler).  The history of gun control is as a pretext to awful things, and if Ms. Weeldreyer wants peace on earth, as much as their can be with the wickedness of mankind, she should do some study of the mass shootings that took place in the twentieth century and see just who did it.

But she doesn’t care about any of that.  The mere sight of guns anywhere is to her a threat, and thus, with her axiom being that only the government can be threats to people, you shouldn’t be allowed access.  Finally, her husband is a former military man.  So he took an oath to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

He could start by teaching his wife and being a real leader in the home.