Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Sean Sorrentino.

The Dems (driven by the gun grabbers) rejected it out of hand.

Why would they do that? If they wanted gun sales to proceed only after a background check, why would they make it impossible to conduct those checks outside of an FFL? The answer is obvious. They don’t care about the background check. They only care about getting the transfer on paper. If they don’t get the transaction written down and permanently recorded, they can’t later take that information and create the firearms registry that they actually want.

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It’s a test. If you just wanted Background Checks, this is everything you’ve asked for. But if “Background Checks” are just a stalking horse for the universal firearms registration that you REALLY want, then this is the worst possible thing in the world.

Gun grabbers can’t possibly accept this.

But they can’t reject it either.

Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

They will reject it. They have to. Accepting it is an off ramp on the highway to gun banning. It throws a permanent roadblock between them and their fantasy of registering all guns, licensing all gun owners, and slowly reducing the numbers of both. It’s a stake in the heart of their long term plans.

But if they reject it, they get two things.
No Background Checks at all.
Their duplicity exposed for all to see.

And then for ever after we get to beat them to death with “We offered you background checks and you refused. You don’t actually want background checks, what you really want is registration.”

I would never have offered it to begin with because it’s toothless unless there is a law requiring its use.  And if there is a law requiring its use, that’s just one more infringement.  And no, I don’t personally want such a thing, and I would never use such a thing,

Furthermore, this sort of brinksmanship is objectionable to me because it places God-given rights on the bargaining table as some sort of gambling bet.

Finally, such a system would be a monster of a divulgement of personal detail.  So what if solider A or Marine B was diagnosed PTSD after OIF or OEF, and the VA submitted their names to FedGov for gun prohibition.  What does that do to their chances to land a good job?  To their chances of ever having their reputation restored? To the unjust actions taken by the VA to begin with?

How does one stop unauthorized usage of NICS for blackmail and other nefarious purposes such as hiring decisions or insurance coverage?

No, no, no, no, and a thousand times no.  I do not offer it, I will not abide by it, and I will not sing the praises of this Trumpesque stupidity.

James Wesley Rawles.

The U.S. Senate returned from its summer recess on September 9, 2019. It has been widely reported that the Senate’s Republican leadership has caved in to media pressure. They have promised to create a Senate version of H.R. 8 — the “Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019”. (It already passed in the House, back in February.)

The phrases “Universal Background Checks” and “Comprehensive Background Checks” sound all warm and fuzzy to the leftists. But here is what they really mean: “We’ll make you a felon if you sell a gun to your next door neighbor”. Please don’t allow this blatantly unconstitutional bill to become law. Turning a fundamental right into a felony is the worst sort of legislative tyranny.

In the Senate version of the bill, they’ll probably carve out an exemption for transfers within immediate families. And they might make an exemption for holders of current CCW permits. There will of course be a compromise version of the House and Senate bills, in Conference Committee. So the exact wording of the finalized law is uncertain. But if the effective date stipulated in the House version is left intact, then the new law will take effect 210 days after it is  signed. (“The amendments made by this Act shall take effect 210 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.”)

President DJT has made repeated public announcements that he wants to see a “universal background check” law.  So there is a very high probability that he will sign the bill, if it crosses his desk. Once that 210-day window opens, watch out.  I predict that we’ll witness the biggest gun-buying frenzy in U.S. history.  President Obama was jokingly named Gun Salesman of the Year for a couple of years, but Donald Trump is about to become The Gun Salesman of the Century. And his signature on that law may even cost him getting re-elected.

James then goes on to outline some very specific implications of what’s coming, as well as lay out some very specific recommendations.

He ends with this: “Once the 210 Days of Freedom window of opportunity has closed, it will probably be closed permanently–at least in our lifetimes.”

Sober words for a sober time.

Nathan Rubin:

Little boy Nathan wants to make the rules now, does he?

You see what he’s done there, yes?  He’s offered you a Hobson’s choice.  Take this option or nothing at all.  Certainly, no one wants to be an irresponsible criminal, do they?

Left unsaid is whether Nathan has followed his part of the covenant to live together in peace with each other – it’s called the constitution.  I wish for something better, but for now it’s what we have.

So let’s replace some of the words thusly.  “You can’t call yourself a law-abiding citizen if you respond with disobedience to the new law that requires you locate one child from each neighborhood every other Thursday and sacrifice him or her to Baal.”

You see Nathan, we get our rights from God, the Almighty maker of the universe and all of His creatures, not the state.  The covenant merely recognizes your agreement to live in peace with that.

If you break that covenant, you invite massive, irrevocable, irreversible trouble.

Rep. Shiela Jackson Lee (D-Texas).

“I don’t know what else it takes but I don’t believe we can stop at the door of the United States House. I believe there will have to be an emergence of members of the House flooding the United States Senate for Senator McConnell to understand that these initiatives today, my gun storage bill, my bill that I’ve introduced dealing with the caliber weapon, I’ve held an AR-15 in my hand, I wish I had it. It is as heavy as 10 boxes that you might be moving and the bullet that is utilized, a .50-caliber, these kinds of bullets need to be licensed and do not need to be on the street.”

So let me see.  A “caliber weapon” short-action cartridge AR-15 that shoots long action .50 BMG.  I want one.  If we can just get the 10-box weight down a little we may have something.

This all reminds me of authentic frontier gibberish.

Breitbart.

The Hill reports that Cruz responded to the letter while attending a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday. He said, “I don’t think it’s a positive thing to see big corporations shifting their focus from their customers and actually doing what they were created to do into trying to become political players on divisive social issues.”

Cruz observed that the corporate gun control push “is about social signaling at the country club.”

Without revealing the name of the financial institution, Cruz spoke about one bank that removed its name from a gun control push after learning more about what was really going on.

He said, “I will note with at least one of those banks that came out with one of those oh-so-brave corporate letters, when I sat down with their leadership and actually asked them about it, the people who wrote the letter didn’t know the first thing about the substance.”

Cruz said he asked the bank CEO to define/detail an “assault rifle,” and the CEO could not do it.

That’s because corporations are being run by HR, legal and finance today rather than people who actually know anything.  These people graduated yesterday with social studies degrees from liberal arts colleges, having been educated in Fascism and anti-American doctrine.

Trump is planning a rollout of his gun control proposals soon.  He says, “I’m talking about meaningful, write that word, meaningful, meaningful background checks.”

Question: does anyone in the republican party other than Ted Cruz and Thomas Massie actually understand the mammoth error they are getting ready to make by embracing gun control?  Does anyone in the party other than these two guys have even three brain cells?

By the way, readers can expect to see that phrase over, and over, and over, and over again here: “Corporate gun control is about social signaling at the country club.”

Mr. Jones (todd.jones@publix.com),

It is with great sadness that I write to you.  I have readers who have already done so, but I thought I should weigh in on your recent decision to ban open carry in your stores.

I had occasion to shop at Publix on Saturday and asked to talk to the manager.  He was a delightful man, very respectful, but just a bit ill-informed on what the law says about open carry and leaving me a bit confused on your policy.

I informed the gentleman that I chose to shop at Publix not only because I can openly carry, which is entirely legal in North Carolina, but also because I wanted to reward Publix for your stand.  I had previously been told by the store manager that Publix follows state law, whatever that happens to be.

In North Carolina, that has worked just fine.  No one gives me strange looks, women and children don’t run screaming for the doors, and sometimes store employees even discuss it with me, asking me what brand of firearm I have, asking about my recommendations for purchases, and so forth.

Your manager brought up the issue of the recent shootings in El Paso and elsewhere, saying that they would not allow something like an AR-15 to be brought into the store, and I explained to him that, as he knew, it was legal to openly carry a firearm in North Carolina.  If I touched my weapon, that’s called brandishing, and it’s illegal.  If I unholstered it, or pointed it towards anyone, that’s called assault with a deadly weapon, and it’s illegal.  He had not previously understood that.  The shooter in El Paso broke the law the second he exited his automobile holding a rifle.

When asked for clarification on the new Publix policy, he explained that Publix would “respectfully request” that people not openly carry in Publix stores, but that legally they could not do anything about it.  That’s not true, I explained.  I must respect the wishes of private property owners and refrain from openly carrying if I know the request has been made.

You see, there is no easy way around this.  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  You cannot please the forces of gun control while at the same time leaving room for me to openly carry in Publix stores by merely “requesting” that I not openly carry, leaving it to my discretion because “there’s legally nothing you can do about it.”

I suspect that your HR department, your financial people, and your legal department, have made a choice to involve you in corporate gun control as social signaling at the country club.  You’ve been backed into a corner by your own people, and perhaps too stolid to understand that.  Otherwise, this decision is entirely on you, and you should be considered 100% responsible for the new policy.

Which is it, sir?  Were you backed into a corner by your own people, who convinced you that there was a happy medium on this issue?  Or was this your decision?  Who is it that wants to virtue signal at the country club?  Are you a member of a country club, sir?

In either case, I cannot say enough to express my disappointment with your company.  I explained to the manager that while I may have to make a pragmatic decision and shop at Publix in the future because only you happen to have a product and someone else doesn’t, I will not longer happily reward Publix with my hard earned money as a patron.  You are not entitled to my hard earned money.  You must earn it, and this decision is a huge blow against your account.

Don’t you see how much easier it would be had you simply told the controllers to go away, and that “You follow state law, whatever that may be?”  It works fine here in North Carolina.  How would you like it if we came to Florida and forced our own laws on you?

David Codrea.

If being on that list is going to prevent you (but not criminals or real terrorists) from buying firearms, who thinks the next step won‘t be to confiscate the guns you already own? (That’s where registration lists, which the National Institute of Justice acknowledges are necessary for “universal background checks” to “work,” can come in so handy, especially when supplemented with so-called “red flag laws.”) And if you are one of those real terrorists and are dumb enough to fill out a Form 4473 and submit yourself to a NICS approval, what better way to be tipped off that you’ve been “made” than to be helpfully told the feds won’t allow your firearm transfer to proceed?

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don’t forget the undeniable truth that is now out in the open: The antis not only want your guns, they want you treated like terrorists, that is, imprisoned without rights and/or killed. That’s not hyperbole. The words are theirs. And those in government want to make it official.

Beware of lists of names.  Such things empower the Leviathan, but its appetite never ceases – it only grows.  Placing names on lists is subject to all of the governmental abuse, ideological bias and bureaucratic twists that any other government program is, but only worse.

Independent Sentinel.

Democrats advanced a new measure this week to encourage states to pass “red flag” laws. These so-called extreme risk protection orders authorize removing guns and ammunition from individuals deemed as dangerous by some anonymous, unaccountable person, but it would not include the ready-made lists of gang members.

Republicans tried to add an amendment including known gang members, but the Democrats will not permit the inclusion of gang databases. It’s odd since gangs are the ones causing most of the so-called gun violence.

They would agree to include the names of white supremacists, but not other terror groups.

The House Judiciary rejected any effort by Republicans to include gang databases since they are worried about people mistakenly taken for a gang member. They brought up the ‘no-fly, no-buy’ list which was filled with inaccuracies, but Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican, who hoped to amend the measure to include gang databases, reminded the Democrats the restrictions for placing someone on a gang database are much tougher than the no-fly list.

“White supremacists.”  If you believe that the U.S. should close the borders, that includes you.  As for the rest of it, this little tidbit is just rich: “They brought up the ‘no-fly, no-buy’ list which was filled with inaccuracies …”

Yes it is, but whether it falsely flags “white supremacists” is another story.  They care about the one, but not the other.

Frank Clarke.

“It’s sad to see a highly-respected American corporation cravenly bending the knee to the forces of darkness. It shows a lack of courage. It shows a lack of foresight. It shows a lack of knowledge or, worse, a rejection of knowledge.

Only two states, Texas and Florida, keep statistics on “does this arrestee have a weapons permit?”. The data from these two states is startling. Lawful gun-carriers are arrested (not convicted, just arrested) at rates between 1/7th and 1/13th the rate for the general population, depending on the year chosen. What that means is that the people who go to the trouble of getting a carry permit are among the safest, most law-abiding people in the country. As a class, they are more law-abiding than the police, and your policy is to insult them and treat them as if they were criminals-in-waiting. Was that your intent or did you simply not think this all the way through?

Recall, as well, that on August 8th, an ordinary citizen — not law enforcement — stopped a potential mass shooting at a Wal-Mart in Springfield MO. Are you publicly asserting that you don’t want any of your customers intervening to stop such incidents in your stores? That would be a surprise, and not a pleasant one, either.

Principles are funny things. They sometimes cause us to say things or do things that others — often ‘others who lack much in the way of principles’ — interpret negatively. That is, alas, what Publix’s latest announcement looks like. It looks like Publix flinched in order to avoid ‘bad PR’ from people whose thinking doesn’t extend beyond “guns bad”. Those same people see the world as full of evildoers who wish nothing so much as to harm others. In such a world, people with guns are a positive danger.

You might suspect that I hold a different view, and you would be correct. I believe our world, despite the occasional ‘bad apple’, is full of loving people who care about their neighbors and want them to live happy, safe, and prosperous lives.

How do you see the world?”