Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

David Codrea.

… noting that Mr. Trump now really needs to keep his supporters rallied, a tweet from the president came across as bizarrely counterproductive:

“The Democrats are so focused on hurting the Republican Party and the President that they are unable to get anything done because of it, including legislation on gun safety, lowering of prescription drug prices, infrastructure, etc. So bad for our Country!”

Really? Now’s the time to demotivate the gun owners who put him in office? Not coming up with new infringements is what’s “bad”?

While he is also saying this.

In a fresh effort to dismiss the impeachment inquiry as nothing but a partisan fight with no real merit, Trump characterized the effort as a move by the Democrats to take things away from the voters who elected him as well as an attack on democracy itself. “The Democrats want to take away your guns, they want to take away your health care, they want to take away your vote, they want to take away your freedom, they want to take away your judges,” Trump said in the video. “It’s all very simple: They’re trying to stop me, because I’m fighting for you.”

I’m afraid he is so tone deaf to common Americans that he doesn’t realize that he’s already in serious trouble with gun owners, perhaps never to regain their trust or their vote, with the nomination of Canterbury to head the ATF, the bump stock ban, support for red flag laws, and apparent support for universal background checks.

The Washington Times.

But the biggest question remained: Where does the president stand?

“That’s an important piece — if the president doesn’t support it, there’s no point. It’s not going to become law,” Mr. Hawley said.

It was not clear what Mr. Trump thought of the proposal, with lawmakers pointing out that he hasn’t signed off on it and Mr. Barr was taking a temperature check.

I told you so.

NYT:

When Mr. Manchin volunteered to take his name off the background checks bill, Mr. Murphy said, the three senators were huddled around a speakerphone, talking to Mr. Trump from Mr. Toomey’s Capitol hideaway office.

“The president is a guy who thinks about branding,” Mr. Toomey said. “I think we just want to make it clear to the president that if he was going to do this, that he should get credit for it.”

Oh, no one has to worry about that.  Whatever new gun control makes its way into law, Trump will own it.  Completely.

Of the things that turn gun owners against gun manufacturers, these three things are highest on the list.

1. Aligning with gun control
2. Exclusive focus on military contracts
3. Reliance on name branding in lieu of true appreciation for the customer (e.g., H&K).  Look up the H&K memes like “Hi, we’re H&K and we hate you.”

It’s difficult to understand what’s so hard about this.

David Hunt on the Trench Gun.

The enemy didn’t like the trench broom one bit. In September 1918, the German government issued a diplomatic protest, complaining that the Model 97 Trench Gun was illegal because “it is especially forbidden to employ arms, projections, or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering” as defined in the 1907 Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land. When the Americans rejected this, the German high command then threatened to execute any soldier caught with a Trench Gun or even just Trench Gun shells. General Pershing replied that, henceforth, any Germans caught with flamethrowers or saw-bladed bayonets would be lined up and shot. As far as is known, no American or German POWs were executed under such circumstances.

For a lesson in history, visit his article.

But not so fast.  The shotgun is still a weapon of war.  As I’ve pointed out before, the U.S. Marine Corps used shotguns for close quarters battle in Now Zad, Afghanistan.  I snagged this shot of a YouTube video of fighting there when I was covering Marine Corps work in that theater.

So the next time some loud mouth tells you that “civilians” should not have “weapons of war designed only to kill others,” inform them that every soldier or Marine is first and foremost a civilian (in that he came from our ranks and will return to our ranks), and that every weapon that has ever been designed, or improvised, by an insurgency or uniformed army, is a weapon of war.  There are no exceptions, from sticks to rocks, from shotguns to rifles, from revolvers to pistols, from bolt action long guns to machine guns.

That’s a Red Herring anyway.  They don’t care about the details.  They just want you disarmed of all weaponry.  You’re easier to control that way.

Via David Codrea, FPC has a brief analysis here.

The invocation of “chain of title” is also problematic, as it suggests a legitimate government interest in maintaining searchable records of all firearm transactions. In other words: a universal registry masquerading as a background check system.

It’s a bad idea for a whole host of reasons.  But I wanted to point out one thing on this that you may have overlooked.

There are so many articles out there where it’s claimed that the White House said “Trump hasn’t bought any of this yet” that I cannot cite them all.

Here’s what I think happened.  These are ideas collectively promulgated by both Trump (a gun controller from way back) and Barr (a gun controller from way back).  Don’t believe it when the articles hint that this is all Barr and Trump is waiting on the Congress to lead by interacting first with Barr.

Barr is his boy on this.  Trump wants plausible deniability, and this effort is him sticking his finger in the wind.  Whether he gets all of this or not, at least now you see where Trump’s hearts is: “chain of title.”  Or in other words, a national gun registry.

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.

[ … ]

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.