Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Texas Tribune.

After several of their priority bills failed to gain traction, some gun rights advocates said House and Senate leadership failed them. Now they’re calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to veto a line item in the state budget they say would add insult to an injurious legislative session.

But that same line in the state’s $251 billion budget is being viewed differently by other firearms enthusiasts.

While some smaller, homegrown groups view the item — $1 million for a public awareness campaign to promote responsible gun storage among firearms owners — as an affront to the Second Amendment, the National Rifle Association says it is unopposed to, though not thrilled by, the public awareness campaign.

Their attention now turns to what Abbott does during the period when he can veto line items in the budget.

Abbott touted the need to promote safe gun storage as part of his school safety proposals in the aftermath of the May 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School that left 10 people dead and 13 wounded. And with a June 16 deadline to make vetoes, the governor is in a delicate position of trying not to alienate Texas gun-rights activists, while advancing a net of school safety reforms that the Legislature passed.

Texas budget writers authorized the $1 million for the Department of Public Safety to promote gun storage so long as it does “not convey a message that it is unlawful under state law to keep or store a firearm that is loaded or that is readily accessible for self-defense.” The campaign, unless vetoed by Abbott, could include online and printed materials, public service announcements or other advertising. House lawmakers first proposed the idea in a draft of the two-year budget in March, and it was approved by both chambers in May.

“It’s certainly fine and lawful to have a weapon for your own protection,” state Rep. John Zerwas, R-Richmond, the House’s lead budget writer, told The Texas Tribune. “But I think we also need to be aware that it’s not uncommon for a child to access a loaded weapon and inadvertently and accidentally hurt themselves.”

But as some gun rights groups criticize the state’s Republican leadership for not stopping the public awareness campaign — “Speaker [Dennis] Bonnen slipped a $1 million spending spree for the promotion of “safe” gun storage,” reads a news release from Texas Gun Rights. “The House and Senate failed to stop this budget rider,” says another one from Gun Owners of America — others have stayed neutral and say the line-item is small and noncontroversial.

“No ‘mandatory storage’ bill passed,” NRA spokeswoman Amy Hunter said. “What passed was a safe gun storage campaign rider that was just several lines in a nearly 1,000 page budget and NRA didn’t oppose it, not that anyone bothered to ask about our position.”

“We’re not sure why $1 million of taxpayers’ dollars need to be used for such a campaign,” Hunter said. “The state can go ahead and do their thing, while we will continue leading the discussion with our own firearms safety training and accident prevention programs — again, at no cost to taxpayers.”

Well then allow me to explain it to you.  This is the first step.  What appears in education first appears in societal pressure next, and then in financial pressure in the way of things like insurance, and then finally in law.  This is the first of several steps the controllers intend to take.

So readers, is that what the NRA should be working on?  “We will continue leading the discussion with our own firearms safety training and accident prevention programs.”  Do you need them to do that for you?

I Stumbled across this website and thought you might be interested.

I’m always hesitant to argue that the controllers’ arguments aren’t based on real math, because it stipulates exactly what they want, i.e., that my God-given rights are a function of mathematics and votes.

They’re not.  But it’s always helpful to see just how easily the controllers are willing to lie to get their way.  They are bad people all the way to the core.

Gun Facts.  The next time you hear about a “scholarly study” on gun control, drop over there to see if they’ve fisked it.  If not, send it to them.

No, seriously.  He does.

He asked the president if he would now consider banning silencers on guns after the Virginia Beach outrage in which high-capacity magazine were also used.

Trump replied that he ‘didn’t like the idea of them’ and was would ‘serious look at’ banning the noise suppressors.

He added: ‘I don’t like them [silencers]. No body’s talked about the silencers very much, they did talk about the bump stocks and we had it banned and we’re looking at that, I’m going to seriously look at it [a ban].

‘I don’t like the idea of what’s happening, what’s going on is crazy, with schools.’

[ … ]

On the subject of semi-automatic assault rifles, Trump responded to the use of AR-15 high-powered rifles that they were used for ‘sport’.

He replied: ‘Well a lot of them use it for entertainment. They do. It’s really. For some people it’s entertainment, they go out and they shoot and they go to ranges and they have a tremendous amount of fun.

My God.  Can the man construct a coherent thought for even a moment?  What on earth does schools have to do with suppressors?

At any rate, we already discussed his apparent kingly choice to go around the legislative system and single-handedly declare bump stocks illegal.  He’s apparently looking at doing that with suppressors too as we learned.

But what we didn’t know is how little he can actually craft a coherent argument for the ownership of semiautomatic firearms.  He thinks you only have an AR-15 to “have a tremendous amount of fun at the range.”

Tell that to Stephen Bayezes.  Oh and by the way, take a gander at the comments on these discussion threads on reddit/firearms.  Look here and here.

Trump is being increasingly seen as an enemy of firearms ownership.  I don’t believe the polls that show Trump as far ahead as they do.  Those polls ignore the fact that the same level of excitement for Trump won’t be there in 2020 as it was in 2016.  Gun owners may simply stay home.

Trump has no real political sensibilities except Northeastern progressive, and as I’ve mentioned doesn’t even speak the same language we do we.  But his advisors are idiots as well.

Washington Examiner:

Four are dead and one is injured in Australia’s second deadliest mass shooting since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania.

A 45-year-old gunman began opening fire with a pump-action shot gun at a motel in the northern city of Darwin before opening fire at other nearby locations in the city’s central business district around 6 p.m. Monday. Pump-action shotguns are largely prohibited in the country under sweeping legislation passed in the aftermath of the Port Arthur shooting, where 35 people were killed.

“He shot up all the rooms, and he went to every room looking for somebody, and he shot them all up,” John Rose, a witness, told Australia’s public broadcaster. “Then we saw him rush out, jump into his Toyota pickup and rush off.”

But with all of those gun control laws, this isn’t supposed to happen.

It looks like at present there are actually five deceased.  Let’s see.  An illegal firearm, out on parole, with an electronic monitoring bracelet.

Where there’s a will there’s a way.  Gun control laws don’t work to stop this sort of thing and everyone knows it.

Avoid crowds, carry guns, and watch your six.

As soon as the blood was spilled the controllers came out of the woodwork to shill their ideas.  First up is The Washington Post, or in other words, Jeff Bezos’ and the CIA’s blog.

But details of the rampage include one fact unique to the growing list of active-shooter cases: the assailant used a .45-caliber handgun with extended magazines and a barrel suppressor. This small detail — that the loaded gun was fitted with simple, and lawful, “silencing” equipment — threatens to upend how we understand and train for active-shooter cases in the future.

Let’s stop right there.  I’ve never “trained” for an active shooter situation by learning to “run, hide and fight.”  Only the DHS is stupid enough to purvey such nonsense.

But details of the rampage include one fact unique to the growing list of active-shooter cases: the assailant used a .45-caliber handgun with extended magazines and a barrel suppressor. This small detail — that the loaded gun was fitted with simple, and lawful, “silencing” equipment — threatens to upend how we understand and train for active-shooter cases in the future.

But the Virginia Beach killer seemed to want the anonymity of silence, a tool of the coward, not one seeking fame or a blaze of glory. None of the videos or manifestos we’ve seen from New Zealand to Las Vegas appear to be part of the Virginia Beach story. The killer wanted silence.

Silence is the enemy of time. An entire “run, hide, fight” policy that governs every school, workforce and the first-responder community in active-shooter cases is conditioned on an important premise: that there is situational awareness that shots have been fired, bullets are flying and it’s always best to run the other way. Once you know where the bullets are coming from, you can — as I tell my own kids — “sprint if you can; duck if you can’t; and fight only if you must. I only have one of each of you.”

If she would rather teach her children that than arm defenders around them, she hates her children.  But you see where this is going.  Now the controllers are targeting suppressors.  Next up, USA Today.

It’s not immediately clear how long Friday’s attack lasted, or how much time passed before the first police officers arrived on scene. But some gun control advocates say the suppressor may have caught the victims off guard. One survivor described hearing something that sounded like a nail gun.

“Especially on a handgun, a suppressor will distort the sound in such a way that it would not immediately be recognizable as gunfire to people who sort of know what that sound is,” said David Chipman, a retired agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and now the senior policy adviser with Giffords, a gun-control lobbying group.

Oh, I see.  An “expert.”  It’s always better for your story when you can get an “expert” to weigh in, yes?

But finally, the beloved Donald Trump himself.  Someone baited him with a question about suppressors, and he had this to say.

Q    The suspect in the Virginia Beach shooting used a silencer on his weapon.  Do you believe that silencers should be restricted?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t like them at all.

First we had the bump stock ban courtesy of a single, solitary, action by the federal executive remaking federal law on a whim.  Nice precedent, Mr. Trump.  We’ll see that used for very nefarious purposes in the future, no doubt.  Then we had support for red flag laws (or so-called extreme risk protection orders).  Then we had the selection of a gun controller to head the ATF, and finally today we get loathing of suppressors.

In fact it wouldn’t surprise me to see a bill pass the House and Senate headed for Trump’s desk to outlaw them completely, something that is no more than a muffler intended to save the hearing of target shooters and sportsmen.

You see, Trump can honestly claim that he is a defender of the second amendment when his definition of the second amendment is that you get to keep a pistol in your home if the Police say so, and only under certain very strict conditions you may be able to carry it like he does.

It’s a matter of language and world and life view.  His isn’t yours, and yours isn’t his.  When he says he is a defender of the second amendment, he doesn’t mean what you want him to mean.

The perspective from a controller.

At this year’s National Rifle Association annual meeting, President Donald Trump invited some special guests on stage. The first was a young mother from Virginia, April Evans.

“One night in 2015 she was alone with her two-year-old daughter when an intruder broke into her home violently,” said Trump.

“April took care of it.”

The crowd swooned.

[ … ]

“But kind of underlying all of this is a presumption about crime that whatever happens to you it’s probably going to be strangers who perpetrate it,” said Carlson. “It’s going to be sudden, it’s going to be fast and it’s going to be violent. And really the only thing you have to do is figure out how to basically train your muscle memory to respond as fast as possible.”

What gets left out of that narrative, according to Carlson, is that most sexual assaults don’t look like that. Neither does domestic violence.

“You’re experiencing crime and victimization, not as a one-off, acute moment of violence, but it’s generally in the form of mental abuse, psychological abuse, financial abuse,” said Carlson.

According to the FBI, attacks from strangers make up less than a third of violent crimes against women. The vast majority of violence women face comes from people they know.

This is an amazing commentary.  It can’t be described any other way than open loathing of women who have defended themselves.  Do you sense the commentary dripping with sarcasm and hatred for women who won’t go silently into the night and perish for the sake of the social planners?

First of all I won’t stipulate to their alleged statistics on anything until I’ve had a chance to review the data and perform the calculations myself.  But let’s grant for the sake of the discussion that they’re right and only a moderate fraction of women defend themselves from strangers intent on raping them or invading their homes to do them harm.

The author’s argument is that she doesn’t care.  She is willing to grant that this fraction gets raped or killed for the sake of gun control.  Her argument is that because she isn’t convinced that this fraction, whatever it is, is worth it, she wants to control means of self defense for everyone.

Only the most crass, blinded and wicked person could develop and perpetrate such an argument.  It’s the same kind of person who seems to dominate the political scene today, with environmentalists who would rather men get eaten by animals than carry weapons in the bush, and women who believe in sacrificing their children to Baal for the sake of convenience or some other reason.

This category of person is dangerous.  They do not believe that mankind is made in God’s image.  They believe they have the right and knowledge to dictate the terms of survival to everyone else, and to them, you are just a statistic.

Never listen to these people except to refute them, teach your family and friends better, and know where the FUSA is headed long term.

News from New Zealand.

New figures show gun owners are holding back on handing in their firearms, because they’re waiting to hear how much the Government will pay for them

Figures released to Newstalk ZB by the New Zealand Police showed that, as of Sunday night, only 530 guns had been handed in since the ban on semi-automatic guns was finalised in early April.

There are around 250,000 licenced firearm holders in New Zealand and it’s estimated as many as 300,000 guns could now be illegal.

I laughed.

So many breathless articles here in America about how easy it was to make new gun control laws, unlike “Cowboy” America.

So much pining away and wishing for such a society by the progressives, so much desire for a state monopoly on violence.

And now, so much fail.

I laughed.

NSSF:

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a record of no-nonsense support for the rule of law that clearly extends to respect for the Second Amendment and the firearms industry.

Chuck Canterbury is the President of the 350,000-strong Fraternal Order of Police who would bring to the Director’s office 26 years of law enforcement experience as well as 16 years’ experience in his current role. Canterbury retired as a major with South Carolina’s Horry County Police Department and was inducted into the South Carolina Law Enforcement Hall of Fame.

And as for the evidence for Canterbury’s support for the second amendment?

Canterbury also stood up to billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg after the anti-gun funder of Everytown and Moms Demand called the Fraternal Order of Police a “fringe group” for opposing the release of firearms “trace” data which is prohibited by the Tiahrt Amendment. Even Bloomberg’s own police commissioner Ray Kelly opposed the release of ATF trace data. ATF says it shouldn’t be released outside of law enforcement either. Bloomberg didn’t care when he misused this information in so-called “sting” operations against firearms retailers – without the knowledge of either ATF or his own police department – interfering with as many as 18 criminal investigations and forcing ATF to pull agents out of the field for their own protection.

There you have it.  He supports cop safety.  That makes him a second amendment supporter according to the NSSF.

Next up, the American Suppressor Association:

“As the regulating body of our industry, ATF has a tremendous amount of control over our ability to operate and create jobs,” said Knox Williams, President and Executive Director of ASA. “Because of their influence over our businesses, the ATF Director is, for us, one of the most important politically appointed positions that President Trump will fill. His nomination of Mr. Canterbury, which does require Senate confirmation, falls directly in line with his campaign promise to work with the firearms industry and protect the Second Amendment. Mr. Canterbury’s resume and reputation highlight that he is the leader that ATF needs in order to become the bureau that they are intended to be.”

What bureau would that be?  What did the American founders intend a bureau like that to do, sirs?

The NSSF has never been a supporter of the second amendment, and with respect to the American Suppressor Association, I suspect that they have no desire to see suppressors unregulated.  If they weren’t regulated by law, they wouldn’t be able to charge $1000 a piece for their tubes with baffles.

Prior:

Further Fisking Of Chuck Canterbury’s Second Amendment Credentials

Fraternal Order Of Police Chief Chuck Canterbury Picked To Head ATF

News from New York:

A 64-year-old New York state man who was arrested for possession of an illegal handgun after he fatally shot a pair of prowlers rooting through his home Tuesday afternoon reportedly told the district attorney the weapon he used in self-defense was his dead father’s and he forgot to register it.

Ronald A. Stolarczyk was charged with felony possession of an illegal handgun, New York State Police said in a news release.

At about 2:40 p.m., officials say Stolarczyk interrupted a man and woman burglarizing his home in Deerfield, New York, located about four hours north of New York City. Stolarczyk then shot the two suspects, according to police.

But the 64-year-old was later arrested after authorities said they determined the handgun used in the shooting was illegally owned.

One of the alleged burglars, identified by state police as 57-year-old Patricia Anne Talerico of Utica, was pronounced dead at the scene. The second alleged intruder, her nephew, 27-year-old Nicholas Talerico of Utica, was transported to a hospital and died of his injuries.

“The word that we had originally was a possible home invasion, possible suspect running at large,” New York State Police Trooper Jack Keller told WSYR-TV. “We were able to quickly identify who those people were identified as…but also we were able to determine quickly that there was no one else and the public was not in danger at all.”

Police said they found items belonging to Stolarczyk at Nicolas Talerico’s home, indicating he may have burglarized his home before, WCSI reported. It’s unclear if Stolarczyk knew him.

Stolarczyk was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a firearm and was transported to the Oneida County Jail, where he’s awaiting centralized arraignment, according to state police.

The District Attorney’s office and police continue to investigate Stolarczyk and the potential motive of the burglars.

Because the only people made in God’s image in New York are law enforcement officers, we can’t let you do that.  You’re the real criminal here, and not only that, we will investigate you until we find a motive behind this that justifies the home invasion.

Just because.  Suck it.  They don’t call us controllers for nothing, capisce?

A reader sends the following references today.

First of all, Senators Feinstein, Warner, Schumer and DeWine claimed support from the Fraternal Order of Police when they introduced a renewed “assault weapons” ban in 2006.  This is exactly within Canterbury’s tenure, who has been president since 2003.

But is this accurate?  According to NBC news it is.

National police organizations such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the International Brotherhood of Police Officers and the Fraternal Order of Police all support the renewal of the ban. President Bush has said he would sign such a bill if Congress passed it.

To be precise, this report is from two years earlier when Bush was president, but it does show support for a renewed AWB (by the way, did you know that Bush had agreed in principle to renewal of the ban?).

Finally, the Fraternal Order of Police is credited with assisting Vice President Biden in formulating the language of the renewed ban, and FOP representatives were standing on stage during the presentation as a show of support for a renewed ban.

But according to Chuck Canterbury, who also supports universal background checks and complete law enforcement access to medical records, “I take a back seat to no one in my reverence for the Second Amendment.”

So in addition to knowing that he is a gun controller, you now know that he is a shameless liar.