Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Via reader Mack, let’s play a game.  “We need a mental health database.”  Who said this?  Let’s name names.

Andrew Cuomo:

Democrats should come together with one clear message on gun safety.

The federal gov’t must:

1) Outlaw assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
2) Create a mental health database
3) Pass universal background checks
4) Pass a Red Flag Law

Wayne LaPierre:

None other than Wayne LaPierre has suggested the same idea. Jeryl Bier pointed me to this speech delivered by LaPierre in 2012 after the Sandy Hook massacre. So frantic was the NRA to steer the conversation away from gun regulations that it proposed having the feds keep tabs on America’s mental illnesses instead.

“How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame – from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave – while provoking others to make their mark?

A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”

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.

Wayne is as much of a “control freak” as Cuomo.

Military.com.

Such laws could be used to “identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement,” Trump said. “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.”

[ … ]

“To put this in perspective, there are over 1.6 million disabled veterans with a service-connected adjudication by VA of mental illness, including one million veterans with PTSD,” he said.

Let me assist Military.com with their article headline.  “Trump backs red flag laws that WILL impact veteran gun ownership.”

Because.  Forecasting the future, witchcraft, sorcery, wicked divination by community witchdoctors who may as well howl at the moon at midnight and throw chicken bones over their shoulder.

There.  Fixed.

Utah Shooting Sports Council writing at Ammoland.

H.R. 8 is sold as a “background check bill” to keep guns away from bad people, but we know from 50 years experience that less than 1% of the bad people who fail the background checks are prosecuted.

What is needed are not more background check laws, but enforcement of existing laws. If bad guys are illegally trying to purchase a firearm, they need to be punished. The lawmakers pushing H.R. 8 do not want to do that. They are not serious about stopping bad people from getting guns, they only care about gutting the Second Amendment.

I stopped reading right there.  Because.  Existing laws.  Infringement.

“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
– St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803

Cited by David Codrea.  His article at Firearms News is full of important commentary on the current state of affairs, and the apparent current support for a new AWB if only enough rulers would favor it.

Don’t miss the fact that Mitch McConnell feels pressured.

“The urgency of this is not lost on any of us,” McConnell said.

But he noted the bar for legislation includes passing the House, garnering 60 votes in the Senate and a presidential signature.

He did not rule out looking at a ban on assault weapons, but noted there is a dispute over whether the 1994 ban that expired in 2004 had showed results.

“It’s certainly one of the front and center issues,” he said. “But what we can’t do is fail to pass something. What I want to see here is an outcome, not a bunch of partisan back and forths, shots across the bow.”

It’s urgent.  They must do something, because politics.  Codrea points out that Trump has jettisoned his base of gun owners.

Since Donald Trump was elected, the gun community has seen the president bypass Congress and ban bump stocks, support over 21 gun purchases, a Department of State over 32-round magazine ban for civilian firearms exports, push red flag laws which destroy the 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th and 5^th Amendments, and a complete ignoring of the evisceration of the 2^nd Amendment in the states of: CA, OR, WA, IL, NM, NV, VT, FL, NY, NJ, MA, etc… And then there is his statement that he “doesn’t like” silencers.

Yes, and I’ll point out one more time that Florida received an influx of Puerto Ricans after the hurricane who will likely vote collectivist, Trump won North Carolina by a small margin, and he is in trouble in Ohio, possibly Georgia and perhaps even Texas.  The road to victory in the next election is narrow.

But it’s like that when you have no principles and undercut the very base you used to put you in office.  We are where we are because enough people didn’t ask Trump the hard questions on his core belief in gun rights (or enough people didn’t listen when I asked the hard questions on core beliefs).  It appears he doesn’t have any.

That thing we fought so hard for, the hard won victory that required throwing Eric Cantor out of office, is going to come to pass.  The republicans are all on the band wagon now and Trump is pushing for it.

President Donald Trump endorsed an expansion of background checks for U.S. gun buyers following the massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, but said there’s “no political appetite” to renew a ban on military-style rifles.

“I’m looking to do background checks,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House on Wednesday to visit the two violence-stricken cities. “I think background checks are important.”

While he said there’s not enough support in Congress to re-enact what was commonly known as the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, he indicated he would discuss the idea with lawmakers. “I will certainly bring that up,” he said.

Remember those words: “I will certainly bring that up.”

So now Trump has ensured that he is a one-term president.  Between the bump stock ban, red flag laws, and universal background checks, he has alienated millions of gun owners.

Other pretend-conservatives have jumped on the band wagon as well. David French has never failed to disappoint me.

A so-called “red flag” law fills the gaps in criminal law and the laws governing mental-health adjudications by granting standing to a defined, limited universe of people to seek temporary seizure orders — called gun-violence-restraining orders — for a gun if they can present admissible evidence that the gun’s owner is exhibiting threatening behavior.

Properly drafted, these laws can save lives while also protecting individual liberty. Improperly drafted, they grant the state an overly broad tool that can be systematically abused to deprive disfavored citizens of a fundamental constitutional right.

He then lists a number of things he pretends will ensure against the improper use of this tool.  It doesn’t matter.

French calls himself a Christian.  I will make no claim whether he is or isn’t.  But I will certainly make the claim that he is an ignorant Christian if he is one at all.  He has bought into the wizardry and community witchcraft of psychiatry.  He may as well advocate howling at the moon at midnight on a full moon and throwing chicken bones over his shoulder.

Some Christian.

His blog, No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money via Gun Free Zone.

According to Uncle (in an email to me), Google accused him of selling guns, which of course is ridiculous.

John seems to think it might be related to his criticism of the NRA.

I don’t claim to know.  I do know that if you’re using BlogSpot (owned by Google), you’re subject to their terms and conditions.  Get off of it.  Back up your content.  Pay another host.  Say goodbye to Google forever.

So Orange Man’s daughter has called for federal red flag gun confiscation laws.

“Congress should enact Red Flag laws/ Extreme Risk Protection Orders in EVERY state and increase resources dedicated to mental health support.”

Prior to the election I visited reddit/The_Donald enough times to learn that not only was it a cult of personality, part of that personality had to do with Ivanka.

Quite literally, the readers were pushing for her candidacy for president immediately after Orange Man.  She’s pretty, said they.

So now how do the cult members feel about it now that pretty girl wants to take their guns based on the word of a single angry person and a midnight signature by a corrupt judge?

It’s all over the news.  There is DeWine who wants new red flag laws in Ohio.

Then there is Senator John Thune who now supports red flag laws, along with potential other gun control.

Next up is U.S. representative Mike Turner, from Dayton, who doesn’t just support red flag laws, but apparently a new AWB and magazine restrictions (Oh, and by the way, Mr. “I strongly support the second amendment” has a 93% rating from the NRA).

There are others, of course.  Pat Toomey was always a sellout, and will be so again.  But the key here is that he is being joined by a chorus of GOP voices this time.

I expect universal background checks, national red flag laws, magazine restrictions, and new age limits on firearm ownership.  Trump will surely sign all of that into law.  Whether this will include a new AWB is anyone’s guess.

In case any republican ever thought that this is any way to get gun owners to show up at the polls, go check out the deliberations at reddit/firearms and see what they think about sellouts.

One … term … president.

AANP:

Far too frequently, NPs are treating victims of mass shootings in hospital settings or helping them manage their recovery long after the media coverage subsides. AANP continues to support policymakers putting politics aside and focusing on common-sense reforms that reduce access to automatic weapons and high capacity magazines, increasing the age to purchase certain firearms and strengthening the federal background check system, while maintaining the individual’s right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.

In addition, AANP supports state and federal investment for additional research to look at this major crisis, including a focus on the root causes of gun violence and expanding access to mental health treatment to communities in the aftermath of these tragedies.

There is no “access to automatic weapons” unless you have $25,000 or more to buy a pre-ban (1968 GCA) machine gun.  What you really meant to say is that you support restricting access to semi-automatic weapons.  They tried that in New Zealand.  Out of an estimated several million semi-automatic firearms, to date the turn-in rate stands at around a thousand, give or take.  This is massive noncompliance in a country that doesn’t have a second amendment.

There are tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of semi-automatic firearms in America.  Do you really believe Americans will comply with orders to turn in semi-automatic firearms?  Really?

But if you demand compliance via door-to-door confiscations, what you’re really asking for is civil war.  In that case you’ll be treating a lot more people than you do now.

Is that what you want?  I would suggest you stop watching so much television – it’s bad for your mental health – and get out a little more into the highways and byways of America and learn the people.

Guns.com.

“Because the Court concludes that semiautomatic assault rifles are essentially indistinguishable from M-16s, which Heller noted could be banned pursuant to longstanding prohibitions on dangerous and usual weapons, the Court need not reach the question of whether semiautomatic rifles are excluded from the Second Amendment because they are not in common use for lawful purposes like self-defense,” said Staton, an appointment by President Obama. Prior to stepping up to the federal bench, Staton was a lawyer in private practice in San Francisco and a California Superior Court judge appointed by Gov. Gray Davis just before he was recalled.

Staton also quoted that the rate of fire of such guns, listed in the order as “300 to 500 round per minute rate” makes semiautomatic rifles “virtually indistinguishable in practical effect from machineguns.”

Wow.  I wish I could pull the trigger 300-500 times per minute for a full minute.  I’d vie for book of world records.  Move over, Jerry Miculek.  The boss is on the block.

But … there’s that sticky issue of legal definitions (like the single pull of the trigger being the difference between semi-autos and machine guns).  I guess judges don’t have to worry about things like legalities.