Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

I doubt it, but let’s rehearse some recent events before diving too far into my assessment.

Even most NRA members, it would appear, still do not get that the issue of bump stocks (and the ban dictated by the stroke of a pen by one man) isn’t about bump stocks.

“You know what? I didn’t even know what a bump stock was,” said Patrick Callahan, 61, from Wyoming. “I have no problem with a bump stock being banned, to be honest with you. I think there’s always balances.”

Sebastian is still arguing, seemingly, that as long as we all retreat in unison, everything will be okay (or at least as good as it can ever be given that we are likely on the losing side anyway).  We just need to avoid division.  If I’ve misinterpreted Sebastian in this admittedly cursory treatment of his latest post, please feel free to correct me.  But on the previous [related] post by Sebastian which I’ve linked (and will do so again), commenter Stephen Wright lays out the following charge.

Talking no-compromise in a political battle is like Hitler not allowing his troops at Stalingrad (and other places) to retreat and maneuver intelligently like a modern army has to. It’s idiotic. But I fear that there’s enough idiots on our side buying into this that it may split our fairly large minority and keep us from being politically effective.

It’s ironic that when the pro-gun movement is actually historically the strongest we may ultimately lose the war that we had been winning until now.

Let’s leave behind the issue of whether we’re winning (there is indication that at the local and state level, there is progress in things like open carry, despite S.C.’s intransigence, while at the national level there hasn’t been a win in a very long time, Heller and McDonald are on the list of mixed-bags).  Consider the brashness and audacity of the charges.

Stephen seems to be saying, “While this can’t really be compared to WWII, or Hitler’s refusal to retreat, and while I have no plan to break the habit of retreat and actually win anything, and while we have no real leadership and a completely dysfunctional organization, I want to retreat yet again, and if you don’t retreat with me, then our ultimate loss will be on your conscience.”  It’s really a remarkable thing when the only thing upon which we can agree is that one side wants perpetual retreat, and the other does not.  And the retreatists will blame the non-retreatists for any losses.  This drips with irony.

Chris Cox seems to be absent in the debates, but since he is a Wayne LaPierre sycophant, he’s likely on Wayne’s side.  Wayne Lapierre is fighting for his life, and so far it looks like he is winning, even if he takes the NRA down with him.  Oliver North is one of the losers in all of this.

Oliver North announced Saturday that he would not serve a second term as National Rifle Association president, making it clear he had been forced out by the gun lobby’s leadership after his own failed attempt to remove the NRA’s longtime CEO in a burgeoning divide over the group’s finances and media operations.

“Please know I hoped to be with you today as NRA president endorsed for reelection. I’m now informed that will not happen,” North said in a statement that was read by Richard Childress, the NRA’s first vice president, to members at the group’s annual convention.

North, whose one-year term ends Monday, did not show up for the meeting, and his spot on the stage was left empty, his nameplate still in its place. His statement was largely met with silence. Wayne LaPierre, whom North had tried to push out, later received two standing ovations.

It was a stunning conclusion to a battle between two conservative and Second Amendment titans — North, the retired Marine lieutenant colonel with a ramrod demeanor who was at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and LaPierre, who has been battle-tested in the decades since he took up the mantle of gun rights. He has fought back challenges that have arisen over the decades, seemingly emerging unscathed each time. In this latest effort, he pushed back against North, telling members of the NRA’s board of directors that North had threatened to release “damaging” information about him to them and saying it amounted to an “extortion” attempt.

Note well.  Apparently it wasn’t up to him, or even the board of directors.  He was “informed” of this decision.  I’ll return to that momentarily.

As for Wayne, there were some awkward goings-on this weekend.

According to someone we’ve spoken to who’s in a position to know, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre met with influential board members and fund-raisers last night and was asked for his resignation. The meeting reportedly became heated and LaPierre stormed out. He then responded to the demand with a scathing letter to those involved, refusing to step down.

So first there is the issue of exactly how an elected board of directors along with an elected president can demand the resignation of a bureaucrat, and be rejected by said bureaucrat outright and that organization continue to function.  It can’t.  I assess that the NRA is a completely dysfunctional organization and has been for a long time.

Leaving aside the issue of Ackerman McQueen, and $200,000 of wardrobe purchases by LaPierre, the bylaws, people and organizational structure aren’t sufficient to rid the group of ne’er-do-wells, whether LaPierre or the cretins who are financial liabilities and parasites to the organization.  A board of directors who doesn’t direct may as well quit and go home.  If there are too many bad apples in the mix, then it’s appropriate for the entire group to go down in flames, suffering the personal, legal and financial loss attending their malfeasance.  Membership on the board of directors means legal and fiduciary culpability, as it should on any board.

But can this situation be salvaged?  Should it be salvaged?  I said a few days ago that the NRA had supported the NFA, the GCA, the Hughes Amendment, the bump stock ban, and red flag laws.  It’s all true.  This is an incomplete list.  Via David Codrea, this list adds to my own.

The real issue with the VNRA isn’t corruption or not doing enough to push rights. The problem is what the group actively does to violate rights. NFA ’34, GCA ’68, FOPA ’86. Everyone knows those. It shows how long the rot has existed.

They tried to keep HELLER from going to SCOTUS. They actively killed constitutional carry legislation in New Hampshire. They wrote an “assault weapon” ban in Ohio. They sabotaged an RKBA/free speech case in NH.

I had forgotten how many open carry fights the NRA has sabotaged, and it’s also true that the NRA didn’t want Heller going to the SCOTUS.  I consider Heller only a partial win because of the wording Scalia put in there supporting gun control at the local and state level, and the weakness of it leading to McDonald, which still isn’t recognized by lower courts.  But Alan Gura snatched a modicum of victory from the jaws of defeat.

The point is that in almost every case where retreat was possible, the NRA has led the way.  Then oftentimes, as with Heller, they claimed credit for what small victory the SCOTUS gave us.  In every exigency in life, a man must make functional judgments.  Whom to marry, where to work, how much to save, with whom to be associated.

In this case, the analysis is quite simple.  If an organization is working against your interests, it’s an easy decision to jettison support for said organization.  It makes no sense to support people who intend harm to your liberties.  If this is considered on a tactical level (retreat might be a good option now), then it is incumbent on our detractors to explain how said retreat will be reversed and good use made of it rather than sling accusations.  I see a lot of hand-wringing, but I see no detractor channeling Sun Tzu.  If you want to be a general, then learn to lead and learn to win.

The issue of red flag laws is problematic, while the issue of bump stocks is more emblematic.  Either way, it’s a mistake to see this in terms of issues without seeing the larger aggregate as well.  I dislike harping on Sebastian, but his most recent post begins this way.

But what got us here isn’t that we didn’t shout “no” loud enough. We didn’t end up here because we’re not pure enough. That’s always what religious zealots turn to when disaster strikes. It’s a natural human reaction. But it usually leads to doing the wrong thing.

Exactly how it leads to doing the wrong thing he doesn’t explain, he just says so.  And any hint of unwillingness to make more compromises becomes “zealotry.”  Very well.  I believe that the second amendment is meaningless inasmuch as it guarantees our right to keep and bear arms.  I believe that the Almighty has not only extended that right to man, He has demanded that men defend home and hearth, as well as answer for placing and keeping tyrants in power.  The second amendment is a covenant, with blessings and consequences (or curses) for adherence and breakage.  The right to keep and bear arms without infringement is sacred.  We observed before that gun control is wicked.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

If this makes me a zealot, then I wear that badge proudly.  And now we’re to the root of the issue.  I may be a zealot, but at least I have an epistemological basis for my statements, and my world and life view dictates my value judgments.

For those who see this through a more pedestrian lens, it will be less important until it becomes important, at which point they would have to explain their next steps because I can’t.

The NRA may survive this, but not in the same form.  It will be known as the home of the Fudds, or it will jettison the ne’er-do-wells, clean house, and begin a campaign of grading politicians truthfully and keeping those grades up-to-date.  It will include in that campaign an honest attempt to stand against the tide of control coming.

If the NRA decides not to approach it that way, it will morph back into an organization that teaches people to shoot bolt action rifles at father-son or mother-daughter events.  But they can begin sending the money back to their constituents and proceed apace with defunding themselves, because you don’t get wealthy by teaching people to shoot rifles.  You obtain some measure of power by truthfully and honestly representing your constituency.

Finally, David Codrea notes of the war between factions that “Not that “Wayne LaPierre prevailing, for now, is a “win” for membership. Nor would it be had North succeeded. This was a coup attempt by NRA’s long-term PR firm Ackerman McQueen to replace former gravy train riders with current ones. There are no clean hands here, and with the weekend battle “won” by current management, don’t expect dramatic changes in the way things are run as long as they’re in power.”

But even if they’re able to rid themselves of the rot within, the question is whether they can return to their roots.  Their tap root is one of preservation of the rights recognized in the constitution, including weapons of war.  “What the Fudds either don’t know (or do, but have no intention of ruining a “good” meme by admitting), is that it wasn’t until after WWII that “the NRA concentrated its efforts on another much-needed arena for education and training.”

Armenian Christian civilians, escorted by armed Ottoman Muslim soldiers, are marched through Harput (known as Kharpert by Armenians, the kaza of the Mamuret-ul Aziz), to a prison in the nearby Mezireh (via Wikipedia)

Raymond Ibrahim.

Today, April 24, marks the “Great Crime,” that is, the genocide of Christians—mostly Armenians but also Assyrians—that took place under the Islamic Ottoman Empire throughout World War I.  Then, the Turks liquidated approximately 1.5 million Armenians and 300,000 Assyrians.

[ … ]

… in 1920, U.S. Senate Resolution 359 heard testimony that included evidence of “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death [which] have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.”

In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (consistent with Islam’s rules of war).  Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: “Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross,” she wrote, “spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies.”  Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 documentary film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian’s memoirs.

Thanks to Mr. Ibrahim for the reminder.  Our own Matt Bracken also had a few words for us.

During the Armenian Genocide from 1915-23, two million Christian Turks were exterminated by being marched at gun point into burning deserts with no food or water. The Turkish gun registration laws were enacted in 1911, in the name of “public safety.” The genocide began a few years later, after the Armenians’ firearms were confiscated.

And finally, Stephen Halbrook detailed the pre-conditions for the genocide.

Hundreds of news stories have been written during the past month reporting on the 100-year anniversary of one of the darkest events in world history, a two-year killing spree that claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 to 1.5 million Armenians.

Virtually none of these news stories, however, bothered to mention why the Armenians were defenseless against their rulers in the then Ottoman Empire: because the Ottomans had disarmed them …

While the remnant of the Ottoman Empire, today’s Turkey, disputes many of the details having to do with the Armenian genocide, most historians agree on certain basic facts. First, that the Christian Armenians had long been denied basic rights under the Ottomans’ Muslim law. Second, they were excluded from participation in the government. And third, Ottoman law made it a crime to possess a firearm without government permission. The Armenians, as British traveler H. F. B. Lynch wrote in 1901, were “rigorously prohibited from possessing firearms.”

After the Ottomans joined Germany in World War I—and a British invasion seemed imminent—the Turks decided to deport the Armenians, who they considered untrustworthy, to the interior. This deportation process became a death march, as thousands, and then tens of thousands, were murdered on their way to nowhere.

The 1915 deportation decree imposed the death penalty not only for armed resistance, but also for hiding or even helping someone else hide. The Ottomans also decreed that any firearms the Armenians possessed were to be surrendered to the government. Failing to do so, the decree said, “will be very severely punished when the arms are discovered.”

Ottoman authorities swept down on Armenian towns to search for guns. Villagers were tortured to induce confessions about hidden arms. Mass executions were ordered.

Such has been the cost of not having weapons, whether under the Bolsheviks, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or whomever decides to act executioner.

News from the UK.

According to The Times, in a message to his 17,000 YouTube subscribers, Mr Long-Collins said: ‘I was told that due to repeated comments from other people on the videos, [the police] felt that the channel was a forum of extremism and it was promoting views that were not in line with legal firearms ownership in the UK.’

He told the paper: ‘The main issue was a video that I made around the Paris attacks where I advocated the French to be able to use handguns for self-defence because of the frequency of attacks that were happening at the time.’

Mr Long-Collins lost an appeal against the decision to revoke his gun licences in 2016 at Portsmouth crown court.

He has been told by police recently that they are unlikely to reinstate the licences in the near future, The Times reports.

The crown won’t allow men to defend themselves.  They won’t even allow men to express opinions at variance with their own.  It’s sort of like a communist country, yes?

Now, contrast that with the words of Jesus.  We’ve discussed it before at length.

… for some evidence, see Digest 48.6.1: collecting weapons ‘beyond those customary for hunting or for a journey by land or sea’ is forbidden; 48.6.3.1 forbids a man ‘of full age’ appearing in public with a weapon (telum) (references and translation are from Mommsen 1985). See also Mommsen 1899: 564 n. 2; 657-58 n. 1; and Linderski 2007: 102-103 (though he cites only Mommsen). Other laws from the same context of the Digest sometimes cited in this regard are not as worthwhile for my purposes because they seem to be forbidding the possession of weapons with criminal intent. But for the outright forbidding of being armed while in public in Rome, see Cicero’s letter to his brother relating an incident in Rome in which a man, who is apparently falsely accused of plotting an assassination, is nonetheless arrested merely for having confessed to having been armed with a dagger while in the city: To Atticus, Letter 44 (II.24). See also Cicero, Philippics 5.6 (§17). Finally we may cite a letter that Synesius of Cyrene wrote to his brother, probably sometime around the year 400 ce. The brother had apparently questioned the legality of Synesius having his household produce weapons to defend themselves against marauding bands. Synesius points out that there are no Roman legions anywhere near for protection, but he seems reluctantly to admit that he is engaged in an illegal act (Letter 107; for English trans., see Fitzgerald 1926).

When Jesus told his disciples to go and purchase swords, debating over how many they got, or whether they used them and for what purpose, completely misses the point.  The point is that by telling them to do so, the Lord of the universe was ordering them to purchase and bear arms in violation of the law.  “This is a fact, and no amount of spiritualizing, Scripture twisting or hermeneutical machinations can get around it.”

I’ll stick with Jesus.  The UK has decided to follow satan.

Discussing the same subject we did a few days ago (but coming to radically different conclusions), Sabastian remarks as follows.

While the figures involved in the hardliner (Knoxers in the past) versus pragmatist (Wayne’s faction) debate have changed, the essential debate is still with us.

NRA’s parasitic relationship with its PR firm isn’t anything new. The Knoxers railed against it too back in the day. I’ve never been comfortable with it either, but I’ve always had the choice of living with it as a member, or joining the hardliners. I am of the opinion that NRA taking a no-compromise, hardline stance will ultimately result in its irrelevance. Believing we can always win by saying ‘no’ louder is not a winning strategy when you’re working as a determined minority in a republican political system.

These days the issue is bump stocks and red flag laws. NRA largely surrendered on the bump stock issue to buy time to stop the bills that would have put semi-automatic firearms in legal jeopardy. They endorsed red flag laws provided they had sufficient due process (which none of them do). I believe both these moves are unpleasant necessities that reflect the reality of the political situation post-Vegas and post-Parkland. If you want to fight and die on bump stock hill, sorry, but we’re going to lose that fight. We also risk losing a large chunk of the current transferrable machine gun stock. You’re all aware of the debates, so I won’t rehash them.

That’s just bullshit.  The NRA didn’t “largely surrender” on bump stocks, it gave Trump the idea and cover for it.  They also endorsed red flag laws (ERPOs), and gave Trump the cover to say “take them first.”

Besides, the due process requirement is a red herring and everyone with two brain cells knows it.  Due process is for after a crime has been committed.  Threats are a crime, so you don’t need red flag laws to arrest someone who has threatened someone else.  The idea behind red flag laws is allegedly to prevent crime, or in other words, sit in the seat of the Almighty and predict behavior in the future.  I suspect that the real idea behind red flag laws will eventually become manifest, i.e., to remove firearms from people whom the FedGov doesn’t like.  Do you believe in the second amendment remedy for tyranny?  Presto.  Red flag your ass.

So you can reform the NRA until you heart is content, sir.  I won’t be a part of what I’ve noted is the best, most effective, most well-connected, well-financed gun control organization on earth and in history, having been involved in and supported the NFA, the GCA, the Hughes Amendment, the bump stock ban, and now red flag laws.

Seldom has it ever actually used its money and power to properly score votes, oppose gun control, marshal people and resources, and stand in the gap.  Can you imagine an NRA that actually used its wealth and power to oppose gun control instead of enrich the pockets of the powerful?

It’s hand-wringing to say that the NRA couldn’t have stopped this or that, if in fact history is no indication of its chances of success given that it has never actually tried.

And I’ll tag this post both NRA and gun control.  The two go together hand in glove.

News from Philadelphia:

“Our concern is that in the immediate timeframe, that family is safe,” Williams said. “Imagine it’s cold out, there’s a family with children that’s just run out of the house with no coats or shoes on to get away from danger. We pick them up, we bring the whole family back to the house, we remove the bad guy and the guns and we make it safe.”

The Sheriff’s office is responsible for more than 1,000 firearms confiscated from accused batters due to Protection From Abuse orders. Their office’s Warrant Unit can execute Protection From Abuse orders signed by a judge 24/7, Williams said.

[ … ]

“We do this every day. We’re not making a judgment if this person is guilty or innocent, we’re enforcing the order,” said Sheriff’s Office deputy chief Paris Washington. “The courts determine whether they get them back, whether it’s vacated, or whether it lasts longer.”

Just obeying orders, like cops everywhere will do when pressed.  The operable phrase here is “alleged.”  It’s in the title of the article, I didn’t make it up.

So we don’t have to imagine anything.  All it takes is an accusation or allegation.  Presto.  God-given rights to self defense abused in a flash.  One phone call, one statement to a judge, one allegation to a social worker, true or not.  But no one is making a judgment, of course.

The US Concealed Carry Association supports gun control.  Via reddit/firearms, this screen capture:

Remember that.  If you do not present a danger to yourself or others and are acting lawfully, there should be no reason to be concerned.

Unlike, say, if you lawfully defend yourself and the prosecutor wants to put you in prison anyway because the system is abused, necessitating a high-powered second amendment lawyer paid for by your USCCA dues.  That’s the only situation where abuse happens.  Or perhaps they know there will be abuse, and it’s another chance to score membership dues from the sheeple.  People will need those high-powered lawyers to get their guns back when they’ve been falsely accused of something.

What a bunch of hypocrites.  Hey, USCCA.  If you’re not careful, you’ll take up the mantle from the NRA as the most well-connected and well-financed gun control organization on earth.  Would that make you proud?

News from the UK.

A FATHER and son who were caught with a vintage Smith and Wesson pistol and stored it in a Tranmere storage unit have been sent to prison for a total of three years.

Philip Williams hid the 100-year-old weapon in a lock-up in Oakenholt, Flintshire, Wales and claimed he forgotten about it after unearthing it in a crate he was left to look after by an unknown farm worker.

But Mold Crown Court heard he moved the gun around to another storage unit in Tranmere and painted the handle to prevent it from rusting.

Meanwhile his son, Daniel Williams, posed for a selfie holding the gun on one of the two occasions he came into contact with it.

Possession of a firearm carries a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment, but the Judge Niclas Parry heard arguments for exceptional circumstances in both cases and reduced the men’s jail terms.

He jailed Philip Williams, 64, for two years while Daniel Williams, 34, received a one-year custodial sentence.

He told the pair: “It must be understood that the rationale and reason for what appears to be harsh sentences is due to the need to deter gun culture and the use of guns.”

Williams Snr said he did not own the Smith and Wesson and it fell into his arms after he agreed to look after some crates for a man he knew only as “Patrick” who worked at a farm in Bodfari where he was living at the time.

He claimed it was only after when he learnt that the man had died while on holiday when he discovered the weapon buried in one of the crates given to him by Patrick.

But instead of handing it over to the police, he kept it for two-and-a-half years, storing it in a lock-up in Tranmere before then moving it to the unit at Oakenholt, police paid a visit on March 10 last year.

Barrister Michael Whitty, prosecuting, said police executed a search warrant at a unit at Pandy Garage after receiving information and found the 0.22 calibre gun wrapped in a tea towel hidden under the wheel arch of a caravan.

Since it’s a hundred years old and a .22, I’m guessing it’s a revolver.  So two men went to prison for a total of three years for having a .22 S&W wheel gun.

“It must be understood that the rationale and reason for what appears to be harsh sentences is due to the need to deter gun culture and the use of guns.”

Because, you know, Pakistani child grooming gangs are okay with the crown, but you can’t have guns.  That might be a danger – to the elitists.

News from New Zealand:

Critics of the Government’s gun law changes say a loophole means that a lower-powered version of the assault rifle used by the Christchurch mosque shooter remains legal.

Police have confirmed that an AR15 WMR .22 semi automatic with military-style features does not fit the definition of a prohibited firearm under the new law, provided it is fitted with a magazine holding 10 rounds or less.

The mosque shooter used a more powerful, centrefire version of the AR15, with large capacity magazines, during his rampage, which left 50 people dead.

He had bought his weapons on a standard firearms licence and illegally converted them to military-style with easily obtainable parts.

The Government banned all centrefire “military style” semi-automatics, but less powerful rimfire .22 semi-automatics remain legal for people holding a standard firearms licence.

Those weapons range from rifles that use standard .22 long rifle (LR) ammunition to a cartridge more than two times as powerful – the .22 WMR (Winchester Magnum Rimfire), also known as the .22 MAG.

Northland man Michael Beckett said he warned the select committee considering the changes that the .22WMR would become the weapon of choice of AR15 owners and become a threat to the public.

He was surprised it had not been covered in the amended law and feared it was a loophole that would be exploited.

Beckett said the standard .22LR was more than sufficient for pest control on farms – he described the .22 MAG as a “double deadly cartridge” with 2.6 times the muzzle energy of .22LR.

Oooo … a “double deadly cartridge.”  Damn.  Must get one of those.

To my readers in New Zealand (I know I have some), don’t be satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the master’s table like a dog.  Not that I have anything against the nice little .22 WMR (Kel-Tec makes a .22 WMR carbine), but a rimfire cartridge will always be a rimfire cartridge.  It’s dirtier and less reliable than a centerfire cartridge.

You have a God-given right to what you have sitting inside your gun safe right now, and more.

David Codrea:

It’s fair to ask what protections will exist to prevent abuse and catch innocents up in a net that will strip them of rights and leave them on their own to fight a state with virtually unlimited resources?

What’s to stop false accusations, and incentives offered to make them?

Yes, the system will be abused, but I’ll go further.  Such abuse could only begin after an ungodly, unrighteous bill was signed into law.  There is no provision in the Scriptures for presuming to know the future and acting to punish people based on what you foresee they might do.  That’s God’s domain, not man’s.  In a Biblical economy, those guilty of divination are cut off from the people, a virtual death sentence.  See Leviticus 19:26-31, Leviticus 20:6, Deuteronomy 18:9-14, and many other passages.

The authors of this detestable thing have set themselves against God and upon the throne of the Almighty.

That’s not actually the title of the idiotic Bloomberg article.  It’s titled The Smart Gun Doesn’t Exist for the Dumbest Reasons.

Smith & Wesson still feels the wound it suffered two decades ago when it decided to invent smart guns.

The idea was to invest heavily in the development of personalized weapons that could be fired only by a single person: the gun’s owner. This was considered a nearly science-fictional proposition in the late 1990s, years before the world was filled with smartphones and finger sensors. But consumer backlash against the project drove the gunmaker to the verge of ruin, and Smith & Wesson recently told shareholders that the corporate bleeding touched off by this long-ago episode has never fully stopped. “Sales still suffer from this misstep,” the company said in a February filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The ordeal also didn’t lead to technical breakthroughs, and Smith & Wesson never brought a smart gun to market. Nor has Sturm, Ruger & Co., Remington, Colt, Winchester, Mossberg, or Glock. It’s not clear that any other major gunmaker has seriously tried.

No one involved can quite agree on who’s to blame for the standstill. Gun manufacturers fault difficult-to-navigate technology. Investors and entrepreneurs are sure that restrictive legislation has created a dead end. Politicians blame each other.

Nobody blames the free market. Nearly half of gun owners in the U.S. would consider buying a smart gun, according to a Johns Hopkins University study. (Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is a donor to groups that support gun control.) The promise of guns that can be used only by one person is that there will be fewer fired by accident or by someone who shouldn’t have access to a gun, and fewer sold on the black market.

This is the story of why the multibillion-dollar American gun industry hasn’t yet managed to make guns any smarter.

Stop right there.  Let me dissuade you from your fantasies, collectivists.  No gun owner actually wants something more complicated.  He wants to be able to work on his own gun rather than paying exorbitant fees for a gunsmith to rebuild or repair it.  He wants to be able to craft his own versions and variations.  He wants to be able to modularize it and put different parts on it if he deems it more comfortable, more ergonomic or simply better for him.

No gun owner wants yet another permissive in the process.  The U.S. military calls it the “kill chain.”  Even though you are probably repulsed by that term, we’ll use it anyway.  No gun owner wants yet another permissive in the kill chain.  That’s another potential failure that wasn’t there before.  And no gun owner wants another permissive in the kill chain that can be hijacked by either government officials or others.  This idea that half of potential gun owning America would actually drop cash on something like that is a lie you have told yourselves over and over until you actually believe it.

Trae Stephens isn’t afraid to put real money into a product most gunmakers are too anxious to touch. His venture capital firm, the Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund, is noteworthy among its Silicon Valley peers for investing in defense and security. But two years spent looking at nearly a dozen different smart-gun startups aiming to raise seed or Series A rounds, valued in the six- to seven-figure range, haven’t turned up anything worth backing.

“I want to do this!” Stephens, 35, says with a wide grin at the firm’s office in San Francisco’s Presidio park. “But there’s just no way I can.”

It’s not easy finding a VC willing to speak openly about guns, let alone invest in them. There have been frequent calls for the technology industry to take on firearms, the type of stagnant industry that seems ripe for Silicon Valley disruption. President Barack Obama sounded the call for the Apples and Googles of the world to get into guns. “If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint,” he asked in 2016, “why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?” But funneling engineering resources into next-generation guns has proved anathema in the liberal Bay Area, even if the intention is to improve public safety.

Folks lament the demise of simpler automobile engines that could be maintained by the backyard mechanic.  Now many folks have to send their vehicle to be worked on by technicians who have been to school at Ford or GM to get repaired.  There is literally no way gun owners are going to make their firearms more complicated.  There is no way.

Wiring electronics into firearms feels like the inevitable next step for the tech industry, which has succeeded in putting motherboards in vacuum cleaners, microwaves, and doorbells. “I started to go down these long Google searches,” Stephens says. “Why is it the weapons we’re still using haven’t meaningfully changed since World War I?”

Because we like simple.  Simpler is better.  Again, wiring electronics into firearms is not the inevitable next step.

His research came up at a Founders Fund debrief with Thiel and the fund’s other partners. “I said, ‘Look, there’s zero chance that any of these companies will actually make money. Am I missing something?’ ” he said. “The answer was no. And that was it. End of conversation.”

And that’s it.  That’s all you need to know.  There’s more in the article, but they could have shut it down right there and been just fine.

And I repeat what I’ve said so many times before concerning “smart guns.”

Perform a fault tree analysis of smart guns.  Use highly respected guidance like the NRC fault tree handbook.

Assess the reliability of one of my semi-automatic handguns as the first state point, and then add smart gun technology to it, and assess it again.  Compare the state points.  Then do that again with a revolver.  Be honest.  Assign a failure probability of greater than zero (0) to the smart technology, because you know that each additional electronic and mechanical component has a failure probability of greater than zero.

Get a PE to seal the work to demonstrate thorough and independent review.  If you can prove that so-called “smart guns” are as reliable as my guns, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat, eat it, and post video for everyone to see.  If you lose, you buy me the gun of my choice.  No one will take the challenge because you will lose that challenge.  I’ll win.  Case closed.  End of discussion.

And to date, no one has taken the challenge.