Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

So says the editorial board of the Seattle Times.

After their elections, county sheriffs take an oath to uphold the laws of the country, state and county — even when they disagree.

At least 13 county sheriffs have said they won’t enforce the state’s new gun law, Initiative 1639. They must reconsider, enforce the law as it is and find another, legal way to protest. Not to do so is to flout their oath and responsibility to citizens.

And, as Attorney General Bob Ferguson warns in a sharply worded letter, the sheriffs would be held liable in the case of a gun sale that could have been prevented by the new background checks and then someone uses that gun in a crime. These elected officials should be accountable for doing their jobs.

The courts will determine whether the wide-ranging new gun law is constitutional or not. It raises the age to 21 to buy semi-automatic rifles, requires enhanced background checks for those purchases and can hold gun owners responsible if their weapon was stored carelessly and is used in a crime.

The National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation are pursuing such a court decision with a lawsuit they filed in federal court. If the sheriffs — from Adams, Benton, Ferry, Franklin, Grant, Grays Harbor, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lincoln, Mason, Pacific, Stevens and Yakima counties — want to join that lawsuit, and their county ethics laws allow it, they could.

The sheriffs have not clarified what part of the law they plan not to enforce, with journalists who have asked. Gun stores could lose their licenses if they sell to someone under age, regardless of whether their county sheriff will look the other way.

Sheriffs and other law-enforcement officers are already doing the enhanced background checks for handgun purchases, so refusing to do so for semi-automatic rifles would be illogical. At least one sheriff, Franklin County Sheriff Jim Raymond, said he would follow the new rules concerning background checks and a 10-day waiting period. Their main responsibility under the new law is to check at least three state and federal databases for outstanding warrants and pending criminal charges.

“These enhanced background checks keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals who lawfully cannot own firearms because of a mental illness or criminal record,” Ferguson wrote in a letter to law enforcement.

The First Amendment protects the right of free speech for county sheriffs and all of us. They may continue to object to the law with their words. But their actions must stick to their oath of office, in which they promised to uphold the law of their county, state and country.

The sons and daughters of libertarian hippies so quickly morphed into statists, controllers and communists that you didn’t even notice.  Signs gave way to 中华人民共和国, and disdain for the politicians gave way to blind, unquestioning trust in senators and black robed tyrants, as long as they say everything is okay.

So here is their logic.  A law gets made, and as long as the judges say it’s okay (since they’re infallible), the Sheriffs must enforce it.  But the Sheriffs take an oath to the U.S. constitution too, whether they attended Yale or Emory law school or not.  And every man has a conscience, is accountable to God, and must do what he thinks is righteous without being a respecter of persons.  I’m left wondering how the Sheriffs feel about being considered monkeys who obey orders without thinking?

That gun control and confiscations preceded every genocide in recent history is irrelevant or unknown to these sophomores on the editorial board, and that mass shootings at the hands of state actors in “gun free” nations approaches 170 millions souls (death by government) matters not to these moral pygmies.

They could be betting that once the state declares such-and-such concerning guns, the hundreds of millions of gun owners in America will willingly comply.  They could be right about a large fraction of them.  I suspect that were AR-15s to be declared illegal except in the hands of LEOs, all but ten million people would comply.

And there are other less draconian edicts in the pipeline as well to catalyze death by a thousand cuts, from lockup requirements for your guns, to increased age before buying, waiting periods, red-flag confiscation laws (one potential red flag being that you believe the second amendment codified God-given rights to ameliorate tyranny), no more bequeathing of firearms in wills, etc., etc.  They have all the solutions.  They will tell you so.

But ten million.  Come up with your own number, folks.  Ten million, five million, fifteen million.  Or two million.  Recall at the absolute height of the war in Iraq (in which my son fought, so I know these things) that the Multinational Force estimated the total number of combatant insurgents to be approximately 20,000.  No more than 20,000 combatants in Iraq caused the torment you watched for a decade, and required saturation by several hundred thousand troops to quell, including 5000 U.S. deaths and around 50,000 more casualties.

Compare those numbers.  Two million (a very low estimate) versus 20,000.  And here is the thing to ponder.  The editorial board of the Seattle Times doesn’t care.  They don’t mind some shedding of blood, some violence, some brutality, because good communists never do.

It’s all the rage now, gun control at the state level, when many gun owners have been focused on federal gun laws.  First up, Arizona has already completed a major infringement and has it in its rear view mirror.

Nevada’s governor on Friday signed into law a bill expanding background checks to private gun sales and transfers, taking advantage of a Democrat-controlled Legislature to approve the first gun-related bill to cross his desk.

Lawmakers say the bill is a fix to a 2016 gun background check measure that was narrowly approved by voters. Former Gov. Brian Sandoval and former Attorney General Adam Laxalt, both Republicans, opposed the law and said it could not be implemented because it required the FBI to conduct the checks.

Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat who took office last month, signed the legislation shortly after Assembly Democrats easily passed the measure. The legislation fulfills a campaign promise of his to address firearm background checks. He described the legislation as “long overdue.”

The bill closes a loophole that allows gun buyers to avoid background checks by going through unlicensed gun sellers. Senate Majority Leader Kelvin Atkinson said the bill addresses an issue with the 2016 measure by allowing Nevada to conduct its own background checks.

All that is subterfuge.  It infringes God-given rights by making person-to-person sales illegal, plain and simple.  Next up, Tennessee.

HB1049/SB0943, also known as the “Families Know First Act,” would allow for an “Extreme Risk Protection Order” to be presented by police then issued by a court for those deemed a risk to themselves or others if in possession of a firearm(s).

Under the bill, a law enforcement officer or agency could seek an extreme risk protection order if based on an investigation police find the individual poses an “immediate and present danger of causing personal injury to the subject or to another by having in the subject’s custody or control, owning, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm.”

[ … ]

If ordered, subjects would have to surrender firearms and ammunition to law enforcement for safekeeping or sell the firearms and ammunition to a licensed dealer.

Say, I’m sure “safe keeping” means that the firearms will be stored in a humidity controlled environment and will work just great when they are returned, which will be immediately when ordered?  And I’m sure that families know best means that no one will use this as a prank or simply because they’re pissed off to have property taken away from people, right?

Next up, even South Carolina.

Law enforcement across South Carolina may soon have the right to seize firearms and ammunition.

A bill filed at the State House provides law enforcement with tools to intervene if someone has mental health or substance abuse issues.

Probable cause must be established and presented to a judge before anything is seized.

The bill’s sponsor says he simply wants to provide officers with tools to keep people safe.

Say, I haven’t heard much about open carry in South Carolina.  Where does that stand?  Oh yea, nowhere.  We’re fighting the controllers on just about everything else, so South Carolina is one of only a handful of states, like California and New York, that don’t allow open carry.

What a sad state of affairs, but involvement in local and state politics is absolutely necessary.  The war for tyranny is first fought politically, and the controllers will only proceed to the next steps if they win the first skirmishes.

David Codrea:

“But if you don’t vote for them a Democrat will win, and they’ll be even worse!” we are warned. Hey, we wouldn’t be in this mess if people would have insisted on principles from the very beginning. And now we’re expected to believe our only way out is to continue enabling the enemies inside the gates?

Make sure to read the comments he’s getting too.  I wouldn’t say, with David, that these commenters are reading-challenged.  I’d say they’re idiots.  They are comprehension-challenged.

Voting for the lesser of two evils, rather than insisting on principles, has gotten us where we are today.

Fox News:

Democrats this week approved legislation to require background checks for essentially all sales and transfers of firearms — but rejected GOP-led efforts to amend the legislation to alert law enforcement authorities when gun buyers, including illegal immigrants, fail those background checks.

The House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of the bill 23-15, in a strict party-line vote, sending it to the House floor. If approved by the full House, the bill would be the most significant gun-control legislation approved by either chamber of Congress in at least a decade — although it stands little chance of passage in the Senate, where Republicans command a slim majority.

Republicans in the House charged that H.R. 8, known as “The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019,” should have included Florida Rep. Greg Steube’s proposed amendment to require that law enforcement be notified “when an individual attempting to purchase a firearm fails a federal background check.” (H.R. 8 was numbered in honor of former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot in Arizona on Jan. 8, 2011 by a mentally ill gunman.)

“Clearly, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee don’t care about preventing gun violence, they simply are playing politics with Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” Steube, a Republican, said after the vote. “The fact that Democrats do not want law enforcement notified if an individual attempting to purchase a firearm fails a background check is truly troubling.”

The democrats want universal background checks, just not if it means that illegals will be deported.  That’s the most important thing.

Troubling, however, is that it’s not clear whether this is a “poison pill” intended to be inserted by the republicans (which they should have known would be rejected), or a capitulation to the forces of gun control?

And what would Trump do if this bill was brought to him to sign?  We all know that the likes of Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn want universal background checks, and that Trump believes in virtually nothing.

Say, what are the chances that the politicians just kill the notion of background checks altogether as being an unrighteous, unconstitutional infringement on God-given rights?  Did anyone bring that up in the hearings?

Like David, I cannot comment on the orientation of the video.  But watch the whole thing and read the comments to which David links.

The first mistake is living in California.  The second mistake is registering guns.  But of course as we all know, the intent of gun control isn’t to reduce crime, it’s to disarm peaceable men before the hordes and mobs, be they criminals or cops, but maybe I’m being redundant.

News from North Carolina:

“Gun violence is a public health crisis,” said Rep. Christy Clark, D-Mecklenburg, a former state director for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

[ … ]

Previous gun control measures have gone nowhere in the Republican-controlled General Assembly in recent years. Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, said she has filed bills every legislative session since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, but none has every gotten a committee hearing.

“This state has gone the exact opposite direction we need to be going,” Harrison said, noting the legislature has expanded gun rights in recent years to allow firearms in parks, in locked cars at schools and other locations where they were previously barred.

[ … ]

Other provisions in the bill include the following:

• Not properly storing a firearm in a locked container when not in use would be a misdemeanor

• Gun owners must report a lost or stolen firearm to law enforcement within 48 hours

• Gun owners must carry liability insurance

• Law enforcement agencies would be allowed destroy seized firearms

• Cities and counties would be allowed to set their own rules on where guns are allowed

Nullification is okay with them if a locale ignores rights and protections, as opposed to imposing infringements.

Here’s what I think is a public health crisis.  Horrible women getting involved in things that aren’t any of their business.

Prediction: Just like their efforts to bully Harris Teeter into going anti-gun (which would have been led to their financial ruination), they will fail and this will go away.

But it’s still a sign of the times.

Via David Codrea, this dreadful statement.

“Nobody wants dangerous people to have access to firearms, which is why the NRA supports risk protection orders with adequate due process protections and ensure those adjudicated to be dangerously mentally ill receive treatment,” Jennifer Baker, a spokesperson for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said. “The NRA believes that any effort should be structured to fully protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens while preventing truly dangerous individuals from accessing firearms. We will only support an [Emergency Risk Protection Order] process that strongly protects both Second Amendment rights and due process rights at the same time.”

Echoing Mack’s comments, why would bearing arms be a deterrent if folks didn’t think I was dangerous?

The NRA: the most well-funded, well-connected, effective, best-resourced gun control organization on the planet.

Seattle Times:

County sheriffs who say they won’t enforce Washington’s new, stricter gun laws could be held liable if they refuse to perform enhanced background checks and someone who shouldn’t buy a gun is able to buy one and uses it in a crime, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said on Tuesday.

In an open letter to law enforcement, Ferguson wrote that he was confident the wide-ranging law was constitutional and would withstand court challenges, but that he was concerned about threats — mostly from county sheriffs — to not enforce the new law.

At least 13 county sheriffs have said they won’t enforce the law, Initiative 1639, which voters passed by a wide margin in November.

Are you going to let him talk to you like that?  Oh … probably so.

It is unclear how many of the sheriffs and police chiefs who have vowed not to enforce the law planned to not conduct the background checks.

For instance, Franklin County Sheriff Jim Raymond called the law unconstitutional and said he wouldn’t enforce it, but said he supported the 10-day waiting period and the enhanced background checks.

“Certainly we’re going to follow all of those type of things,” Raymond said.

If other sheriffs do not, however, Ferguson said they could be held liable if a gun sale that would have been prevented by the new background checks goes through and then someone uses that gun in a crime.

“The taxpayers of your city or county assume the financial risk of your decision to impose your personal views over the law,” he wrote.

Take note that surviving a challenge doesn’t mean that the law is constitutional, it just means that some tyrant, or gaggle of tyrants, lets it go.

So that’s the plan, just as I have said all along.  They will come after your money, your licenses, your reputation, your job, and your ability to do business.

In this case, he’s bullying the citizens of those respective counties to force compliance with the law by the Sheriffs out of fear of financial liability.

It’s almost as if they want to fight, or something.

Via WoG, this:

A retired Army veteran looking to comply with state law is now fighting to keep a family heirloom from getting scrapped.

The Buffalo News reports that Andrew Ciepiela, 46, recently tried to register an old Iver Johnson revolver that has been handed down through three generations. That’s when the Erie County Pistol Permit Department told him the gun, made in 1917, was last registered in the 1950s by a sexagenarian and, as a “nuisance” firearm, it could not be registered to him, clearing the way for local police to destroy it.

“I wasn’t expecting any issue. It took me by great surprise,” said Ciepiela, who saw the matter as a case of “big government stomping on the little guy.”

That’s what happens when the government becomes the big bully on the block.  I’m sure they cried a river of tears over the family’s loss.

Speaking of nuisance, who’s the real one here?  Who else will be stupid enough to try to comply with onerous rules that destroy family property for no good reason?

David Codrea:

Evidently, edicts to deprive people who obey laws of due process are high on the list, although what bearing that has on the Dycus case is left unstated. That and “universal background checks.”

No doubt the reptile who fired indiscriminately into a house full of unsupervised “juveniles” would have thought twice had those been in effect. No?

The point of new gun control laws in America is never to solve any problems.  It’s always to disarm peaceable men and women of their means of self defense and make them more subservient to state control.