Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

HuffPo:

“Why does anyone in this city need to have a gun at all?” Mayor John Tory asked at a city council meeting on Monday.

[ … ]

The city’s motion, which passed 41-4, both calls on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to outlaw the sale of handguns and urges the provincial government to ban handgun ammunition sales in Toronto. The council also voted for stronger prevention against gun sales for domestic abusers and people with mental illness, as well as a crackdown on gun trafficking.

He doesn’t really believe that, or else he would have called for banning police from having guns.  He’s lying.  And I’m sure that more gun controls for “domestic abusers” and “people with mental illness” will handle the problem.

Not stricter borders for men named Hussain.

Capital Gazette:

Maryland already has the toughest gun laws in the country, but it is clear to me that an effective, nationwide, universal background check system to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill is a tool police need to stop more shooters. That’s just common sense and it is something I will continue to support.

You folks up there in Maryland have yourselves a piece of work, yes?

Listen here, big jowls.  I have to fill out form 4473 if I buy from an FFL.  I have no choice.  But as for buying and selling only through FFLs because of your felt need for power and control, and as for never doing another person-top-person transfer, here is my answer.

No.

Your turn.

NRA Comments:

ATF could provide one or more 90-day periods of amnesty for the registration of bump fire stocks. While there are some additional complications due to the lack of markings on bump fire stocks, Congress has delegated broad discretion to determine the scope and requirements of any amnesty. ATF already has experience with firearms marking issues for individuals who are not federal firearm licensees. (Every time a non-licensee makes an NFA “firearm,” the maker must mark the firearm in compliance with federal law.)

In addition to providing amnesty for bump fire stocks, ATF should consider a broader amnesty for “machinegun[s].” When Congress delegated the authority to provide for additional periods of amnesty, there was a clear legislative understanding that amnesty generally serves the purposes of federal firearms laws by bringing “machinegun[s]” and other NFA “firearms” that are currently contraband, and therefore likely to eventually end up in the wrong hands, into the legal market where they have value and are extremely unlikely to be used in crime.

How do you like that?  The same gun control organization that suggested the bump stock ban to Trump to begin with is now suggesting that the ATF allow amnesty to register these things as NFA items.  And not only that, if there are any extant machine guns out there, we should get those registered as well.

The NRA.  The largest, most powerful gun control organization on earth.

Star Advertiser:

Maui police were looking for three suspects after several shots were fired during a home invasion robbery in Haiku.

Police responded to a report of shots fired at a Haiku home at about 10:35 p.m. Thursday and found three adult victims who said three males wearing hooded sweatshirts entered their home with one of them brandishing a shiny handgun.

The bandits forced one victim into a bathroom, then walked through the house. A second victim armed himself with an AR-15 rifle and fired a round at the robbers, nearly striking one.

The three suspects fled, firing four gunshots on the way out.

No one was hurt during the robbery, police said. One victim reported the suspects took $3,000.

[ … ]

Police said a firearm was recovered at the scene.

How ironic.  Simply rolling out an AR-15 and missing with it was enough to thwart the home invasion, and this in the state with the most onerous gun control in the nation (perhaps with the exception of New York).

Hey, with all of that gun control, how did these perps manage to get a firearm anyway?  I thought gun control was supposed to assure us this kind of thing wouldn’t happen?

The Washington Free Beacon:

“He was an aggressive advocate, as attorney general, for gay marriage. He was an aggressive advocate demonstrating hostility to the First Amendment and political speech,” Cruz said in a committee meeting on Thursday. “Most significantly, he has been an aggressive advocate for undermining the Second Amendment.”

Cruz said he was particularly concerned by Bennett’s involvement with an amicus brief in the Heller case arguing that the Second Amendment was only intended to protect state militias from federal interference and should not apply to state laws. In Heller v. D.C., the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court explicitly rejected the argument made in the brief Bennett signed on to by extending its conclusions in Heller to the states.

And yet the Senate confirmed him with 23 republican votes.  It didn’t have to be this way.  Trump could have nominated someone else.  I know about precedent finding a judge within the Ninth Circuit area for a nominee, but what do you say to gun owners in California who feel already beaten up and thrown down?

Do you tell them that Trump looked out for their interests and protected their rights?

News from California.

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill by Assemblyman Tom Lackey allowing retired law enforcement officials to openly carry firearms.

The new law, Assembly Bill 1192, gives retired peace officers permission to openly carry firearms with a high-capacity magazine.

With the previous passage of the Safety For All Act of 2016, it was against state law for any person to carry a high-capacity firearm as of July 2017. The new legislation redefines “honorably retired” to “include a retired reserve officer who has met specified length of service requirements,” according to the bill by Lackey, R-Palmdale.

I wonder whether there is a cop anywhere in America that I would actually consider to be a “peace officer” rather than a cop or LEO.

Under California Penal Code 26350 it is a crime to openly carry a firearm, even if it is unloaded.  They can openly carry because they are special and you aren’t.

Understand?

David Codrea:

Before judging him for that, consider the environment that is New Jersey. Then consider the overwhelming force the state can bring to bear, and its predisposition to using it, especially if it’s to enforce citizen disarmament. It’s easy to anonymously declare “Molon Labe” on the internet. In meatspace, resistance is more effective when the aggressor doesn’t get to dictate the time and place, especially if that place is your home and you have family inside.

Oh sure, I’ve got that.  I’m not sure if and when he’ll ever get them back, though, or how this ends.

Throwing down with a SWAT team in your front doorstep isn’t a good option.  When it comes to it, 4GW will be necessary to end this infringement.

In the mean time, I’m not sure why any thinking man would choose to live in New Jersey.  As for the cops, they are swine.  Every one of them who participated in this, and all of their colleagues back at the station since they allow this sort of thing to happen.

I guess that includes all of them since I folded in both the participants and the non-participants.

Chronicle:

At least four children have accidentally shot themselves in the Houston-area this year. All of those children were 6 years old or younger, and three of them died from their wounds. The most recent incident on Tuesday at a Hockley-area home left a 4-year-old boy in critical condition.

Young children generally don’t associate guns with death, and therefore, can’t be trusted anywhere near the weapon, Houston child psychologist Michelle Forrester said.

Forrester, who has been a licensed psychologist practicing in Texas since 1995, works with children under the age of 8. On the heels of two incidents in which Houston-area children accidentally shot themselves, Forrester opined that young children, including those who grew up with firearm education, shouldn’t even be in the same home as a gun.

[ … ]

But Forrester said young children are curious and apt to explore a home. In some instances, they might inadvertently break the combination to a lock box, she said.

They’ll apparently just hand a psychology degree to anybody these days I guess.  Perhaps she ought to take a course in probability and statistics.  She’d find another reason to hate guns, but at least she’d have to retool her argument and wouldn’t sound so ignorant and uneducated.

We’ve discussed nullification many times before, and this article shows the popularity of this concept, except without the teeth.

Last month, Effingham County, Illinois became a Second Amendment Sanctuary County. The proposal passed the County Board after eight members voted in favor of it. Only one was against, according to a USA Today report.

Last year, a similar proposal in Spokane Valley, WA was floated in the City Council. This comes as a response to the gun control proposals that many members of the U.S. Congress have made in recent years. Moreover, several states also passed firearm restrictions. Illinois and Washington are two of the most prominent ones.

Under said proposals, local law enforcement would ignore the new gun control policies. They would not arrest residents who don’t comply with the new state/federal firearm policies.

“It was a way of standing up for 2nd Amendment rights,” former Spokane Valley City Councilman Ed Pace told UnCut Report (UCR) in a recent interview. When Pace was in the City Council, he proposed making Spokane Valley, WA a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary City.

“If state and federal governments restrict constitutional rights, cities need to stand up for their residents and protect their rights,” Pace elaborated.

Oh bullshit.  What are you going to do with this symbolic action, and how are you going to “stand up for residents and protect their rights?”

What are you going to do, throw ATF agents in the state penitentiary when they come to arrest firearms owners?  Do the CLEOs side with you on this?  Does the governor side with you, and will the state police back you up?  Will you hang judges who hear cases on firearms owners who have broken federal laws?

Unless you answer those questions for me, this is a lot of hot air.

As seen on reddit, a layman’s explanation.

In 1934, rich people decided that they didn’t like poor people sneaking onto their land to hunt game, which was happening a lot because there was this economic thing called the “Great Depression” and poor people were “starving”.

So they called up a bunch of their pet congresscritters, and ordered a custom made law called the National Firearms Act of 1934.

This placed a $200 dollar tax on rifles with a barrel shorter than 16″ or an overall length less than 26″, shotguns with a barrel shorter than 18″ or an overall length less than 26″, and firearm sound suppressors of any kind. This ensured that those nasty poor people couldn’t afford guns which they might smuggle onto rich people’s land to hunt rich people’s deer, or suppressors that might prevent them from getting caught in the act.

Nowdays, $200 isn’t a whole lot of money, but the law is being exploited in a new way to restrict access. You see, this tax gets you a “tax stamp”, without which possession of the firearm is a felony. But the law doesn’t put any upper limit on the wait before the paperwork gets approved. So these papers are processed by one elderly guy named Frank, whose eyesight isn’t so good any more, and a typical application takes six months to two years to come back.

Naturally, modern folks who own guns aren’t too keen on this, but modern folks who hate guns have their pet congresscritters who are dead set against repealing any law that makes firearms ownership inconvenient, even if it makes no sense at all. Also, there is a whole three-letter agency devoted to enforcing this thing, and they don’t want to lose their jobs, so they have plenty of interesting and highly inventive arguments about how this is critical to the future of the nation, and how everyone died multiple times every week before 1934 because we didn’t have this.

So people looked into ways to do normal things while in compliance with the letter of the law.

So, the thing that looks like a stock on that thing that looks like a rifle is technically an arm brace, which makes that thing technically a pistol, which makes the National Firearms Act technically not apply to it. Now, you could say that this is a loophole which complies with the letter of the law while totally ignoring its spirit, but you could also say that the law has no spirit, and is nothing but a big technicality designed to f*** with people from the very beginning.

But however we got here, the fact remains that the thing in the photo is perfectly legal as it is, but with a slightly different stock it’ll get you a decade in the federal penitentiary.

This is why gun owners get kind of shirty about this kind of thing.

This is the same reason why some of the gun community – including the NRA – will never support repeal of the NFA, GCA and the Hughes Amendment.

Too many people have too much money invested in Class 3 weapons.  Suppose you spend $25,000 on a Class 3 weapon, or several of them, and someone comes along and tells you that your investment will tank in the near future and your guns will be worth no more than a used gun of that make and model within a single day.

Would you support it, looking at it only from the perspective of money?  The better question is what, other than a true commitment to the RKBA under God, would make you support it?