Archive for the 'Guns' Category

St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Religious leaders across denominations spoke out in St. Louis on Wednesday against pending legislation that would allow concealed weapons in places of worship in Missouri without permission of the clergy.

“The bill would broaden Second Amendment rights at the expense of the First Amendment right of religious liberty,” said Most Rev. Robert Carlson, archbishop of St. Louis, who presides over some 500,000 Roman Catholics in the region.

What a strange thing.  The law doesn’t mandate that churches allow weapons, and since this is private property I support that because I support property rights.

What the law does is force them to post since this property usually comes with understood open invitations to join the services.  In other words, the “clergy” here doesn’t want the public to know their position, or at least be forced to wonder.

Perhaps they also don’t like the fact that in an ironic twist they are announcing the fact that they have decided to leave themselves without protection of any kind and thus a shooting gallery for would-be perpetrators.

I think it’s a wonderful thing that congregants and parishioners can now tell if they should enter at their own risk as soon as they set foot on the property.  I think it’s sad that the rest of the folk have been left with no protection.

These clergy aren’t clergy at all.  The churches are open sepulchers with dead men preaching to dead congregants.  They have no wisdom, no discernment, and couldn’t care less about the law of God, the pinnacle of which is the law of love, or protecting and caring for those around you.

News4SA.com:

OLMOS PARK — The video has gone viral. Open Carry Texas President CJ Grisham and several other members were along the streets of Olmos Park protesting their right to carry a loaded gun.

Grisham and two other men were arrested by Olmos Park police, facing various charges including resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer.

“He was legally carrying and they are drawing down on him like he is a terrorist, he had his hands up and he is backing away, which they will say he is resisting arrest, but doesn’t everyone back up from a threat,” said Open Carry Texas member Felix Cano.

Open Carry Texas says they were protesting a Olmos Park city ordinance that prohibited anyone other than law enforcement to carry a loaded rifle or shotgun on public streets. Thursday City Council voted unanimously to repeal that ordinance.

“The City of Olmos Park had from a long time ago put in place an ordinance that none of the current council members were involved with, regarding not allowing those two types of weapons to be loaded,” said Olmos Park City Council member Enzo Pellegrino.

Open Carry Texas says this was a victory for them.

“There shouldn’t be any more illegal arrests and throwing down Americans that are legally allowed to carry and putting other charges that don’t belong there,” said Cano.

“Open Carry Texas says this was a victory for them.”  Well I guess so.  It was indeed a victory for them.  I had followed this story from a distance, not knowing the back story behind it and not wanting to do the research necessary to understand it.

But this is the backstory.  It looks like the city of Olmos decided to engage in a little nullification themselves, being the little Napoleons they are.  Open carry is now legal in Texas, and while Olmos challenged that, Texas Open Carry decided to challenge Olmos.

Texas Open Carry won.  Good for them.  The city cannot make its own laws.

Abigail Hauslohner at The Washington Post:

Fabian Rodriguez was cradling his new rifle when he stopped at one of the gun-show booths to purchase a $5 chicken fajita MRE.

The “Meal Ready to Eat” is a mainstay for troops on combat missions. But Rodriguez, a 28-year-old San Antonio native who sells auto paint for a living, wasn’t going anywhere that would require one.

Fabian Rodriguez, 28, tries out his new AR-15 rifle at a shooting range in San Antonio.

“I like them,” he said. “Well, I like watching reviews of them. That’s something people do online, like, open them up and do taste tests.”

Rodriguez, who wears his handlebar mustache slicked into points and never leaves home without his cowboy boots, had come to the gun show to buy his first AR-15, a variant model of the M-16 and M-4 assault rifles that are used by the military, and currently the most popular rifle on the market.

[ … ]

The expanse of tables before him display AR-15s, AK-47s and every other sort of assault-style rifle; hefty shotguns and sleek, modern hunting rifles; handguns that range from high caliber Smith & Wessons to tiny Derringer guns that fit in the palm of your hand.

He makes his way past boxes of ammunition, T-shirts that say things like “CNN IS FAKE NEWS,” and a $1,900 Magnum Desert Eagle that he immediately recognizes as the gun Angelina Jolie carried in the movie “Tomb Raider.” “That specific one she used in the movie was 50-caliber, which is humongous,” he says.

He finds a strap for his AR, and a quick-disconnect for the strap. He inquires about left-handed adjustments and revisits the table where yesterday he purchased an AR-15 magazine engraved with the “Don’t tread on me” snake logo, just like the one pictured on the worn leather wallet that he is now again removing from his pocket.

“Can I still get that discount if I bought one yesterday?” he asks the vendor.

“Yeah, the two for $35?”

Rodriguez nods.

“I remember you,” the vendor adds, as Rodriguez hands him the cash for another magazine, this one engraved with the words, “You can’t protect the First without the Second.

[ … ]

The NSSF, an association of gun manufacturers and sellers — which several years ago started calling ARs “modern sporting rifles” — likes to hype the idea of the AR’s versatility as the key to its appeal: a gun for hunting, home security and whatever else you might need.

David Chipman, who used to carry an AR-15 for his job as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, thinks there’s more to it.

“I would compare it to the same reason Americans might want a muscle car or enjoy a muscle car: It’s American-made, it has outsized power,” said Chipman, who left ATF after a 25-year career and now serves as a senior policy adviser to the gun-control advocacy group Giffords.

There’s a sort of “X-Game-type sensibility” to it, he said, a fixture of “American culture that I see most often with men.”

Rodriguez encounters plenty of skeptics in addition to his mother who ask him why anyone would need so many guns, particularly a semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15 — a gun that can fire 45 high-velocity rounds per minute, bullets that travel so fast that their shock waves mimic an explosion as they enter a body.

His honest answer: He doesn’t need them.

He wants them because he enjoys them, and the Constitution gives him the right to have them.

“I know I don’t need it,” he says of the AR-15. “The revolver, statistically speaking, is more than enough to defend myself.”

But it’s frustrating when people ask him this, because that’s not the point.

The point is that the Second Amendment protects his right to bear arms, whatever and however many he wants, as a guard against tyranny.

Hmm … there’s nothing comparable to getting an “authority” like a former ATF agent to say that there’s some mystique about the gun, alluring, tempting, tantalizing, beckoning people who otherwise wouldn’t want them to come, come, come to me, dear soul, and shoot me.  I can make your life complete.

Good God, what claptrap.  It’s as if Abigail has gone on a quest to hunt the snark, to find the great unwashed dirt people who eat beef, wear cowboy boots and hats, work an hourly job, get their hands dirty, run tooling equipment, run horses and cattle, drive trucks, and so on the list could go.  She’s heard that such people exist, but never actually met one inside the beltway.

Ooo … an expanse of tables with guns and ammo, tee shirts, and stupid bumper stickers.  And the allure and beckon of guns and money exchanging hands.  It’s as if there is actually private enterprise going on in America.

Give me a call, honey.  I can take you up to where they make corn liquor and don’t take kindly to FedGov sticking their nose around.  And you can shoot an AR-15 too.  Wouldn’t you enjoy that?  It’s the next logical step for you.

Seriously, gun owners know the first rule of gun club, which is that you don’t talk about gun club to the MSM.  That’s why gun data on ownership is so crappy.  Most gun owners aren’t going to talk, or if they do, they aren’t going to tell the truth.  Every now and then a MSM writer finds a gullible dunce like this to follow around.

Remember folks, the first rule of gun club is that you don’t talk about gun club to the MSM.  You only talk about gun club to make other gun owners among the potential recruits.

NYT:

In the early 1880s, legend has it that Daniel B. Wesson, a co-founder of Smith & Wesson, the gun manufacturer, heard about a child who injured himself by cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger of one of his firm’s revolvers. Wesson, known as D. B., was so distraught about the accident that he and his son, Joseph, developed a more child-safe revolver that they called the .38 Safety Hammerless.

Wesson was also my great-great-great-grandfather. Though it has been half a century since my family was involved with Smith & Wesson, I feel a twinge of responsibility every time a mass shooting occurs. I realize this is not entirely rational: I play no part in making or selling firearms and have never lost anyone close to me from gun violence. But it still haunts me.

[ … ]

It is only fair for me, for all of us, to demand that our gun manufacturers become leaders in this national discussion around gun violence. They create products designed to kill human beings. The responsibility that must accompany the creation of weapons like an AR-15 is too large to be brushed aside by shouting about freedom and an amendment to our Constitution ratified in 1791.

Yes, the company and other gun makers have taken some steps in calling for better enforcement of the national background check system and sponsoring firearm safety programs. But they can do so much more.

I would start by asking the parent company of Smith & Wesson, American Outdoor Brands Corporation, to push for gun-violence research. Since 1996 the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been severely restricted in researching gun violence. If gun manufacturers are truly responsible organizations, they should wholeheartedly want to back this research as a public health concern. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the C.D.C. from 2009 to 2017, asked Congress repeatedly to fund research in gun-violence prevention but never succeeded.

In response to recent questions from BlackRock, an investment firm that owns the largest share of American Outdoor Brands, the gun maker’s president, James Debney, and chairman, Barry M. Monheit, said, “We must collectively have the courage to ensure any actions are guided by data, by facts and by what will actually make us safer.” Sounds like Mr. Debney, Mr. Monheit and Dr. Frieden are on the same page, so let’s see Smith & Wesson lead the charge in renewing gun-violence research by the C.D.C.

I would also ask that the company publicly endorse the Brady Campaign’s Gun Dealer Code of Conduct. It should support requiring universal background checks and a national registry for tracking its products, and indeed all firearms.

To the author, Eliza Sydnor Romm, I would say that it’s not that it doesn’t sound entirely rational to feel responsibility for the criminal behavior of others, I’d say that it’s so irrational it makes you seem like an imbecile and a dolt.  It would be no different than feeling responsibility for hit and run accidents perpetrated by drivers of Ford trucks, and then trying to tell Ford how to design and build trucks because of that.  If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is.

As for Smith & Wesson, I don’t know much about the parent company of American Outdoor Brands, but I have heard fairly bad things about Black Rock.

BlackRock announced new products for clients looking to avoid investing in companies that make or sell firearms for civilian use, a significant step for the world’s largest asset manager as Wall Street comes under pressure to take a stance in America’s gun debate.

“As it has for many people, the recent tragedy in Florida has driven home for BlackRock the terrible toll from gun violence in America,” it said in a statement in March. “It has put a spotlight on the role of companies that manufacture and distribute civilian firearms. Some of the largest manufacturers and retailers are held in the portfolios of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world.”

On Thursday, BlackRock said it had created new exchange-traded funds and products for pensions and retirement plans that screen for companies that make or sell firearms. BlackRock is also shifting the indexes of existing exchange-traded funds focused on socially responsible investments to avoid gunmakers and sellers.

Back to Smith & Wesson, such moves as the author describes would mean certain, sure and almost immediate death in the market place as gun buyers turned their backs on the company and their workers fled for greener pastures with Ruger or other companies.  Perhaps the Performance Shop at Smith & Wesson could relocate South like so many other gun makers and start up shop in a friendlier climate.

And perhaps busting up one of the leading manufacturers of firearms is the purpose of pressure like this.  What will Smith & Wesson do with an owner who doesn’t like their products?

Charleston City Paper:

Republican Congressman Ralph Norman from the Upstate pulled out a loaded pistol during a meeting with gun control advocates Friday morning, upsetting at least one woman who said she felt “unsafe” by her representative’s actions.

The brandishing took place during a “coffee with constituents meeting” hosted by Rep. Ralph Norman, 64, a Republican from Rock Hill representing South Carolina’s 5th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Lori Freeman, a volunteer group leader with Moms Demand Action in Fort Mill, said she found out about the meeting on the congressman’s Facebook page and decided to go after he rebuffed a previous meeting request on the heels of the February shooting of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

Freeman thinks Norman might have been encouraged to take out his weapon by another constituent who was at the table Friday morning.

“This gentleman offered up that he was concealed carrying, and he asked if we felt safer because he was concealed carry,” Freeman said in a phone interview with CP. “Once the gentleman said he was concealed carrying, that’s when [Rep. Norman] reached into his blazer. He pulled his gun out, told us it was loaded, put it on the table, and let it sit there for five to 10 minutes.”

Norman told the Post & Courier that he pulled out his loaded .38 caliber Smith & Wesson to prove that “guns don’t shoot people, people shoot guns.”

“I’m not going to be a Gabby Giffords,” Norman told the paper, referencing the former Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head during a constituent meeting outside a Tucson-area grocery store in January 2011. “I don’t mind dying, but whoever shoots me better shoot well or I’m shooting back,” Norman said.

“Honestly it was just a strange feeling,” Freeman said about Friday’s meeting. “I don’t know that I felt scared. I was trying to figure out if he was using it as an intimidation factor or to have some kind of bravado. I kind of felt angry more than I felt scared, I felt very angry that he was doing that to us. I felt that he didn’t know our history, if any of us were survivors of gun or domestic violence, if anyone may have also had a criminal history.”

Freeman maintains that both of her encounters with Rep. Norman have been mostly pleasant, and that he even expressed support for a “red flag law,” which would allow family members or law enforcement to temporarily restrict gun purchases to anyone deemed to pose a danger to themselves or others.

There is no evidence he “brandished” the weapon, so the author of this report has leveled an accusation of a felony at the man without the slightest proof.

As for Rep. Norman, I like what you did and what you said, but if South Carolina was an open carry state like it should be, you wouldn’t have had to remove your weapon from concealment like some sort of criminal.  I’ll not be a Gabby Giffords either, but I open carry “For the peace, good and dignity of the country and the welfare of its people.”

But I don’t support your “red flag law,” and I think you need to revisit that support in light of what the constitution says about it and the corruption of the judiciary in the country (along with the stupidity of juries).

One commenter, Jan Napack, says this.

Where did Congressman Norman get his gun safety training? The first rule is never, repeat never, handle a firearm (especially around kids, in mixed company, at a crowded function, in a restaurant, close quarters, etc.) without first checking that it is unloaded. An extension of that rule is never hand over a gun, put it down, or receive it from someone unless its proven to be unloaded.

Sorry dear, that’s not a “rule of gun safety.”  Swing and a miss.  Try again some time.

From Mack and other readers, this.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on Friday challenging Massachusetts’s ban on assault weapons.

U.S. District Judge William Young said in his ruling that the firearms and large magazines banned by the state in 1998 are “not within the scope of the personal right to ‘bear Arms’ under the Second Amendment.”

The features of a military-style rifle are “designed and intended to be particularly suitable for combat rather than sporting applications,” Young wrote.

Massachusetts was within its rights since the ban passed directly through elected representatives, Young decided.

“Other states are equally free to leave them unregulated and available to their law-abiding citizens,” Young wrote. “These policy matters are simply not of constitutional moment. Americans are not afraid of bumptious, raucous, and robust debate about these matters. We call it democracy.”

Well, I have a friend who hunts hogs in Georgia with a 6.5 Creedmoor AR-10, and the only reason I don’t hunt hogs in Georgia with an AR is because I haven’t been invited to go.  Hogs, he tells me, are tough critters and aren’t persuaded with single shots.  They often have to be shot multiple times.

But of course, that’s not the point, is it?  The point is that the second amendment is there for the amelioration of tyranny.  Because the politicians in Massachusetts are tyrants, they don’t want their subjects to have proper means of combat.  The judge is a tyrant too.  He told us so in his ruling.

Bloomberg:

Over the past decade, patient investors benefited greatly from one of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history, using stocks, gold and even cryptocurrency as vehicles of profit. A few of them even used machine guns.

Yes, machine guns. Not the readily available, semi-automatic rifles that have figured so tragically in recent mass shootings, igniting a national furor over gun laws. We’re talking about actual machine guns, which are about as far from the local gun store inventory as you can get, and much more difficult to buy. A machine gun typically shoots about 600 to 800 rounds a minute, while the Bushmaster AR-15 will fire about 45 rounds a minute, depending on how fast you pull the trigger. Fully automatic firearms are often depicted in movies, but in real life they’re a rare commodity except to members of the military.

Some of the hoops a buyer must navigate to get one mirror what some proponents of tougher gun laws would like for all firearms. But the red tape has also helped make machine guns the ultimate collector’s item, with some having doubled in value over the past 10 years.

Frank Goepfert is one of the biggest machine gun merchants in America. From a 100-plus-acre ranch he shares with his wife, son and German shorthair puppy in rural Jasper, Missouri, he runs a small empire of automatic weapons. Inside a tornado-proof vault, dozens of automatic firearms worth millions of dollars hang on the walls. There are Tommy guns, M2 Brownings, Uzis, a Sterling submachine gun and AK-47 assault rifles, the most popular machine gun in the world.

Goepfert, 47, who regularly sports a leather jacket and a black Stetson, says his company, Midwest Tactical Inc., sold as many as 500 machine guns in 2017, averaging thousands of dollars each. He’s made enough money to purchase two planes and even a tank.

His best customer, a technology company executive, spent $1.6 million on guns last year, while an oil and farming tycoon dropped $1.2 million, he says. By Goepfert’s tally, he has 20 clients who each have spent more than $200,000 on his wares. He declined to identify them, citing privacy considerations. And while the government keeps a record of automatic weapons, it’s not public. That may make Goepfert one of the best sources of information outside the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives when it comes to who has a machine gun in America.

There are “a fixed amount” of such weapons, says ATF Special Agent Joshua Jackson. “Demand has caused the value of these firearms to increase.”

In 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed an act effectively banning civilians from purchasing new machine guns. Suddenly, most of those already out there became a lot more valuable (Goepfert says there were 250,000 at the time). Today, the exact number left isn’t known, though one industry expert put it at 182,000.

Some of Midwest Tactical’s best-selling models have climbed in value by tens of thousands of dollars since Goepfert and his wife Joy, 45, started the company. According to data collected by the Machine Gun Price Guide, which uses information from dealers, auctions and gun shows, the cost of a Tommy gun (the Thompson M1) went from about $9,000 in 2004 to almost $27,000 last July—a 200 percent increase. The Heckler & Koch MP5 soared 250 percent, from almost $12,000 in 2003 to $42,000. Meanwhile, the MAC10, technically a “machine pistol,” more than doubled in price from 2011 to 2017, to more than $8,000.

In addition to the GCA of 1986, a traitorous act along with the NFA, there is another reason that fully automatic firearms will never be manufactured for civilians in America again.  Investments.

There are too many people who stand to lose too much and who also donate too much money to campaigns and the coffers of the NRA for the gun community to come together on repeal of the GCA.  The NRA provides the cover.

As always, follow the money.

Seldom does any newspaper in North Carolina do anything but a hatchet job on gun laws, but the News and Observer has actually done a service outlining where the gun owner stands in North Carolina, good and bad.

When it comes to domestic violence, North Carolina has stronger gun control rules in some circumstances, and weaker rules in other circumstances.

North Carolina bans people with even a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction from getting a concealed carry permit, and in some cases the courts can also ban domestic abusers from buying guns in the future.

Furthermore, North Carolina is one of only seven states that require judges to force abusers to surrender their guns – if there are allegations of violence or violent threats. Most states just give the judge that option. However, some states also give judges the option to order abusers to surrender guns even in cases that don’t involve imminent threats of violence, but North Carolina specifically forbids that.

Stop there and let’s discuss for a moment.  Notice that in North Carolina a person must surrender his guns if there are only “allegations of violence.”  Yes, I know someone who has had this happen to them, where a bitter separation or divorce was the catalyst for a false charge, and the man had to surrender his guns.  Unproven in court, mind you, no evidentiary basis, mind you, just allegations.

An accused abuser doesn’t even have to be convicted in criminal court of domestic violence to be ordered to surrender his guns; he just has to be subject to a restraining order. When there are particularly troubling allegations, especially involving the abuse of children or threats of immediate violence, courts can grant temporary restraining orders without the accused abuser getting the option to defend himself first.

Gregory Wallace, a constitutional law professor at Campbell University Law School in Raleigh, said concerns have been raised that people can lose their guns – even just temporarily – without the chance to tell their side of the story in court.

“Even though there eventually is a judicial hearing on the matter, these orders can unjustifiably deprive people of their constitutional rights, whether out of malice or sincere but mistaken concern,” Wallace said.

[ … ]

Can the government take your guns?

No. Or, at least, not unless they’re being seized as evidence for trial.

Even when it becomes illegal for people to own a gun – like after they have been convicted of a felony or involuntarily committed to a mental hospital – police don’t come in and take away their guns.

That’s partially because government officials typically have no idea who owns guns, or how many. Durham had been the only county in North Carolina that tracked who owned handguns – but that registry was shut down in 2014 by the North Carolina General Assembly.

Even in domestic violence cases in which the abuser is required to surrender his guns, police can’t go and take the guns. Instead, the abuser has to surrender the guns on his own and promise that he didn’t keep any.

I’m not sure about this part and would have to do more research, but it seems a stretch and I think I recall times when cops have been sent to confiscate weapons in North Carolina.

What guns are illegal?

For the most part, American citizens and legal permanent residents who are over 21 can buy any gun they want. People over 18 can buy rifles and shotguns, but not handguns.

And people who aren’t yet old enough to buy their own guns can still use other people’s guns in certain circumstances, like if they have their parents’ permission.

It’s a common misconception that highly dangerous weapons like machine guns, sawed-off shotguns and other “weapons of mass destruction” are illegal for people outside the military to own. But it’s actually completely legal to buy those weapons as long as you have a National Firearms Act permit, which requires extra fees and background checks.

And this area is one where North Carolina has looser gun control rules than most other states.

Before 2015, local law enforcement officials were allowed to use their discretion in denying someone one of those permits – for example, if the applicant had never been convicted of a crime but the county sheriff knew he was a gang member, or if the sheriff simply didn’t want any locals owning machine guns.

But that changed after former Gov. Pat McCrory signed a wide-ranging gun bill into law that included several changes, including one requiring sheriffs to approve those NFA permit applications as long as the person meets all the guidelines.

I recall when McCrory did this.  It was a sad day when little boy Roy Cooper was elected Governor of NC.  If Pat has just fought the toll lane on I-77, this wouldn’t have happened.

It is one of the few states to require background checks for private sales of handguns, although private sales of rifles and shotguns can still happen without background checks. Private sales include everything except for buying a gun from a licensed dealer – like making a purchase from someone at a gun show at the fairgrounds, or from a friend or family member.

This is poorly stated and incorrect as it reads.  It is impossible for a citizen to perform a background check on his potential buyer according to the stipulations of the NCIS because he has no access to it.  Rather, state law requires that the seller verify that the buyer have a concealed handgun permit.  Whether this happens or not is another issue.

There are clear legal distinctions about the right to carry guns in North Carolina. People can carry openly in some places as long as they can legally own a gun, but no one can carry a concealed gun without a permit.

The concealed carry application process is handled by the sheriff of the county you live in; it consists of a $90 fee, a background check and a test of basic firearms skills.

Anyone who has gotten a concealed carry permit in any other state can also legally carry concealed in North Carolina. And 36 states – including all the states that border us – recognize concealed carry permits granted here.

This oversimplifies what’s required to get a CHP.  One must also have fingerprints made and sign over authority to examine medical records to the CLEO.  The CLEO then has the authority to inquire of medical facilities in the area whether you’ve had admissions for substance abuse or mental health.  The author likely doesn’t know that because he doesn’t have a CHP himself.  He ought to have been required to obtain one before writing this report.

North Carolina has in my opinion draconian gun laws, while being a shall issue state is still overbearing in terms of medical history for a CHP.  All of it is an infringement on the God-given right to keep and bear arms, as we all know.  On the other hand, it’s useful and worthwhile to stay out of prison if for no other reason than to be with and support your family.

Finally, note that North Carolina is an open carry state.  I’ve never even seen any attempts floated to reverse that.  In general, South Carolina has better gun laws that North Carolina, including no CLEO approval for handgun purchases.

How then can South Carolina persist in their idiotic opposition to open carry?

From one thing to another, and another, and another until all the feelings about anecdotal experiences have been flushed out of his mind into the world.  Or something like that.

Two weeks before Christmas, I had a 9-millimeter pistol concealed in my waistband and a rifle with two 30-round magazines in the passenger seat beside me. I was driving down from the mountains to meet a fellow I didn’t know at a Cracker Barrel off I-40 in the North Carolina foothills. He was looking to buy a Kel-Tec Sub-2000, and I had one for sale. Other than that, I didn’t know him from Adam except for a few messages back and forth on Facebook.

We were both members of a Facebook group where people post pictures of firearms and buyers private-message to ask questions and make offers — sometimes cash, sometimes trade. I needed money to pay a buddy for an old ’70s model Lark teardrop trailer, and that rifle wasn’t doing anything but taking up space in the safe.

What I was doing was perfectly legal. In North Carolina, long-gun transfers by private sellers require no background checks. Likewise, it’s perfectly legal to sell a handgun privately so long as the buyer has a purchase permit or a concealed-carry license. But as I headed up the exit to the restaurant where we agreed to meet, I felt uneasy. I was within the law, but it didn’t feel as if I should have been.

He was backed into a space parallel to the dumpster, a black Ford F-250 with a covered bed, just as he described on Facebook Messenger. As I pulled in, he stepped out. He smiled, and I nodded.

“You can just leave it in the seat so we don’t make anybody nervous,” he said as I rolled down my window. There were families in rocking chairs in front of the restaurant. Customers were walking to their cars to get back on the road.

I climbed out of my truck so he could look the rifle over while I counted the money he’d left on his seat. He was about my age, somewhere in his early to mid-30s, white guy with a thick beard. He spoke with a heavy Southern accent not much different from my own. Said he built houses for a living, and that was about all the small talk between us. He liked the rifle. I needed the cash. We shook hands, and off we went.

If you’re wondering what the hell the point of all of that was and what he’s trying to communicate other than sharing an anecdotal experience, you’re not alone.  It’s all entirely legal as it should be.  It’s called a person-to-person transfer.  Let’s continue with his feelings for a while longer.

Where I live in the mountains of North Carolina, I am not alone. With fewer than a dozen guns in the safe, I wouldn’t even be considered a gun nut. Most of my friends have concealed-carry licenses and pistols on their person. If there are 10 of us in a room, there are most likely 10 loaded firearms, probably more, with a few of us keeping backups in ankle holsters. Rarely do we mention what we carry. We don’t touch the guns or draw them from their holsters. They are unseen and unspoken of, but always there.

I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t around guns. When I was a kid, there was a gun rack hanging on the wall in the living room. My father kept a single-shot .410 and an old bolt action .22, small-game guns, though he didn’t hunt anymore. I can remember watching older boys shoot skeet at a junkyard in the woods behind my house, my fingers plugged in my ears while orange clays turned to smoke against a backdrop of post oak and poplar. I can remember the first time my father taught me to shoot a rifle, how he had me sit on the concrete driveway and use my knee for a rest, aiming for a cardboard target in a honeysuckle thicket across the road. I think I was 8 or 9. I pulled the stock in too high on my shoulder, and craned my neck awkwardly to line up the iron sights. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew the rules: Always assume a firearm is loaded. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Know your target and what’s beyond it.

Okay, so here we are in the South where guns are ubiquitous, and he is sharing an experience and his feelings about that, and we’re left wondering about the point of all of this.  So let’s continue a while longer.

The second and last time I had a gun put to my head it was by the police. After a drunken fight, I left a friend’s apartment to walk five miles and sleep on the porch of a buddy’s house across the river. I was walking down the side of Wilkinson Boulevard in Belmont.

Okay, I know right where he’s talking about.  So what happened?

I was carrying a shoe box. I saw a police cruiser pass me and make a U-turn at a stoplight up ahead. When the Crown Vic came back, the driver jumped the median and next thing I knew there were multiple cars, lights flashing, officers ordering me to the ground.

They had their guns drawn. There was a K-9 unit, and the German shepherd wouldn’t quit barking. I was lying flat on my stomach, and one officer came forward and put his knee in my back, his service weapon pushed into the base of my skull. They let the dog close enough that I could feel him barking against my ear. They said I matched the description of someone who’d burglarized some houses nearby. They asked what was in the shoe box, and I stuttered, “Papers.” They asked if they opened the box if there was anything inside that would hurt them. With my face in the grass and the officer’s weight making it hard to breathe, I was so terrified that I couldn’t mutter a single word. I just shook my head, and they opened that box to find nothing but a stack of notebook papers, a pile of half-assed stories I’d written. They told me I could get up, and I stood there trembling while they apologized. They gave me a ride across the river and dropped me off at the Mecklenburg County line, told me they were sorry but they couldn’t take me any farther.

So at least that night the cops in Belmont were a bunch of ignorant hicks roughing innocent folks up and assuming something for which they had absolutely no basis and which they could have ascertained with a little intelligent conversation.  Actually, I suspect this was the Gaston County Police, but who knows because he doesn’t say?  We’ll come back to this in a moment.  Let’s continue for a while longer.

Just before the deer strolled behind a cedar sapling, I touched the trigger, and the .308 blew apart the morning. A hundred and fifty grains of copper-jacketed lead hit just behind the shoulder and blood-shot the backside to pudding. The buck stooped forward and sprinted, back legs driving him over tangled ground. He made it 40 yards before he crashed. From my stand, I could just make out the white of his stomach through the brush. I watched his ribs rise with each breath, that breathing slowing, slowing, then gone.

There is a sadness that only hunters know, a moment when lament overshadows any desire for celebration.

Hunting isn’t for everybody, but I’m still not sure what this all has to do with anything.  For the love of God, let’s get somewhere, okay?

When the trooper had my license and registration, he went to his cruiser. In a few minutes, he came back to the window and issued me a warning for speeding. I asked if there was anything I could’ve done differently to make him more comfortable when he first approached the truck. The trooper told me what I’d said was fine. He said that some officers might have been uncomfortable with where the pistol was located, being holstered near my wallet, but that he felt we had a good rapport. Depending on the officer, some might have asked me to step out of the truck so they could remove the weapon. He smiled and told me: “But this is South Carolina. Most every car I pull over has a gun.”

Frankly, I think we should be more worried about what the cop intends to do with his weapon than what the cops think about the fact that we have one.  But let’s continue still.

Last summer I drove back to Charlotte to visit my father for his birthday. While I was there, I went into a Cabela’s store in Fort Mill, S.C., to buy him a new depth finder for his fishing boat. After I found what I was looking for, I headed across the store to see if there were any good deals on ammo.

There were floor displays of AR-15s, and probably a hundred or more other rifles and shotguns for anyone to walk up and hold. I watched a kid about 8 or 9 pick up one of those ARs and shoulder it to the center of his chest. He held the gun awkwardly, cocked his head hard to the side, squeezed one eye closed to aim and dry-fired the weapon. I watched two men, presumably his father and grandfather, smile and laugh, then break out their cellphones to snap a few pictures.

I remembered how when I was his age, I used to love going to the sporting-goods section of Walmart to look at fishing lures and camouflage clothes. I’d walk over near the register and push the manual turntable on the curio display to look at all the rifles and shotguns. There were usually a few big game guns — a gray stock Remington 783 in .30-06, maybe a Marlin 336 lever action — a couple of pump shotguns, a single shot .410 or 20-gauge. There were always Ruger 10/22s and Marlin Model 60s, the .22LRs kids unwrapped when their grandfathers gave them their first rifles for a birthday or Christmas. There were always guns, but nothing like the assault weapons that line the shelves today.

Maybe it’s how I was raised and the types of firearms my family kept, but the idea of owning a rifle designed for engaging human targets out to 600 meters just never interested me. I keep a Savage 10 in .308 to hunt whitetail and hogs. I have a CZ 920 that’s absolute hell on a dove field. I have a handful of .22 rifles that I use for plinking at the range and hunting squirrels and rabbits each winter. Then there are the weapons I keep for defense — the shotgun by the bed, the pistols — firearms whose sole purpose would be to take human life if I were left with no other choice. I’ve witnessed how quickly a moment can turn to a matter of life and death. I live in a region where 911 calls might not bring blue lights for an hour. Whether it’s preparation or paranoia, I plan for worst-case scenarios and trust no one but myself for my survival.

My friends see no difference between the guns I own and their ARs. One or two of them rationalize assault weapons the same way I justify what sits by my bed. When I ask if those rifles are really the best option for home defense, they joke about the minute hand of the doomsday clock inching closer to midnight. They post Instagram photos of Sig Sauer MCXs and tac vests loaded with extra magazines, their bug-out bags by the door as they wait for the end of the world.

But a majority defend their ARs the same way I defend the guns I use for plinking and hunting. They say they own them because they’re fun at the range and affordable to shoot. They use the rifles for punching paper, a few for shooting coyotes. Every weekend they fire hundreds of rounds from custom rifles they’ve spent thousands of dollars building. They add bump stocks and Echo Triggers to increase rates of fire and step as close to Title II of the federal Gun Control Act as legally possible without the red tape and paperwork. They fire bullets into Tannerite targets that blow pumpkins into the sky.

None of them see a connection between the weapons they own and the shootings at Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland. They see mug shots of James Holmes, Omar Mateen, Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz — “crazier than a shithouse rat,” they say. “If it hadn’t been that rifle, he’d have done it with something else.” They fear that what starts as an assault-weapons ban will snowball into an attack on everything in the safe. I don’t believe that politicians are going to ban ordinary guns or overturn the Second Amendment, but I understand their reasoning because I understand what’s at stake. I think about that boy picking up that AR in Cabela’s, and I’m torn between the culture I grew up with and how that culture has devolved.

Aha!  We’re finally there.  A gun dude is sharing his feelings about how his culture has “devolved,” and says that he “understands” the reasoning behind politicians and their gun bans.

Would the New York Times have published anything else?  The comments are amusing if not downright ridiculous.  He is a great writer!  He has started a commonsense conversation among gun nuts and the rest of the world.  It’s a “moving and beautifully written article.”  Who needs a gun that can “spray bullets with one pull of the trigger?”  “Concealed carry is a bad idea unless you have a job that requires it.”  And this from Dara Resnik.

Thank you, David Joy, for this thoughtful piece. I wonder how many more are like you, and how we can bring them into the open. I think many of them are afraid of what you experienced when you brought up the subject of banning assault weapons to your friend — it’s taboo in gun culture to talk about curbing any gun rights at all. But I know you are not alone in your views.

I imagine given who your friends are, there will be, to use a firearm term, some kick back for having published this piece. But writing it was the right thing to do.

I hate to break it to you Dara, but most of us don’t feel this way.  We call guys like David a “Fudd.”  You can look it up, dear.  And this from Peter.

People on the other side of the divide are fearful of all those paranoid gun-toters hoping that they’re not in someone’s line of fire when things go bad, with reason or without. How have we as a society arrived at this point

I’m more worried about the cops, Peter.  And yes, “we as a society” have arrived at this point.  At one time, kids carried their guns to school with them.  No, I’m not kidding.  So point your finger of blame somewhere else.

As for the author, David Joy, he’s apparently now fulfilled his bona fides for selling more books, as well as commenting on NBC, CNN, CBS and ABC.

What he hasn’t done is crafted a commentary that’s anything but a running list of anecdotes and his feelings about them, appended by a statement of agreement with gun bans.  And he hasn’t offered any compelling reason to believe that the justification for owning weapons – self defense and the amelioration of tyranny – has changed since the beginning of time.

Greenville News:

Although federal law prohibits convicted felons from possessing guns, local and state law enforcement officers as a rule don’t work to enforce federal laws, lawmakers say. State law bans only those convicted of violent crimes from possessing guns.

The bill prompted questions by Sen. Brad Hutto, an Orangeburg Democrat, starting with why a 36-year-old who was convicted at age 22 of breach of trust with fraudulent intent for embezzlement shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun.

“They’ve done their time,” Hutto said. “They’re fully off probation. Now they’re gainfully employed. They’re married. They’re a deacon in their church. Why are we going to reach back to those people that I would think have just as much right to defend themselves in their own house?”

Hembree said it is already federal law that the embezzler cannot own a firearm.

“But the federal government doesn’t come to my house every day, but the local constabulary might,” Hutto replied.

Hembree said the real solution is to fix the state’s expungement law instead of making the state law on guns different. Expungement is a court order that removes something from a person’s criminal record if that person meets certain conditions.

“You’re not fixing it by having a different state law,” Hembree said. “You’re fixing it by expungement, because if you fix it through expungement, then it’s not a federal violation. That’s the right way to fix it.”

Hutto said another problem with the bill is that if a spouse of a felon owns a gun, the spouse would have to remove it from the house. He believes most households in the state have guns for self-protection.

Hutto also said he wanted to be sure divorcing couples couldn’t use the law to remove each other’s firearms if a judge as a precaution placed a restraining order on both. He said in the heat of emotions, judges sometimes issue such orders to keep relative peace, while there is no evidence in many such cases of any threat of physical harm.

Good points sir.  I agree with every single one of them.  Now, tell me why you’re still ignoring the issue of open carry in South Carolina, and why you’re still like New York and California when it comes to how a man decides to carry his firearm?

What right by God do you have to make a man who openly carries his firearm a felon?  How can you defend an embezzler and call an open carrier a criminal?