Archive for the 'Guns' Category

News From Oklahoma:

The Oklahoma House Thursday overwhelmingly adopted legislation that would permit gun owners to carry their weapons openly without a state-issued license.

House members voted 73-15 for House Bill 3098, the so-called “constitutional open carry” measure, and sent it to the state Senate for debate and a vote.

The measure’s author, Republican Rep. Jeff Coody of Grandfield, said it is similar to open carry laws in more than 30 other states and would allow gun owners to exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms openly, such is in a holster, without having to comply with existing state government licensing requirements.

Coody said persons who want to carry a concealed weapon would still be required to obtain a state permit.

“It’s the ultimate freedom bill regarding open carry,” Coody said. Coody and other supporters said citizens who are qualified to own a handgun should not be required to ask the government for permission and pay a fee to openly carry it.

“It’s our God-given right to defend our self,” said Rep. John Bennett, R-Sallisaw.

But opponents said it would have serious financial consequences for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, which administers firearms licenses issued under the Oklahoma Self Defense Act.

A fiscal analysis performed for the House indicates the measure would reduce OSBI’s revenue by at least $6 million and would lead to the loss of jobs and reduced operating expenses at the agency.

The reduction in revenue would be because firearms owners would no longer seek concealed carry licenses – which cost $100 for initial 5-year license and $200 for 10 years – if they could carry a gun openly without a license. There are now more than 238,300 Oklahomans with active licenses to carry handguns, according to state figures.

Seldom do you see it in such stark words.  Recognizing God-given rights will lead to the rejection of state-granted rights, thus leading to less power by the state, and fewer jobs at the feeding trough of public wealth.  Therefore, the statists are against recognizing God-given rights.

So there you have it.  I believe some of these grievances are similar to those that were enumerated by the colonists against King George.  Yes, now that I think about it, I’m sure of it.  “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Via reader Mack, this from The Rutherford Institute, and written up at Richmond-Times Dispatch.

A Hopewell man who filed a federal lawsuit against a Hopewell police officer who had him arrested and detained at a peaceful public protest while armed with a rifle and pistol has settled the case.

The lawsuit was resolved to the “mutual satisfaction” of both sides, the two parties said in separate statements. Specific terms of the settlement were not disclosed; the lawsuit was formally dismissed last week.

The nine-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond in 2014 said Brandon Howard drew the attention of Hopewell police on Aug. 26, 2013, when he was seen displaying a 6-by-4-foot sign that read “Impeach Obama” on an Interstate 295 overpass.

He had an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder on a strap and a .380-caliber Bersa pistol holstered on his waist.

Howard had been protesting lawfully for about 30 minutes when a Hopewell police officer pulled up to the area on the overpass where Howard was standing and parked his vehicle. Three to five police cruisers arrived a short time later with their emergency lights flashing, the suit said.

Six to eight officers then got out of their cars with their guns drawn and commanded Howard to drop his sign and get on the ground with his hands spread above his head, the complaint said.

After Howard immediately complied, Sgt. John Hunter stated to Howard, “What do you think you are doing threatening people on my interstate?” Howard replied that he had not threatened anyone and was simply exercising his First Amendment and Second Amendment rights.

To that, Hunter said, “Not on my overpass you’re not,” according to the suit.

The complaint says Hunter then handcuffed Howard, with Hunter advising Howard that he was being detained but not arrested after Howard asked if he was under arrest. Howard was placed in a police cruiser and taken to the Hopewell police station without anyone informing him of his legal rights or providing him “with any basis or authorization for his arrest and detention,” the suit says.

Howard spent the following 90 minutes in an interrogation room, with handcuffs still binding his hands behind his back, but was never questioned during his detention, the suit says.

He was then told he was free to go, his weapons were returned, and he was driven back to the interstate overpass.

The complaint said the police violated Howard’s First Amendment right to free speech, Second Amendment right to bear arms, and Fourth Amendment right to be free from a groundless arrest when they confronted him with guns drawn and ordered him to the ground on the unfounded belief that Howard was violating the law by being in public with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

Howard’s suit sought “nominal compensatory and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial.”

The settlement “resolved the lawsuit to the mutual satisfaction of the parties,” according to a news release emailed Friday by the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties advocacy group in Charlottesville that represented Howard.

Hunter said in a statement Saturday: “The parties have resolved this matter to their mutual satisfaction. As a gun owner, avid hunter and former Marine, I, John Hunter, respect and honor citizens’ Second Amendment rights. Similarly, as a citizen and former candidate for public office, I respect the rights of citizens to express themselves and engage in political speech as protected by the First Amendment.

“It was not my intention to compromise Mr. Howard’s rights under the Constitution. As a police officer, my number one priority was the safety of the public.”

The Washington Post:

A masked man burst into a 7-Eleven near Seattle early Sunday morning, swinging a hatchet and slicing the store clerk.

Before the masked man could seriously hurt anyone, though, a customer who was drinking his morning coffee pulled out a concealed weapon and fatally shot the attacker.

Authorities did not name the attacker or the customer, but they did hail the concealed weapon owner as a hero.

“This could have been disastrous,” King County Sheriff Sgt. Cindi West told KIRO7. “Had this guy not shot, who knows what would have happened? We might have a dead clerk right now, and instead we have a dead bad guy.”

The clerk, Kuldeep Singh, suffered minor cuts to his stomach. He, too, thanked the customer for saving his life.

“He [was] killing me,” Singh, 58, said of the hatchet-wielding attacker. Singh added that the customer was a “nice guy.”

West said that the incident will be investigated fully but that the 60-year-old customer was currently being considered a Good Samaritan.

Wait a minute!  The weapon carrier wasn’t an evil NRA member child molester and serial abuser?  You mean he wasn’t a rapist?  You mean he didn’t make things less safe by carrying a weapon?  We hear all the time about how use – even mere ownership – of a weapon always fails and makes you less safe.  In this case, even the LEO is calling this guy a hero, while the victim is hailing him as a good Samaritan.

The narrative failed so badly in this case something had to go wrong at The Washington Post.  How did the editors let this one slip through?

David Codrea:

With the Ohio primary tomorrow, it’s evident Gun Owners of America Chairman Tim Macy has not kept a pledge made by Director Emeritus Larry Pratt last year on national radio about factoring a candidate’s position on immigration in the group’s political ratings.

Groan.  Sigh.  I think it was Jesus who said let your yes be yes, and your no be no.

Eric Holder:

The Senate leadership’s plan to blockade President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court is the “height of arrogance,” former Attorney Gen. Eric Holder says — lashing out at GOP lawmakers for repeatedly refusing to “meet the president halfway.”

Is it the kind of arrogance it takes to discretely send weapons to the Mexican cartels in order to build a case for more regulation of legally made and sold American firearms?  Oh yea.  One is legal, the other illegal.

It’s a sad day for Breitbart.

Kirsten Powers: How long will Obama ignore Christian genocide?  Dumb question.  Forever.

25% of French teenagers are Muslims.  That means France is finished.  It’s a dead man walking.  For the record, I don’t agree with the author’s understanding of Descarte and French identity.  For this I would turn to Carl Becker, “Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers,” but I simply don’t have time for that tonight.

Do you grok the one-handed operation?  No, me neither.

At Mike Vanderboegh’s place, good grief.

David Codrea:

There is a group working right now toward restoration of the Constitutional Militia and other goals, and it’s sharing that message and hoping to recruit members and support: AmericaAgain! I was approached by their founder a few months back and, while I found merit in many of their ideas, had concerns about the way they were presented.  I see they have a reworked video message which merits being shared, because it opens the door to discussing what one group is going forward with to make the Militia as articulated in the Constitution a reality.

Read the whole thing, including the comment that prompted David’s column.  I’m all for this kind of thing, except for one stipulation.  The second amendment discusses the right to bear arms and be free of federal interference in the context of the states’ desire to keep that interference from happening.  That is the historical milieu in which it was written.  The founders only needed one excuse to prevent federal government interference with the states on firearms, and they chose the most likely and obvious choice, i.e., the militia.  The second amendment is not a treatise on the foundation of liberty.

It’s an illogical jump to cast that as the only reason for the right to own and bear arms.  If you had discussed regulation on the right to own and use a tool of their trade to protect their families, hunt, and ameliorate tyranny with a colonial man, he would have buried you under the remotest prison.  God gave us our rights based on man being created in His image and the expected duty to work and subdue the earth to His glory.  The militia was a convenient excuse for a certain clause in one part of the constitution.  Limiting our rights to our understanding of that clause is a mistake.

Nice Holster.  I’d take it is someone like say, Red’s Indoor Range, wanted to gift it to me.

Breitbart:

Police confiscated firearms from 74-year-old Ralph Gilbertsen, although he is not a felon or domestic abuser, and he has never been ruled dangerous to others because of mental illness.

Gilbertsen, who lives in Richfield, Minnesota, believes in Bigfoot and UFOs. And while he does receive treatment for a “mild” mental health disorder, the Star Tribune reports that a psychologist sent a letter to the judge in the case, stating that “Gilbertsen is compliant with his medications and poses no danger to himself or others.”

A former Marine, Gilbertsen is also a concealed carry permit holder, which means he passed the in-depth background check required to obtain such permit, and he was the proud owner of three handguns, until the police knocked on his door.

He came to the attention of authorities after individuals at his apartment complex reported that he constantly talks about the government watching him; he particularly voices concerns that the CIA is spying on him. The Hennepin Community Outreach for Psychiatric Emergencies (COPE) called police about Gilbertsen after his apartment managers expressed concern about a series of letters he had written on CIA spying. COPE handles roughly 13,000 cases–only a third of which are face-to-face–and they asked police to escort them to Gilbertsen’s apartment in 2015. His guns were subsequently confiscated.

Richfield Police Department spokesman Lt. Mike Flaherty said, “Officers are often forced to make snap judgments about an individual’s mental health.” He added, “The street cops nowadays have to be a psychologist. People don’t wear nameplates saying ‘paranoid schizophrenic.’ So the police have to go in there and make judgment calls.”

Lt. Mike Flaherty is a paid, professional liar.  Officers aren’t forced to do anything of the sort he mentions.  There is no law requiring police officers to make any kind of judgment concerning mental health, much less “snap” judgments.  Street cops don’t have to be psychologists – he is lying and he just made that up to sound intelligent and defend his officers.

No, people don’t wear nameplates saying anything, because that would be illegal and stupid.  Besides, mental health is not an indicator of propensity to violence – so says the mental health profession of which the officer fancies himself and his officers.  So I guess they aren’t such great mental health professionals after all.  Perhaps they should stick with policing rather than trying to add to their jobs by doing illegal things like confiscating property that isn’t theirs.

The victim isn’t a felon.  He isn’t a domestic abuser.  His property was stolen – stolen by the very people who are supposed to hunt those sorts of criminals.  Throw the cops in jail with the general prison population, give him his guns back, and fire all of his colleagues who helped him get away with this theft.

Jeremy Bryant makes a 420 mile trip through Oregon to his grandfather’s funeral open carrying a .357 Magnum, hitchhiking all the way.  This is well worth watching in its entirety.  And Jeremy has given me a brand new expression which I will shamelessly parrot until I no longer have breath.  “For the peace, good and dignity of the country and the welfare of its people.”

Tenth Amendment Center:

In “What Did “Bear Arms” Mean in the Second Amendment?” Clayton E. Cramer and Joseph Edward Olson provide solid historical context proving that the phrase was used repeatedly when referring to non-military individuals possessing weapons.

“Those who argue that the original meaning of the Second Amendment was only to protect a collective right, either of the states to maintain militias, or perhaps of citizens to jointly form militias, assert that “bear arms” refers exclusively or at least overwhelmingly, to the collective, military carrying of weapons,” they write. “If ‘bear arms’ referred only to the military carrying or use of arms, then the right protected by the Second Amendment would not be an individual right to possess or carry arms for personal self-defense. The right would be for a government organized militia, or at best, to exercise what the Tennessee Supreme Court acknowledged was a right to revolution.”

While pointing out that historical documents written at the time of the Second Amendment referenced by many scholars generally used the phrase “bear arms” to refer to military uses, Cramer and Olson say that this is due to a bias selection problem.

“Searching more comprehensive collections of English language works published before 1820 shows that there are a number of uses that are clearly individual, and have nothing to do with military service. Some of these uses are by authors and in contexts that give special weight to an individual rights understanding.”

Among their historical evidence is a law written in England during the reign of King Henry VIII making it unlawful for any Welsh resident to “bring or bear, or cause to be brought or borne to the same Sessions or Court, or to any place within the distance of two Miles from the same Sessions or Court, nor to any Town, Church, Fair, Market, or other Congregation . . . nor in the Highways in affray of the King’s Peace, or the King’s liege People, any Bill, Long-bow, Cross-bow, Hand-gun, Sword, Staff, Dagger, Halberd, Morespike, Spear, or any other manner of Weapon . . . .”

“The specific problem that the statute sought to correct was not even Welsh rebellion,” Cramer and Olson write, “but simple criminal actions interfering with the operation of the courts.”

Another English statue intended to disarm Scottish Highlanders also uses the term “bear arms” in referring to requirements for amnesty (emphasis added).

That from and after the time of affixing any such summons as aforesaid, no person or persons residing within the bounds therein mentioned, shall be sued or prosecuted for his or their having, or having had, bearing, or having borne arms at any time before the several days to be prefixed or limited by summons as aforesaid, for the respective persons and districts to deliver up their arms. . . .

This is a good essay.  While I do not ever advocate deference to international law or precedent, not even from our own English heritage, it is quite useful to understand the common usage of words and common practices of the times that led to the documents to which we are all supposed to live.

One can also see the nibbling around the edges of gun control, even in these words above, with the worst of it being gun control as a catalyst for the American war of independence.  Our forefathers fought against the notion of the divine right of kings and for the idea of covenant as seen in the light of continental Calvinism.

The National Association of Evangelicals (USA) has gone on record saying that there should be no religious test for “refugees.”

“Religion should not be a litmus test for receiving aid,” said Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). “Most evangelical leaders believe compassion and security can and should go hand-in-hand.”

While the NAE races down the road to irrelevance, take note of this news from Austria:

Austrians fear parts of Vienna are becoming no-go areas after a father was attacked by a ‘Sharia patrol’ when he told them to stop threatening his wife and daughter for not being correctly dressed.

As various factions of migrants stake claims to territory in the city, it has been reported that the self-styled Sharia patrols have been visiting clubs and bars in the Millennium City area to make sure Chechen women were properly dressed and acting appropriately.

However, when one Austrian man tried to step in to stop the patrol from hassling his Chechen wife and daughter, he ended up being hospitalised.

I’m not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice.  But if such a person comes up to me or my family in that manner, I’m going to say “I feel threatened, back off.”  If they don’t, I will shoot them (hopefully before they close the gap, which means we will be backing up to keep distance).  After I do that, I will never talk to the police.  That will be done by my lawyer.

You should make plans of some sort for dealing with aggression such as this.  And do not ever give up your guns to anyone, for any reason.  I’m not just talking about your modularized-up, tricked out AR-15, with the tactical light, pressure switch, reflex sight and flip-to-side magnifier, because you don’t carry that with you everywhere you go.  In fact, you rarely carry it anywhere.

When you go about your business every day, you carry a tactical knife and a handgun, perhaps a compact 1911 or a small airweight .38Spl revolver.  The best gun in your stable of firearms is the one you have with you when you need it.  I love the gun I carry, because it happens to be the one I am carrying at the time.