Archive for the 'Guns' Category

As an update to my article on the arrest of Danny Gray Lambeth for open carry of a rifle, I do not know Mr. Lambeth and have no way of contacting him.  I would like to know more about the story, but cannot afford the time to travel and sit through a court hearing, especially given that hearings can be postponed on the spot multiple times depending upon what the lawyers and judge want to do.  I have also searched new reports every day since the original report, only to find no updates.

But I did forward a complaint to the office of the North Carolina Attorney General, and heard back the next day.  Basically, I stipulated to the caller (himself a former prosecuting attorney) that I didn’t know all of the facts of the case, and he stipulated to me (after I pressed the point) that arrest for open carry in the county of Davidson while leaving me alone in Mecklenburg County to open carry is capricious and arbitrary, unless there are other facts of the case such as brandishing or threatening (which are both illegal anyway).

And I insist that readers and the legal system stipulate as follows: arrest in one county while allowing open carry in another allows LEOs capricious and arbitrary choices, and by the very definition this isn’t justice.

The New Yorker:

The news that the parents of the children massacred two years ago in Sandy Hook, near Newtown, Connecticut, by a young man with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, were undertaking a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer was at once encouraging and terribly discouraging. The encouraging part is that those parents, suffering from a grief that those of us who are only witnesses to it can barely begin to comprehend, haven’t, despite the failure to reinstate assault-weapons bans and stop the next massacre, given way to despair. Like Richard Martinez, after his son was murdered by a weapon that should never have been in the hands of a lunatic, or anyone else, for that matter, they’re allowing themselves to be angry, and then turning their anger into action: they’re naming the business that helped kill their children and asking a court to hold that business responsible.

The filed complaint—the numbered paragraphs give it an oddly religious feeling, like theses nailed to a church door—is worth reading in full, however painful that might be, not only because of the unbelievable suffering and cruelty it details on that terrible morning but also because it offers, in neatly logical fashion, an indisputable argument: the gun manufacturer is guilty of having sold a weapon whose only purpose was killing a lot of people in a very short time. Despite the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives having previously declared that such weapons “serve a function in crime and combat, but serve no sporting purpose,” Bushmaster sold it anyway—and precisely on the grounds that it could kill many people, quickly. “Forces of opposition bow down. You are single handedly outnumbered,” the advertising copy read.

… one of the ironies of the whole story is that there already is a long-standing ban on truly automatic weapons—machine guns—whose legality not even the N.R.A. or their allies dispute. If anything, they tend to make a sniffy point of discriminating actual machine guns from mere semi-automatic ones, among them the Bushmaster. (Back in the twenties, the availability of the tommy gun to gangsters meant that the police were often brutally out-gunned.) But all of the talk about legal and illegal weapons, automatic and semi-automatic—as about the treatment of the psychologically troubled—evades the simple, central point: it ought to be very, very difficult, as it is in every other civilized country, to get your hands on a weapon whose only purpose is to kill people quickly. The N.R.A. and their allies make it very, very easy.

There are replies to Gopnik, but thus far I have yet to see one that targets the fundamental flaws in the argument.  To begin with, I don’t stipulate at all to the notion that the ban on fully automatic weapons is legal regardless of what the NRA believes.  I believe that the Hughes amendment is an unconstitutional and obscene abomination.  Adam needs to get out of Manhattan a little more and see the world.

Second, his categorization of weapons “whose purpose is to kill” shows fundamental ignorance of guns and the history of them.  The sporting purposes test applied by the ATF and codified into law is circular reasoning as I commented on the ATF study on importability of certain shotguns.

Wrapped up in this paragraph we have not only an amusing logical blunder but also the real crux of the problem. Authors have presupposed the answer (so-called circular reasoning) at which they must arrive, i.e., the statute must remain useful. Thus, all interpretations by ATF are biased to yield that result. It is not the responsibility of the ATF nor is it within the purview of their authority to ensure the continued usefulness of a statute, if in fact it is rendered useless by advances, common practices, evolution in sporting, or lack of wise crafting of the statute (such as the fact that nowhere in this discussion of “sporting purposes” is there any latitude given for personal protection and home defense under the second amendment to the constitution of the United States). This single paragraph renders the study itself as useless as the statute has become.

Let’s use another example in order to make the point clear.  Short barrel revolvers.  While some hunters use long barrel revolvers with scopes for hunting, no one uses a short barrel revolver for hunting.  It has no purpose except to kill (whether used in crime or in self defense).  And yet these aren’t the weapons Adam refers to when he discusses guns with a single purpose.  He is referring to AR-15s and other similarly-styled weapons, which ironically are used quite a bit for hunting (as well as for other sporting purposes such as 3-gun competitions).  You see, the ATF has written the rules by formulating a list and then trying to ban anything on the list – which is circular reasoning.

Scoped bolt action rifles are used as sniper rifles – or for hunting deer.  Shotguns are used for turkey – or to clear rooms in Now Zad Afghanistan by the U.S. Marine Corps.  There is no list that doesn’t ‘beg the question’ (as a formal logical fallacy) when it comes to military or sporting purposes.

Furthermore, a weapon’s capacity to kill is precisely what makes it valuable when it comes to the amelioration of tyranny, which is what the second amendment is all about anyway.  You see, death comes to us not from an imperfect society that lacks the proper state supervision, needing just one more law or the right kind of leadership in order to be the utopia on earth envisioned by Gopnik.  Death comes to us at the hands of criminals, petty and state-sanctioned, due to something called federal headship in Adam and original sin.  Gopnik must return to Genesis Chapter 3 in order to craft a meaningful and consistent anthropology that explains reality.

As with all statists, their god fails them.  They will forever be waiting on the providence of an impotent totem, and may as well slash their wrists and bleed before Baal.  God sits in the heavens and mocks them (Psalm 2:4).  Their attempts to bring heaven down to earth through lawfare and social programs will only end in failure and suffering.  Statistics on guns and crime aren’t relevant to Gopnik’s problem.  He needs to jettison his fundamental world view in order to understand who he is, who man is, and what man must do to be saved.

David Codrea:

It’s not often I find myself in agreement with a “gun control” zealot, but in this case, I’m on board with Rejina 100 percent. By all means, if you don’t want her to think you are a coward, please share. Some may even want to start with these guys.

It might actually be rather nice if the whole thing got a little more legal scrutiny than it has to date.

David Codrea:

Perhaps when enough citizens realize the police can’t protect them and won’t allow them to protect themselves, their attitudes and political choices will change, or at least their inclination against proud and defiant civil disobedience. Some of us would love to help, but we can’t force people not to enslave or harm themselves. Meanwhile, those of us who already know the score will continue to protect ourselves and our rights, and oppose that New York state of mind whenever the fascist Mayor of Everytown tries to impose it beyond the five boroughs.

I’ve said before and will continue to drive the point that totalitarians will answer for every crime committed upon their people that could have been prevented or ameliorated if they allowed their people to defend themselves.  Politicians and police who lobby against the God-given right of self defense will ultimately answer to the one who gave those rights.

Kurt Hofmann:

And that’s another problem for your side, Diamond–the principles on which our republic (as opposed to your “democracy”) was founded are indeed worth dying for, in the eyes of many of us, and perhaps an even bigger problem for you, worth killing for. So if you and your “decent Americans” decide to appeal to “authoritarian government” to deal with us, bring it.

As I survey the ideological landscape, it’s not entirely clear to me yet that the totalitarians get the fact that the civil disobedience we see now in New York, Connecticut and Washington are based on irreducibles, axioms that define character and circumscribe actions.  Let’s hope they do before they do things from which there is no return.

Mike Vanderboegh:

Faith in God (Part III)

The Long Game (Part II)

Squirrel Away As Much Powder As Possible (Part I)

Read them all.

Winston-Salem Journal:

Davidson County deputies arrested a man who was walking around a neighborhood with an assault rifle, according to a news release today from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office.

Danny Gray Lambeth, 51, of Old U.S. 52 in Winston-Salem was charged with going armed to the terror of the public.

According to the sheriff’s office, deputies responded to the area of 10711 Old U.S. 52 on Saturday after receiving a report of a man walking around residences with an assault rifle. During the investigation, Lambeth was identified as the suspect.

Let’s ignore for the sake of argument the idiotic press report about this being an “assault rifle” (which is wasn’t unless it had select fire mode).  As I’ve discussed many times before, I open carry from time to time as a resident of North Carolina.  We are a traditional open carry state.  I have never had any problems from Baker 2 of the CMPD (who usually ignore me or wave and smile), but even the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had to be reminded by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that the open carry of a firearm in North Carolina does not create a “reasonable suspicion” to effect arrest.

It simply doesn’t, so says a federal court.  Case closed.  End of discussion.  Moreover, North Carolina has no stop and identify statute.  Case closed.  End of discussion.  It couldn’t be clearer.  If LEOs aren’t being taught that in their classes, they are being misled and put on the street without the proper training.  That’s malfeasance on the part of the chief LEO.

We have dealt with this before, where I have noted instances where LEOs have unholstered their weapons and pointed them (I assume with a round chambered) at men simply for openly carrying a weapon.  Someone will be killed in such an exchange one day, I have admonished.  And yet, we still see arrests for open carry in North Carolina.

I want to know why?  What about North Carolina being an open carry state don’t CLEOs get?

USA Today is carrying an editorial that has no apparent author (except perhaps Remington Arms).

For nearly 50 years, the Remington Model 700 rifle has been the preferred choice for millions of hunters, shooting sports enthusiasts and military and law enforcement personnel.

Despite emotional reporting of baseless and unproven allegations and plaintiff lawyer assertions, several undisputed facts remain:

The Model 700 is the most popular, reliable, accurate and trusted bolt-action rifle in the world, with over 5 million rifles produced and billions of rounds fired over nearly five decades.

The Model 700 is the firearm of choice for elite shooters from America’s military and law enforcement communities, and has been the platform for the United States Marine Corps and the U.S. Army precision sniper weapon systems for over two decades, both of which specifically require the “Walker” trigger mechanism.

The Model 700, including its trigger mechanism, has been free of any defect since it was first produced and, despite any careless reporting to the contrary, the gun’s use by millions of Americans has proven it to be a safe, trusted and reliable rifle.

Both Remington and experts hired by plaintiff attorneys have conducted testing on guns returned from the field which were alleged to have fired without a trigger pull, and neither has ever been able to duplicate such an event on guns which had been properly maintained and which had not been altered after sale.

Remington takes safety very seriously. We support hunter safety and other educational programs nationwide, and include with every Remington firearm the “Ten Commandments of Firearm Safety,” which urgently remind every gun owner that if proper firearms safety rules are followed, no accidental injuries would ever occur.

The men and women who build, own and shoot the Remington Model 700 take great pride in a product that, over the last half century, has set the bar for safety, reliability and performance.

I just don’t know how else to say it: this is false.  The evidence shows that numerous malfunctions occurred during internal Remington testing, from the firing pin moving forward during the bolt locking cycle to firing when the safety was moved to the “off” position.

As I’ve said before as a registered professional engineer, if I designed a machine that had such malfunctions I would immediately demand “stop work” on the manufacture of the machine until I understood what exactly had happened in the design or manufacture to cause the malfunctions.  Only when those problems had been corrected would I have allowed manufacture to continue.

I wouldn’t do this because I fear retribution from customers, or neglect to do it because I fear retribution from the employer.  I would do this because it is the right thing to do, because it is the ethical thing to do, and because I swore an oath to protect the safety and health of the public in order to be granted my license to practice engineering.  There are things more important than money.

Remington didn’t do any of this, but rather, fought it all the way through the process, even ignoring their own internal reports and concerns of their testing engineers.  Don’t take my word for it.  Go read the evidence for yourself.  In my estimation, Remington is suffering for their ethical failures even as I write.  And I don’t understand why Remington is still trying to rewrite the history of the Model 700.  This is just befuddling.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

David Codrea:

Perhaps one day, applying St. Ambrose’s admonishment to Mumbai will mean JPFO members will feel right at home with a “gun culture” that supports the dignity of all peaceable human beings by not infringing on their choices. That’s the beauty of freedom, and something “Ugly Indians” seem incapable of grasping, as they use their media megaphones to demand colonial mindset defenselessness be imposed on the country that welcomed them in.

But letting ideas do battle in the marketplace and recognizing God-given rights to self defense would run contrary to the collectivist world view of our ruling elite!  That’s why our ruling elite are so anxious to let so many in who would further empower the rulers.

Kurt Hofmann:

When elected officials undertake actions that they fear would anger those they claim to “represent”–fear so strongly, in fact, that they seek to hide their involvement from the voters–they dodge accountability for their actions. The residents of these legislators’ states are their employers–their superiors. In what other line of work is it acceptable for the hired help to do their jobs in a manner that’s hidden from their employers?

But if they did things in an open manner that would return us to the very republic our founders envisioned and mitigate the power of the ruling elites.  We can’t have that happening.

Mike Vanderboegh:

This opinion piece in the LA Times by Jared Diamond was also mirrored at RealClearDefense. Diamond is no Media Matters collectivist putz. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner and thought of as a deep thinker in certain quarters. So when he writes of “the enemy within,” you have to take him seriously. And who are “the enemy within?” Why us, of course.

Read the piece at Sipsey Street Irregulars.  Use of the military would violate the law and recognized historical precedent.  But failure to do so would mean that the ruling elite might actually be held accountable for the tyranny they perpetrate.  Expect to see more calls for use of the U.S. military in counterinsurgency and stability operations in America, as well as further militarization of the police.

Lead ammunition ban passed in California after the federal government knowingly and intentionally (with malice) withheld key technical data and information.  That doesn’t surprise you, does it?

Via Uncle, Prince Law.

ATF is at it again in their latest determination later. Previously, I discussed their determination in relation to the sample that Black Aces Tactical submitted and hinted that ATF might be shifting its view on stabilizing braces …

The letter notes that the literature included with the sample states the Stabilizer is not designed nor intended to enable a user to fire a weapon from the shoulder (Page 1 of the letter). FTISB correctly finds that attaching the Stabilizer does not turn the pistol into a “firearm” as defined by NFA, but then states “provided the Blade AR Pistol Stabilizer is used as originally designed and NOT as a shoulder stock.”

The issue with FTISB’s latest determination is they are attempting to classify a firearm based on the end users use of an attachment designed and intended to be used in a certain way.

[ … ]

The letter to FTISB stated that the device was not designed OR intended to enable a user to fire a weapon from the shoulder. So how does FTISB come to the conclusion that an end user shouldering the Stabilizer turns the firearm into an item regulated by NFA?

[ … ]

Allow me to pose this hypothetical to you using the logic in this latest determination letter. If an individual attaches the Stabilizer to his AR pistol, goes to the range, shoots it as the manufacturer intended and then hands it to his friend who shoulders it, did it just become an illegal short barreled rifle?

I know that the good and smart folks from Prince Law are attempting to make sense of an arcane law and regulation thereto.  That’s their profession and they’re good at it.  And to be clear (although unrelated exactly to this post at Prince Law), lawyers do things that sometimes puzzle us, like argue for or against something before a court and then argue (in case the court rejects that argument) something that undercuts the first argument to see if the court accepts that position, as if they didn’t believe the first argument.  But the problem is that none of this (stabilizer brace ruling) makes any sense.

Let’s circle around on this one again.  The problem is that none of this makes any sense.  It’s similar to the same thing we observed with the sporting purposes test for the importability ruling for shotguns.

On page 4 the following statements are made: “The 1989 study then examined the scope of “sporting purposes” as used in the statute. The study noted that “[t]he broadest possible interpretation could take in virtually any lawful activity or competition which any person or groups of persons might undertake. Under this interpretation, any rifle could meet the “sporting purposes” test. The 1989 study concluded that a broad interpretation would render the statute useless.”

Wrapped up in this paragraph we have not only an amusing logical blunder but also the real crux of the problem. Authors have presupposed the answer (so-called circular reasoning) at which they must arrive, i.e., the statute must remain useful. Thus, all interpretations by ATF are biased to yield that result. It is not the responsibility of the ATF nor is it within the purview of their authority to ensure the continued usefulness of a statute, if in fact it is rendered useless by advances, common practices, evolution in sporting, or lack of wise crafting of the statute (such as the fact that nowhere in this discussion of “sporting purposes” is there any latitude given for personal protection and home defense under the second amendment to the constitution of the United States). This single paragraph renders the study itself as useless as the statute has become.

The entire NFA is useless, (in the main) unenforceable, and nonsensical.  It needs to be repealed, along with the GCA. This ruling by the ATF on stabilizer braces is yet another demonstration of that fact.  Fortunately, we have another option.

In each case, Bloomberg understood his enemies, their foibles and their failures far better than they understood him. So he won and they lost.

But then something happened that Bloomberg in his arrogance never expected, something that the “mainstream gun rights organizations” for their part never expected either — in every single state where Bloomberg had “won,” it turned out that the victims of his unconstitutional laws had other ideas. And they didn’t need “leaders” like Wayne LaPierre and Alan Gottlieb to lead them.

The “I Will Not Comply” movement in the various affected states began the instant Bloomberg’s Intolerable Acts were passed. Individual firearm owners, led here and there by some courageous activists of the smaller rights groups who were not so worried about raising money and preserving their press image than their “betters,” simply announced that they would not obey such unconstitutional laws.

In the case of a stabilizer brace (and I don’t currently have one and I also have no AR pistol or SBR), if my home was threatened by invaders intent on doing harm, I would use whatever weapon was within reach, including a pistol with a stabilizer brace, and deploy it the way I deemed best suited for my own safety and the safety of my loved ones.  If that meant shouldering a pistol, they so be it.

The folks at Prince Law will not argue that way because it isn’t their job.  But it’s our job to disobey unjust laws.

David Codrea:

Claiming to be “a conservative on economic matters,” billionaire David Koch told ABC News in a Sunday interview that he considers himself “a social liberal.”

[ … ]

While Americans for Prosperity (provided with start-up funds by AFP Foundation Chairman Koch with his brother Charles) claims it is “’sitting out’ the immigration debate …

Very well.  We may decide to sit out the next election too.  We’ll see what’s most important to the David Koch and the GOP – immigration issues (and the Chamber of Commerce) or control over the government.  Queue it up and make your decision, boys.

Kurt Hofmann:

So, to whom should Bushmaster, Camfour, and Riverside Sales not have “entrusted” an AR-15 rifle? Any private citizen–any civilian who is not a law enforcement officer. Any of us, in other words, who are not paid government muscle.

That’s what they’re really after.  It’s an attempted end run around God-given rights to bear arms.  It’s unclear at the moment what will happen in the progressive, activist courts in the Northeast, but if it turns sour, gun manufacturers know where they’re welcome.  You do know that, right?

Joe Newby:

A Houston police officer has sparked an internal investigation after an encounter with an open-carry activist legally carrying an AR-15, The Blaze reported Wednesday. The encounter was captured on video, Jon Street said, after the officer attempted to delete the video. After threatening to jail the man for not having ID, he is heard telling the protester that he was “tired” of seeing open-carry “idiots.”

Well, we’re tired of you too, so the feeling is mutual.

David Codrea:

In both cases, the slain individuals were black. That suggests this latest DeWine effort has less to do with training and more to do with Ohio officials being scared to death they’ll see community rage erupt in their cities as has happened in Ferguson and elsewhere. The Brooklyn slaying of two NYPD officers will no doubt put an even more critical urgency to the matter.  It’s a shame, because racial fears that appear to be at the heart of DeWine’s new-found embrace of police training standards did not even factor into the request he rejected, as it was predicated on the assumption that all peaceable people have a right to keep and bear arms, regardless of skin color or any other irrelevant factor.

They do, and so apparently DeWine is a racist.

Daily Caller notes that some pro-gun legislation was enacted in the most recent obscene spending spree.  Whatever.  Here’s a note to the rulers from me.  I don’t bow down for table scraps.  And you’d better untie that cord of servitude to the Chamber of Commerce on immigration issues, or you won’t see me at the polls any more.

The latest silliness from Mike Weisser comes to us from Huffington Post:

Last week I attended a conference on medicine and gun violence in which a cross-section of researchers and clinicians focused on how to figure out if patients are at risk for gun violence and how to intervene appropriately when such a clinical situation appears to exist. The problem raises medical, legal and ethical issues involving proper patient care, privacy, liability and other questions that the medical profession has been wrestling with for a long time but have really come home to roost this year.

Three states have now passed laws limiting the degree to which physicians can ask patients about guns and only a last-minute surge of votes from Democratic senators who will shortly be replaced by Republicans allowed a Surgeon General to be confirmed whose views are decidedly anti-gun.

Throughout the conference I kept listening to presentations which were based on an assumption about medicine and guns which I’m not sure is really true. And it goes like this: in order to effectively raise the issue of gun risk, the physician must first determine whether a patient is, indeed, a risk to himself or others if he has access to a gun. And if the physician determines that the patient is, in fact, a health risk if there’s a gun around, how do you determine the degree of gun access without infringing on his right to own a gun whether he’s a risk for gun violence or not?

The reason I’m not comfortable with this assumption is because I happen to believe one simple thing about guns, namely, that if there is a gun lying around, locked or unlocked, the risk of gun injury is simply much greater than if the gun doesn’t exist. To borrow a phrase from the late Elmore Leonard, “Don’t fool with guns in here, okay? The goddamn piece’s liable to go off.” Now researchers can parse all the data with a fine-tooth comb from today until next year, but the bottom line is exactly what Leonard says: if it’s around, sooner or later it’s going to go off.

We’ve covered this in detail before.  Guns don’t “go off.”  Someone puts their finger on the trigger and pulls it.  If it is pointed in an unsafe direction, someone may get harmed or killed.  It’s the same with automobiles or trucks.  I drove beside a truck the other day that was swerving to the point I thought the driver may be drunk.  Likely he was sleepy, which is as bad or worse than being drunk.  Or, we may substitute chemicals in the home, or cold temperatures, or overheating for the elderly if they lose or cannot afford air conditioning.

Guns are no different.  The problem is that the author sees the role of doctors the same as the role of any other profession – as agents of the state.  He sees life this way because he is a collectivist.  And he likely knows that guns don’t just “go off.”  He is using that phrase in order to evoke emotion and approbation for doctors who won’t behave as agents of the state.

You recall another society where doctors were agents of the state, don’t you?

The Blaze:

A sheriff in Washington state responded Monday to a controversial comment made by one of his deputies two weeks ago during a charity event.

Jerry Moffett, a deputy in Spokane County, Washington, was caught on tape at the Holiday and Heroes event during which some officers took underprivileged children shopping while others stood outside meeting and greeting those attending. But one woman who spoke to Moffett decided to record the interaction. In the video, the woman asks Moffett about the department’s Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) military-style vehicles.

“I’m thinking that is totally appropriate in Iraq but what kind of a situation in the U.S. would you see that happening?” the woman asked Moffett.

The deputy responded by saying, “We’ve got a lot of Constitutionalists and a lot of people that stockpile weapons, a lot of ammunition. They have weapons here locally.”

The Sheriff made a followup comment.

Knezovich said there is “no way” the equipment will be used on any law-abiding citizen. ”It will never be used to take your guns away,” he told the outlet. The outlet noted Moffett is a 20-year veteran of the force and an Army veteran … KXLY reported that Knezovich has since admitted that Moffett’s word choice could have been better, suggesting “extremist” would have been more appropriate than “Constitutionalist

Far from being shocked, disappointed or aghast at the comment by Moffett, I’m pleasantly surprised at his honesty.  It’s always a good thing when the truth comes out.  There is no reason for such equipment on police forces across the nation except for use on the people of America.  Moffett’s candid response reminds us of this truth.

I’m also pleasantly surprised that the Sheriff brought up his time in grade on the police force and his military background.  My own son believes that former military should try to avoid law enforcement if possible.  There are good men who are former military, and there are bad men who are former military.  Moffett is a bad one, and there is no justification for worship of the military.  I know what my own son answers to the question, ‘Son, will you fire on American citizens?’  He would sooner fire on his commanding officers who issued such an order.

Mike Vanderboegh was called a radical right-winger.  Hey, radical right-winger, constitutionalist or extremist.  It’s six one way and half a dozen the other.  As for Moffett, we know where he stands, and it’s because of people like him that we are constitutionalists and stockpile weapons.  Bring it, Moffett.