Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Raw Story:

Minnesota Rep. Rick Nolan (D) on Wednesday defended his call for gun safety laws by joking that his Republican opponent might need a military-style assault rifle to shoot ducks, but he didn’t.

Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Nolan had told CBS News that an assault weapons ban was just “common sense.”

Nolan’s opponent, Stewart Mills, and the Minnesota Republican Party have pointed to the statement as evidence that the congressman wanted to limit gun rights.

“Stewart, what I said on CBS Face the Nation was that I don’t need an assault rifle to shoot a duck,” he explained at a debate for Minnesota’s 8th District on Tuesday. “And I don’t. Perhaps you do. Maybe you should spend more time at your shooting range.”

“The fact is, right now, you can only have three shells in your gun when you’re shooting ducks,” Nolan continued.

On Face The Nation, Nolan said:

… an assault weapons ban is “common sense legislation.”  “I’m a hunter. Believe in second amendment rights. But you know what? I don’t need an assault weapon to shoot a duck,” Nolan said. “And I think they ought to be banned, and I think we need to put a ban on the amount of shells you can carry in a magazine, and I think we have to strengthen our background checks.”

So I’m doubting that Mr. Nolan is really an avid hunter like he says.  In fact, given the duck hunting with assault rifles, shells in magazines and so forth, I’m concluding that Nolan doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.

Someone named Carla Axtman is celebrating (perhaps prematurely) the potential passage of I-594 in the state of Washington.  With the gun control money pouring into the fight, this piece of legislation poses a real danger.

And the commentaries by the leftists are virtually breathless.  Consider what Alexander Zaitchik says at Salon.

Gottlieb’s controversial bill is a direct response to another initiative on the ballot, 594, which expands background checks to include sales at gun shows and over the Internet. It is polling high and expected to pass. If Washington votes “yes,” it will join the growing list of states that have taken gun policy into their own hands in the wake of Newtown. Both the NRA and Gottlieb’s organization oppose 594. But Gottlieb has done more than just denounce it. He has raised more than a million dollars to promote an alternative bill, 591, which would prohibit the state from ever ”requir[ing] background checks on the receipt of a firearm unless a uniform national standard is required.”

Can you spot the offending language? It’s this: “unless a uniform national standard is required.”

For Jeff Knox and much of the gun-rights movement, to even accept the future possibility of federal background check legislation constitutes apostasy. Some of the groups represented at the GRPC are the ones that, along with stalwarts like the NRA and Larry Pratt’s Gun Owners of America, mobilized in April 2013 to torpedo the Manchin-Toomey Senate bill, which would have closed background check loopholes across the country. After looking at the polling data, Gottlieb initially supported Manchin-Toomey as a way for the movement to get some “goodies” (such as relaxing laws on interstate gun sales) while supporting something that he thought was going to pass anyway. (Gottlieb later dropped his support when Chuck Schumer stripped the bill of Gottlieb’s prized “goodie.”)

Gottlieb’s early support for the Senate bill earned him names like “sellout” and “traitor.” But it’s now looking like he understood something his critics did not. Steadfast opposition to a federal background-check bill would give rise to a growing and well-funded movement for background-check referenda in the states. In Washington, the coalition behind 594 is supported by a group of wealthy donors, including Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, the head of the gun violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety. In his newsletter, Gottlieb describes their efforts as the “Billionaire’s Club war against freedom.”

So when Knox asked Gottlieb to defend the language of 591 at this year’s GRPC, attendees sat up in their seats. After a weekend filled with enough policy weeds to replant the Everglades, the confrontation amounted to high drama.

With his comb-over, pencil mustache, and brightly colored bowties, Alan Gottlieb has the presence of a harried, slightly eccentric accountant. But the Queens native is no dutiful CPA; he’s a convicted tax felon who does not flinch easily on questions of strategy, let alone challenges to his commitment to the Second Amendment. In the 1970s, while still in his twenties, Gottlieb began organizing the legal workshops that grew into the brain trust that won the landmark Supreme Court rulings of Heller and McDonald, which enshrined gun ownership in the home as an individual right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. At the podium in Chicago, Gottlieb welcomed the chance to deliver a blunt message to the background-check dead-enders who had been calling him a traitor since Manchin-Toomey.

“The bottom line is that” the background check issue “is different” from other gun gun policy debates, Gottlieb explained, pointing to public opinion. “What issues do you find that get 70 to 90 percent of the people to agree on anything?”

After Knox asserted that he doesn’t believe polls showing support for background checks, Gottlieb responded, “You may not believe the number, but I’ve seen well over 500 polls all across the country over the last six years on background checks. They all say the same damn thing. They’re not wrong, believe me.”

Knox countered with another reality: Many gun groups, especially those in the referendum states of the Southwest, are never going to sign off on background checks, ever, at any level. In Arizona, “I wouldn’t be able to get our members to proactively concede anything,” said Knox. His hardline solution is to “let them go ahead and deal with the consequences.”

By “them,” Knox means the feds. In the purist view, the best way to deal with any gun law is to dig in, take the hits, and ignore the law, forcing the government to “deal with the consequences.” Knox said he wished the NRA had taken that approach with the 1934 National Firearms Act, which regulated machine guns and banned short-barrel rifles.

To Gottlieb, that’s a doomed strategy. In any case, he stressed, “the Bloomberg people” know gun groups will never support background-check legislation, so they can “knock our teeth out and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He later added, “They’ve got us hogtied because they know we’re not going to change. I’m being honest with you. I’m not expecting you to change, but that’s why we’re going to lose.”

I’ve quoted extensively from the article (normally bad form, but it’s Salon so I don’t really care), so let’s deal with a few facts now.  First of all, good pollsters could get the vast majority of the American public to agree with the assertion that the man in the moon stayed alive by eating the green cheese the moon is made from.  Please stop citing polls to me.  Just stop.  Second, when posed this way, what percentage of the public would be in favor: “Would you favor background checks for all gun sales even if it involved bloodshed and possible civil war when warrants were served on otherwise peaceable Americans for selling guns person-to-person?”

As for Gottlieb, I always knew that the “stupid” act he played after support of Manchin-Toomey was a ruse.  He has a deep character flaw that enables him to support totalitarian measures.  We all have our flaws, but this one runs deep and dangerous.  In fact, read again his excuse for supporting universal background checks.  Basically it boils down to this: if you don’t voluntarily agree to it, they will do it anyway.  Or by way of analogy, if you don’t give a pick pocket you money, he’s just going to take it anyway.

Someone please try to convince me that isn’t what he is saying, because it looks to me like it is.  And that’s puerile and childish reasoning, and in this case I think he advances it not because he really believes that it is logically compelling, but because he is frightened, or a publicity hound, or something dark.  As I said, I don’t know exactly what, but the character flaw runs deep in Alan.

Queue it up, all of the polls, and money, and voters, and whatever else you want.  I will not submit to universal background checks and/or its corollary evil cousin a national gun registry.  We know why they want it.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

The writer at Salon has it all wrong, and Alan has it equally wrong.  Passing a bill is the easy part, and it isn’t the first in a string of compromises.  It will be the last straw.

WNCN:

A state law that allows concealed carry permits holders to take their guns into bars and restaurants is now one year old, but even though the law is set in the books, the debate over concealed carry has not died down.

Restaurants can still ban concealed carry by posting signage at their entrance.

Raleigh’s Players’ Retreat off Hillsborough Street is one such restaurant.

“That’s the reason why I’m here,” Rose Caldwell said. “I would not be comfortable dining in a place where I thought people were bringing weapons.”

But the gun rights group Grassroots NC said that sign makes Players’ Retreat and hundreds of other restaurants that ban concealed handguns across North Carolina “high risk,” according to a running list on their website.

“I don’t want to be sitting in a restaurant that’s posted where I can’t carry my weapon safely and concealed on me,” said Josette Chmiel with Grassroots NC. “And in the chance that it gets robbed or somebody comes in, a criminal, a felon, shooting, that I can’t defend myself. To me, that’s a high risk.”

State lawmakers made it legal to carry concealed handguns in places like bars, movie theaters and in locked compartments of cars on school and state government parking lots one year ago Wednesday.

So what’s the result of the law?  Is the blood running from the bars out into the streets from all of the gun fights?  We get our answer next.

“And there’s been no incidences, so the law is playing out exactly as we thought it would,” Chmiel said.

You mean that the blood isn’t running in the bars, just like for the Mississippi open carry law, the blood isn’t running in the streets from all of the gunslinger scenarios like in the movies?  You mean that the gun control lobby is dead wrong?  You mean that people who openly carry weapons waited until it was legal because they are peaceable citizens?  You mean that the folks who waited until it was legal to carry in bars did so because they are peaceable citizens?

Wait.  Something’s wrong.  That’s not the narrative they want us to hear.

Remember that we discussed the boy-Mayor of Jersey City in Jersey City And Responsible Gun Manufacturers?  Well, he’s happy he spent the tax payer’s money.

Gun rights advocates are blasting Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop for a new city initiative that the mayor says uses the power of the city’s purse to reward “socially responsible” gun distributors.

They say Fulop’s plan will do nothing to stop the flow of illegal guns into the city, and is merely intended to tout his liberal credentials. Fulop is among the Democrats eyeing the governor’s mansion in 2017.

Fulop’s political future may be torpedoed by his gun-control advocacy, Frank Fiamingo, president of the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, told The Jersey Journal.

“He wants to be governor of the state of New Jersey?” Fiamingo said. “Not if the million gun owners have to say anything about it. He’s making the wrong enemy.”

Last week, the city announced it plans to award a $500,000 contract to Lawmen Supply Company to provide weapons and ammunition to the police department after a bid process that involved the city quizzing potential vendors about their business practices.

The city asked bidders how they would handle firearms returned by the city, whether they sell assault weapons to citizens and whether they agree not to sell certain models of firearms for civilian use.

Lawrence Keane, a vice president at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearm trade association, said the questionnaire “will have no impact” on keeping illegal guns away from criminals.

“If the mayor’s intent was to try to advance his gun-control agenda by politicizing the purchase of law enforcement equipment, he has utterly failed,” Keane said.

Fulop shot back, saying the National Shooting Sports Foundation has “zero appreciation for the flow of illegal guns into cities.”

“Where Jersey City can shape the dialogue in a productive and safer manner it is money well spent,” the mayor said.

Sort of like Solyndra and any number of other scams on the federal level.  Except they always demand to use other people’s money, don’t they?

Salon:

Black men are routinely shot down by police in the country, that’s the bottom line. And while it’s certainly admirable for open carry advocates to stick to their principles and defend John Crawford’s right to carry a toy gun around Wal-Mart, it’s failing to see the forest for the trees. John Crawford, Michael Brown, Kajieme Powell, Levar Jones were all unarmed black men killed shot by police in the last few months. It wouldn’t have helped them to actually be carrying guns, real or otherwise.

Surely these open carry people, however well intentioned, should realize that nice white men and women openly carrying firearms on the street aren’t being gunned down on sight by police officers. The worst thing that happens to them is they are forced to show their ID. It’s unarmed black men (and unarmed mentally ill people of all races) who are being gunned down on sight by police officers. Are they agitating for their right to shoot cops? I doubt it. Nor should they be.

The problem isn’t that people don’t have enough guns. The problem is that police are too often using the guns they have. That won’t be solved by a bunch of average suburban white people wandering around public spaces with their rifles slung over their backs. Those aren’t the people most likely to be shot by police –whether they’re armed or not. They’re missing the point entirely.

In addition to confusing the Ohio stop and identify statute, which is oriented towards a legitimate “Terry Stop” rather than just any happenstance desire for the police to know someone’s identity (meaning that the Ohio police didn’t really have a right to stop the open carriers), the author is the one that misses the point.

Read her logic again.  Because – in her estimation – blacks are “gunned down” by police more than whites, the silly practice of open carry by whites is a meaningless contribution to liberty.  It misses the problem of over-zealous cops.  And while we can agree with the author about the over-zealous cops, we simply cannot agree on the notion that carrying weapons is a meaningless exercise of liberty and self protection.

The author would deny it, but her conclusion and end result is as racist as the Jim Crow laws in so many counties where the Sheriff reserves the right to deny gun ownership regardless of liberties and rights recognized by State Constitutions.  They are all racist and need to go the way of the dinosaur.

Another example of racism came up today in Disqus comments that drove a little bit of traffic to this site.

I can’t decide whether these comments were left by a feminist Sophomore international studies student at Dartmouth or scrawny boy in his mommy’s basement who has no job.  I’ll assume for former for the sake of argument.

First of all, the only reason that someone would invoke the issue of race is because she is thinking about it.  The only reason someone would think that gun owners and gun rights advocates would care about race is that they assume we are as racist and bigoted as they are.

For the record, I know his skin color.  The man has as much right to defend his life as anyone else, and in Texas he has a right to defend life and property.  Moreover, I don’t even care if the man was guilty of the crime of which he was charged (drugs).  If he thinks that someone is breaking into his home in the middle of the night, he has a God-given right to defend his life and the lives of his loved ones.  In fact, he has the duty to do so.  What you will find if you peruse this and similar sites is a consistent objection to thuggish and overbearing police tactics.  You will also find consistent support for the right to self defense regardless of race.  Consider David Codrea.

I addressed that question in principle many years ago, on the pioneering (and long-discontinued) GunTuths.com website in an essay titled “What the Panther Taught the Eagle: A Modern Folk Tale.” It involved about 50 armed members of the New Black Panthers who were counter-demonstrating against the Ku Klux Klan in Jasper, Texas, after James Byrd, a black man, had been kidnapped by three racist whites, chained to the back of a truck, dragged for miles down a country road and decapitated upon hitting a culvert.

“The Panther’s historic affinity for Marxist dogma notwithstanding, their stand demonstrates the true meaning and power behind the Second Amendment’s guarantee that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” I wrote at the time. “The truth is, the Panthers applied the right to bear arms in exactly the way it was intended to be – in defense of their lives and their rights. Their presence deterred violence against them. They did not engage in unwarranted violence. Their stand should be applauded as an example by all who believe that this is a right of all free people.”

Consider also Kurt Hofmann:

What Sugarmann did not point out then, and is certainly not pointing out now, is that the vast majority of the murderers of African-Americans are also black (91.1% then, 89.4% now). In other words, Sugarmann makes an issue of the fact that almost 57% of black homicides are committed with handguns, while pretending to ignore the vastly stronger correlation of race. If the focus for reducing black homicide, then, “must” be on “reducing access to firearms,” then whose access must be reduced?

“No guns for negroes,” all over again, right in line with the shameful history of American “gun control.”

And shameful it is.  All Jim Crow laws should fall.  I am told that the opposition to open carry in South Carolina by powerful state senator Larry Martin was because those horrible Negros down around Charleston might open carry and thus affect the tourism industry in South Carolina.  Larry Martin is an enemy of liberty.

Now on a personal note.  As to being a “wingnut” blog and my readers being “zoo critters,” let me tell you something deary.  I chew through people like you like I chew through a tenderloin.  I enjoy it.  You feel free to step into my back yard and run with the big dogs any time you feel froggy.  Be warned, though.  We play rough.

And drop the racism.  It betrays an evil heart.  Oh, and by the way, thanks for the traffic today.

David Codrea:

After over three years of emotional torture and total economic destruction, the prosecution, representing the same Department of Justice that has stonewalled investigations into its own culpability for smuggling guns to Mexico, now demands extracting five more years out of the lives of Rick, Terri and Ryin Reese. What that prosecution has not done is explain where a government that gets its sole Constitutional instruction on arms under the proscription that “the right of the people to keep and bear [them] shall not be infringed” also finds its authority.

See the update on the Reece family and the lying under oath engaged by the Federal Government.  Sad and despicable.  When the very ones in authority will not obey the laws the Congress passes to govern them, why should we?  And this reminds me of a post Mike Vanderboegh made just recently on the role of the law in totalitarian governments.

Kurt Hoffman:

When millions of Americans, with neither the metalworking and gunsmithing skills to build firearms by hand, or the wealth to buy equipment sufficiently sophisticated (at the prices such equipment commanded until now) to do so through automation, can nevertheless produce effective fighting arms in the privacy of their homes, “universal background check” laws, “prohibited person” laws, “assault weapon” bans, etc. become meaningless. The gun ban zealots’ worst nightmare–uncontrollable, utterly anonymous access to so-called “assault weapons” is upon us, spelling the death of the “government monopoly on force” so beloved of the gun ban jihadis.

That’s a victory for humanity.

This will make it even easier to ameliorate any evil universal background check law passed by Congress.  Rock on.

Mike Vanderboegh passed on this piece on caliber debates again.  But this is a strange one.  Somebody apparently wants the FBI to begin using the .22LR cartridge.  As I said, strange.  I’ve always thought of the .22LR as underpowered, even for a varmint round.  Muzzle velocity and wound trek matter (I prefer the .22 WMR for varmint rounds), which is why the 5.56 mm (.223) is such an effective round and has served the U.S. military so well for years given its propensity to yaw, tumble and fragment into pieces leaving multiple would treks.  Related: here is a very interesting article at The Daily Caller on the history of the .357 magnum (a round which I like very much).  For the record, I shoot .45 ACP, .38 Special and .357 magnum in my handguns.

News from communist controlled territory:

A Pennsauken-based weapons and ammunition supply company is set to win a $500,000 contract to provide firearms and ammo to Jersey City police under new rules that Mayor Steve Fulop has said will help “shape the dialogue” on gun control nationwide.

Lawmen Supply Company, one of two bidders for the contract, had to answer questions regarding how it handles firearms it purchases back from the city, whether it manufactures or sells assault weapons for civilian use and whether it agrees not to sell certain firearms for civilian use.

Jersey City is the first municipality to seek this kind of information about suppliers’ practices. Seattle and other cities are reportedly interested in replicating the city’s initiative.

The questions, which have raised the ire of gun rights advocates, are “socially responsible,” according to Jersey City. Fulop, who will travel to Los Angeles today to participate on a panel on gun violence, has said that in the absence of nationwide legislation to curb gun violence, big-city mayors must act.

Lawmen’s bid was about $10,000 higher than the only other bidder — Atlantic Tactical, of Pennsylvania — but the city said Lawman’s bid “best met the needs of the department.”

The questionnaires the city required the bidders to fill out show Lawmen said it does not sell weapons to civilians …

Shape the dialogue, huh?  There’s only one problem with all of this.  Neither Lawmen’s nor Atlantic Tactical has anything to do with manufacturing anything.  They are distributors and sellers.  They are a middle man.  There are ten thousand just like them, and it sounds like the boy-mayor of Jersey City is perhaps a little jealous over real manufacturing being driven South?  Or does he not know that we’re taking gun jobs away from the North?  I can get nice custom built firearms at Hyatt Gun Shop.  I can go down to talk to the dozen or so gunsmiths at Hyatt and get more real manufacturing done than any of the bidders for this silly contract.

David Codrea:

“[Kennedy] said there should be a law that lets authorities punish skeptics and deniers — those who engage in ‘selling out the public trust,’” The Washington Times reported Tuesday, citing an interview the “progressive” activist gave to Climate Depot at the people’s Climate March in New York City. “I wish there were a law you could punish them with. I don’t think there is a law that you can punish these politicians under…

And while Kennedy maintains a police officer was lying when, as a teenager, he was accused of spitting ice cream in the officer’s face precipitating his arrest, he did not take the judge up on pleading not guilty, despite having the Kennedy fortune to mount a legal defense that would have allowed him to challenge the testimony. Likewise, his 1982 arrest for heroin possession resulted in probation, community service and an expunged record. Curious, that the man who would control those without addictive personalities is still described as a man who can’t – or won’t – control himself.

David goes on.  Really, read the rest of the hypocrisy here.  Kennedy is sounding crazier and crazier not only because he is an ideologically driven communist who likes being special and above everyone else, but also because he knows that AGW is a perishing science.  It is dying because there is no evidence for it.  There is no evidence for it because it’s a myth, a fairly tale of rich elitists who have nothing else to worry about.

Kurt Hofmann:

The proposal was put on the ballot by the same Republican-controlled Legislature that believes, in the absence of any evidence, that President Barack Obama is coming for your guns” … “The current state of affairs seems to reinforce Mr. Dotson’s position that the amendment’s wording was misleading. It surely didn’t tell voters that they’d be handing guns to felons, but that’s precisely what is happening right now” …

Read the rest of Kurt’s setup with St. Louis Police chief Sam Dotson and his opposition to the gun rights amendment which recently passed by a large majority.  It wouldn’t matter if the language really was unclear.  It wouldn’t matter if they really were giving guns to felons (although they aren’t).  It wouldn’t matter who dislikes the amendment.  It passed, and it passed overwhelmingly.  That closes the issues.  As far as Dotson is concerned, he can be replaced.  He sounds like an outdated dinosaur.

In other news, the Sandy Hook Commission calls for a crackdown on home schooling.  For any readers I have in Connecticut, seriously, is there any reason at all to stay there?  Think hard.  Why would anyone live there?

And this is one reason I am reluctant to ship firearms through the TSA and airline when I am flying.

The Bang Switch has a must read on gun control in France, lengthy, but well worth reading.  Some of it is highly detailed in the legalities of firearms ownership in France.  There are many salient points for gun control in America, but this quote encapsulates the spirit of the article.

This French writer is telling you what the American left is saying concerning their ultimate aim.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

This lefty writer at Daily Kos couches a total gun ban in terms of safety, but even if he believes in this state sponsored utopia, most on the left know that it’s a lie.  In the end it’s all about control over people.

This is why universal background checks and a national gun registry gain no traction in the gun community.  We don’t believe the lie of public safety, and we know your ultimate aim.  We will never relent.  We will never register our guns.  We will never turn in our guns.  We will never be put on a list.  We will fight a gun registry with all of our might.

As the philosophers would say, these truths hold “positive epistemic status.”

The Montana Standard:

By my count this is at least the second life that has been saved from a bear attack after legalization of firearms in National Parks, the first instance being mid-2010 in Denali.

Of course, Mr. Murphy is now charged with a crime.  There are two problems that could be contributing, the first being that laws are now passed in broad sweeping language that apparently ignores guilty intent, or in other words, Congress is Eroding the Mens Rea Requirement in Federal Criminal Law.

The second problem that could be contributing is that the enforcement in question may be of a regulation rather than a law, which is made via federal register by armies of lawyers sitting inside the beltway who have been (unfortunately) empowered by Congress to do just that.

But the third problem is there  is obviously a prosecutor who wants to take this case to court, otherwise he wouldn’t have a scheduled court appearance and need a lawyer.

The law becomes absolute in contemporary America, regardless of the fact that a man’s life was saved because he discharged a firearm.  But it’s absurd that Congress would have passed a law allowing firearms in National Parks early in 2010, but then refused to allow people to use that firearm to defend their lives.  Since it is absurd, it clearly wasn’t the intent of Congress (or should not have been).  Therefore, the prosecutor is likely to blame for the fact that Mr. Murphy has to defend himself in court for saving his own life.