Archive for the 'Guns' Category

WTNH.com:

14 months ago there were about 200.

“After the law was passed, unfortunately, it did nothing to make the state safer and in fact it hurt jobs in the state of Connecticut so unfortunately now we’re down to about 150 employees,” Malkowski said.

For Malkowski that was very hard because he says it was the first time he had to layoff employees in the eleven years he has run ‘Stag Arms.’

As for the years ahead … and if his company does see any growth again what will he do?

“Any future expansion we do for business we will look to other states,” he said, adding, “just because of how difficult it is to operate in the state of Connecticut but for right now we’re going to be operating here.”

He says that he has lost some regular customers, as several smaller gun shops have closed around the state and some out of state customers are unhappy that he continues to operate here.

He says, “they would rather see us in a different place.”

Maybe they will hang on until they are out of business entirely.  They could choose to move to a free state and repair their image, but apparently that’s too difficult for them.  I do understand the trauma of relocation and move of a business, including all of the employees.  But the alternative seems to be death of the company.

These are hard choices, and Stag Arms didn’t choose to be in this position.  Nonetheless, they are here and must act wisely.  Seldom do we get to choose our circumstances.  We only choose how to respond.  That’s what defines our character.

The Scary Reason Some Men Like Guns Better Than Women:

I have been lucky enough not to know too many violent men in my life. And even though I grew up in a part of the country where hunting and gun shows are common, and gun laws are relatively lax, I didn’t know many gun enthusiasts, either. The landlord’s list rattled me. I thought of that scene in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, where the drill sergeant barks, “You will give your rifle a girl’s name, because this is the only pussy you people are going to get.”

The rest of Ann Friedman’s article is more of the same.  She says, with approbation, “Paradoxically, the NRA also actively courts female members. “Come explore, connect, celebrate and unite with the women of NRA,” beckons the NRA Women’s channel, alongside clips with names like “Armed and Fabulous” and “Love at First Shot.” (They’re “stories of empowered women like you,” per the site.) Companies offering products like pink rifles and bra holsters promise to help women “look feminine, look good, and still feel safe.”

It’s sickening to her that a woman would have such a thing, and yet she is the one who conflates why we advocate that women be armed, i.e., exactly so that no one does them harm.  If men are such abusers, the real paradox Ann doesn’t address is why we would advocate that women arm themselves?  But the best is yet to come.  Ann has put the ball in play, but the scoring drive is capped off with this comment.

Males are born narcissists and are needier as children. They have to be taught early in childhood to care about something and someone other than themselves. If not taught young that the world doesn’t revolve around them, that extreme weakness for self-absorption edges over into either the weird or dangerous in adolescence, sometimes both and certainly an inability to successfully navigate life outside their own door in adulthood. The desire to control others because of an inability to control oneself is a pathology. To do so with violence is sociopathy and in the extreme psychopathy.

As my oldest son Josh remarked when he read that comment, “This was written by a person who has never raised children.”  To his point, the notion that man is a tabula rasa doesn’t survive the first child (and I know, as I have four children and he has three, two girls and one boy).  As a Christian, I have an answer as to why both girls and boys are like this.  It’s called federal headship.  We’re all born with a sinful nature.  If you’re not a Christian, you’re on your on to explain evil.  I can’t help you.

Or if she is talking about the fact that boys like machines and things that go boom, this certainly isn’t something to lament.  We should be celebrating the differences in genders.  Guns, like anything else, can be used for evil, or they can help bring out the best innate characteristics in men to protect and serve their familes.

In the end, on a serious note this is a sad commentary on the degree to which Ann Friedman and her commenters don’t really understand what they think they do.  On a slightly more whimsical note, I suspect that the men in Ann’s life have abused her, or that she is married to or dating a confused, effete man who loathes himself and all manhood.  Or both.

Either way, Ann should buy a gun and demand that the men in her life learn how to use it.  It may help change how she sees men and the world around her.

Via David Codrea, Dave Workman:

Yesterday, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s hand-picked police chief, Kathleen O’Toole, was sworn in to lead the beleaguered department, and tomorrow at 1 p.m. he will hold a special meeting with the city council to address “gun violence,” which could be a learning experience for one and all.

O’Toole has been in and out of law enforcement in Massachusetts and recently in Ireland, but she’s yet to walk a beat west of the Mississippi or north of the Columbia and when – not “if” – the mayor starts talking about gun control, she’ll be facing something not found in the Bay State. Gun owners in Washington State don’t need permission from police or politicians to exercise their rights, and they know it. Local governments can’t set their own firearms policies, and gun owners know that, too.

Ah.  It’s always nice to see the reaction of communists when they land in a free state.  During the DNC when so many cops from around the nation were in Charlotte assisting the “Federal Protection Police” to keep Obama safe, local news reported that the Chicago [and other] cops – during their off time – had found a new favorite place to hang out: Hyatt Gun Shop.  Not coincidentally, I like Hyatt too, and I know Larry on a first name basis.  Hyatt Gun Shop, if you’ll recall, was the store that sold $1 million worth of AR-15s in a single day just prior to Christmas several years ago.  Perhaps the cops had never seen so many law abiding citizens buying and carrying weapons.  To Ms. O’Toole, welcome to freedom.  Don’t expect to change it.  You’ll fail.

David Codrea:

“We are at present two peoples, two countries really, living within a common border and sharing (mostly) a common language but divided upon the answer to this question: does the government serve the people or do the people serve the government?” Vanderboegh elaborated. “This is not a question that the answer can be finessed, negotiated or ignored. It is one or the other, that of individual liberty as the Founders intended or of collectivist power in service to a few.”  “Yet we shrink from the honest conclusion,” he continued. “And that conclusion is that such mutually exclusive worldviews cannot long coexist without one or the other winning out.

David is covering Mike, and Mike is telling hard truths.  We won’t vote our way out of this mess.  Upon my last (and only visit) to New York, I remarked to my son that although I share a common language with them, I hardly even consider them to be fellow countrymen.  We have almost nothing else in common.  If I publish on labor unions and Remington (as I have), I make enemies of even the most ardent gun rights advocates in the North.  I mean no disrespect to my Northern readers, but if there is one day a rebirth of America, it will include you or not, but you will get to make that call.  Right now, I have my doubts about your willingness to participate.  There are good folks in Connecticut and New York, but we may be approaching the time when you need to get out.  The die may have been cast in your home states.

Mike Vanderboegh has a link to The Soldier’s Load.  It’s a good and educated study.  Drop by and read it, and then take a turn into history and recall what I said here about combat load, and then here concerning the ability to live and function in your environment.

Kurt Hofmann:

Any restriction on guns, ammunition and accessories justified by their failure to meet the government’s idea of “sporting purposes” is very clearly a violation of the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, as the court ruling in Pennsylvania helps illustrate.

Sean Linnane has an article up entitled Operation Zero Footprint on Benghazi.  It is absolutely must read for those who care about the badness that is the current U.S. government.

As I’ve said before concerning gun rights and favorable statistical outcomes:

… what happens to society at the macroscopic level is immaterial.  My rights involve me and my family, and don’t depend on being able to demonstrate that the general health effects in society are not a corollary to or adversely affected by the free exercise of them.

It’s insidious and even dangerous to argue gun rights as a part of crime prevention based on statistics because it presupposes what the social planners to, i.e., that I’m part of the collective.

Kurt Hofmann has weighed in with an affirmative vote for my position here and here.  This is [partly] why I don’t give John Lott the time of day (there are other reasons).  But occasionally it pays to examine the anti-gunner’s data and show them up for the poor scientists they are.  One such example comes to us from The Washington Post.  The author waxes knowledgeable about school shootings, and then presents this map.

What the author doesn’t tell you is this.  Savannah State, historically black college; South Carolina State University, historically black college; Paine College, historically black; Stillman College, historically black; Grambling State, black college; Stevens, inner city St. Louis, majority black; Elizabeth City State University, historically black college; North Carolina A&T, black college; and Tennessee State, black college.

Chris Conover also upbraids the anti-gunner statistics at Forbes.  The lesson is that they anti-gunners see what they want to, and when they [inadvertently] land on a meaningful social and cultural observation concerning black-on-black crime, they don’t turn it into a full blown commentary or analysis.

Because it doesn’t fit the narrative of collective responsibility.

Presbyterian Church (USA) on guns:

Among other things, the Assembly’s action calls for:

• formation of support, healing and advocacy groups for those who have experienced gun violence in their families;
• opposition to legislation that exempts gun manufacturers and marketers from legal liability and/or financial accountability for the medical and security costs of predictable gun misuse and availability to criminals, the unstable, and the self-destructive;
• opposition to “stand your ground” and other legislation that may entitle gun owners to shoot before taking alternative measures (such as relying on law enforcement and/or other de-escalation techniques) in perceived defense of persons or property;
• encouraging church sessions and PC(USA) entities that own property to declare their particular premises and gatherings to be gun-free zones;
• raising the age for handgun ownership to 21;
• supporting legislation to ban semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing handgun ammunition and .50-caliber rifles; and
• advocacy in support of state and federal legislation to regulate ammunition.

I’m not part of the PCUSA, but having attended Reformed Theological Seminary, I know something about the history of Presbyterianism in the U.S.  The problem started with the Auburn Affirmation, and even before then from the theological liberalism that led directly to that abomination.

Notice that the denomination doesn’t just engage in tactical blundering and hot air.  To be sure, there’s plenty of that to go around.  Reliance on LEOs during period of peril to your life or the lives of your loved ones means that the fight is over by the time (8 – 15 minutes) a LEO arrives.

They go beyond their tactical incompetence and recommend bankruptcy of gun manufacturers when their weapons are misused (similar recommendations for Stanley, Kobalt, Craftsman and other manufacturers of hammers probably won’t be forthcoming when crimes are committed with hammers).  And if that’s not good enough, they recommend new laws that would end with confiscation and civil war when SWAT teams are sent to the doors of patriotic Americans who won’t allow their means of self defense to be confiscated.  So the PCUSA recommends what would inevitably become a bloody mess with cops laying dead in the streets and innocent citizens laying dead in their doorways.

In the mean time, they leave men and women undefended because of their turn to politics to address the theological problems of mankind.  We’ve discussed God’s views of the requirement to defend your loved ones.  The simplest case for killing those who would bring harm to your family lies in the decalogue.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

So while you claim to be a lover of the children, you actually advocate abuse of children because you would disarm the very people with the sworn duty to protect, nurture and provide for them.

The PCUSA is directing its people to run their lives contrary to God’s law, while trying to implement warmed over, washed up hippie ideology as a solution to what ails mankind.  Thus goes perishing denominations.

Mike Vanderboegh:

So if you wish to stay free, prepare to resist, defy, evade and smuggle. The Founders did. The enemies of liberty will certainly never be convinced by anything less.

Make sure to catch Mike’s recent speech in Big Spring, Texas.  He has some praise for your favorite President.

David Codrea:

So Abramski has become law, meaning it has been transformed into stare decisisüber alles, and it can become the basis for more bad rulings across the country. To stop that from happening, gun owners who are sitting on the sidelines must join the fight for gun rights, or the decision’s arcane language and legal parrying involving milk and iPhones will devolve further into how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Yea, and I fear it will become the basis for much more than bad rulings.  I’m afraid that this will empower the federal Leviathan to become even more intrusive with regulations that take on the force of law.

Kurt Hofmann:

Every mass shooting is immediately followed by clamorous calls for more restrictive gun laws. These days, it’s primarily calls for “universal background checks.” One little problem–every one of the guns used in every one of the recent mass shootings was bought with the buyer having passed such a check. Sandy Hook Elementary, Isla Vista, Phoenix, Ft. Hood (twice), Aurora movie theater, Virginia Tech–each and every one of those guns was sold without any fabricated “loopholes.”

A prominent anti-gunner says they have a “messaging problem.”  They have more than a messaging problem.  They have lies and they don’t have the guns.  We have both truth and guns on our side.

I published Colt: The Gunmaker Who Can’t Shoot Straight, and thought that would be the end of it.  Today Janes published this.

Colt Defense have unveiled their new CK901 assault rifle, chambered in the Russian 7.62 x 39 mm cartridge, at Eurosatory 2014 in Paris.

Speaking to IHS Jane’s , a Colt Defense representative stated that the CK901 has been ordered by the Yemeni Republican Guard to replace their existing AK-47s.

According to Colt Defense representatives, the CK901 was designed for military customers in countries that use the AK-47, or AK-47-based rifles, and therefore still utilise, manufacture or possess large stockpiles of 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition.

The distinctive feature of CK901 is that it can be fed from all types of standard and non-standard AK-47 pattern magazines. Colt has thoroughly tested the rifle on all available steel or polymer magazines to assure reliable feeding of cartridges, the company stated. The company also offers the weapon with a US-made 30 round magazine manufactured by US Palm.

The CK901 is a gas-operated rifle based on the existing Colt Modular CM901 multicalibre (5.56 or 7.62 mm NATO) weapon family debuted in 2010.

The firearm uses the direct impingement gas principle with a rotary bolt locking mechanism. The weapon is equipped with a monolithic upper receiver, fitted with an upper and lower M1913 Picatinny rail and side rail attachment points.

I don’t like the 7.62 X 39 mm cartridge, but that’s a matter of personal choice.  Frankly, if I were going to choose such a caliber for this type of weapon, it would be a 300 Blackout.  In the mean time, I’m quite happy with my Rock River Arms AR-15, 5.56 mm.  I’ll follow Eugene Stoner rather than Kalashnikov, and if I get another Stoner-style rifle, it’ll be a .308.

But even if you do like the cartridge, Colt has almost run itself out of business by sucking at the teet of government contracts, so much so that they lost all respect for QA in their product line, and jettisoned most products except what they were providing to the government.  When is the last time you saw a Colt Python for sale at a reasonable price?  As for that matter, have you forgiven Colt for dropping the manufacture of double action revolvers?

So if they can’t have the U.S. government contract for M4s, apparently they’ll go chase the foreign government market.  How sad.

Kurt Hofmann:

In other words, her use of the term “automatic,” rather than “semi-automatic” was intentional, and intentionally misleading.

That’s exactly what I thought when I heard her words.  Don’t think for a minute what one author wrote, that this was a “gaffe.”  If you do you’re not giving Hillary enough credit for obfuscation of the ignorant masses.

David Codrea:

Wait a minute: The AG making it known not to shoot innocent citizens for exercising their lawful rights requires a vote by politicians? What if they vote that it’s OK? And Ohio cops need “special training” beyond telling them not to?

There are some idiotic, violent cops in North Carolina too.  I’ve known some folks who had LEOs draw their weapons on them because of open carry, when North Carolina is a traditional open carry state.  Losing the mandate of heaven, I think it’s called.  They become nothing more than gang members with badges.  They certainly aren’t heroes, and their actions don’t constitute examples for young children as they might have 50 years ago.

In other news, we learn that criminals aren’t afraid of our guns, and so we shouldn’t have them, I guess.  That’s fine with me.  I don’t have guns to make people afraid.  I have them to shoot people who assault me.

Here is one for Mike Vanderboegh, who loves the M1A and M14 platform.  Exploring the humble beginnings of the M1 rifle.

Finally, some strange things with guns.  And more strange things.  I don’t want to do either of these strange things.

CBS Miami:

A police officer mistakenly fired his rifle Wednesday morning while in court in front of the judge.

A Miami-Dade Police Officer, according to police, was demonstrating a scenario to a judge on the 30^th floor of the Lawson E. Thomas Court House around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.

After demonstrating, police say the officer mistakenly fired one shot from his police issued rifle, an AR-15.

The bullet hit the floor and there were no injuries.

Hey folks, forget what I’ve said about trigger discipline.  Remember that cops are highly trained, and are the only ones who can be trusted to own and use weapons.

The Supreme Court has decided the Abramski case with a 5-4 vote.  The reaction thus far has been fairly muted, but the implications of the decision are potentially far reaching.  Kagan, writing for the majority, spends a significant amount of painful time [painful for those of us who have filled it out many times] in the nuts and bolts of Form 4473 and what she believes must have been the intent of Congress when they crafted the Gun Control Act of 1968.  Scalia wrote a spirited dissent, and anticipating the objections, Kagan writes:

But Abramski and the dissent draw the wrong conclu­sion from their observations about resales and gifts. Yes, Congress decided to regulate dealers’ sales, while leaving the secondary market for guns largely untouched. As we noted in Huddleston, Congress chose to make the dealer the “principal agent of federal enforcement” in “restricting [criminals’] access to firearms.” 415 U. S., at 824. And yes, that choice (like pretty much everything Congress does) was surely a result of compromise. But no, straw arrangements are not a part of the secondary market, separate and apart from the dealer’s sale. In claiming as much, Abramski merely repeats his mistaken assumption that the “person” who acquires a gun from a dealer in a case like this one is the straw, rather than the individual who has made a prior arrangement to pay for, take pos­session of, own, and use that part of the dealer’s stock. For all the reasons we have already given, that is not a plausible construction of a statute mandating that the dealer identify and run a background check on the person to whom it is (really, not fictitiously) selling a gun. See supra, at 9–15. The individual who sends a straw to a gun store to buy a firearm is transacting with the dealer, in every way but the most formal; and that distinguishes such a person from one who buys a gun, or receives a gun as a gift, from a private party.⁹ The line Congress drew between those who acquire guns from dealers and those who get them as gifts or on the secondary market, we suspect, reflects a host of things, including administrative simplicity and a view about where the most problematic firearm transactions—like criminal organizations’ bulk gun purchases—typically occur. But whatever the reason, the scarcity of controls in the secondary market provides no reason to gut the robust measures Congress enacted at the point of sale.

If it seems that Kagan is making the judgment of a legislator here, you are not mistaken, and it isn’t a mistake that she spends so much time in her decision on the federal code.

Via David Codrea, attorney Joshua Prince says of the decision:

There is NO law enacted by the Congress regarding straw purchasers! This was made up in whole cloth by the ATF! This is a FAR worse decision than anyone is comprehending. NOW, administrative agencies can enact criminal laws, which have NOT been enacted by the Congress!

David Workman also weighs in at Examiner:

Nelson Lund, a constitutional scholar and Second Amendment expert at George Mason School of Law, had this to say: “Five members of the Supreme Court have decided to make it a federal crime for a lawful gun owner to buy a firearm for another lawful gun owner. No federal statute says any such thing. The Justices are once again legislating from the bench, which violates the Constitution, and enacting a retroactive criminal law, which is even worse.” His comment came via e-mail.

In his dissent, Scalia notes that there is evolving history in how the ATF has applied and enforced the Gun Control Act.

After Congress passed the Act in 1968, ATF’s initial position was that the Act did not prohibit the sale of a gun to an eligible buyer acting on behalf of a third party (even an ineligible one). See Hearings Before the Subcommittee To Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, 118 (1975). A few years later, ATF modified its position and asserted that the Act did not “prohibit a dealer from making a sale to a person who is actually purchasing the firearm for another person” unless the other person was “prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm,” in which case the dealer could be guilty of “unlawfully aiding the prohibited person’s own violation.” ATF, Industry Circular 79–10 (1979), in (Your Guide To) Federal Firearms Regulation 1988–89 (1988), p. 78. The agency appears not to have adopted its current position until the early 1990’s.

Then Scalia offers up this zinger.

In the majority’s view, if the bureaucrats responsible for creating Form 4473 decided to ask about the buyer’s favorite color, a false response would be a federal crime.

He has put his finger on a core problem with this decision [and other such rule-making inside the beltway].  As I’ve noted before:

Laws are passed by the Senate and Congress.  But after laws pass, thousands of lawyers inside the beltway go to work writing regulations based on those laws, or not, using the law as a pretext for further regulation that Congress didn’t specifically intend.  At times, Congress has even had to pass laws undoing regulations because the regulations don’t meet the intent of the law, and yet the executive branch won’t stop enforcing that regulation (or class of regulations).

Regulation is passed merely by entering them into the federal register, allowing a waiting time for public comments (which are nothing but a chance afforded to the authors of the regulations to ignore them or write sarcastic rebuttals), and then after the waiting period, it takes on the force of law including prosecution, fines and imprisonment for failure to follow them.

This happens every day, all over the nation, and in the DOT, NRC, EPA, DOJ, ATF, DHS, and other departments and agencies that the reader cannot even name and didn’t know existed.  Any law giving the executive branch the authority to further regulate firearms will be an opportunity for abuse, overreach and exploitation.

I’ve seen it in my own line of work.  Regulations take on the force of law after comments responding to entries in the Federal Register are summarily ignored by the agency doing the regulating.  It makes little sense to respond with comments when the regulator’s mind is made up.  These regulations frequently far surpass the law in breadth, scope, depth and magnitude.

One such example on Form 4473 might be the following.  My own son was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps, but knew of one poor soul who became inebriated the eve of his discharge and was caught for DUI on base.  This Marine was dishonorably discharged.  According to the wording on Form 4473, he will never be able to legally purchase a gun even if a judge agrees with him because the USMC won’t revisit its discharge and thus he won’t be able to answer – truthfully – on Form 4473 about discharge from a branch of the service.

[I don’t mean here to exonerate the ridiculous GCA for its requirement that gun transfers across state lines go through an FFL.  I have gifted a firearm to one of my sons this way, and in order to fulfill this part of the law (he couldn’t legally carry it with him on the airline even by following TSA regulations since he didn’t own it), we had to pay the exorbitant cost of shipping the gun air express to an FFL and then a transfer fee in his home state.  It had the effect of escalating the cost of the whole affair, and I’m convinced that this was part of the intended effect by Congress.]

To me, this kind of regulation seems onerous compared to what Congress wrote, but it is latitude given (and taken) by the federal regulators.  If there is a problem with legislating from the bench, there is even a worse problem with regulating by the executive branch from inside the beltway.  The problem will continue (and grow) as long as the public abides the abuse.