Archive for the 'Guns' Category

J. D, Tuccille with Reason:

According to Hugh McQuaid at CT News Junkie:

As of mid-November, the state had received about 4,100 applications for assault weapon certificates and about 2,900 declarations of large-capacity magazines.

Michael Lawlor, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s criminal justice advisor, said that so far fewer people than expected have registered weapons under the new law. However, he said gun owners should take seriously the consequences of ignoring the law. Disregarding the registration requirements can carry felony charges in some cases, which can make Connecticut residents ineligible to own guns.

First-time offenders who can prove they owned the weapon before the law passed, and have otherwise followed the law, may be charged with a class A misdemeanor. In other cases, possessing one of the newly-banned guns will be considered a felony that carries with it a sentence of at least a year in prison.

“If you haven’t declared it or registered it and you get caught . . . you’ll be a felon. People who disregard the law are, among other things, jeopardizing their right to own firearms. If you’re not a law-abiding citizen, you’re not a law-abiding citizen,” Lawlor said.

Mr. Lawlor, like most government officials, seems to think he and his buddies have invented policy out of whole cloth, and that the population has no choice but to shuffle along and obey. But weapons registration laws have a history—a consistent history, as I’ve written, of noncompliance and defiance.

State officials could have taken a moment to glance across the state line to New York City, where a few tens of thousands of firearms are owned legally, and an estimated two million are held illegally, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That is not uncommon. In my piece on the history of gun control’s failure, I wrote:

The high water mark of American compliance with gun control laws may have come with Illinois’s handgun registration law in the 1970s. About 25 percent of handgun owners actually complied, according to Don B. Kates, a criminologist and civil liberties attorney, writing in the December 1977 issue of Inquiry. After that, about 10 percent of “assault weapon” owners obeyed California’s registration law, says David B. Kopel …

Connecticut may want to look close to home for even lower compliance figures. In New Jersey, reported The New York Times in 1991, after the legislature passed a law banning “assault weapons,” 947 people registered their rifles as sporting guns for target shooting, 888 rendered them inoperable, and four surrendered them to the police. That’s out of an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 firearms affected by the law.

Noncompliance means they’re not giving up their weapons regardless of what the law says.  And that means that if the statists really want them, they’ll have to send in armed teams to invade the homes of gun owners (if they can find them) and confiscate them while they also shoot anyone who gets in their way.

And that means that gun owners who decide to keep their weapons have nothing left to lose when those armed teams come calling.  The collectivists want it to be ever so easy, with fawning, stupid, television-watching imbeciles who listen and obey their edicts as long as they get free bread and circuses.

But are they okay with bloodshed as a result of their edicts?  Perhaps yes, perhaps not.  Perhaps with some, perhaps not so much with others.  But collectivists nationwide should consider the ramifications of their laws.  Gun owners won’t surrender firearms peaceably.  You can take that to the bank.

By way of preliminaries, I had promised to craft more detailed response to Mr. Bateman, but the context of the promise is this comment.

When my son Daniel was in the USMC (part of which was a combat tour) I followed the Small Wars Journal and associated writers so that I could monitor the silliness. It was an exercise in self serving navel gazing and pedantry. Bateman was among those who spent time on those pages writing worthless garbage for others to ingest. I’ve seen his stuff before.

Bateman wants very badly to be more handsome, younger, more important and smarter than he really is. And he wants people to pay attention. Thus, when he would write and it seemed that no one was paying attention, he would then seed it with something really, really outlandish and ridiculous so that people would pay attention to him.

He isn’t so much an ideologue as he is an attention hound who wants everyone to look at him even if you find him grotesque. Rather than a stooge, he is like a misbehaving child who throws tantrums in front of important people.

Rehearsing the subject which initially brought about this charge, Robert Bateman penned a piece in Esquire in which he bolstered his credentials as a collectivist.  Basing his diatribe on a recent shooting over a college football game, he outlines his plans for gun control.  Here are some excerpts from his commentary.

My entire adult life has been dedicated to the deliberate management of violence. There are no two ways around that fact. My job, at the end of the day, is about killing. I orchestrate violence.

I am not proud of that fact. Indeed, I am often torn-up by the realization that not only is this my job, but that I am really good at my job. But my profession is about directed violence on behalf of the nation. What is happening inside our country is random and disgusting, and living here in England I am at a complete loss as to how to explain this at all. In 2011 the number of gun deaths in the United States was 10.3 per 100,000 citizens. In 2010 that statistic in the UK was 0.25. And do not even try to tell me that the British are not as inclined to violence or that their culture is so different from ours that this difference makes sense. I can say nothing when my British officers ask me about these things, because it is the law.

But just so we are all clear on this, let me spell it out for the rest of you. During the American Civil War, a topic about which I know a little bit, we had a system of state militias. They formed the basis of the army that saved the United States. For most of the first year, and well into the second, many of the units raised by the states were created entirely or in part from militia units that predated the war. But even when partially “regulated,” militias are sloppy things.

Which is why, in 1903 Congress passed the Militia Act. Friends, if you have not read it I’ll just tell you: As of 1903, the “militia” has been known as the National Guard.

Bateman then turns attention to his proposals.

The only guns permitted will be the following:

a. Smoothbore or Rifled muzzle-loading blackpowder muskets. No 7-11 in history has ever been held up with one of these.

b. Double-barrel breech-loading shotguns. Hunting with these is valid.

c. Bolt-action rifles with a magazine capacity no greater than five rounds. Like I said, hunting is valid. But if you cannot bring down a defenseless deer in under five rounds, then you have no fking reason to be holding a killing tool in the first place.

2. We will pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers. That is because I am willing to wait until you die, hopefully of natural causes. Guns, except for the three approved categories, cannot be inherited. When you die your weapons must be turned into the local police department, which will then destroy them. (Weapons of historical significance will be de-milled, but may be preserved.)

[ … ]

4. We will submit a new tax on ammunition. In the first two years it will be 400 percent of the current retail cost of that type of ammunition. (Exemptions for the ammo used by the approved weapons.) Thereafter it will increase by 20 percent per year.

You’ve seen enough to get the picture.  A number of technical responses may be offered to Bateman.  For example, Bob Owens has a takedown of the notion that well-regulated means under government control.  Directing his instruction at Bateman, David Codrea remarks:

As for who is protected by the Second Amendment, it’s the people, just like it says. Alexander Hamilton addressed “well regulated” in The Federalist No. 29, conceding “To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss…Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped…”

There are other responses across the web.  But mostly they are aimed at the content of Bateman’s commentary, which is good analysis technique, but there is more to understanding Mr. Bateman and why he wrote this diatribe.

Several years ago I frequented the pages of the Small Wars Journal.  I linked them often and was linked by editors.  Mostly what undergirded my advocacy was a concern over my son and his colleagues in the U.S. Marine Corps.  The 2/6 infantry was soon to deploy to Fallujah, and I took a great interest in studying how the Marines did things, where they were going, and in watching the progress of the Battalion.

It was a hard time and I spent many hours awake (while other men were asleep), waiting at my door in the dark for that Marine Corps officer and Chaplain (who never came).  It was also a rich time in some ways.  I had shot guns my whole life, but I had not purchased an AR-15 until then and Daniel taught me to shoot the way the Marines taught him to shoot, i.e., what some might call aggressive, plates-forward stance.  It came naturally to me.  Still, the hard and bitter times were far weightier than any good times from it.

During this misadventure, I was unfortunately introduced to Mr. Bateman on the pages of the Small Wars Journal blog.  I invite you to study his prose.  Don’t take my word for what I have said and am about to say.  Read until you simply cannot stand it any more.  He is a scholar, and warrior, and he is good at what he does, and he is great at what he does, and he laments the evil, and he advises and counsels the best, and everyone listens to him, and he knows virtually everything.  If you don’t believe me, just listen to him tell you that himself.

Bateman can only go so long without the attention he so richly deserves, though.  When things get a bit quiet and he wants to shore up his credentials once again, he starts fights with men of notoriety so that they will respond and give him the press he’s after.  The fight between him and Victor Davis Hanson (see here, here, and here) eventually bored Hanson, it appears, and anyway Bateman was highly over-matched.

Bateman goes into a fury over fairly well established facts like the idea that the Western way of war is different.  I’ve commented in a pedestrian way on that same issue, but again, I am under the impression that this is fairly well established.  Either way, Bateman got the attention he wanted, and he was eventually reduced to personal attacks and name calling, with commenters telling him he was acting like a juvenile.

It doesn’t stop there.  At Zero Anthropology (and I make no claims to a knowledge of what this site advocates or the subject of the disagreement), one author had finally had enough of Bateman, and responded this way.  First, Bateman’s comment, and then the response.

Bateman:

Well, at least I now know that you, at least, see what I type. That evidence, at least, now exists for your readers. As does the fact that you ban free speech on your site. Since your readers now see that you openly posted, “This is from the man who is now claiming that I “silenced” him and tried to avoid him challenging my ideas. Of course, he is saying that in private, because he has been banned from this blog and has sent four more messages nonetheless (not included in the list above).”

Well Max, I really could not contrive a confession of oppression of free speech or discourse any more clearly than the way you just laid it out for your readers. Well played son. Well played indeed. “He claimed I ’silenced’ him” and “he has been banned” are wonderfully juxtaposed.

“OPEN” Anthropology.

Regards Max. And I apologize for the future. Not really my fault. But I am sorry nonetheless.

Bob

Response:

You apologize for the future. It was worth approving your message just so that others can see the veiled threat.

It is OPEN Anthropology…just no longer open to you, and your kind. You had your say, and became repetitive, and rather obnoxious, especially as you turned some of your comments on this blog into ad hominem attacks toward someone (me) who had been very analytical, even handed, calm, and reasonable with you. But then the military wolf in sheep’s clothing is all ready to pounce, eh Bob?

Remember, you have a right to free speech. But not on this blog: it is a privilege, and you abused it.

To the notion that Bateman has been “silenced” on that blog, the author lists 32 comments from Bateman approved by the editors.  The straw that broke the camel’s back was this comment:

…your apparent lack of eductation (sic) on military affairs and international relations. But then, of course, you are a minor teacher without a single published monograph, so I suppose you have to try and make your academic mark somewhere, eh? Anything for tenure.

The final remarks by the author are telling:

Not only is it ad hominem, it is a basic lie. Mission accomplished, Bob, you live up to the values of your institution. An academic, you are not, not even a good poser and pretender.

Well, Bob, you wanted attention, now you got it. You have all of our attention now, with your very own post on this blog, all about you. Is this what you wanted?

Why yes, that’s exactly what Bob wanted.  He got his attention, and you spent your time responding to this narcissist.  Perhaps I’m doing the same thing, but if enough people understand who Bateman really is, then my ordeal will have been worth it.

Bob’s outlandish, exaggerated, extremist prose is his hallmark.  It helps with the attention.  Consider:

My entree was, “I think that Robert E. Lee, as a traitor and betrayer of his solemn oath before God and the Constitution, was a much greater terrorist than Osama Bin Ladin… after all, Lee killed many more Americans than Bin Ladin, and almost destroyed the United States. What do you think?”

Yeah, I flunked “Subtle 101” in High School. Oh well. Like I said, I was not in a good place.

But the fact is that there was nothing that any of these men, and they were all men, could say in honest denial to my assertion. They sputtered and growled, spouted and shouted, but not once did it end well for them on any level. You see, if they were “unreconstructed rebels,” well then I was something almost none of them had ever experienced, an “unreconstructed Yankee.”

So that you understand him, he spells it out for you.  He is not just a narcissist, he is a narcissist with an agenda (oops, that may not be so good for a dispassionate “historian,” no?).  And his collectivist tendencies are usually obvious by the folks he hangs with.  For instance, a search of “Bateman” at CNAS (the center that advises Obama on foreign policy) turns up some attention there too.

Now based on the discussion above, consider his recommendation to end ownership of weapons at death.  Does anyone really think that this could ever obtain in America?  Men who have spent $20,000, or $30,000 or $40,000 or more on guns, scopes, optics and ammunition, and who have taught their sons to use those weapons for self defense and bonded by hunting game with those guns, are expected to turn over those weapons to the government to be cut up with a torch rather than turn them over to their sons as a heritage!

Does Bateman know what he is proposing for the armed forces and police of America in the coming years under such a protocol?  Of course he does.  And the irony is that he claims to loath violence.  Does Bateman know that it would take a violation of Posse Comitatus to even try to pull something like this off, breaking the law of the land?  Of course he does.  And does he know that tens or hundreds of thousands of men would perish as a result of his proposals?

Yes.  And thus has Bateman shored up his progressive credentials one more time, and gotten the attention he so desperately wants, all at the same time.  In the future, pay no attention to Mr. Bateman.  He’s a publicity hound and attention seeker, and uses inflammatory and exaggerated rhetoric to evoke responses.  The internet calls this a “troll.”  It’s just that he’s a troll with credentials – and he’s an expert on everything.  If you don’t believe it, just ask him.

WRSA

David Codrea

Kurt Hofmann

Mike Vanderboegh

WKMG:

Florida Fish and Wildlife officers have set up three traps in hopes of catching a bear that attacked a Longwood woman on Monday night.

Susan Chalfant, 54, was injured in the attack, classified by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as the first of its kind by a Florida black bear.  Chalfant was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center with serious facial injuries and she remained hospitalized on Tuesday.

“The dogs got agitated, and she turned around to go back to her house, and the bear knocked her to the ground,” said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Karen Parker.

According to officials, Chalfant was walking two small dogs around 8 p.m. in the 2600 block of English Ivy Court near Markham Woods Road when the bear attacked her before running away.

Chalfant was helped by neighbors and 911 was called, officials said.

“A woman has been mauled by a bear,” the neighbor said on the call, which was released Tuesday.  “She’s so bloody, though, I can’t tell.”

The caller also told dispatchers that the woman was bleeding from her head.

According to the FWC, the neighbor said Chalfant was walking two small dogs, which became agitated and began to bark.  The bear then attacked the woman, the neighbor told officials.

“We believe she was bitten,” said FWC spokeswoman Karen Parker, who added that they only have preliminary information about the incident.

The dogs were not harmed, officials said.

The comments are interesting.  According to some idiotic remarks, it’s her own fault for walking a couple of yap-yap dogs.

My readers know how I feel about OC spray.  It’s a second best option, far behind the first best option, a gun.  If she had shot the bear, the game management folks wouldn’t be searching for the bear and trying to trap it and then “decide” what to do with it.

It would be on its way to bear-heaven, which as best as I can tell doesn’t exist because only humans are made in God’s image.  Shoot the bear.  It almost killed a woman.  Does anything more need to be said?

Prior:

Backpacker Shoots Grizzly In Denali, First Life Saved Since Firearms Legal

Bear Attacks: What About High Capacity Magazines?

So the NFL won’t allow the Daniel Defense Super Bowl commercial (see also National Review).

Now I am no defender of the NFL.  The state of professional football is horrible and the NFL is an overbearing Robber Barron (who prosecutes churches for putting games on a large screen [also a bad idea]).  It has become a game of coaches calling plays in from the sideline rather than quarterbacks being field generals and reading the defense.  For starters, the NFL could attempt to recover some of the historical game by banning electronic communications devices used between coaches and players.

Furthermore, any commercial as good as that one deserves to be aired.  But I won’t be purchasing any Daniel Defense firearms any time soon.  A quick look at their products shows that they are roughly equivalent with Rock River Arms, but RRA’s cost is about 50%-60% of Daniel Defense.

But here is another perspective for you.  I also won’t go out of my way to advocate a firearms company that has a special financing package for their guns if purchased by LEOs.  Either LEOs are special, in which case they should get special deals, or they’re not.

If they’re not and it really matters that common citizens like me should be able to defend their families like the commercial indicates DD believes, they why don’t they offer this “special” financing to everyone?  And if the commercial indicates what DD really thinks, then why offer the special deal to LEOs?

David Codrea:

As there is clearly no pressing justification for imposing draconian citizen disarmament edicts under the guise of crime-fighting, the “benefits” being touted are that the new measures will curb arms trafficking.

The smart money says this is a cynical ruse, and that imposing the new controls will benefit those in a position to create and capitalize on a lucrative new black market — that is, those in power.

That’s what most laws do.  And gun control isn’t about fighting crime.  It’s about controlling the population and making them subservient to their centralized masters.

See other recent articles by David.  He has been busy over the last several days.

Kurt Hofmann:

Killing the filibuster–one of the most important “speed bumps” that has helped make the Senate the more deliberative of the two Congressional bodies, is seen by Sen. Murphy and friends as what is needed for Congress to “do something” against private gun ownership.

And this could be harmful.  Of course, the House could hold strong in spite of the sniveling lackey Boehner.  A potential good thing coming from all of this is that the collectivists in the GOP tilt just enough for us to see their hand.  Oust them, we can, assuming that the vote still means anything, a proposition that I’m not sanguine about.

Kurt also turned my stomach and brought back bad memories by discussing Chris Murphy.  Readers know we have had our run-ins with ole’ Chris.

John Dodson gives us a teaser for his new book on Fast and Furious.  Doubtless he is an honorable man and I believe his account.  But there is a nagging suspicion that what he sees as incompetence was planned and thoughtful foresight by his superiors for the purpose of beefing up the 90% myth, just made to look like incompetence to him.  In other words … well, you know what I mean.

And finally there is this.

Benjamin Johnson faces a charge of negligent endangerment after shooting through the ceiling of his apartment with his handgun, while he was sleeping.

“He woke up from the smoke and the alarm going off in the apartment. He realized something had happened, his gun was on the floor and didn’t make the connection until he looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling,” said McLane.

According to court documents, Johnson’s firearm was not on his headboard, where he had put it before he went to bed, one round was discharged from it and there was a hole in his ceiling.

Uh huh.  It just “went off.”  No rhyme or reason, no one pulling the trigger.  Actually, there is a possibility that is as dangerous as the idea that he didn’t keep his booger hook off of the bang switch (and maybe worse).  It is that he is a sleep walker and didn’t know what he did.  Um, time to move or make him lock his firearm away in a small biometric safe.

David Codrea:

The State of Connecticut’s Office of the State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury released its long-awaited report Monday on the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. While representative mainstream press accounts seem focused on the killer taking his motives with him to his grave and other aspects of the report, a paragraph on page two in the Executive Summary contains the most important revelation applicable to future mass murder attempts …

Read the rest of David’s report.  This is why the notion that the police can be the amelioration for crime and all of its affects is mistaken and dangerous.  Self defense is the most reactive and quickest way to change the boundary conditions for the system.

David Codrea:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearms industry’s trade association, has written letters to Congress urging both houses to reauthorize the Undetectable Firearms Act before it expires on Dec. 9 …

Oh, and I’m sure that the NSSF doesn’t have any skin in the game, do they?

But according to Kurt Hofmann, there may be a champion in the hall.

In other words, Schumer had hoped to pass the bill without any debate, and without any of the other procedural “speed bumps” intended to prevent legislation from being forced through before anyone has an opportunity to object … Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) thwarted Schumer’s plot.

Good for him.  Actually, according to Emily Miller, there is a nuance of this legislation I hadn’t thought of.

His scam was to have the bill expire again during the Senate’s lame duck session in 2014.  At that point, Mr. Schumer and his compadres could tack on the gun-control expansions that their vulnerable Democrats in rural and western states would not support in an election year.

Mr. Schumer and some Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had been trying recently to expand the scope of the ban to include millions of existing and non-threatening polymer magazines.

This is easy folks.  If someone brings this up in conversation with you, tell them that you cannot so much as take a penny through the detectors at the airport.  The notion that they are undetectable firearms is a lie.  Case closed.

Concerning off-duty cops and NFL games:

Yet when we contacted the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers Association, he told us, he’d been given assurances by the Rams Security Director that this was only a recommendation and the Rams intended to continue to allow off-duty police to carry their service weapons into the Dome.

I sent a note to the NFL inquiring as to the accuracy of this report, i.e., that it is only a recommendation and not policy.  To the chagrin of the LEOs at reddit/guns, I supported the ban on high capacity magazines for LEOs in California if citizens weren’t allowed to have them either.  If citizens must be defenseless, then LEOs should be as well.  What’s fair is fair.  And I won’t likely hear back from the NFL.

Terry McAuliffe is already making moves on gun control in Virginia.  Because when you elect communists to office, they enact totalitarian measures – it’s who they are and what they do.

Uncle gives us a blast from the past on the Hughes Amendment when the honorable Ronald Reagan sold us out.  It might be a little more complex than that, but still, he shouldn’t have signed such an unconstitutional abomination.  And we still labor under that awful piece of legislation today.

Evanston Patch:

I came to realize that my child is a part of a world that can and always will contain guns. He idolized police officers. Stared from the living room window at the older neighborhood boys having squirt gun fights. Listed neon-colored nerf guns at the top of most wish lists. I didn’t want a gun to be the impossible itch under a confining plaster cast – more important in its inaccessibility than it really was. I wanted him to understand that real guns are dangerous and never to be used by anyone other than people trained to use them.

There was no denying it: good guys and bad guys existed everywhere in my young son’s world. Power Rangers fought bad guys with laser blasters. During the annual stroll through Evanston’s Custer St. Fair, we’d linger as he watched the “lucky” kids who took home the wooden rubber-band “shooters”. I realized that saying “no” to guns made him want them even more.

I still remember the first time I bought him a toy gun. We were at Target, and I had all three kids with me. My older son was seven and my youngest boy was two. None of my kids at that time got along. I was at the end of my rope. The younger son pointed to a Power Rangers laser blaster and I put two in our cart — one for each boy. I was elated that they’d play together but horrified that I’d caved.

I taught them that toy guns had a time and a place. Never pointed directly at anyone, never used to scare anyone. There were many moments when my rules were broken, and the guns were taken away. The concept of “play” and guns was never easy for me to justify…until I noticed how many meaningful conversations we’d have about them. Why do you think your brother got scared when you pointed that gun at him? What if that had been a real one and you’d shot him? What if you couldn’t bring your brother back? How does it feel when someone points a gun at you? What would you say if you saw someone pointing a toy gun at someone else’s head?  What else would you want for Christmas that doesn’t include a Nerf gun or bullets?

We have an arsenal of toy guns in our basement, but they come out less and less as the boys have grown (they’re now 16 and 10). These days, they’re rarely used unless the younger male cousins or the neighborhood boys are looking to play outdoors. Once, as a noisy Nerf war raged in front of the house with sponge bullets and boys hiding in bushes, my neighbor’s wife called and asked if I’d bring the boys in; her husband couldn’t bear to see young children engaged in gun-play after the recent Sandy Hook shootings. I could hear the neighbor’s husband sobbing in the background. I brought the boys in and talked to them about how upset our neighbor was. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said. “I’m the one that allowed toy guns. But,” I’d said, “you need to know how dangerous real guns are. Children were killed when someone used a real gun for a bad reason.” The boys were confused at first, then grew very quiet. They processed the situation and ask questions about gun violence in their 9-year-old words. I knew that their play had led to meaningful discussion.

There’s no sobbing around the Smith household when the guns are brought out.  The use of a machine to initiate discussions is ridiculous and unnecessary.  People do bad things, and they can do them with knives, hammers, guns, and all manner of tools.

Likewise, people do good things with all of the above.  Guns are what the theologians call adiaphorous.  They are neither good nor bad.  They just are.

As for the right time to converse about gun safety, we don’t need play time or toy guns.  Any time is the right time to discuss gun safety with children.  If you have guns around the house and you haven’t secured your weapons and trained your children on who handles them and who doesn’t, you’re irresponsible.  But then we don’t need a school teacher and play time to tell us that.

Prior: Hey Kids, Guns Are Cool!

Concerning the shooting of a thirteen year old boy carrying a toy by Police in Sonoma County, I said:

… tell me if a single cop tells the truth or holds anyone accountable.  Tell me if a judge or jury finds these men guilty of anything?  No, the strongest response will be from totalitarian lawmakers who want to make it illegal to have or sell toy guns.

From NBC Bay Area:

The death of a Bay Area boy and the paralysis of a Los Angeles teen — both shot by law enforcement while carrying replica rifles — are the human faces behind state legislation being introduced on Friday that would crack down on the classification and color-coding of toy guns.

California State Senators Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) and Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) introduced their “Imitation Firearm Safety Act,” which they hope will prevent any heat-of-the-moment confusion over fake guns by reclassifying BB guns and force manufacturers to paint them a bright color.

“If officers would have seen a gun painted in pink, purple or orange, Andy might still be alive,” Evans said. “This was a huge tragedy for our entire community.”

[ … ]

Critics have long argued that regulating “look-alike” guns do little to protect the public and that bad guys will simply paint their guns in a rainbow of hues to fake cops out.

“That is just a red herring,” she said. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles all have similar toy gun color rules and there is no evidence to support that theory, she said.

I can see how the idea of painting a gun to fool the cops wouldn’t occur to a criminal.  That idea is too obtuse.

It’s all proceeding just as I had foreseen.  But here is a better idea.  Cops stop people carrying toys and inquire as to their intentions and the nature of the item they’re carrying while they maintain at least a modicum of self control .  Or better yet, make California an open carry state and the cops don’t have to stop any one at all unless it’s a valid “Terry Stop.”

David Codrea:

If passed and signed into law, his bill would effectively negate the ability of concealed carry permit holders, or gun owners in states that recognize “Constitutional carry,” to lawfully carry their firearm when dropping off or picking passengers up, rendering them defenseless for the duration of the trip to and from an airport. And importantly, it “would take precedence over any city or state laws that allow weapons in any airports nationwide.”

Go read David’s piece and see what he’s talking about.  If something involves federal preemption of state laws, you know I’m going to be against it.  The federal government, in my view, has a right to raise armies for the common defense and build roads to enable interstate commerce.  Beyond that we’re in unconstitutional territory.

David:

… absolute hypocrisy of a billionaire who can afford an around-the-clock armed presence devoting a substantial amount of his time and untold millions of dollars with the goal of disarming everyone of more modest means.

That’s always the way it is with the people of means and fame.  Gun control for thee but not for me.

Kurt Hofmann:

… it becomes difficult to decide what is the most appalling–the unbridled savagery of the attacks: “One victim shown in the footage is a 46-year-old man from Hoboken, N.J., who was found dead with his neck broken and head lodged between iron fence posts, according to NJ.com,” or the chilling callousness of the descriptions of the “game” …

Kurt makes an excellent point about the size of the mobs doing this savagery and the need for more rounds than most of the gun control states allow in your weapon.

Michael Bane cites Charlie Rangel:

“No one makes a big deal of it, but if you’re a fly on the wall in any of their homes — I’ll tell you what: If you track the Confederate Army to the Dixiecrats, to the conversation of the Republicans, to the districts that were affected, you may be dealing with different labels, but if they were ever able to track down their ancestors, there’s a Confederate general in every damn living room.”

Michael then makes his way through his living room looking for a Confederate general and can’t find one.  Charlie doesn’t have to be a fly on the wall.  My picture is very prominent.

Finally, a New Yorker’s view of guns from Adam Gopnik.  After admitting that gun violence mostly doesn’t happen outside of minority neighborhoods, he nonetheless wants to ameliorate a medical problem you have.

But it’s good, at least, to hear someone arguing the details and filling out the fact-picture, good to be reminded that the cultures and rituals of the gun, however irrational in nature, are still felt to be essential by the people who engage in them. Curing the irrationalities of human culture later depends on understanding them now.

He’s a collectivist and loyal hive member, and he wants to “cure your irrationalities.”  On a related note, sometimes I feel that I have nothing in common with New Yorkers except a language, and I’m beginning to wonder about that.

Baptist Standard:

ABILENE—Christians who advocate gun rights on grounds of self-defense have lost sight of the radical nature of Jesus’ message, a Hardin-Simmons University professor told a student-initiated forum on gun violence.

“Americans have a deep love of salvific violence, the idea that with the use of force—the use of deadly force—against the right kind of people, we can make things turn out OK,” said Rodney Taylor, assistant professor of theology at HSU. “I think the cross, however, says something very different. What we see in the cross is the overcoming of violence, not through resistance, but rather through trust in God.”

Speaking on “God and Guns: The Way of Jesus in a Violent World,” Taylor critiqued the argument of self-defense as a natural right by comparing and contrasting it to Christian beliefs about premarital sex. To non-Christians, a prohibition against sex outside marriage seems like a “strange command,” he noted.

“But there are a lot of other strange commands there that Jesus gives us that seem counterintuitive,” he said. “I think the problem with the natural right of self-defense is that it loses sight of the kind of radical message that we see in the gospel—this radical approach that Jesus gives us that is counterintuitive, that doesn’t really seem to fit.”

The reason it doesn’t fit is because it is nonsense fabricated entirely out of their minds rather than being found in the Bible.

We’ve covered this before in Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense.  There are at least a couple of problems with this forum and its pronouncements on guns.  First, professors in anything, those who have spent vast quantities of money and time in so-called “higher education,” want to believe that they’ve discovered something new, something exciting, something breathtaking, something no one has ever seen.

To get a little pointy headed here and diverge into a sidebar comment that few of my readers will know about (but these professors will), this is one of the features of the so-called new perspectives in Paul and N. T. Wright.  No one before him, he must necessarily believe, not Augustine, not Anselm, not Calvin, not Beza, not W.G.T. Shedd, not Hodge, not Dabney, and on the list could go, has gotten it right.  God left it to him to really explain what the apostle Paul was saying.  Everyone else in history was wrong.

Likewise for this forum, every other theologian was wrong about the justification (and even necessity and duty) of self defense.  This is quite an arrogant way to live and think, but academia is shot through with it.  The second problem is that this forum is comprised of progressive, contemporary theologians who believe in nothing much except the social gospel.  Thus, they want to correct or ameliorate broad, sweeping social ills not by preaching salvation by grace through faith to individuals, but by statist control over the collective.

This is easy, folks.  The sixth commandment controls us in this matter.  God forbids the opposite of what he enjoins, and He enjoins the opposite of what He forbids.  Thou shalt not kill means thou shalt save life.  These forum members would sooner allow their wives to be raped and murdered by home invaders than lift a hand to save the one God gave them to protect.  Or, they would fight to save their wives, making them to be liars, and worse, profoundly stupid liars because they chose to use one of the least effective weapons to defend the loved ones under their charge.

Take your pick.  Silently stand by and watch their wives be raped, or they become liars; not even they believe a word of what they have to say, and so you shouldn’t either.  And for the record, God has made no promise to save their wives in home invasions while they silently stand and watch.  Let’s make this even more visceral by quoting what I said earlier.

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.

And even more to the point, “If you believe that it is your Christian duty to allow your children to be harmed by evil-doers (and you actually allow it to happen) because you think Christ was a pacifist, you are no better than a child abuser or pedophile.”  So here is a challenge for the forum members.  Prove to me and my readers that your views don’t really mean that you wouldn’t save a child being harmed or your spouses being raped.  Prove to me that you’re better than a child abuser or pedophile?  And if you would act to save a life in this way, why would you choose a means that ensured your failure?