Archive for the 'Guns' Category

David Codrea:

So how smart is a gun that requires a separate and nearby fingerprint sensor/wristwatch to activate a chip, and has built-in lights to tell an aggressor where a defender in the dark is, and whether or not they that gun is enabled to fire?

Not very smart.  And we’ve discussed this before.

In a very important development, the Supreme Court is going through its backlog of stuff to consider, and rejects an important one.

The Supreme Court won’t review a decision upholding a Maryland gun law that requires residents to demonstrate a “good and substantial reason” to get a permit to carry a handgun outside their own home or business.

Allow me to summarize.  We’ve all noted that Heller and McDonald were weak decisions, and didn’t envelope carrying outside the home.  Many had suspected that the SCOTUS would continue to develop post-Heller case law that fleshed out Second Amendment rights.  This is important in that what the Supreme Court rejects is as important as what they decide.  In this case, they have decided that Heller doesn’t apply outside the home, or at least, they won’t intrude on decisions they will leave to the state.

Folks, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times.  The Second Amendment frames or boxes in the federal government.  It is a mistake to look to the federal government to delineate your God-given rights at the state and local level.  All gun politics is local.  Marylanders, you must fight the fight where you are, or leave for a free state.

Thomas Sowell discusses the appointment of Janet Yellen to the federal reserve.  She is a true believer in Keynesian witchcraft.  Be careful.  Chicken bones flying around, thrown by Ms. Yellen.  You know, the thing that impressed me most about the article was his quote of Yellen.

Ms. Yellen asks: “Do policy-makers have the knowledge and ability to improve macroeconomic outcomes rather than making matters worse?” And she answers: “Yes.”

For those of you who have read Plato’s Republic, she appears to be a believer in the concept of philosopher-kings, just as is Obama.

Kurt Hofmann:

For one thing, while the supply of legal machine guns in private possession has been capped since 1986, with the (very questionable) passage of the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act, driving the price of the artificially limited supply well out of range of most gun owners, the number of suppressors in private hands has been spiking dramatically, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There is no rational reason to require CLEO approval for purchasing silencers (which Kurt correctly points out should be considered safety equipment).  I have worked in a plant environment all of my working life, as well as operated power equipment outside of work.  I love the fact that I can still hear (albeit less clearly than 35 years ago), and I want to continue being able to hear.  Prohibiting equipment that can protect hearing (part of your set of PPEs) is immoral.

John Jay gives us an update on the armored personnel carriers in Montana.

Finally, see my disapprobation of the federal leviathan from this weekend.

NorthJersey.com:

For years, they’ve existed only in science fiction and the archives of the New Jersey Legislature: handguns that fire only in the grip of an authorized user.

And yet these so-called smart guns soon could be the only kind sold legally in New Jersey under a state law that has languished on the books for a decade.

The law, which requires the state’s gun dealers to exclusively sell smart guns within three years after the first one hits the market, has been largely forgotten since the Legislature adopted it in 2002. But it could be dusted off as early as this year as technology finally catches up to the vision of lawmakers at a time when the debate over gun control is more combative and divisive than at any time in recent history.

After years of stalled and inconclusive research — hampered in part by political resistance from groups like the National Rifle Association — a German company called Armatix says it will introduce the first gun equipped with a user-recognition system within 45 days.

It is unclear whether that model, which will fire only within range of a sensor embedded in a wristwatch, will trigger the New Jersey regulations. But advocates predict that the first sale is likely to create a domino effect as other companies and publicly funded groups — including one at the New Jersey Institute of Technology — are spurred to bring their own prototypes to the market.

[ … ]

The NRA did not respond to requests for comment, but Scott L. Bach, the executive director of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, said the technology is flawed, and could put gun owners in danger when it fails. He also questioned why law enforcement officers are exempt.

“New Jersey’s smart-gun law is as dumb as it gets,” Bach, of West Milford, said in a statement. “It forces you to use an unproven technology to defend your life, and then exempts the state from liability when the gun goes ‘click’ instead of ‘bang.’ If it’s such a great idea, then law enforcement shouldn’t be exempt, and the free market should be allowed to determine its viability.”

Oh, the free market will indeed decide what becomes of this ridiculous machine.  It will be laughed off the world stage when the first person attempts to defend his life with it and an electronic gadget interferes and causes someone to die at the hands of an assailant.

And the next time Chris Christie asks for your vote, remind him that he is governor of New Jersey, home of the some of the most draconian gun laws on earth.  Ask him if he is going to force all of his body guards and state police to use this silly piece of equipment?

Prior: Smart Guns Tag

David Codrea:

“So, this is a way to inch things forward on the gun control issue,” she observed. “You go to one of Vermont’s most liberal municipalities and you get a tiny bit, then maybe you inch forward.”

Death by a thousand cuts.  And what have I told you about gun politics being local?

Kurt Hofmann:

Isolate the Insurrectionists by embracing the self-defenders and the sporting gun owners.

Another incremental strategy, similar to the collectivists in Vermont?

John Jay is wondering why anyone associated with the government in Montana (or the feds) would need armored personnel carriers or grenade launchers?

Darryl Cannady in Charlotte, N.C., was pulled by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police because his car matched a profile description of one they were searching for.  The officer unholstered his weapon and held it pointed at Darryl for quite some time.  What’s really interesting about this case is the reaction in the comments, which seem to be on the side of telling this kid that racial profiling had nothing to do with it.  Get over it, kid.  It happens every day.  In reality, the officer had no right to unholster his weapon and point it at anyone unless his life was in danger.  I can’t do that, you can’t do that, and it would be called brandishing a weapon if we did.  Additionally, we would be charged with felony assault for such behavior.  But hey, even if the kid was in danger that day, at least the cop got to go home at the end of his shift, right?

Mike Vanderboegh is celebrating the fact that gun shows are the last bastion of a free people.  Well, sort of, but not exactly, and it all depends upon whether the collectivists have persuaded the free men to give up their rights.

A smiling Gabrielle Giffords toured rows of tables loaded with rifles and handguns Sunday in her first visit to a gun show since surviving a 2011 shooting, and pleaded afterward for people to come together to stop gun violence.

The former Arizona congresswoman visited the Saratoga Springs Arms Fair with her astronaut husband, Mark Kelly and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to highlight a voluntary agreement that closely monitors gun show sales in New York.

The trio mixed with a gun show crowd that was mostly welcoming — with a few hostile undertones — before calling for people to build on the cooperative effort.

“We must never stop fighting,” Giffords said at a post-tour news conference, her fist in the air. “Fight! Fight! Fight! Be bold! Be courageous!”

Giffords, a face of the national gun control effort, slowly walked hand-in-hand with Kelly through the large room where Winchester rifles, muzzle-loaders, antique knives and other weapons were on display and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags covered a wall.

They stopped at display tables, Kelly asked dealers questions about the weapons, and Giffords shook hands and smiled when people greeted her. “Good to see you looking good!” some said. Kelly bought a book on Colt revolvers, and said later he probably would have bought a gun if he had had more time. He said both he and his wife are gun owners.

The trio was greeted by light applause when introduced at the news conference, but some people booed from across the room. Dealer Joe Albano, who chatted with Kelly about his muzzle-loaders, later said the couple was nice. But he also said he was against New York’s recent gun control law, which is separate from the Schneiderman initiative.

“If she can help us, fine,” Albano said. “We’re doing everything right here. We’re legal.”

Under the agreements worked out by Schneiderman, all firearms are tagged at the entrances to gun shows. Operators must provide computer stations for sellers to do national background checks.

As they are taken away through a limited number of exits, guns are checked to make sure background checks were performed. No buyers can leave a show without documentation of a proper sale.

Schneiderman, who has worked with all 35 gun show operators in New York, showed the couple how the process worked.

“It’s great to see government and licensed firearms dealers working together to solve a problem,” Kelly said.

“Documentation of a proper sale.”  Folks, what have I told you?  The best way for the collectivists to formulate and parse their information is to get the free men to give it to them.  Gun shows are only for free men in free states.

Reason:

California Gov. Jerry Brown will soon decide whether to sign a bill that expands his state’s “assault weapon” ban to cover any centerfire rifle with a detachable magazine. That’s a very broad category, the National Rifle Association notes, since “millions of semi-automatic rifles have magazines that can be removed with the push of a button,” including “classic hunting rifles like the Remington Woodsmaster, Browning BAR, and the Ruger 99/44, among many others.” The actual language of the bill, S.B. 374, refers rather confusingly to “a semiautomatic centerfire rifle that does not have a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept no more than 10 rounds.” The NRA argues that the bill’s definition of a fixed magazine—”an ammunition feeding device contained in, or permanently attached to, a firearm in such a manner that the device cannot be removed without disassembly of the firearm action”—is ambiguous, since “‘disassembly of the firearm action’ is undefined and nobody (least of all the legislators who voted for it) knows what it means, or for that matter even what a firearm ‘action’ actually is.” But the intended target seems to be any rifle with a detachable magazine that fires rounds of a caliber bigger than .22 (generally the upper limit these days for cheaper, flimsier rimfire cartridges). Hence Fox News says the bill “exempts .22-caliber rim fire rifles,” although the legislation does not directly address caliber.

The author, Jacob Sullum, isn’t kidding.  Read the sentence lifted directly out of the bill.

A semiautomatic centerfire rifle that does not have a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept no more than 10 rounds.

They’ve put a double-negative into the sentence.  What this sentence means is anyone’s guess, and yours is as good as mine.  Farther into the bill, they’ve outlawed pistol grips on shotguns.

But back to the issue of hunting rifles, presumably (since the bill is a mass of confusion and no one knows for sure), bolt action rifles are “assault weapons” if they have a detachable magazine (and some do).

Hey.  No one said totalitarians were smart people.  They’re just control freaks.

CBS Connecticut:

The Paradis and D’Avino family knows guns. They’ve owned them and enjoyed hunting and target shooting. Shooting was just part of life, like the time after Thanksgiving dinner in 2009 when a guest of husband and wife Peter Paradis and Mary D’Avino brought out an AR-15 rifle he had in the car.

Together, with their children, the couple spent time shooting at a tree in their backyard on five acres off heavily wooded Route 61.

Paradis and his stepdaughter, Hannah D’Avino, recalled that holiday afternoon recently. They sat their kitchen table and reminisced about Hannah’s sister, Rachel D’Avino.

Rachel D’Avino died Dec. 14, 2012, inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. Twenty first-grade students and six staff members died when Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old Newtown resident who had attended that elementary school, stormed into the building with a Bushmaster AR-15 rifle. He shot his way through classrooms, then killed himself as police converged.

The rifle that killed their stepdaughter and sister was the same kind of military-style rifle the family had shot together that Thanksgiving Day. They’re commonly called assault weapons, a term once applied to fully automatic weapons used on the battlefield but now applied to semi-automatic military copycats given the same look, but not the ability to fire continuously with one pull of the trigger.

Let’s pause there for a moment and review the media explanation of guns.  The term “assault weapons” was not once, ever in history, used to describe what the military uses (which is technically referred to as assault rifle).  As we’ve discussed before, the concept of assault rifle involved three features: intermediate cartridge, mild recoil and selective fire.

Since the typical working man cannot afford the cost of owning a fully automatic weapon (only automatic weapons manufactured before 1968 stayed in circulation and their price is extremely high – see the Hughes Amendment), we have only two of the three features.  The phrase “assault weapon” is a fabricated bastard concocted by the Brady Campaign to scare people.

The next part of the article is very interesting and important.

Rachel’s murder has not marred her family’s memory of that holiday afternoon. For a family of marksmen, it also has not changed their views about guns.

After months of silence, Hannah D’Avino and Peter Paradis said they feel compelled to speak publicly: They are not happy that Rachel D’Avino’s name and her memory are being used to push for more and tougher gun legislation.

Their tragedy, they say, has been hijacked for political gain, to further a message with which they disagree.

“We’re very frustrated mainly because the 26 families got lumped together. We’re 26 families made of individuals that all have different opinions,” Hannah D’Avino said. “It’s like people are speaking for me and speaking for my sister. They don’t know her and they don’t know us.”

Paradis and D’Avino note that the only firearm-related injury or death in their family happened when Rachel was killed. She joined them in target shooting and was a good shot, they said.

That’s not all they remember of her _ it is a small detail of a life remembered mostly for her short career as a behavioral analyst and her work with autistic children and their families. Rachel D’Avino carried a passionate desire to help autistic children, to improve their quality of life and their families. The family home’s solarium is filled with gifts sent by strangers: drawings, letters, jewelry from people touched by her story, and by her tragic death. The family continues to raise money in Rachel’s name for research and services for autistic children and their families.

The family has been reluctant to talk publicly, largely because of unprofessional treatment by media representatives. Days after Rachel’s death, they were inundated with requests for interviews. They were frustrated by repeated attempts by producers and reporters who hoped to land their angle of the Newtown story.

Hannah D’Avino “friended” a woman on Facebook after the woman said she was a friend of Rachel’s. That woman later turned out to be a producer asking to interview her. Another woman got past a state trooper stationed at the front of the family’s driveway, saying she was a friend of Rachel who wanted to bring a basket of packaged muffin mix to the family. Inside was a card containing a business card from a producer at CNN.

So there you have it.  The D’Avino family wants to help the families of autistic children in memory of their beloved Rachel.  The media wanted to foist their political views into the tragedy in order to score points, and CNN lied in order to gain access to the family.

It seems that the term “assault weapon” isn’t the only bastard in the story.

This is Ron Avery with Haley Strategic (managed by Travis Haley) showing us pointers and tips to a faster and smoother gun draw.  It seems helpful to me, but it will require hours of practice.  And if you use a retention holster, this stroke is only part of the equation.

David Codrea:

That leaves one last logical place where a public inquiry could and should be conducted, but Mr. Issa hasn’t shown much interest in following up on things of late, and the Republican leadership hardly seems inclined to encourage him to do so, for reasons we can only speculate.

Put on your hard hat and other PPEs and prepare for a working man’s article.  David takes us on an adventure race down memory lane to rehearse just how bad Fast and Furious really was, now that subject weapons are again in the news.  There are lots of reference links and some technical discussion, but it’s well worth the time.

And take note that even the previously fervent and well-intentioned are disinterested, or worn down, or know that the administration won’t be truthful.  Unfortunately we don’t know, but the sad state of affairs is that people are still perishing at the hands of an administration trying to construct a case for an “assault weapons ban” by rigging the statistics with U.S. weapons.

I also noticed The Washington Post, citing yet another pointy-head academic paper, is still pressing the meme of U.S. weapons flowing South to Mexico as the catalyst for the cartel violence.  Hey, if people don’t know the truth, you can tell them anything you want.  And academics do.  And the main stream media does.

Kurt Hofmann:

Quinn, readers may remember, is an enthusiastic advocate of banning so-called “assault weapons,” being one of those who considers them to be “weapons of war that belong on a battlefield, not on our streets.” He has been, in fact, willing to violate both the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois state constitution to write his own AWB bill, because, he claims, “the proliferation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines undermines public safety and the right of personal security of every citizen.”

We discussed this in Bilderberg, The New American Century And The Rise Of Intelligence.  It is difficult to achieve the status of arming orders for National Guard troops (it involves training, range qualifications, military approvals, knowledge of rules for the use of force, etc.).  The National Guard sent to the border weren’t under arming orders, and thus they did paperwork and clerical duties.

Kurt’s article made me think once again about the Governor’s threat to use National Guard troops.  Such an action would be both illegal and immoral.  But if he deployed the National Guard to the city to quell violence without arming orders or ammunition for their weapons, he is turning them into sitting ducks.

The Governor can’t win.  If he deploys them with weapons and ammunition he is committing an immoral action against the citizens.  If he deploys them without arming orders, he is being an immoral leader for the troops.  And actually he can win in this scenario.  It’s easy.  Don’t deploy the troops at all because that’s not the proper use of those troops.

And for someone who decries the use of weapons of war on the streets, perhaps he should be a little more concerned about unleashing SWAT teams to terrorize citizens.  “Weapons of war.”  The administration sent them to Mexico because they don’t want us to have them – we aren’t the cartels.  The SWAT teams want them, but they don’t want us to have them.  The Governor is prepared to unleash them in the city to quell violence, but not if it involves innocent citizens protecting themselves.

One could begin to think that this all had to do with a little more than “weapons of war,” this quest to arm certain men and disarm others, no?

Read David and Kurt.

Courtesy of Say Uncle, there is this on use of an AR-15 for home defense.

If you are considering an AR-15 as your choice of home defense weapon, I urge you to read “”Bring Enough Gun”: A History of The FBI’s Long Arms,” by Bill Vanderpool in American Rifleman, October 2013, pages 115, 116 …

On page 115, Mr. Vanderpool begins discussing why the FBI chose to replace the H&K MP5 type weapons with members of the AR family for “entry” weapons.  He gives a brief history of the decision-making process and concludes that “…the AR system was found to be a safer and more effective round to use in close-quarter combat.”  [He means safer to shoot inside rooms than the two submachinegun rounds in use at the time in 9mm and 10mm.]

Well, yes, this is rehearsed in articles I’ve written about the AR-15 and ballistics of the 5.56 which tends to yaw in flight and shatter upon impact (frangible ammunition, not green tip, or steel core).  Remember though, use of any weapon inside a home means that you must remember the rules, one of which is that you must be aware of your backstop.  Dry wall is not a good one regardless of whether you are using a handgun, shotgun or rifle.

Policymic summarizes five instances of use of the AR-15 in self defense (situations that likely saved lives).

April, a 32-year-old named Jasper Brisbon attacked a Philadelphia couple as they entered their home. The man grabbed his AR-15 and pointed it at the intruder.  The man told Brisbon to leave, but he didn’t. Instead he advanced menacingly as the resident screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” and finally fired a shot into Brisbon’s torso.  He called 911 and an ambulance delivered the intruder to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. Police said the AR-15 was legally purchased.

This February, a man and woman attacked a tax preparation business near Detroit, pointing handguns at the receptionist and owner.  As you can see in this surveillance video, when one of the attackers advances past two horrified victims to check out the next room of this house converted into a small business office, a security guard behind the door enters with an AR-15 and scares off the intruders with two shots.

This January, two men with a handgun broke into the NY apartment of a Rochester Institute of Technology student named Raymond. His AR-15 may have saved his life.

In 2010, a 15-year-old Texas boy used his father’s AR-15 to defend himself and his 12yo sister when they were home alone one afternoon and two home invaders attacked their house.

Then the author lists the 1992 LA riots where a Ruger Mini-14 was used.  I am surprised that they didn’t list the instance of Mr. Stephen Bayezes that I discussed in No One Needs ARs For Self Defense.

The owner of the Guns and Ammo Gunsmith store in North Augusta, S.C. thought he was going to die tragically. Three men had driven a van into his store, executing what they hoped would be a quick “smash-and-grab” robbery.

Instead, they met owner Stephen Bayezes, who opened fire on the three intruders after the commotion set off an alarm, hitting each one at least once. He says he is not proud of what he was forced to do, but added sometimes “you’ve got to.” The incident occurred on Aug. 9, but the owner says a set of tire marks on the store’s floor and an unfinished wall are daily reminders of the night that he almost lost his life.

“It’s a haunting thought. It literally is a haunting thought when you see the tire tracks, you hear the tires,” Bayezes told WRDW-TV. “Everybody assures you that you just did what you had to do to protect your family. They say it’ll heal over time, but when does time go away? It’s something that nobody ever wants to do.”

But he says he had no choice after he heard one of the robbers shout, “Shoot the mother f**ker!,” followed by the sound of a gun cocking. “I mean, they would’ve shot me. In my mind, with no reservation. If that firearm had been loaded, I might’ve been a statistic.”

Finally, Quartz.com notes that Cerberus has tried to unload manufacturers of AR-15s (probably Bushmaster) but has been unsuccessful, and is still making loads of money off of AR-15s.  Then the author makes this amusing comment.

The inability to close a deal says a lot about the conflicted state of the US gun control battle. There’s clearly something wrong with owning this company—otherwise, why would Cerberus try to sell it and why would no buyers emerge? But there’s also little apparent public-relations cost (and no litigation cost—gunmakers in the US aren’t liable when their weapons are misused) to owning the firearms giant, at least as long as Cerberus claims not to want to. And meanwhile, the money just keeps rolling in.

Uh huh.  Look, we’ve discussed Freedom Group / Cerberus before, and how they are essentially venture capitalists and look to bust up competition rather than making their procurements better.  Thus, the way they look to increase sales in any one category is to buy and close down competition in that category.  Many a small and medium sized gun manufacturer has closed down after being purchased by Freedom Group.

They aren’t good for the gun market in the long term, and thus I won’t shed a tear at their problems.  But it’s a nice problem to have – making all of that money.  I suspect that they are trying to get out while the market is at the peak (or thereabouts), to invest in something else.  Freedom Group isn’t about guns like the article seems to think – good or bad.  It is about money.  That’s why the article is misleading and confused.

AK-47s are also in the news and you can read about it if you wish (I have shot the AK-47 before and I think it’s an imprecise, rattling clanker), but around here we speak the name of Eugene Stoner with hushed, reverential awe and respect.  If you say anything bad about Eugene Stoner or AR-15s you will be banned for life and imprecatory prayers will be spoken about you and your children’s children.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, empty suit intends to sign the U.N. Arms Treaty.  This holds no power as long as the Senate doesn’t ratify it, which we’re told has no chance of happening.

I’d like to take some credit for it’s “dead on arrival” status in the Senate with these articles.

U.N. Arms Treaty: Dreams Of International Gun Control

The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty: It Isn’t That Complicated

The U.N. Small Arms Treaty

So whether it’s honest or not, I will take some of the credit.  Rock on.  But just because it’s dead on arrival in the Senate doesn’t mean that the Obama administration won’t try to implement parts of it by executive order.

After all, if Obama intended to obey the law, we would never have had Fast and Furious, would we?

So if this actually obtains and somehow it passes through to regulation, let me ask?  Will those funny looking little men in the blue hats come and try to get my guns?  No, seriously.  Will they?  Oh, please God let it be so.