PJM:

A bipartisan group of senators today unveiled legislation requiring federal authorities to notify state law enforcement officials when a person barred from purchasing a gun attempts to do so.

The NICS Denial Notification Act was introduced by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), and co-sponsored by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). The senators argue that those who fail the background check and violate the law when trying to get a gun — such as convicted felons and domestic abusers — are rarely prosecuted.

Only 13 states currently run their own background checks using the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System system. The rest, including the District of Columbia, rely on the FBI to screen gun buyers, meaning they have to rely on federal reporting to know when someone prohibited from gun ownership pulls a “lie and try.”

Under the new legislation, the FBI would have 24 hours to notify state authorities. Coons calls the bill “one modest, commonsense way” for senators to work across the aisle on gun legislation.

“We can make progress on gun safety while respecting the Second Amendment rights of American citizens, including better enforcing existing gun laws and responding to warning signs that we get of criminal behavior,: said Toomey. “This bipartisan bill is a critical step forward in helping to ensure that our communities can be safe from criminals.”

The legislation comes with the endorsements of the Fraternal Order of Police, Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, National District Attorneys Association, National Domestic Violence Hotline, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and Everytown for Gun Safety.

Everytown likes it, and that’s all you need to know.  So are your surprised to see Graham, Toomey, Cornyn and Rubio on this list of quislings?  No, I’m not either.

So let’s make sure you’ve got this straight.  Let’s say that a former Soldier or Marine serves his country with honor, and comes home only to be diagnosed with PTSD, like most of them who saw combat and earned a Combat Action Ribbon (CAR, so-called in the USMC), with reporting done to the NICS.  Many if not most warriors who suffer PTSD recover, and they weren’t a danger to anyone anyway.

Let’s also say that they didn’t know that it is the policy of the VA that warriors with PTSD are reported to the NICS.  Let’s also say that said warrior tries to go buy a gun at his local gun shop, only to find out that unbeknownst to him, he is on a prohibited list.

He’s now a felon just for not knowing, and not only that, he will have to fill out any future form 4473s saying that he was once prohibited by the NICS from purchasing a firearm.

That’s what these quislings want to do.  Just so you know.

ISIS fighters were gun controllers, remember.

“ISIS was telling everyone, ‘We’re all brothers,’ ” Abu Malik said. “They let people smoke and drink. At the checkpoints, they distributed presents to the kids. They ate with people, drank tea with people. They were very nice—they didn’t bother anyone. Then, a week or so after they arrived, they started confiscating weapons. They told us it didn’t matter if we’d been with the Awakening or the Army or the police—if we gave up our weapons, we’d be forgiven. Ten days later, they started taking people. Everything changed. They took my cousin. My brothers dug holes in the fields and hid. I was at my house when they came for me. It was afternoon. I saw two Hyundai Santa Fes pull up outside, and I ran out the back and jumped over the wall. That was the last time I saw my family.”

This is no different than Adolf Hitler, who confiscated weapons and outlawed a lot of other firearms hardware from his enemies.

… the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was consolidated by massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents, who were invariably described as “communists.” After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefitted Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state.

Do you want more?

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms.  History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.   So let’s not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country.”

How about Benito Mussolini.

“The measures adopted to restore public order are: First of all, the elimination of the so-called subversive elements. … They were elements of disorder and subversion.  On the morrow of each conflict I gave the categorical order to confiscate the largest possible number of weapons of every sort and kind.  This confiscation, which continues with the utmost energy, has given satisfactory results.”

We could go on with Pol Pot, communist China, Stalin, the Christian Armenian genocide at the hands the Turkish Muslims, and so on.  Suffice it to say that dictators love gun control.

What about today?

Khamenei’s “hard line” on guns is nothing new. One of the Ayatollah’s first orders of business, when he came to power, was to disarm his own citizens – a technique regularly used by “supreme leaders” to extend their tenures.

Ultimately, Khamenei makes a unique case that the Second Amendment is, in fact, an insurance policy against tyranny.

Now, of course, the left, despite being vocal on gun control for the last several weeks, embracing nearly every unqualified expert in agreement with them, up to and including members of the Kardashian family, has been silent on the Ayatollah’s expressed agreement with their agenda. But there is an undercurrent of support – as recently as early January, the Huffington Post wrote glowingly of some of the Ayatollah’s ideas.

Gun control is tyranny, and tyrants love gun control.  It’s in their blood.  It’s who they are.  Any time you hear talk of gun control, remember this and equate the advocate of gun control with Stalin, Mussolini, Turkish Muslims, Khamenei, and ISIS.

This includes any gun control measures, like advocating a ban on bump stocks.  Hey, didn’t the NRA do this?

David Codrea:

“If the only thing that comes out of this tragedy is we outlaw bump stocks and we raise the age at which people are allowed to buy an AR-15, that will be a failure,” … “Because the reality – from my perspective – is you need to do what we’ve always tried to do, which is to ban the sale of AR-15s, have universal background checks, and also take away the ability to buy these large magazines.”

Guess who said that?  That’s right.  Behind door number 1, you get a special prize to Fast and Furious.  The same guy who actually gave all of those same things to gangsters and killers in order to do the same thing in America he just said … “ban the sale of AR-15s, have universal background checks, and also take away the ability to buy these large magazines.”

From my cold, dead hands, Eric.  And no, I’m not talking about the Charlton Heston kind of cold, dead hands.  I mean as one who really believes in God-given rights to own whatsoever he damn well pleases to own.

In this Atlantic piece, James Fallows is citing readers, one of whom landed this dud.

The following passage from the person who wanted to compare plinking with guns to flying private planes stuck in my craw (passage spans two paragraphs of the original):

“…the admittedly whacked out perspective that they will fight the oppressive government should it ever come to that.  Again, the last is probably ridiculous, but it is a psychic benefit important to many people.”

To me this was the real nubbin of the argument that was being made: The idea that people are entitled to work out their issues with society by playing with lethal weapons. Think about that one.

How anyone can justify this as “well-regulated militia” is beyond me — it’s more like the opposite.

And what is the “psychic benefit”? For this, read what some of your subsequent correspondents said about white male privilege. These white guys are out in some vacant area shooting up targets or fenceposts or whatever not just for fun similar to paintball or video games, but in order to feel that they are maintaining a certain level of violent threat against others — against their neighbors, really. Let’s not be satisfied with vague talk of “psychic benefit”. This is surely what we are talking about.

The stuff about flying vs. shooting was, as far as I am concerned, a typical astroturfing argument, diverting the reader’s attention from the real point to meta-issues of logic, and thus putting the brakes on discussion rather than furthering it.

Let’s begin with Fallows’ assertion that it is a whacked out position that armed citizens can hold the government accountable.  We’ve asserted differently before.

… while the U.S. military goes about its business preparing for fifth generation warfare, they do so because they haven’t learned how to win fourth generation warfare and are planning their next engagement being a near-peer.

Do you suppose this would look like great land armies getting into formation at the edges of great fields of battle and marching towards each other?  What do you think such a messy civil war in America would look like?  Bubba would be wearing a Ghillie suit, shooting a bolt action rifle, or a modern sporting rifle, and after the shot you will never hear from him again – until the next one.  And you’ll never catch him.  Police will have to decide what side to take, and if they take the wrong one, they will be dealt with in the middle of the night when they take their dogs out to pee in the backyard.

Insurgent will be mixed with progressive statist, and there will be no SEAL teams or nuclear weapons to which you can turn because you won’t know one from another.  There will be nowhere to target a nuclear weapon, and nowhere for a SEAL team to raid.  All of their close quarters battle preparations will be for naught when their own families are in peril due to civil warfare.  These aren’t Afghan tribesmen you’re dealing with.  These are engineers, mechanics, fabricators and welders, chemists, and the world’s best machinists.  If you think Afghanistan was rough, wait to see what civil war would look like in America.

If you have ever said something like, “You can’t win because the government has a land army and nuclear weapons,” here is the moral of the story for you.  You are an idiot.  You haven’t thought through this well enough, and you need to see the second amendment for what it really is.  It is the best guarantor of peace because tyranny is mutually assured destruction.  The statists know that, or else America will suffer the consequences.

So it looks like Fallows is an idiot, but I suspected that.  Next up, let’s deal with the reader’s note to Fallows where he pans the idea that “people are entitled to work out their issues with society by playing with lethal weapons.”  So let’s play a little thought experiment.  Replace “people” with “victims” during the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turkish Muslims, Pol Pot’s regime, Stalin’s reign, Hitler’s rule, the genocide of Christians in Mesopotamia, Egypt or Uganda.  Recalling that the number of victims of mass shootings at the hands of government entities approaches 170 million between the years of 1901 and 1990, perhaps this self righteous reader would like to explain to us why the victims would have been wrong to defend themselves from genocide?  Go ahead, we’re listening.

As for the final paragraph where the reader uses the terms “astroturfing” and “meta-issues of logic,” I’m not at all convinced that he understands what those terms mean.  In fact, without more context, the entire paragraph is nonsense.

I’m sure in the thousands upon thousands of posts I’ve made something I’ve said could be claimed to be stupid, so I won’t hold Fallows responsible for one stupid article, although a pattern of stupidity is certainly self-inflicted harm.  But I surely have better readers than that, and I think it’s embarrassing for Fallows that he used this letter as an example of reader feedback.

NY Daily News:

The latest city resident to cash in on police misconduct would raise a glass to toast his victory, except he doesn’t drink.

The NYPD found that out the hard way when cops tried to charge Oliver Wiggins with driving while intoxicated to cover up for a police officer who ran a marked SUV through a Brooklyn stop sign and plowed into Wiggins’ car.

Wiggins, 33, received close to $1 million from the city for his troubles, but not before he was arrested and charged with impaired driving, had his driver’s license suspended and was hit with a repair bill for his 2004 Nissan Maxima that his insurance company would not cover because of the DWI bust.

Never mind that a Breathalyzer test he took at the East Flatbush scene on April 19, 2015, showed no alcohol in his blood.

While at the hospital, after the crash at Glenwood Road and E. 43rd St., Wiggins volunteered to have his blood tested for alcohol or drugs at the hospital. That test came back negative. Reports from the EMT and DWI technician each said Wiggins had no signs of intoxication.

That didn’t stop the arresting officer, Justin Joseph, from officially reporting Wiggins had slurred speech, watery eyes, an odor of alcohol on his breath and was observed swaying. Three months later, prosecutors dismissed the charges.

But remember boys and girls, cops are the good guys and they’re there to protect and serve.  Just don’t be in their way or make “furtive” movements around them.

Yahoo:

FBI is refusing to expedite the release of documents about secret meetings that took place between former FBI Director James Comey and former President Obama. Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell says the matter is of public interest.

But remember folks, the FBI wants to be known as the protector of America, the go-to law enforcement of the country, the exemplar of righteousness and all that is good.

Your tax dollars at work.  Hang them all.  The bad people are being protected by the “good” people who won’t hold anyone accountable.  Hemp rope and lamp posts, or oak trees.

NRA:

Even as the nation was grieving the terrible loss of life in Parkland, Fla., gun control activists were doing what they do best: exploiting tragedy to advance their political agenda.  Gun control activists are pushing a message that you are to blame for the criminal violence that took place last month. They’re attempting to capitalize on this tragedy to convince members of Congress to vote for their gun control wish list. 

Proposals to ban the most popular rifles in America, arbitrarily limit magazine capacity, require a waiting period on all firearm sales, and restrict the right of law-abiding young adults to acquire rifles and shotguns have been suggested as “solutions” by those who wish to curtail the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Legislation encompassing these proposals could be voted on in the U.S. Congress in the coming weeks. That’s why it’s imperative that you contact your members of Congress and state lawmakers today and ask them to oppose all gun control schemes that would only impact law-abiding gun owners.

Hey, wasn’t it the NRA who went on record saying that bump stocks should be banned, or at least an NFA item?  Yea, it sure was.

It’s almost like the NRA is stirring up trouble in Congress trying to get them to do things against the wishes of the gun community in order to get the gun community to donate dollars to try to fight what they’ve stirred up.  If you can get it, that’s a sweet gig.

David Codrea:

The latest citizen disarmament plot currently being hatched will raise the minimum age for rifle purchases to 21. While some are specifically calling out semi-automatic rifles, others want it all. Such plans are  gaining traction at the state and federal level by no shortage of Democrat opportunists and “bipartisan” Republican panderers, including Sen. Marco Rubio and President Donald Trump.

An interesting article over at Firearms News notes Audie Murphy would have been deemed “too young” to be trusted with a rifle at the time his legendary heroics earned him recognition as the most decorated combat soldier of WWII.

But wait, the emperor-god Trump wants it, so it must be good, or he must be lying, or he must be playing 4-D chess while everyone else is playing checkers, or something else, it can’t really be that Trump didn’t keep his promises to be pro-gun, can it?

Yea, sign me up for opposition to said stupidity, but you knew that already.

On a different subject entirely, David has a great idea for a new gun law.  I support this one.  Don’t look for it in the bills on the House or Senate web site though.

The Blaze:

“Let me tell you why I’m a defender of the Second Amendment,” she began.

“I was a little girl growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the late fifties, early sixties,” she explained. “There was no way that Bull Connor and the Birmingham Police were going to protect you.”

“And so when White Knight Riders would come through our neighborhood,” she said, “my father and his friends would take their guns and they’d go to the head of the neighborhood, it’s a little cul-de-sac and they would fire in the air, if anybody came through.”

“I don’t think they actually ever hit anybody,” she continued. “But they protected the neighborhood. And I’m sure if Bull Connor had known where those guns were he would have rounded them up.”

“And so, I don’t favor some things like gun registration,” she said to a suddenly silent crowd.

“That said, it’s time to have a national conversation about how we can deal with the problems we have. It’s not going to be any single fix to the terrible events at Parkland,” she concluded.

It’s this last part that’s important, but more on that in a minute.  David Codrea links at Washington Times piece saying this.

Bam. That’s it in a nutshell — this is why founders saw fit to put in place a Second Amendment. It wasn’t a right to hunt they were defending; it was a God-given right to protect one’s self and one’s family from harm. And specifically: from harm from the government

And David points out the same thing I’m about to.

“I think it is time to have a conversation about what the right to bear arms means in the modern world,” Rice told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday. “I don’t understand why civilians need to have access to military weapons. We wouldn’t say you can go out and buy a tank.”

More specifically, Rice said weapons like the AR-15 rifle that authorities say shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz, 19, used to kill 17 students and teachers Feb. 14, shouldn’t be available to civilians, the Washington Times reported.

I would absolutely say that I should be able to go out and buy a tank with all of the ammunition I could afford to use with it.  So here’s  the bottom line, Ms. Rice.  We have the second amendment to protect us from fake second amendment supporters like you.  My conversation on the RTKBA with you can be neatly summarized as follows: Molon Labe.  That’s about all the conversation I’ll have with you.

You’re what’s called a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Hey, I recall a time when you supported race sensitive admissions.  I’m just saying that you’re not who you’re purported to be.  But you fit in well with Mr. Bush, who was exactly who he was purported to be, having first sought permission from Bob Bullock to run for governor of Texas.

Time:

Dick’s Sporting Goods announced on Wednesday that it would stop selling assault-style rifles in all of its stores, a direct reaction to the February 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 dead.

“When we saw what happened in Parkland, we were so disturbed and upset,” CEO Edward Stack said.

The move leaves just one major retailer standing alone in continuing to sell the semi-automatic assault-style rifles commonly used in mass shootings: Bass Pro Shops, which now includes Cabela’s, a competitor it purchased last year. Bass Pro Shops was named by Forbes as one of America’s largest privately-owned companies. There are a total of over 160 Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops retail stores in the U.S. and Canada. Both stores also sell high-capacity magazines, which allow shooters to fire a higher number of rounds without needing to reload.

Many large companies have changed their policies around guns lately, as protesters push for tougher regulations. Some have cut ties with the National Rifle Assocation, ending discount programs for NRA members. Dick’s announced that all of its stores would immediately stop selling assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, and that it would no longer sell any guns whatsoever to customers who are under the age of 21.

While stating that “we support and respect the Second Amendment,” Dick’s also urged Congress to take action and called for a national ban on assault-style firearms, a ban on high-capacity magazines and bump stocks, and a minimum age of 21 for all firearms sales. “Thoughts and prayers aren’t enough,” a Dick’s press release said.

[ … ]

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has also been scaling back gun sales at its stores. In 2006, Walmart stopped selling guns at roughly one-third of its stores, citing “diminished customer relevancy.” In 2015, all Walmart stores stopped selling semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15, the weapon of choice in mass shootings such as those in Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, and most recently in Parkland, Florida.

Ridiculous.  So someone tell me the last time you were in a Dick’s or Walmart and saw anyone buy a gun?  Anyone?  I didn’t think so.

Gun buyers don’t go to Walmart or Dick’s.  You have to call someone over to the counter just to ask about that ammunition behind the counter that you can’t pick up.  Otherwise, the gun counter is the most unmanned part of the store.  No one is buying anything, save a little ammunition or cleaning supplies from time to time.

Walmart will still continue to struggle competing with Amazon, and Dick’s will continue to sell pansy-ass golf gear and clothes and wonder why they’re struggling compared to Bass Pro Shop and Cabela’s – where you can get literally anything you want.

And nothing else will change.  And time will continue to write breathless, hyperventilating fake news about big wins for the gun control lobby.