Month: March 2013

Uncle notes the Obama Administration is looking to computerize all the 4473s held in a giant ATF storage facility in West Virginia, from out-of-business FFLs. The Information Week article on this certainly makes me glad I don’t subscribe to that particular tech rag. Too many tech people get enamored with technology and don’t pay enough attention to human factors. This has been made inefficient by design, because an efficient, computerized system would mean you have a registry, albeit incomplete.

I say this as a tech person: screw putting this stuff in a database. I would suggest the far more low tech solution of a burn barrel, some kerosene, and matches, if we’re worried about how much federal dollars we’re wasting. That money would be far better spent on cops who spend their time catching real criminals. I’m done being “reasonable” with these people. The passage of SAFE in New York, the bills currently in Congress, and Colorado should be a wakeup call that they will pass whatever they can get away with. Gun control must go the way of the temperance movement.

Urgent Alert on a magazine ban. It has the same “readily convertible” language that Colorado’s has, and no real grandfathering. You have to register the magazines, and sign a loyalty oath to the regime promising you’ll never transfer them. This effectively bans any magazine that uses a floor plate design, which is most of them.

Once again, I find myself with a lot of stories to link, but not a lot to say about them. Of course, about every other news dump, I start rambling on about something I didn’t think I had much to say about, and I cut that out as a future post. It’s a great way to get over writer’s block. OK, time for some CMD-C, CMD-V:

We probably shouldn’t forget that the UN is still a threat, with negotiating continuing on the ATT.

A new blog focusing on Second Amendment issues, run by progressives. We really need this. There needs to be a pro-gun movement from the left. We were this close || to having a bipartisan consensus on this issue, and that fell apart in the last midterm elections.

Getting a hearing on restaurant carry and permit confidentiality in North Carolina. We’ve been making a lot of progress in the gun friendly states, even during all this. It’s almost like America is becoming two separate countries. Unfortunately, I think it might be going that way.

Hey, gun free schools.

Channeling Josh Horwitz, of the Coalition to Prevent Gun Ownership, in Illinois. It should be noted the fight there is ongoing.

Following Joe Biden’s advice in Colorado. Biden is underwater in the polls as well. I thought gun control was popular, and NRA, etc only represent the gun manufacturers?

The NRA makes its presence felt at CPAC. I haven’t been talking about CPAC, because of their reprehensible treatment of GOProud. Maybe this is why conservative is becoming a bad word. I’ve never, personally, been comfortable identifying as conservative myself.

This is what happens when you destroy your gun culture. If you want to think scary, the military has to draw from the same pool of people police departments do. This is a matter of national security.

A summary of the Colorado magazine ban, and a video from Independence Institute in Denver on what “readily convertible” means. UPDATE: Magpul is still fighting, encouraging veto, and pointing out the flaws in the bill, both technical and constitutional.

Another way to headline this: NRA stands up for due process for a fundamental constitutional right. I don’t want to enable abusive spouses either, but in this country we don’t “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and a non-adversarial hearing for a protection order is not due process.

The Sandy Hook killer apparently planned the massacre for years, studying other mass murderers in great detail.

Manchin still trying to find Republican support for a “background check” bill. If he thinks we’re going to forget all this by 2016, he’s kidding himself. So far his only taker is Mark Kirk, who the media keeps saying is a moderate on the gun issue. No, he’s not any sort of moderate.

Colorado Sheriffs are vowing not to enforce the new gun laws. Good on them. Meanwhile, Hickenlooper is preparing to commit political suicide.

A case study in the politics of frivolity.

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton supports the criminalization of gun handling through a ban on transfers.

Demand a Plan on illegal mayors.

Word is he’s going to sign the bill Wednesday, but that leaves today to call his office and express disapproval that he’s allowing Colorado to be run from the White House and New York City Hall. The Denver Post is noting that there may be a ballot measure to overturn the ban. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’ve always been wary of the ballot. Ballot fights are expensive, and a loss has much more dire implications than losing a vote in a legislature. What I absolutely do support, in the mean time, is the recall effort of the Colorado Democratic lawmakers who voted for this crap. Keep the heat on until 2014 as much as you can, then be heard at the ballot box.

A disappointed DiFi will always mean happy us:

After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.

Looks like Harry Reid, who likely doesn’t want to vote on it, told her no. Now the question becomes what the Democrats are going to try to pass in its stead. The gods of “Something Must be Done!” have to be appeased, you see. The Dems also likely can’t deal the President a complete embarrassment, so something will be done.

There are two likely paths: Reid could advance a gun trafficking bill with a school safety provision; some form of background checks and the assault weapons ban would then be offered as amendments. In the other scenario, Reid might offer a background checks bill that includes the gun trafficking and school safety provisions, with assault weapons again offered as an amendment.

Apparently the gun control groups are willing to go with a background check bill that is “slightly less stringent” than Schumer’s S.374 “background check” bill. Slightly less is not going to be remotely acceptable. We’re not going to have every gun owner in this country living at the whim of a federal prosecutor because he handed a gun to someone outside of some ridiculous list of exemptions. End of story.

A panel of people, containing no firearms experts or Second Amendment advocates, and generally composed of people Certified Better Than You, comes to the shocking conclusion that the State of Connecticut needs a whole lot more gun control, including universal registration, a ban on background checks, licensing, ban on magazines these Certified Better People deem too large, draconian storage requirements that render firearms useless for self defense, restrictions on how much ammo one can purchase, and my personal favorite:

Requiring gun clubs to report any negligent or reckless behavior with a firearm, or illegal possession of any firearm or magazine, to the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, Commissioner of Public Safety, and local law enforcement.

All good citizens report zheir neighbors to ze Gestapo, Ja? They have their pretext, and now they can do whatever they want to those of us who actually take the Bill of Rights seriously.