I-594 is in full force in Washington State now, and is already attracting enterprising scofflaws. The media in Seattle are sad pandas that we aren’t just holding our nose and swallowing their snake oil.
A super soaker shotgun. Crap like that can get innocent people killed.
Bloomberg targeting twelve more states. Money quote from Andrew Arulanandam, “We have $38 billion reasons to take Mike Bloomberg seriously” He’s not even though his 50 million yet. In its history, gun control has never seen this kind of money at its disposal. Also, Washington state groups are preparing for more. Any victory gives them momentum. More gun owners need to be aware of this.
Key data withheld in California lead ammo ban. Turns out that lead levels in Condors haven’t dropped, which would suggest the contamination is from a different source. Of course, rather than apologizing for calling us all science deniers, the response is going to be we just need to spread the ban to other states, and double down on it in California. Colorado fortunately decided not to go down this path (for now).
Like baseball, there should be no crying in policing.
Dave Hardy finds one of the worst arguments against preemption I have ever seen, courtesy of one of the local (to me) cat box liners. He also points to some research in the area of whether people answer gun ownership surveys truthfully. Answer? Many don’t.
Doylestown, Pennsylvania is now also looking at getting rid of it’s illegal gun ordinances, now that our preemption law actually has some teeth.
The 5 most overrated guns of all time.
Miguel notes the media trying to drive a false narrative. This isn’t the only place I’ve seen there. There have been a few cases of the media portraying drivers who get surrounded and then push through the crowd as monsters, even though the police clear them after questioning. Personally, I view blocking busy roads as a form of kidnapping. I think the law should reflect that.
You’d think the police near Ferguson would be pleased that there are shops they don’t have to worry about. Nope! Fortunately, ignoring the police seems to be doing the trick. Charles C.W. Cooke pens a defense of ‘Antigovernment Militias.’
Maryland Governor Elect to Gun Owners: Thanks for all those votes guys, but I got more important things to do than worry about your constitutional rights. Still, it was useful to punish O’Malley’s hand picked successor, and to spoil any presidential ambitions he might have.
Austin Police Chief: Please tell us about gun enthusiasts you might know, so we can ‘vet’ them.
I used to be a hiker, but I hate the hiker culture, mostly because of crap like this. On a related note, can you believe that Ars Technica is doing positive stories about silencers? Not long ago I would have said getting silencers deregulated was a pipe dream. I think it’s getting a lot closer to possible.
USA Today manages to do an article on the AR-15 market going soft without being patently hysterical. Also from the article, Josh Sugarmann is a sad panda, but he really has been for some time now.
I had hoped that Mark Kessler’s 15 minutes were over, but apparently not. Apparently this has disappointed a lot of his supporters. I was disappointed 15 minutes into hearing him talk for the first time.
Stun gun rights in Massachusetts? I don’t see any reason the 2nd Amendment should be limited to firearms. It should apply to any personal weapon useful for self-defense.
Doctors keep prying into people’s gun ownership despite law. And they wonder why we think this law was needed in the first place.
Are the Tories in Canada actually following up on liberalizing some of Canada’s gun laws? I kind of figured they’d pull a “We got rid of the long gun registry for you, which you should be grateful for,” like you’d expect Republicans to do here.
Re: “Doctors keep prying into people’s gun ownership despite law.”
http://www.2ampd.net/Articles/horn2/Firearms%20Malpractice%20Form.pdf
Regarding the hikers against silencers for hunting rifles: I hate bad hunters more. Growing up, hunters would hunt illegally on private property well out of season, destroy no hunting signs, leave carcasses. They would build hunting blinds with untreated wood and cheap nails, not caring about the damage to the tree.
I wold want to see existing hunting laws and tresspassing laws enforced first. Hearing the rifle shot isn’t much, but it is better than nothing.
How do you propose enforcing the hunting or trespassing laws?
At the end of the day, the property owner is going to have to bear the bulk of the costs of securing their property against incursion.
Signs work for the (vast) majority of interlopers. Fences or barricades will deter yet more. But after that you need surveillance and/or patrolling to detect intrusions. Whether it is your home, your field, or your woodlot — it is your property. It is the police’s function to deter criminal activity in general and to hunt offenders. It is the property owner’s function to secure their land. We happen to be privileged enough to live in a society where a sign is sufficient to do that most of the time.
I would think that someone who is willing to illegally trespass while armed and violate numerous game laws doesn’t care much about using a can irresponsibly either.
Where I grew up, landowners couldn’t just have a hunter’s truck towed. If the land owner didn’t own the truck, they had to get a sheriff’s authorization before the tow would come. Which was never forthcoming. I would propose changing the law, with the goal of letting the landowner buy his own boot and use it, and to have the truck towed. The owner shouldn’t be able to legally get his truck back until he’s satisfied the landowner (or the truck sits too long at impound, and gets sold at auction).
It would be nice to have the police actually stake out hunters’ trucks, and arrest them for the crimes of trespass, destruction of property, and whatever crimes against drinking while illegally hunting are on the books.
It would be nice if the police were willing to act on photograph and video evidence, rather than demanding that the landowner hire a credentialed private detective to collect evidence.
It would be nice if victims could access the state’s victim relief fund, to help with the costs of filing for a restraining order and suing for civil damages.
Why would anyone would think that the taxpayer should pay for the legal expenses associated with suing alleged trespassers in civil court?
Even if the sheriff will not provide relief I’d imagine a civil suit for damages done to the property would proceed quite easily. The weight of evidence is typically “preponderance.”
If the sheriff won’t take a report and allow you to press charges, you need to call the State Police/DNR folks.
But regardless I don’t see how allowing people to hunt with suppressors will make the trespassing problem any worse. Using the logic that denying effective safety equipment makes it easier to catch poachers and trespassers, it should be a crime to travel to a hunt in a truck that has a muffler, right?
to be honest, i think the outrage over Hogan is a little overblown, since it’s not like he could get MD’s strongly, strongly Democratic legislature to overturn it.
i’m waiting to see what he actually does on gun issues down here, but i think gun owners do have to be realistic about what got him elected (taxes, taxes, taxes).
He could make it clear that his administration will not enforce the law, and order the state police and his state AG (if the AG works for the gov in MD) to refuse to arrest or prosecute anyone under it.
The dems do this all the time with laws they won’t like.
oddly enough, our incoming state AG is hugely anti-gun and a big proponent of the law.
don’t get me wrong, i don’t think Hogan should dismiss the pro-gun voters out there and there’s stuff he CAN do. i’m just willing to give it a little time to see how it goes. it’s not like the alternative, who spent the campaign raving about Hogan wanting a state awash in assault weapons, would ever have been better.
I did not know there was such a thing as “hiker culture” (he wrote, just back from a hike).