I’m sorry to tell you that it’s been a pretty slow week for gun news. I didn’t post anything on Monday, not because I was pressed for time, but because I just didn’t find anything interesting to write about. It’s that slow. But I’ll give a gun news post a try and see how it goes. Hopefully this won’t leave me dry tomorrow:
Clayton Cramer: “Close the Police Car Loophole!” It’s more common than people think. The San Francisco shooting was just a particularly high-profile case.
Miguel: CSGV hits every branch of the bigot tree on their way down. It’s not Markley’s Law Monday, but plenty of dick jokes in there. Though, it does seem that becoming a hate group has been more successful for CSGV than being a gun control group. I just wonder what their religious peace-loving coalition partners would think if they knew?
Joe Huffman thinks I was a little off using Gladys Kravitz as a patron saint for the gun control movement, because Gladys was honest, and everyone around her thought she was a nutcase. Not so with the gun control movement. A valid point!
Winning the Culture War: The return of High School shooting sports.
Dave Hardy is celebrating diversity. 14% of Illinois carry permits are issued to women, and in many minority neighborhoods. Imagine what it would look like if costs weren’t driven up beyond what many poor folks can afford? This was a big enough issue, Bloomberg’s mouthpieces felt the need to pooh pooh the article.
Looks like Cuomo has been experiencing difficulty implemented his beloved SAFE Act. Plus, this.
I love people who claim to be NRA members, but have no idea what the organization does. Hint: it already has a substantial training program, and it even puts out “video discs,” or whatever it is the kids are using these days.
The UK Daily Mail: African-Americans still favor gun control, but views are shifting. The other side is terrified of this.
Charles C.W. Cooke: “‘Better Ideas’ Are Nothing without Guns to Back Them Up, Mr. President.”
New Jersey’s draconian gun laws strike again.
Gun control advocates are extremely butthurt over the fact that we’re successfully using the budget process to thwart executive gun control. I sincerely hope NRA’s lobbyists can keep disappointing them. They have gotten pretty good at playing this game.
The Washington Post throws down on Hillary and her gun position. It’ll be very important for us that Sanders gives Hillary a run for her money. Sanders is far from perfect on the gun issue, but the bet among progressives is that the gun issue will hurt him.
Glenn Reynolds: The Donald and Bernie Show. Both candidates are entirely a result of the establishments of both parties not listening to their voters.
You know the old retort that the attacker will just take the gun away from you? Well, it finally happened.
The Rifle that almost became the M1 Garand.
Apparently you collect firearms and drive to Canada at your own risk. Note how ATF spend resources going after a collector. Probably because real criminals might shoot back.
Funny: Fast and Furious ain’t just a movie anymore.
Kids today! In truth people have always been ignorant, but I think the difference is this generation seems to combine profound brilliance without profound ignorance in a way my generation didn’t.
Interesting that the quotes they UK Daily Mail story ran with were a lot of “if a parishioner had had a gun…” and “I need one because I can’t trust the cops to help in time…”
My favorite story of Law Enforcement firearms being stolen happened during the Nineties when a FBI SWAT team stopped for breakfast on their way back from training in either KY or TN. (Story was in USA Today.) Somebody jacked their vehicle, which was loaded with M16s, MP5s, shotguns, a sniper rifle, and a M79 grenade launcher–enough hardware to arm…well, a SWAT team! Plus ammo! They located it a few days later after a manhunt that made the hunt for the DC sniper look lackadaisical.
I bet Shannon was jumping for joy when she heard someone was shot with their own gun.
wrong link on this?
“I love people who claim to be NRA members, but have no idea what the organization does. Hint: it already has a substantial training program, and it even puts out “video discs,†or whatever it is the kids are using these days.”
Yes…. sometimes I don’t quite do Command-C and the previous link gets pasted instead. Let me see if I can find that one again.
Wrong link it is, yes.
OK… that link is fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
The story about the cell tower guy is one of those head shakers for me.
I just don’t understand how a reasonably intelligent gun owner can not know laws vary from state to state, and blithely admitting to a cop in the Northeeast that you are carrying may land you in jail.
I’m not defending NJ’s oppressive laws, of course. I just don’t get how someone can buy a gun and be completely clueless on the laws.
I can. When Bitter would talk to people back home about the gun laws in Massachusetts, they had a hard time believing her. “This is America. This kind of thing can’t happen in America!”
I’ve even had anti-gun people tell me that NYCs may Issue doesn’t work the way it does.
And that most anyone can get a permit, and that people being denied permits are just stories the NRA makes up.
Sebastian, correct me if I’m misstating, but you’ve said a couple of times that PA’s laws on possession and transfer of handguns are almost as bad as NJ, except that a)a license to carry is readily available, and b)they are honored mostly in the breach.
If you have a NJ carry permit (that wasn’t arbitrarily limited by the issuing judge; say if you were retired LEO), you can carry just about everywhere.
As for the “vary from state to state” thing – why do you think we’ve had such a big push for forced national reciprocity for a number of years now? People assume a CCW is like a driver’s license, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable expectation. Totally wrong, of course, but not unreasonable.
I think there is a national reciprocity bill floating around the house somewhere. Anyone have the bill number?
There’s been a few of them through the years, and there are a few bills floating around the Hill this year. I’d have to check my NRA alerts
Two factors are important in this case
1)It’s all too common for people who live in free states to be blissfully unaware of just how bad the laws are in anti-gun states
2)People living normal lives don’t pay attention to the intricacies of guns and gun laws like some gun enthusiasts do.
Hands up anyone who knows that in New York State right turn on red is default-prohibited?
I didn’t know that, and I lived there for several years!
That’s only in NYC. The rest of the state is GTG on right on red except where posted.
QED. I had been told that it applied all through the state, and didn’t notice that all the references were to the city.
(And bonus points for NYC exceptionalism).
Also note, there’s a couple of intersections near me that are still signed as “right turn permitted,” even though the NJ default is right-on-red-allowed. They’re harmless, so I figure that’s why they havent’ been taken down; but they indicate that the law changed “relatively” recently. (IIRC one of the Oil Crises, as a fuel-economy measure)
On reading the article about “People Control”, the author mentioned that we license cars and driving, so we should do the same for guns. I, for one, am not convinced that licensing cars and drivers have made us safer; nor am I convinced that freedom of movement and travel is a privilege rather than a right. (Recall that the 9th specifically protects rights not enumerated by the Constitution; I would make the case that this is one such right that should be protected.)
What evidence, besides good ole common sense (which has been proven wrong before) do these “let’s license guns” folks provide that we’re safer because we do the same with cars?
Also: I’m bothered about this notion that “we might not be able to control guns, but we can control people!” which is ignoring several things:
1. Most “mentally ill” people aren’t going to harm people because of their mental illness: there are too many ways to be mentally ill, and even in severe cases, only a fraction of the mentally ill will actually cause harm. (I don’t want to say such people are “harmless”, but mostly because all of us should be able to cause harm to those who, unprovoked, are attempting to do us harm.)
2. Of those few mentally ill people that will cause harm, in many cases, it’s the law that prevents bystanders from being able to get the help those people need; indeed, it’s paradoxical, but being ruled a “danger to self or others” can only be done when one has actually caused harm to self or others–by which time, it’s too late to prevent the harm.
3. Of those few mentally ill people that will cause harm, often, we aren’t aware of their mental state until they actually cause harm. No psychological test or background check is going to prevent such people from getting weapons or other means of causing harm.
4. The reason we cannot control guns, is because we cannot control people. Saying “we can’t control guns” illustrates a thought process that somehow divorces objects from human action–and makes literally inanimate objects into some vague force of nature.