Weekly Gun News – Edition 27

Finger Sock

You’ll have to bear with me here. Last Friday I lobbed the tip of my finger off with a mandoline slicer. I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. While I applied pressure to the wound, deciding whether cauterization on a hot stove burner would be more or less painful than dealing with emergency care, Bitter threatened to knock me out with a frying pan and drag me there unconscious if need be, so away I went. There’s too much CYA and waiting in emergency medicine today. Horrible experience. The stove would have been less painful. They tried to convince me to throw out my slicer, since they see a lot of injuries from mandolines, but to me if I want to slice the tips of my fingers off, damnit, this is America. Patch me up and get me on my way! I am wearing a sock around my finger to cover the little super glue strip thing they put over it. Supposedly it’ll fall off when it’s time. But it does make typing problematic. Links are easier:

Charles C.W. Cooke: Heller was not an empty decision. It was a pretty strong opinion, if you read it as a whole, rather than cherry picking, as the lower courts do. Hopefully future courts will someday take it seriously.

Apparently Jeb Bush tweeting about getting a gun as a gift is pissing off all the right people.

Tam: “Well, which is it, Atlantic Magazine? Is the AR platform an underpowered jammomatic, like you had Major General Scales write? Or is it a nearly-automated, death-spraying killing machine, like you had Mark Obbie write?” (Quoted from the Book of Face)

Joe Huffman takes a look at how concealed carry has grown over the past decade or so. Herring was a fool to tinker with concealed carry in Virginia, given those numbers. Not all those permit holders are Republicans, you know.

Speaking of that, gun sales are surging in blue Delaware.

You really have to wonder when the other side is going to realize that absent PLCAA repeal, which Hillary will fight for, the whole lawsuit strategy is just a waste of time and money.

Randy Barnett, who I think would make a great compromise candidate for Obama, writes in USA Today about Scalia’s effort to restore the right to keep and bear arms.

Clayton Cramer has a new paper circulating on whether gun rationing laws have any effect.

Charles C.W. Cooke notes that the Dems’ borking of Robert Bork set the precedent. As an interesting side note: if it had been Bork confirmed instead of Anthony Kennedy, we never would have won Heller. Bork was opposed to the individual rights interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, though I believe he’s come around now.

Also from Charles C.W. Cooke: “Heller Is Reason Enough for the Republican Senate to Take Its Time Replacing Scalia.”

Daily Caller: Scalia Replacement Is the Line in the Sand For Gun Owners.

Kane says she won’t run for another term as Attorney General. She shouldn’t even finish out her current one.

Moron: Congressional Candidate Dan Muroff says it’s “not sporting” to use a semi-automatic weapons for self-defense. It’s not sporting to break into my house in the middle of the night. This ain’t a golf game, Dan.

The US is the only industrialized country to lead in selfie deaths. Clearly we must regulate cell phones more strictly, and it’s just common sense to ban selfie sticks.

The Washington Post thinks the anti-gun groups should stop bellyaching over McAuliffe.

Constitutional Carry gets pulled from the schedule in West Virginia.

Ted Nugent would have saved himself a lot of grief if he had just said this from the beginning. Or you know, just been more careful.

Expect to see more stories like this which play down the massive increase in the number of permit holders.

Pennsylvania ranks 4th overall in carry permits per capita.

Off Topic:

Joel Kotkin: The Religious Right is Being Left Behind. Whether one thinks it’s bad or good, it is hard to deny it’s demographics.

I’ve always thought that John Boehner was a dim bulb. This just confirms it.

Millennials like socialism, but they have no idea what socialism is. When socialists ideas are tested on their own, millennials don’t like them.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. More on Robert Bork
  2. Georgia Alert
  3. Questioning the VPC

37 thoughts on “Weekly Gun News – Edition 27”

      1. Please sign my petition to make Obama appoint an occultist-originalist to fill Scalia’s seat.

        They’ve already got the sealed ritual meetings and the black robes. If they just add a ouija board and some spluttering candles in skulls, they’ll never have to wonder about the founders’ intentions ever again.

        Maybe some eagle entrails too? Or is that reserved for the Congressional Haruspex?

    2. Ah yes. I can’t be expected to keep track of who’s alive and who’s dead these days :)

      But I do remember he came to accept it at some point.

  2. re: Michagan CCW. Caon’t comment on the site for some reason.

    516,612 CCW holders commit 592 violent crimes a year. a rate of 113 per 100,000 ccw holders.

    The violent crime rate for the Michigan non ccw holders? 483 per 100,000

    1. Actually, I got that wrong. the violent crime rate of ccw holders is like 45 per 100000

      1. Those are -charges- not crimes committed. To get the actual number of crimes you’d have to look on a case by case basis and/or at how many licenses get pulled.

    1. It feels fine, other than the sock. Fortunately, I did not slice much off. I was kind of annoyed that it wouldn’t stop bleeding.

      2. Was relieved when you didn’t say anything about them trying to sew it back on!

  4. The religious right has a great deal to do with why this millennial libertarian is a registered Democrat.

    1. I’d rather cut a deal with the religious right than the socialist left.

  5. My condolences on the finger. (pro-tip – when explaining the injury, instead of mentioning a food prep appliance, start off by saying that bears [gators/wolves/zombies] are a lot quicker than they look, stare wistfully in the distance for a few seconds, then say “but that’s behind me now – no use talking about it further”)

    I disagree about Heller being strongly worded, though the courts have abused it.

    Scalia used some very flawed reasoning, in what should properly be viewed as dicta (sadly that dicta is what the lower courts have latched on to). He was correct in that the 2nd amendment concerned an individual Right, but he went on to say that it was not to be presumed that previous gunowner control laws were automatically suspect. Since the 1940’s federal courts have upheld firearms restrictions on the premise that the 2nd amendment concerned a collective, not individual Right. That premise is directly refuted by the Heller decision, so that does mean the previous verdicts are suspect on their face.

    It’s quite possible that he attempted to make concessions so that Kennedy, & possibly others, would join him in his conclusion that an individual Right existed & the D.C. law imposed upon that Right. But I regret that he threw automatic weapons and “felons” & certain “gun-free zones” under the bus. The “common use” language is also troubling.

    Heller has largely been ignored by the lower courts. Oh they pay lip service to it, but from what I’ve seen they cling desperately to the aforementioned dicta & justify any gunowner control law they can by using rational basis dressed up as intermediate scrutiny, with the 4th Circuit recently becoming an exception to this pattern.

    So aside from Illinois’ complete prohibition of carrying weapons, Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban & D.C.’s attempts to continue a de facto ban on handguns, Heller hasn’t been that helpful in easing unconstitutional restrictions. & this is mainly because the lower courts have disingenuously used Scalia’s dicta to fuel their disapproval of common folks having the means to protect themselves.

    I think Scalia probably would have found an ‘assault weapons” ban unconstitutional, but I also think that many firearms restrictions have survived thus far because of Scalia’s own words in Heller. So despite his intentions, Heller has been an empty decision in all but 3 instances so far.

    1. Agreed. It’s similar to some of the concerns I had with another widely heralded “conservative luminary” who installed Scalia, Ronald Reagan. We got the 1986 FOPA – lots of good, some bad. I also never did appreciate Scalia’s “law and order stances” when it came to death penalty and drug cases, although Reason.com did have an excellent piece last week on how he did come down somewhat hard against law enforcement on search and seizure cases. It is a hard swallow to question political orthodoxy, but it has to be done.

      That all being said, Scalia was a legal treasure and his loss is a great one for individual liberties.

    2. I completely agree that dicta is problematic, but I think even without that you still would be seeing the same massive resistance from the lower courts you’re seeing right now. I suspect that dicta was added to get to 5 justices. But if you take that in context, and don’t focus on it as the lower courts have often done, it otherwise would not allow categorical bans, and recognizes a right to carry.

  6. I can’t get to excited either way about the const. carry votes going on right now. Va., W.Va, Mich. Utah, etc.

    None of them seem like “real” votes. Rather they know they are doomed but they are brought to vote so supporters and antis can point to their vote come the next election. Doesn’t seem any of the real politicking is going on that would indicate any of these have/had a chance.

    1. Except in W. Va., they had enough votes (and the will) for a veto override last session, but the governor vetoed it too late in the term to be brought up for consideration. Last I heard they still had enough votes for an override this time and were going to pass it sooner. What happened?

      1. Who knows? The fact that it was pulled without explanation is telling tho. Educated guess is that it was traded off for Democratic support for something else.

  8. Still not a lot of sympathy for Nugent from me. Just like bullets, you own every word and idea you send out into the world. That means that, while the PC police will try to twist anything, you vet.your.sources to avoid using -actual- racist-generated trash. As a public figure you don’t get to be “too busy” about content any more than you get to be “too busy” to watch where your muzzle is pointed. And in neither case do you get to just shrug it off.

    1. The definition of “actual racist-generated” shifts endlessly. They’ll “no-platform” and unperson their own allies for imaginary slights–nothing you do will stop them calling you an evil racist.

      There always needs to be a fringe to keep them sliding the Overton Window shut on you.

      1. Except this particular image originated on a damn near Stormfront sister-site. That’s a racist site by any definition. And the text “Jew agent” “gave money to Jews”? That is anti-semetic conspiracy phrasing, not at all ambiguous once read.

        So, again, no sympathy. Engaging one’s brain takes only a second and it is -stupid- to not make the other side stretch so ridiculously to try to spin what you say that they lose credibility among the undecided middle.

  9. The GOP is ENTIRELY to blame for millenials misunderstanding socialism. They labeled everything Obama did as socialism, often conflating it with fascism, when Obama is a center-right Clintonite Democrat. The term no longer has meaning and any millenial who has been screwed by our shitty economic recovery is going to be very open to policies that help them.

    1. I can buy that the right has played a role in that. I’ve been thinking that the left has a role in the rise of actual racists, because the word has been cheapened to such a degree.

      But I’ll be honest, maybe I’m just getting old, but these kids seem damned ignorant and naive compared to how we were when we were kids. That’s generally speaking. Exceptions can of course be found.

      1. To be honest, who can blame 20somethings for being angry these days after they graduate college? This generation faces the worst unemployment and worst economy ever. Student loan debt is at an all time high… No wonder they clamor for “Socialism” which is really more like an all-encompassing cradle to grave “social safety net”.

    2. I agree the GOP carries SOME responsibility for millenials’ misunderstanding, but saying their ENTIRELY responsible goes too far.

      Don’t forget that the public school system and most colleges — nearly universally run by leftists, if not open socialists — doesn’t teach these things anymore. Econ 101 is more about how to balance a checkbook (micro-economics) than how a financial system functions (macro-economics). The law of supply and demand — simple as it is — isn’t well-understood, except by econ majors, and many believe the value of a product is related to what the producer wants it to be worth, not what the market will pay for it.

      Civics isn’t taught, either, which explains why only 1 in 3 college students can name even one right enshrined in the First Amendment, an uncomfortably high number think the “collective right” interpretation of the Second is correct, can’t tell you at all what the rest of the Bill of Rights says, or why it’s important to understand the issues before you vote.

      GOP takes some blame for mislabeling everything Obama does as “socialist”, but the leftists running the schools deserve more for a) not teaching what socialism really is, and b) teaching that socialist economies are every bit as functional as (if not superior to) capitalist ones.

  10. If you’re a person of 28 or less you’ve never worked in a truly successful economy. I know there are jobs out there, but they’re generally crappy jobs with nowhere to go. It’s no wonder millenials don’t understand the American dream. They just know ridiculously priced college/high debt/crappy jobs.

    In terms of religious conservatism … though I’m a “Born Again” Christian I don’t believe in enforcing morality through law. The Bible tells Christians how to live, not what kind of society to force on others under penalty of law. I do strongly believe that unless the Republicans leave the whole “gay marriage” issue alone and just let the court ruling stand there’s no way they can ever win millenials. Even born again millenials I know are pro-gay marriage. And as a guy who works with a lot of gay people and having quite a few gay friends and co-workers I’m for it myself.

  11. With regards to the “Sporting Chance” claim about self defense: every so often I come across someone who says you’re not a Man if you don’t resort to fisticuffs to defend your life and your honor.

    Never mind that I don’t have the time to get adequate training to do so…or that I simply don’t have the build to take on a 300-lb football player…or that my wife won’t have the build to protect herself when I am at work…or that the assailant might very well have a knife or gun himself…or that I simply just want to be left alone, and while I will try to diffuse any situation to prevent a fight, it is NOT my responsibility to expose myself to injury and even death, just to show I can defend myself with fisticuffs rather than a pistol.

    This attitude that self-protection is some sort of “game” with “fair rules” really irks me. I *really* like the rule “If you don’t want to get hurt or die, you shouldn’t break into houses or pick fights, particularly with people who just don’t want to fight.” Any rule that undermines this is simply unfair–particularly to those who just want to be left alone!

  12. You really have to wonder when the other side is going to realize that absent PLCAA repeal, which Hillary will fight for, the whole lawsuit strategy is just a waste of time and money.

    Theory: They know they won’t win.

    They do it for the PR and to build a perception in the unwary that “the law is protecting Big Gun against lawsuits to hold it accountable for wicked abuses”.

    Well, that and to keep their organizations’ names in the news to get more funding, I suppose.

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