Anti-Gun Folks – Page 13 – Shall Not Be Questioned

But I Thought Gun Control Was a Winning Issue?

From Politico: “Dems urged to retool their guns message.” Basically Gabby Giffords is nervous that Hillary keeps talking about “taking on the NRA.” Gifford’s focus groups studies are revealing that people have a pretty favorable view of the NRA, and she would prefer Hillary to use the term “gun lobby,” because that’s totally less offensive to gun owners.

Actually, I think there’s a lot of good advice in this article, and I actually hope no one on their side listens. On a positive note:

ARS also developed specific messages to turn out parts of the original Obama coalition of blacks, Hispanics, women and millennials. The latter might actually be the most difficult to persuade. ARSâ€™ pollsters found that millennials’ views on guns track more with the party ID than their age, andÂ other studiesÂ have found that younger voters are especially open to gun rights, seeing them in the same vein of personal liberty as gay rights.

But as I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter if they won’t vote on it. What we corporate gun lobby folks need is more single issue or near single issue voters.

How You Know There Will Never Be Enough Gun Control

Mom’s Demand laments 14 dead in California shooting that “no one is talking about.” Sorry Shannon, we may be too busy watching the post-war order my grandparent’s generation establishedÂ fall apart all around us, like Germany for example, where apparently an axe lost it and decided to chop a bunch of people on a train. I’ll have to go chain mine up after this. Same headline at CNN: “Germany ax attack injures several on train, police kill suspect.” Maybe I need to start drilling axe shooting scenarios!

Where there’s a will to maim or kill, there will be a way. The media and elites believe if they just stick their heads in the sand a little farther, everything will be fine. Then, on the other extreme, you have the folks who think the only good muslim is a dead one, despite the fact that muslims are doing the majority of the fighting and dying to put an end to this barbarity.

California just passed a battery of enhanced gun control laws, already having had some of the toughest in the nation. Yet bad things still happen, and people like Shannon Watts don’t ever accept that there will always be evil in the world. They’ll keep demanding more and more laws, and burying their heads ever deeper in the sand.

UPDATE: An another one. Good thing Europe has such strict gun laws, or someone might have gotten hurt.

One in Five Dems Think Guns Should be Illegal

Both Joe Huffman and Gun Free ZoneÂ are writing about Vox survey which asked people whether certain guns should be banned by sight. Twenty percent of Democrats, that’s one-in-five, think even flare guns ought to be banned, and all surveyed folks are dead split on whether the Remington 700 ought to be banned. I haven’t seen the survey methodology to suggest whether it’s any good, so I’m not going to take this too seriously. But I keep saying we’re heading into heap big trouble if gun owners keep sitting on their collective posteriors.

I do think the other side is succeeding in building their movement back up again, and I believe this election has the potential to lay waste to gun rights. It’s gloomy, but I have a lot of reasons to feel gloomy about our prospects. I think a lot of people don’t believe we can end up back where we were in the 1990s. We absolutely can.

Dems Introduce HEART Act

No teaching your kids shooting with scary looking rifles, because they just HEART you and your kids, you see… totally more than you do, so they get to make the calls.

â€œEven at a shooting age and under professional guidance, a semi-automatic rifle in a childâ€™s hands is a tragedy waiting to happen,â€ Mr. Markey said. â€œThese weapons are not toys and children should not be allowed to play with them. They are simply too powerful and too difficult for a child to control.â€

What the hell does Ed Markey know about firearms training? The purpose of this is to prevent us from passing the culture on to future generations so they have better odds of killing off the hunting and shooting culture off in the future.

Ladd Everitt Leaves CSGV

He’s joined George Takei’s new gun control group “One Pulse for America,” as Director. I’d ponder whether this represents rats off the sinking ship, but given that going from Communication’s Director of a small gun control group to running a whole new group which may end up being more successful represents a promotion, and it’s probably something I’d take (were I in his shoes) even if CSGV isn’t headed down.

Takei doesn’t have the coin to fund a group at nearly the level Bloomberg does, so it will be interesting to see how this works out. One thing is for sure, Pink PistolsÂ and Operation Blazing Sword just got a lot more important. Have it it folks! Ladd Everitt is now your new arch nemesis.

More Evidence Pamela Haag’s Bellesiles Reboot Filled With Holes

This age would seem to be the era of awful reboots in Hollywood, so it would seem fitting that in these times Pamela Haag would reboot an awful Academic book The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture which is essentially Michael Bellesiles Arming America repackaged.

Clayton Cramer has been looking into this new work and is finding a lot of problems. The latest article of his is a must read, published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). In this article, Clayton refutes Haag’s assertion that the market for firearms in gold rush California was “saturated.”

Coltâ€™s letter (or at least Haagâ€™s characterization of Coltâ€™s letter) is clearly wrong: A strong and vigorous gun culture already existed in California before 1853. Worse, that Haag never questioned the validity of this idea suggests either a gross ignorance of Californiaâ€™s turbulent history during the 1850s or an intentional unwillingness to verify the claim she purports to have found.”

Clayton also found this stunning piece of ignorance:

Throughout her book, Haag uses the word â€œsemiautomaticâ€ to refer to guns that are not. On p.179, she writes, â€œThe family name, which became the rifle name, eventually stood for the genus, becoming a synonym for repeating, semiautomatic rifles.â€ On p.88, she asserts that â€œAs the semiautomatic ancestor of automatic machine guns, the Henry performed â€˜a terrible work of deathâ€¦’â€[emphasis added] Â On p. 204, â€œWinchester had emerged the preeminent name for semiautomatic rifles.â€

Let me just say if you don’t know that the Henry Rifle and Winchester Rifle were lever-action repeating arms and not semiautomatic rifles, you really don’t have any business writing a book about guns. I suspect the rest of Clayton’s findings won’t reveal so much academic fraud as Bellesiles work, but rather stunning ignorance piled upon ignorance, and an unwillingness to apply any real academic rigor.

I’d expect nothing less from someone who believes in speaking with the dead.

House Dems Stage Sit-In for Gun Control

There is no provision in the House where members can hold the floor (in this case literally), so these 30 members of the House are out of order. The sit-in would seem to be lead by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA).

Proud to sit with @RepJoeCourtney and others demanding action. #GoodTrouble #NoBillNoBreak pic.twitter.com/SNMWlQ0ZfZ

— Rep. John Yarmuth (@RepJohnYarmuth) June 22, 2016

Gersh Kuntzman is Just Trolling for Clicks

Gersh Kuntzman, writing in the New York Daily News, doubles down on the article he wrote about his bizarre AR-15 experience. I give him credit that at least he’s fired an AR. Spend a week listening to people blather about ARs who have never fired a gun in their lives makes you start wanting to go “Oh, so you’ve never fired a gun, let alone an AR-15. Well, then shut your ignorant pie hole!” I give kudos for Kuntzman for at least trying it, even if I’ve seen eight year olds handle the experience better than he describes.

But reading his latest article, I think both Kuntzsman and the New York Daily News are just trolling for clicks at this point. It may be shameless, but it works. Those eyeballs are no doubt coming from “Hey, check out this pansy,” as people of the gun spread the link around. But none of that is going to matter to advertisers. So perhaps Kuntzman is willing to endure pot shots at his masculinity for the sake of clicks:

To summarize, this line of argument suggests that I’m not a real man because I am frightened by the awesome power of an AR-15, which, despite however you willfully misread my story, can discharge dozens of rounds in mere seconds.

If you can fire dozens of rounds in mere seconds on semi-automatic, and actually hit what you’re aiming at, having no prior shooting experience, I’ll eat my hat. That is likely a fabrication, or the adrenaline was warping his sense of time. I’d struggle to do that, and I’ve been shooting a lot longer than he has. The AR is easy to use and easy to learn on, but it’s not that easy. I’ve been wondering if the shop owner set him up with a rental M-16 rather than an AR-15.

Yes, this weapon scared the crap out of me. And it should scare the crap out of all of you, too. An AR-15 is a weapon of mass destruction, a tool that shouldÂ only be in the hands of our soldiers and cops, as Rep. Seth Moulton wrote in the Daily News on Tuesday. I don’t think there’s anything unmanly about pointing out this fact.

Kuntzman’s fears are his own problem, not mine, and he shouldn’t make his issues the world’s issues. It also begs the question of why cops should have a weapon of mass destruction? They carry guns for the same reasons we do: self-defense. If it’s useful for police to protect the public and themselves with an AR-15, why is it then not useful to me? Just because he can’t handle it doesn’t mean he should project his inadequacies onto others.

As far as the challenges on his masculinity go: when he ridiculouslyÂ claimed shooting an AR gave him PTSD, heÂ insulted a lot of people who actually have or have had PTSD from experiencing things far far worse than firing a rifle in a safe and controlled environment. And he gets indigent that people then fling insults? He cheapened what those folks went through, and he should get over himself.

Personally, when I started shooting, especially on indoor ranges, it took a bit of conditioning to get over being jumpy at unexpected loud noises. Even when I would get used to the basic din of a range, some dude would show up with a hand cannon, or large rifle and *jump*. Some people struggle with that more than others. I suspect most of us took a bit to get used to a range, especially if we weren’t raised as shooters (which I was not).

Chris Murphy Filibustering for Gun Control

So says Roll Call. He started at 11:21. In this case he’s not filibustering to prevent a bill, but continuing to hold the floor in order to hold up the Senate’s business until it agrees to do some gun control, namely “Terror Watch List.” Personally, I think Senator Murphy can keep bloviating until he’s blue in the face. Holding up the Senate’s business? As far as I’m concerned, the less those people do the better off we all are. Senators, I say let him have his say, go out to Bullfeathers for a beer, and wait for him to finish his grandstanding.

Inquirer Reporter Commits Federal Felony

Reporter Helen Ubinas set out to show the world how easy it was to buy an AR-15, but then committed a federal felony, and violated a number of state laws. You see, Ms. Ubinas paid for the AR-15 with her company card, while answering “Yes” that she was the true buyer of the firearm. You see, if the company is buying it, then it’s a purchase by that corporation, and that corporation is what needs to go on the paperwork. If you put yourself up as the person buying, and the money is being fronted by your corporation, then that is a straw purchase.

After that she says “No need for a concealed carry permit.” Actually,Â transporting firearms in Philadelphia is illegal except under exceptions. One of those is having a License to Carry Firearms. Another is going directly from the place of purchase to your home. My Jersey readers are quite familiar with this type of transportation regime. It’s the same in Pennsylvania for handguns outside Philadelphia, but applies to all firearms in the City of Philadelphia. The only difference between New Jersey laws and Pennsylvania laws, is that licenses to carry are not difficult to get here, and they exempt you from all these transportation laws. But Ms. Ubinas admittedly drive around the city for a bit (not excepted, and thus illegal) and then drove to the police station (also not excepted, unless you’re under an order to).

I mean, I get that whipping out the company AMEX is an innocent mistake, but there’s no innocent mistake exception to what you put on a 4473. I’m actually surprised the dealer would run a corporate card through the machine without noticing. I hold out the possibility that this is all wistful fiction, and the reporter in question is a liar rather than a felon. But none of this stuff is as unregulated as the reporter leads us to believe. When dealing with guns, it’s very easy for uninitiated people to commit serious crimes without realizing it. Maybe Ms. Ubinas can have some sympathy when we argue that each new regulation, while seemingly well-intended, can often put well-meaning people in prison for understandable mistakes. If you’re going to be a serious gun owner and stay out of trouble, you have to know your law.