Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Jim Kessler of Third Way is either ignorant of the law, or he’s a lying sack of shit. In this article:

But then one day, one of the litigants against the gun industry obtained this data and used it to show negligence and malfeasance among some in the gun industry. So at the expense of law abiding citizens, Congressman Tiahrt, at the request of the NRA, limited the information supplied to police. Post-Tiahrt, police would still learn the name of the original buyer and the gun store that sold it, but that’s about it. If they ask ATF about suspicious activity, ATF is forbidden by the Tiahrt Amendment to divulge it. If that original buyer is also the original buyer of ten other guns traced to crimes across the country, that information is guarded by ATF as if it were the Holy Grail.

The police are still able to request trace data as part of a bonafide criminal investigation. Both the ATF and the Fraternal Order of Police favor keeping the trace data restricted. All Tiahrt does is prohibit the information from being released to cities so city politicians can’t endanger criminal investigations. That’s why the ATF and FOP are opposing relaxing the restrictions on this material.

Also, trace data doesn’t work this way. Trace data allows law enforcement, given a recovered firearm from a crime scene, to find the trail of legal ownership. It doesn’t allow them to find, Tiahrt amendment or no, what other guns a person might own.

For a Progressive Strategy group, Third Way doesn’t seem to accept that gun control has been a disaster as a political issue.  Gun-control supporters aren’t as motivated or organized as we are, and we can hurt a lot more on election day than they can.  If guns rank high in someone’s political calculus, there’s an overwhelming likelihood they are pro-gun.

It kind of amazes me the number of people in the anti-gun movement that get charged with firearms crimes.  You’d kind of expect it to happen to us more often, but I think most of us know the law and try to stay out of trouble.   Dave Hardy links to the latest case of gun-control activists getting charged with gun crimes.

The founder of an anti-gang organization known as No Guns, once funded by the city of Los Angeles, was arrested Thursday and charged with selling firearms to federal undercover officers.

Hector “Big Weasel” Marroquin, 51, was arrested at his home in the 8000 block of 6th Street in Downey, said Susan Raichel, a spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

He was charged with the sale of an assault rifle, a machine gun, two pistols and two silencers, Raichel said.

So you kind of  wonder if  this guy favors gun control just like any other business owner favors laws that help his business.  If you’re an illegal arms dealer, you have to love the idea of the government sending more business your way.   Getting 1.5 million from the City of Los Angeles to hand out to your relatives doesn’t hurt either.

I’m not prepared to shout hypocrite.  It seems to be “Big Weasel” is just a very smart black marketeer.   Certainly smarter than the idiots who apparently run Los Angeles.

It looks like one of the blogs I linked to earlier in the day has decided to engage me in some dialog:

So I was a little surprised to see that I was branded as an anti-gun misanthrope simply for posting about an article on Gun Guys; here’s my response

I didn’t say misanthrope. I did say anti-gun, which was a bit of an assumption on my part, I will admit. But is it accurate?:

First, you’re right; I do not like guns although I was raised even as a little girl to know how to handle them and to shoot. But not liking is rather different from “anti-gun”.

I respect anyone’s right to not like guns. I will fully admit they aren’t for everyone. I should probably clarify terms of art here. On our blogosphere community, “anti-gun” is synonymous with “pro-gun control”, and yeah, we tend to fairly broadly apply it.

Second, while I am strongly FOR gun education and safety, I do not campaign against guns or likewise. To some degree, adults should be able to choose their particular interests without having the feds in your face all the time.

Does this include my interest in shooting .50 BMG caliber rifles, AR-15 rifles and Glock pistol? I would hope someone who eschews the label “anti-gun” would agree that law abiding adults should be free to shoot the firearms they are most comfortable with, and enjoy shooting. If you support banning these, then you support taking away the guns I enjoy shooting, which, at least in my book, would qualify as “anti-gun”.

Third, as part of item two, I support intelligent gun laws that allow those who want to shoot as a passtime (or use for protection). I just happen to prefer not to use, see, or even have brought into my home or office a handgun or anything larger.

And I would agree that’s totally within your rights to not want a gun or to want one in your home. It’s “intelligent gun laws” that I expect would be the point of contention between us. What might be intelligent to you, probably isn’t to me. I’m not saying you’re unintelligent, just that the label is very subjective.

Fourth – and here’s probably the biggest gap between us – while some may call it issue advocacy at The Gun Guys, I find them a good place to start for information on an issue that I can then research through other means. After checking out several items, I find GunGuys generally less invested in spin than many of the sites that promote the “give every American a gun” ideals.

As someone who knows just about all the federal, and many state gun laws, and knows quite a bit about firearms mechanically, and the various shooting sports out there, I can tell you with some authority the Gun Guys are pretty much full of crap. You can choose not to believe that if you want, but it’s true. We tend to ignore them in the gun blogosphere, because they are generally so far off base as to not add much serious to the conversation. Even Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign, we dignify with more thoughtful responses.

Since this post mentions the need for education, I say hell yes! We can start with a better reading of the 2nd amendment as to what it DOES say, rather than what some wish to infer.

I know what it says, I’ve spent a fairly large amount of time researching what it means aside from the plain words. I’ve also researched a number of state constitutional provisions, many of which are much more clear about protecting an individual rights. Lately, even the liberal constitutional scholars like Larry Tribe and Stanford Levinson have embraced the view that it protects an individual right. The legal academy has generally come to accept the individual rights view.

Now how the scope of this right will be constructed, or should be constructed, by the courts is up for debate, but all we generally ask is that the right to keep and bear arms be held in the same regard as other constitutional rights.

 

You know you’re in need of some educating on the gun issue when you’re using The Gun Guys as an authoritative source. Most of us have better things to do than comment on anti-gun blogs, but sometimes it’s good to talk to the other side. You’ll probably never change the blogger’s mind, but for the sake of people who might stumble across the post, it’s important to point out errors and ignorance. Most people say they support gun control because most people have no idea what the gun laws currently are, and don’t know anything about them mechanically, their use in sport, self-defense, or other places.

It’s important to educate. It’s really the best way to help the cause.

My shipment of venom and vitriol is late this week.

I’ve heard more than a few gun control proponents say privately that if people didn’t own guns, there wouldn’t be any way to steal them.  Publically, they won’t say this, because Handgun Control Inc. The Brady Campaign supposedly isn’t in favor of banning handguns any longer, at least publically.

One of these days I’m going to write a post on substitution.   There’s some interesting statics that I’ve run across that I want to share, which basically show that if you close down one means of criminal access to firearms, it boosts other means.  Create background checks at point-of-sale, you get a straw purchase problem.   Shut down straw purchases, you get a theft problem.   Shut down theft, you get more organized smuggling.  There will always be someone to fill the demand, which is obvious to us.   But the anti-gun folks are always going to push to close that one last “loophole” until we can’t own anything anymore.

The Brady Campaign made a press release today urging California to pass the microstamping bill:

Microstamping technology was most recently demonstrated last Friday at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. There, the co-inventor of the technology, Todd Lizotte, conducted a successful live fire demonstration of the technology at the building’s shooting range with media
and Hill staff in attendance. Participants were able to see the remarkable clarity and redundancy of the technology when Lizotte projected a microscopic view of a microstamped cartridge onto a projector screen. “All of the questions about microstamping have been answered,” said Joshua Horwitz, Executive Director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun
Violence. “It has passed test after test. Law enforcement leaders want this. Community groups want this. It’s time to get it done.”

Interesting.  I thought guns were illegal in Washington D.C.  I’m curious to know exactly how the firearm was brought into the district, and under what conditions this test was conducted.  Of course, it’s quite possible and probably that they wouldn’t face prosecution here, because of the Parker decision (which they are against) in any case.   Wouldn’t that be a fun bit of irony?

Of course, it isn’t true that this technology is a panacea:

To test the effects of repeated firing, Beddow fitted engraved firing pins into six Smith and Wesson .40-caliber handguns that were issued to California Highway Patrol cadets for use in weapons training. After firing about 2,500 rounds, the letter/number codes on the face of the firing pins were still legible with some signs of wear. But the bar codes and dot codes around the edge of the pins were badly worn.

They also found that results varied widely depending on the type of firearm used, and the type of ammunition.  Of course, there’s also this:

Codes engraved on the face of the firing pin could easily be removed with household tools, Beddow found.

And you can bet, just like criminals remove serial numbers, they’ll remove these as well.  And these will be much more easily and thoroughly removed than serial numbers.

I’m not sure this serves any other purpose than to frustrate manufacturers, and drive smaller custom shops and gun makers out of business.  That would be fine by most of the groups who are supporting this nonsense.

I think it’s quite possible that, rather than an astroturfing campaign, we’re seeing the fact that newspapers just love this “I’m a gun owner, but I support gun control” articles.  I should be clear that if it is astroturfing, I don’t think the Brady’s are behind it.  My guess would be the AHSA, but this is the tin foil hat talking.  It very well may be that the newspapers just dig this gun owners for gun control meme, and are giving people with this idea preferential treatment.

But something sure does smell funny.