Category: Anti-Gun Folks

According to Paul Helmke my penchant for assault rifles could lead me to become violent:

A new 21-page Federal indictment charging the shooter’s father describes a house where there were at least “20 guns, including assault rifles, a semiautomatic shotgun, two semiautomatic rifles, bolt-action shotguns and semiautomatic pistols” along with “more than 2,500 round of ammunition.”

Ignoring for a second the fact that real AK-47s are effectively illegal, this sounds a lot like the contents of my safe.  I have a lot more than 2500 rounds. I don’t quite have 20 guns yet, but it’s good to have goals. I’m very much in favor of getting guns off our streets (and into my safe). Just for this, Brady Campaign Folks, I’m going to buy another so called “assault weapon” with my tax refund check. It’s a little “screw you” from me to you ;) I’m thinking maybe a Robinson Arms XCR in 7.62x39mm.

According to Pro-Gun Progressive, the Brady Campaign is requiring registration for their blog comments. I suppose they got tired of the volume of pro-gun comments on it, and figured since we don’t like the r-word very much, this might keep us off :) It doesn’t appear to me that the comments are still restricted. It seems to have the same WordPress style comment section as it had before

But seriously, it does look like registration isn’t restricted, but to be honest, I’ve never felt good about signing up for their mailing list or other such things. Who knows whether they count registrations or mailing list members for purposes of counting how much grass roots support they have. If a politician were told there are 20,000 people on the Brady mailing list, do you think they’d realize half of them might be pro-gun people “keeping tabs”?

I was amused at the volume of pro-gun comments when they opened them up, but I didn’t ever comment there, because I didn’t see much point. I mean, it’s not like Sarah Brady is going to come out and say “OK, I was wrong, now who wants to show me how you field strip this AR-15?”, or Paul Helmke will start asking for advise on a good reloading press.

UPDATE: Crap.. it got rid of my first update.  Anyway, I said I rethought this, and decided that it’s not a waste of time to post over there, just in case anyone on the fence happens by their blog.  I don’t plan to make a regular habit of it though.

UPDATE: Yeah, the comments work. I just submitted one. It goes into a moderation queue and has to be approved. You can see your comment, but no one else can. That’s how it was working before.

Clayton Cramer does an excellent job tearing apart Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke’s latest statements against state pushing parking lot carry at work. I know I’ve come out against this bill for other reasons, but the Brady Campaign are still completely full of crap:

“This is not about personal freedom – getting shot in the workplace by someone who has retrieved a gun from the parking lot is the opposite of freedom,” said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign. “This is about preserving the ability of companies to make workplaces as safe as they can be, and free from gun violence.”

If I’m the kind of person who is going to go out to the car to get a gun to shoot someone, I’m not the kind of person who is going to give a crap about some HR policy. When are the Brady Campaign going to realize that rules and laws don’t stop these kinds of people? There is no policy that a company can make that will stop a employee who is intent on murder, save not hiring people with criminal histories in the first place.

While I don’t agree that employers should be forced to keep employees because they won’t respect the terms under which the employer agrees to continue their relationship, I absolutely agree that any HR department that thinks a no weapons policy does anything to stop workplace violence are as delusional as Paul Helmke.

Be sure to read Clayton’s entire post. It’s pretty good.

First we get an alert from the NRA about another barrage of hearing arranged by the usual suspects in Philadelphia. Then I pull up the Brady Homepage and notice a PATH graphic with link displayed prominently. Aside from the usual loads of bullshit like:

Under current law, a person can go into a gun shop and buy 10, 20, even 30 handguns without incident.

Except for the fact that the dealer has to fill out an ATF form and submit it to them inform them that they’ve made a sale of more than one handgun to an individual. Under Pennsylvania law, licensees are also required to inform the sheriff of the county the sale takes place in that he made a sale involving more than one handgun. So while PATH would love to have you believe you can just do this under the table without regulation, they would be deceiving you.

The advocates of one-gun-per month have never been able to offer up sound evidence that this type of trafficking, rather than more informal purchases through friends and family, is a significant source of crime guns. Considering the amount of ATF and state oversight that’s already in place on multiple gun sales, I find it difficult to believe it’s significant.  It should also be pointed out that Richmond, VA, in a state that already has a gun rationing law, has a much higher level of violent crime than Philadelphia.

It’s interesting to see what groups form PATH, which is your usual suspects in the Pennsylvania anti-gun movement, including Cease Fire New Jersey, who want to bring the Garden’s state’s wonderful gun control laws to Pennsylvania, so presumably we can have the same overall violent crime rate that they do.  Oh, but I forgot, we already do have pretty much the same crime rates.  Of course, some of New Jersey’s numbers are higher.  And they achieve all this without a major city like Philadelphia!

I mean, given that we’ve had Parker, and now a New Jersey court (frigging New Jersey!), saying the second amendment protects an individual right, the folks at the Brady Campaign and Violence Policy center have to be crapping in their pants.

UPDATE: The Brady’s seem to have noticed my fun at their expense, and commented that they aren’t really that worried:

Even the Parker decision — which is definitely regarded as out-of-step with precedent — allowed that “reasonable restrictions” would still be permitted under their new interpretation of the Second Amendment. So the things we actually advocate for (background checks, anti-trafficking laws, child-safety locks, law enforcement) aren’t impacted by the Parker ruling.

They are right about Parker still leaving a lot wide open, but you have to admit, for pro-second amendment decisions to be coming out of New Jersey is pretty startling, even to me. I can’t imagine that if an individual rights view is ultimately upheld, it will make things easier for them.

SayUncle points to the Brady release that “striking down the District of Columbia’s handgun law is judicial activism at its worst.”

So let me get this straight, you guys don’t want to ban guns, you only want “reasonable regulations” on firearms. But getting rid of DCs near total prohibition on firearms is “judicial activism at its worst”?

If DCs gun ban is a reasonable regulation, then I’ll proudly be unreasonable.

You’ll forgive me for a brief lapse in maturity here.  From the DC court opinion:

To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

So, to the Brady folks, Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center, Bryan Miller of New Jersey Ceasefire, The Gun Guys, Joyce Foundation, and all our other fun furry friends in the anti-gun movement who love telling us how the second amendment doesn’t protect an individual right:

TTTTTTBBBBBBBBTTTTTTTT :P

Well, no, not really. Paul Helmke is full fo shit:

After posting this blog, Zumbo was fired from the magazine, had his television show on the Outdoor Channel cancelled, and lost his sponsors. The NRA suspended their long-term relationship with Zumbo and pointed to the destruction of Zumbo’s career as an example of what happens when somebody crosses them. Some outdoor writers have started to speak up, however.

Sorry Paul, but the NRA mind control rays were off that weekend. We did that all on our own, without any direction from the NRA. As has been pointed out hundreds of times, the NRA didn’t even say a damned thing until it was all over.

We need to be asking what these weapons are used for and whether they need to be regulated in order to promote public safety. If some don’t like the restrictive definitions being proposed, what alternatives do they suggest? Or, should we have no restrictions, even on actual “terrorist rifles”?

Millions of gun owners use these rifles for competitive and recreational shooting. What to you think the annual Camp Perry shooting competition is? Take a look at the rifles most commonly used in that competition. That’s not even speaking of their utility for self-defense.

The restrictions on these rifles needs be no different than any other rifle, because they ARE no different than any other rifle you ignorant twit. They just look scary.

A word of caution to you folks: The Brady’s very much want to keep the Zumbo controversy alive, and drive the wedge deeper between shooters and hunters, because it helps them tremendously. All you folks out there who seem to be unwilling to welcome Jim back to the fold need to understand that. If we drive a wedge between hunters and shooters, Helmke and his friends at AHSA will be popping champaign corks. Now is the time for unity, and we need Mr. Zumbo.