Category: Gun Rights

It’s a miserable Monday morning here in Southeastern, PA. Wintery mix is the worst, but fortunately, it’s converted pretty much all to rain. I don’t mind a few good snows for a season, but we’ve been fortunate, so far, that this winter isn’t shaping up like the last one. The French terrorist attacks were pretty much dominating the headlines last week, so these news links will include more off topic ones than normal:

Cars getting safer is going to become a problem for us. Even though the vast majority “gun deaths” are suicide, you can bet our opponents will play to the hilt when they can claim this is the “Number one cause of death in America!”

George Zimmerman needs to himself, and all of us a favor and check himself into a monastery.

The Mousqueton A.M.D. – France’s Mini-14.

More gun control in France? If what you do fails, just do the same thing only twice as hard.

Journalist, suddenly realizing they are targets of global jihad, debate the utility of concealed weapons.

I agree that this is shameful.

“If Jews Flee, the Republic Will Be a Failure.” Well, you know, there have already been four failed French Republics.

A lot of anti-gun folks are saying a lot of stupid things about the late happenings in France.

Looks like there was some jury nullification in a case of felon-in-posession.

The military is rejecting Beretta’s M9A3, it’s attempt to kill the Army’s Modular Handgun Program. I’m not sure anyone has considered the possibility that this is paybacks from the Administration over Beretta’s defiant stance against gun control in the wake of Sandy Hook.

Walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes. More from Tim at Gun Nuts Media.

Every year a number of Pennsylvania legislators, mostly from Philadelphia, introduce nonsense legislation that they can take back to the constituents as proof that they are doing something. It’s not intended to go anywhere. This is among that type of legislation: “Bill in the PA House of Representatives: Ban human silhouette targets.”

I don’t have cable, so I managed to finally watch the PBS Documentary on NRA on Roku. It was so filled with tired arguments and rehashed nonsense that to be honest, I don’t even really remember watching it. It was all old news, and it covered no new ground.

More fallout from Operation Chokepoint?

Fight terrorism. Shoot back!

 

Jacob wonders if moderate Dems could be the key to reciprocity. I think in the Senate, maybe. I think we would have enough to invoke cloture, but probably not enough to override a veto. We have 54 Republicans in the Senate. You can kiss Mark Kirk’s (R-IL) vote goodbye. That means we need 7 Democrats to invoke cloture. I think we have that. But that doesn’t get us to 67 to override a veto.

The bigger problem is going to be the House. How many pro-gun Dems are left? Not many. You need 290 votes to override a veto, and there are 246 GOP votes. Of course, you don’t get all 246. You can write off Peter King (R-NY) and Chris Smith (R-NJ). At least one of those GOP seats resigned already due to a guilty plea on federal charges. Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Pat Meehan (R-PA) are two squishes I would be concerned about in that vote, especially Fitzpatrick because not intending to run for his seat again in 2016, and thus no longer has to face voters.

So that gets us down to 241 Republicans likely on board, but probably there’s some I’m missing, so we’ll say 238. That leaves us having to find 52 Democratic votes to override Obama’s veto. I think we can count on maybe 10 in the House. I’m not even sure that many, I’m not sure what all pro-gun Dems we lost in the last election. But it’s definitely not 52. So Obama’s veto will hold in the House.

Now, I think we ought to pass National Reciprocity, and make him veto it. So I’m not saying it shouldn’t be pushed and voted on in the 114th Congress. But I wouldn’t be unrealistic about what we can expect. I don’t think we have enough to get an override, but we’ll see. The blue dog pro-gun Democratic is a critically engendered species in Congress by this point.

 

Familypalooza is now over, and despite the Friday after New Years this year, realistically this is when everyone is returning to work. The important thing for me is that I get to eat ham, and eat ham I did. Jews and Muslims really have no idea what they are missing. Especially the spiral cut hams that come with the glaze packets that fixes things up real nice. Now to clear out my tabs so I can start the week anew:

Over the holidays, #ImBlockedByShannonWatts became all the rage. Hey, looks like I’m blocked too!

Shocker: Wendy Davis was faking it.

Gun control groups move their attention to the states. There have been a lot of puff pieces in the media about gun control being on the ascendancy. It’s almost like someone is trying to drive a narrative. Of course, this is only because Bloomberg is willing to dump millions into it. When Bloomberg does it, it’s good. When the Koch brothers do it, EVIL!

Another Shocker: Looks like ATF was trying to use Fast and Furious to justify gun control after all. Unfortunately, because the media is willing to run cover, none of this will amount to a hill of beans. I believe the media is now a bigger threat to the Republic than any single segment of American society.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Eliminating the ATF would be horrible for gun rights. We’d have absolutely no control over the FBI, and they would be free to run roughshod over our rights, and they would do so competently.

From Washington State: Self-defense is a constitutional right.

Why are NRA people such awful Americans? Dave Hardy looks at burial places of past NRA Presidents. Most frequent place? Arlington National Cemetery. Three were awarded CMH, two Navy Crosses, and a Silver Star. Really, they only care about their gun fetish.

Much hand wringing going on in our pacific territories about the possibility that they might have to follow the Constitution.

Not that this doesn’t exist in the shooting sports, but I’ll say it again: Hunters are their own worst enemies.

Mass killing in Australia. But because there was no gun involved, I doubt it will quash the narrative that the Australian gun ban stopped mass killing in its tracks, and was thus hugely successful. Also, a mass shooting in Canada.

Attorney Joshua Prince is keeping a running tally of local municipalities in Pennsylvania which are looking at repealing their illegal gun ordinances. It looks very promising.

Gun control groups seem happy to be rid of pro-gun Democrats. That’s all well and good, but remember they had to embrace gun rights and blue dogs to get back to a majority in 2006. How many times to Dems have to be convinced that gun control is a loser for them?

“The anti-gun writers seem to be engaging more in social signaling than in argument.” It’s always been about that. They’ve never wanted a discussion. They just want to revel in their delusions of being better human beings than we are.

I’d really like to know more about how Master Card was willing to screw us. Makes me glad I only use Discover.

Since I’ve been away, I thought I’d give an update on the happenings with I-594 in Washington State. The media is already doing ground prep for the narrative that the implementation of I-594 is essentially no big deal, and what are all those stupid gun owners complaining about anyway. Expect to see a lot of this as the media tries to run cover for Bloomberg’s project.

Remember there is going to be a rally at the Capitol in Olympia on the 15th of this month to protest I-594. Joe Huffman is going to be a speaker at the rally. I think it’s important that lawmakers see a significant presence. The previous non-compliance rally drew about 1000 people from various accounts, but to really make an impact on lawmakers, it needs to be something they don’t often see. If you live in Washington, I’d make plans to go.

Also, SAF has filed suit against I-594 in court. The suit is on both Second Amendment and vagueness grounds. It doesn’t challenge the concept of background checks on change of title per se, but it really doesn’t need to. All they need to show is that the definition of “transfer” in the law is constitutionally untenable. Despite whatever severance clause may be in the law, the core of the law hinges on that definition, and the court should toss the entire law if it’s written too broadly or vaguely. It would then be up to the legislature to either fix it, or for Bloomberg and his allies to spent millions more trying to hoodwink voters again.

Nebraska and Oklahoma, in a shocking level of disrespect for the concepts of federalism, are suing the State of Colorado over legal weed. This case would be heard at the Supreme Court, since in cases of suits by one state against another, the Supreme Court has Original Jurisdiction. You might be thinking this is an off topic post, but it’s not. If Nebraska and Oklahoma were to prevail on their claim, it would open the door to states like New York and New Jersey to sue neighboring or nearby states for their gun laws. The suit against Colorado rests on the notion that Colorado’s marijuana law creates an “interstate nuisance.” That sounds an awful lot like the kinds of suits PLCAA was meant to eliminate, but PLCAA doesn’t apply to suits between states.

The people behind the lawsuits by these two states should really think about the consequences of what they are doing. Do they believe in federalism, or not?

SayUncle hilariously notes that the new American State Legislators for Gun Ownership Prevention (ASLGVP) won’t release the names of their members because they fear a political backlash. You’d think at least some of them would be like Dwight Evans, and serve in districts so safe they could have a campaign rally strangling a basket full of live puppies on stage, and still win re-election. And here I thought the NRA was losing, the gun control movement was on the ascendancy, and we didn’t have to worry any longer what those toothless cousin-humping rednecks thought?

Our opponents just don’t want to let go of the lie about background checks:

Indeed, according to a recent poll from Quinnipiac University, 92 percent of gun owners and 86 percent of Republicans, support background checks prior to all gun sales. It was widely known that the NRA was responsible for the demise of this bill, a common sense measure that was overwhelmingly supported by its own members.

The 92% number can retire into history with every other lie these people tell. Why? Because we know now that in a deep blue state, with billionaires outspending the pro-gun message 10:1, the best they could do was 59% of the vote, and it outright LOST in all the counties outside of the puget sound area (except for one eastern county). Those counties are where all the NRA members and gun owners are that supposedly support this 92%. What people tell pollsters is not necessarily what they’ll do at the voting booth, especially when it comes to opinions on guns. I also, in my response, took issue with the claim about background checks:

This is not about background checks. After Sandy Hook, we put a background check compromise on the table, lead by Senator Tom Coburn. I would have implemented Universal Background Checks in a manner that was satisfactory to gun owners and probably the NRA. Schumer laughed it out of the room, then introduced his own measure which would have criminalized handing a gun to someone else to look at, among other things. It was a trojan horse.

The problem is, the gun control groups have been trying to slip a lot by in these background check initiatives. For instance, in the Manchin-Toomey amendment, it would have stripped the safe travel provisions we fought hard for in the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986. This was only the tip of the iceberg of garbage Schumer was trying to get passed under the guise of background checks.

Again, we saw the same deceit in Washington State, where I-594 bans mere TRANSFERS of firearms, e.g. giving a firearm to someone else to shoot anywhere that’s not an “authorized range” a term which I-594 conveniently does not define. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife had to restructure it’s hunting education program to deal with this nonsense, since as it was structured presently would be illegal under I-594. They did this by deputizing the instructors, so they would fall under the law enforcement exception, in order to be able to hand a firearm to a student to teach them. Ordinary NRA instructors don’t have this option.

This is what is defined as reasonable? They know it’s unreasonable. What they are hoping for is that no one else notices these are radical measures couched in language that trick most people into believing they support it.

Well, the NRA loves themselves a good villain, given that it’s good for fundraising letters. While I doubt anyone can top Bloomberg in the category of juicy villains, I have very little doubt that Surgeon General Murthy will not disappoint. He eked by the Senate with 51 votes. Remember that Reid had changed the rules so that confirmations don’t need to reach the 60 vote majority to overcome a filibuster.

NRA scored this vote, but with enough Democrats getting the boot this cycle, that unfortunately doesn’t carry as much weight as it would have before the election.