Category: Gun Rights

By now, most of you have probably heard about Defense Distributed’s october surprise. They have chosen to make CNC milling more accessible to the masses with a machine that you can use to make receivers for about $1500. It looks like the mill starts with an 80% lower. The Wired article talks about how milling machines typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, but there are affordable mills out there that you could do more with.

My friend Jason, who has experimented with making firearms and written about it here on this blog, has a Taig mill. It would cost you a few hundred more dollars to build a protective enclosure around it, which he would recommend, since he once had a bit break off and fly across the room and embed itself in the wall before he decided to build one. This is, of course, about double the price of DD’s mill, but with a full blown Taig setup, you can make receivers from a block of aluminum.

Nonetheless, this move significantly increases the accessibility of home built firearms, and I believe that is going to be both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing, because it is now irrefutably true that gun control can never work. It is a curse because there are plenty of political elites who haven’t yet figured that out, and this gives them a new issue.

3D printing and CNC milling is new as a mass market technology (it’s existed for a long time, but only as industrial technology that was priced beyond what an ordinary consumer could afford). Being a new technology it’s going to scare people. People are more easily frightened  by technologies they don’t understand, and between all the billionaires arrayed against us, and a media able and eager to whip up public fears about guns, we could end up in a tough spot.

Our opponents in the gun ban movement have always had more luck with issues that don’t affect all that many gun owners. Remember that when the assault weapons hysteria was at its zenith in the late 80s and early 90s, not very many gun owners were familiar with the AR-15 or AK family. High-power shooters were still using the M1A, largely. That unfamiliarity bred opportunity for our opponents, because as long as you could keep your M1s, M1As, M1 Carbines, and Mini-14s, they had a lot more leeway to get the ratchet on the nut, which could always be tightened later.

The way I see it, the gun ban crowd has several options to deal with this:

• They could change the definition of an unfinished lower. This could be done at a whim, as what constitutes an 80% lower is ATF policy, not federal regulation. It wouldn’t even require ATF going through formal rule making. They could declare tomorrow that now that 80% lowers are firearms, and create a new 70% standard.
• They could require an FFL for all manufacturing and end home gun making. This would require an act of Congress. It would be completely useless to control people manufacturing with criminal intent, but there are plenty of people out there among the public, and even more in elected office, who are quite happy to criminalize behavior that frightens them, and they don’t think anyone should be doing anyway.
• They could restrict CNC and 3D printing technology as a whole. I view this as the least likely option, but if more people find things to do with this technology that scares political elites, you could see a move for this.

So far we have not had any major issues with criminals utilizing this technology. I believe the reason for this is economic — you can buy a gun off the streets in most crime ridden neighborhoods cheaper than you could make one using a CNC machine or a 3D printer. If a criminal want an untraceable gun, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to dremel the serial number off a gun than to make one from scratch in a garage. But that won’t get us off the hook. A lone wolf criminal or nutcase using this technology in a high-profile incident could be all the pretext the politicians, media, and gun control crowd need to get the ball rolling to restrict home gun building and gun smithing.

I believe Cody Wilson* is playing with fire. I’m not saying he shouldn’t do it, but we all should be aware of what’s going on here, and not kid ourselves. This might convince some people who were already disposed to be skeptical of gun control that it is now impossible, but it’s just as likely to frighten the hell out of the type of people who are easily frightened by new and scary things. Which type of person do you think there are more of?

* Pssst, Cody…. The BYO community could really use a decent home anodization kit. Just saying.

Bitter’s mother and grandmother are on their way back to Tennessee, after spending the last week up here with us. Things turned a bit cold up here for folks used to Oklahoma summers. It’s starting to feel more like fall now and less like summer.

Don’t ever let anyone try to tell you that no one wants to take your guns from you. The NJ Star-Ledger calls for Australian style confiscation. Check the comments for people debunking “It worked for Australia!” propaganda.

The changing face of target shooting. Our opponents will do everything humanly possible to halt this trend. Keep that in mind when analyze proposed legislation to gauge their strategy.

Politico: “Gabby Giffords gets mean” The best way to fight back is to help out the politicians she’s attacking, both on the streets and in the voting booth.

John Richardson has a good piece on racial profiling on Form 4473. Why they are doing this now is an interesting question.

Alan Gura on DC’s may-issue shenanigans “In America, the police don’t determine what rights we have good reason to enjoy. You don’t need a good reason to speak, to worship, to vote or to carry a gun for self-defense.”

Doctors groups seem to quite often be comprised of petty tyrants who know how to run your life better than you do. Here’s another example. You hear this a lot from gun control advocates: only federal gun laws are effective, because otherwise you can just go to a state with weaker laws. Well, then why do they keep trying to pass more controls at the state level then?

The war against accurate rifles. They’re going to hate particle beam weapons. More on that topic here.

Has Attorney General Kane offered a gift to gun owners? It seems improbable, but Josh Prince is going to try to put to some use.

SayUncle is done with the NFL. The NFL is an anti-gun organization.

Daily Caller: Top 3 Myths of the Second Amendment.

Shannon Watts: “Now, for the first time in our country’s history, there is a well-financed and formidable force positioned to take on the Washington gun lobby.” Well financed by a single billionaire asshole who has his own private armed security.

Even some Democrats are acknowledging Shaneen Allen doesn’t deserve to go to jail. This is what gun control means. When you heavily regulate a consumer product that’s widely legal most everywhere else, it necessarily means good people will go to prison. Democrats should think long and hard about that before passing everything our opponents (who are fine with gun owners going to prison) ask for.

NRA is getting involved in the race for Jim Gerlach’s old seat. I’m guessing Mike Fitzpatrick isn’t getting help this year. Fine by me, since I’ve been nothing but disappointed in him. Fitzpatrick has taken endorsements from gun control groups. Fitzpatrick has said previous he plans to step down in 2016. If this is not the case, he needs a primary challenger.

More about where NRA is spending its money this year.

Dave Kopel: New anti-gun strategies.

Off Topic:

 

Headline of the century?

Republicans need to figure this stuff out if they want to win elections. They are way behind. A big question in my mind is whether this will work for a run-of-the-mill candidate and not the new messiah incarnate.

The Fourth Amendment may be sick, but it’s not dead yet.

I hate to news links you guys so soon after doing it previously, but today is our Bucks County Friends of the NRA Banquet, for which Bitter is co-chair and I serve on the committee (and will be co-chair next year, as Bitter is stepping down) and Bitter’s Mom and Grandmother are visiting, so lots of stuff going on this week.

Shooting in defense of pets.

A lot of folks are talking about the New York Times admitting the Assault Weapons issue was bullshit. I think there’s a concerted effort by anti-gun groups to spread this story so gun owners feel safe and go back to sleep. Once that happens, next Sandy Hook like pretext, they are going to come after us differently, not trying to get everything and the kitchen sink. But that will open the floodgates.

$350 million for gun control from another rich asshole.

Speaking of rich assholes, looks like NRA has started a site meetbloomberg.com. Bloomberg is a great villain. What we have to hope is that he stays at the center of the debate.

I don’t know about the antis, but I personally prefer it when our nation’s police officers can shoot straight.

Turns out that there is mounting scientific evidence showing that natural supplies of lithium in water correlate to suicide rates. I’ll be it correlates better than gun ownership does with suicide rates. (h/t Instapundit)

The Brady Center is suing Lucky Gunner for selling the Aurora killer ammo. I will analyze that complaint when I come across it. “[T]he case will allege that BulkAmmo.com was negligent in allowing the purchase without any ‘screening mechanism to determine his identity or intent for the products.'” This is sure to be even worse than the case I mentioned yesterday. I actually think someone needs to countersue the Bradys. There are usually sanctions for filing frivolous lawsuits. Punch back twice as hard.

Remember, our opponents are against the very notion of self-defense. Well, maybe they’d agree hitting someone repeatedly with a flower would be a reasonable level of force one could use in self-defense.

I guess Kathy Kane doesn’t want to make people think she’s too anti-gun. She’s pooped in a lot of punchbowls in Harrisburg. She can’t really afford powerful enemies.

Things are looking better for Shaneen Allen, but we should keep the pressure on.

I suspect this is a ploy to derail ATF 41P. ATF can’t define person to mean one thing in one context, and another thing in another context.

It’s the anniversary of 9/11, and I don’t really have much to say after 13 years. Maybe after 40 we’ll have sales at Penny’s. If it hasn’t been apparent, I’m suffering a bit from blogger burnout. Most of that is because I really just don’t have the time right now. In truth, these past few weeks have been quite generally unproductive, so I don’t think it’s just blogger burnout, but burnout in general. The cure for burnout, for me at least, is usually a vacation, but even if I had somewhere to go, I have things I need to spend money on that aren’t a vacation, like digging a fallout shelter in the back yard. I kid for now, but if the Bear keeps terrorizing the countryside, I might not be kidding. I never had high hopes for this Administration, but if you had told me the Cold War might be back on like in the good old days, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Andrew Cuomo won his primary, but not nearly by the margin he should have as a well-funded incumbent against poorly funded challengers. Jacob notes in the link that it’s being acknowledged that Cuomo’s support for the SAFE Act is a big reason why he fell short of expectations.

Please note some of the unintended consequence of the “law and order” stance of “throw the book at criminals who violate our guns laws.” I’d personally love to see the “law and order” strain in the center-right coalition die the quiet death is richly deserves. I get why we’ve wagged that dog int he past, but it’s always been an unsavory business, and it does us no good to pretend otherwise.

More accurate headline: The NRA Pissed Off the Wrong Billionaire, or maybe the right one. In fact, the effort in Washington State to end private transfers of firearms is headlined almost exclusively by billionaires. Remember, it’s OK to buy democracy, as long as it’s the right people doing it.

Remember, it is unlawful to carry weapons on public transportation in Illinois.

Mother Jones thinks “These Women Are the NRA’s Worst Nightmare.” I hate to tell you Mother Jones, but no. We’ve been through much worse than the likes of Shannon Watts. I’d much rather have Bloomberg and Watts as opponents than the Brady’s, who were a D.C. power couple even before they got into gun control. I’d much rather have an unpopular and failed Obama Administration in the bully pulpit than a popular are politically adroit Clinton Administration. There is no comparison.

Why gun control groups have moved away from the assault weapons bans? It’s naive to believe it’s not still on the agenda. They are just looking for ways to score a victory without rousing our community to oppose them, and they’ve learned assault weapons bans tend to do that. They will ban any gun they can get away with politically if you give them half a chance.

SayUncle notes that using wasp spray as a defensive spray, as an article suggests, is a violation of federal law. I also doubt very much it would be effective. Actual defensive sprays have their place, but I wouldn’t use one to stop a home invasion. Home invasions are deadly force situations.

SayUncle notes that the guy in WalMart who was shot dead holding a BB gun was likely swatted. Bob Owens is also on the case.

Eugene Volokh: The Last American Jurisdiction with a Total Handgun Ban. There’s an awful lot of pacific territories that are unfriendly toward guns. It’s good to see that might be changing. John Richardson has more background not he case. Bitter’s grandfather was stationed on Tinian in World War II as a mechanic, but was shipped back to Hawaii only a few months before this most famous aircraft went rolling down the runway there with it’s rather infamous payload.

The Second Amendment isn’t just about firearms. Someone ought to tell that to Mike Honda.

Thirdpower has snapshots of the rally and counter-rally at Chuck’s Gun Shop in Cooke County. They headed to Pennsylvania right after, but didn’t say where until the lawsuits were filed. I’ll have more to say on that later.

Panera Bread has caved to Shannon Watts. I suspect they wanted to avoid the kind of Bloomberg funded ad campaign currently being waged against Kroger. Where would their movement be without rich assholes? It’s the same play, however. Panera doesn’t actually change it’s policy, but instead releases a statement saying guns are icky so Shannon Watts can fundraise off another “victory.”

Bloomberg getting bored with gun control? I’m not relaxing. It doesn’t take much effort to write checks, and Bloomberg can outspend NRA every year for the rest of his life just by occasionally cleaning out his sofa cushions.

NRO: Anatomy of a GOP Disaster, talking about the Corbett Campaign. The biggest complaint against Corbett from the center-right is that he’s been a do-nothing governor. To me, that’s hardly a sin. I worry more about what politicians are going to do to me than for me. But being a loser Republican this year has to take a special talent, when you look at how other states are faring poll wise.

Anti-gun people won’t give up on this ridiculous notion that guns cause suicides. I can state this very confidently: owning a firearm does not increase my risk of death by suicide one bit. If I die from my own hand it’s going to be by fried foods and booze.

Another mass knifing in China. He stabbed 8 children and a teacher, three fatally.

A lot of anti-gun folks really are terrible people, but let’s not pretend we don’t have assholes on our side too. Though, to be honest, I’ve never seen anything like this on our side.

A teacher in Utah has an accidental discharge while, well, having an… err… intentional discharge. A professor in Idaho also screws up. This obviously is not going to help our cause. While I still strongly believe most people who carry are safe, there is a small number of buffoons out there who will ruin it for the rest of us. We’re probably very fortunate the Missouri Legislature chose to override Governor Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that would allow limited carry in schools, and also preempt local communities when it comes to open carry.

From The Firearm Blog: Guns, Ignorance and Superstition in Africa, and The Winchester 94 in WWII.

Mike McDaniel of Bearing Arms: A Submachine Gun Primer.

Remember, gun control works.