The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
About 800 people turn out in Montpelier to tell the Vermont Legislature “no” on the Burlington gun control ordinance. In Vermont, there is preemption, but there’s a provision for the state legislature to approve local ordinances.
Looks like good turnout. There’s always a worry I have that all the lefties that have been relocating to Vermont will start making the idea of passing restrictive gun laws plausible.
It’s a slow news day folks. After a pretty good beginning of the week, the end of the week is looking, well, weak. I’m struggling here just to offer some news links:
Good show from a Chicago Police Officer who was off duty when he was robbed. Notice how he takes back the initiative from the robbers like a boss.
It’s looking possible to topple Malloy in CT, and even Hawaii is in play. Booting Malloy would be a great victory for gun owners. Tom Foley seems to be a bit tepid on the gun issue, but is making overtures at least toward the gun vote. Booting the person who screwed you still has value.
What other rights should be restrict with subjective standards?
Illinois IGOLD rally for 2014 was yesterday, and Thirdpower has pictures. Some drop off from previous years, but not nearly as much as I would have expected given that they got concealed carry this year. Stay hungry, Illinoisans, you still have a lot of improvements that need to be made.
Another boner of an article from Lt. Col. Robert Bateman. Ted Nugent sure is a good foil for the other side.
AR-15 giveaway stirs outrage in New York. Even the world’s ugliest AR-15 is too much for them. That should tell you something.
Apparently the Dems are doing all they can to defend their gun control policies in Colorado. I’d note that 6200 is way way way off the 40% these doofuses were floating around when they were hawking the bill. Either that number of bogus, or, like in Connecticut, there’s massive non-compliance. I suspect it’s a combination of both.
Venture Beat falls for the PR spin of the ridiculous gun control groups. But hey, if they fall for it, then it’s a win. They could probably just make all kinds of victories up and the media would buy it. Meanwhile, the Washington Times calls it like it really is. Robb has a peek at the new interface for Facebook.
A whole lot of truth being said here. Hopefully people can handle the truth.
Guns aren’t required for mass murder. Good thing no one had any guns or someone might have gotten hurt.
Rally this Sunday in Montpelier, for those of you in Vermont.
Wayne LaPierre is giving his CPAC speech now. This is usually where the antis get their ad copy for the next few years.
From March 8-11, 26 cyclists will pedal from Sandy Hook, Connecticut to Washington DC, and their route will take them through my county. There is a rally planned in Doylestown for this Sunday to protest. I gave some thought about whether or not I will attend, but I am of mixed feelings on the best way to deal with this situation, and I have some reservations about the organizers.
One the one hand, the Sandy Hook riders don’t seem to be getting much attention. They currently rank 5063 “likes” on Facebook, with 632 “talking about this.” Hardly a movement. They also aren’t really pulling down much news coverage, at least as of now. There does come a point where all you’re accomplishing by protesting is helping them make a story and get in the news, when they might otherwise be ignored.
On the other hand, I also think they shouldn’t ever be allowed to occupy the field without being opposed if our side still retains the energy for opposition. They should know they are wading into controversy, and that there are fellow citizens who oppose their political agenda. They shouldn’t be able to get away with making their positions look non-controversial, or trying to pass off an obvious political statement as a memorial ride.
So I’m torn on whether a counter-protest is even the right tactic at all, but if protesting is the right thing, the deciding factor turns on what is the best protesting tactic. In my opinion passive opposition is the way to go here. I don’t think passive opposition is always the correct tactic, but I think it is in this particular circumstance it is. The group organizing this protest is Concerned Gun Owners of PA (formerly Concerned Gun Owners of Bucks County) who are not known for using passive tactics. They are better known for armed demonstration combined with aggressive, in-your-face tactics.
CGOBC sprung up right after Sandy Hook, and I attended several of their meetings and rallies. We attended a few meetings with some of their leaders. The group ended up splitting into two organizations last year, largely due to disagreement about tactics. I soured on CGOBC after the mother’s day rally, especially when they started to generate negative headlines having one of their leaders photographed screaming in the face of a little old lady. When you’re in a position of strength, as we are now, I think it’s best to behave as if you’re in a position of strength. Passive protest is the right tactic in this circumstance. Just be seen, and have someone ready to speak to the media when they come around. Don’t let the headline become armed protesters show up to intimidate a memorial ride. Unfortunately, CGOPA hasn’t shown (to me, at least) that they are good at using wise tactics.
UPDATE: Yep. It’s a parody site. It would have been interesting had it been true.
I have no way of knowing whether this is credible or not, but this article suggests that the reason Connecticut isn’t going through their registry record of sales to round up illegal “assault weapons” is because if they did so, they’d have to round up most of their cops.
With in hours a print off of all sworn Law Enforcement officers in the state was obtained. Comparisons of the list of gun owners who failed to comply with registration requirements and sworn LEOs showed a startling figure. Just over 68% of Connecticut cops had failed to register firearms according to the new law.
Of course, if this is true, it means they are running the numbers and thinking about door-to-door confiscation. But I thought the very idea of that made us paranoid whack jobs? These guys really have no idea what kind of fire they are playing with.
UPDATE: Someone in the comments thinks it’s parody. I’ve never heard of this site before, so it’s possible it’s a parody.
Sadly, I managed to lose a number of tabs in Safari, so that means a smaller news dump today than usual:
Are people really this stupid? Sadly, yes.
When they come. When you boil away all the feel good nonsense, Bob’s nightmare scenario is what gun control means in the end. They don’t enforce these laws with time outs and hugs at the end. If you’re going to make something a serious felony, it had better be worth subjecting people to this, because that’s what it means.
Predictions of doom from Idaho on allowing campus carry. None of these predictions have panned out anywhere else. By now they should have zero credibility.
Massad Ayoob: Why gun people need to travel carefully.
Brady’s fuzzy math on NICS denials. They act like every single one of those people denied would have robbed a bank or something if they had gotten a gun. A large percentage of them are actually false positives.
ATF:Â They set a higher standard for us than they live up to themselves.
At what age can someone set up an NFA trust?
Our opponents at least do failure well.
All Nine Yards is looking to target some Florida MAIG mayors.
Ruger is expanding in North Carolina. We won the Civil War because the North had all the arms manufacturing. My guess if America wants to excise the blue state appendix in the future, it will have little trouble.
NRA is scoring the surgeon general vote. I’m kind of surprised they’d pick a fight over this. Does anyone care what the surgeon general has to say these days?
West Virginia enhancing preemption.
They get an A for boldness, but I doubt Giffords and Kelly will find much success in this strategy.
There’s been a fair amount of talk about new NICS regulations from the right, but I don’t see anything that really causes me great concern. The provisions are:
I’m not sure that, under the Brady Act, that the President has the authority for provisions one or two, as the Act makes it pretty clear that the NICS system is for the use of Federal Firearms Licensees. State or tribal law enforcement access is simply not mentioned.
This is another case where the Obama Administration is acting unilaterally, beyond its power, but where it’s unclear who would have standing to sue. Federal Firearms Licensees are still permitted to access the system, and therefore aren’t harmed, necessarily, by tribal or or state and local police having access to the system.
The third provision would be allowed under the Brady Act. Perhaps it could be argued that provision one and two are reasonable, but they should require Congress to act rather than the President acting unilaterally.
Emily Miller notes they are at it again:
Thus, the experts found that at least 43 common rifles would suddenly be considered a prohibited “assault firearm,†such as the .22 caliber Marlin Model 60, Remington Nylon 66 and Winchester 190.
When New Jersey instituted its original Assault Weapons Ban back in the 90s during the Florio Administration, the Model 60 had a 17 round tube magazine standard. There were tons of these weapons in the hands of New Jersey gun owners, with their owners completely unaware they had an assault rifle that had to be registered. You still hear stories every once in a while of some poor fool getting pinched for having an unregistered early Model 60.
Marlin modified the rifle to only hold 15 rounds, but now it appears all those people who have compliant guns would be forced to register them as assault weapons, which most won’t because they would never imagine they own an “assault firearm” as they are classified in New Jersey Law. This will instantly create more felons, which is probably the idea.
If we can’t get a veto out of Christie for this, he might as well just decide not to run for President right now.
I appreciate everyone’s patience with the fact that I can’t really post much on Tuesdays and Fridays, which are the days I’m in the office. We just have too much going on right now, and the company has lost a lot of time because of the winter weather this season. When I’m home, I recover two to three hours every day not having to commute, so I can contribute more content to the blog.
The Week wants to ban the Second Amendment. They note that a “consolidated democracy” has never gone “Full Weimar.” What’s a consolidated democracy? And what’s full Weimar? The Weimar Republic was no picnic, but it’s what came after that was the problem. Someone is a bit history challenged. Ask Ukraine or Venezuela how democracy worked out for them?
The push from Coalition to Stop Gun Violence to get Visa to drop its NRA program is getting a decent amount of press, despite the fact that almost no one showed up to the protest. The burning white hot hate that CSGV has for NRA’s 5 million members couldn’t be more apparent.
E.J. Dionne’s Stand Your Ground fantasies. More on this from Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection.
Another Connecticut newspaper arguing that 300,000 of their fellow citizens belong in jail. This is Irish Democracy at work. My hat is off to the refuseniks.
Remember, our opponents in the gun control movement believe you have an obligation to obey. You need to sit back and take whatever your government dishes out. Comply citizen!
Should we amend the Second Amendment? I’d like to. I’d suggest “The right of the people to buy, transport, carry, bear, practice with, repair, arms, which means firearms, ammunition, particle beam weapons, knives, swords, and any other weapon one can pick up and carry, shall not be infringed. Period! That means strict scrutiny. That means no balancing tests or judicial weaseling. We mean it.” But I’m pretty sure they’d find a way to screw that up too.
Unfortunately, I think the republican spirit is dead.
Off topic: Clayton brings up one of my pet peeves, the H1B program. It traps immigrants in often lousy jobs at substandard pay, and makes it too difficult for them to compete on the open market with everyone else. It’s a terrible program and it should be replaced with a visa that’s portable across jobs. That way they aren’t abused by companies as sources of cheap, compliant labor.
Personally, I think Piers Morgan, now departing CNN, probably helped our cause more than hurt it. Talk about someone you don’t really want on your side.
The sooner someone with mental illness gets treatment, the better the outcomes. Though, our elites and media prefer to ignore mentally ill people until they go on shooting sprees, and then blame the “gun culture.”
“Some Thoughts About Remington, Jobs, And Its Union”
California could see 1.4 million concealed carry licenses issued.
Another false flag? They are popping up like daisies.
The truth hurts: A parody of the Moms who demand action.
More from Reason about the Irish Democracy breaking out all over Connecticut.
I’m surprised by how many people think a sellout by Chris Christie is preordained. Remember that he vetoed the worst of the post-Newtown package, including the 50 caliber ban. He did sign a bill regarding the terrorist watch list that turns out can’t be implemented, however. While I don’t exactly trust Christie on the gun issue, it does seem to me that there’s at least reasonable hope that with sufficient pressure from the gun community, you might be able to muster another veto out of him. If Jerry Brown can veto a few gun control bills, so can Chris Christie.
Democratic lawmakers in both house of the legislature have struck a deal that would allow passage of a measure restricting gun owners to a 10-round
magazine, down from the current limit of 15, two sources with knowledge of the
deal said today.In exchange, the legislature will shepherd through a gun-owner championed bill that would define what are known in the gun world as “reasonable deviations” to the law governing transport of a firearm.
Currently a gun owner may only transport an unloaded, stored weapon straight to the destination, be it on a hunting trip or to a gun range. Under the law, a gun owner may detour from the route only for deviations that are “reasonable.”
So in exchange for something that they should just give us, because it’s a right, you know, they go from 15 to 10? No deal. Kill it with fire. I believe the purpose of this is to tempt Chris Christie to ruin his own national ambitions. The Democrats probably feel they have nothing to lose. If Christie signs the bill, he’ll create the same problems with the base that McCain and Romney had. If he vetoes, Democrats in New Jersey believe gun control wins elections, so they will make an issue out of it in the next Governor’s race. The Dems believe they have everything to gain and Christie everything to lose. But will he be dumb enough to sign it if he wants to run for the GOP nod for 2016?
