Category: Gun Rights

I hope everyone is thawing nicely. I notice my thermometer is now up to 18 degrees, on its way to 23. It’s a heat wave! Here’s some news for this Wednesday:

Eugene Volokh takes on the “spray firing from the hip,” nonsense spread by our opponents. I’d note that the District Court in NYSRPA v. Cuomo bought this line, and included it in the opinion upholding the SAFE Act.

Miguel notes that MDA seems to be in favor of complete bans on sales or transfer of firearms. Shannon Watts is a radical anti-gun extremists. I’m still quite surprised Bloomberg has chosen to back the crazy.

Are New Jerseyans starting to question the anti-gun dogma? Stranger things have happened.

The Bundeswehr is upgrading their venerable MG3, which is essentially the MG42 from WWII chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO.

An assault bat.

Gun control groups in Colorado are taking a fresh look at banning carry on college campuses.

The Weapons Blog has a look at gun giveaway contests.

Dave Hardy takes a look at a new book on jury nullification.

“New York’s Face-Free Gun Ruling”

The Democrats would really like Mike Bloomberg’s money without all that gun control claptrap. I’m not sure he’s really given up. Even if Shannon Watts is a whack job, his money is still a threat.

Dead AK-47 Inventor To Be Buried In Mud For A Week, Cleaned Off, Then Put Back To Work.

It’s been published in the federal register. This is the first step an agency takes when it wants to change a rule, according to the Administrative Procedure Act. This is a proposal. There will be a public comment period, where the public can provide feedback. The docket number for this proposed change is ATF 51P. Reader Chris sent me some analysis which I agree with, so I will reproduce it here:

I forgot to blog this over the holidays, but a local sheriff resigned her position to accept a job at a local university. I’m sure the pay is comfortable, and she doesn’t have to run a re-election campaign. However, this is relevant to Montgomery County, PA gun owners because she did actually announce at public events that she “signed licenses,” something he predecessor did not do.

What kind of licenses did she mean while talking about the kind that her predecessor wouldn’t sign? Form 4.

The replacement sheriff has to be a Republican, according to this article, and will be appointed by the Governor. Hopefully, law abiding gun owners will be able to continue to count on the successor to keep the policy of approving Form 4s. Even local elections matter when it comes to your rights, though they are often overlooked by many voters.

This winter is really shaping up to be a bear. We got stuck out at my dad’s in central Pennsylvania with freezing rain, waiting for the predicted temperature increase that didn’t come until well after midnight. I stopped by the office in the way back, but we only have a few hours until it goes from warm and rainy to arctic cold. So until I get home, here’s some news links:

Only government officials are responsible enough to possess and carry firearms.

Detroit’s police chief is calling BS on the whole gun control fraud. If more inner city chiefs decide to stop parroting the lies from their political overlords, it’ll be over for the gun control movement.

Gun control is another job killing program from the left. These are manufacturing jobs that require skilled labor. It’s good for the economy to keep them.

Why are anti-gun advocates so violent? Notice they don’t delete this stuff, only calmed and reasoned disagreement from our side gets deleted.

In some states, carrying a concealed firearm is reason for the cops to check your papers.

Uncle also notes that Tennessee could use some better preemption. I noticed a park when I was visiting over the holidays that was off limits. I didn’t realize that hadn’t been totally preempted.

When seconds count, the police are only 74 minutes away.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible.

Getting guns right at the New York Times. The problem is, their mistakes which are pointed out don’t even make math sense. I know a lot of firearms knowledge is pretty esoteric, but but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know .9mm is an awfully small hole.

Strategery!

A look at the 2013 ammo stats from Lucky Gunner.

Tam shakes the ant farm with an open carry post that I kept in my tabs because I thought I had more to say, but I don’t really. The takeaway is this: “There’s a difference between just carrying a gun, and carrying a gun at people.” And here’s another thing: when you find yourself questioning whether Tam is pro-gun, it’s time to ask another question.

A look at the Glock 41 and the Glock 42.

So far it’s not looking like anything worth getting upset about:

One proposal would formally give permission to states to submit “the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands,” without having to worry about the privacy provisions in a law known as HIPAA.

I believe it’s already the case that HIPPA doesn’t apply to records reported for the purposes of NICS compliance.

The other proposal would clarify that those who are involuntarily committed to a mental institution — both inpatient and outpatient — count under the law as “committed to a mental institution.”

I believe most states are already counting OITs and reporting them to NICS. Outpatient Involuntary Treatment is still an adjudication, it’s just that instead of institutionalizing the person so adjudicated, they are put on medication and supervised on an outpatient basis. So far I don’t think either of these EOs does anything that wasn’t already existing practice. It basically only makes the existing practice “official.”

Still, it’s worth keeping an eye on. The Clinton Administration did quite a lot of damage in this area by reporting a lot of veterans records to NICS, with those individuals having no further recourse, and many of whom were not any danger to themselves or anyone else.

Happy 2014 everyone. Let us hope that 2014 is more pleasant for us than 2013 was. If you had told me this time last year that by this time the following year, that our only substantive losses would be New York, Maryland, Connecticut and Colorado, well, Colorado would still have confounded me, but I would have been surprised as hell. We all thought we were going to have to bend over for something federally. Our opponents got greedy and overcommitted. I feel like none of the gun control groups want to admit that gun bans are dead, and the best they can hope for is a modest background check bill. More importantly, I doubt they want to admit that to their donors.

Here is the news:

This photo is sending chills up and down people’s spines. It should. Especially for those of us in Pennsylvania, because this is our future if gun owners don’t get their shit together. This has never been about crime.

This is a bunch of self-gratifying nonsense. They don’t propose anything the anti-gunners haven’t already tried and failed at. The only difference now is they have a boatload of money from a moralizing crusading billionaire. But hey, self-gratification is one thing anti-gunners are good at.

Gun laws at work. I think Uncle is correct. Prohibited is prohibited. There’s no LEO exception to the federal prohibition on the mentally ill possessing firearms, except for the “look the other way” exception that you know none of us would be given.

Lowest police officer shooting death rate since 1887. I’d like to know whether accidental shootings by police is going up or down as well.

America’s Internal Checkpoints. Well worth reading. I’d like to believe if more Americans knew about this stuff, they’d be outraged, but I’m not really sure about that anymore.

FL crime v. concealed carry.

PA Game Commission wants to reel in more students to hunting.

Chris Christie declines to defend gun laws. He must be serious about 2016 then.

Where’s the coalition to stop ax violence?

Someone turns an STG-44 into a gun buyback. It makes one cringe.

Why Newtown didn’t change America.

Magpul announces a move to Texas and Wyoming. The corporate HQ will be in TX, and manufacturing Wyoming. A lot of people have been upset with Magpul for not moving fast enough, but anyone who’s ever been involved in a corporate move knows that you can’t pick a company up and move it on a dime. I expect it’ll take another year or so before they execute on their decision. The left has made it abundantly clear they are more concerned about fighting cultural crusades than keeping jobs in the states they control.

It was good to end the year 2013 in better shape than we came into it. This time last year we were all still waiting in dread for the hammer to fall, as the unscrupulous tried to pin the actions of a madman on  the whole of our armed citizenry, and tried to ride the hobby horse all the way to every restriction they ever wanted. I think one of the bigger news stories of the year is that Mike Bloomberg leaves office, and with it MAIG is seemingly going poof, and merging with Moms Demand Action. I haven’t even completely thought through what this means, but I think it likely means a few things. For one, this was about Bloomberg’s ego. He’s not a Mayor anymore so what point does MAIG serve? For two, I think it has to be at least a tacit admission that the MAIG approach has been a failure. Overall, I don’t think much changes for us, because the real threat from Bloomberg was always his money, and now Shannon Watts gets to be the face of the movement backed by his money. The upside, as I see it, is that Shannon Watts is a radical. She’s chocked full of nonsense that’ll play well in terms of mobilizing our people.

But enough about that. I’ll follow Thirdpower’s example in looking at the past year’s stats.

Top Five Referrers of 2013 (That Aren’t Search Engines or Social Media)

• Say Uncle
• Instapundit
• The Gun Wire
• A View from the Porch
• The Firearm Blog

Top Five Posts of 2013

• We Have Language for S. 374, the Transfer Ban
• The New Hope of Gun Control Advocates
• CNC machining an AR-15 Lower
• Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show Bans Modern Rifles & Magazines
• The Continuing Saga of “Living with the Gun”

We have fortunately arrived home. Unfortunately, I must have picked up someone’s flu along the way. I guess the real difficulty of holiday season travel is that everyone has to go home, no matter how sick they are. I didn’t think to get some of that hand gel until the fever started. But so far it’s mild, knock on wood. I’ll bet gas pumps are a pretty significant disease vector this time of year. But through the haze of a cocktail of drugs, here’s the news:

Our savior.

Stop, fondle, go. TSA: Teaching kids it’s OK to let strangers touch you.

NYSRPA update on SAFE Act lawsuit. If charging a 20 dollar tax on every purchase of ammunition is constitutional, the Second Amendment might as well not even be in the Bill of Rights. This is not about stopping criminals. It’s about discouraging citizens from exercising their rights.

Who needs more than seven or ten rounds for their firearm?

Isn’t bargaining one of the stages of grief? This is a good sign their movement is on the ropes. They know they can’t shove it down our throats, so they want to negotiate. No. I’ll get all those things they are offering without having to bargain for it.

People are less supportive of universal background checks when the implications are explained.

Hickenlooper has a modest 2014 agenda. Of course he does. He has to convince the rubes he’s really a moderate.

Interesting case on whether gun ownership can trigger a no-knock raid for a non-violent offense. I’d generally prefer to see no-knock raids reserved only for hardened, violent criminals.