Category: Gun Rights

Let’s see what I have here in the tabs:

Embattled police chief Mark Kessler releases a new video that could be charitably described as intimidating, less charitably as a bona fide threat. The fun part it’s looking like he’s going to spill the dirt on the local politicians. I’m told the reason most of these small coal towns have police chiefs is to keep the state police from looking around too much, and asking too many questions.

Toomey is feeling the heat. Good. At best Toomey was hoodwinked by Schumer and Manchin. At worst he was part and parcel to the deception that the turd sandwich of a deal was actually good for gun owners. Neither speaks well.

Clayton has a bleg out looking at some of the history of mental health prohibitions. More here.

Bloomberg dumped 350 large into the Colorado recall elections. The least we can do is making buying New York style gun control in Colorado more expensive for Bloomberg.

More on that “Sickness in our Souls” Colorado Senate President John Morse was speaking about.

Ignorance and hubris makes for a humorous combination.

Down Range TV has an excellent article about guns in the home with children.

The bright side of the new executive orders.

A Harvard study look at the gun issue and doesn’t find any correlation between gun control and crime or suicide rates. This will do nothing to dampen the enthusiasm for gun control because gun control has never been about controlling crime, it’s been about controlling culture, namely our culture, rather than the criminal one. It’s not that many who support gun control want to live in a world without criminals having guns, they want to live in a world without people like you and me.

Well, Obama promises, and Obama delivers on when it comes to screwing gun owners. We have two new executive orders on guns. First:

Closing a Loophole to Keep Some of the Most Dangerous Guns Out of the Wrong Hands

Current law places special restrictions on many of the most dangerous weapons, such as machine guns and short-barreled shotguns.  These weapons must be registered, and in order to lawfully possess them, a prospective buyer must undergo a fingerprint-based background check.

However, felons, domestic abusers, and others prohibited from having guns can easily evade the required background check and gain access to machine guns or other particularly dangerous weapons by registering the weapon to a trust or corporation.  At present, when the weapon is registered to a trust or corporation, no background check is run.  ATF reports that last year alone, it received more than 39,000 requests for transfers of these restricted firearms to trusts or corporations.

Today, ATF is issuing a new proposed regulation to close this loophole.  The proposed rule requires individuals associated with trusts or corporations that acquire these types of weapons to undergo background checks, just as these individuals would if the weapons were registered to them individually.  By closing this loophole, the regulation will ensure that machine guns and other particularly dangerous weapons do not end up in the wrong hands.

The idea that criminals and other prohibited persons are using NFA trusts as a construct to skirt background checks is laughable. This is a middle finger extended in our direction, and not much more than that. How is this going to work? There are some corporations that legitimately own NFA firearms, such as museums. Does everyone in the corporation have to go through the FBI fingerprint check? Does each person in the corporation or trust have to undergo LEO signoff? There’s a lot of devil that will be in the details here. But that’s not all:

Keeping Surplus Military Weapons Off Our Streets

When the United States provides military firearms to its allies, either as direct commercial sales or through the foreign military sales or military assistance programs, those firearms may not be imported back into the United States without U.S. government approval.  Since 2005, the U.S. Government has authorized requests to reimport more than 250,000 of these firearms.

Today, the Administration is announcing a new policy of denying requests to bring military-grade firearms back into the United States to private entities, with only a few exceptions such as for museums.  This new policy will help keep military-grade firearms off our streets.

Yeah, surplus military weapons sold after the era of the M1 are going to be machine guns are aren’t re-importable already by statute. What Obama is keeping out here are historical pieces like the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. This is also just a way to put the screws to us.

Keep it up Mr. President. We’ll keep defeating you, boxing you into a corner, and otherwise destroying your agenda. You can lash out at us in a childish tantrum all you want. In the end we will prevail over you.

UPDATE: Looks like the AP is already helping the Administration spin this as the greatest thing since sliced bread rather than the load of horse shit it really is.

UPDATE: John Lott takes the AP to task.

A few readers have sent me links to this proposal by a few Democratic Congress Critters that proposes to impose a severe tax on handguns and ammunition. There is legislation introduced all the time in Congress to do all kinds of unspeakable thinks to all kinds of rights, including your Second Amendment rights. The vast majority of them are going nowhere.

When a bill gets introduced to Congress, which any Congressman can do, it first gets referred to committee, which is where the vast majority of bills sit ignored until they die when that session of Congress comes to an end. There are a few things to watch. One thing to watch for is the cosponsor count. HR.3018 is currently sitting at a whopping one co-sponsor. Another thing to watch is whether it gets scheduled for any kind of hearing. Generally speaking, the committee won’t waste its time with a bill that only has one co-sponsor. Only 11% of bills ever made it through the committee process, and only 3% of introduced legislation actually gets enacted.

I’d also add that, while this doesn’t mean as much as it should, it’s generally accepted in current court doctrine on treatment of fundamental rights, that you can’t tax the exercise of those rights. Even the Pittsman-Robertson excise tax is questionably constitutional, let alone this. While I don’t really expect the courts to ever save us, this would be stronger ground to fight on in court than the many other things our opponents can do to us.

All this combined means HR.3018 is something to watch, but it’s probably nothing to panic about.

I always build up news stories over the weekend. Then the question is whether I have anything to add, or just put it in the news links. But there’s always the risk I’ll dump it as a link, and then run out of material. Sometimes the cycle is dry. I am, however, working on a series post, that’s a bit more involved. Hopefully that will go this week. Here’s the news otherwise:

Bloomberg fail. Only 15 people show up to a rally. A lot of us worry about gun owners returning to slumber, but the other side has that problem too. They might as well not bother, says Miguel.

Massad Ayoob: Talk at the Scene, Talk on the Stand. More on the Zimmerman case, and whether you should talk to cops or take the stand in your defense.

No special session in Florida on Stand Your Ground laws.

Bug-a-salt gun terminal ballistics. All you ever wanted to know about blasting bugs with salt.

Second Amendment supports thrive on scare tactics. Pot, meet kettle. I think you’ll find it’s also black.

Fellow blogger Wyatt Earp just lost his father, Philadelphia Firefighter and lifetime NRA member. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family at this difficult time.

From research this weekend, I discovered I have a 1st cousin, 4x removed who was one of the 9 sailors that perished when the USS Lavender struck a reef off North Carolina, 12 Jun 1864. My 3rd great grandfather had to swear an affidavit as to the marriage of the cousin’s parents, and the cousin’s birth in Northern Ireland so his family could get the pension, which was the clue that lead me to it.

The Daily Caller notes that the outrage Australian politicians are expressing over the shooting death of an Australian national in Oklahoma is not backed by facts. The growth in gun culture that we’ve seen in the United States is also happening in Australia. If you’re an Australian political elite, and want to maintain the integrity of the gun control regime you’ve imposed on the peons, can you find a more tailor made incident?

No country is immune from random, senseless violence. It’s rare here too, which is why things like this make national news. The Australian reaction to this incident is more about Australia than it is about us. The political elites want people to remain happy with their gun control regime. Otherwise we’ll all become like the scary United States. Incidents like this are very convenient for the gun control elites.

A majority are not happy with the magazine restrictions, but most don’t believe the recalls are warranted. This is going to come down to which side has the most energy to get out to the polls, so the GOTV (Get Out the Vote) effort is going to be supremely important in this recall.

Cam Edwards of NRA News delivers the keynote at the Independence Institute’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Party.

Hopefully Colorado will be freed in short order. The Chair is Against the Wall.