Labor Day Weekend News

Well, we’ve had some fun with Joan Peterson, and it’s time to move on. A lot of people don’t know why I bother, but I’m really not trying to change her mind. Sometimes it’s just entertaining to shake the ant farm. I hope everyone has a happy Labor Day weekend. I will be smoking some beef and doing genealogical research. I had joked with John Richardson, whose ancestor was also at Antietam, fighting for the Confederacy, that his great grandparents were shooting at my great grandparents. Actually, based on some maps of the battle, and of their respective units, that very well may have been the case!

Given that my 3x great grandfather was wounded severely, but not killed, I think I have to be thankful that legendary southern marksmanship didn’t quite manage to find its mark in his case. We also discovered that my 4x great grandfather, who was a well known bottler in Philadelphia, was raising money for the recruitment effort for the war. So we know that his son likely didn’t join up to avoid being drafted — they were believers in the cause. But anyway, I’ve rambled on enough. Now for the news:

Prince Law offices has been doing quite a lot of posting on the new proposed regulations:

Pretty much everything you wanted to know.

SayUncle notes that NFATCA petitioned ATF for rule changes, ATF came up with a bunch of different rules, and then cited NFATCA. NFATCA wanted to get rid of the LEO sign-off requirement. They have a response here. Though, I have to say, if their petition for rule-making raised concerns about background checks and trust, that was a mistake.

ATF Form 4473 and the Prohibited Persons List. This article notes that there is serious difficulty implementing New Jersey’s law about the terror watch list. You see, it’s a secret list. As in, really secret. FFLs can’t run that check.

Ted Nugent’s wife gets arrested at DFW International Airport for forgetting a gun in her carry-on.

Dave Hardy: “The law has the concept of justified homicide. The average person has the concept of ‘good riddance.’

Well, that didn’t work out the way they thought it would, did it?

California gun owners are about to get fracked.

Bloomberg: The Godfather of Gun Control. The resurgence in energy for gun control I think can be squarely credited to two people. The person who deserves the most credit is Barack Obama. The person who deserves the second most is Mike Bloomberg.

I hope this woman gets a really big judgement against the Pennsylvania State Police for this. I think the only way to stop raids like this from happening is to take away the toys.

Thursday News

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.

It’s Never Been About Crime

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.

Obama Issues Executive Orders to Screw Us

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.

9th Circuit Says No on Firearms Freedom Act

The suit to defend the Montana Firearms Freedom Act has gone down to defeat in the 9th Circuit. Given the precedent in Gonzales v. Raich, this idea was never really going to fly. It’ll be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether to take the case, but I don’t give that much of a chance. There were several other states that passed laws like this as well. Post Sandy Hook, there was also a movement to do outright nullification, with our state’s introduced legislation being HR357. I’ve also become aware of local efforts at the county level to do the same.

I think it’s important for people to be aware of what these laws do. The Freedom Acts, like Montana’s, really don’t have much more than symbolic value. They aren’t going to stop, and in fact can’t stop the federal government from the execution of federal law and regulations. You won’t be able to manufacture a machine gun, or any gun, in Montana and them wave a state law in their face and suggest they can’t arrest you and prosecute you. You’ll quickly find that is not the case.

The nullification laws, at the state level, could in theory do some good under dire circumstances. This is because states are actual sovereigns, and can pass real laws and control real monies. If the federal government were to pass draconian new gun control, it would be tremendously beneficial for the states to have laws that prevent state authorities from enforcing the federal law. If a state wanted to take nullification farther and actively interfere with federal enforcement, that could also be useful (though dangerous — civil wars can start that way.) I’m far less convinced that local action on this kind of nullification is anything more than empty symbolism, because county and local government typically don’t have the lawmaking power necessary to do anything substantive.

These are just things to consider when judging whether to get behind laws like this with serious resources. I tend to think nullification is more useful than Firearms Freedom Acts, but nullification is something to save for when we actually lose, or loss appears likely. I would suggest that resources are best applied to not losing in the first place.

It’s good to be vigilant, but …

ItsATaxA 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.

Monday News

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 Australian Outrage

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.

New Polling on Colorado Recalls

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.