Category: Guns

Are you a type 3 FFL, Collector of Curios and Relics? John Richardson has some preliminary language. By my reading, transfers have to go through a dealer, importer, or manufacturer. So if you have a C&R, you could buy from Century or a dealer at a gun show, but you couldn’t buy from another C&R license holder. This renders the C&R considerably less useful, since you’re most likely to find good pickings in the hands of other collectors.

I’m beyond believing they just don’t know how to write legislation. I don’t know, maybe they don’t, and don’t really care who they impact. I’m sure if you asked Bloomberg he’d happily eliminate C&Rs entirely. So why would he care if his lawyers who wrote this shit are clueless?

If they were willing to work with us, they’d already have some kind of background check bill. But background checks are not their goal here. Sneaking other shit into the bills is their goal. De facto registration, even if not de jure, is the goal. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this has jack shit to do with background checks.

Boulder residents are standing firm on not complying with the city’s ban on assault weapons:

Boulder’s newly enacted “assault weapons” ban is meeting with stiff resistance from its “gun-toting hippies,” staunch liberals who also happen to be devoted firearms owners.

That’s great. Why don’t you try to send a message by not voting for anti-gun Democrats. You see, because if you keep voting for assholes who want to do this to you, they will keep doing it.

“That was a neat protest because it really brought out people from Boulder,” Ms. Hollywood said. “People you would never expect to be gun owners were standing there, the gun-toting hippies, basically, saying, ‘Why are you guys doing this to us? We didn’t do anything wrong, and now you’re coming after us.’ “

Stop voting for them.

I am back from a prolonged trip, and have gotten caught up with a lot, except for getting the blog going again. I hope you all had a nice Christmas, or whatever you might celebrate. We’re getting close to my 12 year blogoversary, which is Sunday. I’ll be busy that day, so will not be blogging again about it. I’ve slowed down a good bit from when we started this venture, but in 2019 I’m going to try to post more in the coming year. I’ll never be able to get back to what I used to do, but I don’t wish to hang it up quite yet.

To start off the year, I recommend reading Kevin Creighton’s post at Ricochet: “Gun Owners are Being Othered, And We’re Letting it Happen.”

I’ll offer some observations for 2019, because I think this is going to be a challenging year for us. In my mind gun people are suffering from a number of maladies:

• Everyone underestimated how much Bloomberg’s money would make a difference for the gun control movement. It’s made a huge difference. Our biggest asset historically has been our ability to self-organize. There have always been a sizable number of people who would support gun control, but the movement won’t organically provide the money and organizing talent to make them a force. But with Bloomberg’s money, and the money from other elites he’s bringing along, that’s no longer an issue for them. With the money a given, it will buy them a movement.
• We surrendered the “horizontal interpretive communities” that got us where we are to top-down social media which are centrally controlled. I can remember seasoned activists from the 80s and 90s tell me they got their message out using informal fax networks to organize back when that was a new technology. We’ve always been on the bleeding edge of self-organization. But our community doesn’t have an answer yet for the problems being caused by Google and Facebook, who would rather see us disappear and largely have the power to accomplish that if they really wanted.
• Too many people insisted on bringing unrelated culture war issues along with gun rights, which has made it difficult to expand our base, and has completely removed us as a force in one of the two major parties. I’m not saying that means we support anti-gun Dems: the damage has already been done. Our only hope is keeping the Dems confined to a minority of states to keep them from power until they come to their senses. There is some hope we can accomplish this with the Senate.

Not all of this is our fault, or a result of people sitting on their laurels. We gun owners didn’t surrender the distributed Internet of the 90s and 00s to a handful of Silicon Valley elites. Society as a whole decided centralized control of the Internet was desirable, and we’re being dragged along. I suspect before too long a technology will come along to disrupt Google and the social media companies. When that happens, we have to be ready to dominate it and start self-organizing. It’s what we do best.

Why does everyone in the gun issue think a Lame Duck passing of National Reciprocity is possible? It’s not. Not happening. Wasn’t going to happen in any known universe of possibilities.

Lame duck sessions are when you might get an outgoing party to do something for an important constituency they didn’t want to otherwise do if having to face re-election. It’s not a magical time where you can get anything you want. First, the Lame Duck House has already passed National Reciprocity. They weren’t the problem.

The problem is getting 60 votes for cloture in the Senate. The votes for that aren’t there, whether it’s a lame duck session or not. The only option would be to eliminate the filibuster, and while I do think the filibuster should be taken back to what it used to be prior to the 1970s, I have a bad bad feeling if we did that now, we’d very much come to regret it in the not too distant future.

The only way we’re likely making progress is to have the courts firm up the 2nd Amendment a bit, and make Bloomberg reel some. Strategically, I think the number one goal should be to get gun bans off the table. You cannot ban handguns, rifles, and shotguns, no matter what they look like, and what ergonomic features they have. Semi-automatic firearms are categorically protected. We also need some kind of protection for common accessories, like magazines. If those are off the table, we’re on much better ground for moving carry forward. I’ve never agreed with putting carry first on the priority list. We need bans off the table, first and foremost.

Dave Hardy noticed something in John Paul Stevens’ piece on writing his memoirs:

He said he had taken an extraordinary step in trying to head off the decision. Five weeks before Justice Antonin Scalia circulated his draft opinion for the majority, Justice Stevens sent around a draft of what he called his probable dissent. He said he could not recall ever having done anything like that.

“I thought I should give it every effort to switch the case before it was too late,” he said.

The effort failed. But Justice Stevens wrote that he helped persuade Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was in the majority, to ask for “some important changes” to Justice Scalia’s opinion. A passage in the opinion, which Justice Scalia had plainly added to secure a fifth vote, said the decision “should not be taken to cast doubt” on many kinds of gun control laws.

As Dave notes, this is pretty strong evidence that Kennedy was the weak member of the coalition, and his replacement by Justice Kavanaugh may tip the balance. Of course, that assumes there was only one weak link, not two. But this is very encouraging. It’s clear that Stevens targeted Kennedy to flip, and when he wouldn’t he at least convinced him to water down the ruling. Indeed, those passages have been latched on by lower courts and gun control advocates to render Heller and McDonald largely meaningless.

This is very good news, because at some point the Republicans will be out and the Dems in, and Dems are still competitive in dozens of states with currently reasonable gun laws. We really do need strong court protections for the Second Amendment, and we’re not going to get them through Congress.