Category: Guns

The Second Amendment as an individual right is a lie, and gun owners are stupid people who lap up and regurgitate everything the NRA says, and are “primed to trade in ‘fake news’.”

There’s an old adage that one should never interrupt your enemy when they are in the process of making a mistake, and I’m certainly not going to. I think we were even accused of being Russian stooges in there, but I’m not sure.

This is why they have lost, and why for the foreseeable future they will continue to lose. For the most part, we went out into the culture with a mission to persuade and change minds, and save the handful of states where the law and/or culture has already been rigged against that, we’ve succeeded. The only reason the gun control movement has seen any success at all is because Mike Bloomberg is a good strategician, and has the will and capability to outspend us. If it had to depend on the minds at the Brady Campaign, the issue would have made no gains whatsoever in the past five years.

I don’t know how many of you follow “The Trace,” which is part of Mike Bloomberg’s new media strategy. It’s actually a pretty soft-sell type publication when it comes to gun control. They obviously have a pro-gun control bent, but they also do some decent reporting on the issue. So I admit, I use them as one of my sources. I tend to think “The Trace” is to the gun control movement was Guns.com is for us. Guns.com also does some decent straight reporting on the issue, bit with a bit of a pro-gun bent.

Anyway, I noticed since the election that The Trace has gone from more of the soft-sell to a much harder sell. I don’t know if that’s part of a deliberate strategy change, or whether a lot of people over there are just pissed off at the election results. Not that I’m complaining: the hard sell is a lot easier to make fun of, and it should provide some good material in the future. The mainstream media has gotten pretty boring with their gun reporting, and the fever swamp places like Media Matters are so hilariously over the top as to be hardly worth paying attention to. It’s self-parodying.

Nevada voters very narrowly approved a ballot measure that ended private firearms transfers, at least officially. Unofficial the law is unenforceable, and most chief LEOs in the state aren’t going to enforce it. But the purpose never was to just get a private transfer ban in place and then move on. The purpose is to build the organization necessary (even if it’s paid organization funded by Bloomberg) to rinse and repeat on the ballot, nibbling away at the edges until they get something they really want. The groundwork is now being laid to put a magazine ban on the ballot in Nevada. This is why you need to convince people to vote “no.” I don’t care how sensible it sounds. I don’t care even if it is sensible. By voting yes, you will be enabling Bloomberg to keep going back again and again. We’ve seen it in Washington, and now Nevada has signaled it is willing to follow the same model. You know where I’ll bet he won’t be headed back to the ballot trough? Maine. Because Mainers told him to go f*** himself.

John Feinblatt is Bloomberg’s chosen leader for Everytown. He was a muckety muck in Bloomberg’s Administration as Mayor of New York City, and has been involved in Bloomberg’s gun control efforts since the beginning. He pens an article in the Daily News, which I will address point by point. The gist of the article is that NRA doesn’t really mean it when they say “enforce the laws we already have,” and so Feinblatt offers his own ideas on what that means:

For decades, though, NRA lobbyists have fought to suppress trace data, even using the federal budget to try to limit intelligence-sharing among law enforcement.

You might recall when that data was freely available before, it was used to target high-volume gun shops for lawsuits with the intent of putting them out of business. It is still available to law enforcement for bonafide investigations. It’s just not available to people like Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign, and they are butthurt about that.

To help catch more murderers and gun criminals, it can also advance an investigative tool called microstamping …

Yes, a tool so great even UC Davis had to admit it was bullshit. Additionally, both California and New York have both passed Microstamping laws, but have yet to issue any regulations about it. Why? Because it’s a bullshit issue and even the bureaucrats know it. I’m a bit disappointed in Mr. Feinblatt here. This is the kind of pie in the sky dreaming I’d expect from the Brady Campaign.

Good old-fashioned communication can boost enforcement, too. Felons broke the law and tried to buy a gun more than 40,000 times last year alone — yet they rarely face any consequences, beyond the gun store turning them away.

This is actually one area I disagree with the NRA on, and one area I’m pretty sure they are mostly sincere in wanting stronger enforcement. The reason most of those felons who tried to break the law aren’t prosecuted is that most of them are non-violent felons who are no threat to anyone. It would be a waste of public resources to prosecute and incarcerate them. If the prohibitions on felons was limited to violent felons, and was part of their conviction, I would have little issue with more rigorous enforcement.

We all know the reason prosecution rates for NICS denials are low, but no one wants to admit it: I’m not all that worried about the dude who gets a NICS denial because a decade ago he cheated on his taxes, and no one else is either. Yet any felony, including tax evasion, regulatory crimes like importing a lobster in the wrong bag, possessing a bald eagle feather, and having a bit too much pot on you will earn you a lifetime prohibition.

There’s actually no federal gun trafficking law, and “straw purchasing” a gun for a criminal is nothing more than a paperwork violation.

This is an outright lie, and it’s one repeated often by gun control advocates. Straw purchasing, that is buying a firearm for someone else, anyone else, is a federal felony with a 10 year prison sentence. Many states have analogue crimes with similarly harsh sentences. The exception is if you wanted to buy a gift for your wife or brother. But if someone gives you money to buy a firearm for them, and you do, that’s a straw purchase. It is also unlawful sell guns to people who are residents of another state without being a licensed dealer. Only Federal Firearms Licensees may ship firearms via common carrier (there are exceptions to this, like shipping a gun to an FFL for repair) out of their home state to a non-licensee. So there is a federal trafficking statute, even if it’s not explicitly called that.

The issue they have, when you really analyze their arguments in this area, is that it can sometimes be hard for the state to meet its burden in prosecuting federal gun law violations. Rather than viewing that as a feature, necessary to prevent ordinary people tangled in the web of non-violent federal crimes, gun controllers have always viewed the state’s burden as a bug, and consistently support weakening or eliminating due process when it comes to gun violations.