Quote of the day—Paul Rosenberg

Another case whose settlement should be announced soon involves another gun industry loophole custom-made for the “bad guy with a gun”:  replica antique black powder guns (that are nonetheless fully functional). Collectively, what these cases show is how deeply dishonest the “good man with a gun” rhetoric really is. It’s not that such people don’t exist. But they’re not the people the NRA and the gun industry have been looking out for.

Quite the contrary: They’ve been used as human shields to fend off gun safety activists and reasonable regulation, while the “bad man with a gun” demographic has been catered to for decades, as the body count continues to grow. With the NRA in crisis and the industry’s PLCAA bulwark teetering, the time is ripe for a historic, responsibility-focused shift in gun policy. And the fact that Congress is still paralyzed no longer matters all that much. Change is coming anyway.

Paul Rosenberg
December 5, 2020
Real gun reform without Congress: Lawsuits demolish the “good guy with a gun”
[We may have some rough times ahead of us.—Joe]

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19 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Paul Rosenberg

  1. Sorry I won’t read anything from a magazine that once featured a piece written by a pedophile in defense of his pedophilia.

    Salon has tried long and hard to scrub that from their website, but you can find it if you want to see what their core values really are.

    I agree that this is a serious threat to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

    Why it has been allowed to proceed, in spite of the law, is puzzling.

  2. There’s so much hilariously wrong with this article it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.

    I had to dig this out of the Buffalo News:

    “The man who shot Williams, Cornell Caldwell, served his sentence, and was released from prison earlier this year. The gun trafficker who bought the 9mm handgun used in the shooting, James Nigel Bostic, also served his time and has been released from prison.”

    Williams was shot in ’03. The news story I pulled from dropped in ’12. That means these two lowlifes served nine years, max, for attempted murder and conspiracy to aid and abet. And lefties wonder why they keep having problems with crime.

    • No, they don’t wonder. Crime is part of their agenda, part of their way of life.

      Let’s please stop calling them clueless. Doing so is to grant to them, in advance, the only plausible defense they could mount. The fact is though, if deeds speak louder than words, their repeated actions over many years reveal their purposes.

      And once again, for effect; the nature and character of a Marxist revolution is no secret. We should all know very well how this works. If not, it’s on us,

      • His point is that this Paul Rosenberg has a long history of hostility toward conservative/libertarian causes and individual rights. Click his name at the top of the Salon article to bring up a list of his recent postings.

        When you see his name at the top of an article touching on individual rights, Constitutional questions, or how government should run, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion what he’s going to conclude. He will side with “more influence for Democrats, less for Republicans” and “more power to the State, less to the People”. You almost don’t even have to read it except to pull specific quotes.

        It’s like seeing Ladd Everitt’s name at the top of an article on guns and gun rights. As head of the VPC (Violence Policy Center, a known rabidly-anti-gun group), you don’t have to read it to know he’s going to be talking about how guns are the bane of peaceful society and should be banned, and/or how CCW licensees are violent killers just waiting for an opportunity. He’s written that so many times, for so long, it’s very nearly copy-paste predictable.

      • It’s enough for anyone that knows the big players in the interstate conspiracy to deprive civil rights.

        The congressmen and senators and mayors are not the biggest players in the civil rights violation racket. They’re just the most visible, and they’re also the most replaceable. The people that buy the mayors and congressmen and senators, and the propogandists that give them political cover, are the enduring foundation of the criminal enterprise.

  3. As someone who worked in the gun industry. I can tell you every gun manufactured or imported. Then sold thru an FFL. Is tracked and audited. (Albeit by some of the most ignorant people to walk the earth.)
    But none the less traceable. In fact, the ONLY way the BATF knows you have, or can trace a firearm is thru manufactures/importer. As they hand over their records as to where guns go to, and to what distributor’s their sold to. Which in turn report to ATF which retailer’s,(FFL dealers) a gun were shipped to.
    Which will only sell a gun to someone who can pass a background check. By law.
    At which point government is supposed to delete all information about the retail transaction. (wink, wink, nod, nod.) And the FFL dealer has the only link to you and a certain firearm. Contained in form 4473. Retained by FFL for 20 yrs.
    And if he goes out of business. There sent to the BATF. Wal-mart sends 4473’s directly to the ATF. Which is also an option.
    Salon was short on details as to how a distributor was going to be able to stop someone from making a straw purchase. When that transaction doesn’t in anyway involve them?. And is completely out of their purview?
    I mean a straw purchase is something that is almost impossible to prove. As the government has to prove intent, and action thereon. It was perfectly legal in most states for individuals to buy and sale guns without a background check. So I buy a gun, go to the range. Shoot it. Decide I don’t like it. Sale it to the guy shooting next to me. That would NOT be a straw purchase. Just a bad one on my part. But not illegal. Well maybe to a useful idiot.
    But how would a distributor be able to control any of that?
    Even a real straw purchase of a criminal talking a “legal” into buying them a gun?
    It’s all stuck at police level.
    Other than sending out pamphlets, it’s BS and going no where.

    • Salon was short on details as to how a distributor was going to be able to stop someone from making a straw purchase. When that transaction doesn’t in anyway involve them?. And is completely out of their purview?

      The point isn’t to stop straw purchases, nor is it to prove straw purchases happen or prosecute the purchasers.

      The point is to establish in legal precedent that distributors are liable for the criminal misuse of guns they distribute. The plaintiffs are claiming that the distributors knew or should have known that at least some of the guns they transfer might — someday, somehow — be used in crime, and therefore shouldn’t have transferred them.

      Of course, the distributor understands that a small percentage of guns eventually — often many years later — get used in crime (just like a small percentage of cars sold get used in crime, or a small percentage of Tylenol gets used for suicide attempts, etc.), and that they have no way of predicting which ones or preventing it from happening. If they could, they just wouldn’t sell that one, thus preventing the straw purchase and/or resulting crime. But again, stopping straw purchases isn’t the point.

      The real point is to challenge PLCAA and make the business of distributing firearms financially and legally risky, and prohibitively expensive. It’s to get that precedent that says the only “safe” number of guns to distribute wholesale is “zero”, thereby bypassing PLCAA altogether. Not by changing or repealing the law, but by getting the courts to ignore it. “Special protections enjoyed by the firearms industry that no other industry has,” and all that.

      And never mind that the sole reason PLCAA was passed in the first place was because of frivolous lawsuits like this one. Never mind that nobody holds Ford and Chrysler accountable for drunk driving deaths using their cars, or Johnson & Johnson responsible for suicides-by-Tylenol; no other industry needed the protections because common sense prevailed everywhere else. PLCAA merely set in law protections that were always assumed there, but ignored only for the firearms industry.

      In truth, getting rid of PLCAA shouldn’t remove firearms manufacturers’ or distributors’ protection from liability for criminal activity outside their purview, any more than repealing the 2nd Amendment removes the Right of the People to keep and bear Arms; both pre-existed the written law, and were merely codified.

      But it does make it easier for activist judges to ignore fundamental rights. That’s what the plaintiffs are really after.

      • Good points all. I posit this question as rhetoric. Why would any lawyer/client/ judge allow agreement to something one has no control over?
        They could just as easily be sued for not stopping the sun from shining?
        I’ve said before that this would destroy all industry. As you mention the auto manufactures, indeed, the alcohol manufactures are in real trouble.
        My boss use to endlessly complain of damage I could do with a hammer. To say nothing of what the mac-n-cheese industry has done for diabetes?
        The list is as limitless as Einstein’s theory of stupidity.
        Just when you think we’ve bottomed out…..

      • Lawyers are salivating over the thought that once this is precedent it can be easily applied to automobiles. Automobiles are already considered deadly weapons under the law. Why should this rule apply to one deadly weapon and not the other?

    • And for states that have “extras” it is worse. The federal 4473 has strict limits on what can be done with it and how long it has to be stored and so for and so on. As well as laws currently on the books saying they can’t be turned into a gun registry.

      When the DC sniper was active I received a call from the MSP asking “Are you the sniper? Can you prove you are not the sniper?”

      Their justification for the call was that they had a registry of every handgun and “Assault weapon” sold in the state. They had a MD 4473. That form got sent to the MSP where they added it to their database. They then sat on their thumbs for 21 days before telling the FFL to transfer the firearm.

      What this meant was that when it was discovered that the DC sniper was using 5.56 and was using a “van” they cross referenced the gun registry of everybody that had purchased a rifle in 5.56 against everybody that owned a van or van like vehicle and my name poppped.

      Never mind that it turned out that the shooters purchased the gun on the west coast and that they were driving a sedan with out of state plates.

      That big net swept up lots and lots of people. I’ve been much much more leery of registration methods since then.

  4. Today it’s the “black powder loophole”, next it will be the “percussion lock loophole”. Soon he will be arguing why people shouldn’t be allowed anything as efficient as a wheel lock.

    • Or a matchlock. Pretty much useless once it starts to rain.

      He’s using the Leftists’ definition of “loophole”, which is “anything not directly controlled by law”, even if the written law specifically exempts the action(s) or item(s) from regulation.

      A normal person correctly interprets “loophole” to mean something not addressed in law — essentially left unregulated, by accident or by design* — and reads a specific exemption and sees it as just that: an exemption that allows what would otherwise be prohibited.

      It comes from a deeper difference in principles between statist controllers and free citizens. The free citizen will say that anything not expressly prohibited by law is allowed; the statist will say that anything not expressly allowed by law is prohibited, and classify non-prohibition as a “loophole”.

      How these two wildly-different world-views have co-existed this long, is beyond me.

  5. I see that this article is featured on Google.

    IMO, it’s just another version of the cancel culture that is legal while leaving one side without effective due process.

    If private parties are not willing to trade, how do you get them to trade? Especially if the need for the trades are questioned by a large segment of the population.

  6. don’t run out of ammunition, or courage. keep shooting as long as you have both, as long as you have life.

    • I take it you are taking your own advice.

      How’s the ammo supply holding up? Are you getting short on targets or ammo? Let me know if you need advice on where to find targets or you are running short on ammo. I might be able to supply one or both.

  7. You have to give the sick bastard credit for being able to lie almost as skillfully and as eloquently as the Jesuit pope, making deadly lies appear caring and compassionate! He’s a brilliant writer, to be sure.

    And as always, anywhere, under any circumstances, the bad guys will always be armed. They don’t observe weapons restrictions (I know; it shouldn’t need to be said; it’s so blatantly obvious). And so when it comes to the issue of who will be armed according to laws, we’re only talking about those who obey said laws.

    Therefore, when laws restrict gun ownership, they do nothing more and nothing less than to grant a government-enforced monopoly on such arms, for the sole benefit of the criminal element, to the detriment of every liberty-loving, peace-loving citizen. Criminals, and only criminals, benefit from guns restrictions.

    So don’t get angry at the clever liar. Instead, expose the son of a bitch for being the criminal advocate son of a bitch that he is. And then prosecute him.

    The liar that is most clever may be able to fool more people, but in so doing, in demonstrating his cleverness, his ability to gather information and to turn it and twist it to his evil cause, he is also further indicting himself by way of removing a possible stupidity defense, or ignorance defense. In other words; the idiot liar has a better shot at an effective defense than the genius liar. The genius can never claim the old, “I’m so sorry; I had no idea” defense.

    So when it comes to liars, I’d much prefer a stupid and ignorant liar over a very clever and knowledgeable one– The stupid liar will do less damage, but the clever liar will be far easier to prosecute: He’ll have demonstrated his ability to do more damage, and he’ll be much more difficult to defend.

    In my estimation, if a prosecutor truly had the will to fulfill his duties, he could have that son of a bitch arrested right now for conspiracy to deprive rights, and have an effective case. And in fact, nothing short of this kind of pro-active, aggressive defense of constitutional principles, fully within the legal system, will ever be effective in turning the tide.

    The point is, in short; we as a nation are totally, utterly screwed. A new, more terrible version of the Dark Ages is on our doorstep. Man’s law, to say nothing of the sin-loving men charged with implementing it, is wholly inadequate as a means of overcoming the evil of the “prince of the world” (the most clever and knowledgeable liar of all).

  8. The agenda is power. Total and complete control of ALL of us. That agenda REQUIRES that we be disarmed. And ANY lie, any action, any unconstitutional law is perfectly acceptable to them if it serves that need. We on the “normal” side of America need to acknowledge an ugly but simple reality. The left are our MORTAL ENEMIES. They seek to enslave and/or kill us. PERIOD. There can be no compromise, no coexistence. It is them or us. And the sooner we accept that reality and act accordingly the more of our freedom we may be able to salvage. And we do NOT have much time left to act in.

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