Author Archives: Joe

Quote of the day—Alan Gura

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If the city doesn’t want to pay civil rights attorneys fee awards, it should stop violating the Constitution. So long as they view the vindication of our fundamental enumerated rights as “injuries,” they will continue to pay.

Alan Gura
September 7, 2008
Comment to Are Heller’s Attorney’s Asking for Too Much?
Via a comment by Jeff at Shall Not Be Questioned.
[As much pleasure as it gives me to see the villains pay attorneys fees I would rather the individuals responsible, instead of the city taxpayers, “pay the price” by spending time in prison. And an even greater pleasure would result if they completely stopped violating our rights.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Alan M. Gottlieb

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It is an insult to United States sovereignty that the U.N. would be entertaining such measures while enjoying this country’s hospitality at its headquarters in New York City. It is the greatest irony, and perhaps the pinnacle of hypocrisy, for the United Nations to be discussing any treaty that might threaten our Second Amendment, because it has been the United States, with its citizen soldiers and our constitutional right to keep and bear arms that has come to the world’s rescue not once, but twice in global conflicts.

Alan M. Gottlieb
CCRKBA Chairman
December 7, 2011
CCRKBA APPLAUDS WALSH LEGISLATION TO WITHHOLD UNITED NATIONS FUNDING
[A lot of people think concern over the U.N. Small Arms Treaty is paranoia and/or a fund raising ruse. I probably should do more research on the topic before taking a really firm stand but my initial take is that it would require registration of firearms in the U.S.. That is totally unacceptable and more than sufficient grounds to vigorously oppose it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Robert W. Burke

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Entirely too much energy of our state police force is spent controlling honest citizens, simply because it is something they can succeed in doing.

Robert W. Burke
From here.
[I haven’t studied this much but I suspect it is true. If so then the solution is probably to change the incentives. I suspect the incentives are for arrests and convictions rather that low crime rates.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Kristin Goss

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In the late 1980s and into the mid-1990s, the framing of the gun control debate continued to revolve mainly around criminal justice. But this time the “bad hands” and “bad guns” had changed. The target of gun control efforts became the urban gang and the “assault weapons” that gang members used. The new focus on assault weapons gain clarity after Patrick Purdy used an AK-47 to kill five children at a Stockton, California, elementary school playground in January 1989. In that year the Nation Coalition to Ban Handguns changed its name to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence to reflect its view that assault rifles, as well as handguns, should be outlawed.

Kristin Goss
Disarmed: the missing movement for gun control in America, see the actual text in a preview of the book on page 112.
Published November 17, 2008
[This is supporting evidence to refute those that claim CSGV does has not advocated banning handguns for more than 20 years. See also the Wikipedia article on CSGV.

There is more (posted March 29, 2002) evidence at (posted November 1, 2003) these web pages which all (posted January 21, 2002) claim (posted July 16, 2003):

CSGV supports a ban on the importation, manufacture, sale and transfer of handguns and assault weapons, with reasonable exceptions for police, military, security personnel, gun clubs, and antique and collectable firearms stored in inoperable condition.

Also of interest is the domain gunfree.org (created 19-Feb-1997) is an alias for csgv.org (created 09-Jul-1999) and is used as the reference for a number of those pages. Hence any reference to either gunfree.org or csgv.org must have been created since those domains were registered. Since both domains were created in the last 15 years claims that CSGV has not advocated banning handguns for over 20 years must be considered false.

One must also ask the question, “What would be the objective of an organization who uses the domain name of GunFree.org?” My hypothesis would be that they wish to ban all guns.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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My message to our opponents is to give up. Gun control as as fantastical now as unicorns. Technology will just no longer allow it to work.

Sebastian
December 12, 2011
CNC Milled AR-15, The Test Firing
[Legally, politically, culturally, and now technologically, it’s game over for the anti-gun guys.—Joe]

Quote of the day—HarpoSnarx

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Poor dickless Gooper needs his power enhancer whereever he goes. I guess an essential of the Gooper lifestyle is hearing eggshells crunching as they strut around in their little master of the universe persona.

To such “timid, oppressed” souls, it’s a safeguard against being razzed about destroying America from a family librul. They pimp the 2nd Amendment to make us as dickless as they are.

HarpoSnarx
November 24, 2011
Comment to Dear Amy, Should I Let My Holiday Guests Pack Heat?
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

Beyond this being a another example of Markley’s Law I can’t even make sense of this.—Joe]

Quote of the day—David E. Young

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The 5/4 split decision in the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia vs Heller case demonstrated a continuing dichotomy in Second Amendment history between relevant period sources, which were largely relied on in the Courts’ decision, and the views of modern historians that backed up the dissent in that case. Justice Breyer’s statement that most of the historians supported the Heller dissent was correct, but that is exactly the problem. The historians’ brief contained numerous errors of fact and failed to present the essential bill of rights related developmental history of the Second Amendment’s clauses.

David E. Young
The American Revolutionary Era Origin of the Second Amendment’s Clauses
From Volume 23 (2011) of the JOURNAL ON FIREARMS & PUBLIC POLICY.
[It’s a great resource on the origin of the Second Amendment. I wish there were a way to get these points across to current historians and judges. But as near as I can tell facts are frequently superfluous to the decision making process of most people.

Update: Young’s blog post about the paper.—Joe]

A Christmas classic

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A classic in more than one sense:

Via Kevin from the Lewiston Pistol Club email list.

New shooter report

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My niece Lisa took a new shooter to the range:

Friday we went to the shooting range and taught my roommate Shannon how to shoot (she had never shot a gun before in her life).  Mike did most of the “training” since he’s in the Army.  We shot a .22 pistol, my .357 magnum revolver, and… a full-auto AR-15.  It was fun to introduce someone new to shooting.  Shannon loved it and wants to go shooting again!  Luckily we found out that Thursday nights are “date night” and two people shoot for the price of one… can you say roommate date?

All violence or just “gun violence”?

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As Daniel from work said in the email, “back to bows and arrows” and I would like to add knives and clubs:

A new technology called ShotSpotter enables law enforcement officials to precisely and instantaneously locate shooters, and it has been quietly rolling out across America. From Long Island, N.Y., to San Francisco, Calif., more than 60 cities in the U.S. have been leveraging ShotSpotter to make their streets safer.

…

ShotSpotter relies on wide-area acoustic surveillance and GPS technology to triangulate the source of gunshots. Sensors are fixed to buildings and poles to provide coverage over a fixed area. With audio-analysis software, it can identify whether a shooter is stationary or moving — meaning police officers can be equipped with information on the speed and direction of, say, a vehicle from which a shot was fired.

It can also “hear” the acoustic signature and distinguish between calibers and types of firearms. Similarly, it can hear different explosions and classify them, from vehicle backfires to fireworks to bombs.

The ShotSpotter Gunfire Alert system then relays the location and data to the police or a dispatch computer within moments, enabling a more rapid response time for both police and first responders.

The best part: ShotSpotter works. It’s accurate to 10 to 15 feet, and some police departments are reporting accuracy to within five feet. In Long Island’s Nassau County, gun violence was reduced by a whopping 90 percent at the close of this year’s first quarter.

It would be interested to see if the total violence and not just “gun violence” was reduced. I’m immediately suspect when careful wording such as that in the last paragraph is used.

A chapter is closed

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A choir boy shot by a racist vigilante white guy in 1984 died on the 27th anniversary of the shooting:

Exactly 27 years to the day after Bernhard Goetz — famous in New York lore as the “Subway Vigilante’’ — shot four young men he thought were threatening him on a train, one of them killed himself by swallowing prescription pills in a low-rent Bronx motel, authorities said.

James Ramseur, 45, was found dead of an apparent overdose at 11:30 a.m. yesterday at the Paradise Hotel at 2990 Boston Road, law-enforcement sources said last night.

…

Ramseur had gotten out of prison only 17 months ago, after serving 25 years upstate for raping a young woman on a Bronx rooftop.

The shooting took place on Dec. 22, 1984, when Ramseur, 18, and neighborhood pals Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen and Troy Canty, all 19, were riding a downtown No. 2 train.

…

Cabey, who was paralyzed when Goetz shot him at close range, won a $43 million lawsuit. Goetz declared bankruptcy and hasn’t paid a dime.

Cabey, by far the most seriously injured, still is confined to a wheelchair and functions with the intellect of an 8-year-old.

Allen was convicted of robbery in 1991 and released from prison four years later.

Canty racked up a string of petty offenses and once served 18 months in a residential drug- treatment program.

The NY Times has more:

Mr. Ramseur was already incarcerated at the time of the trial, having been convicted of raping, sodomizing and robbing a young pregnant woman in 1986. He was conditionally released in 2002, but he returned to prison for a parole violation in 2005. He finished his sentence in July 2010.

I can only think that Goetz should have had more training and ammo so this particular chapter of history could have been closed much earlier.

Quote of the day—Jane Fonda

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I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist.

Jane Fonda
August 2002
[In the 20th Century about 100 million people were killed, mostly by their own governments, trying to implement communism. So, tell me Ms. Fonda, are you volunteering your body to be thrown on the pile in the 21 Century?—Joe]

Do as I say

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If, as I have heard, pointing out hypocrisy is one of the most potent political weapons then this gun grabber just exposed himself big time. Via Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms:

BELLEVUE, WA – Mobile, Alabama Mayor Sam Jones has some explaining to do in the wake of a highly-publicized incident this week during which he held a burglary suspect at gunpoint, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

Jones, a Democrat, is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an organization that has campaigned for stricter gun control laws that affect average private citizens.

But Jones is no average private citizen. According to published reports, Jones was returning home from an errand, driving his private vehicle. “His bodyguard, who drives the mayor’s city vehicle, was not on duty,” the Press-Register newspaper reported. And now there are questions about whether the mayor has an Alabama carry permit.

“Here is a municipal mayor who has a bodyguard, and believes it is okay for him to carry a gun, but he belongs to an organization that consistently works to keep everyone else from carrying,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “If the mayor is legally licensed, why does he belong to a group that has fought to prevent law-abiding citizens from exercising their self-defense right?

“If Mayor Jones doesn’t have a permit,” he continued, “then he is a poster child for the double standards that elites like Mayor Michael Bloomberg believe separates them from the citizens they serve. Either way, Mayor Jones owes it to his constituents to show them his carry permit, and to oppose any further attempts by Mayors Against Illegal Guns to prevent private citizens from exercising their constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms.

“It is no surprise that average American citizens are fed up with government officials at all levels,” Gottlieb observed. “We’re glad that Mayor Jones had the means and the willingness to protect his property, but we are stunned and disappointed that he belongs to an organization whose very essence is to make it virtually impossible for average citizens to do likewise.”

I have to wonder if Bloomberg will kick him out of the organization or if he will find nothing wrong with one of the anointed defending life and property with their own firearm.

Quote of the day—James Carville

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I don’t think there is a Second Amendment right to own a gun.

James Carville
October 2002
[If there had been a period after the third word in that sentence I would have totally agreed with him.—Joe]

ATF standardizing on residency requirements

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This is nice news:

The DOJ recently concluded that, as a matter of law, applying a more stringent State residency requirement for aliens legally present in the U.S. than for U.S. citizens is incompatible with the language of the GCA. As a result, ATF will be revising the regulations in 27 C.F.R. Part 478 to conform to the DOJ’s conclusions by removing the separate 90-day residency requirement for aliens.

Gun rights jujitsu

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This was a nice bit of verbal jujitsu for gun rights. The end result was the usual “Reasoned Discourse” but still it had to have stung for at least a little while.

How do we solve this problem?

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To the best of my knowledge they do not back these conclusions up with data yet we have this from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

The best way to keep your children safe from injury or death from guns is to NEVER have a gun in the home.

  • Do not purchase a gun, especially a handgun.
  • Remove all guns present in the home.
  • Talk to your children about the dangers of guns, and tell them to stay away from guns.
  • Find out if there are guns in the homes where your children play. If so, talk to the adults in the house about the dangers of guns to their families.

Presuming there is no factual basis, which I’m virtually certain there is not or the CDC would have mentioned it, what is the best way to encourage them to recant? My guess it has to come from pediatric physicians but I’m open to suggestions.

A lot can happen in ten years

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It was just a little over ten years ago the news was U.S. Handgun Production Dives 52%:

The American handgun market has dropped off so steeply that some industry experts worry that it may never fully recover.

Observers and critics cite a number of factors for the decline, including tougher rules for buying handguns, the revulsion caused by workplace and school shootings and the possibility that Americans already own all the guns they want.

The handgun business is “a dying industry,” said Cameron Hopkins, editor in chief of American Handgunner magazine.

Combined production for domestic and overseas handgun sales tumbled 52 percent between 1993 and 1999, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Industry experts foresee more rough going in the future for the country’s 50 handgun manufacturers.

Handgun imports also are way down, ATF figures indicate.

Of course a big share of the production “dive” was the boycott of Smith and Wesson the previous year. But still those were dark days for the industry and for gun rights.

We are “riding high” now but in ten years things could change again if we do not keep pushing as fast and as hard as we can in the proper direction. Liberty is always unfinished business.

See also Quote of the day—Tom Diaz from earlier today.

Quote of the day—Tom Diaz

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I think the era of the mass marketing of handguns is going to end.

Tom Diaz
Violence Policy Center analyst
April 13, 2001
U.S. Handgun Production Dives 52%
[Lest anyone get too cocky about our current situation keep in mind this was just 10 years ago. A lot can happen in ten years.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Jeff Knox

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It infuriates me when I hear “reporting” and editorializing about “the powerful Gun Lobby” and “the intransigent Gun Lobby” and sometimes even “the evil Gun Lobby,” as if we were a handful of rich fat cats in safari shirts sitting in a mahogany-lined room full of leather, stuffed animals, and cigar smoke plotting how to increase our profits by increasing crime. We are the people! We are the 80 to 90 million people in this country who own guns and the tens of millions more who do not own guns, but fully support our right to do so.

Jeff Knox
December 17, 2011
I Am The Gun Lobby
[This excellent rant should become a classic. Please read the whole thing and remind those who refer to the NRA as “the gun lobby” that we are the gun lobby.

H/T Say Uncle.—Joe]