Hilarious to see them still beating this drum when we have just seen the broadest carry rights expansion in US history. After Bruen, the antigun holdouts like New York, California, and New Jersey were forced to issue permits to the broader public for the first time. At the same time, lots of formerly shall-issue states have adopted constitutional carry.
A study from Stanford University of four decades of data found that states that adopted more liberal gun carry laws, and therefore more civilian gun carrying, saw an increase in violent crime of from 13% to 15%. Numerous studies of states that have adopted broad “stand your ground” laws (meaning that people when confronted with a perceived threat in public had no duty to retreat) and that also have liberal gun carry policies have seen significantly higher rates of gun killings. A study of intimate partner violence found that such violence was three times more likely when guns were present. In short, more guns lead to more crime.
So if there was ever a way to “stress test” whether an expanded right to carry leads to more violence, this was it. The result? We are now experiencing the lowest national homicide rate in modern US history, and it’s still dropping.
The predictions of people like Spitzer and his gun control group allies were totally wrong. They should be discredited.
The highlighted area of the quote is Moros quoting Robert Spitzer. Spitzer, almost for certain, conflates “gun killings” with crime. I remember the time after the Boston Marathon bombing when the anti-gun crowd was doing a protest of gun ownership, and they read a long list of people killed with guns. One of the deceased they were using as evidence of “guns bad, ban guns” was one of the terrorist bombers killed by the police when the terrorist was cornered made his last stand. They cannot distinguish between justified and unjustified homicide and/or they deliberate equate them to increase the numbers.
The Communist Manifesto turns 178 today. Read it if you haven’t. Know what it says. Understand its appeal. Then look at what happened every single time someone tried to implement it. Ideas have consequences. These ideas had 100 million of them.
When someone tells you that guns are dangerous and that you should not have them, tell them how many millions of people have been murdered by the dangerous ideas in The Communist Manifesto. Then inform them of your opinion of gun control.
Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Arizona, said that the tools “allow police officers and security personnel to de-escalate dangerous situations without resorting to deadly force.” He noted the bill has been endorsed by a number of law enforcement groups.
Those arguments don’t persuade gun control advocates, who say the bill would create a new market for people to buy powerful weapons without typical safeguards, such as a background check, or even to transform the devices into weapons that could kill.
“What it’s about is not law enforcement. It’s creating consumer markets for average, everyday people to go and buy these kinds of weapons,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun control group Brady.
State laws, not federal laws, regulate police weapons procurement, Brown pointed out. Gun control advocates are also concerned that recategorizing an entire group of weapons gives manufacturers such as Axon a blank check to create new types of weapons that would be exempt from the safeguards that usually apply to guns, such as background checks and serial numbers.
In case it wasn’t clear from the last 60 years of conflict with anti-gun people, it is not just guns they do not want you to have. They do not want you to have any defensive tools. Not knives, not tasers. These people are evil.
At the same time, many anti-gun stalwarts were falling all over themselves to advance arguments that, in any other circumstance, would remain alien. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, submitted waspishly that “the Trump administration does not believe in the 2nd Amendment. Good to know.” Anti-gun rights groups joined the fray. The Giffords campaign argued that Pretti was “a lawful gun owner who was protesting in his community” and “had the right to be there,” and the Brady campaign asserted that he was “a law-abiding gun owner with a concealed carry permit.” At what point, one must ask, did they all turn into Wayne LaPierre?
…
one has to laugh. At present, Gavin Newsom is literally attempting to repeal the Second Amendment, and, in 2023, he signed a bill in California that barred guns from being carried in “sensitive places,” including at protests. (Minnesota has considered a similar law, and, in 2024, the state filed an amicus brief arguing that there is no Second Amendment right to carry guns at “events involving political speech, like political rallies and protests,” because they are “often targets of violence.”) The Giffords campaign wishes to ban the type of firearm that Pretti was carrying on the grounds that it represents “a threat to society” and is “designed to kill large numbers of people quickly,” and it holds the official view that “guns at protests” are not protected by the Constitution because carrying them “chills the exercise of our fundamental freedoms.” The Brady campaign agrees with this, proposing that Americans “do not need a loaded gun to peacefully protest” and should not be allowed to carry one.
It appears as if the Republicans started it with saying stupid stuff about Petti committed a crime by protesting ICE activity while carrying a firearm. I have to wonder if it was a coordinated effort to demonstrate the Democrats will take the opposite side of whatever the Republicans says.
After a few seconds of thought, no. I do not think they are smart or coordinated enough to pull that off. I think it is more likely they started it off by vomiting out the first thing that came to mind when it was discovered Petti was carrying a gun when he was killed. “Democrat with a gun? I’m opposed to Democrats. I am on the side of law and order he must have done something illegal…”
I think the Republicans were doing what they usually accusing Democrats of doing. Taking the opposite side of their political opponents no matter how stupid it is to do so.
The link between saturation media coverage of mass murder, spree killing, jihadi attacks and copycat crimes is well established. It must stop.
News-media organizations that persist in literally glorifying these villains beyond any reasonable news value are complicit in encouraging further crime. They know it.
That fact has been established by the medical and law-enforcement communities. Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, along with a growing list of national co-sponsors is encouraging the journalism industry to cease and desist from repeatedly flashing the names and faces of mass murderers’ and jihadis’ in their reports.
It has been almost 10 years and still the media persists in continuing this dangerous activity. They should bear as much or more responsibility for mass shootings than all the gun owners in the entire country combined. If they think they can justify the Second Amendment being infringed because of mass shootings, then there is more than enough justification to infringe upon their First Amendment rights.
It is not that I think their rights really should be infringed. It is that proposing they be fined and/or jailed for exercising their First Amendment rights would, rightly, generate a great howling of protest. Then, claims of hypocrisy could be thrown at them.
While there’s certainly always a place for civil disobedience, I think “just don’t comply” and boating accident jokes are not a real solution to the expansion of authoritarian gun control laws.
Hard truth: They don’t care if you don’t comply. Either you’ll get caught breaking the law and charged, or, your defiance will be driven underground and unseen, and they will win the culture in the meantime. Your grandkids will find your gun stash after you die and turn it in.
By making more and more stuff illegal or more expensive, they also choke off any new converts (this is also why the antigun groups are obsessed with pressuring YouTube and others to censor).
You can’t just ignore them, because they will not ignore you.
Also note that they aren’t going to play to your strengths. They are not going to “go door to door”. They will increase costs through licenses, delays, taxes, lawsuits, zoning, debanking, fines, inspections, fingerprinting, background checks, “sensitive places”, “red flag laws”, “child endangerment”, “safe storage” requirements, semi-auto bans, magazine capacity limits, caliber restrictions, self-manufacturing bans, ammo quantity purchasing limits, age limits, etc.
We need to fight with our strengths. Take new people to range. Donate money to gun groups that win in the courts (I donate thousands each year to the Second Amendment Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition). Leave comments on anti-gun media articles.
Most importantly, be a good public representative of gun ownership.
As a gun guy for a loooong time, I have bad news for 3D printing guys—the word “gun” is often enough for people to give up their rights out of fear.
People will gladly bend over & let the state have their way with them if it will help with the made up “Gun Problem”.
Guns are the Goldstein Big Brother uses to fuel enough Two Minutes Hate so that people will gladly turn their eyes away from abuses like this because they have been brainwashed into thinking somehow this will keep them safe.
It won’t. And it WILL be used against more than printed guns. It’s a form of control and they will use their fairly successful campaign of making guns out to be the boogeyman to allow them to control more & more of your life.
This is why I’ve fought gun control. It’s MUCH more than just the guns, always has been. But too many people are scared shitless of loud noises & Hollywood portrayals that they honestly fear them enough to allow whatever draconian laws are presented and then call you names & try to have your life ruined if you oppose them.
This is regarding the restrictions certain politicians are putting on the 3D printers. These restrictions include printer firmware recognizing gun parts and refusing to print them and the printer “calling home” to report restricted items being made.
This is a First Amendment issue as well as a Second Amendment issue.
During one of his training videos, Carita claimed his group has a “strong focus on bringing gun owners into policy discussions.”
However, Carita did not respond to phone calls, texts or emails sent via his website, so there’s at least one gun owner he doesn’t want to bring into any policy discussion. Also, his website’s “contact us” and “media inquiries” buttons have both been disconnected.
Hawaii is not addressing an unprecedented societal concern posed by permitholders. Data show the opposite: carry-license revocations are exceedingly rare—typically between 0.01% and 0.32% annually—and often unrelated to criminal conduct. Texas conviction statistics show that permitholders are nearly seven times less likely to be convicted of a crime than the general population. Colorado’s arrest-based revocation system shows that permitholders are more than eight times less likely to be arrested. Independent research, from RAND to the Chicago Tribune, and even data collected by the Violence Policy Center, confirm that permitholders offend at far lower rates than ordinary citizens. Concealed carry permitholders are exceptionally law-abiding, and Hawaii’s treatment of them as predatory actors has no empirical or historical foundation.
This is nothing new. Essentially everyone, even anti-gun people, knows the basics of this. The only reasons they continue to harass gun owners with laws against possessing gun for defensive use must be something other than fear of gun owners committing criminal acts.
In my mind the best explanations for this unconstitutional and immoral behavior are:
They intend to commit acts against gun owners that they know would get them shot.
High violent crime rates against defenseless people increase dependency on the government.
Tribal loyalty compels them to be opposed to anything their political enemies advocate.
Robbers are the natural ally of the anti-capitalist and the anti-gun people are protecting their allies.
They have mental health issues and are unable to think rationally (Peterson Syndrome).
Of course, various anti-gun people can have more than one reason to pursue their evil goals. There is no need to pick just one reason. embrace the power of and. Then, prepare and respond appropriately.
We’re not here trying to burden unnecessarily the American citizen, who has the complete right to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and we will not be doing that in the future if I am so confirmed.
He is mouthing words which are better than the actions of the director during the Biden administration, but unless he is dismantling the firearms portion of the ATF the agency is always going to be an illegal “burden” (infringement) of the Second Amendment. 4473s and background checks were not part of the history and tradition of firearms regulation at the time of our country’s founding.
Still, we should take one step at a time and celebrate our victories. Having a better director than the last one is a step in the right direction and worthy of mild celebration. Always remember, Laugh, and the World Laughs with You. If nothing else keep in mind that if Robert Cekada is confirmed as director, the anti-gunners will be saddened and demoralized.
The people who scream the loudest about government tyranny have nothing to say. The same people who fantasize about standing up to federal overreach have vanished at the precise moment federal power killed a citizen exercising a constitutional right.
This is the tell.
We have seen this movement erupt before. When Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with an AR-15 and killed two people, he was transformed into a cause. He was fundraised for, defended relentlessly, and held up as proof that armed citizens are the last line of order in a chaotic world. The weapon was the point, and the violence was excused. The narrative was protected at all costs.
But when a man lawfully carrying a firearm is tackled, disarmed, and shot anyway, there is no mobilization from the same crowd. The difference is not the gun. It is who the gun is allowed to protect.
Because the gun-rights movement has never actually been about freedom. It is about hierarchy and about who gets to feel powerful and in charge. It is about whose fear counts, and whose death does not.
Dead children are acceptable collateral. Dead immigrants are invisible. Dead Black and brown men are routine. And now, apparently, dead armed citizens are still not enough to stir outrage unless they fit the right political story.
The tell is that McClure left out the part where Alex Petti, who is never named in the article, committed a crime and was in the process of being arrested when he was disarmed and erroneously shot during the scuffle. A criminal getting shot by law enforcement during an arrest is much different than Rittenhouse who successfully defended himself against multiple criminals’ intent on killing or seriously injuring him.
The two situations are not analogous. It has nothing to do with the political affiliation, skin color, or immigration status. It has to do with whether the people involved were law-abiding or not.
The only thing clear in the article is McClure does not have a good grasp of reality and/or is being deliberately deceptive.
It is my intention to assure the residents of Livingston that we are still a Second Amendment sanctuary county, and we will be paying close attention to the bills that will be coming out of Richmond. I will do my absolute best to help protect those citizens and our constitutional values here in Spotsylvania.
With the flurry of gun control laws being enacted in Virginia this is at least a little bit of good news. I don’t think the whole “Second Amendment sanctuary” thing has ever been tested in the legal arena. But at least it is “a spit in their face”.
Several niche, left-leaning gun advocacy groups said that since the killing of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, they can hardly keep up with the surging demand for firearms training.
Surely, everyone can see this will result in making it easier to eliminate the infringements on our 2nd Amendment rights. Some people will be concerned of increased odds for violent civil war. What they probably don’t realize is that once someone becomes a gun owner there is increased rate of those people leaving the political left.
I see this as a minor increase in risk with tremendous potential for good.
A few Trump Admin officials said some very dumb anti-2A things over the weekend. They got criticism and walked back those statements today. On the actual substantive policy and law, the Admin has generally been very good on the issue, although we do strongly disagree with them on some things.
Democrats, for their part, said some very pro-2A things over the weekend in support of Alex Pretti. But by Monday, they were already back to banning the gun and magazines he carried.
I’d love nothing more for Democrats to truly support the 2A and make the issue less partisan. But that just isn’t the reality. Trump may say things like “take the guns first.” Democrats actually do it.
As I told Barb, “I don’t believe politicians have actual principles. They will say and do whatever they think is good for them politically.”
So, you have to either make your desires politically rewarding enough for them to obey the law or abandon all hope of them behaving in a constitutional manner. The judges at the SCOTUS level are better and where I place most of my hope of getting the gun issue straightened out. Hence, I donate money to the Second Amendment groups which appear to be most effective in the courts.
My remaining hope is in creating new gun owners and increasing the enthusiasm of existing owners. Hence, my taking new shooters to the range and Boomershoot.
Is the Hobbesian fear truly rooted in reality? If not, what happens to politics when we allow fear, not cooperation, to become foundational to our framework? Robert Nozick asked these same questions in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. These lucidly written pages extend these arguments even further—with some surprising conclusions.
Aeon J. Skoble—professor of philosophy, bestselling author, and acclaimed political theorist—makes a powerful case that the state as we understand it today is not only morally unjustifiable, but also, thankfully, unnecessary. It has only the power we mistakenly grant it. What if we didn’t?
Packed with urgent lessons, original insights, and unparalleled philosophical rigor, this book is essential reading for anyone who dares imagine a freer world.
I am extremely skeptical. I am of the strong opinion that governments are a necessary evil to protect the rights of the individual. Yes, when they go rogue they can be the greatest infringer of rights. But on the whole, with a well armed populus, they can be a net benefit to humanity.
That said, if the book were available in audible form, I would purchase it just to see what the author has to say.
In every clip I’ve seen of Noem today, she’s saying something she can’t know or that is a lie. She also undercuts 2A to say carrying ammo is a problem on its face. I know it’s too much to expect people to be responsible, but this is opposite of a grown-up doing the job.
It is way beyond having hope of most people to be responsible. Things are more chaotic than I think I have ever seen them. Emotions are running very high. Most people cannot even determine what is reality. Part of the problem is the media lies, selective reporting, and deliberate distortion. Part of it is that many people don’t even believe in the existence of an objective reality. And part of it is that reality is a really tough problem. We are left with people blinded by emotion, without knowledge of how to determine a reality they don’t even believe exists, with deliberate lies as the basis to make decisions on how to interact with the rest of the world.
