I love humor where someone literally interprets something resulting in a completely different message.
From Steve at work who found it on a Facebook page for police officers and former officers (Steve is the latter):
Category Archives: Gun Rights
Quote of the day—Yankeesfan66 @Rangersfan66
I’m not talking about violent crime, I’m talking about homocides of children. There is quite a diffrent, the shrink can help
Yankeesfan66 @Rangersfan66
Tweeted on February 18, 2016
[In what universe does this guy live such that homicide of innocent children is not a crime?
These people have mental problems and projection issues.—Joe]
Update: I got a response on Twitter from this genius in response to this blog post:
@JoeHuffman Now you know why I remember psychiatrists for you gun addicts…
Culture changing concealed carry
Starting at Say Uncle I followed a trail of links and found this:
Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report:
- The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing at an ever increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued – a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits.
- 5.2% of the total adult population has a permit.
- Five states now have more than 10% of their adult population with concealed handgun permits.
- In ten states, a permit is no longer required to carry in all or virtually all of the state. This is a major reason why legal carrying handguns is growing so much faster than the number of permits.
- Since 2007, permits for women has increased by 270% and for men by 156%.
- Some evidence suggests that permit holding by minorities is increasing more than twice as fast as for whites.
- Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.2 (preliminary estimates) per 100,000. This represents a 25% drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 178%. Overall violent crime also fell by 25 percent over that period of time.
- Regression estimates show that even after accounting for the per capita number of police and people admitted to prison and demographics, the adult population with permits is significantly associated with a drop in murder and violent crime rates.
- Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors or felonies at one-sixth the rate that police officers are convicted.
Later in the report we find this:
This report will focus on the increase in concealed carry. Obviously, the main focus from a crime prevention point of view is whether people actually do carry guns, not whether they are allowed to do so.
Unsurprisingly, the number of permits has grown faster than the number of states that allow concealed carry. This is because in each state, the longer the law is in effect, more and more people have gradually applied and received permits. But there appears to be another factor: President Obama’s election in 2008. Not only did Obama’s election increase gun sales, it also increased the number of concealed handgun permits.
Initially the increase in permits was slow, growing from roughly 2.7 million permit holders in 1999 to 4.6 million in 2007. But the number of concealed handgun permits literally exploded during the Obama presidency. For December 2011, the federal Government Accountability Office estimated that there were at least 8 million concealed handgun permits. By the June 2014, it was 11.1 million; in 2015, 12.8 million.
In other words, during the eight years from 1999 to 2007, the number of permits increased by about 240,000 per year. During the next four years, the number of permits surged by 850,000 per year. Then from the end of 2011 to 2013 the yearly increase rose by 1,550,000. And during the last year the increase has continued to accelerate to 1,700,000.
Emphasis added. In other words, as others have observed, if Obama and his friends want to reduce the number of guns being sold and carried publically in this country they should resign from politics.
Then there is this which, with a little editing, could be put in a tweet with good effect on certain occasions:
Permit holders on rare occasion violate the law. But in order to truly appreciate how incredibly rare those problems are one needs to remember that there are over 12.8 million permit holders in the US. Indeed, it is impossible to think of any other group in the US who is anywhere near as law--abiding.
One of the best ways to change the culture is to normalize a behavior. The anti-gun people have been trying to convince others we are “extremists” for decades. We are rapidly being able to turn the tables on them.
A couple weeks ago a female coworker told me, wide eyed and with an incredulous tone as if he were crazy, “My dad told I should get a concealed weapons permit!” I responded that another woman we both knew applied for one a week or so previously. Her attitude immediately became subdued and she didn’t continue the “crazy dad” attitude. Last week she told me about some guy in our building who scares her. He stares at her when she is around. She then told me she going to get a concealed pistol license and asked how to go about it. Today I offered to take her to the range at lunch time. She agreed but we haven’t gone yet.
That’s one way to victory. There is another path to culture change in the report I have been quoting above.
The concealed carry permit numbers for all states are included in the report. Alabama has the most with 12.64%. I’m most interested in Washington State, which has 8.83%, and Idaho with a 8.62% rate but we can mine more out of this paper.
The lowest permit rate in the top 26 states is North Carolina where the rate is 5.47%. So when someone expresses concern about people discretely carrying firearms in public you can tell them, “If you live in most states the odds are that at least one in 20 and perhaps as high as one in eight people you meet in public has a permit to carry. How many people did you see in public today?”
In other words the changing concealed carry culture can change the culture further by pointing out how normal it is to carry firearms in public.
But perhaps the strangest indicator the culture is changing I have seen came in the form of an email today. In part it said, “It seems like shooting like you do would be quite a rush. Does that extra adrenaline carry over into the realm of subsequent sex?”
I invited them to the range with me to get some free coaching and see for themselves.
Would you like hollow points with that?
Paul Barrett spent Three Days Behind the Counter at a Vegas Gun Shop.
As usual, Barrett’s article is factually correct with a relatively mild anti-gun tone. But getting the facts to such a wide audience, Bloomberg Businessweek, is generally a good thing.
Quote of the day—Rich Burgess
The State’s Attorney’s Office has made it clear that they will put their collectivist politics over the need for them to perform their job as advocates of the law. Mentioning mass shootings and the fear-based political climates that their collectivist ilk have manufactured to describe how police should interact with law abiding members of the population is the height of propaganda.
Rich Burgess
Connecticut Carry President
February 8, 2016
Press Release
Manual of How to Harass Law Abiding Citizens
State’s Attorneys Release ‘How to Manual’ of Harassment
[Here is a direct link to the actual “manual”.
If you were to imagine making the appropriate substitutions of people peaceably exercising their First Amendment rights, or entering an abortion clinic, or “driving while black” instead of gun owners and treating them as suggested the uproar would make national news. And rightly so. This has to stop. These people should be candidates for prosecution instead of public officials. They are deliberately casting a chilling effect upon a specific enumerated right.—Joe]
This is how they respond to terrorist threats in other countries
This is old news (October 2015) but is good to see. It can be used as a counter to those people who are opposed to our school teachers and other private citizens being armed:
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Wednesday approved a number of measures to ease the requirements for firearm permits, as Israel copes with a wave of “lone wolf” terrorism.
“In recent weeks many citizens have helped the Israel Police subdue terrorists who carried out attacks,” he said.
“Citizens with firearms training are a multiplying force for the police in their fight against terrorism and therefore I will take measures to ease the restrictions at this time.”
…
The ministry on Wednesday used the example of allowing the Jerusalem Municipality to give permits to school teachers in the ultra-Orthodox sector, which it referred to as one of the most vulnerable communities.
Israel has been subject to a greater intensity and longer duration of “lone wolf” terrorist attacks than any other nation I know of. Rather than increasing firearms restrictions they are reducing them.
This is what they think of you
This is so you know the type of people who oppose private gun ownership.
Via a tweet from Linoge I found that at 12:40 PM PST, on November 30, 2015 Chris Tacy tweeted:
@monteiro perhaps they should have to shoot their kids to keep their guns
This is what they think of you and the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Quote of the day—Alan Korwin
Depriving us of gear as a way to stop murderers is misguided, puts you at risk, and is a thinly disguised effort to get to zero-round magazines — in the false and dangerous belief that disarming innocent people will finally disarm criminals. Police never want less ammo because they know that’s dangerous — neither should you.
Alan Korwin
January 25, 2016
Normal Capacity Magazines
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
Quote of the day—God Hates Windbags (@GodH8sWindbags)
@wallsofthecity @robdoar Need phallic symbol to show your manhood? Buy a fucking Camaro
God Hates Windbags (@GodH8sWindbags)
Tweeted on October 30, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday! Via a tweet from Linoge.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Justice Antonin Scalia
I don’t see how there’s any, any, any contradiction between reading the second clause as a — as a personal guarantee and reading the first one as assuring the existence of a militia, not necessarily a State-managed militia because the militia that resisted the British was not State- managed. But why isn’t it perfectly plausible, indeed reasonable, to assume that since the framers knew that the way militias were destroyed by tyrants in the past was not by passing a law against militias, but by taking away the people’s weapons — that was the way militias were destroyed. The two clauses go together beautifully: Since we need a militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Justice Antonin Scalia
March 18, 2008
During oral arguments in the case of District of Columbia et. al. v. Heller.
[We lost our strongest ally on the Supreme court in the battle against anti-gun people yesterday. He will be greatly missed.
See also other quotes and references I have posted about him.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Louis Pasteur
The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.
Louis Pasteur
[I can’t disagree with the conclusion. But I fear that particular derangement of the mind is so common that one would be hard pressed to prove it was abnormal. Hence my placing it in such a wide variety of blog post categories.—Joe]
Quote of the day—Denning and Reynolds
Political scientists and law professors alike have written extensively on signaling and agenda-setting by the Supreme Court. Despite being dicta—the issues mentioned were not before the Court and were not necessary to resolve those that were before it—the Heller safe harbor seems to us to have been a clear signal, clearer perhaps than any sent in Lopez, that lower courts should not declare open season on any and all federal gun laws. It seems to us that the lower courts have certainly heeded this signal.
If the Heller safe harbor was indeed intended as a signal to lower courts (and litigants, perhaps), then it tends to confirm an earlier observation we made about Heller: that it is another example of the Court’s tendency to constitutionalize the national consensus on certain hot button issues and then enforce it against outliers.
Brannon P. Denning
Glenn H. Reynolds
August 1, 2009
Heller, High Water(mark)? Lower Courts and the New Right to Keep and Bear Arms
[Via Glenn Reynolds.
This conclusion would appear to be true and signals to gun rights activists the incredible importance of changing the culture prior to pushing our luck in the courts. We need to make restrictive laws appear to be nonsensical outliers then, if we cannot get legislative action to our satisfaction, press the issue in the courts.—Joe]
The science is settled
Report: Criminologists, Economists Find Benefits to Gun Ownership:
Economists and criminologists have very different approaches to research and different political views, but they both generally find benefits from gun ownership,” Lott told Townhall in an email. “Economists, on the whole, were much more likely than criminologists to believe that there are benefits from gun ownership. By a factor of 12-to-1, economists believe that permitted concealed handguns reduce rather than increase murder rates. Despite their differences, still criminologists also believe this by a factor of just 2-to-1.”
Perhaps surveys such as this will help Americans take a level-headed approach to gun control in the future.
No. It won’t help Americans take a level-headed approach to gun control. This is because anti-gun people have never been “level-headed”. If they had the capacity to be level-headed they wouldn’t have been anti-gun to begin with and they wouldn’t have to lie to gain traction.
We must continue to fight them culturally and politically until they become as irrelevant as the KKK which they so closely resemble.
Quote of the day—Alan Korwin
Nothing points out the bankruptcy of our nation’s gun-control debate better than the mythologies that surrounds it.
Prior “common sense” proposals are perpetually abandoned. The so-called “news” media adopts each new absurd gun-control scheme dutifully, promotes it uncritically, then drops it like a hot potato when it is proven worthless and runs to the next latest greatest bit of hoplophobic (morbid gun fear) ridiculousness.
In effect the nation endures a serial mythology, with new myths invented constantly, so we lose sight of each established myth as new ones spring into the public eye.
Alan Korwin
December 21, 2015
KORWIN: America’s Real Gun Problem – The Gun Myths
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
I-594 being ignored
I reported some on this last December but KING 5 News has more:
But analysis of federal data by the KING 5 Investigators raises questions about how effective that law has been.
Only 2% of background checks in Washington in 2015 stemmed from “private party” sales of guns, according to data in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check – or NICS – system.
That number is surprising to researchers Philip Cook of Duke and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago, who study gun violence.
They say that their own research – and studies by others – have shown that up to 40% of gun sales nationwide are between private citizens. They’re skeptical that the 2% reported to the FBI is an accurate picture of the private gun market in Washington state.
“I suspect…there are a lot of unreported private-market sales going on,” Ludwig said in an email to KING 5.
In other words, the data could indicate that many gun sellers and buyers are evading the law.
And that doesn’t even count the “transfers” covered by the law which don’t involve a sale. I’ll bet they would be unable find anyone who did a NICS check on someone they loaned a gun to for a short period of time. I-594 is probably, and justifiably so, going to be ignored as much as other stupid laws such those against recreational drugs, underage drinking, and oral sex.
Quote of the day—Ms. Ann Drist (@saltphoenix)
and the first thing to shit up my mentions with trollish-ness? A man with a gun. Always swinging their dicks when you call ’em out. Or guns.
Ms. Ann Drist (@saltphoenix)
Tweeted on November 2, 2015
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!—Joe]
Quote of the day—United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
We reject the State’s argument that the Second Amendment does not apply to detachable magazines because magazines are not firearms—that is, detachable magazines do not constitute “bearable” arms that are expressly protected by the Second Amendment. See U.S. Const. amend. II. By Maryland’s logic, the government can circumvent Heller, which established that the State cannot ban handguns kept in the home for self-defense, simply by prohibiting possession of individual components of a handgun, such as the firing pin. But of course, without the ability to actually fire a gun, citizens cannot effectively exercise the right to bear arms. See Jackson v. City of San Francisco, 746 F.3d 953, 967 (9th Cir. 2014) (“The Second Amendment protects ‘arms,’ ‘weapons,’ and ‘firearms’; it does not explicitly protect ammunition. Nevertheless, without bullets, the right to bear arms would be meaningless.”). In our view, “the right to possess firearms for protection implies a corresponding right” to possess component parts necessary to make the firearms operable.
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
February 4, 2016
No. 14-1945; STEPHEN V. KOLBE et al. v. State of Maryland
[It’s nice to find a court that agrees with us and is making clear what we gun rights activists all know to be true and essential.
This answers the ignorant high school kid I quoted yesterday.—Joe]
OSHA is going after ammo manufacturers
I received a call today from someone who works for a major ammunition manufacturer. They required anonymity but want the following information to get out to the public.
NSSF is also involved in the fight but doesn’t want to speak out about it either.
It turns out my blog post about OSHA considering a requirement of “no guns at work” policy got their attention.
They referred me to this letter from OSHA as background and proceeded to tell me:
For about two years we’ve been BITTERLY fighting, and ultimately losing, a battle with OSHA over warning labels on ammunition.
They have repeatedly asked something to the effect, “Are you doing this due to pressure from above?” They haven’t been able to get an answer. Everything just seems a little odd about it. My blog post dialed the paranoia up another notch.
It’s a little obscure so you may not be aware that the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is prohibited, by law, from regulating firearms and ammunition. This means that, by law, ammunition is not considered a “consumer product”. And some other agencies don’t have authority to regulate them for other reasons.
Ammunition manufacturers have long recognized they could be a target of repressive regulation if the government were given a plausible excuse and hence have been very careful to “police their own”. With no major events attributable to poor quality, indifference to safety, or newsworthy events attributable to ammunition they have managed to avoid undue attention for many decades. The only thing I can recall in my lifetime that put them at serious risk was the big fuss about Black Talon ammo back in the mid-90s. Winchester nipped that in the bud by taking it off the market faster than the tyrants in congress could pass a bill to ban it.
So for decades the ammunition manufacturers have been avoiding undue scrutiny and everyone has been getting along pretty well. Then a couple years ago OSHA approached them and said, in essence, “You need to put warnings on all your products because indoor range employees are at risk from exposure to lead.”
What?
Sure, some indoor ranges have had severe problems with air quality. And some employees and customers have been exposed to too much lead. So one shouldn’t have a problem understanding how OSHA could find a way to poke their nose into the business of indoor ranges. They have never had oversight over ammunition before so how do they imagine they have authority to regulate it now? Well, from reading the letter OSHA sent to SAAMI lawyers ammunition it appears their claim is that ammunition is a “chemical container”. And hence manufacturers much comply with all the nuances of proper labeling of chemicals in their use at the place of business. They can sort of explain this away because ammunition is not, legally, a “consumer product”.
Okay. Fine. Using the proper weasel words the power hungry regulators think they have an angle to harass the ammunition manufacturers. Why not just comply with the labeling requirements and get them off their backs? They are. But it’s not all that easy.
It turns out this is non-trivial for a number of reasons. One reason is that some of the larger manufacturers have many thousands of different packaging configurations. It can cost over a million dollars to change the packaging on everything. Another reason is that the labeling requirements are such that it can’t fit on some of the current packages. A fifty round box of .22 LR ammo is just too small to have the required warnings and still be readable. Another reason it’s a problem is that the environment where the ammo is used varies so much. The same ammo that is perfectly safe for the shooter in a hunting environment can be toxic at an indoor range with inadequate ventilation due to plugged air filters. There are just so many things out of the ammo manufacturers control that the valid safety issues need to be addressed at the location where it is being used.
There are a couple of things that are kind of strange about this whole thing. One is that this person talked to several importers at SHOT show this year. None of them had been contacted by OSHA. Also, there have not been any sanctions or direct threats of sanctions over this. OSHA is providing guidelines and “suggestions” but doesn’t actually claim they have the authority to tell them what to do.
They suspect this may be due to politics rather than a semi-legitimate concern of regulators for the health of range employees. But, they don’t have any hard evidence to support that hypothesis. Do you?
Strict scrutiny in MD by the 4th on the 2nd
The 4th Circuit Court ruled on an assault weapon ban in Maryland. They said, in part:
Strict scrutiny, then, is the appropriate level of scrutiny to apply to the ban of semi- automatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 rounds.
…..
“In our view, Maryland law implicates the core protection of the Second Amendment—“the right of law-abiding responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home,” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 635 (2008), and we are compelled by Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), as well as our own precedent in the wake of these decisions, to conclude that the burden is substantial and strict scrutiny is the applicable standard of review for Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claim. Thus, the panel vacates the district court’s denial of Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claims and remands for the district court to apply strict scrutiny.“
It was a 2-1 majority. To put it technically, “Suck on that one, anti-rights cultists!”
Ahem. That is to say, “I’d count that as a potentially important win.”
Quote of the day—Murray Rosenbaum
If you have a single gun and over 50 bullets, you could be a public danger.
…
The amount of ammunition you would need to keep your home safe from potential thieves and those who would cause you harm wouldn’t be even close to 100 rounds of anything. A single clip is more than enough to be threatening and protective if worse comes to worse.
Murray Rosenbaum
A eighteen-year-old senior at Columbia Prep in NYC
February 3, 2016
Bullet, Not Gun Control
[Children say the cutest things!
But children with crap for brains like this shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Murray, let me help with your education.
A typical pistol match requires a 100 to 150 rounds.
Last month reloaded, for my own use, just under 2000 rounds. Last year it was 9531 rounds. Later this month I’m taking a class which requires, “2000 rounds of brass-cased FMJ ammunition (minimum)”.
When I took a friend to the range last weekend for a couple hours to teach her how to defend herself she went through about 200 rounds and her education and practice is far from complete. After I get her to a basic competency and comfort level she will probably take this class which requires, “600 rounds of brass-cased, FMJ ammunition (minimum)”. I expect getting her to that level will require another 500 rounds of ammunition.
Murray, you say,
the trick is making bullets more expensive…
I have no doubt there are plenty of other people who would claim that I’m endorsing the destruction of the second amendment. They can say that all they want, but in the end the Constitution says “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” but it doesn’t say anything about bullets.
Okay. Then using that same argument I have to conclude you would be unable to find a constitutional problem with a heavy tax on books. The First Amendment says freedom of the press, but doesn’t say anything about you being able to read it. Right?
When practicing I sometimes go through ammunition at the rate of up to five rounds per second. I figure that is about half the speed you can read words. So I propose we tax your use of reading of words at double whatever tax you want to impose on bullets. The number you used as an example in your post figured out to $75 per bullet. So, doing the arithmetic for you just in case your ignorance extends to the area of numbers as well as firearms and constitutional law, that would be a tax of $150 per word.
If you want to inflict a crushing tax on my education and those of others exercising their specific, enumerated, constitutionally protected, rights then you can say all you want, but in the end the constitution doesn’t protect you any more or less than it does me.*
* If you want to claim “books don’t kill people” ask your history instructor about Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Then reevaluate your claim before you engage me on that issue.—Joe]