Quote of the Day

Gun rights politics — i.e., defending your Second Amendment — is not a spectator sport. The people determined to destroy your rights play dirty, because in their book the end justifies the means. When you are in a nasty fight, expect somebody to accuse you of hitting “below the belt.”

Your response can be a simple: “Well, I didn’t think there was anything down there I was going to hurt.”

Dave Workman
April 26, 2024
Confront The Lies (jpfo.org)

The end justify their lies. It is part of their culture.

Quote of the Day

As a professor who studies the economics of violence and illicit trades at the University of San Diego’s Kroc School of Peace Studies, I think this law could have important ramifications.

That agency, part of the Justice Department, is tasked with making American communities safer.

The ATF focuses on those products because, while legal, they can cause significant harm to society – in the form of drunken driving, for example, or cancer-causing addictions. They also have a common history: All have been associated with criminal organizations seeking to profit from illicit markets.

Alcohol and tobacco products are thus usually subject to state excise taxes. This policy is known as a “Pigouvian tax,” named after 20th-century British economist Arthur Pigou. By making a given product more expensive, such a tax leads people to buy less of it, reducing the harm to society while generating tax revenue that the state can theoretically use to offset those harms that still accrue.

California, for instance, imposes a US$2.87 excise tax on each pack of cigarettes. That tax is higher than the national average but much lower than New York’s $5.35 levy. California also imposed a vaping excise tax of 12.5% in 2021.

Of the three ATF product families, firearms have enjoyed an exemption from California excise taxes. Until now.

Topher L. McDougal
University of San Diego
May 28, 2024
California is about to tax guns more like alcohol and tobacco — and that could make a dent in gun violence (goodgoodgood.co)

Even if you want to ignore the unconstitutional taxing of a protected right, I find the following things very telling:

• He claims the BATFE has the control of those products because of safety issues. This conveniently ignores the history of starting out under the Department of Treasury because it was all about the taxes on alcohol, tobacco,and NFA firearms.
• If you read the source article, while tallying all the costs he ignores all the benefits of private firearm ownership.
• He uses the total number of homicides as a cost while ignoring many of those homicides are justified. Which means each of those justified homicides represent one or more innocent lives saved.
• He includes all suicides by firearm as a cost, which assumes none of them would have occurred if it had not been for the access to guns. I.E., he is assuming no other means of suicide would have been substituted in any of the cases.

In other words, he is lying by omission.

Of course he lied! You should not be surprised. It is part of their culture.

Quote of the Day

I spent an hour putting the data together. If I figured out that guns ownership has an insignificant effect on the murder rate then so did the researchers paid for by anti-gun billionaires. This data means that they knew. It means they lied to please the people who paid them.

Rob Morse
May 26, 2024
See for Yourself if Guns Cause Murder (jpfo.org)

Of course they lied! It is part of their culture.

Quote of the Day

If the Biden regime gets four more years, they are coming for your guns,

In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.

Donald J. Trump
May 18, 2024
Accepting N.R.A. Endorsement, Trump Pledges to Be Gun Owners’ Ardent Ally – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

And what about the Trump attack on the Second Amendment? Is everyone supposed to overlook the bump stock ban under the Trump administration?

I’m not saying a Biden second term would be better than a Trump second term. But casting the contest as voting for the lesser of two evils would have a fair amount of validity.

Quote of the Day

After reading about the gun class for people who hate guns, I couldn’t help but think what’s needed even more is a gun-control class for those who love guns.

Jerry Rubin
Santa Monica
May 13, 2024
L.A. Times letter to the editor
Letters to the Editor: Liberals don’t need to get a gun because everyone else has one (msn.com)

Ahhh… yes. A slightly obscure reference to the reeducation camps they are just can’t wait to send us to.

Prepare appropriately.

Quote of the Day

Parker said that even though the proposed bill would not have prevented the 33-year-old gunman who committed the mass shooting from purchasing a gun, she still thinks it’s a step in the right direction.

James Hartley
May 8, 2024
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker makes statement in support of proposed gun control measure (yahoo.com)

I find this very telling. They find excuses to implement gun control knowing that the proposed law would make zero difference in the examples they use to get the law passed. Gun control is not about making the general public safer. And they know this as they push for yet more gun control.

It is the same with almost all anti-gun activists and politicians. It has been going on since at least the “Brady Act”, which had that law been in effect before Brady and President Regan were shot would have made zero difference in the perpetrator committing his crime.

How can you tell if an anti-gun activist is lying? Yes, their lips are moving. It is an essential part of their culture.

Prepare and respond appropriately.

Quote of the Day

Duarte is an American citizen, and thus one of “the people” whom the Second Amendment protects. The Second Amendment’s plain text and historically understood meaning therefore presumptively guarantee his individual right to possess a firearm for self-defense. The Government failed to rebut that presumption by demonstrating that permanently depriving Duarte of this fundamental right is otherwise consistent with our Nation’s history. We therefore hold that § 922(g)(1) violates Duarte’s Second Amendment rights and is unconstitutional as applied to him.

REVERSED; CONVICTION VACATED.

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
May 9, 2024
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. STEVEN DUARTE, AKA Shorty,

EMPHASIS in the original.

Duarte had been previous convicted of five non-violent felonies and was then caught with a gun.The ninth circuit court of appeals just found his gun possession was protected by the Second Amendment. As this was in a car driving down the street this would imply one does not need a license to carry either.

I expect the prosecution will try to get an en banc hearing to overrule this ruling by just three judges.

Quote of the Day

The ATF has even made it a matter of official policy to shut down gun stores by making perfection the standard in record keeping – a standard the ATF itself could not meet,

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)
June 26, 2023
Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene look to defund ATF director using Holman rule – Washington Examiner

So… That was almost 10 months ago. And what was actually accomplished? They did their virtue signally thing and made some people hopeful for a time. But here is the thing, if they actually accomplished most of the things they claim they have tried to do then they would need a new issue to string their voters along. Actually accomplishing their stated “goal” means they risk putting themselves out of a job.

I don’t trust legislators. I have a moderate amount of trust in the courts. I have been advocating for the gun law reform for 30 years years now. The legislators did a decent job on the carry issues. But we have been losing ground on most other fronts. And I think a significant part of that is because the legislators don’t really care to follow through.

Quote of the Day

I oppose any form of regulation or tax on the people’s right to keep and bear arms. No constitutional right should be at risk due to public opinion, or subject to regulatory and tax burdens. These rights certainly extend to the procurement of safety accessories for firearms. My legislation would eliminate the overly complicated and antiquated process for acquiring suppressors and ensure that those purchases are no longer subject to federal regulation.

Bob Good
U.S. Representative from Virginia
May 6, 2024
Bob Good introducing bill to protect gun silencers from federal regulation (msn.com)

It is a nice gesture, but even if it were to pass both houses (unlikely) President Biden would certainly veto it.

But, maybe, next year it could be passed into law and we could go to sleep with the sweet sound of Democrats wailing and the gnashing of their teeth filling the streets.

Quote of the Day

We have millions of classroom-days of experience with armed staff at school. The trained school defenders didn’t have an accident with a firearm and shoot someone. Fortunately, the news gets even better.

The best defense prevents the attack in the first place. Mass-murderers do not want to get into gunfights with bullets going both ways. They consistently choose to attack somewhere else rather than face an armed defender at school. We’ve never had an attack on a school campus that had a publicly announced program of armed school staff.

Rob Morse
April 22, 2024
A Forest of Flaws put our Children at Risk, but a Sea of Doubts Might Save Them | SlowFacts (wordpress.com)

This should not be a surprise to anyone. And I doubt that it is, even the most die-hard anti-gun person. This is because gun control isn’t about the safety of our children or the public at large.