Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day—wheresjack

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There are only two reasons to own a hand gun, one is to shoot at a target and the other is to shoot at a person. The Liberal Party is committed to banning hand guns in Canada and I will make sure they stick to that commitment. For the target shooters that are serious about owning a hand gun, I will ask for legislation that permits ownership under strict guidelines and keeps the guns under lock and key at the accredited range of their choice. Transporting the gun would require a security service to take it from one approved location to another.

wheresjack
September 14, 2010
Where’s Jack on Gun Control?
[Wrong! Those aren’t the only reasons. And even if it were true what’s the problem? Sometimes some people need to be shot. That is the reason the police carry their guns. I carry a gun with me because I can’t carry a policeman.

The right to keep and bear arms is a basic human right. Any person, any political party, or any government opposed to such a basic human right cannot be trusted in a position of power and should be forever banned from positions of public trust if not jailed. We need to put pressure on these admitted violators of human rights in other countries.—Joe]

Another bigotry example

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Suppose the law said companies were not allowed discriminate in their hiring or firing based on the prospective employee being in an interracial marriage. But then fires someone because, while on company business, gives their spouse of a different race a quick hug. The company claims they are not violating the law because the law doesn’t cover public displays of interracial affection while on company business. The public outcry would be, and justifiably so, huge.

There should be a similar public outcry in this case as well:

A metro Atlanta woman is asking a judge to strike down a Gwinnett County company’s gun policy.

Jamie Lunsford said the company violated her rights by firing her after they discovered she had a gun in her car while on business. Lunsford said the company violated her right to carry a permitted, concealed weapon in her car.

Her employer was a subsidiary of Iron Mountain, Inc. They are based in Boston Massachusetts. That might explain their anti-gun bigotry. Just as if the rules 70 years ago of a company based in Jackson Mississippi would reflect on their attitudes toward interracial marriage.

I understand the property rights argument and the right of the employer to set the terms of employment. You will notice I didn’t say the courts should force her former employer to rehire her. But I do think the public should let them know they don’t care for their bigotry and address this injustice via complaints and boycotts. Bigotry should not go unnoticed or tolerated even if it is, and should be, legal.

Those Extremist Militias

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Over at Oleg’s blog there’s this comment, in Russian, to this post about Survival4Chicks;



Извините, что не по теме, но из России трудно оценивать различные американские явления.


Например, не ясно, что представляет из себя движение Militias.


Его часто описывают как экстремистское, но относится ли это ко всем , кто входит в различные негосударственные ополчения?


И второй вопрос:


Не способствует ли появлению Militias тот факт, что Национальная Гвардия фактически перестала быть “домашней армией”, объединяющей живущих по соседству людей, которые готовы к мгновенной мобилизации для защиты именно своих дворов и улиц?


Не слишком ли бюрократизировалась и оторвалась от улиц Национальная Гвардия?


Не потому ли удается так легко “обрабатывать” людей самозванным Militias?



Извините за беспокойство


Apparently he got his view of America from ABC/NBC/CBS, AKA the Old Media, AKA the Lamestream Media.  I stepped in with the following comment, trying to set the record straight.  I wanted to keep it short and to the point, hopefully without over-simplification.  If I’m mistaken in any of this, let me know;



Traditionally, and by the intent of the American founders, the militia in this country consists of regular citizens with their own arms and equipment.  They receive no pay, as the intent was to keep government influence upon the society to a minimum, thereby keeping government power from growing out of control and becoming destructive to liberty.


Some militias gather in groups of various sizes to train, while most either train on their own or not at all.  Some militia groups are organized, with a headquarters and a command structure, and others are very informal, but have a common interest in fostering marksmanship among the population generally.  Many years ago, our Congress formed a Civilian Marksmanship Program for that purpose.  The CMP sells military surplus arms at very low prices to any regular citizen who can demonstrate that he or she has attended some number of organized marksmanship events.


Many militia members have no arms or equipment, but since they are citizens they are militia according to our nation’s founding principles.  Some of them actively lobby for the restriction of the right to keep and bear arms.  Hence they are citizens actively working against the citizenry.

We win because they screw up

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Sebastian pointed me to this article by Brian Doherty who quotes Alan Gottlieb:

The invalidation of handgun bans throughout the country, accomplished in the space of two years, was sudden and surprising even to those who have spent decades laying the groundwork. Take Alan Gottlieb, founder and president of the Second Amendment Foundation, which began backing Gura’s various gun lawsuits after Heller. Since founding the SAF in 1974, Gottlieb has been hosting academic conferences, supporting legal scholars and historians, and filing carefully targeted lawsuits in defense of gun rights. Still, he says, “six years ago if you had said [the gun rights community would] see two cases get to the Supreme Court and two victories, I would have said, ‘Not in my lifetime. Maybe in someone else’s.’ ”

Gottlieb attributes the rapid turnaround in part to the brazen overconfidence of gun controllers. If Washington, D.C., had not challenged the March 2007 appeals court decision overturning its highly restrictive gun ban, the Supreme Court would not have had the opportunity to declare in Heller that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to arms. If Chicago had not insisted on maintaining its gun ban after the Heller decision, there would have been no McDonald, and the question of whether the Second Amendment binds states and cities would have remained unsettled. “We needed a little luck, and the other side gave us that luck,” says Gottlieb. “Our opponents are our biggest supporters.”

I had a long talk with Alan last November where he said essentially the same thing. My notes on that part of the conversation are:

We win because the other side screws up. All the big wins such as the 1997 I-676 in Washington state, Heller in D.C, and McDonald in Chicago could have been avoided if the other side “had been smart”. As soon as D.C. lost at the appeals court level they could have made a minor tweak in the law and we would have had to start over at ground zero and it would have decades, if ever because the court would have been stacked differently, before we could get it to the SC. Same thing in Chicago. I asked, “Do you really think they are stupid? If not then why are they screwing up?” “No. They aren’t really stupid”, he said. They have “true believers” who see things in black and white. He didn’t say it but I immediately thought of GOA on our side. “Politics is the art of the possible. Not the perfect”, he said. They haven’t been playing the game that way and they have been losing because of it. I didn’t ask but have been thinking that perhaps there is some way we can encourage them to keep screwing up.

Think about that.

They screw up and we win.

There are two lessons there. One is we need to encourage them to keep screwing up. And the other lesson is that we can screw up and lose. We can have too much overconfidence. We can be too aggressive. We can go for it all and they can win.

It’s sarcasm, right?

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It has to be sarcasm:

If you teabaggers don’t like the president, you can always leave

America voted for socialism and if you hate big government, you hate America. Teaching kids about homosexuality, taxing the rich, abortion and gun control are American values now, if you don’t like it, fuck off. Redneck scum that you are.

At least Marxism and Nazism were beautiful.

Sure, lots of people think that. But they wouldn’t come out and say it. Would they?

Quote of the day—Beverly Ackerman

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So that’s my response to the Dawson killings: No more guns. It’s as simple as that. Because no one can accurately predict who among us will become unhinged enough to explode in bloody slaughter, I believe that guns should be unavailable to the public.

Beverly Ackerman
September 13, 2010
The solution is simple: Canada needs MORE gun controls
[Using the same logic we can also demand guns be unavailable to the government. And of course pointy sticks and rocks should be unavailable to all as well. After all, no matter how much ammo you can carry you still run out of ammo eventually. But your pointy stick and rock never need to be reloaded. Think of them as infinite capacity assault weapons and you’ll understand just how dangerous they really are.—Joe]

Job opening for zero pay

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The Brady Campaign has some job openings. In this bad economy more jobs is a good thing—except they don’t have any money to pay you:

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and its legislative and grassroots affiliate, the Brady Campaign and its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, is the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence. We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities. We have several unpaid summer internship opportunities available:
…

  • Career Level:

    Student (Undergraduate/Graduate)

  • Pay Range:

    Unpaid

  • Job Function:

    Marketing

  • Job Status:

    Not Listed

  • Industry:

    Nonprofit / Charitable, Advertising / Marketing / PR

Didn’t Obama suggest mandatory “volunteer” work for everyone? Maybe the Brady Campaign is just getting with the program a little early.

I suppose it is fitting. The KKK probably doesn’t pay a lot these days either. You take a job like that because you believe in tearing down others more than enriching yourself.

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

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Handgun Control Inc. has long said that the NRA leadership was out of step with the NRA membership. And HCI was right—but in exactly the opposite way from what HCI wanted to believe. For the second straight year the NRA membership has overwhelmingly elected Directors sponsored and promoted by Second Amendment Action, of which I am chairman. Last year, the members elected 11 of our 16 candidates.

This time,  in the results reported to NRA Directors today, Second Amendment Action swept every one of its 17 nominees into the 26 vacant seats on the NRA Board.

The house-cleaning assures that NRA will be taking a tougher stance in the legislative arenas.

Read the NRA election results and weep, Handgun Control, Inc. You’ve got a fight on your hands.

Neal Knox
April 13, 1992
Hardliners Sweep NRA Elections, from The Gun Rights War, pages 351 and 352.
[I love this book.

Nearly 20 years ago HCI had “long said the NRA leadership was out of step” with members. HCI was renamed “The Brady Campaign” in 2001 but they haven’t changed their rhetoric. They still claim the NRA is an extremist organization that does not represent its members. But if you read the blogs and the forums you will find far, far, more people critical of the NRA for not being aggressive enough than you will find those that say the NRA is too aggressive.

HCI or Brady Campaign–it doesn’t matter. They are out of touch with reality and have been for well over 20 years.—Joe]

Where we could be

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Had we lost the war against our specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms we could be facing this:

GetALifeBinThatKnife

Via email from Ben who simply said, “Fucking brits.” and gave me this URL.

Quote of the day—Handgun Control Inc.

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Commonsense, and the growing number of intentional and unintentional shootings involving licensees, dictate that more guns on the street put everyone at risk. But the gun lobby consistently advocates for CCW systems that do not require safety training and do not allow for local law enforcement to evaluate CCW license applicants. Time and time again we hear about a tense situation that becomes deadly with the introduction of a gun. If citizens are to be allowed to carry concealed firearms, every community deserves the best laws to protect public safety. Anything less is potentially a deadly mistake.

Handgun Control Inc.
December 18, 1997
Year-End Report on U.S. Concealed Weapons Laws
[And yet, as they lost more and more battles over concealed carry laws the crime rate didn’t go up in those states. I guess their “commonsense” must have been broken. Because the commonsense of the gun owners, the NRA, the SAF, and all the other pro-gun rights organizations said crime rates wouldn’t go up. And they were right.

HCI renamed itself to be “The Brady Campaign” in 2001. Was that to hide from their legacy of errors?

Odd how that worked out–increasing freedom did no harm. Let’s make it trend in all areas of our lives.—Joe]

We didn’t lose everything therefore we are winners!

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It must really suck to be on the Brady Campaign team. I didn’t read it word for word but from my quick scan of the Brady Campaign’s 2009 Annual Report it appears they want their supporters to believe that if they didn’t lose every battle they fought in that they are winners.


They can just keep thinking that way all the way into oblivion.

A little extreme

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Via email from Ben we have this guy wanting to fire the police and rely on the Second Amendment for our protection from criminals.

I understand the sentiment and it would eliminate the problem of people being prosecuted for victimless “crimes”. But I want an option other than going in “guns blazing” when an employee embezzles money or someone writes a bad check or runs a stop sign.

NRA-ILA volunteer kick-off meetings

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If you are a Washington State resident and NRA member please consider attending one of these events and helping win the battle for freedom (via email):

This November will be ground zero for the enemies of freedom trying to turn the tide against our gun rights in the Evergreen State, serving as a launching pad for their national gun ban crusade.  Our opponents will be pulling out all the stops as the mid-term election nears, so it is more important than ever that we block their campaign against the Second Amendment.
 
To ensure we are prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities we will face this election season, NRA-ILA is hosting a free volunteer kick-off meeting on September 9, 2010 in Tacoma and a second event September 10th in Olympia!

Event 1:

Thursday, September 9th
7:00 p.m.
Pacific Lutheran University
University Center
12180 Park Avenue S.
Tacoma, WA 98447-0001
(317) 445-9332
FREE PARKING!!!

Event 2:

Friday, September 10th
7:00 p.m.
Evergreen Sportsmen’s Club
12736 Marksman Road SW
Olympia, WA 98512-9200
(360) 357-9080

Each of these events is an opportunity to get involved, and is open to any NRA Member!  Please invite your friends and family that belong to NRA so they can attend these great events and help us win the fight in November!  I’ve attached copies of the invites to this email so you can forward them on to your friends!

Yours in Liberty,

Caleb N Giddings
Campaign Field Representative
National Rifle Association
317-445-9332

Unless something urgent comes up at work I plan to attend the event tonight. If you want to attend register by sending an email to caleb@gunnutsmedia.com. Here are the invites for the Tacoma and Olympia events.

Quote of the day—Neal Knox

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Institute for Legislative Action Executive Director Bob Kukla, in an extremely courageous act, confirmed that the independence of ILA, and its effectiveness in fighting repressive gun legislation had been threatened by the Management Committee, composed of the three top officers. As proof, Kukla played an openly recorded tape of the February 26 Management Committee meeting in which he was criticized for ILA’s opposition to Smith & Wesson’s proposal for national handgun licensing, and ILA’s opposition to the National Education Association’s anti-handgun position. Kukla’s evidence convinced the neutral members of the seriousness of the problems within NRA; although relatively few members in the meeting had known of the Federation’s reform program, they supported it overwhelmingly.

Neal Knox
July 1977
From The Gun Rights War, page 311.
[I have often heard of “The Cincinnati Revolution” within the NRA but had never gotten any details. The Gun Rights War has several articles by Neal Knox about the revolt. Wow! No wonder there was a revolt.

Smith & Wesson proposed national handgun licensing? Was there a boycott then? Or was the first boycott in early 2000 when they tried to force all dealers and distributors to abide by a “code of conduct”? The “code of conduct” would have required all sales at gun shows to go through a background check, prohibited dealers and distributors from selling “assault weapons” or standard capacity magazines, and numerous other backdoor Second Amendment infringements. Gun owners decided then and there that Smith & Wesson must die and we almost did it too. Why wasn’t it well publicized that the Smith & Wesson betrayal was nothing new and had sided with the anti-gun people 23 years earlier?

If there was a boycott in 1977 Smith & Wesson apparently had forgotten about it. Let’s hope all gun manufactures learned their lesson in 2000 and we don’t have to repeat it. We need to be fighting the enemies of freedom rather than our own.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Zsuzsanna Legradi

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I don’t want to see guns. No one should have guns. It is bad enough that people have knives.


Zsuzsanna Legradi
September 5, 2010
A 42-year-old gardener.
New York Times article: Altered Movie Poster Puts the Spotlight on a San Francisco Agency’s Gun Ban
[I wonder if the New York Times would have printed that if it had been “I don’t want to see queers holding hands…” or “I don’t want to see ni**ers touching a white woman…”


And what would have been the response if someone had actually said made such a bigoted comment about homosexuals in San Francisco? Would they still have a job (or a home!) the following day?


Another thought that occurred to me is that SAF should be selling those posters. I don’t see them in their merchandise list. I’ll send Alan an email about it.


Update: I got an answer from Alan:



There will be posters for sale at GRPC with the proceeds going to the Calguns Foundation.


Another reason to attend GRPC 2010.—Joe]

Let them beat the dead horses by themselves

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There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think they are writing a brief that will win the Heller decision. As near as I can tell they don’t realize that decision came down over 26 months ago.


There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think they can pull the same scam they pulled back in 1994 about “assault weapons” again. As near as I can tell they don’t realize so many millions of those “Evil Black Rifles” have been sold in the past few years that even if Congress didn’t know the topic was only a few milligrams short of being full-scale chain reaction that they would qualify as guns in “common use” and protected by the Heller decision.


There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think they can claim blood will run in the streets if people are “allowed” to exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. As near as I can tell they don’t realize there are so many states with millions of concealed licenses and so many states that have allowed open carry for, like, forever, with the greatest blood flow in the “gun free” zones that we crush that argument almost before their electrons reach the far end of the Internet.


There are some anti-gun people out there that apparently think claiming children are dying by the dozen each day they can gain sympathy for their cause. As near as I can tell they don’t realize we long ago caught on to their definition of “children” which includes “young people” up to the age of 25—most of whom are shot while involved in criminal activities and many are even legal, justified, shootings by the police and private citizens.


There are some anti-gun people out there that are apparently so stupid they don’t know how to distinguish truth from falsity and are apparently unable to accept that zero, or even negative, correlation conclusively demonstrates their premise is false. As near as I can tell they don’t realize most people recognize them as fools and charlatans within minutes.


I realize it is sometimes very difficult but it is a waste of time to argue with them. They are no different than those that wave the Confederate flag and claim, “The South will rise again!” They no different than the “Truthers.” They are no different than those that want to relive some critical point of WW II and have the Germans come out on top and complete the “Final Solution”. They are no different than those that cry and whine, “God damn, God damn, what is this God damn country coming to that the niggers have got guns, the niggers are armed and the police can’t even arrest them!“


Let them beat their dead horses by themselves. They are irrelevant to both the present and the future. Spend your time on the real front rather than on conquered and fully occupied territory.


If you will notice the Brady Campaign has fully abandoned the “collective right” view of the Second Amendment. While they still toss out small trial balloons of “blood in the street” and occasionally throw in an “assault weapon” reference they are spending most of their time and energy on things they have some hope of winning or at least stalling. They are spending their time on things like the “gun show loophole” or stopping legislation that would reduce ATF abuses.


While framed in the classic manner the “gun show” issue is probably a loser too. But Mayor Bloomberg and his “illegal guns” sound bite is good enough to be plausible to the causal observer and might gain some traction.


If you enjoy doing the politics thing then call, write, and visit your elected officials and/or help the NRA-PVC every election season.


If you enjoy teaching people to shoot then get your NRA certification and issue certificates to your students who successfully complete your classes. If you enjoy competition get out there and make a good showing. Then let your friends, neighbors, and the local newspapers know about the monthly match results.


If you have construction skills and time then help a local non-profit range improve their shooting facilities.


If you have more money than time and energy then donate to the Second Amendment Foundation, Calguns, Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership, or some other gun rights organization you align yourself with.


If you enjoy arguing and pointing out the fallacies of the anti-gun bigots then take on the biggest baddest dogs the other side has to offer—The Brady Campaign and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Sure, as dogs go, the Brady’s are the equivalent of a whimpering, freshly neutered, toy poodle. But they are the best the other side has. Read their media releases and follow their Twitter feed to keep up on where they think they can gain some traction and take them on in whatever arena they present themselves.


Whatever you do, remember there are a couple names for those that continue attempting the ride the dead horse they are beating. They are called “losers” and “crazy”. The same names may also apply to those that spend more than a few minutes trying to engage them.

Think twice before you mess with Alan and Alan

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As I pointed out before Alan Gottlieb of SAF is daring San Francisco to take down his posters.

The bigots are having second thoughts about their opposition to both the First and Second Amendments:

A Supreme Court decision could alter what riders here see in ads on city buses and trains and in transit shelters.

Pro-gun images, which are banned under an ad policy of the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency, showed up recently on posters for a conference for the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group based in Washington.

…

When Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, read that Wahlberg and Ferrell had been stripped of their weapons, he had 16 posters printed to promote the group’s gun rights policy conference, scheduled to be held here. To his surprise, the posters were installed last week in what a news release called “something of a coup.”

Paul Rose, a spokesman for the city transportation agency, said that after the gun group’s posters went up, the city decided to take another look at its policy.

“At this point, we’re not taking any action to remove the ads. We are currently reviewing our advertising policy in light of the recent Supreme Court decision, which may have altered the legal landscape regarding firearm advertising.”

That would be the June 28 decision in McDonald v. Chicago, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the right to bear arms guaranteed under the Second Amendment applies to state and local gun control laws.

The team of Alan Gura (the lead lawyer in McDonald) and Alan Gottlieb are a force to be taken seriously and are taking point on a lot of skirmishes these days.

SAF is a 501 (c) (3) corporation and your donations are tax deductible.

Quote of the day–Steven Lachman

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The current batch of Democrats is not a particularly liberal bunch.

…

[L]et’s examine what America would look like under the current Republican Party ideology:

Health care reform will be undone. At least 45 million Americans will lack health insurance. According to a Harvard School of Medicine study, the absence of health insurance leads to the deaths of 45,000 Americans a year.

…

Republicans will eliminate all gun control. We now suffer about 30,000 gun deaths per year.

…

The current batch of Republican candidates ignores the overall benefit to society of redistributing wealth from the haves to the have-nots through taxes. For Republican politicians, deaths from abortion are unacceptable, but deaths from pollution, gun violence and poverty are just background noise.

Few Republican voters would actually choose to live in the Republican ideological world. Most of them want good schools for all children, safe streets, a clean environment, fair treatment of the disadvantaged and Social Security benefits — all of which require taxes and regulation.

Steven Lachman
September 7, 2010
A GOP-run nation would be barren
[From the first to the last sentence of his opinion I was agape. I found it hard to believe he was serious. He had to be mocking the political left or something, right? Then I read his job title. He is a professor.

Okay then. That explains it.—Joe]

Inspections by government agents

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Under current Federal law the ATF is authorized to inspect Federal Firearm License holders (FFLs), unannounced, up to once per year and to do audits of their records. Every single gun must be accounted for by manufacture, model, and serial number. The FFL will face consequences if some buy wrote “N” and “Y” instead of “Yes” and “No”, they failed to include the county of residence in addition to the city, state and Zip Code, or they used the abbreviation “MINN” instead of spelling out “Minneapolis” in the small box for the city name. The FFL must record the NICS Transaction Number (NTN) on line 21b of the ATF Form 4473 and retain the form for auditing purposes. Form 4473 must be retained for 20 years.


Imagine if we had a Federal Book License holders (FBLs) and similar record keeping requirements. Would the book banners be able to claim such regulations were “common sense” and justified?


Imagine if the IRS were authorized one unannounced inspection and audit, without cause, of every taxpayer per year. Would people tolerate that?


Why is it that the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms can be so heavily regulated when the Second Amendment explicitly says “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”? Is there anyone surprised gun owners are pushing back and winning?

Random thought of the day

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Frequently the anti-gun bigots claim that since “strict gun laws are the norm in most countries” we should have similar restrictions in our country. If that were, in fact, a valid basis for implementing laws then when this country was founded we would have had a state religion and a king.


And suppose slavery was the norm in most of the world. Would that be justification to implement slavery in this country?