Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day–James Taranto

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For decades the Second Amendment might as well have been called the Second-Class Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court spent the late 20th century expansively interpreting the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments, not to mention unenumerated rights ranging from travel to sexual privacy. But not until last month did the court hold that the Second Amendment means what it says: that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”


James Taranto
July 19, 2008
Alan Gura–How a Young Lawyer Saved the Second Amendment
[In a lot of a ways I find it very odd. Of all the articles in the Bill of Rights the 2nd Amendment is among the least, if not the least, ambiguous. Yet it was so despised by people of the last century they managed to twist it into meaningless. The Heller decision only rescued a fragment and I fear that only another small portion will ever be recovered.–Joe]

Defining away the RKBA

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One of the problems with “compromise” (it’s not really compromise) on the “assault weapon” issue is the definition of an “assault weapon”. As we all know the Washington D.C. definition of machine gun includes essentially all semi-automatic handguns. The N.J. definition includes the Marlin Model 60 .22 LR with tubular magazine.


From Canada comes the lastest example where the Ruger Mini 14 is being attacked by one of my “favorite” bigots:



Gill’s firearm “is neither a hunting rifle nor a target shooting gun. It is a military assault weapon,” said Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control.


“One of the things (Ramsay) didn’t highlight is there are many more like the CX4 Storm (not on the prohibited list). The Ruger Mini 14 used in the (1989 Polytechnique) massacre is still being sold as a hunting rifle.”

Quote of the day–Mike Brown

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Did you pick this guy or did your daughter?


Mike Brown
September 7, 2008
While at a USPSA pistol match after having a particularly well informed conversation with John, Xenia’s fiancé, on carry options for people under 21 (John is 19) and on college campuses.
[My response was that it was Xenia’s pick. I had nothing to do with either daughter’s choice in spouses. I occasionally wonder if it is my “boy blood for daughter’s tears” policy that causes them to suck up to me a little but I don’t see enough evidence to justify validating that hypothesis.–Joe]

And your point is?

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What’s the problem here?



A small fire broke out inside a building in the 3400 block of River Hills Drive in Newtown Friday night.

When firefighters opened the building they found hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Some had been fired, others had not.

“We have some concerns in the fact that we have some rather large quantities of explosive materials,” said Chief Tom Driggers, of the Little Miami Joint Fire and Rescue District.

Edwin Wolfer III owns the property and the ammunition. Wolfer is licensed to own it and is a dealer.

Chief Driggers, however, said his fire department should have been made aware that it was there.

“Because of the uncertainty as to why it’s in here, the quantities of it’s being here – the fact that there was no permit process – we’ve notified the ATF,” said Chief Driggers.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms along with the Hamilton County bomb squad responded to the scene.


A couple weeks ago Todd Jarrett told a bunch of gun bloggers he has about 250K (or was it 350K?) rounds of loaded ammo and the components for another 650K at his place. And the guy above is a dealer not just a consumer. Chief Driggers needs to realize that there are a lot of people that have 10s of thousands of rounds of ammo in their homes. It’s easy to go through a 1000 rounds per month and someone that buys a years supply when the price is expected to go up isn’t out of the ordinary and isn’t a threat of some kind. U.S. consumers go through something like nine Billion rounds per year. The dealers aren’t going to be buying and storing in quantities of a few hundred.

Date change for the blogger meet in Seattle

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As mentioned before, there is going to be a gun/freedom blogger meet in Seattle next weekend. I received an email that the date has been changed. The new meeting info is:



10:00 AM
Sunday, September 14th
Eggs Cetera’s Blue Star Cafe
4512 Stone Way N
Seattle, WA 98103
Phone: (206) 548-0345

Quote of the day–Barack Obama

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If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it. Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress.


Barack Obama
September 5, 2008
Obama: ‘I’m Not Going to Take Your Guns Away’
Wall Street Journal
[This was brought to my attention via an email from the Apex of the Triangle of Death. Ms. Apex of the Triangle of Death also pointed out this was almost a Diane Feinstein moment.–Joe]

Air travel with firearms

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Something I did not know…


I received this on an email list I’m on:



From: Mike Brown
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2008 3:45 PM
To: LewistonPistol
Subject: [LPC] Air Travel with Firearms



For those of you who travel with guns, I received the following
response from TSA to my question as to whether I could use non-TSA
recognized locks (i.e. the little ones that they have the key for) on
my gun case.


“Passengers should not use TSA-recognized locks to secure firearm
cases.  Regulations state that the passenger must be the only one who
retains the key or combination to open the case.  TSA-recognized locks
on firearm cases do not meet this requirement.  If TSA needs to open
the case, the passenger must open it.”


They also have some photos on their website of do’s and don’t– cases
have to close securely (no being able to lift up an edge of the case
and see the gun.)


I bought several of those TSA-recognized locks so I would have some for my gun cases and now I find out that we are not to use them for guns. It makes sense but I’m not used to the TSA making sense so it is quite a surprise to me.


Here is the link Mike mentioned to the TSA requirements for firearms and ammunition.

Blogger meet in the Seattle area

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Phil of Random Nuclear Strikes and Gay_Cynic of FreeThinker (in email to me) are suggesting a blogger meet in the greater Seattle area:



I’m debating throwing together a monthly brunch in the PNW for pro-gun/pro-liberty bloggers.  Nothing fancy, nothing formal, just food, BS’ing, and the occasional mad conspiracy to demonstrate the essential foolishness of Nickels & Co and his regrettably common fellow travelers.


Maybe call it the “Fluffy Bunnies from Hades Brunch Group”?


Think you’d be up for it? Know others that might be?


If  you are interested send me an email or leave a comment somewhere.


Update: The time and place has been decided:



10:00 AM
Saturday Sunday, September 13th 14th
Eggs Cetera’s Blue Star Cafe
4512 Stone Way N
Seattle, WA 98103
Phone: (206) 548-0345


Update2: The date has changed to Sunday the 14th.

Wheelbarrows full of cash

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The Apex of The Triangle of Death just sent me another wheelbarrow full of cash to tell everyone about their new website–Gun Ban Obama. This is your one stop site for information on how anti-gun Obama really is. Lots of quotes and other material that leave no doubt as to his true colors.


That wheelbarrow of cash sitting in my vault reminds me of something I forgot to report on. Last Wednesday I had breakfast with Pepper Petersen, “Advancement Officer”, from the NRA. He is one of the people that collects the truckloads of cash so others can distribute it in wheelbarrows. We had breakfast in the Microsoft cafeteria and after telling me, “I never ask for money on the first date”, we talked about Boomershoot quite a bit as well as various other Microsoft gun people we both knew. He may make an appearance at the Gun Blogger portion of Boomershoot 2009 and help make reactive targets as well as trying to connect with some long range targets on Sunday. He and his wife have a baby due about the same time so it’s a little bit iffy at this point.

Heads in the sand

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The Harrold Texas school district went through a careful deliberate examination of the situation and came up with the obvious conclusion:



The biggest champion of the school district’s policy, superintendent David Thweatt, said his goal is to arm the good guys in order to deter the bad who might want to turn tiny Harrold, with its 100 students, into the next Columbine, the Denver-area high school that was the site of the infamous 1999 shooting that left 15 dead, including the two student gunmen.



School massacres of the past have shown they can happen anywhere, Thweatt said,


Two geographic factors make Harrold’s school vulnerable, he said. It is only about 1,000 feet from the four-lane U.S. 287, yet it’s 18 miles away from the local Sheriff’s Office.


“I don’t want to call a parent and say, ‘Some bad guy came in, and your kid’s dead, and we didn’t have a good plan to prevent it,’ ” Thweatt said last week from his office.


…


Lee said that Thweatt isn’t unreasonable either when he talks about the school’s remote location. The 999-square-mile county is patrolled by no more than three deputies at any given time. Should his men be on the wrong side of the county during an emergency at Harrold’s school, it might take 25 minutes for them to arrive, Lee said.


But the Brady Center has their heads in the sand as well as talking out of both sides of their mouth:



According to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group, fewer than 1 percent of school-age homicide victims are killed on school grounds or on their way to or from school.


“Schools are amongst the safest places in America,” said Brian Siebel, senior attorney at the Brady Center. “Homicides at schools are the extraordinary, exceptional situation. Our no-gun policies are very effective.”


I suppose it depends on how you determine “effective”. If they means in terms of disarming victims, then yes, they have been very effective. And disarmed victims means more deaths of innocent children in our schools. But when confronted I’m certain they won’t admit to that interpretation. They prefer to believe letting the good guys be armed is a bad thing.


If the Brady Center claims bans in guns in schools are a good thing then they must rejoice when a nut-case shoots up a school unopposed by an armed innocent. Oh, that’s right, they do dance in the blood of the innocents.

Quote of the day–Right Democrat

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Despite the increasing presence of Democrats such as Brian Schweitzer, Russ Feingold, Jim Webb, and Bill Richardson who are embracing our Second Amendment rights, it seems that gun policy for the Democratic Party is still being dictated by the likes of the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center instead of by Democrats themselves.

Isn’t it time our party found its own voice on gun legislation?

Doesn’t our party deserve better than to be snared by the pitfalls of the past?

Standing at that podium, Obama could have made one small change to his acceptance speech without compromising his own core values: “Don’t tell me we can’t guarantee the right of law-abiding Americans to own AK-47s while keeping them out of the hands of criminals.” A small change in wording, true, but one that would have added a new dimension of clarity to Obama’s gun policy.

 

Right Democrat
August 31, 2008
Tester says Obama is no threat to gun rights
[As a libertarian with a focus on the right to keep and bear arms I wish the Democrats would see the light and stop being so divisive on this issue so I could move on to other issues. It’s a specific enumerated right and gun restrictions don’t reduce crime so why do they keep trying to further infringe on our rights? The cynical see it as a desire for power and a need to remove guns from society to achieve their goals. I’m not sure what to think about their motivation but I do know Barack the Savior Obama uses weasel words on the gun issue and cannot be trusted.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dennis Hennigan

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The lines are being more clearly drawn on the gun issue. One day after Senator Obama made it clear that he thinks assault weapons should be banned in a remarkable portion of his speech, here Senator McCain selects someone who is not only proud to be endorsed by [the NRA], an opponent of that ban, but apparently is pretty enthusiastic about the guns themselves.


Dennis Hennigan
Legal Director for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
Newsweek: On the Hunt–Sarah Palin, a moose-hunting, lifetime NRA member guns for D.C.
[You got that right Dennis. So what this means is this election is going to have a significant component that is about the right to keep and bear arms. The contest in November will be about those that recognize a specific enumerated right and those that want to infringe upon it. It will be between the Brady bunch, the Violence Policy Center, and a handful of lesser known (and knowledgeable) groups composed of a few 10s of thousands of members versus the NRA, GOA, CCRKBA, and dozens of other pro freedom organizations with several million members. Not everyone agrees with me but I think it’s game over man, game over. There is still work to be done in the trenches until November but some of the generals are going to be planning for a Sarah Palin/Bobby Jindal ticket in 2012.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Elliott Greenblott

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Agree with me or not, the Second Amendment hinges on the necessity of a militia (National Guard or Reserve) for the protection of our country; not as an excuse for anybody with a few extra dollars, a chip on the shoulder, or a grudge, to become an armed vigilante.

Elliott Greenblott

August 30, 2008
Letter to the editor of Brattleboro Reformer
[Ironically he goes on to compare the Heller decision to the Dred Scott decision. In the Heller decision the right of the people to bear arms and throw off tyrants who would make us slaves was confirmed. But the Dred Scott decision said certain people were slaves and could not sue for their freedom. And his basic underlying assumption that the “armed vigilante” was the conclusion of the Heller decision is totally without foundation. I can only conclude he has mental problems.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Al Gore

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Take it from me, if it had ended differently, we would not be bogged down in Iraq, we would have pursued bin Laden until we captured him. We would not be facing a self-inflicted economic crisis; we would be fighting for middle-income families. We would not be showing contempt for the Constitution; we’d be protecting the rights of every American regardless of race, religion, disability, gender or sexual orientation. And we would not be denying the climate crisis; we’d be solving it.


Al Gore
August 28, 2008
[Notice he doesn’t say anything about protecting the rights of gun owners so one has to wonder why he doesn’t think his idea of registering all gun owners, support for the so called “assault weapon” ban, and restricting the right of free association at gun shows didn’t show contempt for the Constitution. Would registering all homosexuals and outlawing gay bars not meet his threshold for “showing contempt for the Constitution”?–Joe]

Quote of the day–William Drummond

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He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.


William Drummond
1585-1649
[Also attributed by some to Lord Byron. Regardless, I would like to add that those that insist we should not reason wish to be our slave masters.–Joe]

Pirate Hunting

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Kim recently brought up the idea of modern-day privateering and I think it’s a good one.  It’s high time.


Col. Cooper recommended a 30 caliber machinegun for the purpose.  I tend to think he was right, but a machinegun is a necessarily heavy piece and not easily moved.  Two of those mounted, say, one bow and one stern, or one starboard and one port amidships, would be a good deterrent.  I’d think you’d also want some hand-held rifles (M4s or Kalashnikovs, etc) for portability.


For clearing a whole deck of pirates in a hurry, nothing would beat a modern Gatling gun.  My son and I came up with the idea of a 10 gauge or 8 gauge smooth bore Minigun, firing heavy loads of 000 buckshot at 6K RPM.  Yeah, that should about do it.  If there is armor involved, Ma Duce would be a good choice, and she’s excellent at punching holes in engines and transmissions.


Now where do we get our licenses and tags?

Quote of the day–Frederick Douglass

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This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.


Frederick Douglass
1857
[Very appropriate for gun rights activists. But what is even more interesting to me is where I found it. I found it in an anti-freedom blog post. I read it and it just didn’t seem right. So I looked it up and found what you see above. The anti-freedom person used this one:



Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.


What a difference the context makes! As always, they have to lie and obfuscate in their attempts to win. To be fair he did supply a more complete one in the comments when called on it. But initially he stripped out the lines that make our point better than his.–Joe]

Opportunities for moles

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One of the things we talked about last night was how much harder it is for an anti-gun mole to penetrate the gun rights movement than the other way around. One of the reasons is it is much easier for us to speak their language than it is for them to speak ours. I’ve mentioned this general topic before but it’s worth reposting the gun portion:

…I worked on a political campaign to oppose a anti-gun initiative (I-676) a few years ago.  The people on the phone lines would tell stories about the anti-gun people that would call and try to get information about our plans.  You only had to ask one or two questions and the anti-gun people would, figuratively, fall in heap on the floor.  If the lines weren’t very busy then they would play with them for a few minutes and have more material for the story telling later that evening.  They would just ask something like, “What type of gun do you have?“  “What caliber is it?“  They would get answers like “Glock“ and “.357 Magnum“ (only revolvers shoot .357 Magnum and Glock doesn’t make any revolvers).  Or “Shotgun, I’m not sure who makes it, but it’s a 9mm.”  With a little bit of suggestive questioning you could get them to agree to the most incredibly outrageous things.  It was great sport making fun of the people that were trying to do us harm and now I realize that it can be more than just sport.

Quote of the day–TSA employee at SEATAC

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Law enforcement?


TSA employee at SEATAC
August 21, 2008
After seeing my STI Eagle 5.1 with Kramer IWB holster, five full capacity magazines with leather mag pouches, electronic ear muffs, 200 rounds of handloads, and eye protection in a customized travel case.
[He must not know much about guns or he would have known that no police department would spend $2000+ on issue handguns for their officers. It irks me some that his inclination would be to believe that high end guns would most likely belong to “the special ones.” Perhaps my telling him “No” will help correct that belief.–Joe]

Deadly, hip-fired, bullet spraying assault weapons receive police approval

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This normally wouldn’t be a story– police departments need guns.  Can you say, “Duuuhhh”?  But it is a story over on WCBSTV (brought to our attention by Uncle).


Apparently, our police departments haven’t gotten the loon’s memo; “Violence never solves anything.”
Or the other loon memo; “Having a gun is more likely to endanger you than to stop an attacker.”
Or; “Arming yourselves will do nothing but ‘provoke’ the bad guys (sorry– victims of American imperialism) and escalate the violence.”



Then there’s;
“It increases our range and our accuracy,” Sgt. Brian Lyman said.


Uh…9 mm parabellum in a submachinegun = “range” and “accuracy”?  OK I’ll play; compared to what?  I hope he’s referring to an M-4 rather than the UMP mentioned in the article as an “assault rifle” (for those of you in Rio Linda; a submachinegun [or machine pistol] is not an assault rifle [the former was created decades before the latter] but given their level of education on controversial, hot-button political issues, we don’t expect a single journalist in the U.S. to know the difference [UMP stands for Universal Machine Pistol, IIRC]).



“I think if they think they need [submachineguns], then it is good that they have them,” one woman said.


OK, granted, so we can throw out all the silly arguments that say you must have criminal intent, or be paranoid and/or racist and/or a redneck drunken testosterone-poisoned yahoo, before you’d ever want a gun.  Glad we got that cleared up.



“When you have to wait, five, 10, 15 minutes… during that interim people could be dying…”


That one is the best.  I guess when a cop says it it’s clear and sensible, but when we’re talking about an armed citizen in the absence of any police, it’s a totally different paradigm.  Five, 10, 15 minutes, or any amount of time for that matter, to wait for police to arrive after calling 911, is a perfectly acceptable amount of time for people to be dying.  Just ask any anti gun-rights organization.



“Many departments in Bergen County are using Homeland Security grants to purchase these weapons.”


You mean more submachineguns are needed in the civilian population to secure the Homeland (police are in fact civilians, no)?  That makes no sense in light of the fact that, as we’ve been told, 9/11 was an inside job and there is no terrorist threat (I heard Mike Moore say the latter himself, so we know it has to be true– he got an Academy Award didn’t he) guns are more dangerous to their owners, violence never solves anything, and having weapons provokes your enemies.  Obviously then, the Homeland Security assertion is just cover for the “real reason” police are acquiring automatic weapons.


But I’m forgetting something– the Left hate police almost as much as they hate liberty (remember; in the 1960s police were referred to collectively as “pigs”) so I expect they’d go along with the above criminal-intent/paranoid/racist/yahoo theory to explain why police want guns, and let it go at that.