Category Archives: Gun Rights

Quote of the day–Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

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ATF’s longstanding policy has been to provide total access to trace results to the law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction with respect to the trace request, but to safeguard those results from third parties. Congress’ appropriates restriction simply codifies ATF’s longstanding policy of sharing trace data with other law enforcement agencies for the purpose of conducting a criminal investigation.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
ATF Disclosure of Firearms Trace Data (176.87 KB .PDF on my server)
[I put this on my server for safe keeping and so you can avoid generating web log entries on the ATF website with your IP address. The above quote is for all those anti-gun bigots that claim the ATF policy is hampering “illegal gun” efforts. Mayor Bloomberg, are you listening?–Joe]

Sensible restrictions

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Robyn Ringler is almost friendly to gun owners in her latest post:

The bill also includes an appeals process if you get listed in the database and feel it is unfair. This was insisted upon by the NRA. Fair enough and a good idea.

This distinguishes her from a lot of the anti-gun bigots who insist that if you are on “terror suspect” list you should be banned from owning a gun even if there is no way to challenge the validity of your name being on the list. Another intolerable situation is when someone shares a name with someone who is on the list and both have their rights restricted without due process.

However, Ms. Ringler still has more education in her future:

I cannot support the stand that there should be NO restrictions at all on gun ownership. We restrict free speech, we restrict behavior, we restrict what movies children can get into, we restrict certain foods, medications, products. And all for good reason.

It makes sense to restrict gun ownership to you, the sensible people who are out there being responsible.

I’m glad she compares gun ownership to free speech. It’s a good comparison. Both are constitutionally guaranteed rights. Kids going to movies and medications are not guaranteed rights. But she misses a critical point. The restrictions on free speech do not involve prior restraint. You are not muzzled prior to gaining access to a crowded theater so that you can’t do the classic “shout fire in a crowded theater”. You don’t have to get a license from the government before you can post your opinions on your blog. You don’t have to pass a background check before you can buy a printer for your computer. There are laws against slander and libel just as there are there are laws against murder and assault. It should make no difference whether someone murders someone with a baseball bat (video of an actual baseball bat crime–thanks Rob) or a gun. We don’t license or restrict baseball bats, possession of which is not a constitutionally guaranteed right, and we shouldn’t license or restrict firearms which are a constitutionally guaranteed right. We restrict the actions which actually cause harm. And we do that by punishing those people who engage in those prohibited actions. There is no victim when someone purchases a .50 caliber precision rifle so they can punch holes in paper or connect with boomers 700 or 1000 yards away. Driving drunk or at high speed in a residential neighborhood is sort of an edge case. By itself there isn’t a victim but the risk is so high with no reasonable justification for the action that restricting that behavior is acceptable. Plus it’s not a guaranteed right.

Banning some .50 caliber rifles when the number of shooting victims where the criminal used such a rifle in the last 20 years can be counted on one hand (even if you are missing a finger or two) is not “sensible”. It’s prior restraint and it’s bigoted.

Update: Jason pointed out to me in email that a baseball bat (clubs) could be considered arms and hence are protected by the Second Amendment. I tend to agree with him but worry that the anti-gun bigots might start claiming as long as we are allowed at least one type of club our RKBA is not being infringed.

Quote of the day–George Orwell

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Though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found to be generally true: That in ages in which the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people will have a chance…

George Orwell
Essays, Volume IV 
[Just a reminder–Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984. Both should be required reading in High School.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Jeff Knox

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There has never been a serious study to determine what – if any – impact the multi-Billion dollar NICS program has had on violent crime and criminal misuse of firearms. Instead, every evaluation of NICS has been based on the number of transactions and denials the system processes and how quickly they do their job. Stopping sales does not necessarily equate to reducing crime and it is well past time for the Government Accounting Office and the Justice Department to examine the true value of this expensive intrusion on civil rights.

Jeff Knox
Director of Operations
The Firearms Coalition
fcalerts-list — News from The Firearms Coalition
June 13, 2007

What timing!

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is managed by Battelle. It was these people that wrongfully, and feloniously, terminated my employment there just over two years ago. Apparently they had an issue with me exercising my First Amendment rights in advocating for the right to keep and bear arms. I am now in the middle of a lawsuit against these bigots. Increasing their vulnerability is Battelle’s contract to manage the lab is about to expire:

The future for about one-tenth of the Department of Energy lab is in limbo as the federal government looks for a way to call for bids on operating the lab.

At issue are $65 million to $80 million in private contract work out of PNNL’s overall annual $750 million budget. $52 million to $60 million of that private work would be lost if the Department of Energy decides not to allow private work under a new lab operations contract. The rest could be converted to government research projects.

Battelle spokesman Greg Koller said “significant job losses at PNNL, probably in the 300 to 400 range” are possible if the private work is not somehow preserved in DOE’s call for competitive bids.

Battelle has operated the lab under contract with DOE for 42 years. But DOE officials announced in January 2006 that there would be a competitive bid for running the lab after Battelle’s current contract expires at the end of September.

That they have a problem with people exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights and see fit to keep felons on their payroll might be a point of interest for certain people as a new contract is being considered.

Quote of the day–Robyn Ringler

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If banning guns in the inner cities is not keeping guns out of the hands of 12, 13, and 14 year old children, then we need to think of another way.

Robyn Ringler
June 11, 2007
Enough Dead Kids Today, Yesterday, the Day Before—It’s Time For a Change
[Agreed. Can we now get rid of these silly bans? If you read her entire post you will discover she only wants to prevent young teenagers and children from having unsupervised access to guns not prohibit their exposure under all circumstances. I don’t really have a problem with that. But what Ms. Ringler hasn’t yet realized is that she needs to answer Just One Question before she proceeds to the conclusion that there exists any restrictions on firearms that might reduce crime.

You are making progress Robyn. Keep thinking and questioning the conventional wisdom and we might yet have you attending one of my NRA Basic Personal Protection classes.–Joe]

I’ll give her some credit

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For an anti-gun person she is remarkably fair, and even friendly, to hunters in this post.

Thank you Robyn.

The only nit I have to pick is that she apparently didn’t notice that a .50 caliber firearm was used in a legitimate activity and it didn’t result in an instantaneous kill.

I don’t like the sound of this

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Democrats, NRA make deal on new gun rules:

WASHINGTON — Senior Democrats have reached agreement with the National Rifle Association on what could be the first federal gun-control legislation since 1994, a measure to significantly strengthen the national system that checks the backgrounds of gun buyers.

The sensitive talks began in April, days after a mentally ill student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, had been judicially ordered to submit to a psychiatric evaluation, which should have disqualified him from buying handguns. But the state of Virginia never forwarded that information to the federal National Instant Check System, and the massacre exposed a loophole in the 13-year-old background-check program.

Under the agreement, participating states would be given monetary enticements for the first time to keep the federal background database up to date, as well as penalties for failing to comply.

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators. Individuals with minor infractions in their pasts could petition their states to have their names removed from the federal database, and about 83,000 military veterans, put into the system by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000 for alleged mental health reasons, would have a chance to clean their records.

The federal government would be permanently barred from charging gun buyers or sellers a fee for their background checks. In addition, faulty records such as duplicative names or expunged convictions would have to be scrubbed from the database.

“The NRA worked diligently with the concerns of gun owners and law enforcement in mind to make a … system that’s better for gun owners and better for law enforcement,” said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., who led the talks.

First: If someone is so dangerous they can’t be trusted with a gun then I don’t think they can be trusted with a can of gasoline and a book of matches either. Either they can be trusted in public or they should be locked up.

Second: Making the least agreeable portions of the infringement on our rights more palatable just means it will be more difficult to justify getting rid of it entirely later on.

Third: The longer this infringement stays in place the more accepting of it people are. The ban on new machine gun sales is so well accepted that most people believe they are banned entirely. Today it would be really tough to repeal the ban on machine guns and day by day it’s getting more difficult for people to even consider repealing the Brady Act.

Fourth: The Brady/FBI database and reporting system is so close to a database of all gun owners and their guns that it is a hazard to the health of our freedom. Which has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peal anyway.

All that said, borrowing from a great book I just listened to recently, Survival of the Sickest, “Why would you take a pill that will kill you 40 years from now?” The answer is, “Because it will keep me from dying tomorrow.” And so it is with this agreement.

Quote of the day–Sandy Froman

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They keep the truth from being taught in public schools, and they even write books laden with falsehoods in a dishonest attempt to rewrite history.

Seven years ago, Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles published a book purportedly proving there were few guns and gun owners in early America. The book garnered Columbia University’s coveted Bancroft Prize. Two years later, primarily due to the efforts of a brilliant young research historian, Clayton Cramer, who had studied that period in history extensively, the book was revealed to be a total fraud, full of lies and fabrications. Bellesiles was forced to resign from Emory University and, for the first time in history, Columbia University rescinded the Bancroft Prize.

Every American who values his or her constitutional rights should know something about these frauds that gun control advocates perpetrate so we can be watchful and teach the truth to our young ones.

Sandy Froman

June 7, 2007
The history of gun control, part 1
Sandy Froman is immediate past president of the National Rifle Association of America and a longtime member of the NRA board of directors.
A practicing attorney in Tucson, Ariz., Froman is an international speaker on the right to keep and bear arms and an advocate for federal judges who will interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning.

Man on rampage kills 9 (with a machete)

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Damned good thing none of the victims had firearms, ’cause, you know, violence is never the answer and it only begets more violence:

The man then barged into a neighbor’s house, where he stabbed and hacked to death a 37-year-old pregnant woman and her three daughters and two sons, aged 1 to 9.

All I want to know is; who sold him the machete, how much money did he make on the sale, and is he proud of it?  How is it that a madman can so easily get hold of such a deadly instrument?  Why are iron and carbon made so widely available when we know things like this are going to happen as a result?  What are the Filipino legislators going to do about this?  What do the Filipino cutlery manufacturers have to say for themselves and their irresponsible production of such deadly products?

 

There is one word missing in all the descriptions of the victims, which bears notice:  “Unarmed”.  Add the correction and it makes more sense: 

“The man then barged into a neighbor’s gun free house, where he stabbed and hacked to death the unarmed 37-year-old…”

 

Here’s a news headline you’ll never see:  “Machete-wielding madman kills eight concealed pistol carriers.”

 

But some of our Great and Compassionate Leaders would prefer several dead innocent women and children to one dead criminal, shot by his intended victim.

Irony at the CDC

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Some “progressive” activist is complaining that the CDC has becoming politicized:

In 1995 there was a vibrant public health effort in the area of gun injuries. Then the newly elected Republican Congress applied the pressure of the gun lobby. Suddenly the half dozen or so states funded by CDC to do fire arm injury surveillance were defunded. Zeroed out. Shortly thereafter all CDC funded prevention and injury programs had to agree that there would be no activities, direct or indirect, related to gun control. Health department people we have spoken to reported that a profound chill settled over injury programs regarding gun injuries, like homicides from guns. Intense pressure was applied to the head of the CDC injury control program and he and some of his experts on the public health aspects of firearm injury were threatened with investigations over possible entanglement with gun control advocates. Now extreme care is taken in how data is reported or recommendations made in the area of gun injuries.

Never mind that those “studies” were some of the most egregious examples of sloppy science I have ever seen. The “studies” were implemented to generate political justification for infringing our constitutionally guaranteed rights. Those studies were just as repugnant as a “public health effort” in the area of gays/blacks/Jews with entanglements with the KKK. Taxpayer (my) money was being spent to justify taking my guns away from me. And this bigot gets bent out of shape because they have to be more careful in their science?

The CDC was engaged in highly political activities, they are told to stop, and this person whines, “…politics has become an increasingly important part of CDC world.”

Where, in the Constitution, is the Federal Government granted the power to create the CDC to begin with? The CDC in it’s entirety, is a political creation of the socialist scum of this country. For this “progressive” to be whining about the defunding of a small portion of the CDC engaged in an illegal conspiracy (see 18 USC 241 and 242) is beyond ironic. It’s effrontery.

Bigoted Brits

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An off-duty policeman observes a young woman with a gun shooting at people out the passenger window as her accomplice drives along M62. The officer reports it and soon the pair is pulled over with the help of other officers with four jeeps, two vans full of dogs, and helicopters. Being hopelessly outnumbered and out gunned the pair surrender without a fight. They spent several hours in a jail cell before the police let them go because they determined the pair only had the one gun which was a toy. Read the rest of the story here. A picture of the young women, and their guns, who had just been to a “Cowboys and Indians” party is below:

I wonder what the response would have been had they been in possession of a bow and arrow and dressed as North American Indians.

Had it been in Idaho had they been stopped they would have been asked to put the toy away. It’s spring time and we don’t want to scare away the dimwitted California tourists. In the fall you can bring out the real guns for hunting season and scare them all you want just by putting it in the rifle rack on the back window of your pickup.

I’m sure the UK residents feel safer now. It’s good to know all that tax money is being put to good use.

Wow!

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Via Say Uncle who viewed it at The Bitch Girls.

Question: Handgun ownership; A right or a privilege? Answer: Privilege.

But he considers a college education, access to the internet, and health care as rights. How did he manage to get through law school?

Letter to the editor to be published

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I just got a call from the Bristol Herald Courier in Virginia. They wanted to verify that I had sent a letter to the editor. Apparently they are going to publish it. Watch for it here in the next day or two.

I haven’t received word back from the bigoted opinion writer I briefly corresponded with. I wanted to post our email correspondence but bigots aren’t too keen on being exposed like that so I doubt I will ever hear from him again.

Quote of the day–William L. O’Neill

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Robert F. Williams, Jr., . . . . had become head of the NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina, in 1957. When threatened by the local Ku Klux Klan he organized a rifle club of sixty members and got it chartered by the National Rifle Association. This was partly to get the free ammunition provided NRA members by a grateful government, partly also, no doubt, a tribute to both groups’ joint faith in self-defense. When the Klan organized a motorcade against one NAACP member’s house, the club drove them off with gunfire. . . He had deeply embarrassed the NAACP. It was bad enough that he rejected the nonviolent ethic, worse still that he did so with such success. His was the only armed NAACP chapter and, for its size, the most effective.

William L. O’Neill
Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960’s
160-61 (1971)

Quote of the day–Greg Hamilton

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If you get killed in a fight either: your training sucked, you suck, or you got fucked. If you go to jail, either: your training sucked, you suck, or you got fucked.

IMO most of the time it’s because you suck.

Greg Hamilton
19:57 PM, March 22, 2007
From the Yahoo group InSights Training Center List

State of mind in my letter to the editor

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Yesterday I quoted Mr. Fox. Since Kevin is busy I also sent Mr. Fox an email. He responded and invited me to send a letter to the editor where he works and where his opinion piece appeared.

I believe we need to go on the offensive in our battle for public opinion. Constant defense can only slow, or at best stop, the advancement of the gun control. I advocate a particular state of mind when participating in gun control debates and I’m seeing a number of other people pick up on that theme. I continue in that vein here:

I’m writing in regard to the editorial by Mike Fox on gun control that appeared on your pages today.

Mr. Fox should look at the data rather than relying on his emotions when advocating public policy. Despite decades of law and crime data and research examining that data from countries all over the world no one has been able to answer just one question of mine, “Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?”

One should look at the benefits of private firearm ownership and use as well as the hazards. Firearms are used far more often in the defense of innocent life than they are used to kill or injure innocent life. Mr. Fox does not appear to have taken that into account.

Crime rates do not decrease when the victims of crimes are prohibited access to the tools of their own defense. That should be “common-sense”. Apparently Mr. Fox wasn’t able to see things from that viewpoint.

I believe had he been advocating banning people of color from the restaurants he frequents, from using the same drinking fountains, or interracial marriage then his advocacy of public policy without exceedingly solid factual data he would not have been allowed to present his opinion on your pages. The same criteria should be used before you allow someone to advocate restricting the rights of millions of gun owners in this country. To do otherwise is for you to participate in their bigotry.

See also my blog posting: https://blog.joehuffman.org/2004/12/14/just-one-question/

I have asked for, but not yet received, his permission to post the email exchange I had with Mr. Fox. If I receive that permission I’ll post it as well.

Quote of the day–Mike Fox

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Some conservatives mulled that if concealed weapons had been permitted on Tech’s campus, the gunman might’ve been stopped. Yet, that doesn’t mean anyone in Norris Hall would’ve had a concealed weapon or that they would’ve been able to use it to stop the gunman; after all, more than 50 people were killed or wounded in that building.

Mike Fox
After Tech, common-sense gun control laws cannot be ignored
June 4, 2007
[As near as I can tell, “common-sense gun control” is a code phrase that means, “we must ignore facts and rational thought and do what make me feel good”. But beyond that it seems this guy isn’t capable of rational thought. Read that last sentence and see if it makes any sense to you. Mr. Fox, I have Just One Question for you.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Mac Johnson

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Henderson’s second insight was that despite the right belonging to “the people” in the amendment, it actually belonged only to the militia as an organized military force. To believe this, you have to believe that the United States is the only nation on Earth that felt a need to guarantee its government, in writing, the right to have an army — which is possible, I suppose, if Jefferson foresaw the attitude of the modern Democrat party towards the military.

Mac Johnson
March 15, 2007
Court Rediscovers 2nd Amendment, Liberals Fear Other ‘Rights’ May Soon be Found

Quote of the day–Fred Thompson

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Many other universities have been swayed by an anti-gun, anti-self defense ideology. I respect their right to hold those views, but I challenge their decision to deny Americans the right to protect themselves on their campuses — and then proudly advertise that fact to any and all.

Whenever I’ve seen one of those “Gun-free Zone” signs, especially outside of a school filled with our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, I’ve always wondered exactly who these signs are directed at. Obviously, they don’t mean much to the sort of man who murdered 32 people just a few days ago.

Fred Thompson
April 20, 2007
Signs of Intelligence?
[Spread Fred!–Joe]