The fact that the bad guys in New York City, the city with the toughest gun control laws in the nation, were still able to get guns and use them in this very shooting should make it clear as day that something just isn’t adding up.

The only narrative this story advances is that gun control is a complete and total failure.

Tom Knighton
July 20, 2021
NY Shooting Not An Example For Gun Control Advocates – Bearing Arms
[It doesn’t add up if you were under the impression the intent of gun control is to reduce crime. There are some people who actually believe this. But long time politicians know better and have different motives.

It’s about creating a safe work environment for themselves and comrades, the criminals. This is well-known. Read The Gulag Archipelago. The USSR regarded thieves as allies in the building of communism because they were the enemy of property owners.

Appearances are that similar motivation is at play in the U.S. It’s certain it is not about violent crime control. Just one question demonstrates this.—Joe]

President Joe Biden recently announced a plan to reduce gun violence and other crimes nationwide, but leaders in the Black community think it could do more harm than good.

Dana Whyte
June 29, 2021
NAACP concerned about Biden’s gun control plan
[Winning.—Joe]

This sounds like a blatant attempt to harass legitimate businesses. The Biden Administration is working overtime to make things difficult and inconvenient so that fewer people will want to engage in the business of manufacturing and selling firearms to law-abiding people.

Alan Rice
New Hampshire State Director for Gun Owners of America
Leak Shows ATF Preparing Operation Targeting Smith & Wesson and Others
[Via a tweet from John Richardson.

Their goal is more than “difficult and inconvenient”. The goal is elimination of the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms…one step at a time.

Rice, almost for certain, knows this but a snapshot of the evidence in the current news doesn’t reveal the entire picture. So he makes the more easily supported claim for the soundbite.—Joe]

We, as Americans, demand the right to live free from gun violence. Historic disinvestment in communities and unregulated access to guns equals more gun deaths. It’s really that simple.

Lauren Footman
Director of Outreach and Equity at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence,
Via email on July 6, 2021
[Apparently Footman is unaware of a well known truth:

Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible—and wrong.

Henry Louis Mencken
Modified from the original in his 1920 collection of essays called “Prejudices: Second Series”.

She is also flat out wrong about there being the possibility of a right “to live free of gun violence.”

It comes as no surprise to find an anti-gun advocate expressing ignorance and falsehoods. It’s part of their culture.

Respond and prepare appropriately.—Joe]

With the increase in firearms across the state, Bonta partnered with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence to call on Californians to utilize the state’s red flag laws – Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs) and Domestic Violence Restraining Orders (DVROs). GVROs and DVROs can help local law enforcement temporarily recover firearms or prevent the purchase of firearms by individuals who have shown a probability to commit violence. Red flag laws can be a proactive tool to help prevent gun violence.

Mark Truppner
July 2, 2021
Attorney General Bonta Releases 2020 Gun Sales Data
[“Prevent crime” by confiscation of a constitutionally protected property.

What is the proper action to be taken to prevent Bonta and his ilk from committing the crime of deprivation of rights under color of law?—Joe]

If you’re a gun-rights group challenging the law in California then you want to be before Judge Benitez. He has become the most vigorous defender of gun rights in the federal courts today.

Adam Winkler
Law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles
June 21, 2021
California Gun-Control Battles Sparked by One Judge’s Decisions
[I hope Benitez is well protected. He is a major player in getting the long standing infringements on our rights overturned.—Joe]

The ATF has been an object of ire for many gun owners because of the agency’s grossly unconstitutional actions, ranging from its gruesome crackdown against innocent civilians during the Waco Massacre of 1993 to the infamous “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal that resulted in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in 2010.

If there is one institution that should be defunded, if not outright abolished, it’s the ATF.

José Niño
June 20, 2021
A Bipartisan Team of House Representatives is Trying to Hold the ATF Accountable
[Probably 99% or more of the current Federal government is unconstitutional. But starting with the worst of the worst is better than nothing at all.

That said, as Publius said recently:

I think we should get rid of the unconstitutional laws first, then get rid of (no longer necessary) enforcement.

Otherwise I think it’s an exercise in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. There are MANY alphabet soup agencies who would be willing to take up the slack in your scenario, and I would bet that they would be hiring a lot of ex-ATF agents to do the work.

I could also it also being done simultaneously with a single bill. Or, I could see it being done incrementally with things funding decreasing as they eliminate regulation of suppressors, then short barreled rifles, sawed off shotguns, eliminate FFLs, etc..

But in some ways this doesn’t address the basis of many of the complaints. There really should be a bunch of ATF people prosecuted and sent to prison. But firing them and elimination of the laws they are enforcing would probably be enough to satisfy most people.—Joe]