For our mayors, the tired debate about gun control is over and beside the point. Now that we know the answer, we can sort of put aside the tired debate at the extremes and focus on how you respect the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding owners and keep the guns out of hands of people who shouldn’t have it.

The sweet spot is letting law-abiding citizens buy the guns they want. While tightening the background check system to make sure the next Jared Loughner, the next Virginia Tech massacre doesn’t happen.

Mark Glaze
January 22, 2012
TN gun laws, or lack thereof, under attack
[As Glenn Reynolds said about the first sentence above, “What he means by that is, they lost.”

Yes, they lost but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still trying. Background checks are teetering on the edge of firearm and/or owner registration which is totally unacceptable. The ability with which a background check system could be turned into a registration system is scary easy. And since there is no evidence background check improve public safety I am of the opinion the system should be scrapped.

But what I find most interesting about this quote is that Glaze is willing to concede “letting law-abiding citizens buy the guns they want.”

Other anti-gun people and groups need to have that pounded into them in public debate. No “assault weapon” bans and stop the whining about “.50 caliber sniper rifles”.

Removing restrictions on suppressors are next and full-auto firearms are just over the horizon.—Joe]

It’s not scary looking guns that frighten me, it’s the thought of an unarmed citizenry at the mercy of a tyrannical government that makes be toss and turn at night.

The one thing that all slaves have in common, they don’t own guns.

John West
January 2012
Comment to RCMP to seize more ‘scary-looking’ guns before registry dies.
[Nor do slaves own weapons of any type.

I have nothing further to add.—Joe]

With all the permit holders, it’s getting to where violent crime isn’t safe anymore.

Dave Hardy
January 23, 2012
CCW customer kills robber
[I’ve been listening to another economics book by Thomas Sowell. He gave many examples where criminals were entirely rational and responded to “economic” pressures. Sowell’s definition of economics is “the study of allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses”. When a violent criminals scarce resource is their body and that it might be reallocated by someone else as worm food most probably come up with the correct answer when they ask themselves the question, “Do I feel lucky?“

That violent crime is going down and the murder rate is at it’s lowest level in 50 (I think, I don’t want to bother looking it up right now) years could be because of the dramatic increase in CCW and the number of gun owners in general.

I may just be that the anti-gun people were wrong and the NRA, SAF, CCRKBA, JPFO, GOA, etc. was right (again).—Joe]

New York state has enacted rational gun laws for one very simple reason: to protect everyone visiting, living, or working in New York.

Erin M. Duggan
January 21, 2012
Director of communications for the New York City district attorney’s office.
New York gun law triggers confusion, arrests for visitors
[“Rational”? What part of “… the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” does Duggan have trouble understanding?

This is the same sort of person that would claim separate restaurants, drinking fountains and toilet facilities is “rational” too. I’m looking forward to the day when a Judge strikes those laws down and threatens the bigoted politicians, prosecuting attorneys, and police officers with arrest and jail time when they fail to obey in a timely manner.—Joe]

Gun control laws in the United States originated as a scheme for keeping blacks disarmed. By turning gun rights into privileges, granted at the discretion of local police chiefs and county sheriffs, whites could keep blacks from bearing arms while still in practice maintaining their own rights. The slope turned out to be slippery and, in all but eight states, whites lost their gun rights too. Finally in 1987 people of all races started to reclaim their gun rights through the “shall issue” movement, requiring police chiefs and county sheriffs to issue gun permits to all adult applicants who are not disqualified by history of crime or mental illness.

Alec Rawls
2002
Blacks and Guns
[Another one via Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms  by Philip Mulivor.

It’s the dirty little secret of gun control. And it’s just one more thing anti-gun people have in common with the KKK.—Joe]

The maintenance of the right to bear arms is a most essential one to every free people and should not be whittled down by technical constructions.

Supreme Court of North Carolina
May 11, 1921
Stave v. Kerner, 181 N.C. 107 S.E. 222
[From Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms by Philip Mulivor.

Mulivor sent me a free copy which I am enjoying immensely. I will be stealing more quotes from it in the coming weeks.—Joe]

We have passed the point, to be honest, where these folks deserve the dignity of being treated like reasonable adults. As they have plainly demonstrated, they are incapable of acting in such a manner.

Sebastian
January 16, 2012
The State of the Debate
[As I have said before, we do not have a common basis to even communicate with these people.

Their “political currency” is the tragedy of their victim “heroes”. Ours is the enabling of self reliance and determination. There is no common ground upon which to compromise or even talk.

There is very little to be gained by engaging them. Point out the absurdities of their claims on our own and public turf then let them fade away into the dustbin of history.—Joe]