If physicians are unable to, by law, ascertain the mental stability of someone to own a gun in Florida, then the Federal Government should deny everyone in Florida the ability to purchase a gun.
Mr. Fusion
January 10, 2016
Comment to The Absurd Logic Behind Floridas Docs vs. Glocks Law
[What is it with anti-gun people and their obsession with assessing the mental health of gun owners? It is they who demonstrate mental health problems (see also here).—Joe]
The right to keep and bear arms is not up for popular debate. It’s a constitutionally enumerated civil right.
Craig DeLuz
Firearms Policy Coalition spokesman
January 12, 2016
Gun debate: Californians support more gun control, poll finds
[Technically he is correct. But from a practical standpoint he is wrong. If a large majority wish to hurt us any way they can, as one person in the article said regarding buying ammunition, “Anything that slows the process down, I’m all for,” the local courts will ultimately find some weasel words to allow it. We have to change the culture or we need some very strong rulings from higher courts.
With dwindling percentages of gun owners in the most oppressed states and significant obstacles for bringing new people into our camp changing the culture is probably nearly a lost cause in these areas.
Therefore getting a pro-freedom president in the Whitehouse next January is our do or die battle for states like California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, etc. Otherwise the Supreme Court will, for all intents and purposes, eviscerate the Heller and McDonald decisions.—Joe]
As implied by my last post about the overloading of the NICS system I have been noticing how crowded the indoor ranges are around here. A couple weeks ago, about 2:00 PM, on a Saturday, I was stopped at the local range to practice before a match. The parking lot was full. And it’s not a small parking lot:
Every place you see parking lines, or cars, and on the street in front of the building had parked cars. I drove by the front door and looking into the lobby to see it was packed. I just drove on home.
Recently I’ve been visiting the range at lunch time and while I don’t have a problem finding a parking spot the range has been crowded. The only time it hasn’t been crowded recently was when I went to a different range (because I was in the area anyway) and it was during a Seahawks game. I was far from the only shooter in the place but it wasn’t packed.
Another item of interest is that I ordered a holster and magazine pouches from Kramer Leather yesterday. They quoted me a delivery time of seven to nine weeks.
My speculation is that it’s the threat of more gun control that has people hitting the range and the gun stores in mass again.
I wanted to post something about this last night but it was dinner and video night with my daughter so I decided to do it tonight. Then Sebastian made nearly all the points I wanted to make.
The one issue I want to elaborate on further is:
The surge of criminal background checks required of new gun purchasers has been so unrelenting in recent months that the FBI had been forced to temporarily halt the processing of thousands of appeals from prospective buyers whose firearm purchase attempts have been denied.
Since October, the bureau’s entire cadre of appeal examiners— about 70 analysts — was redeployed here to help keep pace with waves of incoming background investigations that continued through December when a record 3.3 million firearm sales were processed.
This shows us there is a loophole in the system an (redundancy alert) unscrupulous, anti-gun administration could deny the majority of the people in this country their right to purchase new firearms. If they can ignore the appeals of denials then it would seem that instead of actually doing a proper background check and giving a pass or fail response they could just say, “Fail” to everyone. Then they just ignore their appeals.
It would seem to me this loophole needs to be fixed. Best case is to just eliminate NICS and if states want background check for firearm purchases they can put “Firearm exclusions” on drivers licenses and state ID cards. And if it is impractical to eliminate NCIS the law should require the FBI/DOJ/whoever respond appropriately to the appeals within 10 days or else the denial is automatically overturned.
Being a software engineer for the last 30+ years means I have had opportunity to make a fair amount of money. I certainly didn’t do as well as I could have. I still regret declining the request for a job interview with Microsoft in 1985 but I’ve managed to do okay and with a little bit of income from Boomershoot I manage to adequately feed my gun, ammo, training, and explosives appetites. Currently I have a job I really like, I feel secure in (the last place I worked at just laid everyone off and is closing the Seattle office any day now), and am paid a comfortable amount. So for Christmas this year I decided I would share some of the wealth.
So it came to pass that it was with great pleasure I gave my three children, Barb, Barb’s two children, and Ry each fifty trillion dollars. Powerball winners have nothing to brag about when I get in a giving mood!
It was with great anticipation that I saw Barb select my present to her to open first:
But the first thing she said after looking at it was, “What am I going to do with this?”
Uh-oh! I didn’t have a good answer. I thought about, “Don’t spend it all in one place.” But decided that might not be wise in that context and told her there were other presents from me, maybe she would like one of them better.
Her children on the other hand thought they were awesome gifts and said they were going to take them to college and put them on their dorm room walls.
I was a little worried about my kids. What would they think? But they studied their gifts thoughtfully, considered their new status as multi-trillionaires and drew the appropriate conclusions about the hazards of hyperinflation, paper money, etc. Ry, of course, got it immediately and we drifted into a conversation about the worldwide economy, Europe, etc.
I don’t want you to think I gave away all my money last Christmas. I saved some for myself:
Yes. I kept 100 trillion back for myself and a “rainy day”.
As citizens, we must all take a stand. March, protest, Facebook, Tweet, write your congressman, senators and legislators urging them to ban guns.
Rana Florida
December 15, 2012
Shame on Us, America: Take a Stand and #BanGuns Now
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
There is a reason that the weak are drawn to snark while the strong simply say what they mean. Snark makes the speaker feel strength they know deep down they do not posses. It shields their insecurity and makes them feel like they are in control. Snark is the ideal intellectual position. It can criticize but it cannot be criticized.
Ryan Holiday
2013
Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
[This is a bit of an oversimplification. You can say what you mean, have a strong position, and still be snarky. But in many cases, as exhibited by the endless cases of Markley’s Law, Holiday is absolutely correct.—Joe]
I’ve moved so many times in the last 10 years that many of my boxes still are unpacked. But in the last few days I’ve been making some progress. Here are some of my Insights Training certificates of achievement which I put up on the wall:
I have several others but some are in boxes and the frame glass is broken in still others. Today Barb got prices on replacement glass so those will be going up soon.
The certificate in the upper left is for Intensive Handgun Skills. The certificate is dated nearly 20 years ago, October 25-27, 1996. I signed up to repeat it on February 20-22, 2016. I figured I need a tune up after so many years.
Dave Hardy went to the Clinton Archives to look for gun control records. Last month he reported some staggering information:
A fax from Jody Powell, President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, to George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton’s new press secretary, warning Clinton to back off from gun control because … it just doesn’t work.
…
We have yet to propose anything that people think will make any difference. The people who are generally for gun control don’t make it a voting issue because it has no real impact on their lives. On the other hand, the inconvenience and hassle of wading through another round with indifferent and incompetent bureaucrats and the fear that this is only the first step toward more radical measures are quite real to people who own guns.”
Then came the real bombshell:
“Much as I hate to say it, the NRA is effective primarily because it is largely right when it claims that most gun control measures inconvenience and threaten the law-abiding while having little or no impact on violent crime and criminals.”
This month he reports on the Brady Campaign wish list:
The Brady Campaign has long claimed that its agenda is limited. Just some “reasonable, common-sense” gun restrictions—no need for anyone to worry about confiscation or onerous regulations.
…
The White House files were filled with Brady Campaign/Handgun Control Inc.’s legislative plans. A memo stamped “confidential—do not circulate” (with the label set out by images of skulls and crossbones) outlined Brady’s real agenda.
It began with a list of what Brady wanted from the Clinton administration. The list was long, but mostly quite predictable: licensing requirements and registration for handgun ownership, a ban on “assault rifles,” “one-gun-a-month,” a seven-day waiting period, and stiff increases in fees (to $1,000 per year) for FFLs.
Even that would not be enough to please the Brady Campaign, though. Its memo added some proposals that (until now) have never seen the light of day.
Brady also asked for a federal requirement of a special “arsenal license” for any gun owner who possessed 20 guns or 1,000 rounds of ammunition. (The White House copy has a handwritten note: “all guns.”) The memo described the arsenal license’s requirements as “similar to the requirements for a machine gun license,” including the requirement for police approval, since “anyone who has an arsenal is a danger to society.” In this scenario, two bricks of .22s would be enough for a gun owner to be treated as a public menace.
Brady also asked that each component of a handgun, including the “barrel, stock, receiver, any part of the action, or ammunition magazines” be treated as if they were the receiver. “Buyers would need a license, sellers would need an FFL, and interstate sales would be illegal,” Brady explained. Replacing the grips or a firing pin spring, or purchasing an extra magazine, would actually require a 4473. Apparently they consider handguns to be that dangerous!
Incredibly, Brady also wanted a ban on manufacturing magazines that held more than six rounds, and a requirement that transfers of used seven-round and larger magazines have law enforcement approval. Essentially, nearly every magazine in the United States, apart from those for some pocket guns and deer rifles, would be banned if new, or tightly restricted if already in existence.
It’s all just common sense… if your goal is to eliminate the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
Here is a November 29, 2015 picture of Brady Center president Dan Gross (left) and New York Governor (and New York SAFE Act author) Andrew Cuomo (right) as they present Hillary Clinton with the Mario M. Cuomo Visionary Award for her leadership on gun control:
If Hillary wins the November election the supreme court candidates she picks will neuter the Second Amendment.
The paid nra trolls are freaking out about being founding members of the #tinycockclub. It’s too funny. #bokbok #fuckthenra #gunsense
Bacon @Baconmints
Tweeted on December 23, 2014
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
Via a Tweet from BFD @BigFatDave.—Joe]
The mass shootings that plague us, and the daily individual acts of gun violence and death should, however, lead us to make access to guns more difficult. We should, that is, seek to “control” access to them and their use. But even that’s not going far enough. We should get rid of them, that is, ban them. Guns create too many problems, promote too much fear, and lead to too many deaths to not consider banning them. Perhaps they were necessary at some point in our history, but let’s declare that that time has run its course.
Hollis Phelps
December 4, 2015
The Second Amendment must go: We ban lawn darts. It’s time to ban guns
[Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
The other day I was cleaning out a box of old stuff and I found this:
It’s some very old primers. I’m pretty sure I bought these in Moscow Idaho about 1975. This was long before I was into guns or had ever reloaded ammunition. I think I was going to use them to make an Estes rocket into some sort of missile with a “warhead” for the 4th of July. I never got around to it and all the primers are still in the package.
Herman’s World of Sporting Goods closed their last store in 1996, but I’m pretty sure the one in Moscow was closed many years prior to that.
Today a box of 1000 Small Rifle Magnum Primers cost about $35.00, if they were packaged and sold in 100 piece quantity, as in the picture above, the price would be just about double what they were when I bought mine.
Today I finished loading a case (supposedly 2500 but there were 2513 in this one) of 180 grain, .40 caliber, JHP, Montana Gold bullets. In the box I found this:
It’s a partially formed bullet jacket.
I am officially beyond a place of wanting to find a compromise with those who want to argue for the right, or the need, of citizens to arm themselves with guns. Focusing on assault weapons only is just giving in to the gun lobby out of a fear that we can’t beat them if we don’t give them something. The time has come for our society to say enough is enough and that we must completely outlaw private citizens from owning guns. There is just no good logic to it and the number of senseless deaths attributed to people wielding all too easily acquired guns has reached a point where we have to say this has to stop.
…
Let’s not go halfway on this. Let’s not be afraid of the fight ahead in working to remove all guns from private ownership.
Earnest Harris
January 16, 2013
Assault Weapons Ban Is Not Enough
[Harris said this three years ago today. How’s that removal effort working out for him? Not so well? Maybe because he hasn’t take point on the implementation.
Don’t ever let anyone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
The term ‘loophole’ suggests that it was a minor, unintended flaw in the design of the law, something inadvertently overlooked by lawmakers, when it was actually the very intentional result of a carefully worked-out political compromise between those who wanted background checks on all gun acquisitions and those who did not want any at all.
Gary Kleck
January 7, 2016
PolitiFact Sheet: 3 things to know about the ‘gun show loophole’
[This article does a good job of explaining the facts about the “gun show loophole”. I particularly like this part:
Our findings show that there is, in fact, an exemption in the law. But the exemption pertains to who sells the guns rather than where they sell them.
And that distinction is critical. The anti-gun crowd uses deliberate deception (it’s part of their culture) in an attempt to get laws passed which would be far less likely to get support if they were to be truthful.
I also found this to be of interest:
Professors at Northeastern and Harvard universities conducted a gun survey in 2015 that isn’t yet published. The national survey of 4,000 non-institutionalized adults found that 22 percent of the people who purchased guns — at gun shows, stores or elsewhere — underwent no background check, said Matthew Miller, professor of Health Sciences and Epidemiology at Northeastern University and co-director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
When researchers excluded purchases between family and friends, that number dropped to 15 percent, which equates to approximately 5 million gun owners whose most recent purchase did not involve a background check.
I sent an email to Miller that said, in part:
I have some questions about the study referenced.
When will this study will be published?
A “background check” is not a black and white activity. Did your study consider the seller requiring the purchaser possess a concealed carry license a “background check” or not? There are other indirect “background checks” possible as well. For example, some gun organizations require a concealed carry and/or background check for membership. Hence any member of the organization has had a background check at some point in the not too distance past.
It’s unclear, but implied, that the way study was conducted was to ask 4,000 people if their most recent gun purchase was made without a background check. Is this true? If so, that raises an important issue as in the following scenario.
Suppose collectors of antique firearms purchase almost exclusively from private individuals at a rate of five firearms per year. If most people with only one (or very few) firearms purchase almost exclusively from licensed dealers, then it’s not possible to discern the overall number of sales without explicit background checks. In this situation there is a bias which results in an underestimation of the number of sales without explicit background checks.
Other scenarios are also possible that can give a bias in the other direction. Additional information is required to arrive at the true rate of explicit background checks.
But in any case, it would appear there is data which puts the upper limit on private firearm sales to people of unknown eligibility at about 15 percent. This is in contrast to the common, long known to be erroneous, claim of “40 percent”.
Now I wonder when (if?) this study will be released and if the anti-gun people will revise down their claims of the prevalence of firearm sales without background checks. Particularly when Miller receives a lot of money from the Joyce Foundation.—Joe]
Update: I sent the email to Miller four days ago on January 11th. No response yet.
Via email from Miles I received this bill introduced in Missouri by Representative Stacey Newman.
The TLDR version is, in Miles words:
It would create restrictive guidelines that a person must follow to purchase a firearm in the state of Missouri.
Basically you can only buy from an FFL that’s at least 120 miles away from your residence, after getting a psych eval signed off (I assume at the buyer’s expense), watch a 30 minute anti-gun video and take a tour of a trauma ER on a weekend between 10pm and 6am when there’s actually a patient being treated for a gunshot wound, visit two families who have had a family member shot and visit two “ local faith leaders” who have performed a funeral service for a teenager who was shot and killed in the last year. Oh, I almost forgot, I have to have my 91 year old father and 89 year old mother sign off on the purchase too as there’s no age limit for the required parental permission slip (and what happens if one is an orphan?).
Many anti-gun people have mental health issues. I have to believe this another one. It’s hard to believe someone, even the most evil, if they are rational, can imagine this would pass muster in the courts let alone with a majority of their fellow politicians. Even in the most generous of scenarios, signaling her virtue to other anti-gun people, you would have to conclude, “this is crazy talk”.
How does someone like that even get elected? They must have stopped taking their meds after winning the election.
Via email from Paul K.
Six Democrats in Georgia’s state House of Representatives unveiled a bill on Jan. 11 that would “require seizure” of “certain weaponry and ammunition” that is deemed as contraband, effectively banning “assault weapons” and “large-capacity magazines.”
HB 731, which is sponsored by Mary Margaret Oliver, Carolyn Hugley, Pat Gardiner, Stacey Abrams, Dar’shun Kendrick and Dee Dawkins-Haigler, would amend current law to “prohibit the possession, sale, transport, distribution or use of certain assault weapons, large capacity magazines, armor-piercing bullets, and incendiary .50 caliber bullets.”
…
Those who do possess either an assault weapon or a large-capacity magazine, as defined in the text of the bill, on July 1, 2016, will need to either modify the weapon to magazine to “render it permanently inoperable or such that it is no longer an assault weapon or large capacity magazine” or give the firearm over to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to be destroyed; gun owners will have an Oct. 31, 2016 deadline to do so.
I agree with some of the text of this proposal. The part about requiring seizure and rendering permanently inoperable. But they have the object of those verbs wrong. The objects should the politicians advocating for such a law. They should arrested and then prosecuted.
Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.
@NRA I’d wager most of your members are adjudicated mentally incompetent.
Miss Tina @Miss__Tina
Tweeted on January 7, 2016
[This is what they think of you. If you don’t think like them you must be crazy and it’s off to the psych ward for you. It’s what Stalin did and it’s what they will do if they get the chance.—Joe]
What are conservatives going to do when we succeed in taking their guns away? 
#guncontrol
Domenico P. Nanni @dominicnanni
Tweeted on January 7, 2016
[Don’t ever let someone get away with telling you that no one wants to take your guns.—Joe]
From CNN, Gun control groups emphasize suicides in bid for more public support:
In years past, gun control advocates focused almost exclusively on homicides, whether the mass shootings covered intensively by the national media or the inner-city murders that are a staple of the late local news. Now, groups such as Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, as well as public health researchers, are starting to emphasize suicides.
The shift is part of a broader change in looking at gun violence as more of a public health issue and less of a matter of crime.
“When criminologists focus on guns, they focus on crime,” said David Hemenway a professor at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “What we’ve been trying to say is that a person is dead whether or not someone else shot them, they were shot by accident or they shot themselves on purpose.”
…
Zimring said that by putting the focus on victims who are their relatives and neighbors, gun control advocates hope to get the attention of these “apathetic” suburban voters.
“It’s a politically sophisticated way to change the nature of the debate,” he said. “The point is not to increase the percentage of support, but to increase the intensity of support. It’s not to make more people support gun control. It’s to make them care about it.”
I used to play a lot of tennis. There was a “rule” my instructors drilled into me, “Never change a winning strategy, always change a losing strategy.” This same rule is applicable to a lot of endeavors. This includes politics.
Gun control people are losing their war on guns and they know they need to change their strategy. It’s a little subtle but I find the statement “When criminologists focus on guns, they focus on crime” very telling. They know criminological data does not support the case for gun control and they need to change the focus of their attack on our rights. The Heller decision blunted many of the gun control by “principle” (such as “civilized people don’t own guns”) and conformance with “other advanced countries”. The mass shootings excuse for infringement is falling flat because any rational person recognizes that the best way to stop such an attack is exactly what the NRA says, “A good guy with a gun.”
What do they have left? They only have suicides as a possible weapon against us. There is a reason this has not been used much in the past. It’s because it too has fallen flat when it has been attempted. In debates with anti-gun people in the past I have never had them try to defend suicide by gun as a valid reason to place restrictions on the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. And people in the middle will dismiss it even quicker. This is the anti-gun conspirators last ditch tool of desperation and it will fail just as it has in the past.