My only concept of guns or gun control was of overweight, balding white men with tiny dicks and smaller brains.
Amy Butcher
October 19, 2013
You Miss Until You Make It: Reclaiming Independence At A Firing Range
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!
It is a little hard to tell but I think she may have revised her opinion of gun owners. This was without doing counting hairs, measuring skin tone, or any length or mass measurement.—Joe]
As both Lyle and I posted recently Idaho passed a law that “nullifies all future federal gun laws”. It passed 68-0 in the house and 34-0 in the senate.
Unanimous. Think about that a bit.
It took our lobbyists in Idaho at least seven years to get the right to keep and bear arms respected on college campuses. And the vote was far from unanimous. There were legislators yelling bloody murder about this. So what is going on with a unanimous vote that “nullifies all future federal gun laws”?
There has to be something else to this than what it is billed as.
The reality is the law has no practical meaning. It has political meaning. It means that legislators that are, for all practical purposes, anti-gun can use it as defense against opponents who confront them on their anti-gun votes. “Look what I voted FOR! You can’t get any more pro-gun that this!”
This does not prevent the locals from going on raids with the Feds and it doesn’t stop them from sharing in the proceeds of civil forfeitures generated by federal enforcement actions. And what do you think would happen if the local sheriff arrested some ATF agent enforcing a federal gun control law?
Do you remember what happened when Lon Horiuchi was charged with manslaughter for the death of Vicki Weaver? After years of legal battles he walked. That was in a case where the Federal Government admitted Vicki Weaver was wrongfully shot paid the Weaver family millions of dollars in compensation.
This law is all for show. It feels good but it doesn’t do any good and if cannot do any good there can only be a downside to it.
Gun owners are hostile to having guns registered and requiring a license to own them. The fear of having that data in the hands of the government is justifiable. Not just stories like the Belgian Corporal from 75 years ago on another continent but the stories in present day from Connecticut, New York, and California.
Now we have conclusive evidence that car licenses are also subject to abuse.
It’s time to treat cars like guns. No more registration.
H/T To Tamara K. for the retweet of Kirk Freeman.
This is an important first step for Idaho. Getting this law passed will ensure that any new plans or executive orders that might be coming our way will not be enforced in Idaho. Then, once this method is established and shown to be effective, legislators can circle back and start doing the same for federal gun control already on the books. SB1332 is an important building block for protecting the 2nd Amendment in Idaho.
Mike Maharrey
March 21, 2014
BREAKING: Idaho governor signs emergency legislation nullifying all future federal gun laws
[Lyle also posted on this last week.
Also of extreme interest was that “S1332 passed the house by a vote of 68-0 and the senate by a vote of 34-0.”
Interesting times.—Joe]
Via email from Squirrel Hunter:
That looks to be quite handy but I suspect it might “wreck the mood” if the headboard got bumped just right while the activities in the bedroom were more “friendly” than hostile.
The original finish on my Ruger 10/22 hammer forged barrel was not at all tolerant of moisture. I discovered this the hard way after one Boomershoot when I closed it up in the slightly damp case for a couple of days. I cringed every time I looked at it. I kept telling myself and others that saw the damaged barrel, “I need to get the barrel refinished but I just haven’t got around to it yet.” This went on for several years and I finally got around to it this year.
I sent the barrel to Robar to get their NP3 finish on it. I really liked the NP3 finish on my STI Eagle and figured it would be good for the 10/22 barrel as well.
Except for the pitted surface irregularities it looks good:
I still need to sight it in and see if the accuracy changed any.
As I mentioned yesterday I went to Idaho a couple weekends ago. Originally I was going to take my friend Elizabeth with me and drop her off in Pullman. Her daughter is going to school at Washington State University. Elizabeth would stay with her daughter then Saturday the two of them and her daughter’s boyfriend would visit me on the farm for a Boomershoot private party. Due to conflicting schedules Barb was not going to be able to go with us.
A week or so before the trip I asked Elizabeth if she was still planning to go. I wanted to arrange for additional explosives handlers if the private party was still on. Elizabeth decided not to go because her daughter was coming home for spring break in just a week anyway. Fine. The weather wasn’t looking all that great anyway.
When I found that walking was the only viable way to get to Boomershoot Mecca to make the targets and that still another cross country walk with the targets and guns would be required I was pleased things turned out the way they did. What I didn’t realize was that the trip back on Sunday was even more reason to be grateful for the change in plans.
I worked on Boomershoot stuff Sunday until mid afternoon then stopped to visit daughter Kim on the way back and didn’t leave the Moscow area until much later than I usually leave. Much of the rest of story is contained in the texts I exchanged with Barb.
Have you guys seen what is happening in Connecticut right now? One million gun owners in New Jersey are also gonna say, like our brothers and sisters in the north, that we will not comply. And I can tell you here and now, I will not comply.
Anthony P. Colandro
March 13, 2014
New Jersey CEO Takes a Stand Over Proposed Gun Control Bill, Warns Lawmakers ‘We Will Not Comply’ Just Like Connecticut
[It appears a line in the sand may have been drawn which a critical mass of people are willing to stand upon.—Joe]
Brother Doug and his family have a cat, Smokey:
They also used to have a dog, Nick, who Smokey loved to torment. Nick would be sound asleep on the floor and Smokey would sneak up and pounce on him. Nick knew he was not allowed to put a permanent end to the irritant but would push it as far as he dared. He would grab him by the head, with the cat’s face stuffed deep into his mouth, then shake him back and forth. The cat apparently concluded the Jonah and the whale threat was worth the amusement factor and continued to do this for years.
One time Smokey did something that got that him the simulated mauling treatment while outside with wet sticky snow on the ground. Nick flipped him back and forth over the snow long enough that the snow embedded deep into his long fur. It then packed and stuck around him until he was nothing but a snowball with a face, tail, and four paws sticking straight out to the sides. Nick left him on the ground unable to move. His legs could not be moved enough to get his feet on the ground for coordinated movement.
The family was concerned but wasn’t sure what to do. He was packed in the snow so tight with his legs spread so far apart that they weren’t sure his leg joints were even still in their sockets. They brought him indoors and rather than risk addition stress on his joints just let him melt on the floor. Smokey recovered just fine but still didn’t consider there was a long term lesson to be learned.
Nick never initiated anything but never passed up an opportunity to inflict a desired punishment upon the cat. When someone yelled at the cat about some wrongdoing, like scratching the furniture, Nick would come running and nail the cat to give it the time honored visit to the tonsils and a vigorous shaking. He could be at the opposite end of the house, apparently asleep, and the words “Smokey! No!” would get him from full slumber to full cat head gagging in under five seconds.
All this is the back story for the real story I wanted to tell.
Nick was a really smart dog. He figured out that sometimes when Doug left the house with his rifle he would return with a dead deer and that after a short while Nick got tasty deer bones to chew on. Since hunting deer with a dog is not allowed Doug had to resort to things like putting the rifle out of a window at the opposite end of the house from Nick, leave the house with Nick inside, then retrieve the gun and go off into the woods in search of deer. If Nick were to see Doug leave the house with the rifle he would make life inside the house miserable for the inhabitants until Doug returned or he were released.
One time Doug was not sufficiently sneaky with getting the rifle out the door and Nick was on the lookout for an opportunity to join the hunt. Doug was just heading over the hill behind the shop into the woods when Doug’s daughter Amy gave him that opportunity. She absentmindedly opened the door on some minor excursion and Nick bolted through the narrow crack between her legs and the door. He launched out of the house like a fighter jet off the steam catapult on an aircraft carrier. He had acquired a lock on Doug, was on full afterburners, and time to intercept was measured in a handful of seconds. Amy realized she had messed up and yelled for Nick to return. After a couple of attempts with absolutely no response other than what appeared to be an attempt to break the sound barrier she finally yelled, “Smokey! No!”.
Disregarding the inadvisability of an instantaneous transition from full afterburners to full thrust reversers Nick did just that. There was a cloud of gravel and dust in the driveway and parking area between the house and the shop as Nick went from just subsonic in one direction to nearly supersonic in the other. Amy held the door open wide and stepped aside as Nick blew past her into the house in his quest to find Smokey and make sure he got what was surely due to him.
Doug had a smart dog but he has a smarter daughter.
Three weeks ago I made a trip to Idaho to work on some things for Boomershoot 2014. Contrary to the previous visit I was not able to drive in the 700+ yards to Mecca. There was a snow berm blocking the field road:
And had I shoveled it down to size the depth of the snow on the field road would have been problematic even with four-wheel drive and studded snow tires on all four. I walked in.
Things looked pretty good:
It was cold (16 F) and windy (with a wind chill factor of 5F) but that wasn’t a big issue except for the conditions in the portable toilet:
I did a bunch of work inside for several hours then I noticed my fingers and toes were getting cold. I wore gloves off and on and was able to keep the fingers at an acceptable temperature but the toes weren’t getting any better so I decided a trip back to the vehicle was in order.
As I was walking back I realized that if my visibility were to be sufficiently reduced by a blizzard or fog I could be in bad situation very rapidly. I was just walking across an open field. There was no road or trails to follow except for my foot prints from the trip out. A few minutes of drifting snow would fill those in. Cell phone reception is very flakey. I could easily get in a situation that I couldn’t even call for help. And if help did arrive at the road what could they do beyond blink lights and honk the horn? It wouldn’t be safe for them to try looking for me even if they thought they could find me. My phone GPS might or might not get a fix without the assistance of a data connection via cell.
Not too long after getting back to Seattle I purchased some radios that would allow me to connect with brother Doug on the frequencies he uses for the farm. They also work on the FRS frequencies we use for Boomershoot (Channel 13, Code 0). I have done the range tests but I expect they will have similar range to the portable radio he has which is many miles further than what I would need should I get into trouble at the Boomershoot site.
My concerns were without warrant and I made it back to my vehicle and did some Wi-Fi testing. I had installed a new antenna at Mecca on my previous visit but hadn’t tested it from the Boomershoot shooting line. I drove over to the intersection of driveway into the shooting area and Meridian Road. I had to buck through some snow drifts but they weren’t too bad:
The Wi-Fi signal was great! I could connect to Mecca with my laptop on Meridian Road without putting up another access point. My cell phone needed the extra AP though. With the extra AP I could connect just fine but I couldn’t get out. I found out, after I got back to Seattle, there was a little check box on the “Advanced” tab of the Nanostation 2 that needed to be unchecked. I made a big notation in my setup notes, “CLIENT ISOLATION MUST BE OFF!”
The driveway probably was passable but I walked out to the shooting line berm.
Barb and I have been anxiously awaiting for signs the transplanted daffodils (see also this blog post) survived the winter but today was not the day. Here is the downrange side of the shooting berm where we planted them:
Things were looking good for Boomershoot 2014. The snow was well within normal limits. I talked to brother Doug earlier this week and he said 90% of the snow has melted now but it is still early enough that it could snow up again.
Via email from Squirrel Hunter:
Aroma Therapy
A scent that can ease anxiety, promote a sensation of security, calmness and control in an uncomfortable situation.
The N.R.A. objected to the letter’s support for a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons and ammunition, a buyback program to reduce the number of guns in circulation, limits on the purchase of ammunition, mandatory safety training for gun owners, and mandatory waiting periods before completing a purchase.
…
These sane, mainstream proposals will not prevent law-abiding citizens from acquiring and keeping firearms.
THE EDITORIAL BOARD of the New York Times
March 17, 2014
The Gun Lobby’s Latest Bizarre Crusade
[And as long as it is possible for law-abiding citizens to acquire and keep firearms the NYT editorial board will insist further infringement is “sane and mainstream”. What they don’t address is that such infringement does not accomplish any worthwhile goal and is clearly unconstitutional. They want bans on guns and ammunition in common use.
Don’t ever let anyone get away telling you that “no one wants to take your guns”. The Editorial Board of the New York Times is just one of many that have repeatedly said they do want to take them.—Joe]
Update: A comment from Mark Alger:
John Lott’s scholarship demonstrates clearly that restrictions on gun ownership do not have a positive effect on violent crime. That is to say, reality does not comport with the writer’s claim that infringements on the RKBA is sane, as they ignore the facts — reality. And, given that the overwhelming majority of We the People support RKBA, the outlook is NOT mainstream; it’s fringe, extremist, backwater. But, what’s dispositive is that RKBA **is** a right, long recognized in common law, infringed or abridged only by tyrants, and (almost an aside) recognized and protected as such by our Constitution. I therefor urge you to add this post to the crap for brains category.
Done. “Crap for Brains” category has been added.
The 9th Curcuit Court, crazy as it is, decided it was time to piss in someone’s oatmeal. Specifically, Hawaii. Short version: because of Peruta, Hawaii is now a “shall-issue” concealed carry state.
Totally tubular!
The ATF has a long history of making up the rules as it goes along and not telling anyone what the rules are until it decides you have stepped over the line. A judge has now slapped them down for this:
Uncle Sam arbitrarily classified a new device as a firearm silencer without sufficient review or a decent explanation why, a federal judge’s somewhat scathing opinion states.
“In any agency review case, a reviewing court is generally obligated to uphold a reasonable agency decision that is the product of a rational agency process,” U.S. District Judge John Bates wrote Wednesday. “This is not a high bar. But in this case, ATF fails to clear it.”
There is a lot more where that came from followed by this:
“Hypotheticals further illustrate the weakness of this methodology,” he wrote. “A mouse is not an ‘elephant’ solely because it has three characteristics that are common to known elephants: a tail, gray skin and four legs. A child’s bike is not a ‘motorcycle’ solely because it has three characteristics common to known motorcycles: two rubber tires, handlebars, and a leather seat. And a Bud Light is not ‘Single-Malt Scotch,’ just because it is frequently served in a glass container, contains alcohol, and is available for purchase at a tavern. To close with a firearm-related example a hockey puck us not a ‘rubber bullet,’ just because it has rounded sides, is made of vulcanized rubber, and is capable of causing injury when launched at high speeds. Learning that one object has three characteristics in common with some category may not be very helpful in determining whether the object in question belongs in that category.
“To make matters worse, other agency guidance uses a different set of characteristics – the six characteristics in the Classification letter appear not to be an exhaustive definitive list.”
And my favorite part:
He also granted Innovator summary judgment on its claim under the Administrative Procedure Act, holding that the agency’s action must be set aside as arbitrary and capricious because of the agency’s failure to “articulate a satisfactory explanation” and “examine the relevant data” in classifying Innovator’s Stabilizer Brake as a “firearm silencer.”
“Arbitrary and capricious”! Yes! There are going to be a lot of people agreeing with that conclusion.
Via the Daily Caller we have this letter from Diane Feinstein to President Obama:
The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500Dear Mr. President:
During your State of the Union address, you stated that you want to make 2014 a “year of action.” We write to urge you to take immediate action to address the significant number of assault weapons that are being imported into the United States in contravention of federal law. We respectfully request that you take steps to ensure that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) fully enforces the ban on the importation of these military-style firearms.
A provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 925(d)(3), prohibits the importation of firearms that are not “generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.” In recent years, however, importers of firearms have taken advantage of ATF’s interpretation of the “sporting purposes” test to evade the import ban. In 1998, the Department of the Treasury — which then housed ATF — issued guidance that interpreted the import ban to prohibit only semiautomatic rifles that use magazines originally designed for a military rifle. Many semiautomatic firearms on the market today do not have a military origin but are modeled closely after military firearms. These military-style firearms are not prohibited under the current import ban, even though they are functionally equivalent to prohibited rifles with a military origin. In addition, the Treasury Department’s 1998 guidance allows foreign-made firearms to be imported into the United States without military features, even though these firearms have the capacity to fire multiple times in quick succession without the need to reload and can easily have military features attached.
As a result of the Treasury Department’s unnecessarily restrictive interpretation of the sporting purposes test, imports of military-style weapons have increased dramatically in recent years, helping to fuel deadly gun violence along the Southwest border and in neighboring Mexico. According to data obtained from the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission and analyzed by The Center for Public Integrity, 2.96 million rifles and handguns were imported into the United States in 2009, more than double the 1.32 million firearms imported in 2005. In January of this year, Russia’s Kalashnikov gun maker announced that it plans to sell in the United States up to 200,000 rifles and shotguns, many of which are designed after the Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle. An analysis by the Violence Policy Center found that more than 700 Romanian AK-47 variant rifles were identified in 134 federal gun trafficking prosecutions involving illegal smuggling from the United States to Mexico and other Latin American countries.
For example, one imported Romanian AK firearm, the WASR-10, was carefully designed to exploit the sporting purposes test and has become a favorite of the gun traffickers that profit by arming Mexican drug trafficking organizations. The importer of the WASR-10, Century International Arms, circumvents the import ban by taking the following steps: First, the company imports the inexpensive weapon without any military features, to avoid contravening the ban. Next, the weapon is disassembled, and American-made parts are added, to make the weapon “American-made,” not “foreign-made.” The magazine well is also modified to accept higher capacity ammunition magazines. Finally, assault features — which would be illegal if added to a foreign-made weapon — are added to the now-American-made weapon, rendering the weapon an assault rifle for all practical purposes. The resulting firearm is then sold on the civilian market, either to be used in violent acts here at home or smuggled across the border into Mexico.
WASR-10s have repeatedly been found in the arsenals of top drug kingpins and their associates. For example, at least one WASR-10 was used in May 2008 to kill eight police officers in Culiacan, Mexico, a city in the northwestern part of the country. An analysis conducted by The Center for Public Integrity found that, over the last four years, WASR-10 rifles comprised more than 17% of the firearms recovered at Mexican crime scenes and successfully traced back to the United States. In all, according to a memorandum by the Council on Foreign Relations published in July 2013, over 70% of the 99,000 weapons recovered by Mexican law enforcement since 2007 were traced to U.S. manufacturers and importers.
We urge ATF to close the loopholes that allow the importation of military-style weapons into the United States. Such an approach should, at a minimum:
- Prohibit importation of all semiautomatic rifles that can accept, or be readily converted to accept, a large capacity ammunition magazine of more than 10 rounds, regardless of the military pedigree of the firearm or the configuration of the firearm’s magazine well;
- Prohibit semiautomatic rifles with fixed magazines with a capacity of more than 10 rounds;
- Prohibit the importation of the frame or receiver of any prohibited rifle, regardless of whether it is incorporated into a fully manufactured firearm;
- Prohibit the practice of importing assault rifles in parts and then constructing the rifles once they are in the United States by adding the requisite number of American-made parts;
- Prohibit the use of a “thumbhole” stock as a means to avoid classification of a rifle as an assault rifle; and
- Prohibit the importation of assault pistols, in addition to assault rifles.
We urge you to review enforcement of the sporting purposes test and take the necessary regulatory steps to stop the importation of all military-style, non-sporting firearms, and the assembly of those firearms from imported parts. We have endured too many funerals and mourned the loss of too many innocent lives to accept less than full enforcement of the import ban. Thank you for your attention to this important issue.
Don’t let anyone tell you no that one wants to take your guns. Diane Feinstein does.
We really need to get rid of the “sporting purpose” clause of GCA68. It shouldn’t be that hard, should it? It’s more crazy talk to insist that a gun can be built and sold in the U.S. without issue but that same gun is somehow inappropriate to import.
The Second Amendment does not apply to schools.
Bruce Newcomb
Director Of Government Relations at Boise State University
February 28, 2014
Testimony before Idaho House State Affairs Committee
[That’s odd. My copy of the Bill of Rights doesn’t have an exclusion for schools. If Mr. Newcomb’s does then that must mean he shouldn’t have a problem with him being convicted without a trial as long as it is done on school property.
H/T to Mike for the email.—Joe]
This should have occurred to me much sooner. The world is unstable. Trouble in the Middle East is growing. Putin’s Russia is pining for a return of the “Glory” of the Soviet Union while radical Islamists pine for a new global caliphate, and China is a rising military power. The U.S. Continues to commit economic suicide. We’re well on the way to becoming a full-on surveillance state, with global information sharing.
You’re homosexual and you want to get married, thus putting your name on a list (a database) of homosexuals.
As gun owners and supporters of liberty, we know well the dangers of registration and lists, as they almost always lead to confiscation or something else unpleasant.
Just sayin’. Once the novelty of this great idea of “gay” marriage wears off, there’s nothing left but the long term implications. Communists, socialists, Progressives, Fascists and jihadists aren’t known for their respect of basic human rights, whatever they may have you thinking right now. And they all love lists, and the more detail the better. Lists are power to them. And they all consider the Earth to be vastly over-populated already.
As a white, male, heterosexual business owner, employer and father who has guns and openly advocates liberty, I’m already a target of just about everyone else on the planet. I’m already out of the closet, so to speak, and so I’m not afraid to say this. Someone had to.
I’ve never been all enthusiastic, eager and giddy about being added to yet another list in someone else’s database, speaking just for myself. Some friends of mine, a man and a woman, just got married, and kept it off record as much as possible. In their minds it’s none of the state’s bloody business. Maybe later you’ll be glad to have read this. I don’t know.
I’m hearing it more and more; some version of “I don’t want rails all around my (AR or AK) forend because they’re so rough on the hands”. I’ve had people tell me that over the phone, and when I suggest rail covers they pretend they didn’t hear me and continue on as though I’d said nothing. Key-Mod and other slick-sided forends, or even wrap-around fabric jackets, are the proposed answer. I don’t understand it fully. Those who are now in their 20s were of single-digit age when we first started selling rail covers, and rail covers of several types, materials and sizes were a well-established and readily available item before we started selling them. Apparently no one is doing enough marketing to even make people aware of the existence of the rail cover. I had always figured they were an obviously necessary component to any multi-railed system. Maybe we’ll have to start marketing rail covers as a “New Product!” in order to get people aware of them all over again. Next I suppose someone will come out with a “New!” insert for the Key-Mod forend that will fill the un-used slots, protect them from dings, and provide a nice gripping surface.
I just signed a contract with Castalia House, a recently started Finland-based publisher, to be the official publisher of The Stars Came Back. By some combination of luck, skill, happenstance in a changing marketplace, and doing enough things right to compensate for what I didn’t, I managed to move more than 2700 copies of the book world-wide between 13Jan2014 and 18Mar2014. Not bad for a total noob, and quite above expectations, if not as many as one may absurdly hope. So why would I cut my profits by sticking a middle-man in the mix? Because the book is already selling and done, the change to my bottom line for this book is very minimal, we have a good deal to come out with a conventional prose format version of the story, one where I won’t have to worry about upfront costs for editing and new cover art. (He says my old cover fairly screamed “self published,” and was quite surprised that it was selling as well as it was).
He’ll also handle translation into at least two other languages, possible audible books, and taking it to ink-on-paper (something I’d been only slowly making progress on), meaning I’ll get a fair percentage of markets I’d get zero from otherwise. It also opens the door wide for sequels and offshoots and other projects I’ve been mentally kicking around but didn’t have the resources to go after.
The funny thing is, I didn’t really intend to submit the story in an attempt to get a publisher. I had tried to post a question in a previous thread in which Vox compared indie publishing and working with a publisher, but the blog kept eating my post, so I just emailed the question to him. Basically I was asking “how does all this affect someone like me, a self-published author that is doing OK, but is a total no-name noob at it all?” He asked me to send in a copy for him to take a look at. I did, more thinking I might get some professional feedback, or maybe a plug on a blog read by people that might like the story. Shortly thereafter, it seemed like we were both a little surprised how things worked out. But as he said, “who am I to argue with the market?”
It’s been an interesting ride. Guess I can add “Raconteur” to my biz card.
An anti-gunner reads a book though, or sees a documentary on TV — or perhaps worst of all, gets a degree — and suddenly they have the almighty authority and expertise to tell us how we ought to live our lives, replying to our objections to their onslaught by throwing pictures of dead kids in our faces and commanding us to shut up, because we’re just a bunch of stupid radicals and liberals alone know what’s best for America.
Barry Snell
May 3, 2013
Snell: Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned
[An even larger point is that liberals believe in a planned/controlled society and I don’t. I believe in free association and exercising free will as long as you don’t infringe upon the rights of others to do the same. I want government out of not just my bedroom, my body, and gun safe but out of my house, my bank, and my contracts with others. The job of government is to protect rights and enforce contracts, not infringe rights and invalidate contracts.
See also my comments from when I first quoted from this same article.—Joe]
