So, when considering the constitutionality of bans on so-called military-style assault weapons, or restrictions on the capacity of magazines, senators should begin by asking whether the weapons being banned are in common use by civilians. When it comes to so-called assault weapons, like the AR-15, or 30-round magazines, the answer is clearly "yes." Millions of such weapons and magazines are in private hands.
That should settle the matter, but senators can go a step further and ask whether these or other measures are actually rational -- to articulate the end they are seeking to accomplish, then assesses whether the means adopted actually match up with the purported end. Would they actually have prevented a mass shooting or ameliorated real crimes? This heightened "rationality review" could help ensure that the reason being articulated is the real reason for the law.
For example, "assault weapons" are a made-up category of weapons that is based solely on cosmetic features that make them look like the fully automatic weapons used by the military. Banning them leaves other rifles that are functionally identical in their lethality and rate of fire completely legal. Moreover, far more powerful hunting rifles are left untouched by the law, as are shotguns. This is simply irrational and therefore unconstitutional.The New York state laws are already facing legal challenges and are likely headed to the Supreme Court.
First and foremost is the oppressive and ineffective drug war that has destroyed inner-city neighborhoods and severely harmed the life prospects of millions of Americans, most acutely, young, African-American men.
As Prohibition-era America showed, banning a highly in-demand substance increases the violence surrounding that substance. When legal methods cannot be used to settle contract and other disputes, extra-legal methods (i.e., the point of a gun) will be used. Moreover, unsavory characters will tend to traffic the prohibited substances, further escalating violent business practices. These new businessmen also facilitate the illegal gun trade, brazenly ignoring assault weapons bans and other cosmetic limits on gun ownership. Those guns then flood the black market, giving easy access to would-be criminals and mass shooters. A 2001 Justice Department study found that 20 percent of prison inmates received their guns from a drug dealer or off the street. Comparatively, only 0.7 percent of the weapons were obtained at gun shows. Which "loophole" should we be focusing on closing?Amen to that!
8. This is our country, these are our rights. We believe that it is time that we take personal responsibility for our choices and actions rather than abdicate that responsibility to someone else under the illusion that we have done something that will make us all safer. We have a responsibility to stand by our principles and act in accordance with them. Our children are watching and they will follow the example we set.
The undersigned Quiet Professionals hereby humbly stand ever present, ever ready, and ever vigilant.Our country has ever been protected by men like these. God bless them all.
Gun control advocates really do not understand the fire they are playing with, with much of what is being proposed. How many millions of Americans are you prepared to imprison? How many are you prepared to kill? What is the count of ruined lives, broken families, and ruin are you willing to inflict to try to achieve your rainbow farting unicorn utopia where every gun turns into a flower? Widespread disrespect for the law by millions of Americans is not going to bring that about, and in fact, may only serve to create larger unregulated markets, and far more willingness to engage in law breaking people would not be willing to engage in under normal circumstances.As I have said for years, the controlling word in the phrase "gun control" is control, not gun. I've followed with interest many of the threads on various forums arguing about "terminology"...if, for instance, we all agreed to call black rifles "modern sporting rifles" or we were careful to never refer to firearms as "weapons." I used to agree pretty wholeheartedly with those arguments, but over the years I've come around to a different view. Our enemies aren't antigun, they're anti-people-with-guns. It's not the guns they hate...it's us.
The shooting at Sandy Hook has brought gun policy to the forefront of our national conversation. President Obama has pledged to act aggressively on the issue, having laid out a comprehensive plan, including new weapons regulations as well as law enforcement and public awareness programs, in the hope of reducing gun violence. This will be a marquee issue in Washington and throughout the country over the next several months, and media coverage will only intensify. With that said, too few journalists have a solid understanding of guns and gun violence. Here are three major things the media gets wrong.Obviously, read the whole thing. The second is more along the lines of the canary in the coal mine, on the collapse of even the pretense of a free media. From Ace of Spades:
And I've mentioned this before, but I'm truly alarmed about it: What we are witnessing is the full and seamless fusion of media power with government power. The media used to hide it a bit, in their actions; they would temper their scorn of conservatism, throw them a bone now and again just to prove they were capable of such a thing. No longer.
The media no longer hides it in their actions. They are fully fused with the Obama Administration and DNC. The only way in which they do hide it is by simply lying when confronted about it: They'll issue a snide denial, then go about doing precisely what it is they were accused of doing.At my Friday "Stuck In Las Vegas" party after SHOT, my Sweetie asked Steven Hunter, who of course won a Pulitzer Prize while he was at the Washington Post, what happened to responsible journalism...how did we get from "objectivity" to Pravda in record time? The short story (as she related to me) was that Steve said the huge influx of young people into journalism after Woodward/Bernstein/Watergate essentially stressed, and eventually cracked, the old news cult of objectivity. The newcomers were activists, and they saw journalism as a tool of activism — and a way to make good money from it. Hope I got that right, Steve!
I very much enjoy your blog and tv shows, mainly for two reasons. Your vast knowledge of guns and the articulate way you present them. I think it is surprising that you have fallen to the level of using nazi references and slurs against the president .you may not respect the man, but at least respect the position. As little as two weeks ago you said that we needed to stick to the facts to win this fight. Please, do not let you standards fall... We need you.First, thank you so much for the kind words...they are appreciated more than you can imagine. However, I can't imagine how you can read the Daily Kos piece, How To Ban Guns: A Step-By-Step Long Term Process and not hear echoes of Germany in the 1930s (and note that my comment was not addressed directly at BHo). One of the progressive Left's greatest strength is it's ability to not just ignore the past, but to pretend that there is no such thing as the past. The progressive Left can't even agree or articulate a reason why they want all civilians disarmed, but accept it simply as an element of faith, of dogma...yes, the wine is indeed transmogrified into the blood of Christ! We must disarm the citizenry because...because...because we must disarm the citizenry! The dogma itself becomes its own rationale.
"I'm convinced that we have to have Federal legislation to build on. We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily--given the political realities--going to be very modest ... Our ultimate goal--total control of handguns in the United States--is going to take time ... The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered, and the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns, and all handgun ammunition totally illegal."Civilian disarmament has always been the goal of the progressive movement in the United States. It is the only goal...everything else is just smoke and mirrors (or night and fog, as the case may be). Recall Diane Feinstein's amazingly revealing quote after the passage of the first AWB in 1994 (see it here on YouTube):
If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in — I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here.A couple of days ago Diane Feinstein said on PBS Newshour that she didn't want to ban all guns — "that dog just doesn't hunt," she said, assuming all of us in the gun culture to be toothless morons from the swamps. Watch it yourself...which Diane Feinstein do you think is telling the truth?
Believin' in your power, it's what you can doWeird, huh? My views, then, are shaped by those early years of studying mass comm, the psychology of propaganda and revolution, and stuff like that.
You gotta help change the world, there's nothin' to lose
Come on and do the people's will, your masters are hate
You gotta help us bring the changes to the masters of our fate
Even before the 27 victims had been laid to rest, gun control was a far more prominent part of the Newtown narrative than it had been in previous incidents. And in contrast to the Virginia Tech, Aurora and Giffords shootings, it has come to dominate the media narrative. The week that Obama issued the executive actions, more than 60 percent of stories that mentioned Newtown also included a reference to gun control.To be sure, the media has always been antigun, at least for the latter part of the 20th Century forward. A story I've told many time before is the first time I walked into a newsroom and applied for a job, in 1968 at my college paper, the editor explained to the stupid kid from Tennessee how important gun control was. In my time in the MSM, I was usually the only person working for or writing for a particular publication that held pro-gun views.
The narrative is the set of assumptions the press believes in, possibly without even knowing that it believes in them. It's not like they get together every morning and decide 'These are the lies we tell today.' No, that would be too crude and honest. Rather, it's a set of casual, nonrigorous assumptions about a reality they've never really experienced that's arranged in such a way as to reinforce their best and most ideal presumptions about themselves and their importance to the system and the way they've chosen to live their lives. It's a way of arranging things a certain way that they all believe in without ever really addressing carefully. It permeates their whole culture.And they are formidable enemies.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.This is amazingly powerful, the basic line of the successful attack on Romney in the last election. That rule should alwasy be coupled with Rule 5:
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.Ridicule is man's most potent weapon! We are as a culture uncomfortable with ridicule, because we prefer to think of ourselves as a debating society with all the facts on our side. Yet ridicule can be used as a nuclear option — immediately after Newtown all the usual suspects in Hollywood put together their "powerful" call for gun control in a multimillion dollar commercial, which was COMPLETELY DESTROYED by this YouTube parody (which I'm not showing here because of the "F-bombs").
Our loyalty is due entirely to the United States. It is due to the President only and exactly to the degree in which he efficiently serves the United States. It is our duty to support him when he serves the United States well. It is our duty to oppose him when he serves it badly. This is true about Mr. Wilson now and it has been true about all our Presidents in the past. It is our duty at all times to tell the truth about the President and about every one else, save in the cases where to tell the truth at the moment would benefit the public enemy.Our loyalty is due entirely to the United States. Teddy went on at different times to say that the Office of the President was indeed due respect, not so much the man occupying that office at any given time. Maybe one more quote from TR bears repeating:
No man who is not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free community.
So registration is the first step. Now that the vast majority are registered, we can do what we will. One good first step would be to close the registry to new registrations. This would, in effect, prevent new guns from being made or imported. This would put the murder machine corporations out of business for good, and cut the money supply to the NRA/GOA. As money dries up, the political capital needed for new controls will be greatly reduced.
There are a few other things I would suggest. I would suggest an immediate, national ban on concealed carry. A ban on internet sales of guns and ammunition is a no brainer. Microstamping would also be a very good thing. Even if the only thing it does is drive up costs, it could still lead to crimes being solved. I'm willing to try every advantage we can get. A national Firearms Owner Identification Card might be good, but I'm not sure if it's necessary if we have a national database. We should also insist on comprehensive insurance and mandatory gun safes, subject to random, spot checks by local and federal law enforcement.
We must make guns expensive and unpopular, just like cigarettes.And a hardy Sieg Heil! to tie the package up with a nice bow. Remember, behind every "victim," behind every call of "reasonable" or "common sense" or "national conversation," behind every "non-partisan survey," behind every move to divide us, there is this sole agenda. This is the end game, and our enemies will say and do anything, regardless of how outrageous, how deceptive, how degrading, to accomplish their goal of civilian disarmament.
The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot. Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store? But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition.By all means read the whole thing!
As a hunter and gun owner, I believe that we should protect the Second Amendment right of law-abiding individuals to own firearms. As a dad and grandfather, I also believe that we have a responsibility to make our schools, streets and communities safe...He got "hunter, "gun owner" and "Second Amendment" into the lede graf, so you know what that means! Yep, get ready to be bent over the ole pool table, kids:
A majority of Americans also agree (according to a Pew poll released this month) that assault magazines have no place in our society. These magazines hold more than 10 rounds and allow a shooter to inflict mass damage in a short period of time without reloading. Banning them will save lives.Oh Mike, Mike, Mike..."assault magazines"...could you sound any more pathetic? I've shot sporting clays with you and even shared an adult beverage once upon a time. You seemed like a smart guy to me. Would it have killed you to at least do a rudimentary Google search before dropping to your knees before the Twin Gods of Feinstein and Obama and shaming yourself like this? However, you did provide an excellent learning point for those of us who actually believe in the Constitution:
Obama made many other false statements during his talk. He asserted that “over the last 14 years [background checks] kept 1.5 million of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun.” But these were only “initial denials,” not people prevented from buying guns. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms dropped over 94 percent of those “initial denials” after just preliminary reviews. Virtually all the remaining cases were dropped after further investigation by ATF field offices or the Department of Justice. Few of these “initial denials,” 62 people or about 0.1 percent, involved strong enough evidence to be consideration for prosecution. Just 13 pleaded guilty or were convicted.I say heck yeah, let's spend billions to raise this number to, what...15...even 18? So we want to ban assault weapons because, by SS-Oberst-gruppenfuhrer Feinstein's own numbers, almost as many people are killed every year by "assault weapons" (sorry, Mike...the gruppenfuhrer didn't provide numbers for "assault magazines") — 50 people a year — as by those dreaded bees and wasps — 54 people a year. And we want to spend zillions and billions for "universal background checks" because over the last 14 years fully 62 of the wrong people have been prevented from buying guns.
The AR-15 is lightweight and practical. As light as five pounds, it produces low levels of recoil, and it’s easy to shoot. It also looks intimidating, which is what you want when facing an assailant or intruder. But don’t let its appearance intimidate you. Assault rifles such as the AR-15 aren’t more “dangerous,” as liberals claim. They don’t fire faster than other rifles, and don’t normally contain more powerful ammunition. Accuracy? Check. Ease in handling? Check. Intimidation factor? Check. An AR-15 might be a woman’s best friend. We are rational women who, as law-abiding citizens, understand the need — and the right — to defend ourselves. We don’t want to be caught underprepared in the kind of desperate situation that happens too frequently to people across America.Amen! From Jennifer at the In Jennifer's Head blog:
There’s a funny thing about those bent on evil, those that aren’t bound by normal human decency. They look just like everyone else. It is not until they make their intention known that you realize they are different. At that point, the law has failed you. Maybe they will be caught. Maybe they will even be punished, but the risk of those things isn’t stopping them at the moment. This will end one of three ways; you will run away, you will stop them, or you will be a victim. There are no other choices.Indeed, there are no other choices. Oh yeah, today I learned from Jackass-In-Chief Greasy Joe Biden that them darn assault rifles cain't hit the side of no barns, but a double barreled shotgun is practically a laser beam:
“A shotgun will keep you a lot safer — a double-barreled shotgun — than an assault weapon in somebody’s hand who doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does know how to use it,” Biden said. “You know, it’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than it is a shotgun.”That man doesn't have 2 brain cells to rub together...I've seen smarter fruit plates.
Oh, these people, these poor misguided hicks! All they've got is their hunting and their fishing! Clinton isn't doing a very good job of following his own advice not to "look down your nose at them," is he?Here's a comforting, albeit overly optimistic, piece from Guns Save Lives on the attention span of American popular culture:
Leftist gun haters are in denial that Americans, absent hysteria, recognize that gun bans aren’t best for their personal security and well-being, and that the only thing that stops evil men is good people with guns. Gun control proponents are angry that America has moved on to discussing President Obama’s inauguration, the next “fiscal crisis” in Washington, Roe v. Wade’s anniversary and so forth. So where are the gun control advocates now? They are bargaining, offering all sorts of legislative proposals. It’s symbolism over substance, and that’s only because of a very sympathetic mainstream media. Why is that, you ask? Everyone knows the votes aren’t there to pass these flawed schemes through Congress.The net here is that we are having an effect! A powerful effect. KEEP IT UP! The next piece is from the ever-thoughful Thomas Sowell writing for NRO on the 30 round mag cap:
Anyone who faces three home invaders, jeopardizing himself or his family, might find 30 bullets barely adequate. After all, not every bullet hits, even at close range, and not every hit incapacitates. You can get killed by a wounded man. These plain life-and-death realities have been ignored for years by people who go ballistic when they hear about how many shots were fired by the police in some encounter with a criminal. As someone who once taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps, I am not the least bit surprised by the number of shots fired. I have seen people miss a stationary target at close range, even in the safety and calm of a pistol range. We cannot expect everybody to know that. But we can expect them to know that they don’t know — and to stop spouting off about life-and-death issues when they don’t have the facts.Amen to that! Based on some of my conversations at SHOT, this may be a direction the Administration may go in when the legislative "initiatives" fail...that damned U.N. small arms treaty! From Fox:
A more subtle flaw, notes Bromund, is that any badly designed treaty that the U.S. agrees to at the negotiations, and that the President signs, can have an effect on U.S. laws and regulations even though it would still need to be ratified by the Senate, which must approve international agreements by a two-thirds majority. The reason: once a treaty is signed, the parties must respect its “object and purpose” even before ratification—or if ratification does not occur—which is “completely in the eye of the beholder,” Bromund says.In short, if BHo doesn't get what he wants — and that's looking more and more likely with each passing day — he can turn to the U.N., an institution that all progressives worship, for "relief." This has HUGE political downsides.
There’s no way to split the difference between the two extremes, but President Obama could have defused the most polarizing aspects of the debate by focusing more specifically on a few small areas of potential cooperation. All parties agree that it should become more difficult for criminals and the mentally ill to get firearms and that enhancements in school safety are necessary and appropriate.
Before framing his own multifaceted program as a noble crusade and suggesting that any disagreement counted as immoral and demagogic, the president could have reached bipartisan consensus on a few practical, uncontroversial changes to reassure the public. Instead, he rushed to use the firearms issue as one more tool to bludgeon and discredit his Republican opposition. His moral fervor on gun control looks suspect at best, given his refusal to even address the issue during his first four years—when statistics showed violent crime rates looking considerably worse than they do today. In the current battle, the rage from all sides has already led to soaring sales of guns and ammunition. The angry charges and counter-charges will ultimately do nothing to bring further reductions in violence but have already made a major contribution to perpetuating the polarization, puerile posturing, and stalemate from federal leaders of every faction.I do want to make it clear that we didn't start this war, we didn't make the decision to demonize fellow Americans who choose to exercise their Constitutional rights, we didn't call for violence against our enemies even as our enemies called for violence against us. We may not have started this war, but I believe we sure as hell will finish it!
When you actively seek to disarm me you are deliberately attempting to subjugate me and put my family in mortal jeopardy — that fact makes you my enemy. The Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States did not create the rights of man; it simply enumerated and affirmed them. When you seek to nullify or circumvent the Constitution of the United States as well as the Constitutions of each individual State, you are my enemy.
"There’s a reason for the Second Amendment and we all need to band together and stand behind it.”Hell yes, brother!
As a small child I remember my grandfather had his rifle on a gun rack over his bed for protection, my father has a rifle in his home and today, being a farmer and living on a farm, I, too, own a 22-caliber rifle. Most farmers are responsible and law-abiding, and they use their guns safely. Like most farmers I have a deep appreciation for the land and the animals who share the land. I respect the right to bear arms and support the Second Amendment. But I question what the Sam Hill does a farmer or hunter need with an AR-15 or any assault weapon?Sam Hill! Hell, ain't he folksy? The proper response to this sort of bleating is ridicule. Here's Boyd's Wikipedia entry, proving that he's just another liberal paid shill...aka, 'ho. Expect to be flooded with articles that start out, "I'm a gun owner, but..."
The longer the fight on gun rights carries on, the more members — and money — the NRA will add. It’s not unreasonable to think the NRA will add more members (and raise more money) in 2013 than in any year in recent memory.Excellent! If you have friends who are NOT members of the NRA, offer to buy them a one-year membership!
A disarmed population is allowed the toxic luxury of feeling as though our way of life and our safety from oppression comes without the tremendous responsibilities and moral complexities of wielding force. The same people who passively pay taxes that put tanks on the streets and fighter jets in the skies over our enemies' nations can cringe at the idea of owning guns themselves — projecting their survival instincts onto an all-powerful father figure (the state).BTW, the Nazi Germany meme is having an effect...so much so that the big liberal guns of HuPo and Salon are in full whine...here's my favorite moronic comment from Salon:
The law did prohibit Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns, but this should not be an indictment of gun control in general. Does the fact that Nazis forced Jews into horrendous ghettos indict urban planning?Here's my response:
LAFAYETTE -- "No regrets." That's how Jax Mercantile President Jim Quinlan feels three weeks after making a controversial decision to stop selling assault rifles and high-capacity magazines throughout his outdoor gear retail chain, including the store in Lafayette. He doesn't deny that a fair number of customers were angry enough that they pledged never to shop Jax again, but Quinlan said the bulk of the reaction he has received has been from those applauding the stand he took in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown, Conn. The killer in the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting that left 26 people dead -- 20 of them students -- used a Bushmaster .223-caliber AR-15 rifle, classified by the federal government as an assault weapon. Until mid-December, Jax sold the popular AR-15 model rifle. The chain also no longer sells magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds.So basically this...gentleman...Quinlan thinks we're all to blame for a psychopath? I strongly suggest that we avoid this man's stores like the plague. Jax Mercantile has in the past given gift certificates to matches as prizes--I even won one. Here is my deal...if you are a match director, DO NOT deal with this man! Your shooters and your other sponsors deserve better than a gift certificate from this quisling. I suggest if you have such a gift certificate, it makes excellent toilet paper!
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