All posts by Carl Bussjaeger

Firearms Policy & Law Analyst at The Zelman Partisans Personal Blog: https://www.bussjaeger.us/blog/

When liars figure

Possibly you’ve seen reports about the new study that showed a sharp increase in firearms-related deaths after the Sandy Hook shooting, attributed to the sharp spike in gun sales. If not, here’s a fine example:

Gun sales spiked after Sandy Hook. So did people being shot and killed.
Gun sales in the United States spiked dramatically after a shooter walked into Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012 and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were children. Now researchers say that as a result of that rush in gun purchases, 60 additional Americans — 20 of whom were children — were killed by accidental gunshots in the five months following the tragedy.

That’s… interesting, if really kinda vague. So off to the study itself. You can read it, or I’ll give you the TL;DR.

They used Google Trends to define the period of gun sales that they attribute to post-SH panic buying (you’ll giggle at their search terms), which they determined to be 5 months. They looked at firearms-related accidental deaths — concentrating on children 0-14yo –for that period and compared them to a 2008-2013 period and magically came up with this:

That’s… even more interesting. I happen to recall another gun buying spree in 2008 and 2009. If these folks really found a sales/accidental deaths correlation, I’d expect a bigger spike in those years.

Well, charts are misleading. What’s graphed there isn’t the number of children dead, but the anomaly in deaths; that is, they essentially figured the statistical average for a five month period for the years 2008-2013, and decide the period in question had 20 more than average.

Not having access to their undisclosed “restricted” data, I decided to use the CDC WISQARS online tool, which only breaks data down by year. For the researchers’ 2008-2013 time frame, I got this:

Right off, you — not being a grant-funded academic — probably notice, despite the apparent increasing trend in deaths, that 2013 wasn’t much of a spike. In fact, it’s five deaths lower than the 2011 “spike.” And the average annual deaths for the 2008-2013 time frame is 62.17. So the annual total for 2013 is only 7 higher than average.* Where did they find 20, 13 more in just a five month period? And haven’t we heard that accidental firearms deaths are decreasing?

That’s an oddly limited time frame, given that more data is readily available. WISQARS currently has data for 1999-2015.

And the rate per 100,000 for that age group:

The entire year of 2013 is only the sixth highest, both in numbers and per capita. And again –not being a grant-funded academic –you may have seen the trend: constantly down.

The researchers’ “spike” in their study appears to be largely imaginary, and what there was is more easily attributed to random variance. The lack of sales/deaths correlations with other known periods of increased buying (2008-2009, 2012) invalidates their Sandy Hook-related claim. The overall consistent decrease in child accidental deaths tells me that, rather than untrained newbies going out and slaughtering kids, more people are getting trained and demonstrating safety awareness. Remember: the number of guns are cumulative; if more guns really correlated with accidents then there be a constantly increasing number of accidents instead of the real decrease.

Researchers Levine and McKnight say, “No external funding was used to support this research.” It might be interesting to see what monetary resources are consider internal.

And just for info regarding that additional people of all ages killed?

In 2012, there were 548 people of all ages killed in accidental firearms-related incidents.

In 2013, it dropped to 505.


* The 17 year average for 1999-2015 is 64, meaning 2013 was only 5 higher than average.


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Vegas Questions; and why they matter

The Mandalay Bay shooting has left more questions unanswered than answered. And yes, it matters.

It matter because numerous — and gross — violations of Constitutionally “protected” rights are being proposed to “fix” the problems that let that happen.

1. “‘Silencers’ must not be deregulated; they must be banned because what if the Mandalay Bay asshole had used them and nobody knew they were being shot?

2. “More preemptivly-prove-your-innocence prior restraint “background checks” because they were good enough to catch this guy when he passed them.”

3. “Ban bump-fire stocks because they turn any gun into a machine gun.”

4. “Ban all semiautomatic firearms because ‘military grade weapons of war’!”

5. “Stop reciprocal carry because that guy might’ve gotten a carry license.”

6. “Register all gun owners and all their guns because… we don’t know, but do it for Vegas.”

7. “Ban all guns because no murderer will ever figure out how to kill without a gun.”

And the list goes on. Mandalay Bay has become the rationalization for human civil rights violations on a scale not seen in this country since slavery was outlawed. Hyperbole?

Consider that anti-gunners are screaming that gun owners have no right to speak on the subject. Bans and confiscations deprive people of property. Finding the owners and guns will involve mass warrantless searches. Privacy will be invaded as authorities scour email and social media for ownership indications. Bank records will be searched for firearms (and accessories) purchases and sales. Failure to comply fast enough will get you dead or jailed.

Or somebody dead.

It isn’t just the Second Amendment violations; it’s everything else they have to violate just to accomplish them. That’s some serious stuff to be doing based on near total ignorance of the facts of the incident.

And, since the authorities claim the shooter acted alone, and they aren’t searching for anyone else in the matter, there’s no reason for the ignorance; there’s supposedly no real ongoing investigation to compromise unless they’ve lied about looking for accomplices.

So before any more rights violations advance, let’s get answers.

1. Several media outlets reported early on that, in addition to bump-fire stock-equipped weapons, the shooter had AR-pattern rifles converted to full auto. Fox reported that the full auto conversions were chambered in both .223 and .308.

Those reports were never walked backed or corrected. They just stopped talking about the weapons, leaving the anti-gunners free to whine about bump stocks.

I’m not a mass murderer, so I could be missing something. But if he had fully automatic weapons, why bother using bump-fire while the automatic weapons were available? C’mon, you’ve had months to do ballistics testing; you know what weapons were actually fired.

2. If no automatic weapons were used, why does at least one recording of the incident have a burst with two simultaneous rapid fire gunshot audio signatures, one a steady boom, and the other a sharper crack, at different rates of fire?

A wannabe Rambo could grab two fully automatic weapons and fire them at the same time. Poorly and inaccurately, but it’s doable if you don’t mind a face full of brass. But not bump-fired rifles; you need both hands with a bump-fire stock: one for the trigger, and one to provide the tension to pull the rifle forward.

If the weapons were bump-fired, it raises the question of how one guy fired two guns at the same time.

3. Las Vegas is one of the most surveilled cities in the world; possibly the most when you include all the casino and hotel interior cameras. Where is the video of the asshole bringing in his guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition? Sitting in a restaurant? Playing video poker? Walking down halls? He doesn’t even show up in the background in some tourist’s iPhone footage?

Did he carry everything himself, or did someone help him with all that stuff? Maybe an innocent valet, who could at least add to the timeline. Where’s the video?

4. When people spotted a “note” in crime scene photos and speculated that it was a suicide note or explanation of motive, authorities said it was actually “ballistic calculations” to better target his victims. Why would he need such ballistics calculations?

Calculations of that nature would involve wind speed for bullet drift, and more importantly bullet drop for shooting from an elevation at a given range. Except he didn’t need that, and relatively few shooters know how to do it on a scrap of paper. He didn’t need it because such precision is to hit a specific — often relatively small — target accurately. Our asshole wouldn’t be concerned about hitting a torso or head on one person. He was hosing down a mass of tens of thousands of people, a crowd the size of football fields. Unless there’s something else they haven’t told us.

And this brings us back to bump-fire. Bump-fire is inaccurate. What’s the point of careful calculations of the most accurate way to aim a firehose? An automatic rifle in most people’s hands wouldn’t be much better.

Can we see a legible image of that note/calculations?

5. Authorities said the asshole had an escape plan. What was it, and why did he abandon it for suicide?

6. Where is the computer hard drive? Law enforcement said the drive from the computer in the hotel room was missing; where did it go and when?

Would video answer that question, too? Speaking of video, the shooter had his own cameras which are implied to have been wireless computer types; where’s that video? On the perambulating hard drive?

7. Why did the shooter stop after 9-10 minutes with thousands of rounds of ammunition left over?

Is that when he killed himself?

7. So when did the asshole die?

Just body temperature should give them a rough idea of how long he’d been dead when they finally entered the room. Perhaps that would shed light on why spent brass appeared to be sitting on top of coagulated blood in crime scene photos. Or how he shot himself in the head and fell down, extending one leg under a rifle on a bipod without knocking it over.

9. Within a day or two, authorities were rummaging through the shooter’s financials enough to figure out that he’d purchased software, and been shipping cash out of the country by the pallet. Why did it take another month and a half — when folks were getting antsy over motive — to discover he was despondent over massive gambling losses, when they totally ruled out “terrorism” in less than a day?

How much had he lost? When? Was it significantly higher than previous losses? Victims and families suing the estate would probably like to know how much is left.

10. Why did the most valuable material witness leave the country, and did the authorities know before he left?

Seriously; no one told him, “Don’t go leaving town. Keep yourself available for more questions while we sort out the latest version of the timeline.”?

11. Why did the police wait until roughly an hour and twenty minutes after the last shot was fired to enter the room? Was the shooter still alive, did he communicate with them? For that matter, we don’t know why it allegedly took them so long to figure out what room the shooter was in. Two witnesses claim they reported it.

Oh well. It isn’t as if I don’t know about plenty of “armed standoffs” with empty houses, or sleeping drunks who didn’t know the cops were there.

Until investigators will explain what guns the asshole used, and how, along with other pertinent facts, imposing more infringements of human/civil rights based on “we have to prevent another Mandalay Bay” makes as much sense as banning automobiles because the shooter owned one of those, too. Or houses. Or boats. Airplanes. Clothing. Suitcases.

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“‘Astronauts with Shuttles’ can be dangerous, too”

‘Good guys with guns’ can be dangerous, too. Don’t gut concealed carry laws.
That day in Tucson, amid a gun tragedy, one of the heroes almost got shot.

…and proceeds to tell of a lawfully armed man using his training — and restraint — to not kill anyone. Apparently Mark Kelly believes that we are as thoughtless and impulsive as he is, buying a gun “on a whim” and publicizing that it is an illegal straw purchase.

I’m beginning to believe the “brain damage by hypoxia” theory.

Using his… reasoning, Mark Kelly was “a matter of seconds” from crashing STS-108 and STS-121, not to mention all those aircraft in his naval aviation days.

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Truth in advertising

Have you noticed the recent trend in arguments from the human/civil rights violators? If not, here are some hints.

“Why is gun control now equal to a restriction of liberties? Gun Control is not Gun erasure, it is not taking away the 2nd Amendment. Gun Control is not saying you do not have a right to own a gun for your protection, safety, and soundness of mind for you and your family.”
Anjeanette LeBoeuf, The Act of Gun Control

Ms. LeBoeuf, bless her heart, also demonstrates why she should have spent more time on history, and less on women’s studies.

“The challenge in bringing change is that the debate over gun rights isn’t really about guns at all. It’s about what they represent: cherished freedoms, a reverence for independence. ”
Philip Elliott, Haley Sweetland Edwards, Charlotte Alter; The Fight Over Gun Control Isn’t Really About Guns

Hold that thought.

“So how can we articulate the gun control message more effectively? What if instead of emphasizing gun control, there was a Movement for the Safety of All Americans? If the problem were framed as a domestic and public safety issue rather than a gun control matter, perhaps we could build greater demand for conquering this national epidemic.”
Bruce Berlin, Let’s Reframe Gun Control To Focus on Our Safety

Ah, safety.

“Take the phrase we often reach toward in the aftermath of a mass shooting: “gun control.” “It feels like there’s an American sense that responds quite well to the idea of ‘rights,’ and not so well to the idea of ‘control,’” Dust says. Dust believes that this small point could the origin of a new type of conversation–around how the right to carry arms is ultimately infringing on our right to peacefully gather.”
Eillie Anzilotti, Can We Redesign The Way We Talk About Gun Control In America?

The trend is to pretend there is no such thing as “gun control,” and the reason is because they finally realized it’s a non-finisher.

LeBoeuf wants people to believe that only total confiscation is “gun control.” Yet proposes… controls. She’s not alone in adopting that position, and it’s not new; there’s a reason Handgun Control, Inc. isn’t using that name anymore.

The rights violators are used to having money and near-exclusive media access, allowing them to push whatever message they wanted. In the Internet age, that access isn’t so exclusive (in the ’90s, merely getting an unedited pro-RKBA letter to the editor in an urban newspaper was a challenge; yet here you are reading this column now). The rights violators are forced to rephrase and hide their goal.

They think this is a winning gambit.

It might be. For us.

“Excuse me, Ms. LeBoeuf. If those laws preventing me from owning this type of firearm, or making me an ex post facto prohibited person without due process, requiring licenses to own, licenses to buy, licenses to carry, mandatory insurance, waiting periods, mental health evaluations, and so forth aren’t gun control, what are they?”

The answer being, as we’ve long known — but which the human rights criminals tried to deny — people control. Now, every time one of those smarmy SOBs plays the “not gun control” card, we can call them on it, and make them admit that the goal is to manipulate every aspect of every life, all the things they can’t do to an armed populace.


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Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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Extreme Risk Facebook Use

I’ve warned about the dangers of due process-free “Extreme Risk Protection Orders. The lack of said due process, the way pretty much anyone can get one, the way the target isn’t allowed to know until it’s too late, the potential for abuse.

Let’s look at one of those points again: he way pretty much anyone can get one. It varies by state, but generally anyone who sort of knows the target can get one. Truly sucks if the requestor was simply trying to get his target disarmed, the better to kill or injure him with impunity.

Anyone who sort of knows the target…

Like Facebook.

Facebook rolls out AI to detect suicidal posts before they’re reported
“This is about shaving off minutes at every single step of the process, especially in Facebook Live,” says VP of product management Guy Rosen. Over the past month of testing, Facebook has initiated more than 100 “wellness checks” with first-responders visiting affected users. “There have been cases where the first-responder has arrived and the person is still broadcasting.”(emphasis added-cb)
[…]
Facebook’s tools then bring up local language resources from its partners, including telephone hotlines for suicide prevention and nearby authorities. The moderator can then contact the responders and try to send them to the at-risk user’s location, surface the mental health resources to the at-risk user themselves or send them to friends who can talk to the user.

Gee, I can’t see any possible way that could go wrong. Except when it does. A lot.

But assuming you survive the wellness/welfare check, what’s next? We have Facebook notifying the authorities that a person is suicidal; is that going to trigger an ERPO?

Perhaps not under most current laws just now — though several have been written to allow police to file for an order when they become aware of a situation — but given the fad for minority reports predictive policing, and for mental health tests for gun ownership, I figure it’s merely a matter of time before the Pelosis of the statist world take note of Facebook’s snooping and require a FB report to trigger an ERPO. Just to be sure.

Unfortunately, after TechCrunch asked if there was a way for users to opt out, of having their posts a Facebook spokesperson responded that users cannot opt out. They noted that the feature is designed to enhance user safety, and that support resources offered by Facebook can be quickly dismissed if a user doesn’t want to see them.

Quickly dismissing the “first-responders” kicking in your door may be a little more difficult. Dismissing a gun-siezure ERPO is effectively impossible.

But the spokesman is wrong. There is an opt-out: drop Facebook for your own protection. True, FB permanently archives your account contents in case you ever want to come back, but at least you can avoid the near real-time telescreen psych monitoring.

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Teach something, learn something

Once again, I indulged in my hobby of confronting less than accurate media reports. This one turned out considerably better than some, and Ed Palm deserves some kudos. I think I taught him something, but he set me straight on something, too.

The ingratitude of the NRA
Along the same lines, I’m sure it’s fun to play with a “bump stock” — a device I hadn’t even heard of before Stephen Paddock used a few of them to kill 58 people and wound 546 more in Las Vegas on October 1. Soon after that senseless slaughter, we all learned that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock can simulate fully automatic fire.
[…]
Such was my experience in 1967, when I was in Vietnam. The Marine Corps had just transitioned from the semiautomatic M14 to the new M16. Unlike the M14, all M16s featured a selector switch, allowing for semi- or fully automatic fire.

Regarding the first bump-fire point, I noted that: “Nope. A bump-fire stock is training wheels for people who have trouble pulling the trigger quickly. It’s inaccurate, and bump-fired rifles are prone to malfunctions. There’s a reason that police and military don’t use them, despite being far cheaper than automatic weapons. (And since LE sources reported the Mandalay Bay shooter had at least one rifle converted to full auto as well as bump-fire stocked rifles, and the sheriff claims the asshole fired over 1100 round s in 9 minutes — more than two rounds per second, even with weapon and magazine swaps — I wonder how many of the rounds came from bump-fired rifles.)”

Major Palm still had doubts:

“My understanding is that a bump stock will enable an AR15 to cycle more rapidly than by just pulling the trigger.”

To which I replied: “No. A bump-fire stock is a purely passive device in which the receiver slides freely, back and forth. It in no way changes the action of the rifle. For a somewhat more detailed description, written for someone who admitted knowing nothing about firearm so excuse the simplistic language, see “Training Wheels,” at the The Zelman Partisans (a Jewish pro-RKBA group).

“In fact, some rifles are less reliable when bump-fired, because the weapon is not properly supported; rather like limp-wristing a 1911. Add in the loss of accuracy, and I think they’re silly.”

He thanked me for the information. Score one for me, I hope. It may not change his mind, but he strikes me as honest enough to consider the point, unlike most to whom I’ve reached out.

Where I blew it was on the M14: “Since the M14 is actually a selective-fire rifle like the M-16, I find myself a bit dubious regarding your firearms knowledge. And military experience. It seems unlikely that your Vietnam combat unit had all been issued the M14M “developed for use in civilian rifle marksmanship activities such as the Civilian Marksmanship Program.” Or the M14 SMUD, unless yours was an EOD unit.”

And there I made my mistake. While I knew there were (and still are) semiauto variants, I didn’t think they were all that commonly issued in Vietnam. Obviously I’m a little too young to have been sent there to fight, so my impression was anecdotal, based on conversations with VN vets who had carried M14s. For whatever reason, each one I spoke to described a select-fire weapon (one with an amusing tale of a lost front sight).

(And yes, I was unnecessarily rude. I apologize for that, too.)

Major Palm set me straight:

“I take it that you have limited knowledge of the deployment of the M14 in the Marine Corps. The M14 selector-switch is a modification that the great majority of Marine Corps M14s didn’t have. When I was stateside, and when I was in the rear with the gear in Vietnam, my M14 didn’t have a selector switch. Before the M16, the Table of organization called for one man out of each four-man fire team to have a selector switch and to be able to fire fully automatic. Whether that was really the case in infantry units, I don’t know.”

In fact, he checked with some other vets and found that one select-fire in twelve was more common than the TO 1:4

Major Palm is the first person I spoke to who admitted to having a semi M14 in Vietnam. Whether by chance I had previously happened on the one-in-four (or twelve), or they had original issue rifles before the need for the semiauto modification became clear, I don’t know. Maybe some of them were even blowing smoke up my… where ever.

Point is, I took tales for fact, and hadn’t checked it for myself. So I was wrong.

And this is one reason I continue contacting folks write on gun control. Sometimes it’s possible to get correct information across. And sometimes they can teach me something.

Thank you, Major Palm.


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The Rules of the Gun [Control] Debate

David Frum, who has mastered the art of psychological projection, presents a an asinine parable and cynical “rules” for running the gun control debate. This man clearly has mental health issues.

Frum’s little parable, meant to represent the problem of “gun violence,” purports a town which has stupidly built itself in a locale guaranteed to suffer repeated natural disasters. The sensible folk of the town think everything should be raised up on stilts to avoid flooding, while the pro-gun reactionary do-nothings object to preparation because it won’t stop floods.

The reality of the “gun violence” problem is that 1) it’s man-made by a relatively few bad guys, and 2) the pro-gun folks don’t object to taking measures to protect themselves. In Frum’s water-logged village, we’d be the folks putting up our own houses on stilts, pilings, and mounds, while the anti-flood violence idiots like From pass laws designating the town a flood-free zone.

Frum’s “rules” illustrate the usual problems of irrationality on the part of victims disarmers.

Frum’s Rule 1. “The measures to be debated must bear some relationship to the massacre that triggered the debate. If the killer acquired his weapons illegally, it’s out of bounds to point out how lethally easy it is to buy weapons legally. If the killer lacked a criminal record, it’s out of bounds to talk about the inadequacy of federal background checks. The topic for debate is not, iWhy do so many Americans die from gunfire?’ but ‘What one legal change would have prevented this most recent atrocity?'”

My Rule 1a. If you are proposing a solution to a specific incident, the proposal should address characteristics of that incident.

My Rule 1b. General discussion of the many sordid causes of “gun violence” is a separate conversation.

Frum’s Rule 2. “The debate must focus on unusual weapons and accessories: bump stocks, for example, the villain of the moment. Even the NRA has proclaimed itself open to some regulation of these devices. After the 2012 mass shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, attention turned to large capacity magazines. What is out of bounds is discussion of weapons as in themselves a danger to human life and public safety.”

My Rule 2a. See My Rule 1a.

My Rule 2b. Any proposed solution must included a cost:benefit analysis, and not be based on the unicorn wishes of just one party.

My Rule 2c. Firearms are not a natural disaster; they are man-made tools, which must be manipulated by an external force — like a person — to do anything, good or bad.

Frum’s Rule 3. “The debate must always honor the “responsible gun owners” who buy weapons for reasonable self-defense. Under Rule 1, these responsible persons are presumed to constitute the great majority of gun owners. It’s out of bounds to ask for some proof of this claimed responsibility, some form of training for example. It’s far out of bounds to propose measures that might impinge on owners: the alcohol or drug tests for example that are so often recommended for food stamp recipients or teen drivers.”

My Rule 3. Since there are 55-120+ million gun owners, and the human race has not been rendered extinct in the US, one should start with the assumption that most gun owners are not murderous lunatics bound and determined to kill everything; if we were, you’d know… not know it because everyone would already be dead.

Frum’s Rule 4. “Gun ownership is always to be discussed as a rational choice motivated by reasonable concerns for personal safety. No matter how blatantly gun advocates appeal to fears and fantasies—Sean Hannity musing aloud on national TV about how he with a gun in his hands could have saved the day in Las Vegas if only he had been there—nobody other than a lefty blogger may notice that this debate is about race and sex, not personal security. It’s out of bounds to observe that ‘Chicago’ is shorthand for ‘we only have gun crime because of black people’ or how often ‘I want to protect my family” is code for ‘I need to prove to my girlfriend who’s really boss.'”

My Rule 4. Assume parties in the discussion mean what they say unless you have evidence to the contrary. An automatic assumption that ‘Chicago’ must be a racist codeword — in face of demographics of Chicago criminals — or that the only possible reason to have a defensive weapon is to abuse women says much more about the person who believes only that than it says about most lawful gun owners.

From there, Frum devolves into “discussion.”

“A requirement that gun owners carry insurance would not only protect potential accident victims—including gun owners, since many gun accidents are self-inflicted—against economic loss.”

We did that. You folks called it “murder insurance” and tried to stop it. Make up your minds.

As for preemptively-prove-your-innocence (“background”) checks: If they work, then lawful gun owners have already proved themselves “responsible gun owners” (FR3). If they don’t, then stop demanding something that doesn’t work and come up with something that would.

My Rule 5. There is no “gun violence” problem. There is a violence problem, most prevalent in certain economic/geographic demographics.

If a doctor conducted a study to determine if a chemical caused a certain cancer, and found that cancer in just 0.00124% of regular users of that chemical, he’d discard that hypothesis and go looking for another cause.

0.00124% happens to be the estimated number of lawful gun owners who are murderers in any given year.

Clearly, while guns are used, they aren’t the cause. People kill with guns, knives, clubs, cars, fists, feet… If guns are removed, the cause will remain until addressed and fixed; murderers will simply use one of the myriad other methods available, as they have through history.

My Rule 6. If you ignore the underlying cause and only treat symptoms, you will never cure the disease.


* Note the original URL.


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Ed. note: This commentary appeared first in TZP’s weekly email alert. If you would like to be among the first to see new commentary (as well as to get notice of new polls and recaps of recent posts), please sign up for our alert list. (See sidebar or, if you’re on a mobile device, scroll down). Be sure to respond when you receive your activation email!

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About those “fugitives”

Anti-gun types are all upset now that they noticed the FBI was eliminating some folks with active warrants from the NICS database, making them eligible to purchase firearms.

Tens of thousands with outstanding warrants purged from background check database for gun purchases
Tens of thousands of people wanted by law enforcement officials have been removed this year from the FBI criminal background check database that prohibits fugitives from justice from buying guns.

The names were taken out after the FBI in February changed its legal interpretation of “fugitive from justice” to say it pertains only to wanted people who have crossed state lines.

Well… No. It isn’t so much as they changed the interpretation as that they noticed they weren’t in compliance with federal law. Again. (Kind of the inverse of the military not bothering to report felons.)

Allow me to explain, setting aside for the moment the unconstitutional prior restrain of preemptively-prove-your-innocence checks.

It appears from a search on US Code that to be a “fugitive” under 18 U.S. Code § 922, once has to have actively fled when a warrant is issued. The fact that a warrant was issued doesn’t make one a fugitive; or even necessarily aware of the warrant.

No flight, no fugitive.

I find it interesting, but not surprising, that gun controllers think people should be denied rights based on a mere warrant… when it’s Second Amendment rights. But not so much when it comes to other rights.

A federal court found it unconstitutional for for Michigan to deny welfare benefits to people with felony warrants unless they are actually fugitives.

So… same thing for 2nd Amendment rights. For once the DOJ did something half right (the other half being the whole prior restraint bit).

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Informers

Jews learned several harsh lessons in the Holocaust. One of them was to beware of snitches. The problem has not gone away.

Pennsylvania: Couple Sues Over Police “Drug” Raid That Mistook Hibiscus for Marijuana
Last November, a Pennsylvania couple’s home was raided by police who mistakenly believed the couple’s hibiscus plants to be marijuana. The couple is now reportedly suing Buffalo Township and Nationwide Insurance for “excessive force, false arrest, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy in their lawsuit.”

The couple’s ordeal began when Nationwide Insurance sent an agent out to assess a claim; the agent took pictures of the couple’s hibiscus plants and sent them to local police as evidence of the illegal planting and growing of marijuana. Buffalo Township police reacted by raiding the couple’s home and leading a partially-dressed and barefoot Audrey Cramer, 66, out to their patrol car. Her husband Edward Cramer, 69, was met with drawn guns and arrested upon returning home while his wife was still sitting, handcuffed, in the cruiser.

This police state worshipping “good citizen” narced on an elderly couple. An innocent elderly couple. A couple with whom he was in a business relationship to help. Instead, he exercised his ignorance to try to destroy their lives.

Perhaps you happen to believe the “War on Drugs” is a good thing. Maybe you think anyone using marijuana deserves whatever they get. I don’t, on either count.

But that’s beside the point.

What if this nasty little informer spotted a defensive firearm and reported that to police. What if he saw a semiautomatic AR-pattern rifle and decided — probably on the basis of lamestream muddia reporting — that it was an illegal machine gun?

Got grandad’s old deactivated WW1 artillery shell memento? Maybe he’d report an explosives stash.

I’m fairly careful who I let into the house. This is why.

Insurance agent/Stasi informant Jonathan Yeamans is scum; he abused a position of trust to violate that couple’s rights and his company helped. Fortunately, people are discovering that.

“Nationwide will run and hide.”

And the dangers abound. Victim-disarming harpy Shannon Watts encourages people to ask if friends and family are armed for the holidays. If they have to ask, they are not real friends, and you should be concerned what they’d do with that information.

If you want more information on protecting your privacy and life, I recommend Claire Wolfe‘s free ebook, RATS! Your guide to protecting yourself against snitches, informers, informants, agents provocateurs,narcs, finks, and similar vermin.

Hat tip to David Codrea.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

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“Fix NICS” right

In a bipartisan act of insanity, Senator Cornyn and cronies from both sides of the aisle have come up with a wonderful plan to “Fix NICS.” Basically, it bribes states to report more people.

But there’s a “penalty,” too. Sort of. If an agency fails to report properly the politically appointed agency chief bunghole boffer doesn’t get a bonus (presupposing that bureaucrats should by default get bonuses).

If we must be saddled with a background check system that forces people to preemptively-prove-your-innocence (PPYI), a clear prior restraint, in order to exercise a constitutionally protected right, then let’s fix NICS properly.

Simply not giving a bonus to a political bureaucrat for a failure is not sufficient. Penalties must be imposed at the individual level:


1. Any individual who, through malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance, fails to properly report a prohibited person under 18 U.S. Code § 922 to the NICS databases shall be guilty of a felony; the penalty for which shall be a prison term of no more than five years and a fine of no more than $10,000 for each offense.

   a. In addition, if the failure results in a prohibited person obtaining a firearm and using it in a crime, the individual shall be charged and tried as an accessory before the fact in the prohibited person’s crime.

   b. Should malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in supervision at any level be a contributing factor in the failure, all supervisors, up to and including appointed agency heads, shall be guilty of a felony; the penalty for which shall be a prison term of no more than five years and a fine of no more than $10,000 for each offense.

   c. “Sovereign immunity” shall not be a defense.

2. And individual who, through malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance, causes a person who is not prohibited under 18 U.S. Code § 922 to be denied or delayed the exercise of a constitutional right shall be charged under 18 U.S. Code § 242 – Deprivation of rights under color of law.

   a. In addition, if the denial or delay of the right to a firearm results in injury or death, the individual responsible for the denial or delay shall be guilty of a felony the penalty for which shall be a maximum of life in prison and a fine of up to $1,000,000.

   b. Should malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in supervision at any level be a contributing factor in the failure, all supervisors, up to and including appointed agency heads, shall be guilty of a felony the penalty for which shall be a maximum of life in prison and a fine of up to $1,000,000.

   c. “Sovereign immunity” shall not be a defense.


Private citizens — licensed dealers, private sellers, would be buyers — all face criminal penalties for their errors that could allow a prohibited person to obtain and misuse a firearm. It’s time for bureaucrats to join the party.


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar.

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